Concepts in Politics: Liberty and Freedom

Liberty and freedom tend to be used interchangeably in political discourse, but they are not the same thing, at least according to some sources. Wikipedia describes the difference like this:

“Sometimes liberty is differentiated from freedom by using the word "freedom" primarily, if not exclusively, to mean the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; and using the word "liberty" to mean the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved. In this sense, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others. ..... Liberty entails the responsible use of freedom under the rule of law without depriving anyone else of their freedom. Freedom is more broad in that it represents a total lack of restraint or the unrestrained ability to fulfill one's desires. For example, a person can have the freedom to murder, but not have the liberty to murder, as the latter example deprives others of their right not to be harmed. Liberty can be taken away as a form of punishment. In many countries, people can be deprived of their liberty if they are convicted of criminal acts.”

Thus liberty is constrained by the rule of law and to a lesser extent constraints that flow from things like social and tribal norms and loyalties. The concepts are important in politics because many people consider rule of law constraints to be unjustifiable or unconstitutional. Differences of opinion arise because both liberty and freedom are essentially contested concepts. They are not definable with universal authority and probably never will be. People will endlessly disagree about what is a proper liberty or freedom and what is not.

This is important because an ideology such as libertarianism leads many libertarians to believe that there are far too many burdens on individual freedoms that should never be subject to the rule of law. Some libertarians argue that many or most laws are illegal because they are unconstitutional. A sociologist who worked as a financial advisor for multi-millionaires and billionaires commented on how many of those people viewed the rule of law and thus the scope of their own liberties:

“The lives of the richest people in the world are so different from those of the rest of us, it's almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. ..... About a quarter of the people I interviewed [financial advisors to billionaires] really seemed to believe quite unironically in the justice of protecting the wealth of their clients from taxation. They literally view taxation as theft, and they view government as incompetent at best and corrupt at worst. They are deeply suspicious of any sort of welfare state programs because they see it as destroying initiative.” 

A lot of those wealthy people cheat on their taxes with no qualms whatever about it.

With that kind of an anti-law mindset, it is easy to see how the urge to make government so small it can be drowned in a bathtub would be appealing. Of course, we are witnessing the downside of that attitude at work in the staggering incompetence and failures of our shrinking federal government to deal competently with the coronavirus pandemic. Before the current disaster is recovered from, that anti-government, unrestrained freedom attitude will cost the US economy and taxpayers trillions, maybe $10 trillion, maybe a lot more.

In a 1944 speech, federal judge Learned Hand commented on how he saw the liberty vs freedom difference, the danger of unrestrained freedom and how he struggled to define the undefinable concept of liberty:

“What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow. ..... What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; .....” 

That language expresses sentiments that are rarely voiced in modern political discourse. Among many conservative and populist Americans, the idea of weighing the interests of others along with personal interests without bias is probably seen as naive, goofy or maybe even immoral. That attitude is unfortunate. There is nothing naive, goofy or immoral about having some concern for one’s fellow citizens and people in general.

One can see the danger inherent in elevating the concept of freedom and/or liberty to a position that negates the rule of law and any other constraints that tend to impede the rise to power of demagogues, tyrants, plutocrats, oligarchs, kleptocrats, murderers, crooks and liars.

Spiderbait, Most Boys Suck

Did Gender Keep Democratic Women From Winning The Primary?

Elizabeth Warren has now fully thrown her support behind former Vice President Joe Biden in the presidential race. She's even said, without question, that she would serve as his vice president.

It's been a little over a month since Warren dropped out of the race. At the time, only Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, two older white men, were left as the viable candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, highlighting that the Democratic Party would not diversify the top of the ticket this year.

And yet, the Democratic Party had its most diverse candidates of all time this cycle, including the largest group of women ever. That six-woman wave of candidates came after four years of buildup – years that featured Democratic women getting mad, getting organized, getting on the ballot and getting elected in record numbers in 2018.

And Democrats sure seemed excited about women in the abstract: As of November, 83% of Democrats said they were "enthusiastic" about voting for a woman. Only 53% said they were "enthusiastic" about white men.

But then, it was never assured, or even widely assumed, that a woman would win the nomination. Biden and Sanders went into the race with high name recognition among Democrats and significant bases of support, whether among party activists or the establishment.

And as it turned out, the race came down to those two white men. So ... what happened? Gender was definitely a factor in this year's Democratic primaries. How could it not be after what the party has seen over the last four years? But the ways in which attitudes about gender impacted the outcome are varied, and of course more than a bit complicated.

