Just to Be Clear

I plan to make this short today. There’s something I want to spell out, as clearly as I can manage. I’ll say it slowly and carefully, so it doesn’t go over the heads of—someone like California Governor Newsom, who proposed a 28^th Amendment to the US Constitution yesterday, to nullify the 2^nd Amendment.

Governor Gavin Newsom, image found here

His announcement says they’re not really touching actual gun rights; they’re just—well, here’s what it says: 

While leaving the 2nd Amendment unchanged and respecting America’s gun-owning tradition, the Governor’s proposal guarantees common sense constitutional protections and gun safety measures that Democrats, Republicans, independent voters, and gun owners overwhelmingly support – including universal background checks, raising the firearm purchase age to 21, instituting a firearm purchase waiting period, and barring the civilian purchase of assault weapons.

The federal government is limited; they cannot do any federal gun laws. To refresh your memory on the 2^nd Amendment, it says, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Shall is a legal term. It is absolute. Infringing on the right to keep and bear arms is something the federal government cannot do.

There’s this other little clue, near the end of Newsom’s paragraph, telling us they’re not serious about protecting our rights: “barring the civilian purchase of assault weapons.” How are they defining that? Because we know from long experience that “assault weapon” is not an actual category; it is a catchall for “any gun we think is scary looking enough that we can convince people to think it’s an automatic military-grade weapon,” even when it’s just a simple rifle, such as an AR-15, which is a brand name, meaning Armalite Rifle. It is not an automatic rifle, which has been illegal for decades; it is a fairly basic semi-automatic rifle. It was not developed for the military, although some versions have been adopted by the military, because of its light weight and ease of use.

an AR-15 rifle
image from here

If a threatening bad guy has a gun, the threat can best be stopped by a good guy with a gun—and most efficiently by the person being threatened, because it’s immediate, instead of after damage is done. Government doesn’t get to set the terms, or decide on the tools, or determine the safe and lawful use of those tools.

There is plenty more we could say about weapons, and the anti-gun crowd’s harangues against all guns held by law-abiding citizens. But we’re keeping this simple, for their sakes, and in slightly larger print.

The right to self-defense isn’t granted by government; the right belonged to the people before any US government was formed. The right to defend oneself is inherent in all human beings.

We have the right to self-defense, as human beings, because we got that right from God. Even if you don’t believe in God, you don’t stop having the right to self-defense. It’s inalienable.

We don’t get the right to self-defense from the Constitution; the Constitution declares the right, to make sure no tyrannical government oversteps its lawful limits and attempts to infringe on that right. That’s true of all the rights in the Bill of Rights—the first 10 Amendments. And it’s true of other rights not stated (as summarized in the 9^th and 10th Amendments). These other rights include, for example, the right to the care and upbringing of our children, or the right to choose how we attempt to make a living, or the right to make medical decisions for our own bodies. Government doesn’t get to dictate our choices, unless our choices directly prevent another person from experiencing their God-given rights.

There. Just three paragraphs. If read slowly enough, that should be clear now.

We need a reminder, then, as John Adams put it:

“Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

There’s a paragraph on the Spherical Model website, where I say why we need a belief in God:

Why Every Civilized Society Must Be a Religious Society

If rights are God-given to every human being, then there must be a God from whom they come. Without God granting the rights, then “rights” would be totally dependent on whoever or whatever entity currently wields power over human beings. So, freedom from tyranny is only possible if we acknowledge God as the right-giver, and then we set up governmental systems for the specific purpose of protecting those rights—limiting governmental power to protecting rights rather than taking or granting them.

I was reminded of this in a recent interview with Robert P. George, in which he says, 

Robert P. George
image from here

But we are a country founded on the principle of ethical monotheism, the idea that there is a more-than-merely-human source of meaning and value—a Creator, a God who cares about us, who endows us with rights, and to whom we are ultimately answerable for how we conduct ourselves. So it’s not a merely human source of rights and obligations. It’s a divine source. And since our basic rights did not come from presidents or kings or parliaments or congresses, or any merely human power, those rights can’t be taken away legitimately by any merely human power.

