Author Archives | by Zach Courtney

Courtney: Rick Scott said the quiet part out loud. We should listen.

This fall, Minnesotans will be casting their votes for the U.S. House, governor and both houses of the state legislature. Ahead of the elections, voters everywhere are trying to decide which candidates to cast their ballots for. As split ballots become more rare, the choice becomes less focused on specific issues and more on what each party stands for.

In short, voters are asking: Should I vote for Democrats or Republicans?

Of course, I can’t – or at least shouldn’t – answer that question directly. Instead, what I think I can do is offer some perspective into what the two major parties have to offer.

A few months ago, I offered my take on what the Democrats have to offer. Now, I plan to focus on the Republicans – specifically Florida Sen. Rick Scott and his “12 Point Plan to Rescue America.”

There’s a lot to get to, but I’ll try to be brief, so you don’t need to read it yourself (unless you really, really want to).

While Scott organized his plan into 12 points, I could only decipher five. As I analyze his plan, I’ll separate it into my five categories – the economy, lies, things that sound good but are actually bad, fear mongering/buzzwords and contradictions.

Economy

Scott’s plan for the economy is detached from reality, to say the least. Though backlash led to Scott removing this specific quote from the currently published document, it originally said that, “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount.”

This would raise taxes not just on the poorest Americans, but more than half of Americans. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in political science to recognize that his proposal is bad politics, but it’s bad policy, too. Raising taxes on the poor despite inequality being at its current level would be detrimental to the economy.
The idea that poor Americans need to pay income tax to “have skin in the game” fails to recognize that poor Americans do pay tax, just not income tax — things like the gas tax, sales tax and FICA tax, for example. Despite quietly removing this problematic quote from his published plan, does Scott still hold the radical belief that taxes should be raised on the poorest of Americans?

In addition, Scott’s plan calls for the “Do It Better” Test, where work will be done by American businesses if it can be done cheaper and better than the government can do it. Since studies show that the public sector would do a better job in the world of healthcare than the private sector currently does, should we consider Scott onboard with Medicare For All? Or does he simply want to shrink our government so private businesses can profit at the expense of the average American?

Lies

Scott’s plan doesn’t shy away from denying climate change or pushing false narratives that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

In other words, his plan doesn’t shy away from lying. Endless court cases found Trump’s claims of fraud to be baseless, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that human-induced climate change requires more action to be curbed.

Sounds good, actually bad

Scott also proposes sunsetting all federal legislation after five years. This is radical. It would mean Congress needs to pass one-fifth of all federal legislation each year. This sunset requirement would mean many good, bipartisan laws would go away simply because Congress doesn’t have the time to renew them. It could also mean the end of medicare, medicaid, and social security. But maybe that is exactly what Scott and the GOP wants to happen.
Next in Scott’s laundry list of proposals to ruin our economy, Scott calls for the prohibition of raising the debt ceiling absent a declaration of war. My opinion on the debt ceiling is no secret — it’s a bad idea that sounds good to well-meaning fiscal conservatives, but it would almost certainly mean an economic recession or depression.

Fear mongering/Buzzwords

It says we should “stop socialism” despite there being zero socialists and a handful of self-declared Democratic socialists (I’d argue none of them legislate as one) out of 535 total voting members in Congress. President Joe Biden – a lifelong moderate who is far from a socialist – is president.
It says we should ban critical race theory, despite the topic rarely being taught in K-12 schools.
It says we should build a wall, despite there being little evidence to suggest a wall would stop illegal immigration.
Scott’s plan dedicated a whole point to transgender people as if it is a large issue facing our country. It isn’t. If a trans woman wants to play girls’ high school basketball, who cares? Let her live her life and be happy. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox released a statement as he vetoed a transgender athlete ban in March — I concur.

Contradictions

Scott’s plan is rife with contradictions, but I’ll just mention two.

His plan calls for no social indoctrination of children in schools, but it also says that we will teach students to love America. Which one is it?
His plan calls for enforcement of all laws, but it also calls for a 50% decrease in IRS funding. This drastic cut in funding would limit the ability for the IRS to collect taxes — in short, it would limit their ability to enforce the law. So Scott isn’t actually in favor of enforcing all laws, just the ones whose enforcement won’t negatively impact his wealthy donors.

Conclusion

I’m not going to act like the Democrats are perfect. But as Scott’s plan – and much of the GOP – goes further and further to the right, they also go further and further from the truth. They stand for ideas that would undoubtedly put us into a recession, and they think the 2020 election was stolen. Will voters hold this all against the GOP this fall? I sure hope they do.

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Courtney: I read the Dobbs decision so you don’t need to

The words that came across my Twitter feed two weeks ago still make me quiver:

“Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

Just as the Christian right movement has long desired, and just as former President Donald Trump intended with his three picks for the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey – two SCOTUS decisions that federally protected the right to abortion – are no longer the law of the land. States are now free to ban abortion as they see fit, all the way up to conception if they wish – even in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.

Constitutional law can be confusing. Because of this, and because understanding such a consequential ruling is so important, I decided to break down the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization so everyone has a better idea of what the decision and the justices’ opinions mean.

Facts

In the case at hand – Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the Court was asked to decide the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This is in direct conflict with Planned Parenthood v. Casey – a 1992 decision that protects a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion up until fetal viability (generally considered around 24 weeks into the pregnancy).

The Court ruled 6-3 to uphold the Mississippi law, with Alito, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Thomas and Gorsuch voting to uphold the law, and the liberal bloc of Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor voting to strike down the law.

