“This glorification of States Rights Doctrine—the right of secession, and the honoring of men who represented that cause, fosters in the Republic, the spirit of Rebellion and will ultimately result in the handing down to generations unborn a legacy of t Continue reading NO TAXES FOR CONFEDERATE MYTHS
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Legislators should learn from Ed
Would you encourage family members to study to become teachers or other government employees? Unless we can answer “yes”, government is failing as an employer.
Can you hear the voices of elected officials berating and blaming their employees for government performance problems, laziness, and being “thugs”? Employees are tired of it. They want respect and fair treatment. Continue reading Legislators should learn from Ed
LEST WE FORGET
“Lest we forget” – That inscription is carved into the stone foundation upon which a bronze Confederate soldier stands, fully armed, at the entrance to the public building where my County Commissioners meet. A century and a half after the Civil War, it’s time to free this young man, probably a draftee forced to fight for the long defunct Confederate States of America. And it’s time
to move ahead in creating the future of the United States of America. “Lest we forget”, the outcome of the Civil war was preservation of the Union, our nation, and it’s flag to which we pledge allegiance. The failed purposes of the Confederacy included breaking that Union – treason.
Some argue that we can’t (or shouldn’t) change history. Certainly they are correct that facts and events of history are what they are. We fought a long and bloody civil war. Its events are well documented. The statue was placed to honor the memory of Randolph County veterans who served the Confederacy. Those are facts of history that we couldn’t change even if we wanted to.
There’s more to our history than a list of events and dates. The war arose from a conflicting sense of right and wrong – values – regarding slavery, economics and national unity. Today our decisions about whom and what our government will officially honor are based on the values of today’s Americans. Change is part of our history, as it is for every nation and civilization.
When Rome became a Christian empire, it replaced the statues of Greco-Roman Gods with statues of saints and old-testament figures. They didn’t change the facts of their history or the mythology of Roman Gods. They did change who was honored in public buildings.
When Germany lost World War II, the Allies took down many Nazi era statues and symbols. The Germans removed the rest from places of honor but they relocated some and re-interpreted their history. German schoolchildren are required to visit museums and learn the horrors of Nazi rule – lest they forget.
The slogan “Lest we forget” comes from a Rudyard Kipling poem about the military conquests of the British Empire. Its original meaning in the poem is similar to the maxim “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” We should keep that meaning in mind today.
Here in North Carolina, the majority of citizens voted against secession. In Randolph County, the reported vote was 2579 against secession and only 45 in favor! They did not want to dissolve the Union or join the Confederacy. But in order to preserve slavery, the basis of their wealth, legislators seceded from the union and joined the Confederacy – overruling the will of voters.
Then the Confederacy created a military draft. North Carolina provided more soldiers than any other Confederate state. North Carolina’s Governor, Zebulon Vance called the conflict “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight”. There were so many draft resisters and deserters in Randolph County that the Confederacy imposed martial law. If our statue represents a Randolph County soldier, there’s a good chance that he was a draftee, not a volunteer.
Surely there were many Tarheel soldiers who fought courageously for the Confederacy, as German soldiers did for the Third Reich. Today’s values judge that their sacrifices were on the wrong side of history – in support of slavery and in absolute opposition to the proposition that “…all men are created equal.” Confederate statues and battle flags are part of our history but they don’t belong in places of honor financed and maintained by the governments of free people.
Blood has again been shed over white supremacy, and it should come as no surprise to see Confederate battle flags waved by people shouting Nazi slogans such as “blood and soil”. White supremacy ideology was suppressed but now its advocates parade on our streets carrying clubs reminiscent of the axe handles distributed by racist governor Lester Maddox of Georgia. Our President’s election campaign was eerily similar to George Wallace’s nationalist/racist campaigns in 1964 and 1968. Both railed against polite (politically correct) conversation and both helped unleash pent-up racist rage.
We may never be totally rid of supremacists, but our government should not honor their ideas with statues, license plates and flags. Lest we forget, issuing license plates with Confederate battle flags and honoring Confederate heroes on public property is honoring both white supremacy and treason against the United States.
