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Posts published in April 2024

A really bad outfit

April 30, 2024

One of the chief agonies of all politicians from Congress on down is the unfunded mandate.  When a political body creates a requirement (mandate) for another level of government to do something and doesn't provide funding, screams immediately emanate from subordinate bodies.

Nowadays, we're seeing a second level mandate coming from state level.  It's the increased use of statehouse-initiated legislation to stop all cities/counties from doing something.  Or, conversely, making them do something.

Idaho experienced this as some local governments tried to deal with equal rights protection only to be told by denizens under the dome in Boise to "knock it off." So, the legislature created laws to forbid those lower bodies from assuring equality for all.

We're seeing more of these "statehouse-down" laws of prohibition, I believe, because of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  If you don't know what ALEC is, you need to find out because that unelected, mostly privately-funded organization is affecting your life as much as most elected bodies.

A lot of states belong to ALEC, sending usually conservative Republican members of their legislatures to various national meetings.  Much of what appears to be "local" legislation originates at these meetings - some from elected attendees.  But, more often, it comes from ALEC staff.  That's where you'll find the red flags.  And, the major funding from Charles Koch, the Hunts and others of their ilk.  All pretty much the same political outlook.  "Self above service."

Because ALEC is primarily funded by states, large national corporations and wealthy individuals with agendas of their own, you see a lot of narrow interest bills.  Bills that can sometimes be in direct opposition to the general public good.

That's been going on for many years.  But, ALEC activity has increased recently.  That's because Congress has become so immobile and ineffective that the far right is turning its primary attention to the state level.  And it's meeting with a some large successes.

One ALEC-originated flotsam is a new law in Texas forbidding cities to declare themselves "sanctuary cities."  You can find this same "format" law in at least four other states.  And, Congress.

It's a good bet if legislative subjects like abortion, immigration, offshore drilling or voting rights show up at the same time in half a dozen state capitols, you'll find ALEC fingerprints on the computer thumb drives.

A decade or two ago, ALEC seemed like a good idea.  Nearly every state and many large, national businesses joined up.  But, as the scope of the output of ALEC began to involve more sensitive subjects like voting rights and immigration, some states dropped out.  So did some sponsoring corporations - especially four years ago when North Carolina's legislature and governor tried to legislate bathroom selections and who could (or could not) vote. There was an exodus of members and dollars from ALEC but not nearly enough of either to end it.

ALEC-originated bills have appeared in most legislatures.  Many have become law.  But, a couple of years ago, courts began to strike down a few of the most egregious output based on ALEC models.  Some of the new voting rights laws, using ALEC authorship, couldn't withstand court tests and were consigned to the trash.   Where they belonged.  Then, we saw challenges to that Texas sanctuary cities law and it, too, died a timely, legal death.

"One size fits all" is a marketing concept we often deal with in our computerized society.  Might work fine for stretch socks and automobiles, but doesn't seem satisfactory when it comes to creating laws governing our lives.  ALEC is the main legislative practitioner of the "one size" idea.

As a source of proposed laws for the 50 states, ALEC has created some very bad bills.  It's a bad outfit and it ought to be put out of business.  Soon.

 

The last smear campaign season?

April 29, 2024

Ever since the Republican Party decided to close its primary elections in 2011, we have witnessed increasingly nasty, truth-deprived GOP primary elections. The most extreme candidates learned that they could win by using ugly smear tactics against reasonable, pragmatic Republican opponents in the low-turnout GOP primary.

For instance, Senator Brian Lenney won his District 13 seat in the 2022 primary election with just 12.7% of registered voters. Senator Dan Foreman won his District 6 seat with only 8.8% of the vote. With the R behind their name, they then coasted to victory in the general election.

GOP smear campaigns will no longer be sure winners after Idaho voters approve the Open Primary Initiative in this year’s November election. Candidates will have to campaign on real issues, conduct themselves with civility and refrain from vicious campaign tactics in order to win in the general election.