What we know: Democrats' electability "freak out"

When Elizabeth Warren bowed out, she was explicit in calling out sexism.

"If you say, 'Yeah, there was sexism in this race,' everyone says, 'Whiner!'" Warren said. "If you say, 'No, there was no sexism,' about a bazillion women think, 'What planet do you live on?'"

I've spent more than a year asking voters about gender and sexism in this presidential race, and I can say with confidence that Democratic voters who don't want to vote for a woman (or, at least, who will say such a thing out loud) are rare to nonexistent.

In a January Ipsos/USA Today poll, 84% of people who planned to vote in Democratic primaries said they agreed with the statement that they'd be "comfortable with a woman president."

But that leaves 1 in 6 potential voters in another category. That group includes the 5% who said they disagreed.

Perhaps 5% is a sliver, but especially in tight primaries it is meaningful if 1 in 20 voters are biased against the women candidates. (Furthermore, there is the question of what the other 11% of voters meant when they said they "neither agree nor disagree.")

And then there's this: Only 33% of likely voters of any party said they thought their neighbors would be comfortable with a woman president.

This is something that many journalists (myself included) heard over and over in interviews with voters – not sexism itself driving voters' choices, but fears about other people's sexism.

"I have a friend at work — she's like, 'You're not progressive.' She thinks that I don't want a woman president," Anita Burgess told NPR in March 2019. "I do! But I don't think they're going to do it! And so I can't waste my vote either, because we have to get the orange man out. I'm sorry — orange man got to go," she said, mocking President Trump's appearance.

And that feeling persisted in the Democratic electorate through the primaries.

"I really like Elizabeth Warren, but I just don't think a woman is going to win this election, unfortunately," UCLA student Brook Rosenberg told NPR as she stood in line to vote in California's primary. "Also, I don't want Trump to tear her down."

Polling showed how widespread this fear was. In that January poll, 50% of people who planned to vote in the Democratic primaries said they agreed that a woman would have a tougher time running against Trump than a man. Half as many — 24% — disagreed.

It's important to keep in mind that while a wide field of women candidates is a relatively new phenomenon, this kind of amateur political strategizing is nothing new.

"The Democrats always freak out about electability," former presidential contender and Democratic Rep. Pat Schroeder told me (with a heavy sigh) in December. "I mean, I remember every single primary, everybody starts, [gasp] 'Who are we going to get?'"

"Of course," she added, "this year, we're having a bigger freak-out than normal just because people are so obsessed about, 'How do we get rid of Trump?'"

It's not just that Democrats desperately want to unseat Trump, though. For some voters, the very fact not just that a woman lost in 2016, but that this man won – someone with a track record of insulting and objectifying women, who also has a long list of sexual misconduct claims against him (all of which he denies) – is a sign of how much sexism their fellow voters are willing to put up with.

"I don't think it's right, but I think that the fact that we have the person in the White House that we do, it is evidence that the country is not quite totally ready for a woman," New Hampshire voter Patti Rutka told me in March 2019.

Or as Mother Jones' Pema Levy more pithily opined, "Trump's greatest trick was convincing voters women can't win elections."

And so, as Democratic organizer Karine Jean-Pierre explains it, voters thought about who seemed like they could be president.

"They're thinking, 'We have to beat Donald Trump. What's the best way to do it?'" she said. "OK. Maybe someone who is of his age, someone who has been the closest to being presidential, if you think about being a vice president, being the number two to the president being in the Oval Office, having all of those visuals."

On the Democratic side, Biden has grappled with gender in ways that have disappointed some feminists. Early in his campaign, multiple women accused him of invading their personal space. He eventually apologized... around the same time that he joked about the matter on stage at a campaign event.

In addition, some news outlets have reported more recently about a more serious allegation against the former Vice President.

Biden also reported early in 2019 that he had apologized to Anita Hill for her treatment when she accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in his Senate confirmation hearings. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, Biden chaired those hearings.

Hill told the New York Times that she didn't feel Biden had apologized to her for his own role in her treatment.

"I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, 'I'm sorry for what happened to you,'" she said. "I will be satisfied when I know that there is real change and real accountability and real purpose."

The "hostile sexism" factor

Here's one more thing we know: that higher levels of sexism were associated with a greater likelihood of supporting Biden and Sanders, as well as a lower likelihood of supporting Warren.

