HB 400: Nevermind

A teacher friend of mine in Austin, a gifted physics teacher I might add, is distressed over hearing the news that HB 400, a bill introduced by Eissler in the current legislative session, will strip her of some of her salary next year.

In Austin, they have yet to be given their contracts to sign for next year, and her colleagues, she tells me, suspect that it is because the administration is waiting for news of the bill’s passage so they can offer them lower pay next year.

Current state law dictates that a public school teacher cannot be paid less than they were paid in the previous year. HB 400 "fixes" that, allowing school districts to pay its teachers less. Ostensibly this is to reduce the number of teachers they will have to lay off to stay within their budgets.

But my friend, and her colleagues, can rest easy, for a year at least. Here is what Section 31 of HB 400 says:

“SECTION 31 (a) Except as provided by Subsection (b) of this section, this Act applies beginning with the 2011-2012 school year.

(b) if this Act takes effect on or before April 10, 2011, the change in law made by Sections 21.103 and 21.206, Education Code, as amended by this Act, applies beginning with contracts for the 2011-2012 school year. If this Act takes effect after April 10, 2011, the change in law made by Sections 21.103 and 21.206, Education Code, as amended by this Act, applies beginning with contracts for the 2012-2013 school year.”

It is now past April 10^th. The bill has only just been voted out of committee. It doesn’t apply next year.

And really, I have to wonder if it will stand a constitutional challenge. Teachers are being singled out as public sector employees for pay reduction. Administrators? Not so much. Or police. Or firemen. Or anyone else. My question is, doesn’t this bill, if enacted, violate the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment?

These legislators keep missing the point. Spending cuts must come hand in hand with an increase in state revenues.

Regression Comes of Age in the Republican Party

I like to consider myself a Progressive Liberal. That is, someone with core beliefs that the best thing we can do as a people is see to the weakest of us, and raise them up. That the best thing we can do as a people is to make health, wealth and happiness available to the greatest number. That the best thing we can do as a people is to guarantee that everyone gets a fair share and a square deal with opportunity for all.

That’s what lies at the core of a Progressive. More or less.

The Republicans, or shall we say now, the conservatives don’t have a progressive branch unless you consider moderate Republicans the progressive branch of that party. But now, I definitely think that a new branch of the Republican Party has formed this year. A branch that is so anti-progressive that the only word to describe it is “Regressive.”

Regressive Conservativism has come of age in the Republican Party.

I became convinced of that this week. Earlier, when conservatives were railing about the 14th Amendment, a matter of settled law for 140 plus years, I thought it was just theatrics. Then when the Bush doctrine of privatizing Medicare and allowing Social Security to play in the stock market (heck, why not go whole hog and let them play the ponies? A hit on an exacta, now that’s a great return on your investment) I thought they were just trying to impress Wall Street. When the lunatic fringe suggested that the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency needed to be abolished, I thought that they were just catering to the Teabaggers. But then when people railed about refusing to turn in their census forms because . . . well just because . . . I thought it was just another way to tell that Black President they weren’t going to play ball if he continued to insist on pitching.

But I have been in denial, haven’t I? These people are serious. This week, the new flavor is abolishing the minimum wage.

Just now, when the economy needs to get more money into the hands of people, so they’ll spend it, people are now talking of putting less money into the hands of people, and actually think that’s a good idea.

This is just craziness.

All of these ideas, very regressive ideas, are part and parcel of the new Regressive Wing of the Republican Party.

And I bet they’re not done. In undoing a century and a half of progress, the Regressives can have a lot on their plate. Areas for future consideration:

• Abolish votes for women.
• Abolish the 40 hour work week.
• Overturn Child Labor Laws. Make the spoiled brats work in the mines. It was good enough for my grandfather after all.
• Abolish the USDA. It should be up to the meat packing industry to police itself, and salmonella.
• Overturn Roe v. Wade. Make getting an abortion a capital offense.
• Reinstitute prayer in public schools.
• And last but certainly not least, abolish the two-party system. One is enough and it’s just too expensive to allow a dissenting party to run a campaign. As a matter of fact, why not regress all the way to 1776 and bring back the British Monarchy?

God save the Queen!

Republicans: Repeal the 14th Amendment?

Just when you think that Washington, DC cannot make itself more dysfunctional someone there goes and proves that being dysfunctional seems to have no ceiling, and certainly no floor.

Now that the Senate has fully engaged itself in a discussion of whether the children of illegal aliens, born in the US, have a right to citizenship, and then someone conducts a civics lesson for them demonstrating that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says it must be so, it has come full circle. Now we have Republicans openly questioning whether the 14th Amendment, a matter of settled law for 140 years, should be repealed.

I can’t believe these words even as I type them.

But that is what it has come to. Here we have Mitch McConnell, who would be the Senate Majority Leader had Republicans been a little luckier two years ago, broaching that very subject. From the Washington Post:

“We ought to take a look at it -- hold hearings, listen to the experts on it. I haven't made a final decision about it, but that's something that we clearly need to look at. Regardless of how you feel about the various aspects of immigration reform, I don't think anybody thinks that's something they're comfortable with.”

