A Spin Round The Laboratories Of Autocracy

First off, I must give credit where credit is due. Charles Pierce is the one who came up with the moniker of the “laboratories of democracy” when talking about the states. I have simply coopted and modified that moniker for my purposes.

Let’s start off in the home of the hogs, Arkansas. There, the GOP controlled legislature tried to take another run at mandating a photo ID in order to vote. A similar law in 2013 was struck down by the Arkansas State Supreme Court as being unconstitutional, citing the fact the state constitution only lists four items as a requirement to vote – being over 18 years of age, being a US citizen, being registered to vote, and a resident of the state. There is nothing in there about needing a photo ID. But this time things could be different, primarily because the four members of the court that ruled it unconstitutional have been removed. The three remaining justices all wrote a separate opinion that struck down the law only because it did not pass with the required two-thirds majority to change the state constitution. The Arkansas House passed the bill 74-21, more than the two-thirds required, and it now awaits a vote in the Senate.

But restricting voting rights was just a warm-up for the Arkansas House. The House also voted some extreme abortion restrictions as well. The bill provides some clear definitions of an unborn child, “an individual organism of the species Homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth”, and a woman, “a female human being whether or not she has reached the age of majority.” Based on what’s in the rest of the bill, they may want to change the definition of a woman to just a vehicle with which to give birth to an unborn child. The bill bans the most common and safest abortion procedure after 14 weeks of gestation. Arkansas already makes it difficult for women who want abortions. 97% of the counties in the state do not have an abortion clinic and those counties account for 77% of the women’s population in the state. But by far the most outrageous part of this bill is that it allows the husband of a woman seeking an abortion of what the bill calls “an unborn child” and who is that “child’s” father to file a civil suit for monetary damages against the doctor providing the abortion or an injunction to prevent the abortion. The woman’s parents or legal guardians could also sue if she is a minor. Even worse, while the bill restricts the right to sue for monetary damages in the situation where a woman is the victim of spousal rape, it will allow the rapist to sue to prevent the abortion. As Shakezula says, “Nothing says law and order like letting violent criminals control their victims”. The bill also passed the Senate and was signed into law by Governor Asa Hutchinson. Other states who have tried similar laws have had them struck down as unconstitutional. But all these bills are just a prelude to the presumed overturning of Roe v. Wade when Gorsuch gets on the Supreme Court and abortion is left to the individual states.

Let’s move on to Virginia where the state legislature also introduced its own version on restricting voting rights. Virginia already has a photo ID requirement but is now introducing even stricter measures in order to register to vote in state and local elections. Now citizens would be required to show a birth certificate, passport, naturalization document or other federal ID in order be able to vote in state and local elections. These requirements have already been ruled unconstitutional for federal elections but the state can still mandate them for local elections. This splitting of the requirements for registering for federal and local elections will merely confuse citizens and prevent people who don’t have these documents from registering at all. Governor Terry McAuliffe will veto this measure and it appears the GOP does not have enough votes to override him.

While they were doing their best to restrict the right to vote, the GOP in Virginia was also making sure that they would not protect children working on tobacco farms in the state. In the House Commerce and Labor subcommittee, Democrats put forward a proposal to crack down on child labor on tobacco farms, especially to protect them from the toxic chemicals in the tobacco plants. A report from Human Right Watch documented that “Child tobacco workers in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia often experienced nausea and vomiting while cutting stalks of burley tobacco during the harvest.” Democrat Alfonso Lopez challenged his GOP committee members saying, “If this was your kid, would you be OK with having them work in this job? Would you? I don’t think you would. So why is it OK for kids you don’t know to do this job?” The GOP responded by saying they had already voted this proposal down last year and really didn’t want to hear it again. Said one GOP member, “I’m just curious if there was new things you could bring? Because I’m sure everybody was here from last year on this committee.” In fact, two of the largest tobacco firms had recently put new protections that prohibited children under 18 from working I direct contact with the tobacco plants. But the GOP was more interested in what the tobacco lobby had to say. “We believe that setting out one Virginia commodity outside of every other when farming is inherently a practice we want to encourage people to get into,” said Katie Frazier, president of the Virginia Agribusiness Council. “Singling out tobacco as one specific commodity that would be dangerous for children under the age of 18 to work in is concerning to us”. By a party line vote, the proposal was killed.

The Show-Me state, Missouri, is going to show how to bust unions by passing a right-to-work law. Right-to-work laws basically allow a union member to forgo paying dues. The member gets all the benefits of union membership – higher wages, better workplace protections – without having to contribute to the proper functioning of the union. Missouri is now the 28th state to allow “free-riding” by union members. But the action may have been moot anyway as the a right-to-work bill has already been introduced in the US House of Representatives and there are indications that Trump might sign it.

Finally, the GOP controlled legislature in Iowa is ready to strip collective bargaining power away from its public sector unions. According to the Des Moines Register, “The changes would remove health insurance from mandatory contract negotiations for most public sector union workers, and it would limit mandatory negotiations to base wages, cutting out discussions over things like insurance, evaluation procedures and seniority-related benefits.” Basically, the only thing unions could negotiate would be wages. The state could strip away health insurance without the unions having any way to fight it outside of an illegal strike. Of course, the bill exempts cops and fireman in another classic maneuver to divide and conquer the working class.

I’m sure there are many more bills like these in other states around the country. These are just the ones that came to my attention in the last week or so. It is worth noting that absolutely none of these measures does anything to bring well paying jobs to any of these states. It’s all about restricting the rights of Americans in one way or another. That is the mantra of the GOP these days and its epitome is Donald Trump.