So faith in God plays a very important role in the American constitutional order, a very important role, historically, in our self-understanding as Americans. And when faith in God, trust in God, and fidelity to God begin to wane, there are real social and political consequences. Our sense of our responsibilities begins to weaken, including our responsibility to honor and protect and never violate the rights of others.

Our “rights can’t be taken away legitimately by any merely human power.” That does not prevent tyrants and would-be dictators from attempting to take them away. Such despots lie, cheat, and steal—and sometimes harass and prosecute—to override any protections we have from what they see as that pesky piece of parchment people keep bringing out, that old Constitution we revere for some reason. They’ve been attempting this override with impunity. And they only get stopped when enough of us, referred to as We the People, take a stand and say, “No! You can’t do that.”

So, to be crystal clear—No, you can’t create a 28^th Amendment that allows you to take away a God-given right, one that is spelled out in bright letters in the Constitution by prescient writers who foresaw people like you who would try to do this very thing. No. You can’t tyrannize us without our consent. And, like our forefathers, we do not consent to tyranny.

Constant Vigilance

One of the purposes for our representative government is so that we can go on with our lives without having to study out each and every issue—and have it decided on by whatever the media persuades the majority to believe. But going on with our lives—leaving the elected officials unmonitored—is too dangerous today. Constant vigilance is required of us.

floor of the Texas Senate
from a tour in 2018

Today’s post is Texas legislation information. But it may be of instructive interest to others. Here are just a few issues I’ve been paying attention to this session.

Just to remind, the Texas Legislature meets mid-January through May every other year. We’re approaching 3 ½ months in. A rule of thumb is, if a bill can’t get voted out of committee in its originating chamber by the end of April, it’s dead. There’s not enough time to get through the remaining steps before the end of the session. So there’s a lot that really needs to happen immediately.

 

School Choice

I’ve been working, along with many others, to pass a bill in the Texas Legislature on school choice. The bill is titled the Family Educational Relief Act. I wrote about it here, and did a shorter op-ed published here.

This bill takes no money away from public schooling; in fact, it adds funding sources. But it is a way for low-income families to escape failing schools.

Opponents will do practically anything to keep kids in failing schools. One tactic, last Thursday, was to put the following amendment in the budget bill (the budget is pretty much the only requirement of the legislature during the session):

Prohibition on Use of Appropriated Money for School Choice Programs. Money appropriated by this Act may not be used to pay for or support a school voucher, education savings account, or tax credit scholarship program or a similar program through which a child may use state money for nonpublic primary or secondary education.

The amendment (slightly longer) was pre-introduced by Republican Rep. VanDeaver, then removed on a point of order, but replaced by this one by Democrat Rep. Herrero.

Beside the basic fact that I disagree with the intent, there are some major problems. This is a policy issue; putting it in the budget does a skirt around the committee process and prevents public discussion. For that reason it is likely to be stripped back out during reconciliation with the Senate. (The bill, SB 1,  originated in the Senate, got loaded up with amendments in the House, and then has to go back to the Senate, where changes will be made until there is agreement on what should be in the budget bill.)

When you talk with opponents of our school choice bill, they say they could never take money away from public schooling—which shows you they have not read the bill.

The vote was 115 in favor of the amendment; 29 opposed (5 not voting, including the speaker during the vote). All of the Democrats voted for the amendment, of course. The problem is, of the 83 Republicans, only 29 voted against it. Two were absent, so that means 52 Republicans voted to keep children in failing schools without a way out under any circumstances.

The Texas Constitution (Article VII, Sec. 1) requires that students be educated:

A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.

The Republican Party platform has some 340 planks, including unequivocal support of school choice, but the platform starts with 10 constant principles—which Republican officeholders are required to agree with. Principle 7 is We believe in:

Having an educated population, with parents having the freedom of choice for the education of their children.

In addition, at the Texas GOP Convention, the delegates voted on 8 top legislative priorities, and one of these is school choice:

School Choice for All: Empower parents and guardians to choose from public, private, charter, or homeschool options for their children’s education using tax credits or exemptions without government restraint or intrusion.