Political scientist Brian Schaffner attempted to measure sexism by having pollsters ask Democrats if they agreed with phrases including "women are too easily offended" and "most women fail to appreciate fully all that men do for them." In a separate interview, pollsters asked those same people whom they preferred in the primary.

"There is a very strong relationship between how people responded to the questions that are meant to measure sexism and whether they were likely to vote for Elizabeth Warren," Schaffner said. "And it was the least-sexist Democratic voters who supported her the most. But her support dropped off very quickly among those who registered higher levels of sexism."

Schaffner found something similar in the 2016 general election – that there was an association between sexism, as he defined it, as well as racism – and voting for Trump. But he says that these associations mean something different in a Democratic primary.

"In a primary election, you take party out of the equation," he said. "You have a bunch of candidates who have very similar positions who are running against each other. And people tend to rely on what they can, that differentiates these candidates who otherwise look fairly similar to them. And gender is definitely one of those things."

Furthermore, while Schaffner found this correlation – and, to be clear, attempted to control for a range of factors, like ideology – his study doesn't mean that a bunch of voters walked into the voting booth with straightforwardly sexist ideas driving their votes. He recognizes that the relationship is subtler.

"I think a lot of this plays at a subconscious level for voters," he said. "They may not be really aware that the things that they think grate on them about Warren are actually things that wouldn't bother them if it was a man doing the same things."

The presidency may be different

But then, hold on. We do know that women candidates often do just fine at winning races – in fact, studies show that women congressional candidates win at roughly the same rates as men do. ("When women run, they win," is a common refrain among groups that work to elect more women.)

One possibility, as Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told NPR last year, is that voters treat the presidency differently from other offices.

"Voters are very, very willing to send women, younger candidates, people of color, LGBTQ candidates to Congress," she said. "But for president or executive office in general, we know from the data that people are much, much more cautious and tend to second-guess themselves much more."

In addition, there's evidence that women face a "performance premium" in running for office – that, yes, they may win at similar rates to men at the congressional level, but that they have to be better candidates to do it.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said something to this effect at the November debate, contrasting the women candidates to the then-37-year-old South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg: "Do I think that we would be standing on that stage if we had the experience that he had? No, I don't. Maybe we're held to a different standard."

Of course, it's impossible to know on an individual basis whether any particular candidate is more successful because they're a man (or less so because they're a woman).

But there was another memorable debate line, this one from Warren, that threw this into relief. At a January debate, Warren noted that she and Klobuchar were the only two candidates on stage who had never lost a race.

In addition, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and California Sen. Kamala Harris had never lost an election until this year's primaries, either.

It is, of course, possible to become president with a loss or two on one's record. But this cycle, America only saw competitive women candidates with long resumes and perfect down-ballot records.

Unanswered questions

Knowing exactly how much gender played into voters' decisions this year may never be possible because it's so deeply mixed into how people think.

"We know that what's really happening in most cases is gender is informing a lot of the different aspects or predictors of a candidate's success," says Kelly Dittmar, professor at Rutgers University's Center on American Women and Politics. "And so to try to pinpoint how much sexism mattered becomes much more difficult. Instead, I try to think about it as, what are the ways in which gender shapes the dynamics of the race?"

Dittmar uses Kamala Harris as an example: When she dropped out, the California senator said one reason was that she didn't have enough money to carry on.

"Was that solely because she was a woman or because she was a black woman? No. There were other challenges at play, in terms of the strength of support for her candidacy," Dittmar said. "But were gender and race and the interaction of those things probably a factor in how much she was able to gain support, interaction with donors? That's very likely."

Jean-Pierre also evidence of a higher standard in Harris' rise and fall.

"She started off with 20,000 people at her at her rally in Oakland. She raised tons of money very early on, and she never made it to Iowa. She never made it to certain early states," Jean-Pierre said. "I do believe that there is just a different way that women are treated. There is a different way that women of color are treated. And there are these barriers that are so much higher that they have to jump over and cross."

Of course, no candidate lost purely because of their identity (just as Biden didn't win purely because of his). Voters raised substantive questions of all of the women candidates in this race:Harris' record as a prosecutor angered some progressives. Klobuchar was too moderate for some progressives, and she also faced allegations that she was abusive to her staff. Gillibrand has swung from moderate positions to progressive ones during her career. Warren's early answers on how she would pay for "Medicare for All" struck some as evasive.

But it's possible that women were punished more for these things than men would have been.

