Political Protest

Rudy "expressing his grievances" against the Utah State Legislature

Everyday, I get more and more upset at the Utah State Legislature. Being politically moderate, I get really disturbed by extreme legislation on either the far right or the far left. Here are some of the disturbing proposals from the last few weeks:

• Ending affirmative action by amending the state Constitution.
• Honoring a the inventor of a semi-automatic pistol with a state holiday that would coincide with Martin Luther King Day, who worked for peace and was murdered by guns. When asked to justify celebrating guns on the same day as one honoring a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was murdered by an assassin, the Senate Majority leader said “Guns keep peace.”
• A bill to prevent the Federal government from regulating guns manufactured in Utah, even though Utah already has the least strict gun laws in the nation.
• Advertising on the sides of school buses.
• A bill to order the Federal EPA to stop regulating carbon-dioxide gasses until climate change is proven.
• Denying instate tuition at state universities and colleges to undocumented aliens who graduate from Utah high schools.
• Preemptive legislation to allow Utah to be immune from any Federally mandated health care reform bill.

The purpose of many of these laws is to give messages to the Federal Government and public. Having spent some time this year in law school studying Utah laws, I’ve come to realize that message laws generally end up creating contradictions in the legal code. They are generally short-sighted and do not consider the long term ramifications of their effects. Rather, message laws help politicians win points with special interest groups (i.e. NRA) and make for good bullet points on a campaign brochure (i.e. “I voted to keep your family same from the mean nasty Federal Government).

Many, including our governor, are concerned about these message laws.

The Patrick Henry Caucus is behind many of these message laws. They are an ultra-conservative group who interpret the 10th Amendment very broadly in wanting to minimize the role of the Federal Government. Their message is akin to southerners in the pre-Civil War South who wanted the Feds to get off their back about slavery. The issue of Federal v. State sovereignty was was really caused the Civil War, not slavery by itself. The Caucus largely ignores two centuries of Supreme Court case law interpreting the Constitution, and instead want to impose their interpretation on the country. None of the Caucus members attended law school.

Rep. Chris Herrod, a member of the Caucus, was the sponsor of SB81 from a few years ago, is also advocating for the state to seize federal lands in southern Utah. Near the end of President Clinton’s presidency, he declared this area in Southern Utah a national monument. This upset developers (i.e. Big Coal Companies) who wanted to mine the area, and they have resented it ever since.
From the Salt Lake Tribune:

“Our schoolchildren have been robbed," said Rep. Chris Herrod, R-Provo.
Herrod asserts that, despite Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, the state is "sovereign" over lands in its boundaries and has power to reclaim those that the federal government did not acquire with state approval. He concedes that Utah gave up claims to federal lands at statehood, but said the federal government has broken its pledge to put the state on "equal footing" with other states by keeping more than two-thirds of the state in federal ownership….

Rep. Kraig Powell, R-Heber City, said the potential advantages of a court victory are worth the risk of defeat and loss of legal fees.
"We may very well be termed crazy somewhere by constitutional attorneys around the country," he said, "but every argument that was once asserted by someone had to be started by someone."

When they say “Constitutional attorneys”, I’m afraid that’s going to include the Supreme Court Justices and any other judge who would hear this case. I doubt they would even accept the appeal.
From the Deseret News:

“"Most of the land is not in production. We cannot tax it and it cannot provide for us," Herrod said. "But the rewards of going after that land are in the billions and billions. I am not a gambling man, but if someone were to say I could put a quarter in a machine and had a chance to get a billion dollars, I would put that quarter in.”

With our state facing a very serious budget crisis this year, this is not the time to put quarters in any gambling machine.

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who thinks this and other message laws would be a waste of time or money.

Now, I must admit that not everything that has been proposed has been terrible. For example, Rep. King from Salt Lake City who wanted to raise income taxes by 1% for those who earn over $250,000 to help raise $100,000 million for public education next year. However, being a Senate Democrat plan to raise taxes, the proposal was quickly defeated by the right wing.

My message to the legislature is this: Radical Right Wing Utah Legislators...Please stop wasting time with weird, 1855-style State Sovereignty message laws to the Federal Government, and actually try to fix some of the problems this State is facing. I understand it is important to you to show the Feds their powers are not unlimited, but state sovereignty is only effective if you use the power to help the people.

When do people suffer more: when the Feds have too much power, or when the States refuse to provide public services for their citizens?

Update: Here's a really awesome political cartoon on this subject by local cartoonist, Pat Bagley: