THE HOT JOINTS » marcus gadson

Can Social Conservatism Still Win?

Marcus Gadson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:45:11 +0000

Can a staunch social conservative still win an election in an increasingly Democratic state? We’ll find out in November if Bob McDonnell wins the governorship in Virginia. You can read an article exploring his controversial views in depth here.

Here are some highlights:

He described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family
He criticized a Supreme Court decision legalizing contraceptive for non-married people
In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women
He opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest

Unsurprisingly, his Democratic opponent Creigh Deeds is trying to put these social issues front and center. He hopes that moderate suburban women in northern Virginia will sour on McDonnell of his social views. I’d normally expect it to work.

But in this electoral climate it might not. Right now, the biggest worry is the economy. Moderate suburbanites are as concerned as anyone else. They’re concerned they could lose their jobs and homes.

To the extent McDonnell can keep this election about the economy his controversial social views should have only a limited impact. True, some feminists who pay enough attention to know all of the details I listed will be horrified and incensed. But most of them were probably already voting for Deeds.

Many suburban women could be persuaded to vote for McDonnell if he has a better economic message. He can make the argument that “I’m going to make sure you have a job and health insurance. This election isn’t about social issues, it’s about the economy.” He can also say as he already has that he’s changed his mind on some of these issues since he’s been in office.

Remember too, that McDonnell doesn’t need to win every female voter. He was going to lose liberal women anyway. He just needs to avoid being blown out among moderate women, and he can focus on turning out the Republican base to win.

In an ordinary year, his views would be much more of a problem. But in an economic crisis, social issues almost always recede. President Obama was able to win last year, despite voting against the infants born alive protection act as an Illinois state senator. Ironically, that same dynamic will probably help a conservative culture warrior in Virginia.

-Marcus Gadson

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Is Affirmative Action Constitutional?

Marcus Gadson — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:40:28 +0000

This is a question that came up repeatedly in the last few months, especially during Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings.

I’m no lawyer, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. But I do think that it is constitutional. Let’s look at this from an originalist perspective. Nothing in the text of the constitution prohibits affirmative action. It says that the races get equal protection under the law. But it does not say that the ability to get into one’s first choice college for example falls under protection of the law.

There is nothing in the history of the time that suggests the authors of the 14^th amendment wished to prohibit affirmative action. I don’t see any evidence that Thaddeus Stevens wanted to prevent the University of Michigan from using race as a plus factor to get accepted. It’s important to understand the context of the amendment. It was written during reconstruction at a time when southern states were trying to deny rights such as the right to vote to the newly emancipated black slaves.

So my understanding of the intent is that the authors wanted to protect the black minority from the white majority in these states. It’s not at all clear that the authors were against using race to help these former slaves. In fact, they set up the Freedmen’s Bureau to do that. It used a strictly racial criterion to decide who to help.

You could argue that the authors of the 14^th amendment intended those measures to be temporary, and that their goal was eventually for a completely color-blind society that didn’t even consider race as a tip factor for college. But that is reading a lot into the amendment. As I said earlier, I don’t see evidence that the authors wanted to ban efforts on the part of the white majority to help the black minority.

So originalism probably doesn’t support outlawing affirmative action. Ironically enough, the one school of thought that might is the living constitution school of interpretation—the idea that the constitution should be interpreted in light of changing societal mores—something conservatives tend to dislike.

That is not to say affirmative action is a good policy, or a wise one. But those would seem questions for Congress, not the Supreme Court to address.

-Marcus Gadson

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The Public Option is Nothing to Worry About

Marcus Gadson — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:51:13 +0000

One of the most controversial parts of President Obama’s healthcare proposals is the public option. It’s also badly needed. Nonetheless, the insurance industry and conservatives and Congress are fighting it tooth and nail.

The public option makes sense economically. Healthcare costs, as Obama noted in his press conference last week have risen 50% in 10 years. This is a crushing burden for businesses, large and small. Even in good times, high premiums cut into wages for workers. They also increase the cost of doing business, which make American companies less competitive with foreign firms. That’s the last thing a company needs in the midst of these challenging economic times. Why do pro-business Republicans want to oppose something that would lower costs for businesses?

Even people who choose private insurance will benefit from a public option. In order to draw people to their plans, private insurers will have to do one of two things. Either they will have to offer more affordable premiums, or they will have to offer greatly expanded services at current rates to convince consumers that their plans have an added value. That could mean reduced instances of private insurers doing all they can to deny legitimate claims.

I can understand concerns about expanding the size of the budget deficit at a time when we have so much debt already. But the money we currently spend on healthcare is a huge burden as it is. In 2008 alone, we spent $2.4 trillion on healthcare. That number is expected to rise to $4.3 trillion by 2016. In fact, the US spends six times more per capita on healthcare per person as western European countries that provide universal healthcare.

A good public option that provides more affordable premiums and coupled with other reforms like comparative effectiveness research can reduce that number to a more sustainable level.

Of course conservatives say that the public option will mean the end of private insurance in the US. But that need not be the case. They are most likely to point to Canada and the UK in making these arguments. But in the Netherlands and France, private insurers do exist. In France for example, 80% have supplemental private insurance to help cover co-pays.

There is a chance that government ends up being as wasteful and inefficient as conservatives claim. In that case, people will turn to private insurers. And to win over consumers, those insurers will have to offer either cheaper premiums, or better services. True we might have wasted a fair bit of money, but then the way we do healthcare currently is bankrupting us. And at least we’d cover everyone even if costs are high; as it is, we don’t even do that with our high costs.

Then of course, there is the argument about rationing. A government option will lead to some federal bureaucrat in Washington DC deciding whether Grandma gets hip replacement surgery. What those making this argument frequently fail to mention is that we already have rationing. Millions of people a year receive no health insurance because they can’t afford it. Unless Grandma has a gold-plated insurance plan, or lots of extra money lying around, she isn’t getting the hip replacement under the current scheme.

Exploding costs also make us ration in other ways. Having to pay $10,000 a year for family coverage means that working and middle class families must cut back in other ways, such as saving for a child’s college education. A public option could relieve the strain on these families.

The public option is truly nothing to fear.

-Marcus Gadson

Check out my blog here

Judge Not That Ye Be Not Judged

Marcus Gadson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:13:07 +0000

Just two weeks ago, almost no one knew who Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina) was. Now everyone does. Normally that would be a good thing for a politician. Unfortunately for Sanford, he is infamous instead of famous.

There has been almost nonstop coverage of every last, tawdry detail of Sanford’s affair with his mistress in Argentina. A South Carolina newspaper even posted the e-mails that went back and forth between Sanford and the Argentine.

No doubt, Sanford has brought much of this on himself. He cheated on his wife, left his job without telling anyone where he was, and flew to another continent, all he tells us, because he needed to cry. His argument for why he shouldn’t resign was plain wacky. Said Sanford, “what I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then [he] picked up the pieces and built from there.”

Translation: David had an affair with Bathsheba and didn’t resign, so why should I? Fair enough, but David also slew Goliath and was ordained by God to be king of Israel. Comparing himself to David hardly projects an image of humility that would be helpful for him. And certainly, he could have done without providing us every last detail of his extra-marital activities as he did in his ill-conceived press conference.

Still, this whole saga raises useful questions. Should we force Sanford and politicians who have similarly sinned to resign? How harshly should we judge them? I’ve come to the conclusion that we are often too quick and too harsh in our judgment of politicians in these instances. Many observers claim that politicians who have strayed in their marriages are unfit for public office.

A lot of people then, are unfit for their jobs. Infidelity is hardly limited to politicians. Plenty of law firm partners, hedge fund managers, teachers, and police officers commit adultery. Moreover, traditional morality is eroding in society-at-large, and not just in Congress. About half of all new marriages end in divorce. Premarital sex, cohabitation, and having children out-of-wedlock have become accepted behaviors. So perhaps we should take the log out of our eyes so we can see clearly to take the speck out of Mark Sanford’s.

Essentially, many critics of Sanford argue that we should hold politicians to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. They’re supposed to be role models for society. If we can’t trust a politician to be faithful in his marriage, how can we trust him to conduct public affairs well? Besides being unfair, that attitude could deprive of us of the service of a lot of talented politicians. People who can write a good tax code or create an efficient health care scheme would be kicked to the curb because they weren’t perfect.

Politicians today aren’t any worse than they were fifty years ago. FDR, JFK, and LBJ all had extramarital affairs. The only difference between them and Mark Sanford is that Sanford got caught, largely because the media has no respect for privacy anymore. Despite their misdeeds, you’ll find no pundits bloviating about how we shouldn’t have trusted Kennedy or Roosevelt.

As for the bit about role models, I doubt that seeing Mark Sanford committing adultery will cause someone else to also have an affair. The sad truth is that they are more likely to think such behavior is acceptable from seeing all the adults they know personally engage in it. They think of divorce as normal not because some politicians got divorced, but because their parents did. Instead of outsourcing the responsibility to be good role models to politicians who already have difficult tasks, we should take it upon ourselves.

-Marcus Gadson

check out my blog: http://thegadsonreview.blogspot.com/

The End of the Religious Right?

Chris Jones — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:40:27 +0000

Mark Sanford and John Ensign are just the latest in a long line of conservatives espousing family values who’ve been caught having affairs. The amount of apparent hypocrisy in the Republican Party has caused many to ask if evangelicals will stop their one-sided support of the Republican Party in disgust.

Conservative evangelicals have gotten precious little for their support of Republicans in the past thirty years. Abortion remains legal. School Prayer is not allowed. Intelligent Design is not taught in public schools; evolution is. The only scraps they’ve been handed were ephemeral bans on embryonic stem-cell research and gay marriage. Still, on their biggest issues, Republicans have failed to deliver.

This is not true of the other factions in the Republican base. National security hawks and neo-conservatives got a military buildup against the Soviet Union, and an invasion of Iraq. Fiscal conservatives got large supply side tax cuts from Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Case in point: in 2005, although opposition to gay marriage had helped reelect George Bush, he spent his political capital trying to reform social security, not amending the constitution to ban gay marriage.