"I think it's compatible to think both that it was sexist and that there's really some substance to those criticisms," says Kate Manne, Cornell University philosophy professor and author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. "And here, it's not that the criticism is illegitimate because it's sexist. It's that we're soft-pedaling the criticism, albeit unwittingly, when it comes to a male counterpart who's done something very, very similar."

The comparison between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on paying for Medicare for All is an excellent example of just how difficult it is to tell what was driving voter attitudes and expectations.

On the one hand, Sanders put forth a list of funding options, but never came out with an exact way to pay for his own Medicare for All plan. Warren, meanwhile, faced heavy scrutiny over how she would pay for his plan, which she backed. To Manne, that is plainly unfair.

"Reasonable minds can disagree about whether her plan for implementing Medicare for All was a good plan," she said. "[But] it's kind of remarkable that she got lambasted for the content of her plan while his non-plan played much better."

Then again, Warren had made "having a plan for that" her brand. So one could also argue that she naturally had additional expectations here.

But on top of that, there's another potential layer: was Warren forced to run as the hyper-competent, plan-for-everything candidate because she's a woman? Or, put another way: could a woman candidate run as a revolutionary, the way Sanders did, and get as far as he did?

Gender still matters

The presidential race will be one white, straight man versus another white, straight man. But that doesn't mean gender, as well as other parts of a candidate's identity, is no longer a factor, Dittmar points out.

"The more that you see candidates move away from simply masculinity as the sort of measure by which president reality is determined right or valued, we see that then leads to hopefully some progress in which women don't have a distinct set of challenges," she said.

She points to a 2006 memo strategist Mark Penn wrote for Hillary Clinton's first presidential run, in which he warned her against being seen as too soft and nurturing: "[Voters] do not want someone who would be the first mama... But there is a yearning for a kind of tough single parent."

These conversations have largely centered around the Democratic Party, which has had more — and more successful — women presidential candidates than Republicans have.

And when Republicans do have another opportunity to nominate a woman, those women might run differently than Democratic women. That's because Democratic voters tend to be more receptive than Republican voters to identity-based campaigning.

In 2018, and again in the 2020 Democratic presidential field, women ran more firmly as women, with more overtly feminist messages tailored to speak to women's experiences. Warren's story of struggling to find childcare as a law student was a standby on the stump. Similarly, Klobuchar told voters the story of being kicked out of the hospital 24 hours after giving birth.

However, Republican strategist Alice Stewart, who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns, including Michele Bachmann's in 2012, says that it's nevertheless telling that her party has yet to nominate a woman.

"I truly believe Republicans will say gender doesn't matter: 'I would vote for the person based on their qualifications, whereas others might say gender is a factor.' But they evidently are not following through with that," she said.

Even if a woman will not win the presidency this year, the 2020 field represented progress, in a diverse range of women candidates finding a range of ways to be themselves on the trail.

And progress could still come from the men in the race, Dittmar adds.

"I think it's just important to remember that the gender dynamics of the race are still very much at play," she said. "And so in terms of the value we place on masculinity, it's something for us all to be continually evaluating with the men who are left. How do they navigate gender?"

The question is doubly relevant considering that Biden's opponent is someone who weaponizes masculinity in his campaigning. Biden has done so himself on occasion – "If we were in high school, I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him," he said of Trump in 2018.

Women candidates also aren't out of this campaign yet: Biden has promised to put a woman on the ticket with him. Were Biden to win the presidency, that woman would be the highest-ranking female elected official in American history.

It would be progress. Just slower than some Democrats would have hoped.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/apr/17/did-gender-keep-democratic-women-from-winning-the/

Fraying Nerves + Flaring Tempers = Rising Irrationality

“Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. I also believe in science as the greatest instrument ever devised for understanding the world. So what happens when these two principles are in conflict? My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning, in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true.” -- prominent libertarian Michael Shermer, 2013


Rationale: a set of reasons or a logical basis for a course of action or a particular belief

Some of the news from the last few days reports a harsher undertone among some of the public and from conservative pundits. State stay at home orders prompted a large protest in Michigan, with mostly conservative people protesting and demanding for workplaces to be reopened immediately. The Washington Post writes:

“For miles, thousands of drivers clogged the streets to demand Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) ease restrictions and allow them to go back to work. They drowned downtown Lansing, Mich., in a cacophony of honking. They blared patriotic songs from car radios, waving all sorts of flags from the windows — President Trump flags, American flags and the occasional Confederate flag. 