The Court ruled 5-4 to explicitly overturn Roe and Casey, with Roberts joining the liberals on the Court. I will say more about Roberts’ decision later.

States with Democratic state legislatures and/or Democratic governors (like Minnesota) will see no changes to abortion restrictions as long as Democrats are in power. On the other hand, around 25 of the most conservative states will see new abortion restrictions implemented in their state.
Wealthy, primarily white Americans that live in states with an abortion ban will still be able to get one if they wish, it will just require more travel and money to do so. These new laws will disproportionately and overwhelmingly impact people of color and poorer Americans who don’t have the luxury of traveling long distances to get an abortion.

Before I get to the justices’ opinions, it is important to note that all nine justices on the Court are incredibly intelligent. This makes deciding what opinions are most compelling far more difficult; if you read only one opinion, it’s easy to be swayed by it, as the justice that wrote it is one of the brightest legal minds in the country.

Majority opinion

The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, did not pull any punches. It boils down to this quote: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”

The majority opinion focuses on the doctrine of stare decisis, which is Latin for “to stand by that which is decided.” In short, they focus on the concept of precedent, and whether Roe and Casey were “egregiously wrong” to the point where they need to be overturned.

On page 48, the majority writes that “Roe’s failure even to note the overwhelming consensus of state laws in effect in 1868 [when the Fourteenth Amendment was passed] is striking, and what is said about the common law was simply wrong.” But why does the Court care what the consensus is on state laws? At the time Plessy v. Ferguson was decided, the United States was incredibly segregated. Does that make Plessy – which established the “separate but equal” doctrine – a correct decision? The obvious answer is no.

On page 68, the majority writes that “Roe certainly did not succeed in ending division on the issue of abortion. On the contrary, Roe ‘inflamed’ a national issue that has remained bitterly divisive for the past half century.” But is the goal of the Court to end division on issues or to uphold the Constitution? The obvious answer is the latter. Brown v. Board of Education – a case the current Court used to explain how overturning a wrong decision can be necessary – was incredibly divisive, but it was the correct decision under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Lastly, the majority writes that the Constitution makes no mention of abortion. This is true in technicality only. Our Constitution is short, and its amendments are often quite broad. It would be a long, long document if it contained an exhaustive list of our rights.

Here is the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Here is a portion of the Fourteenth Amendment: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

If you read that and are left wondering “what the hell does that mean,” you are not alone. These amendments are broad. But the Court has long interpreted them to include a right to privacy. This includes the right to make private decisions with your doctor, like obtaining an abortion, but it also includes the right to do other things in your private life, like marry a person of the same sex (Obergefell v. Hodges), be intimate with a person of the same sex (Lawrence v. Texas) and obtain and use contraceptives (Griswold v. Connecticut). These are three SCOTUS decisions that Justice Thomas argues the Court should reconsider in the future. But I’ll get into that later.

Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion

Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion – where a justice agrees with the majority but writes an opinion of their own to add more about their point of view – and we can learn a lot from it.

Kavanaugh’s opinion references how the Court is neutral on the topic of abortion, but they are giving the issue back to the states. This seems logical when taken at face value. What it fails to consider is that the whole point of the Constitution is to establish certain rights that are “out of bounds” for the states and federal government to infringe upon – the right to privacy is one of these rights in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Thomas’s concurring opinion

Justice Thomas, widely recognized as the most conservative justice on the Court, also wrote a concurring opinion. Much has been made of his radical beliefs in the world of social media, but they’ve perhaps been blown out of proportion.

Yes, his view that the Court should look into overturning other Supreme Court rulings that deal with a right to privacy, like Griswold (contraceptives), Lawrence (same-sex intimacy) and Obergefell (same-sex marriage), is out of touch, but he seems to be the only person on the Court who feels this way.

Alito’s opinion specifically says this: “And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Roberts’ opinion, concurring in judgment

Roberts’ “more measured approach” was quite compelling. He writes that he would have upheld the Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks, but he also would have upheld the component of Roe and Casey that grants women the right to an abortion.

In upholding the Mississippi law, he would have thrown out Casey’s viability standard (that guarantees a woman’s right to choose up until fetal viability), which he argues “never made any sense,” and would have established the “reasonable opportunity” standard, where states would be required to allow women a “reasonable opportunity” to terminate their pregnancy.

In short, Roberts argues that Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban doesn’t infringe on women’s core right to obtain an abortion – if they choose to have an abortion, 15 weeks gives them a “reasonable opportunity” to still do so.

It’s worthwhile to note that if Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have lived for a few more months, or had she retired when Barack Obama was president with a Democratic majority in the Senate, Roberts’ opinion would have been the majority opinion of the Court in this case. It’s amazing how much a single person’s heartbeat has to do with the rights of women in this country for decades to come.

Dissenting opinion

Though the liberals’ joint dissent was passionate and compelling, it doesn’t say anything that is unexpected. They feel the Court should have upheld Roe and Casey and should have struck down the Mississippi law.

My opinion

Going into reading the justices’ opinions and writing this column, I was expecting to disagree with every opinion besides the liberals’ dissent. That was not the case. Though my expectation was correct with Alito, Kavanaugh and Thomas, it was not true with Roberts.

In fact, strictly from a constitutional standpoint, his concurrence in judgment might be the most compelling. I view the Ninth and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution to protect the right to privacy and the right for a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy. That said, rights are not absolute. At some point, states deserve the right to protect fetal life in line with the views of their constituents. Consistent with this belief, a “reasonable opportunity” standard seems to make more sense than a “fetal viability” standard.

