Losing sucks. It’s just a fact of life.
When some people lose, they take a hard look at themselves and figure out what they should do better next go-round. Or they accept that they did the best they could and understand that it’s possible to not come out on top, even if you didn’t do anything wrong.
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But when Republicans lose, they increasingly ignore the actual reasons for their loss and instead try to change the rules in their favor.
Because, hey, why try to evolve and improve yourselves or your party when you can just rig the outcome?
Brand New Set Of Rules: So, as an erudite reader of this newsletter, you probably realize that many states (26, actually) allow citizens to place proposed laws on the ballot.
- Once the electorate has spoken on a new law by voting it up or down, legislators are obligated to accept the will of the people.
… or are they?
- Republicans across the country have been working super hard this winter to undo last November’s ballot measure outcomes.
- They’re using every tool and trick at their disposal to undermine new laws approved by [[checks notes]] the voters they ostensibly answer to (gerrymandering notwithstanding).
Specifically, in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, and Utah, GOP-majority legislatures have been busting their butts to undo voter-initiated, voter-approved laws.
- In Florida, voters last November favored restoring voting rights to 1.4 million citizens who’d previously been convicted of felonies by a nearly two-to-one margin.
- But the Republican legislature—as it typical for the party generally— wasn’t super jazzed about expanding the electorate.
- So first they tried to stall the Jan. 8 implementation of the measure, claiming they needed to pass new laws to “clarify” or implement it.
- This was simply false. Amendment 4 contained all the required specifications about which Floridians who’d been convicted of felonies were or were not eligible to have their rights restored.
- Also, it was self-executing.
- Thwarted, Republicans switched tactics.
- They couldn’t stop the implementation of Amendment 4, so they decided try to pre-emptively prevent the next ballot measure they didn’t like by making it harder to get legislative proposals on the ballot in the first place.
- Currently, an amendment must be approved by at least 60 percent of voters to pass.
- GOP lawmakers want to raise that threshold to two-thirds, or 66.7 percent of the vote.
Fun fact! The threshold for passage was a normal 50 percent until lawmakers asked voters to approve and amendment raising that threshold to 60 percent back in 2006. That ballot measure passed by … less than 60 percent of the vote (57.8 percent, specifically).
- In Michigan, activists successfully collected over 500,000 signatures last year to place paid sick leave and a $12 minimum wage on the ballot in November 2018.
- If the ballot measures had passed, they would have become law without the (then-Republican) governor’s signature.
- And the legislature could only make changes to the new laws with a three-fourths supermajority vote in both chambers—something not even the GOP’s extreme legislative gerrymander could deliver.
- So Republicans pulled a legislative maneuver that would allow them to gut the measures at their leisure.
- Specifically, they cynically approved both the paid sick leave proposal and the minimum wage hike to gain the ability to make changes to them with a simple majority vote at their leisure. That had the effect of taking both of these measures off the ballot.
- And by “at their leisure” I mean “during the post-election lame duck session so voters couldn’t punish them for their procedural skullduggery.”
So how, specifically, did GOP lawmakers gut these measures?
Glad you asked!
- GOP lawmakers delayed implementation of the $12/hour minimum wage hike to 2030.
- Yes, you read that right. 2030. 20freaking30.
- btw, that’s also the year when a Japanese company says it’ll launch an underwater city of 5,000 people living in a giant spiral. Just to give you a frame of time reference.
- Lawmakers also excluded tipped workers from the increase.
- Republicans further exempted any company with fewer than 50 employees from having to provide paid sick leave for its workers.
- By the by, that’s most companies in Michigan.
- Lawmakers also required employees to work at the same place of employment for at least a year before receiving that benefit.
- But Michigan Republicans didn’t stop there. Oh no no no.
- After all, they were enjoying the final days of a Republican governor who might actually sign their garbage bills, since Democrat Gretchen Whitmer had just given the boot to Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
- And Republicans wanted to make signature-gathering more difficult so they could keep pesky things like redistricting reform and voting rights expansions off the ballot henceforth (both of which were on the ballot last November and passed).
- So they gerrymandered the ballot measure petition signature-gathering process.
- Specifically, the GOP passed a law requiring that no more than 15 percent of the signatures come from any one of Michigan’s 14 congressional districts.
- This establishment of completely arbitrary caps is based on Michigan's extremely GOP-skewing congressional map.
- Also, this garbage requirement makes signature-gathering harder by preventing canvassers from racking up totals in accessible and densely populated urban areas.
- In Missouri, voters overwhelmingly supported legalizing medical marijuana, raising the minimum wage to $12/hour, and implementing redistricting reform last November.
- In Utah, GOP lawmakers just went straight for the ballot measure vote outcomes they didn’t like.
School’s Rules: By now most folks are generally familiar with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and their long history of and great skill at disseminating anti-worker, pro-gun, pro-voter suppression, and generally shitty conservative legislation for Republicans to introduce and pass in statehouses across the country.
- But ALEC isn’t the only game in town in terms of pushing model bills across multiple states in support of conservative agenda items.
- Enter the Discovery Institute and the Heartland Institute, two organizations working to change laws in multiple states to encourage climate change misinformation in the classroom.
- State legislative assaults on established climate science aren’t new, but according to the National Center for Science Education, the amount of legislation introduced across the country designed to undermine the integrity of this kind of education in the classroom is at a record high already this year.
- Several of these bills, including proposals in Oklahoma, North Dakota, and South Dakota, echo the Discovery Institute’s model legislation.
- Other bills that have surfaced in Arizona, Maine, and Virginia call for teachers to avoid “political or ideological indoctrination” of students—as though climate change weren’t a scientific issue but rather political point of view.
Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that teaching evolution was against the law.
The Rules Of The Road: Remember when Republicans still pretended to be the party of “small government”?
- A GOP lawmaker in North Carolina is so over it.
Break Every Rule: This week on the Bummer But Good Riddance beat, Nevada Democratic Senator Kelvin Atkinson resigned after it became public that he’d be pleading guilty to a federal charge of misappropriating his campaign funds for personal use.
- Atkinson had been regarded as a star in the party.
- He’d served in the legislature since his first election to the state Assembly in 2002, and he was the Senate’s first openly gay and third black majority leader.
- Nevada fills vacant legislative seats by appointment, and replacements must be of the same party as the departing lawmaker, so this heavily blue seat will continue to be represented by a Democrat, preserving the party’s 13-8 advantage in the Senate.
Let Love Rule: Good news, everybody! Sex outside of marriage will soon be legal in Utah!
Welp, that’s all for this week. Thanks for hanging in. You should reward yourself for your perseverance by knocking off early, calling it a week, maybe booking a sexy trip to Utah. Just print this email out and show it to your boss, I’m sure she won’t mind. But maybe don’t mention the bit about the Utah trip.