In speaking against the amendment, Rep. Toth presented the polling data: all over Texas, among every demographic and party, no less than 70% approve of school choice.

In Florida, a voting bloc of black mothers who wanted school choice made the deciding difference in electing Gov. DeSantis.

Someone wryly said to me, “If only we could get a Republican majority next session—Oh, wait!”

We’ve had a Republican majority in the House and Senate, plus the governor, since 2002. And yet we can’t seem to get the will of the people done.

Here is the vote count on that amendment:

My representative, Hull, voted against the amendment (so, on the side of school choice), as did local representatives Swanson, Oliverson, and Murphy. Schofield, who is usually very reliable, was absent, so at least he wasn’t a wrong vote. Rep. Harless voted in favor of the amendment. I have been thinking he’s more conservative than his wife was, who held the seat before him and was frequently unreliable, what we call “squishy.” Maybe he isn't better. His constituents ought to call him and ask what he was thinking.

Where does the opposition come from? Teachers’ unions. Teachers unions are not about better education for students. They are not even about better pay or conditions for teachers. They are about power for teacher’s unions. And they’ve been accruing that power for a long time. They control the message—in the media, among teachers. Politicians are afraid of them. We need to let the politicians know we are the voices they should be listening to.

Call to Action

We believe we have enough support among Republicans in the State Senate. So here’s an immediate call to action for anyone in Texas:

Call the following and ask for an immediate public hearing for the Family Educational Relief Program, SB 1968, as well as a vote in committee followed by a floor vote so it can be sent to the House:

·         Governor Greg Abbott: 512-463-1782, email https://gov.texas.gov/contact.

·         Lt. Governor Dan Patrick: 512-463-0001, and email ltgov@senate.texas.gov,  info@danpatrick.org or here.

·         Senate Education Committee Chair Larry Taylor, phone: 512-463-0111, and email here.     

 

Constitutional Carry (permitless carry)

screenshot from here

Another legislative priority worth discussing is Constitutional Carry. I think when people use that term, they’re talking about the US Constitutional 2^nd Amendment right to self defense “shall not be infringed,” which means people ought to have the right to carry a firearm without government interference. Texas—while very pro-gun—has allowed concealed carry only with a license. A concealed weapon would be a handgun, so handguns were handled differently from hunting rifles or shotguns.

What this bill is really about is permitless carry. That is, as long as you’re following all the rules a concealed carry permitholder would abide by, you can carry a concealed handgun without a permit.

There are multiple bills trying to accomplish this. As always in the messy legislative process, some get enough attention to move, and others don’t. Thursday, April 15, the House held a hearing on two of these: HB 1927 and HB 1911. HB 1911 was left pending in committee (no vote was taken), but HB 1927 passed out of committee and passed on the House floor, so it was sent to on to the Senate.

The problem is, HB 1927 is not a good bill. I heard from my son shortly afterward it passed the House. He’s a prosecutor and has been working on a case for quite some time now of a gang leader who was charged with illegally carrying a firearm. It is possible to have a permit and still be illegal—because violent gang members are not legally allowed to carry, for obvious reasons. This bill removes the ability to charge violent gang members with illegally carrying a firearm; it facilitates their use of firearms as they carry and deal their drugs through the Texas corridor.

Political Sphere had contacted his representative before the bill’s hearing, but got no response. So I contacted my state senator’s office to see if there was something they could do by way of an amendment during the Senate hearing on the bill. I had met with my senator’s district director in early February. She’s new with the senator this session. She has a background in police work and told me to contact her on issues related to criminal justice. She and the senator had already noticed that problem with the bill. She asked for contact info for my son, and he reports they had a good, long conversation.

Meanwhile, there’s a huge pressure campaign to get HB 1927  passed in the Senate. Any resistance is dealt with as being outright anti-2^nd-Amendment.

