Month: February 2018

As we recognize throughout our policy study, there are usually clear separations in political views with policy agendas. Views on immigration are no different. A June 2015 PEW Research Center trends study found that 71% of Republicans say immigrants in the U.S. are making crime worse, compared to just 34% of Democrats. The same view is reflected in how Republicans see immigrants’ contribution to the economy: 71% of Republicans say immigrants make the economy worse, compared to 34% of Democrats. There has always been a focus on the risk that immigrants bring to the U.S. and its citizens from a Republican standpoint, contrasted with one of the benefits or the need to help the immigrants in the Democrats’ view. I believe both parties want to help immigrants, but I also recognize a need to ensure the overall safety of our country and its citizens. One belief that both parties tend to have in common is that U.S. immigration policies are weak and need attention.

Even more differences are evident between states, cities, and municipalities. There are major differences in the way that three states are handling “sanctuary cities.” California has laws in place to support the legal concerns of immigrants and plans to increase the size of detention centers to support the immigration population increase. Texas is implementing laws to charge city officials if they do not comply with state laws and other enforcement measures.   Florida falls somewhere between both extremes, with cities throughout Florida having the ability to set their own immigration measures (as reported by NBC News in October 2017).

The policy of policing undocumented immigrants is quite controversial. No one wants to rip families apart and separate those who love each other the most; however, the safety of all citizens is the priority. As a country, we have so many people incarcerated for minor crimes. If we are looking closely at how to help as many undocumented immigrants as possible stay with their families, perhaps the same concept should be true for all citizens. For sanctuary cities to claim that police relationships are so important as one of their proclaimed reasons for resisting offering assistance, many of those very cities struggle with racial divides among police and the citizens. This area of policy is one that will need to be addressed at all levels of government to be successful. I do not feel that the federal government can make progress without the buy-in at the state levels, and the states getting support from their cities and municipalities. It’s one of those wonderful areas of policy where true collaboration between all actors is going to make it successful for everyone.

“Policy is not made once and for all; it is made and remade endlessly. Policy-making is a process of successive approximation to some desired objectives in which what is desired itself continues to change under reconsideration” – Charles E. Lindblom

In the formative days of our country, the notion of same-sex marriage would have been as obscure as that of women or people of color having the right to vote. The establishment of sodomy laws emerged in a pattern of criminalizing behavior that was viewed as lewd and objectionable, with no consideration given to “rights” for these individuals. This legislated persecution continued into the 20^th century.

Through the McCarthy era, homosexuality was oft regarded to be as “anti-American” as communism (see the Lavender Scare). Underground LGBT enclaves began to appear in cities like New York and San Francisco. Later, emboldened by the Civil Rights revolutions of the 1960s, they grew more vocal in demanding equal protection under the law. The conversation began to shift, with Lindblom’s “desired objectives” becoming the attainment of everyday civil rights, such as the right to marry.

A select timeline of successive change:

1778 – Continental Army Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin is dishonorably discharged for “attempting to commit sodomy”; George Washington approves of the verdict “with abhorrence and detestation of such infamous crimes.”

1779 – Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson drafts a law that would prescribe castration as the maximum punishment for men engaging in sodomy. This was rejected by the legislature in favor of preserving the existing penalty of death.

1892 – Congress passes a Washington DC law protecting property from “vagrants” including anyone viewed as leading a “notoriously lewd or lascivious course of life.”

1917 – Congress overrides Woodrow Wilson’s veto, enacting the Immigration Act with language barring “mentally defective” individuals or those with a “constitutional psychopathic inferiority” from entering the country (same-sex attraction was considered a mental disorder at the time).

1919 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, directs a sting operation to uncover instances of “vice and depravity”, resulting in 17 sailors being jailed and court-martialed on suspicion of homosexuality.

1962 – Illinois becomes the first state to decriminalize sodomy.

1969 – Riots begin after police raid the Stonewall Inn, a New York City gay bar, sparking the symbolic beginning of the gay civil rights movement.

1977 – Harvey Milk elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first non-incumbent openly gay man elected to public office in the US.

2003 – US Supreme Court reverses Lawrence v. Texas, invalidating state sodomy laws. Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that denying marriage rights to same-sex couples is in violation of the state constitution, becoming the first state to license same-sex marriages.

2011 – The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, implemented by President Clinton which barred openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual individuals from military service, is repealed by President Obama.

2013 – SCOTUS rules in United States v. Windsor that a section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which federally defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, is unconstitutional.

2015 – Ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges holds that any ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, and that such marriages should be legalized and recognized in all states.

2017 – Danica Roem wins a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates becoming the first openly transgender state legislator to be elected. Palms Springs, California City Council becomes the first in the country comprised of all LGBT members.

In what direction will the objectives of both LGBT rights advocates and those opposed to LGBT rights shift next?

“I ask the chair, you know what this is? It’s a snowball, just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonal,” James Inhofe, Republican senator from Oklahoma, said shortly before he infamously threw a snowball in the Senate Chamber (as reported by Slate in February 2015). Inhofe’s performance that day was in the context of a heated global warming debate that had been raging on the Senate floor. Inhofe argued that the science was not conclusive on global warming, and suggested that snow was proof of just that.

If only he had known that uncommon weather patterns, including increased winter precipitation, are a sign of global temperature increase, according to the National Wildlife Federation. But the debate over global warming has never really been a debate about the science, although both sides argue that it is. Instead, this debate is a policy one; the two sides differ with respect to their ideological position on environmental regulation, and global warming has become a proxy for that war. The battles are fought on specific federal policies concerning carbon emissions, whether they be international treaties, carbon taxes, or departmental regulations. Although scientific data is utilized in these debates, it only serves as a tool of the discussion, not as the main focus, as we shall see.

Republicans are actually divided on whether or not global warming is even happening at all. In the 2016 presidential election, for example, New Jersey governor Chris Christie said that he does think, “global warming is real… And I do think human activity contributes to it,” while Ted Cruz claimed, “the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of flat-Earthers” (as reported by CBS News in September 2015). Where they are in agreement, however, along with the rest of their party, is in their overall opposition to the regulations that have been recommended to combat climate change. The 2016 GOP platform opposed most of President Obama’s actions to combat it, and instead claimed that environmental problems are best faced by, “incentives for human ingenuity … not through top-down, command-and-control regulations” (as reported by Los Angeles Times in July 2016).

Democrats, by contrast, are largely in agreement that global warming exists, is affected to a notable degree by human activity, and should be addressed through federal regulation. Going back to the 2016 election, the two frontrunners for the Democratic party election, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders “ … laid out aggressive plans to reduce carbon emissions that make President Obama’s initiatives look tame” (Time magazine, April 2016). They differed a bit on specifics, but a basic trust in science, as well as their support of federal measures designed to support its conclusions, could be found at the heart of both candidates’ plans. The Democratic platform, crafted once the primary season was over, called on the federal government to take drastic steps toward fighting climate change, such as moving to 50% renewable energy in one decade’s time.

As shown in Senator Inhofe’s speech, this debate is not a scientific one. Rather, this debate is perspective-driven, with the two sides disagreeing on what role the federal government should play in combating environmental issues more broadly. Science serves as a sort of cloak to further the agendas at work. Ideology is the wolf under that cloak.