But with the makeup of today’s Court and with our current political climate, none of this matters. Neither of these standards are the law of the land. Not because they don’t make sense – they do. Not because the Constitution doesn’t guarantee a right to privacy – it does.

What does matter? A small, motivated, religious portion of our population – whose views, we used to agree, had no place in our government – voted like hell to get their views reflected on our Supreme Court. Two weeks ago, they got their wish. One can only hope that one day we – the majority of Americans – can again have our views reflected on the Court too.

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Courtney: What statistics best show the economy’s health?

Last week, the Golden State Warriors won the 2022 NBA Finals in six games, clinching it with a 103-90 victory over the Boston Celtics at TD Garden.

No one disputes this. After all, the Warriors scored more points than the Celtics in four of the six games. Sounds pretty simple and straightforward, right?

Why can’t politics be this easy? Why can’t we, as voters, agree on a set of statistics that matter most to determine which party is doing better and is more worthy of our votes?

Our current system is like if some teams in the NBA used rebounds to determine the winner, while other teams used assists. While they both have indications of how well their team is playing and who is going to win, the real way to see what team won is by looking at which team scored more points.

When I set out to write this column, I was searching for what would be analogous to points (the best metric to declare who played best), and rebounds and assists (what both major parties use to declare who played best). Here’s what I came up with.

The GOP’s Version of Rebounds

Rebounds are often a good indicator of which team will win in a basketball game; more rebounds means more possessions, and more possessions means more shots. That said, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes a team can win by 15 points despite getting outrebounded, as they gain a possession advantage in other ways, like creating turnovers.

Republicans’ economic equivalents to rebounds are gas prices and inflation. They’re certainly important, but only in some ways, and never without context.

Gas prices and inflation certainly fall in this category. They’re important — no one is arguing that paying $5 per gallon of gas or 8% annualized inflation is good — but context is necessary.

The context is that high inflation and gas prices exist in all parts of the world today. This shows that inflation isn’t simply a result of the Fed’s low interest rates or deficit spending by Congress, but that much of it is due to issues with the supply chain as a result of the ongoing pandemic. It shows that gas prices aren’t the fault of President Joe Biden, but a result of the war in Ukraine and OPEC’s unwillingness to pump more oil.

The Democratic Party’s Version of Assists

Likewise, some in the world of basketball like looking at assists as a key indicator of how a team is playing. After all, a team that has a lot of assists is clearly playing good team basketball and making the right passes, making them more likely to win.

The Democrats’ economic equivalent to assists is headlining unemployment. Sure, we want more people working, but does the unemployment rate really tell the full story about how workers are doing in this country?

The answer to this question is no.

If we want to know how many people are working, the best statistic is the labor-force participation rate, which is the percentage of Americans at least 16 years old that are working. For example, Minnesota’s unemployment rate sits at about 2% today, but the state’s labor-force participation rate is at 68% — two percentage points lower than it was before the pandemic and seven percentage points lower than it was in the mid-1990s. The labor-force participation rate shows that fewer people are working in Minnesota today, so the record-low unemployment rate is quite misleading without context.

And even that doesn’t show how workers are doing. In reality, real wages — which account for inflation — have been largely stagnant over the last 50 years.

Poor Bipartisan Statistics

There are two statistics, however, that both major political parties agree are important: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is a statistic showing total economic output and trends in the stock market.

They’re still bad stats that don’t do much to show how regular people are doing. The stock market should be obvious — only 58% of Americans own stock. GDP is less obvious, but still a poor stat. At this point in our development as a society, why do we care about an increase in GDP while life expectancy and mental health go down? Robert Kennedy put it best: “It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Economic Version of Points

While the two major political parties are debating whether people should care more about high inflation and gas prices or good unemployment rates, regular people — no matter what political party is in power — are being left behind.

The issue is that we aren’t even looking at the statistics that matter the most. We’re just looking at the statistics that will make our political party look the best at that moment in time. As of now, that means Democrats look at the unemployment rate, while Republicans look at gas prices and inflation. It would be bad for the two-party system if anyone brought up the statistics that make both major parties look bad, so they just avoid them entirely.

I’ll list some, but be warned, part of why we hear so little about them is because 1) they’re depressing, and 2) they show a complete bipartisan failure to help anyone besides those at the very top.

In the wealthiest country our world has ever known, we still have far too much poverty and food insecurity. Today, the United States has about 17% of its children living in poverty, and 14% of all Americans live in poverty. A pre-pandemic statistic shows that 10.7% of Americans are food insecure.

Americans, quite simply, aren’t healthy today. Life expectancy is declining. Americans have been dealing with a recent increase in depression, anxiety and suicide rates, too.

Over the last twenty years, there has been an alarming increase in drug-related overdose deaths. In 2015, there were 52,404 drug-related overdose deaths — that number skyrocketed to 91,799 in 2020.

It’s not that we can’t care about inflation, gas prices, unemployment rates, GDP or the stock market. In fact, we should care about these statistics, just like we care about rebounds and assists. They just shouldn’t be our main factor when it comes to who we vote for or how we think our economy is doing.

We should care about our mental health, drug overdose deaths and suicides, as they show many of us are stuggling; we should care about real wages, as they show how workers are doing when we factor in inflation; we should care about wealth inequality and poverty rates, as they show if we are effectively redistributing the fruits that flow to the top to ensure all are able to live lives of dignity; we should care about life expectancy, food insecurity and clean water, as these are all basic statistics that show how well a society is doing.

