What Ted Cruz's Idiocy Tells Us About American Government
What Ted Cruz's Idiocy Tells Us About American Government
It'd be nice if someone took governing seriously
Welcome to a Thursday evening premium edition of Progressives Everywhere!
Here’s some good news: It’s been a bad 48 hours for egomaniac lawmakers who drive me nuts.
And now some bad news: It’s been far worse for millions in Texas who are without power, warmth, food, or clean water.
Read on for those stories and a whole lot more — a lot is happening right now!
Important News You Need to Know
Mess in Texas
Texas Senator Ted Cruz became a special kind of climate refugee last night when he pushed through the frigid tundra of Houston and boarded a flight for Cancun. He was booked to stay at one of his favorite resorts but was forced to quickly turn around and fly back to Texas, a concession to the shocking outrage over his callous decision to abandon his state as its wasted infrastructure sat frozen and millions of people suffered. Damn cancel culture.
This is no mere screw-up by a remarkably tone-deaf politician (though it’s that, too). A US Senator called for the end of Trump’s impeachment trial by citing the imposing amount of work ahead of the chamber, then skipped out on his responsibilities to a home state devastated by climate change and shoddy deregulated infrastructure to fly over Trump’s border wall for a vacation in Mexico. It tells you everything you need to know about the Republican Party — and, frankly, the federal government altogether.
Undoubtedly, Republicans are craven in a way that Democrats could never dream of being. But Democrats control Congress and green-lit this week’s recess, despite the aforementioned imposing mountain of work ahead of them. The to-do list isn’t even long-term work, either — they haven’t accomplished much of anything to address the immediate crises crushing the rest of us.
It’s been nearly a month since President Joe Biden’s inauguration and Congress still has not even voted on the stimulus checks that Biden promised would go out immediately if Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock were elected to the Senate. An astounding 73% of Americans support the president’s relief plan, but it’s only likely to pass in some compromised version and not until several weeks from now, all because they don’t have the urgency or political strength to force two obnoxious senators to agree to waive the filibuster to deliver on this promise.
The disaster in Texas is a sneak preview of the future we face if there’s not monumental progress on pollution, green energy, infrastructure, and regulatory action. I don’t expect them to fix all of those problems, but without ending the filibuster, Democrats aren’t going to make a dent in any of those things — Republicans will never cooperate. The futures of our country and planet are on the line. Lobbyist pressure, a weird reverence for institutionalism, and a disconnection from the problems we all face are pushing us to the edge.
Immigration is another pressing issue that they seem to be bailing on, including tonight’s near-total surrender to ICE, the agency most villainized by Democrats since the beginning of the Trump administration. Undoubtedly, that decision has its roots in many centrists’ reluctance to touch most of Trump’s inhumane immigration policies.
State governments are similarly unserious about actually governing right now. Again, forget the Republican-run states, which have been gerrymandered into kleptocratic theocracies run by local car dealers bankrolled by regional energy companies and insurance firms. While far better than GOP states, the big Democratic states that could be leading the way continue to fall short of seriously addressing the issues that plague their citizens.
New York is the most economically stratified state in the country, but its governor refuses — out of spite, ego, and fealty to campaign donors — to raise taxes on the wealthy, bring back fees on a financial industry that has so sucked the lifeblood out of New York City, or embrace criminal justice reform. As I’ve covered exhaustively, New Jersey still can’t figure out a way to implement legal weed after voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure on legalization (yup, a deal fell through again). California has had a housing crisis for over a decade and homelessness was at record highs even before the pandemic struck.
None of this is easy. Obviously. But the longer lawmakers put off fixing these problems (with popular solutions!), the worse the ultimate consequences will prove. Especially if Republicans wind up taking back the government.
