“What do we do now?” – Bill McKay (played by Robert Redford) after winning an election to the U.S. Senate in the movie “The Candidate.”
What are you going to do?
That’s a simple question. Maybe the only question we should have when we consider who we elect to public office.
What are you going to do?
Still, it’s a query that too often gets lost. Somewhere out in all the speeches, and sound bites, and commercials. Hidden among the gaslighting, and the lies, and the cliches, and the talking points.
What are you going to do? What are you going to do for us? What are you going to do for our state? What are you going to do for our country?
In Michigan, Democrats have control of the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature for the first time in nearly 40 years. What have they done? Well, for starters, this:
*Repealed the state’s right-to-work law. This law allowed workers to opt out of union membership and dues payments.
The Washington Post reported that laws like this have been a big contributor to the decline of union membership in this country – down to an historic low of 10.1 percent in 2022. After Republicans passed Michigan’s right-to-work law in 2012, the state lost about 40,000 union members (2.6 percent), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Republicans love right-to-work laws because they hate unions. They hate unions because they provide workers with the leverage to negotiate better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Not surprisingly, research has shown that union members tend to earn higher wages than their nonunion counterparts in similar roles.
Anything that hurts workers and helps the rich and corporations is okay with the GOP.
*Approved a sweeping tax proposal. The Associated Press reported that this will provide relief to retirees by phasing out taxes on public and private pensions, help lower-income families by increasing the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit from 6 percent to 30 percent, and earmark $1.5 billion in corporate income tax revenues over the next three years for a fund used to attract large corporate business projects to the state through tax incentives.
*Expanded civil rights protections to include the LGBTQ community. Michigan’s courts had previously ruled that the state’s civil right laws should include LGBTQ individuals. This made it official by expanding the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expressions, the Detroit Free Press reported.
These protections include things like housing, employment, education, and public accommodations.
If the courts have already ruled on this, why was legislative action needed? Supporters of the bill said it will prevent future courts from reaching different conclusions. You can understand that reasoning when you look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal on 50 years of settled law by overturning Roe v. Wade.
Republicans have been waging war on the LGBTQ community as part of their cultural war to win over white voters who don’t benefit from their policies. This isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
*Revoked a state abortion ban. The ban was approved in 1931. It made abortion a felony – punishable by up to four years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000 – to administer drugs that induced a miscarriage unless a mother’s life is in danger.
After the Roe v. Wade decision, there was a question over whether the law went back into effect, but a state judge declared it unconstitutional in September. It also included a provision that made it a misdemeanor to advertise, publish, or sell “any pills, power, drugs or combination of drugs” that can cause an abortion.
This is really just following the will of Michigan voters, who approved a constitutional amendment that would add protections for reproductive rights last year.
*Moved forward on a package of gun-control bills. These bills include red-flag laws, requirements for safe storage, and universal background checks.
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That’s a lot of stuff. As with the federal government during the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, with Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate, a number of legislative achievements were accomplished.
This stands in stark contrast to the GOP’s approach to governing – which is to basically to not govern at all – that we’ve seen in Washington.
So, what’s the Michigan Republican Party been doing since it lost control of the state? Has it been taking a reflective look at itself to see what changes it needs to make to again retain the reins of power?
For one, it elected Kristina Karamo as state party chairman. Karamo has pushed the big lie of election fraud concerning the 2020 presidential race, and hasn’t gotten around to conceding her 14-point loss in her bid for Michigan secretary of state last year.
But it gets worse. Responding to state Democrats’ efforts at gun-control legislation, the state GOP party compared their actions to the Holocaust, going as far as posting a meme with a 1945 photograph of a collection of wedding rings that the Nazis took from their Jewish victims with the caption: “Before they collected all these wedding rings … They collected all the guns.”
I guess if equating the execution of six million Jews to having to undergo a background check to buy a gun, trying to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous unstable people, or requiring parents to keep their weapons safely away from their children in a country where mass shootings have become a staple of everyday life is your thing, then the Michigan Republican Party is the place you want to be.
For those Michiganders who see this as one more step in the GOP’s appalling dissent into a party of racist, anti-Semitic, lying hatemongers, then it looks like putting the Democrats in charge was a pretty good idea.
What are you going to do?
When it comes to Democrats and Republicans in the politics of our day and age, we already know.
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Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writing on my blog: Musings of a Nobody.