This year, we are already seeing the kind of ugly campaigning that will continue to drive support for the initiative. The Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) has laid the groundwork with its contrived “freedom index” scoring that portrays its culture warriors as virtual heroes, while making responsible Republicans, who want to do the hard work of addressing actual problems facing the state, look like big-spending villains.

Those narratives are picked up, amplified and injected into smear campaigns by unscrupulous hired guns like McShane LLC, which operates out of Las Vegas. A prime example of McShane’s dirty work was its successful attack on Senator Jim Woodward in the 2022 primary election in District 1. Woodward honorably served his country as a Navy officer on a nuclear submarine, is a successful businessman and was a highly-regarded conservative Republican Senator. His opponent, Scott Herndon, employed McShane with financial support from IFF’s cronies and allies, to conduct a vile, but successful, campaign against Woodward.

McShane works in tandem with far-right groups and individuals that benefit from having friendly officials in positions of influence. The collective “money, consultants, PACs and messaging work like a machine to ensure a tiny group gets unqualified candidates elected who will remain loyal and vote for the self-serving interests of the collective group’s demands.”

According to the Secretary of State’s website, eleven candidates have used McShane’s services to the tune of more than $300,000 through March of this year. They include Scott Herndon and Cornel Rasor in District 1, Carl Bjerke in District 5, Christy Zito in District 8, Brandon Shippy and Jacyn Gallagher in District 9, Chris Trakel and Lucas Caylor in District 11, Jaron Crane in District 12, Barbara Ehardt in District 33 and Brett Skidmore in District 35. Past McShane customers include Brandon Durst, David Reilly and Wendy Horman.

Most of McShane’s candidates are enthusiastic supporters of school choice programs that seek to divert taxpayer funds into private and religious schooling. McShane will certainly pursue that theme in coming days and will have lots of support from a variety of dark money groups that abhor Idaho’s public school system.

The head of one such group, the American Federation for Children (AFC), recently said: “If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school choice and freedom in education – you’re a target.” Idaho Business for Education points out that AFC pledged to spend $10 million this year to defeat lawmakers across the country who oppose school vouchers. A good deal of that will likely be spent in Idaho to support McShane's candidates and defeat supporters of Idaho’s public school system. It will get ugly.

Idahoans should brace themselves for this last scorched-earth Republican primary. It will once again demonstrate the folly of allowing a few party bosses to essentially dictate who gets elected to important public offices. With the Open Primaries Initiative, there will be better days where everyone can take part in choosing our leaders and setting the policy agenda. Idaho will still be a Republican state but, instead of being controlled by divisive culture warriors, we can return to civil and reasonable leadership.

And out-of-state political hit-men, like McShane, will be just an unpleasant memory.

 

RIP party of the gipper

RIP party of the gipper

April 27, 2024

It never occurred to me, at least before Donald Trump rode down his escalator, that the Republican Party would, all in my lifetime, embrace the sunny optimism and national security mantra of the actor-cum-President Ronald Reagan and then turn on a dime and completely bury Reagan and the GOP he built.

Authoritarian cults are mighty powerful draws, apparently.

In a new book, Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism, John Kenneth White, a professor of politics at Catholic University, attempts to explain what has happened to the party of the Gipper. His brutal assessment is made all the more damning by its stark truth.

“After consecutive losses in 2018, 2020, and 2022, Republicans should be entering a period of reflection and reconciliation,” White writes. “But Donald Trump will not permit either to occur. Instead of redefining conservativism for a twenty-first century audience composed of multicultural and multiradical voters, Republicans are fixated on stoking their angry base of older white Baby Boomers who once defined the nation’s past but not its future. Instead of reckoning with the Trump presidency and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Republicans are determined to erase the latter from their collective memories. Rather than rejecting election deniers, Republicans elevated them to positions of power.”

There is something within the DNA of the Republican Party, as White concludes after detailing the history both before and since Reagan, “that makes it prone to conspiracy theories, election deniers, and top down presidential leadership that is fraught with danger.”