In short, in the world of politics, we need to quit putting rebounds and assists at the top of the scoreboard. I just want to know how many points we’re scoring.

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The Democrats need to look themselves in the mirror.

All of my columns have motivations behind them. My motive for this column, though, is more clear than most. A few weekends ago, I took U.S. Highway 12 from the Twin Cities to my hometown of Willmar, Minn. On the 100-mile trip to and from, I saw a lot of political signs.

The only diversity in the political signs was that some were explicitly anti-Biden or anti-Democrats, while others were only pro-Trump. In other words, there was no diversity; every political sign I saw had one political leaning.

To some that read my columns and live in the Twin Cities area, this is surprising and something they’ve maybe never reckoned with, especially if they don’t interact with conservatives on a semi-regular basis. Some questions they might ask include: Why would someone support Trump? Why would they support Scott Jensen? Why would they hate Joe Biden or, more broadly, the Democratic Party?

Some might say there isn’t a good conservative answer to these questions. But for our democracy to thrive, progressives, liberals and anti-Trumpers need to truly reckon with them.

Voters support Trump, Jensen and others because they feel politically abandoned by the left and mainstream Republicans — people they may have previously voted for. When things aren’t working, voters want change. If they aren’t offered what might be perceived as “good” change, they’ll resort to “bad” change — sometimes to extremists like Trump and Jensen.

But still, progressives and liberals might respond that these arguments don’t suffice; just look at what the Democrats stand for!

To that, I have a rebuttal: what do the Democrats actually stand for?

They stand for the working class! They stand for ensuring all have access to health care! They stand for families! They stand for women’s right to choose!

These problematic responses – all too common from progressives and liberals alike – often come with no reasonable rebuttal from the left. I’m here to offer that.

They stand for the working class!
The last presidential administration to oversee Congress raising the federal minimum wage was the George W. Bush administration in 2007. The last Democratic administration to do so was Bill Clinton’s in 1996. Neoliberal free-trade policies, like Clinton’s NAFTA and Obama’s attempt to pass TPP, also showed how the Democrats have failed to support the working class. To President Biden’s credit, he vowed to be the “most pro-union president you’ve ever seen”; but where has the action been since then? Has he really shown that he is pro-union?

To truly stand behind the working class, Democrats in Congress should pass the PRO Act, raise the minimum wage, guarantee paid maternity leave, and more.

They stand for ensuring all have access to health care!

President Biden recently tweeted “In America, health care should be a right — not a privilege.” But his words seem to amount to empty promises. As I outlined in my recent health care column, the Democrats seem uninterested in truly fighting to lower costs and ensure that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

If Biden and the Democrats truly meant this all-too-common phrase, they would back it up by coalescing behind either a public option bill (that Biden campaigned on) or a universal, single-payer system.

They stand for families!
The most pro-family policy of my lifetime — the expansion of the Child Tax Credit — expired while the Democrats hold majorities in both houses of Congress, and a Democrat lives in the White House. Need I say more?

They stand for the women’s right to choose!
Many Democrats identify as pro-choice, and Senate Democrats routinely confirm pro-choice judges and justices to federal benches and the Supreme Court. But the fight over abortion rights wouldn’t rely on the courts if the Senate would just pass legislation that codified Roe into law. It’s really that simple: Congress could just pass a law (crazy to suggest, I know) that codifies Roe into law, guaranteeing the women’s right to choose. Once again, the Democrats hold majorities in both houses of Congress, and a Democrat lives in the White House. If they really wanted to guarantee abortion rights, they could do so. So why haven’t they?

Though there are certainly problems with the Republicans — their anti-vaccine stances, election fraud and homophobic and transphobic rhetoric to name a few — the Democrats still remain likely to be shellacked in the midterm elections.

Instead of complaining, it’s important to ask the most important question: why? Why might the Democrats, who supposedly support the working class, ensuring access to health care, families and abortion rights, lose?

It’s because the Democrats have failed to legislate in line with their supposed core beliefs. Instead, they’ve allowed the rich to continue to get richer, while the poor struggle and the middle class shrinks. This all spells electoral disaster for the Democrats, and maybe they deserve it.

And maybe, as my title suggests, the Democrats would do a whole lot better if they just took a nice, long look in the mirror and asked themselves: Are we living up to our core beliefs?

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Courtney: What happened to health care?

2020

Let’s flash back to better times: It is early 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has yet to wreak havoc on the United States. The Gophers just finished an 11-2 season after topping Auburn in the Outback Bowl. Life is good.

In the political world, the discourse was different than it is in 2022, to say the least. On the Republican side, President Trump is regularly sending … unique … tweets out, and the trial for his first impeachment has just concluded.

On the Democratic side, the primaries are in full force. Long shot candidate Andrew Yang dropped out, but he seems to have won just by bringing universal basic income to the forefront. Bernie Sanders, the progressive candidate that lost the nomination just four years ago to Hillary Clinton, appears well-positioned to win the nomination, after winning the popular vote in the first three states.

On a more fundamental note, though, it seems that there is a regular, healthy discourse in the Democratic primary around how we can and should improve our healthcare system. Though the Affordable Care Act — Barack Obama and the Democrats’ reimagination of Romneycare out of Massachusetts that features an individual mandate and bars insurance companies from refusing to cover treatment for preexisting conditions — has had some success, it also is far from enough. The Democrats seem to understand this.

The disagreement seems to be on how far to go; the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, led by Bernie Sanders, is advocating for a single-payer, universal healthcare system, dubbed Medicare for All. The moderates, led by Pete Buttiegeg and later by Joe Biden, are advocating for a more modest, but still good proposal of a government-run health insurance option, commonly known as a public option.