OK, one more thing, about this specific screw-up by a remarkably tone-deaf politician:
Ted Cruz somehow made it even worse by blaming his children. He threw his wife and father under the bus in 2016, so I guess it was only a matter of time. But still. Wow. Not only that, he’s lying — he had reservations at the Ritz-Carlton through Sunday. He intended on staying there. And don’t let the “good dad” thing fool you either — he could have very easily sent his daughters and wife to the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun and stayed behind himself to help out with the disaster in Texas.
Not that would have occurred to him or any of the conservatives that are defending him, because they simply don’t understand that government is at its most basic all about service.
No, Ted Cruz couldn’t have passed legislation that would magically return power to the half a million homes currently without it, but he was damn well capable of using his office to lead relief efforts, provide food and warmth, and help out Texans with whatever else they needed. Perhaps he could have convinced local businesses to offer assistance or driven donations to food banks. Phone-banked to check on people like Beto O’Rourke has done the past few days. Directed helicopters with relief supplies. There is really no limit to the things he could — and should still — do on behalf of the people he tricked into voting for him. They are truly suffering right now.
The infuriating reality is that when you suppress the vote and gin up lies to create absolute loyalty, you don’t fear losing your job, no matter how little effort you put into it. They just don’t care about people.
If you want to help vulnerable Texans more than Ted Cruz ever has, you can donate to a number of different mutal aid organizations and non-profits, including the Houston Food Bank.
Bipartisan Bad Government
New York: On the other hand, there is such a thing as having too much power during an emergency, especially when you’re a vindictive egomaniac.
On Sunday, I published an interview with New York Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim, a progressive who has been at the forefront of pushing back against some of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s more egregious policies throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, Cuomo tore into Kim in a ferocious and somewhat unprecedented way.
To quickly recap, Kim has from the start been critical of Cuomo’s choices during the pandemic, including the executive order mandating that nursing homes take back Covid patients and the subsequent decision to give nursing homes legal immunity for the massive number of casualties suffered within their walls. Kim suggested as early as last April that the state-reported nursing home death numbers were off, and in late January, NY Attorney General Letitia James vindicated him when she announced that the state had undercounted the death toll by nearly 50%. In reality, about 15,000 New York nursing home residents have died of Covid.
As the head of the Assembly’s aging committee, Kim was on the call last Wednesday during which a top Cuomo official seemed to admit that they hid the real number from the Assembly out of fear of a federal investigation. And while it wasn’t public knowledge at the time, Cuomo followed up that conversation by personally threatening Assemblyman Kim’s career. That makes what he said to me all the more logical — and honestly, I’m impressed that he didn’t go further:
Mayor de Blasio made some mistakes. He wasn’t decisive at first and I think he was about 10 days late in deciding to shut down. But the difference is that I think the governor and people like Donald Trump, they're extremely fixed-minded and vindictive. And it's a dangerous combination during an emergency because it's not about you, dude. This is about my constituents, our people who are dying, but you're worried about your fragile ego and your brand.
After the cover-up became public, a consensus began to grow among Democrats in the legislature that they should strip Cuomo of his special emergency powers, which had been granted to him last year as New York was overtaken by the pandemic. Cuomo’s rant did not help his cause, to say the least. Progressive lawmakers who were already skeptical of the governor have now almost completely turned against him.
There’s a lot of drama happening here in New York. For an even more in-depth look at where things stand, check out this story from City & State.
Now Here’s Some Positive News
I hit you with two gigantic messes to start things off, and while there are a few other worrisome items to address, I thought it’d be good to switch it up a bit and bring out some headlines that’ll make you smile.
Utah: OK, this one is perhaps more bittersweet than anything else. A bunch of cruel bigots in the Utah legislature are trying to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports. Thankfully, Gov. Spencer Cox isn’t willing to sign the bill… at least not in its current form, anyway.
“These kids are ... they’re just trying to stay alive,” Cox said. “There’s a reason none of them are playing sports ... I just think there’s a better way. And I hope that there will be enough grace in our state to find a better solution.”