Fraught with danger, indeed, particularly given the widespread willingness of Trump backers and their elected representatives to ignore the mountain of damaging facts about the former president — what one writer calls Trump’s “kaleidoscopic corruption” — while embracing the nonsense that stokes that angry baby boomer base.

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu is the latest A-list example to go full in on the nonsense. Sununu, son of former conservative governor and one-time White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, appeared recently on ABC’s Sunday morning TV show.

As interviewer George Stephanopoulos questioned the once harsh Trump critic, he finally put to Sununu the only question that really matters for every Republican officeholder, not to mention voter.

“So just to sum up,” Stephanopoulos said to Sununu, “you would support (Trump) for president even if he is convicted in classified documents. You would support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You would support him for president even though you believe he’s lying about the last election. You would support him for president even if he’s convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”

Sununu’s response: “Yes, me and 51% of America.”

Setting aside the fact that Trump has never polled higher than 48% in the average of all national polls, in other words set aside that the governor is lying about Trump’s level of support, Sununu says nothing matters other than electing a Republican president. Nothing matters: not the lies, not the law, not the Trump promise of retribution for his opponents. Nothing matters but political power.

It’s also worth remembering that Sununu, as Peter Wehner noted in The Atlantic, has in the recent past — while trying to help Nikki Haley in GOP primaries — referred to Trump as a “loser,” an “asshole” and “not a real Republican.” Sununu, before debasing himself on ABC, said the country needs to move past the Trump’s “nonsense and drama.” Speaking of the legal morass Trump faces, Sununu said last year, “This is serious. If even half of this stuff is true, he’s in real trouble.”

The real trouble here is the obscene obsequiousness of politicians such as Sununu, the enablers and apologist for what passes for a political party led by the most flawed man to ever sit in the Oval Office.

Pick an issue — book bans, diminishing education, abandoning international leadership — the party of Reagan is dead, buried like Trump’s ex-wife on the back nine of a golf course where the GOP nominee goes to cheat.

Reagan spins in his grave as Trump demands congressional Republicans refuse critical military aid to Ukraine, the same country he attempted to coerce into manufacturing political dirt on President Joe Biden, a brazenly un-American scheme that earned Trump his first impeachment.

The country Reagan deemed “an evil empire” is now run by a truly evil man arguably worse than any Russian leader since Joseph Stalin. Yet many in the GOP embrace Vladimir Putin, mouth his propaganda and take his money. The white Christian nationalists who now define the party’s policy agenda, such as it is, are beholden not to a Reagan or a George W. Bush or even a Dwight Eisenhower philosophy. Instead they praise Hungary’s strongman, Viktor Orbán, and the new right-wing crackpot, Javier Milei, who is running Argentina over a cliff.

The party that fought ten thousand elections with a call to outlaw abortion finally became the dog that caught the car and from Arizona to Idaho to Alabama, the fruits of that “victory,” delivered by an ideologically politicized U.S. Supreme Court, has created a maternal health crisis.

Arizona’s current total ban abortion law dates to the Civil War era, before Arizona was a state and long before women could vote, and Republicans there have refused to entertain any change.

In Idaho, many OB/GYN docs have left for fear the state’s extraordinary restrictions on abortion not only imperil the lives of patients with pregnancy complications but hold a real risk of sending doctors to jail. The overwhelmingly Republican Legislature in Idaho recently adjourned after ignoring any fix that might have slowed the physician exodus, while protecting women’s health.

Meantime, stoking fear and grievance with the Trumpian base, governors from Republican states spend millions of their taxpayer’s dollars to send state police and National Guard personnel to the southern border in what is nothing more than a performative act made for cable television.

Republicans had a chance earlier this year with bipartisan border security legislation to do something that would actually address border concerns, but at Trump’s behest they opted for performance over substance.

This is not a serious political party, which makes it truly dangerous. Real political parties have real policy proposals based, of course, on an ideology, but also rooted in facts and realism. You want to “fix the border”? Tell us how you would do it. You support Ukraine? Show us the plan.