2022

Now, let’s flash forward to 2022. As the pandemic still lingers, Americans are still waiting for robust improvements to healthcare. A 2021 Pew Research survey found that Americans consider the affordability of health care to be the biggest issue facing our country today.

Even the modest provisions in Build Back Better — capping insulin costs at $35 per month, expanding Medicaid to GOP-led states that have yet to expand, allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices — seem to have little momentum in Washington, let alone things like a public option (something Biden campaigned on) or a more robust single-payer system.

My question, which also serves as my headline, remains: what happened to health care? I’ll get to what I think the best answer is, but first I need to explain why there are certain explanations I just don’t buy.

Reason #1

A seemingly reasonable answer is that the war in Ukraine puts just too much on our politicians’ plate; if there was no war in Ukraine, certainly the Democrats would be moving on healthcare, but they simply can’t do so yet!

In simple terms, this is ludicrous. If the Democrats in Washington cared enough to pass robust improvements to our healthcare system, they could. They have majorities (even if they are small) in both houses of Congress — for the rest of the year, anyway — and hold the White House as well.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said, “Our job is to punish Russia for this uncalled for and illegal and terrible invasion … But at the same time, here’s the point that I want to make. We cannot lose focus on the crises facing working families in this country with or without a war. You’ve got 80 million people in this country who are uninsured or underinsured, and people cannot afford the high cost of prescription drugs without a war.”

I agree, Senator. Congress can and should walk and chew gum at the same time. Congress has the ability to take on more than one issue at a time.

Reason #2

Another seemingly reasonable answer is that robust healthcare reform would just cost too much. We can’t afford it!

The reality is that healthcare reform would save money for just about everyone besides health insurance executives. If the Senate passed the same version of Build Back Better that passed the House, the Congressional Budget Office estimates we would save $79 billion over ten years. Medicare for All would save us a lot of money while also covering everyone. Even a Koch-funded study found that Medicare for All would save $200 billion per year, while other left-leaning studies find the savings to be even bigger. Not only would these healthcare reforms be inexpensive, but they also would be more cost-efficient than our current system.

So, why aren’t Congressional Democrats taking aggressive action on health care? I don’t buy that their hands are full with the war in Ukraine; Congress could act on healthcare as well if it wanted to. It can’t be that it would cost too much or that Americans don’t want robust healthcare reform; these statements are simply not true. So, what is it?

The real reason

I don’t know for sure, but I think I have an idea: corruption.

If stalled healthcare proposals are the peanut butter, corruption is the jelly; when you see one, expect the other. This case is no exception. As this article by David Moore at Sludge outlines, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), other key Democrats, the DCCC, and the DSCC have received large chunks of change from key healthcare industry lobbyists, and even if it is implicitly, this money and regular access being given to healthcare lobbyists certainly leads to politicians folding on campaign promises and giving big pharma what they want.

It should come as no surprise that I am an advocate for a single-payer, universal healthcare system. The principle that creating a monopsony would lower healthcare costs for everyone, ensure all are covered and end the days where health insurance is a for-profit business seems obvious to me.

Still, I dream of the days in the 2020 Democratic primary where there was at least a regular discussion over whether we should implement a single-payer system or a still-respectable public option. Instead, corruption has left us with mostly the same system we had when President Biden took office over a year ago, with little indication that substantial improvements are on the way. If we want to see robust improvements to our healthcare system — which polling suggests we do — we should spend time not just discussing how far our healthcare proposals should extend, but how we can ensure all of our voices are heard, not just the voices of healthcare companies and their lobbyists.

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Courtney: The case for democracy

When people ask how I identify politically, it’s a tough question to answer. I have multiple identities. I’m an advocate for universal healthcare, expanding public education to include preschool, eradicating (or at least cutting) child poverty and implementing bold climate change policy. Call me what you want.

I don’t identify as a Democrat — a member of the Democratic Party — because I have too many issues with the party today, but I do identify as a small “d” democrat. I have faith in democracy. Because of this, it should be no surprise that I have doubts and worries about the future of our democracy. I’m not alone, either; recent NPR/Ipsos polling indicates that 64% of Americans think American democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.”

Research indicates that 31% of Americans want a “strong incumbent leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections.” So this begs the question: why should we even care if American democracy is at risk?

I could go on and on about why we should value and desire democracy. I’ll just give a few reasons why we should, otherwise this column would be too long.

  1. War is bad. We should avoid war— at home and abroad— if at all possible. A great way to do this is by championing democracy; research shows that democracies, quite simply, don’t go to war with each other.
  2. Though authoritarian leaders will falsely claim otherwise, history shows that democracies have higher rates of economic growth than other countries.
  3. The most basic way to determine how successful a country and their government has been is by how long their people live. If a country is successful, their people will live long, healthy lives. Research shows that citizens of democratic countries live longer than citizens of other countries.
  4. I believe that all are created equal, so all should have power in their government by voting and making their voices heard. Just on principle alone, the people as a whole — not just a dictator or the wealthy — should have a say in the laws that govern their country.

So, if democracy is as peachy as I claim it to be, why do almost a third of Americans basically want to scrap our current system for a dictatorship? In short, they don’t approve of our current system because it isn’t a democracy. If I were to use a term to classify our political system, I would call it a representative democracy. Still, the United States’ democracy is lacking in some areas as well. The Senate and Electoral College are intentionally not democratic. Studies have shown that legislation that passes through Congress is correlated with the preferences of the wealthy, not the average American. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has long argued that the United States is on the verge of being an oligarchy; I agree. There is a bit of a paradox here; for those of us that value democracy, we need to build a better one before we lose what we have right now to autocracy or oligarchy.

