When will politicians stop using our tax dollars to orchestrate their political marketing?
In my home state, Texas, Republican Party leaders decided to vote Saturday on whether they should include a measure on the March primary ballot asking Texas voters if they would like to see the state secede from the US. State Republican leaders voted not to put such a measure on the ballot, after discussing it for 30 minutes – a time limit decided by another meeting vote, according to the Texas Tribune. All this despite the fact that the US supreme court declared secession illegal in 1869.
The State Republican Executive Committee member who introduced the secession proposal admitted the whole thing was a “harmless” way to “get out the vote” among some Texas Republicans who have been sitting out recent elections. In other words, it was a publicity stunt. “The goal of these is to take a thermometer of how Texans feels about an issue, and what better issue for Texans to do that with?” she asked.
Oh, I don’t know. How about that Texas’s rate of food insecurity is above the national average? Or that the Annie E Casey Foundation rated Texas one of the worst states in America for child wellbeing? Or that Texas’s rate of uninsured citizens is above the national average? Or that the Texas Department of Public Safety has a nasty little habit of stopping more Hispanic drivers than any other group and then reporting them as white so as to skew racial profiling checks?
This frivolous political posturing isn’t just a Texas issue. More than half of the governors in the US took the time after the Paris attacks to say that they’d refuse to accept Syrian refugees in their states – even though it’s been established a million times that immigration policy is the jurisdiction of the federal government.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal issued an executive order instructing all “departments, budget units, agencies, offices, entities, and officers of the executive branch of the State of Louisiana” to “utilize all lawful means to prevent the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the State of Louisiana while this Order is in effect”. New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan became the first Democratic governor to say we should halt all relocation of Syrian refugees into the country.
Texas took it a step farther. State attorney general Ken Paxton filed a federal lawsuit last week against the US government and private contractor International Rescue Committee for planning to resettle Syrian refugees in the state. The lawsuit came two weeks after Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered private companies contracted by the federal government in Texas to stop accepting Syrian refugees due to security concerns. (By Friday, Paxton had backed down from the lawsuit, presumably because it had no legal basis whatsoever.)
I understand being fearful in turbulent times and wanting reassurances that every measure of security is being taken to certify that refugees are who they say they are, but taking time for symbolic lawmaking is a waste of citizen time and tax dollars. If our politicians really want to secure their own political future in this country, I can think of no better way to do it than to accomplish the job of taking care of their constituents.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is a wonderful example of this. In 2010, he took over a state with a $6.2bn deficit as well as a debt of $2bn to Minnesota schools. Today, through taxing the rich, Minnesota has a $1.9bn surplus. Dayton wants to use the surplus to, among other things, provide free, high-speed broadband internet to all Minnesotans. And, PS, he also didn’t jump on the anti-Syrian refugee bandwagon either. With nearly $2bn in the bank, I have a feeling his constituents aren’t going to hold it against him come the next election.