And here we had Rand Paul just a few short weeks ago running for cover over his suggestion that the Civil Rights Act may have gone a tad too far in guaranteeing equal rights to all comers. Who would have ever thought at that point that a sitting senator would go even farther and suggest that we reconsider a Constitution Amendment that their own party pushed through after the Civil War?

Ah, they forgot about that little thorny detail, I’ll bet. They like to call themselves the party of Lincoln but their values certainly don’t mesh with Lincoln’s do they. I think they should rename their annual fundraising dinner, currently the Lincoln/Reagan Dinner to the Reagan/Bush Dinner, don’t you?

Anyway, as suggested at the bottom of the Post article, and I heartily agree, this is much ado about nothing. No one, not a soul, is going to go anywhere with this. But it makes for perfect rhetoric in a mid-term election that is shaping up to be one of the craziest on record.

Making Healthcare Reform Optional for States Won’t Work

The latest fad in the Senate is to amend healthcare reform legislation so that states that don’t want healthcare reform can opt out of it.

It’s an insane idea. Who on Earth would have ever thought that this was a good idea? I know, Rick Perry probably thinks it’s a good idea. According to Perry, Texas didn’t need $555 million in federal dollars to pay its unemployed workers over a period past when their unemployment checks ran out. Nope, not when it could spend a billion dollars to get the same effect by borrowing the money and paying interest on it.

It’s insane to trust the judgment of states, letting them judge for themselves whether or not to bring healthcare costs under control. That isn’t even a logical decision to make.

No, this idea is as insane as letting the states decide whether they want to opt out of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Or Medicare. Or the Emancipation Proclamation.

But more to the point, I am no lawyer, but doesn’t this bring up an equal protection question? What if, as a hypothetical, Joe Wilson in South Carolina comes down with skin cancer but because his healthcare policy is capped, because his state has opted out of healthcare reform, Joe Wilson will have to forgo the treatment that could save his life but David Vitter, who is from Louisiana, which has adopted the federal healthcare reform program, can have his life extended when he comes down with the same disease?

Very clearly, allowing healthcare reform in one area of the country while banning it in another is denial of equal protection of the law. Denial of one’s 14th Amendment rights.

In short, it’s not just an insane idea. It’s unconstitutional.

California Supreme Court Takes a Pass on Proposition 8

Incredibly, the California Supreme Court, the court that ruled in a 4-3 June 2008 decision that there was no reason why the state could not grant marriage licenses to couples of the same sex, ruled – again in a 4-3 decision – that a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage in California should stand.

The court, it seems, feels that it has no authority to overturn the will of the people of California.

So what was OK before is not OK anymore.

The only good news in all of this is that the 18,000 same sex marriages that took place during that window of time when they were allowed were not nullified by this decision.

But back to that spineless court.

Sometimes the people are wrong. Take the majority that sent George W. Bush back to the White House in 2004. Sometimes the people are wrong and act badly, in this case voting for Proposition 8, an initiative concocted by the Mormon Church whose purpose is to interfere in the personal lives of their neighbors by forbidding state-sanctioned marriage between people of the same sex, and all of the benefits that you derive as a result.

Bald-faced discrimination by the initiative process.

You know, this is not the first time that the majority of California voters approved a discriminatory initiative.

Way back in 1963, an African-American California state legislator introduced the Rumford Fair Housing Act, a bill that would set guidelines for how and why a renter or buyer of real property could be turned down.

California property owners, it seems, had a habit of discriminating because of race when faced with an offer to buy or rent property. This bill sought to remedy that situation.

And like the Mormon Church, the California Real Estate Association was horrified, horrified I tell you, that the state was intruding in their business decisions.

So they introduced Proposition 14 in the 1964 general election.

A constitutional amendment that overturned much of what the Rumsford Fair Housing Act provided.

And it passed by a 65% majority vote.

Here is what Prop. 14 said:

“Neither the State nor any subdivision or agency thereof shall deny, limit or abridge, directly or indirectly, the right of any person, who is willing or desires to sell, lease or rent any part or all of his real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses.”

Nice, huh?

A lot of people are of the opinion that the ill will that this constitutional amendment spawned among the African-American community was part of the back story that resulted in the Watts Riots that occurred in the summer of the following year.

So this is all sounding a little familiar isn’t it?

All except for two things. Instead of rioting this year, the gay community responded by writing and performing in a musical called “Proposition 8 – The Musical.”

And the other thing, in 1967 the US Supreme Court overturned Proposition 14, labeling it unconstitutional. Unconstitutional because it violated the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment.

Back then, the US Supreme Court was not squeamish at all about overturning the votes of 65% of presidential year California voters.

Because the voters acted poorly.

So the ultimate answer, it seems, is a process that was just begun this past week by an unlikely pair of lawyers: Ted Olsen and David Boies, the two lawyers that faced off in the US Supreme Court in 2000 in the now infamous case Bush vs. Gore.

Their intent? They have filed suit this past week challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8 on the grounds that it violates the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment.

Because, you see, you can discriminate all you want in life – it has happened time and time again with impunity. But when you pass a law that allows you to discriminate against someone – like Proposition 14 in 1964 - that’s unconstitutional.