But in the massive demonstration against Whitmer’s stay-at-home executive order — which they have argued is excessive and beyond her authority — the pleas from organizers that protesters to stay in their vehicles went unheeded. Many got out of their cars and crashed the front lawn of the capitol building, with some chanting, ‘Lock her up!’ and ‘We will not comply!’

Right-wing media joined in the chorus. Tucker Carlson of Fox News described Whitmer’s actions as ‘petty authoritarianism,’ accusing her of putting on a show in an effort to be former vice president Joe Biden’s running mate. On Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh, a conservative talk-show host and Trump favorite, applauded the protesters, saying Democrats like Whitmer are ‘being coached by Nancy Pelosi and [Charles E.] Schumer to push this harder than they might normally feel is appropriate.’ 

Local law enforcement on Wednesday even joined the conservative criticism, as four county sheriffs wrote an open letter informing residents they would not be “strictly” enforcing Whitmer’s new order.”

Conservative allegations of political motives are not accompanied with any evidence, rendering rhetoric more irrational partisan dark free speech based on unsubstantiated, probably false conspiracy theories. Multiple sources are reporting that conservatives are now arguing to reopen businesses along these lines: “I'm no doctor but, some businesses can reopen right now. Retail stores can reopen now. There is no reason to keep businesses closed.” So far, none of those arguments I am aware of has even acknowledge the fact that America is still unable to conduct large scale testing for the virus and for antibodies to the virus.

That ‘rationale’ is not rational on several levels. First, it is even not a rationale because it is not based on facts. Instead, it is based on ideologically inspired opinions that real facts contradict. Real experts, not ideologically blinded political blowhards, uniformly assert that it is still too early to relax social distancing measures at present. Those measures now appear to be having a significant effect in slowing the spread of the virus. Second, America is still unable to do the large scale testing that is absolutely needed to guide rational decisions about when it is safe and who is safe to relax containment rules for. People who test positive for antibodies may have immunity from reinfection and are thus reasonably believed to be safe to release back to the workforce.

Regarding testing, the New York Times writes today:

“As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say.

Concerns intensified on Wednesday as Senate Democrats released a $30 billion plan for building up what they called ‘fast, free testing in every community,’ saying they would push to include it in the next pandemic relief package. Business leaders, who participated in the first conference call of Mr. Trump’s advisory council on restarting the economy, warned that it would not rebound until people felt safe to re-emerge, which would require more screening. 

And Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York reiterated his call for federal assistance to ramp up testing, both for the virus and for antibodies.
‘The more testing, the more open the economy. But there’s not enough national capacity to do this,’ Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said at his daily briefing in Albany. ‘We can’t do it yet. That is the unvarnished truth.’ 

At his own briefing later in the day, Mr. Trump boasted of having “the most expansive testing system anywhere in the world” and said that some states could even reopen before May 1, the date his task force had tentatively set. Twenty-nine states, he added, ‘are in good shape.’”

Ideology beats truth

Once again, American conservatism and rigid ideology are at odds with scientific facts and the facts fall to irrational beliefs based on no stated rationale. There is an unstated rationale. It is true that sooner or later the social distancing and lockdown rules will need to be relaxed. The economic damage so far has been very high. The damage could be catastrophic and long-lasting if rules are not relaxed fairly soon, maybe as soon as the middle or end of May.

Experts talk, political ideologues walk

It is now time for economic experts, not political blowhards, to start laying out scenarios for how much longer our economy can withstand this shutdown without incurring cataclysmic injury and how to reopen it with or without enough testing data to make informed decisions. Economic estimates will need to include as a factor, the fact that we still cannot do widespread testing and thus may be forced to reopen while flying mostly blind about the extent of the infection or how many more people will die.

The president’s constant uninformed blithering that facts contradict are damaging. That kind of dark free speech makes it harder for real experts to speak with authority the public will accept. When president keeps irrationally undermining experts, many people disbelieve their advice. At present, experts are giving the best advice they can based on data that is significantly limited due to the president’s astonishing incompetence in dealing with the pandemic from the beginning to this very day.

To assert that our president is unfit for office, is almost an equally astonishing understatement. The main problem here is the president, not the experts. Our president should be impeached for his incompetence and failures, especially including his failure to get large scale testing in place weeks ago.