Stuff is happening. HB 1927 was referred to the Constitutional Issues special committee, with a public hearing on April 29. Meanwhile, a new bill, SB 2224, was given special permission to be filed (way past the deadline for filing, which was March 12). It has been referred to Administration, which isn’t a normal committee. I believe it is intended to replace HB 1927. It was long, and time was short, but Political Sphere plowed through it, and he’s very pleased. Here’s what he wrote to his state senator:

As a big proponent of Constitutional Carry, I have been following the various bills that have been presented. Unfortunately, the House, in HB 1927 has passed what seems to be an impossibly broken attempt at Constitutional Carry. It is rife with contradictory sections and a completely unworkable framework. As a lawyer who will have to deal with these if it passes, I cannot support this version of Constitutional Carry.

While HB 1911 dealt with many of these issues, I was much more impressed with SB 2224. I was worried that such a rushed bill would have some major problems, but, while there were still a few things missing from my ultimate wish list, I did not find any major problems.

I want to express my utmost support for SB 2224. Please do what you can to see this version of SB 2224 passed by the Senate. Please do not pass HB 1927. As much as I want Constitutional Carry, I want it to have a framework that will hold up through court. That means it would be best to have SB 2224 pass, but would, unfortunately, be better to go without Constitutional Carry than to pass HB 1927. Thank you for your consideration.

Go ahead and use what he says as a pattern, and contact your state senator.

If SB 2224 passes, I think it will then have to go through the House, from scratch, since it’s not just an amended existing bill. People think this is game playing to keep “constitutional carry” from passing. But it isn’t. It is an attempt to keep a self-contradictory and badly written bill from becoming law and affecting criminal justice in ways the public would not intend.

Call to Action

·         Contact your state senator and ask him to support SB 2224, to replace SB 1927. Find contact info here. 

·         Submit testimony for Thursday’s hearing on SB 1927 to oppose it, so that you can support real Constitutional Carry in SB 2224.

o   To testify in person, follow these instructions.

o   To submit written testimony, use this form.      

Electric Grid

image from here

After the disastrous freeze we had in February, there was a flurry of legislation attempting to prevent future power failures. Some of these are:

·         HB 14: Creating the Texas Electricity Supply Chain Security and Mapping Committee, which will be activated to improve coordination and flow of energy during power disasters.

·         HB 1520: Authorizing the Railroad Commission to obtain securitization bonds during power disasters to protect consumers from being saddled with high electric bills.

·         HB 1572: Closing a regulatory loophole to ensure that facilities purchasing temporary emergency generators are not subject to power generation facility regulations.

·         HB 3648: Directing the Railroad Commission to designate "critical natural gas facilities" during disasters, exempting them from load-shedding requirements and ensuring a consistent flow of natural gas.        

These all look to be good and useful bills. All of them passed the House on April 20, and were moved along to the Senate but have not yet been assigned to committee. But they’re at a good stage so far for the session.

I asked a friend, Fred Reitman, who is usually up on electric grid issues, what news he had for me. While he approves of the bills above, he is looking at what he refers to as “pre-February grid issues.”

We’ve been working on the electric grid since long before the freeze. Multiple legislative sessions. The concern is a solar flare (natural) or EMP strike (terrorism or war attack), which could take down the electric grid. (Read here—better yet read this book.) Fortifying it is a relatively inexpensive solution to prevent utter long-term disaster, and could be passed along to consumers fairly painlessly, without undue burden on electricity providers.

So, on that kind of electric grid issue, here’s Fred’s update:

The most important bill is Sen. [Bob] Hall's SB 1606, and [Rep. Matt] Shaheen's companion bill HB 3792. Those are getting nowhere.

SB 1606 has 23 authors, five of whom are on the Business and Commerce Committee. The problem, once again, is Committee Chair Hancock. The committee needs to vote. Hancock is holding that up. And over on the House side similarly Shaheen's bill was assigned to committee a month ago but no hearing yet scheduled. Go figure.

The Senate Business & Commerce Committee Chair is Sen. Kelly Hancock. In his bio he claims all kinds of conservative bona fides. While this ought to be a bi-partisan issue, it’s a wonder yet again why these elected officials aren’t listening to the people.

Call to Action

·         Call and ask for the SB 1606 to be voted on in committee and sent on for a floor vote:

o    Senate Business & Commerce Committee Chair Kelly Hancock, 512-463-0109, email 

·         Call the Business & Commerce Committee members and request that they vote to pass SB 1606 and move it to a floor vote.

o   Committee members listed here. Find their names, and then go to their member page for contact info.