Congressional Legislative Malpractice
The 13 Senators who drafted a bill to replace Obamacare are all Republican, male, white, over age 40, and prosperous. California, Florida and New York, which together account for one-fourth of our population, were not in the room but there were two Senators from number fifty Wyoming.
Discussing diverse opinions is one way to identify and avoid unintended consequences of new legislation. Do Republicans think that women, middle class, minorities, young, poor, and other Americans left out of the process have no ideas worthy of consideration?
They did their work in secret meetings without input by experts in health policy or economics, out of the sight of the public and the press. The result is a political bill to satisfy Republican ideology with little regard for facts or alternatives.
Previously, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a similar bill that was designed behind closed doors without serious public hearings, expert testimony or debate. They proceeded despite a Congressional Budget Office projection that it would cause 23 million Americans to become uninsured. The CBO’s estimate of spending reductions from the bill amount to $43 per month saved for each person who loses health benefits – not a good deal!
There’s no doubt that Obamacare has serious problems in the individual and small employer exchanges. Republicans try to mislead us into believing that those troubles mean that the law is failing. It isn’t. Because of Obamacare 20 million more Americans are now insured and the rate of growth in total health care spending is lower than it was before Obamacare. It is a successful law that needs improvements.
Bluntly, Republican lawmakers don’t believe that all Americans should receive basic health care regardless of their ability to pay and they’re willing to let other Americans die for that ideology. Republican leadership intends to pass their bill before Americans understand that it will cause more people to lose health benefits, more healthcare related family bankruptcies and more individuals suffering death or disability.
Rushing ill-considered bills through a legislature to satisfy an ideology is not limited to the congress. North Carolina Republicans imagined an “emergency” when Charlotte passed a civil rights ordinance allowing transgender citizens to use restroom facilities consistent with their gender identity (and, in most cases, consistent with their physical appearance). Rather than holding hearings and carefully considering what (if any) legislation was needed, they packed the infamous HB-2 with unrelated and controversial provisions then passed it as “emergency” legislation. If standard legislative processes had been followed, a more appropriate response (or no response) to Charlotte’s ordinance might have been made. HB-2 has been mostly repealed, but the damage to the state’s reputation remains and some economic losses will never be recovered.
Similarly, North Carolina Republicans gerrymandered the state’s congressional and legislative districts through secret processes. They hired attorneys who hired consultants to design legislative districts that would give massive election advantages to Republicans. Because the work was done through attorneys, they were able to claim attorney-client privilege as justification for refusing to let the public and the press see exactly how they instructed the consultants. The US Supreme Court ruled that the result of their work was racial discrimination. It again seems obvious that an open process with public hearings could have produced a better outcome.
If Republicans were practicing medicine rather than legislating, their negligence would be called malpractice. They circumvented the rules and procedures that assure thoughtful deliberation before laws are passed. That violates American values, undermines trust in government and exposes us all to the negative consequences of ill-considered laws.
Senate Republicans plan to debate, amend and pass a healthcare bill back to the House of Representatives in 10 days, with no public hearings and no expert testimony. As an example of the unanticipated consequences of doing that, unemployed Republican rural voters in the coal mining areas of the Kentucky mountains will probably lose their Medicaid benefits and see closure of clinics opened to serve them under Obamacare. Health care has added more jobs than mining lost in the Kentucky mountains. Similar outcomes are inevitable in other places. The damage to the credibility of our legislative processes is severe. Worst of all, Americans will die as a result of Republican legislative malpractice.
CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED
Allegations of cheating and foreign influence in our recent elections abound. Many Americans suspect that elections and consent have been stolen. What has happened to “consent of the governed” ?
Our Declaration of Independence explains the importance of consent: “… all men … are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights … to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” The first purpose of government is to secure the rights of citizens. The authority of government is derived from “consent of the governed”. Under our constitution, voters consent to be governed under laws passed by election winners. Consent means majority consent, not unanimous consent. Non-voters gave tacit consent by not participating.
Why do citizens across our political spectrum believe that consent of the governed is being undermined by cheating, rigging and outside influences? Here are examples, some of which focus on North Carolina, but similar conditions exist in many states.
