Best Pride Month Ever:

• Prayer protected
• Filibuster protected
• Gun rights protected
• Federalism protected
• Unborn lives protected

These are familiar conservative talking points, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I thought I’d calmly reflect on these issues, point by point. On the other hand, maybe I’ll start a fire. We’ll see.

Prayer protected

Well, yes, maybe. But it might depend on who you’re praying to. Or more precisely, who you are praying in front of. The Supreme Court ruled it’s judiciously cool for a white conservative Christian coach to kneel ostentatiously in prayer in the middle of a football field after a game on school grounds, gathering as many like souls together as he, and they, wish.

Do you think non-Christian players feel any peer pressure to conform to this religious ritual, especially in a majority Christian community? Could there be anything coercive about this?

I wonder how the Justices would have ruled if the coach was a Muslim who chose to engage in Islamic prayer on the field with his players, prayer rugs and all, bowing to Mecca? Is that particular prayer on public school property protected by the Court ruling? Do I want my Christian son exposed to this? And oy vey, shall we protect a Jewish coach who conducts a prayer of gratitude to God for his blessings, on the field, along with his players? Maybe a Buddhist meditation, all in the lotus position, quietly chanting on the sidelines? (Buddhists aren’t especially demonstrative, after all.)

Does the Supreme Court ruling really protect “prayer” in America? I wonder…

Filibuster protected

Again, yes, but… The filibuster? Seriously? No one likes the filibuster. It’s not mentioned in the constitution and it wasn’t part of the Founding Fathers’ vision of the U.S. Senate. It is, in fact, according to most congressional experts, the single worst feature of Senate procedure. It came into being as a result of an unfortunate accident of history due to an obscure Senate rule based on an 18th Century English law regarding parliamentary discourse. It allowed a member to speak on the floor without limitations, and it is now used exclusively to delay or block a vote by the opposite party.

There is nothing sacred, traditional, or “American” about the filibuster. If you’re a democrat or republican in the majority in the Senate, you hate the filibuster. It messes with your ability to pass legislation, to perform the will of the people. If you’re in the minority, and you want to assert powers far beyond any granted to you by the constitution, you cling to it like a life raft on the Titanic! Our system is based on “majority rule,” not “Super majority rule.”

I would think we’ve all had enough of folks obstructing a legislative assembly, whether they accomplish it through the filibuster, or by insurrection.

Gun rights protected

Yes indeed, the more protection the better! Right? But oh my goodness! Be careful what you wish for, America. White nationalists and mentally unstable teenagers open-carrying handguns and military grade assault weapons where you shop, eat and play? How lovely, and how very Second Amendment-y. Most folks fighting hard for unrestricted gun rights did not anticipate that these very rights would apply equally to the teeming mobs of unruly minorities and unwelcome immigrants that they are so afraid of and believe they need to protect themselves from! Moreover, what about the public health and safety of all of us, our First Amendment rights and freedoms to peacefully assemble and to speak without fear of violence? I’m sure the Founding Fathers would be delighted to see children today slinging assault weapons over their shoulders as they head to the mall.

This isn’t exactly what James Madison intended when he proposed “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” There was no standing American army at that time so State militias were essentially the national defense. Hence, the Second Amendment. Tell me, who needs this well-regulated militia now?

A significant majority of American gun owners across the political spectrum, from the Left to the Right, are very much in favor of the “well-regulated” part, and support extensive background checks on gun purchasers, raising the age for gun purchases to 21, and enforcing red flag laws.

Shouldn’t we all?

Federalism protected

Federalism? OK, I hear you. Big HUH? What the hell is federalism? And who cares? Good point. Well, I care. That’s all I’ve got. Here’s one definition:

Federalism is a mixed or compound mode of government that combines a general government (the central or “federal” government) with regional governments (provincial, state, territorial, etc.) in a single political system, dividing the powers between the two.

This is essentially our American government. So I have a question. Who is protecting federalism, and from what? Is federalism under siege? Are federalists being attacked in the streets like racial minorities, or in their workplaces, like Congress people? Maybe it’s the Federalist Society, as usual, feeling victimized?