That’s a good day’s work you’ve just been assigned. Do what you can. Get better at it. And then learn to do more. Because, for those of us who love freedom, free market, and civilization, the odds of getting and/or keeping those things are against us—even in a Republican/conservative-led state like Texas.

Concerns, Part II

We started this two-part post about concerns, in Part I, with a look at The Book Thief, a novel about a young girl in Nazi Germany in the early 1940s. The main questions we’re looking at are:

How does a free, civilized people become subject, in a rather short time-frame, to undeniable tyranny? And how many in the population are willing to submit before even the unwilling are also subjected?

Today we’re looking at America, present day, concerned about what's happening, because we ought to know better.

* The other day I referred to a Bill Whittle Afterburner video. About halfway through, Whittle says this:

Now, some people have said that Obama is being petty and adolescent by deploying the new gestapo, that Smoky the Bear hat wearing National Park Service, as his primary weapon in making things hurt for the American people. It’s not just barricades erected by supposedly furloughed rangers in order to keep the American patriots that kept this country free from freely walking through the monuments erected to their dead friends and to they themselves. It’s things like keeping people on buses to keep them from even taking photographs of the national parks that we the people, not King Obama, actually own. It’s things like removing the handles from taps on hiking trails so that people can’t get a drink, and a list of shameful, shocking, eye-opening jackboot tactics to make sure his pain is felt—not allow it to be felt, but to make it be felt—goes on and on and on. And of all the things I’ve seen that have worried, depressed, and angered me since this hope and change huckster came to the Oval Office, nothing has disgusted and worried me so much as the willingness, the ease—in fact, in many cases the relish and the joy—at which formerly innocuous seeming people like park rangers have taken to kicking the American people in the groin. I will never forget this—not ever. And while I used to wonder where a dictator’s private army would come from among formerly free people—well, I wonder no more.

That use of regular, friendly neighborhood park rangers—who are willing to do as they’re told when they’re asked to do something obviously wrong—is disturbing. It’s a concern. No panic yet. We’re not expecting park rangers to beat any of us for sharing bread with a hungry stranger. But how far would they go, just doing what they’re told, before saying, “No, I won’t do that?” We don’t know.

photo from here

* Here’s another story that is cause for concern. Police took a flag from a veteran during a visit to the WWII Memorial. It looks like the veteran carrying the flag was in a wheelchair. But was he waving it, possibly risking hitting those around him? According to this report, no: he wasn’t doing anything but holding it. So police, who in pretty much my whole lifetime, have been considered the friend of law-abiding citizens, look here like recruits of an anti-freedom tyrannical overlord. At this point just the DC park police, and maybe only some specific bad apple. Still, cause for concern, though not yet panic.

* Here’s yet another puzzling piece: Veterans are being told that someone who doesn’t know them, some unknown Veterans Administration government bureaucrat, will determine their mental/emotional/physical competence. If this stranger determines you are not competent, you may be deprived of your ability to make your own financial decisions, and/or you may no longer have your second amendment right to own/purchase/use guns and ammo. The link will lead you do an actual letter sample. There have been thousands sent out. Some of the recipients can guess that it is because they sought help for PTSD, or temporary depression, or something else they sought help coping with. But these aren’t individuals who consider their problem disabling—or even still currently relevant. And many recipients can’t identify any conceivable reason for the notice. Their being a veteran seems to be the only contributing factor.

I know you can’t always believe everything you find on the internet (even here, despite my efforts at finding and revealing truth). But when I look at this story, it appears credible. The piece is written by Michael Connelly, Executive Director of the United States Justice Foundation, who writes a blog and teaches on constitutional issues. At this point I haven’t evaluated the reliability of the story. But if it is true, and it’s kept quiet so we aren't told elsewhere, this is more than just a minor concern. It’s the kind of thing a conspiracy theorist would come up with: government is determined to disarm the very citizens best trained and experienced in defense against enemies foreign and domestic.