Our intelligence agencies say that Russia hacked into computer systems of multiple candidates and both major political parties. The CIA concluded that they used stolen information in an attempt to manipulate our presidential election.
Disinformation has become a science used not only by Russia but also by non-governmental political interest groups. Consider clandestine videos that were expertly edited to make it appear that Planned Parenthood offered to sell aborted fetuses. The untrue charges were amplified on social media and cable news channels in ways that made them seem credible and then used in election campaigns. Allegations that Hillary Clinton was running a child-sex ring out of a Washington DC pizza parlor seemed ridiculous; but they were spread by Republican sympathizers and did affect public behavior.
North Carolina provides examples of flagrant offenses against consent of the governed. Republicans used unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud to justify new voter ID requirements. It was subsequently proven in court that the legislature unconstitutionally gave intentional preference to forms of identification that minorities are less likely to possess as compared to white voters.
By gerrymandering North Carolina’s congressional districts for partisan advantage, Republicans won ten of 13 seats (77%) with only 53% of the votes. They intended exactly that result, publicly predicted it and bragged about it. CLICK HERE to see the Republican website that explains the gerrymandering strategy with which they maintain control of the House of Representatives and state legislatures. Their manipulations result in the “consent” of Democrats and black voters having less influence on elections than the consent of Republican and white voters.
Do you wonder why some people burn American flags or refuse to stand for the nation’s anthem? The root cause of their grievances might be that “consent of the governed” has been systematically and intentionally denied through actions like those I’ve described. That same kind of grievance led to the Declaration of Independence.
There are things that we can do to correct our problems. We can make voting easier through automatic registration of eligible voters, easy access to early voting and easy access to voting by mail. We can increase confidence in our elections by maintaining a paper trail and record of every ballot so that recounts are meaningful, easy, and fast whenever they are needed. We can ban redistricting for partisan, ethnic, economic, religious or cultural advantage. We can reject negative campaigns and character assassination by supporting candidates based on their positive plans for action and their character.
First and foremost, we must elect candidates who value the consent of ALL of the governed. Changing election laws for partisan or personal advantage is immoral, unethical and unpatriotic, even if it is legal. Some who care more about winning than about the principles of self-governance believe that their causes are important enough to justify “whatever it takes to win”. Such thinking should be unacceptable to free people. Protecting “consent of the governed” is more important than any one cause.
Consent of the governed will be effective only if we voters pay careful attention and cast our votes judiciously. If we don’t care enough to do that, we will enable manipulation of our consent and we will reward leaders who divide rather than unite us. No matter how depressed or exuberant we feel about the outcome of this election, the future remains in the hands of voters if we will fully exercise the rights that we have inherited from prior generations.
CLICK HERE for expert opinion of North Carolina’s election integrity.
CLICK HERE for comparison of US election integrity to other nations.
CLICK HERE to see the nature of problems with US election integrity.
CLICK HERE to see how Republicans have used gerrymandering to dominate the southern United States
WHY DON’T PEOPLE TRUST GOVERNMENT?
Did you ever play a game with a child who wanted to change the rules after something didn’t go his way? As a child matures, parents and others teach him fair play and we expect him to accept fairness, honesty and basic decency as guiding principles by about the age of 10.
The few who don’t learn those lessons generally become known as whiners, bullies or both. They typically get their next lessons in places lacking adult supervision. The bullies get put in their place by somebody who stands up to them and the whiners are ignored until they figure out how to socialize. Most eventually learn to succeed without getting their own way every time.
A few folks never learn the lesson, and as big people (I’m reluctant to characterize them as adults) they are still bullies or whiners. Their behavior puts the leaders of North Carolina’s Legislature in these categories. (Please excuse the all-male characterizations in this column. I don’t know what else to do when all of the Republican leaders are boys.)
Phil Berger, Tim Moore and his predecessor Thom Tillis, as leaders of the House and Senate, changed the rules to enable Republican Governor Pat McCrory to politicize state employment. Specifically, they passed a law allowing him to hire up to 1500 political appointees into various positions in state government.