The Federalist Society makes its case for an originalist interpretation of the constitution, and there is, in fact, disagreement with that idea. This means adhering to the constitution precisely as the federalists believe our Founders intended exactly at the time they wrote the document. There is opposition to that idea inasmuch as many others in fact believe it goes against the Founding Fathers intention that in order to survive and remain relevant the constitution must grow and evolve and change with the times. There is healthy debate between originalism and living constitutionalism, but that argument has almost nothing to do with federalism, particularly as it was originally articulated.

Federalism simply maintains that the “middle ground”, as James Madison conceived it, provide equal power and responsibilities to the central, or “federal” government, and to the states, or the “people.” From the outset theory and practice frequently collided. There has always been robust conflict between federal and state government legal jurisdiction and we have plenty of lawyers available to keep those battles going on forever. There’s money in them thar bills! More importantly, we live in a democratic republic and it’s a messy business. Our challenge, as citizens and voters, is not to let our country slide into authoritarianism.

Our fragile republic has teetered on the edge many times throughout history, as it does now. The protections enshrined in our constitution might find challenges in the arms of federalists, but they would flail hopelessly under authoritarian rule, and they would not survive totalitarianism. Let’s not go down this path.

Unborn lives protected

OK. Watch out here. Yes, the Supreme Court tossed out the constitutionally protected rights of women to make their own reproductive choices. This is a deeply sensitive issue, controversial, even violently so, and with little apparent opportunity for compromise. I always supported the position that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. But I am only prepared to make that argument medically, and morally, not religiously. I believe a woman has a right to choose what she does with and to her own body, especially a pregnant 10-year old rape victim.

Of course, for many people, this is not the point.

We come to the issue of “unborn lives.” This is a very charged phrase, and it is a powerfully effective way to frame the issue from the religious standpoint. I do not question the genuine beliefs and passions of those who righteously choose the religious argument, those who actually know and care what they’re talking about when they invoke the “sanctity of life.” No one on either side of the issue will ever win the argument over whether or not a fetus at any particular stage of development is an actual life possessing equal, or even more rights, than the woman carrying it.

My simple, and not particularly original thought, is to suggest we all follow our own beliefs, our own consciences, our own adherence to religion or science on this issue. That we pray with compassion for the moral outcomes of each and every decision a woman and her family make about terminating a pregnancy. And let’s not bully anyone, by laws or coercion, into making a life-altering decision, for better or worse, a decision whether or not to have that baby.

The post Right vs Left: Is Civil Discourse Possible? appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Allow me to introduce a friend, Elliott Negin, who writes for the Union of Concerned Scientists. The UCS, marshals volunteers and a network of twenty-thousand scientists for a variety of objectives including fighting misinformation and attacks on science, on matters from global warming to pollution to nuclear weapons.

Elliott just wrote an essay considering a speech by Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, before CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, The analysis underscores Pruitt’s startling hypocrisy, most recently on display in Congressional hearings exploring some of the many oddities of Pruitt.

Tough competition, but Pruitt is a contender for the most glaring example of Trump Administration venality, and of the easy willingness of the Administration to plant time bombs in the environment and in the public health in the service of puppeteers like the Koch brothers. A menace like Pruitt is best exposed when he preaches to the choir. Eight minutes into his CPAC presentation Pruitt sits down with interviewer Gina Loudon who asks for a show of hands of “those of you that kind of hoped that Administrator Pruitt will just sort of make the EPA go away”. Big cheer. Now, that’s a choir.

Getting a major appointment from Donald Trump is like sitting in the barber chair of Sweeney Todd. Bets are now placed on whether the President will find it expedient to give Pruitt the Trump Heave-Ho or keep him to placate Pruitt supporters like Senator Rand Paul. “@EPAScottPruitt is likely the bravest and most conservative member of Trump’s cabinet,” tweeted Paul on April 5. “We need him to help @realDonaldTrump drain the regulatory swamp.” Pruitt’s so brave he seeks to hide in his forty-three grand cone of silence. Paul’s tweet reminds us how prescient George Orwell was. Note that draining the swamp has morphed into draining the regulatory swamp.