* Another story this week was about a woman working for the government, taking calls to help people navigate the impossibly flawed (“glitchy”) Obamacare website. She had the misfortune of taking a friendly call from Sean Hannity from his radio show. He was kind to her and thanked her for how nice she was. But she apparently made a fatal error by admitting (in a job where she takes complaints) that a lot of calls she takes are from people who don’t like Obamacare. She was fired. As Bryan Preston of PJ Media put it,

This firing makes Erling Davis, not Kathleen Sebelius or any of the contractors who messed up the website, the first person held accountable for any problems with Healthcare.gov. The first person held accountable by the Obama administration is a person at the very bottom of the regime, who makes no decisions that impact the implementation of the law at all.

Just let that sink in.

Who fired her? How far up the chain was the decision to fire her made? What reasons were given for her firing?

Those are among the questions that the most secretive administration we’ve ever had will never answer.

Saying something the government doesn’t approve of is enough to get you fired; messing up the finances and health care of millions of Americans is just doing the job. Sean Hannity stepped in, by the way, to offer the woman a year’s salary to get her by until she gets a job, because he felt bad for getting her in trouble.

* The president gave a speech shortly after the government reopened in which he gave this warning:

And now that the government is reopened, and this threat to our economy is removed, all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists, and the bloggers, and the talking heads on radio, and the professional activists who profit from conflict, and focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do.

Who are the villains? Well, of course lobbyists—people who sway government; the very cronies this president gives favors to but doesn’t want you to believe he’s in bed with. Then there are bloggers. He has just warned you about me; I’m not to be heeded. Neither are radio hosts, flippantly referred to as talking heads, even though on radio you don’t see their heads, while on TV news, which is much more aligned with his propaganda, you do see talking heads. Then he mentions “professional activists,” as if that isn’t the only kind of job he himself ever had. So, translate that to “evil conservative patriot activists,” like the ones the IRS targeted—not the actual paid professional ones like ACORN and subsidiaries that this president got paid to train in their tactics.

This is a little like the Wizard of Oz telling Dorothy, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Translation: “Don’t notice evidence of truth; only notice and believe what I tell you to notice and believe.” As a blogger, my role in the story is Toto, the little dog pulling back the curtain on truth. That’s not an ignoble character to play. Even though we might not be “in Kansas anymore”—in the American freedom world we grew up assuming was our home—Toto is still perfectly capable of sniffing around and pulling back the curtain.

At this point, the president’s call for avoiding unsanctioned information sources doesn’t actually stop someone like me from posting. So his anti-conservative-voices rhetoric is a concern, but not yet a reason to panic. So far this still sounds like paranoia, but if voices like mine ever get shut down—then we’re beyond concern and into reason for panic. Just saying, while I can.

Measuring Mitt Part IV

Here’s what we’ve covered while measuring Mitt Romney so far:

·        Part I identified the main general arguments against Romney (but didn’t actually cover them yet—the rest of the post briefly covered Huntsman).

·        Part II looked at the problem of believing the media and opponent stories, with examples of their inaccuracies.

·        Part III looked at character issues, where even enemies have to admit Romney is exemplary.

Today and tomorrow I’d like to cover two more topics: the flip-flopping accusation and Romneycare.

Flip-Flopping and Other Distortions

The flip-flopping argument itself got traction back in the 2004 election. It was used—accurately—on John Kerry, who proudly proclaimed, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." There was a long list of Kerry waffles. He tried to appeal to both sides of various issues, managing to appeal to neither side.

So when the flip-flopping charge was brought against Romney, people thought they knew what that meant—it meant an unprincipled politician who would say anything to any audience and not even bother to keep track of his viewpoints.

Romney and Kerry are from the same state, but they’re very different people. As far as I can tell, every flip-flopping charge, as well as other differences from conservatives, stems from the previous presidential race. No one claims any change from the conservative positions Romney took then. He has been consistently supporting and expressing conservative ideas since his last candidacy, and he was recognized as the conservative among top contenders McCain and Huckabee at that time. So let’s look at some of those specific accusations, made mainly by the McCain campaign in 2007, and what was true.