He did say that those seeking to enact a ban had some legitimacy, which isn’t cool, but it’s a relief to see a Republican take some kind of a moral stand. Similar transgender athletics bans are working their way through the legislature in a dozen states, including Minnesota, Montana, Tennesse, and South Carolina.
Yeah, maybe that one wasn’t as happy as I expected…
Virginia: Alright, this one is definitely good news. The Democratic legislature in Virginia has agreed on a bill that would provide people who have been convicted of certain crimes to have their records sealed in the years following their arrests.
The legislation would allow the automatic sealing of nine misdemeanor convictions after seven years, provided the person has not been convicted of any other crimes. The offenses include underage possession of alcohol, use of a fake ID, petit larceny, trespassing, disorderly conduct, possession of marijuana and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.
The bill would allow more serious charges — misdemeanors through Class 5 felonies — to be sealed through a petition-based process that would require a judge to review and sign off on the request. As with the automatic process, the legislation requires the person not have been convicted of any other crimes for seven years in the case of a misdemeanor and 10 years in the case of a felony.
This is a big win because having a criminal record can seriously damage a person’s ability to live a full life after the incident and subsequent punishment have passed. Given the gross racial disparities in arrest rates, this has an especially damaging impact on people of color, so sealing records is an important step in evening out the playing field.
Voting Rights
Georgia: When we last spoke, Georgia Republicans had proposed a whole host of voter suppression laws. After two days of cloak-and-dagger state Senate subcommittee hearings that began at 7 am and were not live-streamed for the public, some of the worst of those policy proposals are on the path to becoming law.
Some of them are familiar by now, including the photo ID requirement on absentee ballots and the total elimination of no-excuse mail voting for anyone under the age of 75. But there are some new doozies, including the end of Sunday early voting, an unabashedly racist shot at the many Black voters who cast ballots during the community Souls to the Polls events ahead of Election Day.
Sara Tindall Ghazal, the former state Democratic Party voter protection director (and 2020 Progressives Everywhere endorsee as a legislative candidate), didn’t mince words about what the GOP is pulling:
I’ll be talking with her soon, so look for that conversation in an upcoming issue of this newsletter.
Kentucky: As I mentioned Tuesday, a Republican lawmaker in Lexington has proposed a bill that would automatically restore the voting rights of most formerly incarcerated citizens. A new poll shows that a whopping two-thirds of the state’s voters are in favor of the proposal, so you’d think it’d be a slam dunk, right?
Well, not in Kentucky, where Republican primary voters still drive most policy decisions. Hence it looking increasingly likely that the bill won’t go anywhere.
Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, who sponsored the bill, said timing seems to be the biggest thing standing in the way of the bill. It comes after nationwide protests over racial bias in law enforcement. Many in the heavily Republican legislature opposed the protests and are reluctant to take much action on criminal justice measures.
“There are a number of people I hear that are concerned about running anything on criminal justice given the environment over the last year,” Nemes said.
Translation: They’re catering to racists who are pissed off about Black Lives Matter.
Oregon: In a sign of the inherent absurdity of federalism, Oregon is moving toward becoming the third state to grant voting rights to people in prison (DC also grants those rights but isn’t a state… yet). It may not pass this year, but Oregon is moving toward other expansions of the franchise such as granting primary voting rights to 17-year-olds (should they be 18 by the time of the general election) and counting absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day so long as they’re postmarked by that day.
Quibis
Medicaid expansion has helped dramatically lower the uninsured rate among young people aged 18-25.
Not really sure how you reform this: 35 Capitol police are under investigation for allegedly being involved in the Capitol insurrection, six of whom have already been suspended.
Cuomo isn’t all that interested in giving up power over the tax proceeds derived from legal marijuana, which is slowing things down in New York yet again. I guess that’s better than New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s demand that kids get arrested for possession even after the drug is legalized.
Outside of the New York Post and Bill de Blasio, I’ve never seen a newspaper hate a sitting officeholder like the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel hates Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. Wowzers.
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