This is truly sad because evangelicals have paid a steep price in return for nothing. They have identified fervent Christianity with one political party in the eyes of many Americans. The result has been to turn off people who are politically moderate or liberal who might otherwise be open to religion.

Besides being counterproductive, the idea that people of faith should all support one party is just wrong. One Christian can legitimately look at scripture and church teachings and feel moved to support a party which works hard to eradicate poverty and help the least among us. A Christian could be dovish on war—“blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

And of course, there is no doubt that another Christian can conclude that abortion contravenes God’s will, and is a moral evil to be stamped out, and want to support a pro-life party. I understand too, how a person of faith could read Joshua’s declaration that “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart,” and believe that abortion is not just one issue among many. Concern over the one million abortions a year can never be dismissed as trivial.

It is largely forgotten that there is a long, proud progressive tradition in American religion. Martin Luther King and many of the participants in the civil rights movement were inspired and sustained by their strong faith. They saw their faith as providing a mandate to fight for justice and improve the human condition. Conservatives have never had a monopoly on faith and values.

I do not call for the formation of a new religious left to counter the influence of the religious right. Tying religion to worldly politics surely cheapens religion. There is no way to know whether Jesus would have been a Republican or a Democrat. I don’t know whether he would support a public option for universal healthcare, or a cap and trade scheme. The Jesus portrayed in the Bible would likely have harsh words for both parties and Americans of all political persuasions.

So, when applying faith to politics, we could do with a little humility. Said Abraham Lincoln: “my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” Members of the Religious Right and would-be members of the Religious Left should keep that sentiment in mind before they dare invoke God in support of their political philosophy.

-Marcus Gadson

Read Marcus’s blog at http://thegadsonreview.blogspot.com/

Stop Electing Judges

Chris Jones — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:21:40 +0000

The American justice system is supposed to be fair and objective. Yet it was very possibly neither according to the Supreme Court in the case of Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co, perhaps the most important decision it has rendered this year.

The plaintiff, Hugh Caperton, brought a successful lawsuit alleging that A.T Massey Coal and its chief executive Don Blankenship drove Capterton’s company into bankruptcy. In the next election cycle, Blankenship spent $3 million to oppose a state Supreme Court justice he thought insufficiently favorable to his cause. When the challenger Blankenship backed won, he refused to recues himself from the case. It was little wonder when he cast the deciding vote to overturn the first verdict.

What a depressing thought that justice in the 21^st century can be sold to the highest bidder. In his dissent, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to tacitly acknowledge that money can be a corrupting influence on judges. That is perhaps why he raised practical concerns on implementation instead of attempting to argue that we should not be worried about the influence of campaign contributions on judges.

He lamented that “today’s opinion requires state and federal judges simultaneously to act as political scientists (why did candidate X win the election?), economists (was the financial support disproportionate?), and psychologists (is there likely to be a debt of gratitude?).”

I understand these concerns. So I propose a simple solution: stop making judges stand for election. Even with this decision, there is potential for all sorts of abuse. A judge ruling in a case now might not favor one side because he got campaign contributions from that side. Or so we hope. Remember the decision only says that excessive contributions compel a justice to step aside. But he may well favor one side over another because of other electoral concerns.

For example, a judge who owes his election to say the Religious Right could be a tad biased on cases involving the separation of church and state. In a racially divided area, a judge who wins because of high support from one ethnic group could be predisposed to favor litigants from that group lest he lose favor the next election cycle. Even if we expect that people who are essentially politicians will put aside their electoral concerns immediately after the election, the mere fact that they have to go before voters can create the perception of bias.

Having an independent judiciary is critical to our system of checks and balances. To maintain that system, the judiciary needs to be able to make unpopular decisions in some instances. There are cases brought to court, where the correct decision polls poorly with voters. For example, decisions protecting the rights of disfavored minority groups might cause a judge to lose an election even though it’s the correct decision legally.

During his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts compared judging to being a dispassionate umpire in a baseball game. Just imagine the havoc on the game if we let umpires stand for election each inning. Or imagine if we made the umpires take polls after each pitch to inform their decision as to whether to call a ball or a strike. Whichever team had the most fans at the game would get the most favorable umpires. Unfortunately, this is not terribly different from judicial systems in state where the judges have to raise money and go before voters.

There is of course a realm for shifting public opinion in the political process. That’s why we let people vote for who represents them in Congress and who serves in the White House. But do we really want our judges looking over their shoulders at polls before rendering a decision? Triangulation is bad enough when politicians use it. It simply does not belong in the judiciary.

-Marcus Gadson

The Hot Joints Welcomes Marcus Gadson As A New Contributor

Chris Jones — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:07:07 +0000

The Hot Joints is happy to welcome Marcus Gadson as our newest contributor. Marcus is a freelance journalist and commentator on political, economic, and social issues. He has written for The Huffington Post, Indiana Herald, Cincinnati Herald, Opednews.com, and BlogCritics magazine.

You can read Marcus’s blog @ http://thegadsonreview.blogspot.com/

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