That’s right — my headline and subhead were written for right here at home, not some country halfway around the world.

A few side notes before I get to my main proposals for fixing our democracy:

  1. I’ve already written columns on the benefits of ranked-choice voting and abolishing the filibuster, so I won’t spend too much time on those proposals, but they would do a lot of good as far as making our democracy more representative and responsive.
  2. Bolstering journalism and public education (two proposals I’ve also discussed previously) would make our electorate more educated, which would be great for our democracy.
  3. Many on the left propose abolishing the Electoral College and the Senate altogether. Not to say I’m opposed to these proposals, I just think they aren’t worthwhile discussions; they would require constitutional amendments that would need small states to vote against their own self-interests.

So, what steps can we take to build our democracy before we lose our democracy?

We should make drastic changes to the House. Many discuss the anti-democratic nature of the Senate, but fail to discuss that the House isn’t very democratic, either. Instead of the voters choosing their House representatives, gerrymandering has made it so politicians are choosing their voters. At the very least, we need to ban partisan gerrymandering through the Freedom to Vote Act. More drastic proposals like multi-member districts and proportional representation should be considered, too. We could and should expand the House to 930 seats so individual districts have closer to equal representation.

  1. We should pass a constitutional amendment that would overturn the disastrous Citizens United v. FEC decision that allows corporations to pour unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns. This has allowed our democracy (rule by the people) to increasingly look like an oligarchy (rule by the wealthy).
  2. If a constitutional amendment is unattainable, a bill that gives each American $100 to donate to candidates — dubbed “Democracy Dollars” by Andrew Yang — would go a long way towards making our democracy more democratic. If money is speech, as Citizens United says, Democracy Dollars would give everyone a voice.

I know this was a long column. Nothing is important if we lose our democracy, and I wanted to make sure I got this column right. It has a lot of links that might seem boring to read, but I encourage everyone to read them. They’re written by people who are much smarter than I am (though that doesn’t say much). As I said in my column “A republic, if we can keep it,” our democracy can be preserved if 1) we want it to be and 2) we do everything we can to ensure it is preserved.

Though the policies I propose both in other columns and here are good, they are far from exhaustive. Most importantly, though, we need to do something before it is too late. Americans are losing faith in our democracy in part because they don’t think it is working well for them. In short — they’re right. It isn’t working well for them because we don’t live in a democracy — yet. If we build one through some of my pro-democracy measures, then our democracy will be here to stay.

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Courtney: Child poverty soaring under Biden and the Democrats

If someone asked me what the best thing President Biden and the 117th Congress has accomplished was, there is a good chance I would say the one-year child tax credit (CTC) expansion that was passed as part of the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief legislation.

That being said, if someone asked me the worst thing that President Biden and the 117th Congress has done — or failed to do — it would be their failure to extend the Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion. While my headline might be considered slightly misleading, it is also 100% accurate; Democrats’ failure to extend the CTC expansion has already led to 3.7 million children falling back into poverty— a 41% increase in the child poverty rate from 12.1% to 17%.

In a normal year, the CTC gave parents $2,000 in tax relief per dependent, but in 2021, the CTC was expanded to give parents up to $3,600 in tax relief. From July to Dec 2021, $250 per child (or $300 for children under six) was sent out to parents on the 15th of each month as an advance on their 2021 returns. These payments functioned as a miniature version of a universal basic income specifically for parents. These payments weren’t sent out on January 15 or February 15; this is a moral failure on the part of our policymakers, and it shouldn’t go unmentioned, even if it is the fault of politicians with whom I more regularly align.

Regular readers of my column should not be surprised by my stance on basic income-like measures; I’m a huge fan. The best way to reduce poverty is to give people money, and the best group of people to reduce — or eradicate — poverty for is young people. The CTC expansion did just that; it is estimated to have cut child poverty by 45%. But these monthly payments are no longer going out to families, meaning the Democrats’ great job of decreasing child poverty was only a temporary measure.

I recently wrote a column on why we should pay our politicians more. Admittedly, that was one of my more controversial opinions. I have a feeling that this one is less controversial, but somehow still under-discussed. We need to pay parents more, just for being parents. They have the most important jobs in the world. Why don’t we act like it, at least a little?

Just as I said in my previous column, we as a society should recognize our most important jobs and decide to pay them more; this is how we become a better society as a whole. I don’t have kids, and I likely won’t have any anytime soon — still, I will reap the benefits if others’ kids are ensured to live a life above the poverty line at least until the time they hit 18 years old.

Though I have reservations with much of the rhetoric the Republican Party offers, I agree with them on at least one thing: families are extremely important. But they deserve some of the blame here, too. If the GOP is as pro-family as they claim to be, they should be on board with the Democrats’ plan to extend the CTC expansion, or, at the very least, have a sufficient counter-proposal to bring to the table.

The one-year CTC expansion should serve as proof that our government can successfully pull children out of poverty. The fact that President Biden and the 117th Congress — yes, both Democrats and Republicans — have failed to do this for more than a year should be a massive disappointment for everyone. We can, and should, do better for our young people. A permanent expansion of the CTC would be a great first step.

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Courtney: We should pay our politicians more.