Real political parties don’t let people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz or George Santos assume outsized influence. Real political parties consign the quarrelsome clowns to the deepest back bench and ignore them. Republicans now elect them speaker of the House. Or run them for president.

Near the end of his book, White quotes conservative jurist Michael Luttig: “The Republican Party has made its decision that the war against America’s Democracy and the Rule of Law it instigated on January 6 will go on, prosecuted to its catastrophic end.”

That is where the one-time party of Reagan stands in the early 21st century. It’s a scandal. It’s dangerous. Only voters can fix it.

(image/Wikimedia Commons)

 

Every single emergency

Every single emergency

April 26, 2024

If the early reads on the U.S. Supreme Court are anywhere near right, Idaho’s new abortion law may have a sweeping and deep effect in many states around the country.

More effects than many people even realize, or even can calculate.

Idaho’s law is being challenged in the Supreme Court by federal agencies, which point out that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 requires emergency rooms (those which receive Medicare) to provide at least stabilizing medical care for patients who show up. The Idaho law appears to run counter to that, ordering that abortion cannot be part of any medical treatment unless the mother is at clear risk of dying. Abortion is a treatment for a number of medical problems which may not be solvable otherwise, and without which a woman may either die or her body may be severely damaged.

Federal Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, described the impact: “Today, doctors in Idaho and the women in Idaho are in an impossible position. If a woman comes to an emergency room facing a grave threat to her health, but she isn’t yet facing death, doctors either have to delay treatment and allow her condition to materially deteriorate or they’re airlifting her out of the state so she can get the emergency care that she needs.”

Idaho is in other words in the process (a number of cases have become public already) of dumping desperately ill patients on other states which will take care of them. Which Idaho won’t.

If a law like Idahos were in place in all states, the talk would shift to cover airlifts out of the country entirely.

Prelogar didn’t get into the point that a large portion of Idaho’s obstetricians have exited the state, mostly because of the new law; there was no place in her argument for it, this being a mere practical consideration rather than legal analysis.

But if the Supreme Court does what hearing questioning seemed to suggest - that the Idaho law will be upheld - the result won’t be just singular. It will be a vast array of impacts, as varied as the patients who show up at hospital emergency rooms.

The Supreme Court waded into that point during the hearing, even if the implication was left mostly undrawn. Numerous what-ifs were posed during oral arguments, but the number of potential questions opened by the laws on a practical level could multiply almost to infinity.

Every person's medical conditions are at least somewhat unique - our bodies are all at least slightly different from each other - which means that pregnancies are all slightly different too. That's why even a sophisticated algorithm won't replace a good physician: Conditions aren’t always normal and natural processes (like a pregnancy or any other medical condition) won't always go according to plan. There’s no good replacement for on-the-spot and in-the-moment judgment.

The same reason an algorithm won’t work in managing every pregnancy is the same reason no law, however well crafted (and many of the nation’s new abortion laws are shoddy) can cover every case. Each pregnancy is its own unique situation, often involving important decisions along the way. Normally, up to now, those critical decisions have been made by the parents or the mother, with help from medical professionals. Many medical conditions (not just, but including pregnancies) require running monitoring and adjustment, and calculation of cost and risk that add up to a series of very personal responses - calculations different people will make in different ways. No one outside that immediate circle can understand all the factors that weigh in every decision.

You can't call the Supreme Court or the state legislature to cover every contingency, every decision, of which the life-threatening situations are just the most visible part of the iceberg.

The new abortion laws seem to contemplate that you can. The friction between those rules and life in the real world, and discussion about it, is going to grow.

(image/George Hodan)

EMTALA

EMTALA

April 25, 2024

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) has been in the news recently. The Biden Administration has sued Idaho over our restrictive antiabortion laws, claiming the Federal Act trumps the states restrictions. Oral arguments were heard before the US Supreme Court this week.

So, let’s step back a bit and try to understand just what EMTALA says.