Redistributing Wealth to the Top

The Washington Post writes: “More than 80 percent of the benefits of a tax change tucked into the coronavirus relief package Congress passed last month will go to those who earn more than $1 million annually. ..... The provision has fueled criticism by congressional Democrats and some tax experts who have called it a giveaway to the wealthy and real estate investors, who frequently face large losses on their investments. ..... An analysis by the JCT found suspending the limit overwhelmingly benefits higher earners. About 82 percent of the benefits of the policy go to about 43,000 taxpayers who earn more than $1 million annually. Less than 3 percent of the benefits go to Americans earning less than $100,000 a year, the analysis found.” The data was released by the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).

Senate Republicans inserted a change that temporarily suspends a limitation on how much owners of businesses formed as “pass-through” entities can deduct against their nonbusiness income. That will cost taxpayers about $90 billion in 2020. Other tax changes will add about $170 billion to the national deficit over the next 10 years. 

Income data for the top 1% of earners are summarized here for each state. Income research indicates that income inequality increased in all states since the 1970s. Also, inequality increased in most states in the post–Great Recession era.

It is no wonder that the president and the Trump Party want to keep this kind of government spending as hidden as possible. These optics are not good.

Meet the young lawmakers crossing party lines for a green future

Though they both grew up in Iowa, they hail from different worlds. Now, these two legislators are joining forces to advance climate solutions in their state.

The two Iowa legislators make an unlikely pair. One’s a Democrat and the other is a Republian. One’s a Unitarian Universalist, the other is a Christian. One’s the son of two lesbian mothers and grew up in Iowa City, which has more than 76,000 residents. The other hails from a more traditional household, and he’s spent his life in Wayland, a small town with fewer than 1,000 people. One speaks at a rapid-fire pace, his voice full of energy and passion, the other has a calm demeanor and speaks in a measured, matter-of-fact way.

But Zach Wahls and Joe Mitchell do have some things in common. They grew up less than an hour from each other in southeast Iowa, for starters. They’re also young: Wahls is 28 and Mitchell is just shy of 23. They both ran for office in 2018 and won, part of a national upswell of young, first-time candidates who were elected during a midterm election that drew unprecedented numbers of people to the polls. Leaders from Iowa’s Democratic and Republican parties hailed their victories as a sign of changing times.

And even though these two legislators sit on different sides of the political aisle, they’ve still managed to find common ground, particularly when it comes to solutions for the climate crisis.

Mitchell, a state representative, and Wahls, a state senator, are part of a growing number of young legislators who are rising above the polarization that has soured politics nationwide and stalled action on climate change. At both the state and national level, legislators are forging friendships across the political divide and engaging in dialogue to better understand each others’ viewpoints.

They say their constituents are exhausted by the political circus and hungry for progress. Many Iowans agree on the need for things like economic opportunity, good schools, affordable health care, and renewable energy — and they’re looking for lawmakers who are willing to do the job they were elected to do: make laws that help Iowans thrive.

Wahls and Mitchell meet for beers, share meals, and travel the state together to talk with constituents. Their vision is to work across party lines to improve the lives of all Iowans. That’s what got them into politics to begin with, they say, and as bright-eyed young legislators, they aren’t going to let partisan strongholding or divisiveness stop them from achieving this goal.

“Relationships are everything in life and in politics,” said Mitchell, who represents a rural swath of southern Iowa’s farm country, one of the reddest districts in the state. “I understand that Zach and I are going to disagree on some issues, but for the most part we can find common ground in almost every area.”

“Just because I have a great relationship with Joe doesn’t mean I’ll vote the same way as him,” said Wahls, whose district is more urban and suburban. “But being able to start building those relationships now and creating a space for that dialogue is really important so that the politics are workable.”

If Zach Wahls’ name sounds familiar, there’s probably a good reason. Wahls rose to Internet fame in 2011 when he delivered a speech to the Iowa Legislature about growing up with lesbian parents. Millions saw it online and Ellen DeGeneres invited him to be on her show. Shortly after, he dropped out of college at the University of Iowa to promote his book, My Two Moms, and cofounded Scouts for Equality to advocate for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Boy Scouts. (Zach is an Eagle Scout, the organization’s highest rank.)

“I lobbied the Boy Scouts to reverse their ban on gay members, and we were successful in that,” he said. “That wound up being a big part of my life, and I realized that politics would be an avenue I could pursue.”

Joe Mitchell got started young, too. He served on mission trips, and supported his parents’ small manufacturing business. In college, he worked at the Capitol for four legislative sessions. He was still a student at Drake University when he won his seat, and was the youngest lawmaker to take office in Iowa that year. Living in rural Iowa, he has a unique lens on an often underheard yet critical part of America that he hopes to revitalize.