I have a radical belief that the people in our society with the most meaningful, consequential jobs in our society should be paid the most. Though there are many that I could name, three of the most important jobs in our society are doctors, teachers and parents. Doctors are already paid well, as they should be. Paying teachers more has long been a thing that those on the left and I have advocated for, and most Democrats are on board to pay parents more through the extension of the child tax credit expansion. 

Paying our most important professions more is good for us all. If we have good doctors, teachers and parents, the society as a whole will benefit. The best way to ensure the best people will flock to the most important professions is to pay them more (revolutionary logic, I know). There is another, often under-considered profession where the same logic holds true: politicians. 

I know that this take is controversial. Politicians are supposed to be public servants. They aren’t supposed to make a fortune off the position they hold. I agree; this is actually part of why we should pay our politicians more. 

In Washington, congresspeople in both houses make $174,000 per year. I recognize that this is no small figure, but considering the cost of living in the Washington D.C. area and the need to have somewhere to live in your home state as well, it isn’t as high as one might think.

Still, this figure remains, admittedly, quite high. Another reason we should consider raising our politicians’ pay is their ability to make more money when they leave office through corporate lobbying. This problem is multifaceted; first, if politicians can make more money elsewhere, they’re less likely to value the position they hold, and they don’t need to take voters’ concerns seriously. Second, if they could increase their pay by lobbying on behalf of a corporation, they are far less likely to be critical of said corporations while actually in office. 

This issue isn’t just limited to congresspeople, though. Presidents should be paid more than their current $400,000 salary and their $221,400 post-office pension. Though these numbers are already fairly high, they’re not much when compared to the amount of money past presidents can and do make in other ways. For example, from the time Bill Clinton left office to the time his wife, Hillary Clinton, launched her 2016 presidential campaign, the couple made over $153 million from paid speeches. 

When people assume elected office, their duty is to work for the people they represent as a whole, not to represent the specific interests of corporations, Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry or anything else. It isn’t controversial when I say that this isn’t always the case today. We need to change our politicians’ incentives to ensure they work for us all, not just the wealthy. A great way to do that is by 1) raising their pay and 2) barring them from making any money in other ways, whether that be stock trading, post-office corporate lobbying, paid speeches or anything else. 

I’ll admit one thing: my proposal — to drastically raise the pay of our politicians — would be horrible politics, though it would be great policy. I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon because of this. But we the people should want it to happen. Even tripling the pay of every congressperson would only cost approximately an additional $348,000 per member (it gets a little messy with the slightly higher pay of the majority/minority leaders, House Speaker, Senate President pro tempore and a few other titles, but you get the point). Raising the pay of the President by five times would only cost $1.6 million more per year. These figures amount to practically nothing in the bigger picture; our federal government spent $4.4 trillion (that’s $4,400,000,000,000) in fiscal year 2019.

A cliche line holds true here: you get what you pay for. If we keep underpaying our politicians and allowing them to collect money from elsewhere, we should expect our politicians to continue to underperform for the people as a whole and continue to do a good job for the wealthy. Good policy proposals like mine would change the incentives of our lawmakers, ensuring they work for us like they’re supposed to. 

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Courtney: Biden’s first year in review, and a creative look ahead to year two

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a column on what President Biden needed to do during his time in office, titled Biden needs to be FDR, not Clinton or Obama. To few people’s surprise, Biden has failed to live up to the FDR, New Deal-era standard for what a progressive president should be and do.

Biden’s first year in office certainly had some positives. He put the middle finger up to the military-industrial complex and ended the war in Afghanistan. He passed a major COVID relief bill that included $1,400 stimulus checks and a one-year expansion to the child tax credit. He did what former President Trump never could by passing a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Still, there are many negatives to discuss. “Build Back Better,” Biden’s proposal that includes money for social infrastructure, expanding the safety net and combating climate change, seems unlikely to pass due to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-AZ) opposition, meaning the end of the child tax credit expansion. Health care — either a single-payer system (what I want) or a public option (what Biden supposedly wants) — seems to have vanished from the public discourse in Washington.

To Biden’s credit, in a presser last week he clarified that he is not Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT). He’s right — he’s not — but maybe, to a certain extent, that is part of the problem. Sanders is a more popular Democrat than Biden is, despite 1) not technically being a Democrat and 2) being subject to much more critical media than Biden is.

To be fair, Congress’ issues shouldn’t be blamed on Biden. But like FDR, Biden could and should do more to prove to Americans that he’s doing everything he can to help us. That’s how a president becomes popular and forces their own party to do as they say.

With the roadblocks of Manchin and Sinema making progress through Congress unlikely, the Biden Administration needs to be creative in using its executive authority to 1) increase popularity ahead of the midterms, 2) leverage this popularity into getting Sinema and Manchin to pass some meaningful legislation, and 3) help people (duh!).

Biden could…

Cancel Student Loan Debt
Through the Higher Education Act of 1965, advocates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) argue the Secretary of Education has the authority to cancel all federal student loan debt. This power has already been exercised to some extent; federal student loan payments were first paused under the Trump administration, and this policy has continued under Biden’s administration as well. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have used the Higher Education Act to forgive certain borrowers’ student loan debt in certain circumstances, but the legality of widespread cancellation remains debatable.

Still, widespread cancellation — whatever the dollar amount might be — would be decent policy and great politics. Young voters are uninspired by Democrats today; a good way to change that would be to (at least try!) cancelling $20,000 of their student loan debt.