The law was passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan back in 1986. There were many stories at the time in the press and professional testimony telling stories of patient “dumping” between hospitals.

A patient with no health insurance might show up at an emergency room. Let’s say the ER is in a private hospital.

If the city had a public hospital, like LA County Hospital or Cook County Hospital in Chicago, the private ER would just send the patient down the road to the public hospital without offering any treatment. That is, they performed a “wallet biopsy” and determined they wouldn’t get paid, so sent the patient off to a publicly supported facility.

There were also cases of pregnant women in active labor being shunted off. Tragic outcomes were reported.

Congress acted. Not to fix our messy health care system, just to make such dumping cases sanctionable.

Congress put the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in charge of enforcing these rules.

EMTALA violations are investigated, and fines are levied. Every year 3-4% of US hospitals are fined. Private, for-profit hospitals have twice the incidence of violations as do nonprofit hospitals. Fines average about $34K per incident.

So, dumping still occurs, I guess, but it just doesn’t stir the outrage it used to.

EMTALA prohibits the transfer of patients based on their ability to pay. It also required patients receive stabilizing treatment before transfer. Indeed, the emphasis on “stabilizing treatment” in the law is at the crux of the Biden Administration lawsuit against Idaho’s antiabortion laws.

I am not a great fan of the Federal EMTALA law. I think it responded to outrageous behavior with bureaucratic hand slaps. Indeed, the cost of healthcare went up after EMTALA. More cost shifting onto insured patients occurred when hospitals were required to provide uncompensated care.

But it was enacted to put a band aid on our bleeding health care system. Uninsured patients were being treated inhumanely. So, dumping them gets a fine.

Instead, we should have made sure all had health insurance.

Back when EMTALA was passed about 17.6% of the population was uninsured. In 2022, we have gotten down to 7.9%. EMTALA didn’t give anybody health insurance. It just brought civil penalties, fines to violators.

The public and Congressional moral outrage at hospitals denying care based on the patient’s inability to pay lead to EMTALA. But we still have uninsured. We still have the most complicated, mind boggling health care system in the world. Maybe you think it’s what makes America great. I don’t.

Whether the US Supreme Court will decide Idaho’s antiabortion laws violate EMTALA has almost stood the purpose of the law on its head.

Idaho is arguing our laws, to DENY CARE take precedence over the Federal requirement to provide care.

Specifically, in Idaho, if a pregnant woman comes to an emergency room and is unstable due to conditions of pregnancy, she cannot be treated with an abortion, that is, delivery of the fetus that likely will not survive, unless it is to save her life. If she is bleeding, infected, unstable, and the recommended treatment to save organs, her reproductive future, she cannot receive this treatment in Idaho. She must be transferred to a state where such treatment is legal. Six such transfers have occurred since our laws went into effect. Idaho is dumping our unstable pregnant women on other states.

Little wonder that doctors who treat pregnant patients look at Idaho with trepidation. Such a determination puts them very close to, if not over the line of do no harm.

(image/low res)

 

A child tax credit split

A child tax credit split

April 24, 2024

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, has found a sure way to ensure that his prized legislation doesn’t see the light of day.

He sent a news release singling out the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, and blasting Republicans for holding up legislation aimed at boosting the child tax credit and helping innovative small business owners – the Tax Relief for Families and Workers Act.

Wyden said that Crapo has not accepted the Oregon Democrat’s offer to change the bill. “The changes he asked for instead would have destroyed any chance of passing the bill and left way too many kids living in poverty.”

I talked with Crapo about Wyden’s remarks, and the Idaho senator brushed off Wyden’s remarks. As Crapo said, it’s not unusual for committee chairs and ranking members to have aggressive disagreements, and Crapo recognizes that he is the GOP’s focal point on this issue. Crapo and Wyden are longtime colleagues from neighboring states and have worked on a long list of issues over the years.

“This will not harm our working relationship at all,” Crapo told me.

Of course, Senate Republicans who may have read Wyden’s release, might have a different view. If anything, their support for Crapo – and his opposition to the bill – will be even stronger.

