Tag Archives: policy

Tyranny of the Majority

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AUSTIN, Texas — House Speaker Dade Phelan late Tuesday signed 52 arrest warrants for Democrats who left the state for Washington D.C. in July and have yet to return to the House chamber for the second special legislative session of the year. (Yahoo News)

American political discourse is supposed to be about compromise, give and take, and a collegial spirit of doing what is best for the electorate.

On January 6, 2020, this went out the window, and as we have seen since, it continues to fall by the wayside.

In the latest bout of my way or the highway which has seen disgruntled GOP (and former) GOP lead states strip away powers from their Governor when they lost control (Wisconsinand North Carolina), or when they disagree with the Governor (Michigan, Minnesota, Kentucky) and other elected officials (Arizona).

Now Texas issues arrest warrants for the minority power (Democrats) who refuse to vote for what is clearly voter suppression laws. Their option, knowing they do not have the votes to override what is clearly a regressive bill, is to ensure quorum cannot be achieved and left the state.

State Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio highlighted the issue clearly:

Have we got to the point where we believe our own bull shizz so much that we arrest our own colleagues. Civil discourse took a nasty turn today.

Civil discourse is no longer civil. And what is happening in Texas around voting rights is the same level of GOP crap that we have seen in Georgia, and other Republican strongholds where following four years of mismanagement at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the American public said enough is enough. And those voices were loudest in the parts of the country where the GOP is now moving beyond gerrymandering and moving to outright vote restriction so this sort of radical politics never happens again.

Welcome to the new normal.

Historic…what?

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Lawmakers unveil details of ‘historic’ federal paid parental leave benefits | Federal News Network

The annual defense policy bill, if passed by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by the president, would grant federal employees up to 12 weeks of paid leave for the birth, adoption or foster of a new child.

If you live in the United States, and you are an employee of the United States Federal Government, and you are planning to have a family, this is a wonderful benefit, assuming the bill is actually passed, which with this current government, is doubtful. However, to call it historic, or even wonderful, falls well short of the mark.

Other backslapping terms cited in the article include watershed, life-changing, and monumental. If the bill passes, this will go into effect in October of 2020, more than a year from now. Please make a note of that in your family planning.

Why am I so contemptuous of this policy? For starters, this only applies to employees of the Federal Government. Without a calculator, I cannot accurately estimate the impact. Still, the number of people that this will benefit is a fraction of a percent of the overall workforce in the United States when you consider those of childbearing or family starting years and those who are actual Federal Employees. This does not cover contractors or anyone else that toils for a paycheque in the United States.

I am also derisive of this policy because it still falls considerably short of the policies for other First World/Developed nations around the world. According to the United Nations, of 193 countries, only a handful do not have any national paid parental leave law. Guess who they are? New Guinea, a few South Pacific island nations and the United States. The Federal law would align the benefit for Federal Employees with the basic minimums that are already prevalent in the world, which means we are not on par with countries like Sudan (oh, wait, never mind, everyone in Sudan gets 13 weeks).

Most of the developed nations start at 26 weeks and go up from there, with a guarantee that your job will still be there should you decide to return. Let me say that again. If you go on maternity leave, most policies guarantee that the employee will have a job when they return from their leave. It is not clear that such a guarantee is in this bill. I will need to check that, but I would hope it is. Of course, this bill was supposed to be a larger bill that also provided for the care of sick family members, a growing problem in the United States as the cost of health care skyrockets, and the population is aging at a rapid rate. That is still a significant hurdle that many people, not just Federal Employees, need to overcome on a daily basis.

I congratulate the Federal Government. An organization that has been the whipping boy of both the President and Congress, where hiring the best and the brightest has never been easy, now has a benefit worth writing home about. If the bill gets passed. And signed. And not watered down in committee, and any of a dozen other things that could happen before October of next year. Now, what about the rest of the population?