When Roy Cooper defeated McCrory for Governor, the bullies decided to change the rules again. The easiest way to do that was to revise state laws before the inauguration so that Cooper could not veto changes. They arranged a sneak attack at the end of a special session for flood relief by announcing plans to adjourn and re-assemble on the same day for another special session. It became obvious that they had been gathering signatures to authorize the session for some time. They allowed about five hours for introduction of legislation. In that brief time, carefully crafted legislation increasing the power of Republican leadership and drastically reducing the Governor’s authority was introduced. The plan was conceived well in advance.
Republicans have the votes to pass these bills. Given their history with HB-2, they may do it before this column is published. They can do it without serious debate and without time for consideration by the public. That’s how they passed HB-2, and North Carolina has paid a heavy price for it.
Here is some of what they want to do.
- Reduce the number of political appointments by the new governor from 1500 to 300. This would also make about 1200 McCrory political appointees into permanent state employees.
- Eliminate the Governor’s two appointment slots to the boards of state universities.
- Remove the state’s Chief Information Officer (responsible for information technology across all state offices) from appointment by the governor and have that position appointed and supervised by the Lieutenant Governor (a Republican).
- Re-organize and merge the State Boards of Elections and Ethics in ways that reduce the Governor’s appointments and guarantee Republican chairmanship during election years.
- Make the Superintendent of Public Instruction (Republican) independent of supervision by the Board of Education
- Require that all of the Governor’s cabinet appointments be confirmed by the Senate.
There is a lot more in these bills and there is no way that anyone can adequately understand their implications without time for consideration and debate. Much like HB-2, there will be unforeseen consequences in addition to the apparent self-serving intent.
There are two ways to prevent this impending train wreck. One is for enough Republican legislators to stand up to the bullies leading their party by refusing to pass the bills in a special session. They can insist on adequate consideration by the public and the legislature. If they fail, Governor McCrory could grow a spine and veto the bills. Taking such firm action might even create the possibility of resurrecting a political future for him.
Are there enough Republican legislators who value fairness, honesty and decency and who have the courage to stand up to bullies? Is Governor McCrory, who no longer needs the support of the bullies, willing to stand up and be counted? If these bills pass, is there any form of cheating that should be off limits to whoever has power?
I’ll close with a quote from one legislator. “This is why people hate us.” He’s right.
For those who are interested, here are links to the as-filed versions of some of the bills submitted for the special session as posted on the website of the North Carolina General Assembly
SB 4 : http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2015E4/Bills/Senate/PDF/S4v0.pdf Ethics, elections and court reform bill creates Republican advantage and control of elections Board
HB 17: http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2015E4/Bills/House/PDF/H17v0.pdf changes public instruction, UNC and department head appointments and authority of Superintendent of Public Instruction
HB 6: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2015E4&BillID=H6 creates independent CIO nominated by Lt Gov
Link to all 21 house bills submitted for the special session: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/lastaction/todaysaction.pl?Biennium=2015E4&ActionChamber=H&DateReport=12%2F14%2F2016
Link to all 7 senate bills for special session: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/lastaction/todaysaction.pl?Biennium=2015E4&ActionChamber=H&DateReport=12%2F14%2F2016
What to do on the morning after?
The day after the election will be the first day of the rest of our lives. What should we expect of our elected officials? Will we help or undermine each other and elected leaders? If individuals, families and communities listen to each other’s ideas and agree on how to move forward together, we can invigorate the idea of “commonwealth”, a society that is organized to benefit all. Everybody wins. If, on the other hand, winners kick losers while they’re down in order to maintain dominance and if losers do all they can to stop winners from implementing their ideas then the republic will decline. Everybody loses.
It’s happened in great societies throughout history and it’s especially clear in the Bible’s Old Testament. When those in power dominate and abuse the powerless, everybody loses and the society fails. When the principle of commonwealth guides decisions, the society blossoms.
