At the national level, with Democrats in control ofboth houses of Congress and the presidency, many of us were appalled to see howdifficult it still was to accomplish long-held Democratic goals of reforminghealth care and creating more jobs.
There, at least, unwieldy rules intended to protectthe rights of the minority party could be blamed for allowing unanimousRepublicans to try to block progress at every turn.
But what’s the excuse of the Wisconsin Legislature?
There, too, Democrats are in control of both housesand the governor’s office. And legislators are not saddled with obstructionistrules that require super-majorities to overcome filibusters.
All majority Democrats needed were majority votes topass anything they wanted.
Yet, when the legislative session ended, what shouldhave been high Democratic priorities of promoting jobs and alternative energyor saving Milwaukee County’s public transitsystem were left on the table.
A couple of other bills badly needed by theDemocrats’ most vulnerable constituentsregulation of predatory payday loancompanies and state intervention in the worst public schools serving poorchildrenbarely managed to pass in the closing hours.
Clearly, more than partisan majorities are required.We also have to elect officials who are politically courageous enough to votefor good things and against dumb things despite ridiculous attacks from theother side.
Two billsa dumb one that passed and a good one thatdidn’tdemonstrate the power of dishonest debate to make it difficult forgutless legislators to vote against something dumb or in favor of somethinggood.
It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikelybill to pass in America’sDairyland than one to allow the sale of milk without pasteurization, theprocess discovered in the mid-1800s by Louis Pasteur to curb deaths andsickness from typhoid, diphtheria, scarlet fever and salmonella.
What could possibly prompt politicians to pass suchlegislation in the face of opposition from the Food and Drug Administration,Centers for Disease Control and public health officials everywhere?
Apparently, all it takes is a Tea Party attitudethat government shouldn’t be telling people what to do. That includes tellingbusinesses not to sell food products that can sicken and kill people.
No sentient being could have failed to noticemassive recalls of beef, spinach, peanut butter and other food products inrecent years. Obviously, we need more government oversight to protect us fromunsafe food, not less.
Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation and his Academy Award-nominated documentary film, Food, Inc., provide all the evidenceanyone with a strong stomach could possibly want about the need to restorepublic protection in the food industry.
But in the Tea Party view of America, the“people” know better than government, science or a bunch of elitist experts.
In the case of raw milk, it was a very tiny sliverof people who hold the superstition that milk that hasn’t been treated to killdeadly toxins is healthier than milk the government certifies as safe.
Voting Rights for All?
Let’s move from an issue that only a very few peoplecared about to one that affects all of us: voting. The partisan divide onvoting is well known.
Democrats want to make it as easy as possible forpeople to vote in a democracy. There is a partisan advantage to them becausethe people who traditionally have had low voter turnoutthe poor, racialminorities and some of the very elderlyare more likely to vote Democratic.
This also puts Democrats on the side of, well,democracy.
Republicans, on the other hand, want fewer people tovote. There’s also a partisan advantage in their position. In low turnoutelections, those most likely to vote are higher income people who are far morelikely to vote Republican than all that Democratic rabble.
This is an elitist, undemocratic position.Republicans obviously can’t oppose democracy in public. So, instead, theyscream vote fraud.
The Democratic voter registration bill considered inthe closing days didn’t even address the most serious denial of voting rightsin Wisconsin:restoring voting rights to felons returning to the community afterincarceration.
Democrats didn’t want to face Republican criticismfor encouraging former offenders to become good citizens. And, in the end, theycouldn’t even summon up the courage to expand voter registration byautomatically registering everyone who received a Wisconsindriver’s license.
Since the majority party is going to be attacked bythe other side no matter what it does, we should at least expect Democrats tohave the guts to vote against the sale of unsafe food and for democracy.