Legalize Marijuana
For regular readers of my column, my stance on this is no surprise. The federal legalization of marijuana is long overdue, and President Biden could take this issue into his own hands and effectively legalize it through executive order by pardoning all non-violent federal marijuana offenders. Next, the Biden Administration could change marijuana from its ridiculous status as a Schedule I drug to a more reasonable Schedule III drug. This would allow for more medical research, remove unnecessary federal restrictions and allow for the eventual full legalization of marijuana at the federal level.

Expand Medicare to All
Most have heard of my first two proposals, but not this one. In the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare), there is a provision that allows the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to expand Medicare to anyone subject to an “environmental exposure.” Though this provision was written with Libby, Mont. in mind — a small town exposed to asbestos whose residents now have Medicare for life — it could apply to any situation where the Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or HHS declares a public health emergency. We just so happen to be in a pandemic and are under a public health emergency. The Biden Administration could temporarily extend Medicare coverage to everyone who has been infected by COVID-19, or they could push to temporarily cover all Americans through Medicare.

Now, I’m not naïve, and I’m not a constitutional lawyer. I understand that the constitutionality of these three proposals (to varying degrees) might be questionable. But maybe that’s part of the political appeal. Ahead of the midterms this November, Democrats need to make one thing clear: are they on the side of the people, or are they on the side of corporations, the prison-industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industry? Are they doing everything in their power — even some things that might reach out of their power — to help the little guy out?

Biden’s first year in office has been… fine. There have been positives, but there have been negatives as well. Biden and the Democrats have dismal poll numbers and a bad outlook in the 2022 midterms. People don’t go back for a “fine” burger, a “fine” movie or a “fine” glass of wine, and they won’t vote en masse in November for a “fine” President Biden’s Democratic Party. Ahead of the midterms, Biden and the Democrats need to be creative in their use of power to generate a popular, FDR-like movement for regular people. If they don’t, get ready for a shellacking in November.

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Courtney: Why are our memories so bad?

American politics is broken. That might be the understatement of the year. The Senate, especially, has a tough time getting much of anything done with its filibuster rule unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. Over in the House, well, Marjorie Taylor Greene is a member, if that says anything. In the Supreme Court, politics seems to slowly be taking over, as decisions are increasingly decided along the lines of what party’s president appointed the justice to the Court (every once in a while, Kavanaugh and Roberts surprise me, to their credit).

I touched on all three branches of the American government — executive, legislative, and judicial — in my opening paragraph. That was intentional. When people think of American politics in general, they are usually quick to (correctly) say that American politics is broken. According to Gallup polling, just 23% of Americans approve of Congress , 40% approve of President Biden, and 40% approve of the Supreme Court.

So, if Americans as a whole are usually pretty good at assessing the ineptitude of all three branches of government in the present, why are our memories so bad when looking at politicians in the past? How many years out of office does it take before we choose to put on the nostalgia goggles?

I’ll give some examples:

First, on Jan. 6, Congressional Democrats praised Dick Cheney. I understand the goal — uniting people from different political ideologies around the similar goal to sustain our democracy — but are there no better options of Republicans aiming for a better democracy than Dick Cheney, a part of an administration that 1) lied us into two decades of war in the Middle East and 2) massively expanded illegal surveillance of Americans under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts post-9/11?

I can say many of the same things about George W. Bush. Though it can be cute and fun to talk about his friendship with Michelle Obama, let us not forget that he was one of the worst presidents we have seen, lied us into a seemingly endless war, expanded the surveillance state and allowed for the conditions that led to the Great Recession. Saying his actions as president are inexcusable would be an understatement.

New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a column on a potential Biden/Liz Cheney presidential ticket in 2024. To his credit, he recognizes that this is extremely unlikely, but the argument is still horrible; if the Democrats want a vice presidential candidate across the aisle that can at least be a small-d democrat, shouldn’t they at least support expanding voting rights through the Freedom to Vote Act? Or is the only thing that matters anymore being anti-Trump?

We wear the nostalgia goggles with recent Democrats, too. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are the most and seventh-most popular Democrats today, respectively, per YouGov polling. For what? Clinton is responsible for the 1994 crime bill and ending “welfare as we know it,” something that Clinton claimed as a positive. Obama came into office in 2009 with massive majorities in both houses of Congress, even a filibuster-proof Senate for a short period of time, and 1) wasn’t able to pass a public health insurance option, and 2) massively underspent at the beginning of his presidency, leading to a prolonged recession. And I haven’t mentioned Obama’s drone strikes or being soft on Wall Street. The policies of these two Democrats led to wealth continuing to trickle to the top and needless death in the Middle East.

Some will say that this column is too harsh. “We need to accept our political differences,” they might say. I have a few different responses to that. First, the criticisms I raised are not political differences, but realities of what happened under these politicians’ watch. Second, as politicians, criticism from voters is exactly what they signed up for. As both a voter and (at least temporarily) a member of the media, it is our job to criticize their shortcomings. If you choose politics as your career — which George W. Bush, the Cheneys, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton all did — there is no longer any separation between your personal life and your political life.

As with many questions I pose, I’m not certain of the answer to my headline. But I do know this: for positive change to occur in the future, we must first reckon with the true history of our politicians’ pasts.

Democracies only last if voters hold elected officials accountable. If not, the natural progression is oligarchy — whether officially recognized as such or not. To ensure powerful people in America and elsewhere are held accountable, we first need to ensure we have an honest, accurate account of them. I’m far from innocent in this respect either, but I try my best. If this column does anything, hopefully it encourages everyone — voters, politicians, and the media — to take off the nostalgia goggles and truly see our elected officials in a more accurate way.

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