Wyden says there is plenty of GOP support outside of the Senate. The bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, a Republican and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. In January, the bill passed the House with 357 votes – a landslide by House standards.

“It’s a combination of ideas from both sides,” Wyden says. “It expands the child tax credit, focusing on kids from low-income families.” For small businesses, “it beefs up the incentive for (research and development) and investments in things like new equipment and software.”

Wyden suggests that Senate Republicans are holding out for a better deal in 2025, a notion that Crapo does not totally reject. Maybe some are hoping for a Trump presidency, or a Republican majority in the Senate.

“I don’t presume those kinds of things, and that’s not the position I’m advocating,” Crapo said. “We need to get into negotiations and find a resolution.”

Crapo says he’s all for strengthening the child tax credit and giving a boost to small businesses.

“There is a series of business tax polices that need to be fixed, and I am one of the strongest – if not the strongest – advocate for fixing those,” he said. “The demand on the Democrat side for doing that has been to expand the child tax credit, and I am not opposed to that. But they also want to change the tax credit to being much more of a straight entitlement, taking work requirements out of the system and making it much less available to the middle-class people who are paying taxes.”

Crapo favors helping those who need the government subsidy, the roughly 50 percent of families that receive the child tax credit. “But this will take it to about 91 percent and it’s not offering the appropriate amount of support to the middle-class working families.”

Also on the Republican side, pulling work requirements for any welfare program is a non-starter.

“I’m very open to negotiating a bill, if we get it right,” Crapo said. “As of now, the fixes that I believe need to be made to the bill are considered to be unacceptable to negotiate on from the other side, so we are at a standstill.”

Republicans are not heartless creatures when it comes to helping out families and kids, Crapo says.

“The child tax credit was created in 1997 by Republicans, and in 2017 it was doubled. I voted for it, and that is the law today,” he said. “I’m willing to add strength beyond what we did in 2017. This discussion is about not only expanding it, but whether we are going to change it by taking work out and moving a vast portion of it away from working middle-class families.”

It seems that there is a middle ground somewhere. Finding it is next to impossible in a presidential election year when party control of the Senate hangs in the balance.

Chuck Malloy is a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com

(image/Oregon Department of Transportation)

Do you know

April 23, 2024

Have you ever voted for a candidate for office because someone you respect recommended it?  Someone made an endorsement.  Did it affect the way you voted?

Looking back over nearly seven decades of casting a ballot, my answer would be "No."  Someone else's political "thinking" has never really affected on my own political decision-making.

This came to mind the other day as I was reading about the anger of the "Orange man" at Kevin McCarthy for the latter's refusing to endorse his latest bid for the presidency.  Trump blew another gasket to which McCarthy replied with the "f" word

This got me to thinking about all the candidates, issue voting and other choice-making at the ballot box I'd encountered during those aforementioned decades.  Had I ever let my vote be influenced by someone else's recommendation?

The answer, as I said, was "No."

I've never understood the worth of most endorsements.  Oh, there are some, usually union-connected, that carry weight with a lot of people.  Nothing like getting the United Auto Workers behind you.  That can make a real difference.

But, most of us don't have such a connection.  We're individuals and, most of the time, we follow our own instincts.  Besides, most voters don't do extensive research about names on the ballot.  In small towns, we generally know the candidate on a one-on-one basis and our votes are seldom swayed by outside influence.

On a related issue, how many of us really pay attention to what's going on around us?  To what's influencing our existence?

A retired friend recently related an experience he'd had.  The main drag in our burg is about to be torn up to replace hundred-year-old clay sewer and water lines.  Crews will update and bury much of the electric and other currently above-ground utility hardware.  The "business" center of our little town will be a mess for about a year.  The local newspaper has run many stories of what's about to happen.

My friend was in a small store and asked the owner if she had made plans to keep her business running during the disruption.