“What propelled me into politics was the idea that government can be very helpful and very hurtful at times to the American worker and getting in the way of the ‘American Dream,’” Mitchell said.

The two first met at an orientation offered by the state for all incoming senators and representatives. Mitchell was the youngest representative to take office and Wahls was the youngest senator.

“We bonded over being the youngest,” Wahls said. “It’s funny, he was finishing college through his primary, and I was finishing grad school during my primary.”

As fate would have it, they ended up serving on the education budget sub-committee together, one of the few joint committees between the Senate and the House.

“We were both freshmen coming in and that was really helpful for both of us,” Wahls said. “So many legislators are there for a couple years and feel like they’ve been betrayed by the other side. For me, I said, you know what, we’re coming in at the same time, we both like and trust each other, this seems like a good place to start.”

Their friendship grew, and in the summer of 2019, they decided to take a road trip together to a conference in Nashville. They drove south, stopping for gas, pausing for bathroom breaks, chatting about policy and politics, sharing stories from their pasts, and listening to the audiobook of Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Iowan author Art Cullen.

Their destination was the Future Summit, hosted by the nonprofit group Millennial Action Project (MAP). The organization was founded by the charismatic Steven Olikara, a high-energy, ambitious millennial who grew up in Wisconsin — a state with its own colorful history of division.

The idea behind Millennial Action Project is to encourage Republicans and Democrats to form “future caucuses,” at both the state and national levels. Mitchell and Wahls are co-chairs of the Iowa Future Caucus, along with Representative Lindsay James (a Democrat) and Senator Zach Nunn (a Republican).

“The Iowa Future Caucus represents the widest array of districts you can imagine,” Olikara said, adding that “they have chosen to prioritize renewable energy as a top issue in their agenda.”

There are now more than 700 legislators like Mitchell and Wahls who are engaged in MAP’s initiatives across 29 states. The organization also supported the creation of the Congressional Future Caucus which works at the federal level and engages more than 40 U.S. Representatives with nearly equal representation from both parties.

“If you can develop these young leaders at the beginning of their legislative careers, we might be able to shift the paradigm and bridge the old divides that have held our society back,” Olikara said.

Shortly after their journey to Nashville together, Wahls and Mitchell went on another road trip — this time around Iowa — to tour wind and solar farms and biodiesel plants, and meet the Iowans who work at the state’s renewable energy operations. The statewide tour was covered in local papers and news channels, reinforcing a message of unity among Republicans and Democrats in support of renewable energy in Iowa.

“Senator Wahls and Representative Mitchell are two of our youngest legislators, and I’m glad they’re working on issues that are important for Iowans,” said state Senator Rob Hogg, a Democratic legislator (and member of the 2016 Grist 50) who’s been a vocal supporter of climate action.

At 53 years old, Hogg is not eligible to be a part of the Future Caucus, but he supports the work that’s happening across party lines.

“I think it reflects the broad support for clean renewable energies … regardless of party affiliation,” Hogg said. “It is extraordinary what we’re seeing from young people in Iowa and across the country on climate change and other issues.”

Last year, Mitchell and Wahls worked together to oppose a bill that proposed a “sunshine tax,” allowing utilities to force consumers to pay additional fees for using solar power.

“It was primarily Republicans that were pushing these fees, Democrats were generally against them,” Hogg said. “Representative Mitchell and other younger Republican legislators joined with Democrats to say they don’t want to do that.”

The battle gave birth to another unlikely alliance, as the Sierra Club joined forces with Iowa pork producers who use solar panels on their animal feeding operations. Many of these operations are in the middle of nowhere; they’re required to be a fair distance away from population centers due to air-quality concerns.

“Getting electricity to them is expensive, which is why distributed solar is a perfect solution for them,” Wahls said.

The bill stalled, and never came up for a vote in the House. Utilities and solar groups are now working on a compromise solution to present to legislators this year.

“We want to be proactive and have a system in place where we’re generating power from alternative sources,” Mitchell said. “It’s better for our environment as a whole as we start slowly getting away from fossil fuels.”

One of the next bills Wahls said he’s eager to work on with Mitchell focuses on regenerative agriculture, a method of farming that enriches and sustains soil while reversing the impacts of climate change. They’re also exploring legislation that would attract and retain young people in Iowa’s rural areas through a tax credit — an idea that came about during their drive to Nashville.

This work isn’t without risks or pushback, though. Both Wahls and Mitchell have experienced backlash from people in their own parties, and skepticism from groups that have grown accustomed to political divisiveness. To illustrate this, Mitchell described a recent visit with the Sierra Club.