If you can persevere or jump to the last two minutes of the CPAC speech, about twenty-one minutes in, Loudon and Pruitt are rolling out doublespeak that would leave Orwell in awe.

It’s instructive to examine the realities behind three points of emphasis in Pruitt’s CPAC speech: attention to process, rule of law and federalism. However this game of White House Chutes and Ladders plays out, those realities are still the bedrock of Trump’s environment and energy agendas, no matter who is in charge at EPA.

EPA Chief Pruitt Even Violates His Own Principles by Elliott Negin

With Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s job now hanging in the balance, it is a good time to recall that, just after his Senate confirmation, he gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that emphasized the three principles he said would stand at “the heart of how we do business at the EPA”: process, rule of law, and federalism.

A little more than a year into his tenure, he has violated all of them.

Subverting Process

“Number one,” Pruitt told his CPAC audience, “we’re going to pay attention to process.”

In fact, as we now know, Pruitt has a long track record — going back to his days in Oklahoma — of flouting official procedures when it suits him.

Most troubling is Pruitt’s disdain for EPA policy procedures, which have a considerable impact on public health. Just this week, Pruitt undercut the EPA’s long-established process for drafting strong, protective regulations by proposing that the agency no longer accept studies if all of their data isn’t publicly available. That would mean the agency would have to ignore most epidemiological studies, which rely on private medical information that cannot and should not be shared.

Polluter-funded members of Congress have tried to pass bills instituting this restriction for years, despite the fact that it would violate the EPA’s obligation to use the best available science to protect public health. Sure enough, emails obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists show that political appointees, not career staff or scientists, were behind the proposal, and they only considered its potential impact on industry. In response, nearly 1,000 scientists sent a letter to Pruitt asking him to back off.

Pruitt also packed the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) with industry scientists, overturning four decades of precedent by banning scientists who have received EPA grants from serving on the SAB or any other agency advisory panel. Why? Pruitt claims they have a conflict of interest. Pruitt did not renew terms for a number of respected members and dismissed several independent scientists before their terms were up, shrinking the SAB from 47 to 42 participants and more than doubling the number of its polluter-friendly members.

Likewise, Pruitt clearly has little use for standard EPA administrative procedures. The Government Accountability Office, for example, recently found that he violated federal law by ordering a $43,000 soundproof phone booth. Political appointees, it turns out, have to clear office improvement purchases over $5,000 with Congress. Unlike his predecessors, he has routinely flown first class, and so far it has cost taxpayers more than $150,000. He tripled the size of the administrator’s security team to 19 agents, and according to CNN their annual salaries alone cost at least $2 million. He has a 24-hour-a-day bodyguard. He rented a condo for $50 a night — well below market value — from the wife of an energy lobbyist who met with Pruitt last July and lobbies EPA on behalf of his clients. The list of Pruitt’s ethical infractions goes on and on.

Breaking the Rule of Law

“When rule of law is applied it provides certainty to those that are regulated,” Pruitt explained during that CPAC speech. “Those in industry should know what is expected of them. Those in industry should know how to allocate their resources to comply with the regulations passed by the EPA.”

It’s hard to argue with that. Of course industrial facility owners should be clear about their responsibility to curb emissions. Under Pruitt, however, polluters can be certain about at least one thing: There’s a good chance they won’t be prosecuted. For Pruitt, the rule of law is made to be broken.

In its first year in office, the Trump administration resolved only 48 environmental civil cases, about a third fewer than under President Barack Obama’s first EPA director and less than half under President George W. Bush’s over the same time period, according to a February report by the Environmental Integrity Project. The Trump administration recovered just $30 million in penalties from these cases, nearly 60 percent less than the $71 million the Obama administration recovered in its first year.

A December analysis by The New York Times comparing the first nine months of the Trump regime with previous administrations, also found a marked decline in enforcement. It determined that the EPA under Pruitt initiated about 1,900 enforcement cases, about a third fewer than during the Obama administration and about a quarter fewer than the Bush administration over the same time frame.