Her response was surprising.  She was seemingly unaware of what was going to happen and what effect all the disruption would have on her business.  She'd made no plans to open a rear entrance to the store and didn't seem to grasp how construction would affect parking.  Or, that the mess would last a year or more.

Our local newspaper certainly has been on top of the construction info.  There's been nearly a year's worth of stories about the coming "big dig."  But, to at least this one business owner, not a thought of how she'd be affected.

We live in what's been called an "information age."  That information surrounds us daily.  It often overwhelms us - causes confusion.  It can even redirect our attention from other important things we need to do, making it hard to stay up-to-date.

But, when you own a downtown business, lack of thought about what's to come to your front door for nearly a year isn't pardonable.  It borders on stupidity.  Especially when your local news media has been so proactive.  For so long.

 

The morality war

The morality war

April 22, 2024

Idaho has an interesting history of occasionally using the power of government for or against religion. Fortunately, when all is said and done, we usually come back to the concept that the power of government should not be used to advance or target particular religions or religious dogma. And so it will eventually be with legislation like House Bill 710, which seeks to use religious beliefs to purge certain books from the shelves of Idaho’s school and other public libraries.

The Constitution that Idahoans adopted upon statehood in 1890 was replete with shameful discriminatory provisions targeted at the Mormon Church. Under Article VI, section 3, its members could not “vote, serve as a juror, or hold any civil office.” Over time, Idahoans came to their senses and removed these ugly constitutional provisions. We returned to the concept that the government should stay neutral in the religious realm–allowing religious freedom but not forcing religious beliefs upon the population.

The great majority of Idahoans trust Gem State librarians with book selection. Despite any evidence that they have violated that trust, religious zealots in the Legislature were finally successful this year in getting legislation passed to second-guess them. So much for keeping government decision-making closest to the people. Why trust locally-elected school and library boards to reflect community values when we can turn to the morality champions, Representatives Mike Moyle and Jaron Crane, to make those decisions?

Those exalted legislators had the guiding hand of Christian nationalist Blaine Conzatti and his morality police at the Idaho Family Policy Center to lay the groundwork. Based on his mistaken belief that public libraries were dishing out smut to kids, Conzatti launched his crusade against books with any sexual content that ran afoul of his religious views. He as much as admitted that HB 710 was primarily intended to intimidate librarians into self-censoring books that he deemed impure. He crowed that the $250 bounty, plus attorney fees and costs, for refusing to move targeted books would drive up liability insurance costs for libraries. Librarians have been fretting over the cost of trying to fend off the frivolous purge demands that we all know are coming.

There is one important lesson I’ve learned from over five decades of legal and political experience–there is usually a way to overcome adversity. There is a path to righting the damage that will result from HB 710. We just need to buckle down and make it happen.

Everyone who can should vote for reasonable, civil and pragmatic Republicans in the GOP primary election on May 21 and replace the culture warriors who have made our libraries dangerous conflict zones. Unaffiliated voters may register to vote in the Republican primary on election day. Additional culture war extremists can be voted out in the November general election.

The Open Primaries Initiative will be on the November ballot and it is essential that it be approved in order to break the stranglehold that extremists currently have over the electoral process in Idaho. That will eliminate a number of the book-banning, gay-bashing culture warriors from public office for the long term, while facilitating eventual repeal of the book removal law.

In the meantime, librarians must be on the lookout for a good test case to bring before the courts to test the application of HB 710. I’m confident that pro bono attorneys and expert witnesses will be found to defend a library’s refusal to take a worthy book off of the shelves. The party demanding the removal of the book will have the burden of proving the book is harmful to minors, whatever that means. Expert witness testimony will be important and costly for both sides. If the complaining party fails to prove the case for removal, it could face having to pay the library's costs and fees, in addition to its own. A hefty cost and fee award for a frivolous case could eliminate a vast number of the removal demands that HB 710 can be expected to produce.

So, despite the fact that Mr. Conzatti’s forces have won this chapter of the battle, the final chapter can have a happy ending where Idaho returns to the traditional concept that our government must remain neutral in the religious realm.

