Down through the years, the embarrassments of our state legislators in Tennessee have provided much fodder for late-night talk show comedians. Who can forget the bill that allowed the gathering and eating of road kill? Jay Leno and David Letterman got a lot of mileage out of jokes about carry-out meals and driving for dinner.
In 2009, we were not so funny as insane with guns in bars, and we got negative national attention and were the butt of jokes.
Ah, the good ol' days!
Just when you think our legislators cannot top themselves, they do. But, the current crop are not your father's Republicans. These are an extreme element of the Radical Right that are rampaging in more than a dozen state houses, from Wisconsin, to Tennessee, to Nevada, to New Jersey, and so on.
While Wisconsin's union-busting governor is getting more media, I am afraid over the long haul Tennessee may win the national prize for stupidity, cruelty to our own species, lying and self-dealing as our extremists have spawned bills across a wide range of human endeavors.
Although we have heard the most about Tennessee Republicans attacking teachers and labor, there are other sinister bills lurking under the radar, the most egregious of which tell you all you need to know about the Republican agenda: Three bills in the house and two in the senate make it legal for corporations to give money to political candidates, and one increases the contribution limit by 20%, to boot.
The corporate takeover of our electoral process and our politicians who offer themselves up for sale is the most emergent threat to our democracy. The Founders would not recognize any of this as the America they had in mind, which was power vested in the people to self-govern.
While we know that there are bills to strip teachers of the right to collectively bargain, to make it easier to fire teachers and to screw teachers out of their pensions, another anti-teacher bill presents the most wicked twist of all: Tucked away under "licenses," Senate Bill 551/House Bill 740 would suspend the license of any teacher who is behind on his or her student loan payment. That reminds me of debtor's prison. If your work is taken away, how is it that you can better pay your debt?
While the Republicans are voting for themselves to take corporate money to keep them in office, Senate Bill 139/House Bill 160 make it a class C misdemeanor for a labor union to contribute to a political campaign. (Unions and teachers are more often Democrats, and for good reason, so this is a prize partisan target for the Radical Right.)
Taking a break from bald partisanship long enough to reach the outskirts of loony town, legislators introduced: 1---a bill that would require the attorney general to post in newspapers the names of Muslim sharia adherents and would punish sharia terrorism supporters with 15 years in jail, and 2---a bill that expands the definition of illegal drug paraphernalia to include cigars, cigarettes, tiparillos and new and unused pipes, spoons and so forth that merely have the potential for drug contact. I am calling it the "Don't Bogart that Shiny, New Bong, My Friend" bill. With a world-record 2.5 million Americans incarcerated, I suppose Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America needs some more non-violent prisoners to house and bill to the taxpayers.
The "Equal Opportunity Scholarship Act" is identical to bills just introduced in many states. This is the bill that calls for vouchers and is the first step in the Republicans' long-range business plan to obliterate public education in America.
Certain so-called tort reform and malpractice bills limit what an injured person or consumer can receive in damages, after being an accident victim or being the victim of an unsafe drug or product. Instead of their usual cries of "let the market work" or "no government interference," the R's want to dictate to judges and juries how to do their business.
Drug, toy, gun and other manufacturers will no longer have an incentive to test products to make sure they are safe. The public will be thrown overboard and into the abyss of "buyer beware," and these companies will skip paying for clinical trials and product testing as the consumers themselves will be the guinea pigs. In corporate logic, risk is capped at the $250,000 limit on non-economic damages, including in case of death, which is a much better bargain than what it costs to control the safety and quality of their products in the first place.
Most Americans want clean air and water, want safe drugs and products, want workers' rights protected, want access to health care, support public education and want politicians to eschew special interest money. It is an extreme minority of lunatic fringe that are pushing this Draconian agenda, rather than better using the taxpayers' money to do something constructive for their fellow Homo Sapiens.
Where were these politicians during the 2010 campaign? I do not recall hearing any of this on any Republican's platform, although it became a nationwide, full-court press as soon as they got in office. Was that not dishonest and a big, fat lie to have a radical agenda cooked up but to not campaign on it?
In their world view, no tax money should be used for the common good. That rules out social security, public education, the Environmental Protection Agency, Medicare, Medicaid, public parks, etc. ---everything except for the defense department, which pays contractors billions to make war toys they know will never work and which maintains at least 823 publicly acknowledged U.S. military bases in foreign countries to guard the oil.
Come to think of it, I did not have to reach so far back when I said the Founders would not recognize this America. Neither would Ronald Reagan, who gave amnesty to illegal immigrants and who referred to unions in an Oct. 19, 1982, speech as "one of the most elemental human rights---the right to belong to a free trade association." Neither would Richard Nixon, who proposed a health care program very similar to the Affordable Care Act of 2010.
Neither would the political party whose platform in 1956 would be called the work of "commie pinkos" by these neo-Right Radicals. This platform included care for the environment, expansion of social security, broadening unemployment insurance, vigilance to uphold anti-trust laws and "better health care protection for all our people."
This platform said labor and management should be allowed to resolve their issues "at the bargaining table without the intervention of the Government."
"America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper," stated the Republican platform when Dwight Eisenhower was re-elected president in 1956.
How far the Republicans have fallen! These who are now hijacking the Tennessee state house want to take us back to the Thirties……the 1330s.
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