“They’re not generally a group that’s friendly towards Republicans, and Republicans don’t generally meet with them,” Mitchell said. “But I met with them, and talked about the water-quality issues that the state is working on and how Republicans support initiatives such as cover crops.”

The Sierra Club representatives were surprised, Mitchell said, because they didn’t realize Iowa Republicans support environmental initiatives.

People need to realize that there’s a spectrum within group identities like “Democrat” or “Republican” — they are not monolithic, Mitchell and Wahls said.

There’s also an issue of semantics.

“The moment you say the word ‘climate change’, it can shut down and trigger,” Mitchell said.

But that doesn’t mean that people oppose policies and projects that combat climate change. Iowa, known for its exports of soybeans, pork, and corn, is a rising star in the nation for its production of renewable energy. The state generates more of its energy from wind power (40.1 percent) than any other state in the country.

Both Wahls and Mitchell agree that renewable energy is great for the environment, the economy, and the livelihoods of hardworking rural Iowans who lease their land for new wind and solar installations. The wind operators they met earned $90,000 a year on average, they said.

“We’ve created thousands of jobs in the solar and wind sectors, and in our agriculture economy here in Iowa,” Wahls said. “We know the state is better for it.”

In national politics especially, it’s clear that the divisiveness continues to ripple out through impeachment hearings, stonewalling, hate-filled tweets, and an “us vs. them” narrative.

Still, it’s this changing sense of politics among millennials and Gen Z that gives Wahls and Mitchell hope for the future — a counter-narrative to the type of political story we’re so used to hearing, full of animosity and partisanship.

“It gives me hope because the stakes could not be higher than they are right now,” Wahls said. “It seems like this evolution may be happening at just the right time … People are reaching across the divide and, despite having different opinions, are able to work together to achieve a common goal.”

https://grist.org/fix/meet-the-young-lawmakers-crossing-party-lines-for-a-green-future/

Hiding Government Loan Recipients

The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration can choose to hide the names of companies that apply for federal relief. Legislation to provide relief to businesses apparently doesn't require disclosure of all recipients of aid under the $2.2 trillion coronavirus aid bill. Critics argue that the opacity opens the spending program to fraud and favoritism. Favoritism, especially corrupt self-serving favoritism, is a hallmark of the current administration, e.g., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner (currently working on building a massive privacy destroying surveillance system using coronavirus as cover), tax breaks for real estate developers, forced government business for Trump brand resorts and golf courses, etc.

WaPo writes: “Chief among the omissions is the $349 billion expected to be doled out to small companies in chunks as large as $10 million. .... So far, the agency has said it received about 487,000 applications totaling $125 billion in requests. .... A potentially even larger gap involves the trillions going out to businesses under the auspices of the Federal Reserve. .... Proponents of withholding the information argue that identifying coronavirus aid recipients could make firms hesitant to apply out of concerns for privacy, especially if they are small. Other needy firms may fear that an aid application, once made public, could be construed as a sign of financial frailty. Restarting the economy requires getting money to businesses quickly, these proponents say, so programs should avoid requirements that discourage applications.”

As usual, the president and Trump Party (formerly the GOP) prefer to conduct their business in as much secrecy as the law allows, or more if they think they can get away with breaking the law.*** Privacy certainly is a good things for themselves and their friends. Fraud under cover of secrecy and opacity is of no concern to the Trump Party or the president. Of no concern except, of course, in relation to voting and voter registration rolls, where voter fraud is seen as a critically urgent and an overwhelming problem for democracy and civilization itself. That fake perception massive voter fraud exists despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

*** Getting away with lawbreaking by the president, his friends and the Trump Party generally is a safe bet now that the Department of Justice has been corrupted and neutered to protect crimes by those people.

One can only wonder how many tens (hundreds?) of billions in taxpayer cash is going to be loaned to businesses that will never pay it back due to their financial frailty. Keeping loan recipients a secret makes it impossible to know if the loans were never merited in the first place. That way the government can falsely claim that all loans were good right from the get go, and no one can contradict such false claims based on data. Failing businesses (indirectly) owned by Ivanka and Jared probably have submitted their loan applications. Even if that is illegal, the federal government is not going to punish it. And, if the loan recipients are kept secret, state law enforcement will never know about any bad or illegal loans.

The hogs are gonna have a huge pigfest at the taxpayer trough. Accountability and transparency are extinct species.