Poverty, income inequality and homelessness are at crisis levels in many places. Rural America has depended on agriculture and manufacturing to provide family incomes and property tax revenue for local governments. Both of those economic sectors now produce more goods with fewer people than ever before. At the same time that rural employment opportunities paying middle class wages have become scarce, the tax revenues of rural communities have stagnated. Budgets for public education, safety, and human services are under severe stress at a time when they are critical to redevelopment of communities. The plight of rural America has much in common with high poverty neighborhoods of urban America. Low incomes and insufficient resources have similar effects in both places.
Will legislatures reconsider how public services are funded and which tax revenues are available at local, state and federal levels? Will high poverty areas have funding for education, high-speed internet, water, sewer, quality of life, health and other priorities at a level that is proportionate to wealthy areas? If not, will their future be inter-generational poverty and emigration of successful residents to more desirable areas? Will legislators work at solving the underlying problems or will they pit urban vs rural and white vs black vs Hispanic for partisan gain?
What about the sanctity of human life? Will we expect our congress, legislatures and executives to behave as if “all lives matter”? Does someone who wants a gun have the right to own an assault rifle designed for mass killing? Does a woman have the right to remove a fetus from her body? In which decisions should government have a role?
Conflicts between personal and constitutional values will not be fully resolved but can we make progress for the common good? Could we agree to reduce the demand for abortion by providing free birth control, better access to pre-natal care, simple and inexpensive adoption procedures, and by solving our income inequality problems? Will we expect legislators to find ways to preserve gun ownership for self-defense and recreation while getting weapons designed for mass killing out of circulation and screening gun purchasers to rule out suspected terrorists and known criminals? Or will we reward leaders for continuing to insult each other?
The Republican controlled Senate has refused to consider President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court. They hope to win the Presidential election and get a conservative-leaning nominee. Senators Richard Burr and Ted Cruz have made the radical statement that if Hillary Clinton is elected, they will refuse to confirm nominees and let the court shrink. That abrogation of a senator’s constitutional responsibility would invite similar behavior from Democrats toward a Republican president. Will we insist that senators fulfill their constitutional duties?
Differences of race, wealth, religion and philosophy divide us on a long list of issues: immigration, transpacific partnership, climate change, war, taxes, LBGTQ rights, health care, and more.
We’re not all going to miraculously agree after the election. Continued success for our republic will require two things of us. First, we must look honestly at facts. Second, we must engage each other in ongoing conversation (listening more than arguing) about the principle of commonwealth – making decisions and laws that create opportunity and peace for all of us.
Our legislators are capable of that, but they will do it only if they know that we voters expect it, demand it, and that we’re doing it ourselves.
We can start on November 9.
We can do well while doing good
The ongoing debate about the economic impact of HB2, North Carolina’s “bathroom law” seems both sad and laughable because its effect is so small when compared to another foolish decision made by the state’s Republican legislature. The economic and human damage done by the decision to reject expansion of the Medicaid program is greater by far.
Republican friends, before you disagree, do your homework and discover the facts for yourselves. Bring truth to the debate and then see how your legislature’s decisions look under that bright light. Before considering human impact, let’s examine some raw financial facts.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute have collaborated on research to understand the economic impact on states that rejected Medicaid Expansion. They found that health care funding in North Carolina would be increased by $41 billion in the decade from 2017-2026 if the state accepts Medicaid expansion. That would require $4.9 billion of state funding and would bring $36.1 billion in federal funding. Do the math. $36.1 minus $4.9 equals $31.2 in net gain. Another way to look at it, suppose someone offered you $36.10 in exchange for $4.90. Would you accept it? That is one billionth of the deal that Republicans rejected. The legislature knew this information when it rejected the Medicaid expansion.
Some will argue that our state budget is too large and we shouldn’t increase it further by expanding Medicaid. That is a reasonable concern, so let’s look at Medicaid expansion in the context of other government spending.
Most federal highway grants require a 20 percent state match. State funding of $4.9 billion would produce a federal highway match of $19.6 billion. That is $16.5 billion less than we would get if we spent the money on Medicaid expansion. Therefore, if one accepts purely financial justification for not expanding Medicaid, the state would be better off by $16.5 billion to reject the highway match and use the money to fund Medicaid.
In addition to providing health care to uninsured North Carolinians, the Medicaid expansion would create thousands of new jobs in health care to replace those lost in other industries.