Meanwhile, Pruitt — who sued the EPA 14 times to block stronger air, water and climate safeguards during his tenure as Oklahoma attorney general — is now trying to roll back environmental protections from the inside. Since taking office, he has moved quickly to delay or weaken a range of Obama-era regulations, including ones that protect the public from toxic pesticides, lead paint and vehicle emissions.

Ironically, Pruitt’s cavalier attitude about following procedures has thus far blunted his wrecking-ball campaign. “In their rush to get things done, they’re failing to dot their ‘I’s and cross their ‘T’s, and they’re starting to stumble over a lot of trip wires,” Richard Lazarus, a Harvard environmental law professor, told The New York Times. “They’re producing a lot of short, poorly crafted rulemakings that are not likely to hold up in court.”

Federalism for all but California

“So process matters, rule of law matters, but let me tell you this: What really matters is federalism,” Pruitt told the CPAC faithful. “We are going to once again pay attention to the states across the country. I believe people in Oklahoma, in Texas, in Indiana, in Ohio, and New York and California, and in all the states across the country, they care about the air they breathe, and they care about the water they drink, and we are going to be partners with these individuals [sic], not adversaries.”

California? He must have forgotten that when he lashed out at the state for embracing stronger vehicle fuel economy standards than what he and the auto industry would prefer. “California is not the arbiter of these issues,” Pruitt said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in mid-March. California sets state limits on carbon emissions, he said, but “that shouldn’t and can’t dictate to the rest of the country what these levels are going to be.”

California, which has a waiver under the 1970 Clean Air Act giving it the right to set its own vehicle emissions standards, reached an agreement with the Obama administration and the auto industry that established the first limits on tailpipe carbon emissions. The next phase of the standards calls for improving the average fuel efficiency of new cars and light trucks to about 50 miles per gallon by 2025 in lab tests, corresponding to a real-world performance of about 36 mpg. By 2030, that would reduce global warming pollution by nearly 4 billion tons, akin to shutting down 140 coal-fired power plants over that time frame.

California wants to stick with the standards. Pruitt, echoing the specious claims of auto industry trade groups, announced in early April that he wants to roll them back. Putting aside the fact that the auto industry’s own analysis concluded that carmakers can meet the 2025 targets primarily with conventional vehicles, what happened to Pruitt’s “cooperative federalism” ideal, especially since California is not acting alone?

Thirteen states, mostly in the Northeast and Northwest, and the District of Columbia have adopted California’s stricter emissions standards. Together they represent at least a third of the U.S. auto market. And in response to Pruitt’s roll-back announcement, 12 state attorneys general and 63 mayors from 26 states released a declaration supporting the stronger standards. “Such standards are particularly appropriate given the serious public impacts of air pollution in our cities and states and the severe impacts of climate change…,” the declaration reads. “If the administration attempts to deny states and cities the basic right to protect their citizens, we will strongly challenge such an effort in court.”

That declaration sounds a lot like what Pruitt endorsed at the conclusion of his CPAC speech, but of course he was referring to state efforts to weaken federal environmental safeguards, not strengthen them. “We are going to restore power back to the people,” he said. “We are going to recognize the regulatory uncertainty and the regulatory state needs to be reined in, we’re going to make sure the states are recognized for the authority they have, and we are going to do the work that’s important to advance freedom and liberty for the future. It’s an exciting time.

“The folks in D.C. have a new attitude,” Pruitt continued. “It’s an attitude that no longer are we going to dictate to those across the country and tell them how to live each and every day. It’s an attitude that says we’re going to empower citizens and the states. It’s an idea of federalism and believing in liberty.”

The CPAC crowd gave him a standing ovation, but the reception he’s now getting from both Democrats and Republicans alike is considerably cooler. At this point, Mr. Pruitt may soon find himself out of a job.

Some of Elliott’s offerings at the UCS and at the Huffington Post can be seen here and here.

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