(image/public domain)

 

Those questionable comparison surveys

April 21, 2024

You may receive, as I do, emails and reports from online organizations about research purporting to show how Oregon stacks up to other states in various ways.

Don’t trust them.

One recent report said that among the 50 states, Oregon has the fifth highest rate of religious discrimination – a topic that’s emerged in presidential politics.

Republicans have appealed to conservative Christians by alleging religious victimization, and presidential candidate Donald Trump even offered to declare a Christian visibility day if elected. Democrats say much of the victimization argument is thinly supported, while the Biden administration has categorized some regulatory changes in social services as designed to protect religious freedom.

The report listed five states atop the list – Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Washington and Oregon – all are Democratic-leaning.

Could this be another instance of skewed data in support of an ideology?

An online publication, New American, headlined the results with this point: “States Biden Won in 2020 Lead – in Religious Discrimination Complaints.” The article added, “Of the 15 states with the most religious discrimination complaints, 11 are among the 15 most atheistic states.” It failed to mention that deep-red Idaho immediately follows Oregon in sixth place.

But what does this ranking even mean? The core data comes from credible sources. The state rankings were developed by the Boston law firm Duddy, Goodwin and Pollard, which specializes in employment law, based on underlying data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In Oregon, those cases are overseen by the Bureau of Labor and Industries, and Oregon has its own rules on religious discrimination.

However.

As the EEOC reference suggests, we’re talking here strictly about employment discrimination –- hiring, firing, job conditions and harassment and similar subjects. Other areas where religious discrimination might be alleged – in housing, education, health and other areas – weren’t part of the analysis.

Second, the rates in the study didn’t relate to how many cases of religious discrimination were alleged based on population, but rather they were based on a percentage of all kinds of employment discrimination charges. So if, for example, Mississippi, which had the lowest religion-based percentage, had a higher percentage of other forms of discrimination, that would lower the religious percentage, even if the number happened to be higher than Oregon’s.

The New American article even suggested another concern about the lack of data on religious complaints.

“To what extent is today’s fashionable Christophobia at issue and to what degree are these politically correct complaints (e.g., allegations of anti-Muslim bias)? And how does this vary state by state?”

A September 2020 analysis from the University of Washington, the fourth ranking state, said “Muslims and atheists in the United States are more likely than those of Christian faiths to experience religious discrimination, according to new research led by the University of Washington.”

On top of that, the causes of religious discrimination cited in the data were scrambled, with data thrown together from during and after the pandemic, when debates roared over who would be required to take protective actions, such as getting a vaccine or the temporary closure of churches –  issues that cut widely across cultural and political lines.

None of that means, of course, that discrimination on the basis of religion is irrelevant to Oregon. In fact, there have been a few recent cases where discrimination was alleged. For example, in May 2023, state Sen. Cedric Hayden, R-Fall Creek, complained to state and legislative employment offices that the Senate president had violated his right to an excused absence when he wanted to attend a Saturday church service during a stretch when Senate Republicans had departed the Legislature to bring it to a halt. That case appears to be still pending.

And another instance has been cited by the Portland firm Meyer Employment Law, which  posted a list of top discrimination cases in the state in recent years. The top three involved age, race and gender discrimination but the fourth involved religion. A Portland city employee was awarded $14,080 in that latter case. The city was found to have allowed a hostile work environment, with her lawsuit against the city quoting a fellow employee as saying: “I am tired of your Christian attitude … I’m going to file a complaint against you the next time I sneeze and you say ‘bless you.’”

There was also a religious discrimination case in Brookings involving zoning law and St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church. It routinely provided meals for homeless people in the area as part of its religious mission, leaders said. But in 2022, the city passed an ordinance requiring a permit for meal services. The  church fought back in court, claiming religious discrimination, and won.

So does that mean that Oregon has among the highest instances of religious discrimination in the country?

Hardly. The data doesn’t stack up. But this case does show that it’s good to be skeptical of comparisons during high-stakes election campaigns.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.