The argument that “we can’t afford it” doesn’t hold water when made by legislators who spend money on items that yield a far smaller return on investment. It’s a matter of priorities, and this legislature obviously sees other spending as more important than keeping poor people alive and creating jobs.
What about the human effect of the decision? The Medicaid expansion was designed to provide coverage for the working poor, many of whom have jobs (sometimes more than one job) but who are paid so little that they can’t afford insurance even with the help of the Affordable Care Act. Whatever became of that right wing mantra “take a bath and get a job”? As cynical as it sounds, the Medicaid expansion is designed to support exactly that behavior. It provides health care for people at the bottom of the economic ladder so that they can stay healthy enough to work and support themselves.
Instead of supporting a program that fits with their own traditional philosophies, Republicans rejected the expansion. That leaves us with a law that requires hospitals participating in Medicare and doctors with privileges to practice there to provide emergency and obstetrical care without regard to a patient’s ability or willingness to pay. The cost of that is invisibly built into the prices paid by everyone else. As a result, North Carolinians will pay for surgery to add a few months of life for an emergency patient diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. But we won’t expand Medicaid to pay for the colonoscopy that could have prevented the cancer from forming in the first place. The result of Republican policy is higher cost and a dead patient.
Yes, HB2 is a foolish law that should be repealed. Yes, the cancellation of concerts and sports events has an economic impact on hotels, restaurants and tourism. Yes, the law unfairly discriminates against a largely defenseless class of citizens. Yes, it should be repealed. But so far no one has died as a result of HB2 and the economic impact is microscopic compared to the rejection of Medicaid expansion.
It’s a fabulous opportunity when the right thing to do is also the profitable thing to do. We have two such opportunities at the moment. Accept the Medicaid expansion. Repeal HB2. Everybody will win.
Republican friends, the facts don’t support your policies. It’s time to change your minds.
Should we stand for our national anthem?
After months of complaints from the political right about PC limitations on speech and discussion, it is ironic that those same right wingers see a national scandal in Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for our national anthem. Like Muhammad Ali and Olympic Athletes of 1968, he is using his celebrity status to bring attention to what many see as American racism.
Kaepernick’s voice is but one in a crescendo criticizing the “land of the free”. Leaders from African American and Latino communities have politely spoken their minds on voting rights, law enforcement, criminal justice, public education and income inequality. Not much happened. If quiet and polite voices are ineffective, louder ones are to be expected. Whether it is an NAACP Chapter, a Latino Coalition, Black Lives Matter, the American Civil Liberties Union or some other organization, their list of unaddressed concerns is long.
Since passage of civil rights laws in the 1960s, many Americans, believe that we live in a post-racial society. We don’t. Our problems extend to the heart of democracy, consent of the governed.
It is with those thoughts in mind that I looked into the controversies surrounding North Carolina’s new voting law as one example among many concerns. For a more complete account, read Appeal-16-1468 published by the Fourth Circuit United States Court of Appeals. It overturned portions of the law because of its discriminatory intent.
The court found that the law was specifically designed to target African Americans and said, “…by 2013 African American registration and turnout rates had finally reached near-parity with white registration and turnout rates. African Americans were poised to act as a major electoral force. But, on the day after the Supreme Court issued Shelby County v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013), eliminating preclearance obligations, a leader of the party that newly dominated the legislature (and the party that rarely enjoyed African American support) announced an intention to enact what he characterized as an “omnibus” election law. Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.”
The court also found that, “Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist. Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation … the State took away [minority voters’] opportunity because [they] were about to exercise it. … Faced with this record, we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent.”
Here are a few examples of discrimination that the court found in the law. In deciding which forms of identification would be acceptable for voting, the legislature used racial data to select IDs that whites are more likely to have than minorities. They used racial data to eliminate voting opportunities that were used more heavily by African Americans than whites. Similar processes were used to determine early voting days, eliminate same day registration, and eliminate out-of precinct voting.