·        In 2005 Romney supported McCain’s immigration bill as “reasonable” but then opposed it in 2007. In actuality Romney clearly rejected the 2005 bill. Romney remained steadfast in his anti-immigration policy, even when various bills in Congress changed.

·        Governor Romney failed to support Bush’s tax cuts. In reality, at the time he was asked, he was involved in trying to pass a state budget through a liberal legislature that would cut taxes and spending to bring the state back into the black from drowning deficits; at that time, under those pressures, he said he was focusing on the state and staying out of the national political debate. It would be quite a stretch to suggest, however, that staying out meant he was against cutting taxes—the very thing he was accomplishing at the state level against all odds. He remains consistent on this issue, and now that he is involved in the national debate, he is very much in favor of extending those very same Bush tax cuts.

·        Taxes went up under Romney in Massachusetts. Not true. Romney cut state taxes; cities raised taxes, as is their prerogative, whether wise or stupid.

·        Fees went up, and fees are essentially taxes. Not really. Fees cover costs for a special good or service, so they affect only those using the good or service. Fees went up not because Romney raised them, but because he reduced taxpayer subsidies of fees, so that those costs would be borne by the beneficiaries of the goods or services.

·        Illegal aliens were given sanctuary under Romney’s governorship. Not exactly. Certain cities granted sanctuary status on a city level, outside Romney’s influence. A state legislature could act to punish cities for failing to uphold immigration laws, but Massachusetts’s legislature was 85% Democrat, so they had no intention of acting to correct cities on that issue.

·        Romney claimed to be for gay rights and then stood against gay marriage. Not exactly a flip flop. When asked in 1994 whether homosexuals should have the same rights as other citizens—to work, to have access to courts, to be as free from harassment and harm as any citizen—then he said yes, they should have those rights. When, during his tenure as governor, a rogue court decided to “find” a “right” to redefine marriage so that it no longer meant one man and one woman who would engage in the act that could result in procreation and who would commit to a permanent and exclusive bond (an interest of the state as a whole)—then he fought against giving homosexuals that special power over the rest of us. He remains firm on that issue and has testified of the need for a national solution (constitutional amendment and upholding the DOMA law) so that such contracts made in one state will not impose the change in marriage definition on all other states. While it is no longer possible to use the phrase “I support gay rights” to mean supporting their citizenship rights rather than their radical agenda, when he said it in 1994, people knew what he meant. And his stance hasn’t changed. It is essentially the same stance I hold.

·        Romney is against capital punishment. Not true. Massachusetts has no death penalty, but Romney pressed to institute it.

·        Romney was against the NRA and then joined. Hmm. Not exactly. Romney has always been in favor of 2^nd Amendment rights, and although he has never been in lock step with every NRA policy, he has signed on as a member. The main discrepancy is probably on waiting periods; he favored them and then opposed them. But that is because of a change in technology, not policy. Romney favors background checks, so that guns aren’t given to criminals and terrorists. It used to be that a background check took a few days—thus the waiting period. Now that technology makes them almost instantaneous, Romney is against the waiting period.

·        Romney lied about his father marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. Actually, George Romney did participate in King marches. And the elder Romney, former Governor of Michigan and one-time presidential candidate, personally led a march of 10,000. MLK, who was a Republican, spoke in favor of George Romney’s presidential run. It is possibly worth noting that it was Republicans who pushed for civil rights legislation in the 1960s; it was “conservative” Democrats (i.e., in favor of conserving their status quo) who opposed civil rights legislation.

·        Romney provided $50 co-pays for abortions in his Massachusetts healthcare bill. No. The abortion co-pay was not part of the bill, but was later court mandated. When Romney speaks of the importance of choosing strict constructionist judges, rather than activist judges, he speaks from experience with them.[1]

The point of today's post is that, now that it's 2011, maybe it's time to stop allowing the McCain campaign (or any other of Romney's enemies and opponents) to define Mitt Romney.

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[1] I have paraphrased and added my commentary, but this list comes from a post by Ryan Larsen, January 31, 2008, 7:50 AM, from www.redcounty.com/orange-county/2008/01/california-debate-mccain-remin/, no longer available online.