North Carolina’s law was crafted by Republican leadership in secret sessions with advice from consultants employed by attorneys so that documentation of their work would not be available to the public. The court found that “… after the General Assembly finally revealed the expanded (law) to the public, the legislature rushed it through the legislative process…in three days: one day for a public hearing, two days in the Senate, and two hours in the House.”
The law passed by party line vote. Every Republican legislator supported it. I don’t think they are all racists. Instead, I think they are much like the Democrats who passed racist laws in the Jim Crow era. They bowed to pressure to win elections and one way to win elections is to keep the opposition from voting. That’s what they did, and it is an example of 21st century racism in operation.
Because of laws like this one and other grievances, some people don’t honor our national flag and anthem. Would you honor the flag of a nation that did such things to you? I’ll continue to pledge allegiance because our courts generally overturn unjust laws and because we’re free to replace those who passed a racist law at our next election. It’s time to have a record voter turnout.
WHO CAN SEE POLICE VIDEOS?
Gotcha! That’s the word that comes to mind when I hear arguments about access to body-cam and dash-cam recordings. Advocates for law enforcement agencies and those who think they’ve been mistreated by police both want to use recordings to justify themselves but the “gotcha” blame game inflames tensions rather than improving public safety.
Controversies surrounding who can see the recordings will make our problems worse. Imagine the following two scenarios, both of which are likely to occur:
- An individual complains publicly about improper treatment by police. Police respond by releasing a recording which demonstrates that their actions were reasonable and appropriate.
- A similar complaint is made and a recording exists but police refuse to release it.
Neither truth nor justice will matter after those events converge into one story. Together they will appear to be evidence of self-serving decisions and bias by law enforcement – a no-win situation for police and for the public.
More than a year ago, I identified some of the issues and urged passage of a law to regulate access to the recordings. North Carolina legislators, including local representative Allen McNeill who has extensive police experience, drafted and passed HB 972 which addressed several important concerns. It’s a good beginning but it leaves law enforcement agencies vulnerable to charges of conflict of interest.
The law allows record retention and release rules that are customized to the unique issues surrounding law enforcement videos by declaring that the recordings are not “public records” to be made generally available like minutes of meetings and government correspondence. Nor are they “personnel records”. This will prevent:
- mass requests for videos by those who want to scan thousands of records for instances of certain kinds of behavior by a particular ethnic minority or police
- “witch hunts” against a particular officer
- social media posts of half-dressed people recorded while police intervene in domestic disputes.
HB 972 creates a presumed right to disclosure (seeing the video) for anyone appearing or heard in the recording and for their designated representatives. It also provides more restrictive criteria for release (obtaining a copy) of the video and it includes a list of circumstances where disclosure or release could be denied.
Four flaws in this otherwise reasonable law make allegations of conflict of interest by police virtually inevitable.
- HB 972 requires the head of the law enforcement agency to decide whether to disclose or release videos. A citizen who is denied access must hire an attorney and go to court in order to appeal. Public confidence could be improved by reversing the burden of proof – requiring police to go to court to justify denying access to the videos.
- A provision of the law allowing police to release videos for “any law enforcement purpose” should be tightened to prevent suspicion that police will release videos that make them look good and withhold those that make them look bad.
- One criterion in the law allows denial of access to protect “the reputation of an individual”. That protection should be limited to bystanders. It should not apply to interactions between officers and the public. It is precisely because of concerns about behavior of officers and the public that the recordings are needed.
- The law does not allow access to videos by news media, advocacy organizations or the public under any circumstances. They could only obtain recordings from an involved individual who had met the police-administered criteria. The ban on public and news media access to recordings should be reconsidered to see if good criteria can be created. That will be difficult but probably less harmful than making public release totally subject to police discretion. The levels of suspicion that already exist between police and some segments of our society mean that police will not be trusted to make unbiased decisions about releasing recordings.
Legislators deserve credit for making this first effort and there is much in the new law that can be helpful. If they quickly fix its flaws, this otherwise promising law may help build trust between police and citizens. Without changes it is more likely to generate allegations of bias and conflict of interest by police, no matter how hard they struggle to be fair.
Lives are at stake along with mutual trust between police and the public that they are sworn to protect. Let’s not play political “gotcha” with these videos.