Honoring Our Legislators

As the clown car pulls out of the Columbia station, I think we should all take a few moments to reflect on what I believe has been a year of astounding idiocy.

For example, who can ever get enough state symbols?  Whenever we start to think there is nothing our legislators can agree on, we can always turn to choosing another state symbol.  But wait!  This year, we managed to turn a simple request to recognize the Columbian mammoth as state fossil into a battlefield.  Just as we keep fighting the Civil War, this was yet another chapter of science versus the bible.  Senator Kevin Bryant added an amendment that referred to the animal "as created on the sixth day with the beasts of the field."  Not to be outdone, Senator Mike Fair then put a block on the bill based on his failure to grasp the theory of natural selection.  These religious objections and aimless incursions into the realms of science are just another day of governing down here;  my favorite objection, however, is that we have just too darned many state symbols.

Anyway, my personal opinion about the state symbol debate is that the more time they spend arguing about state-whatevers, the less time they have to do real damage.  Like the way they mangled attempts to legalize medical marijuana.  Our moral mediocrity members, by way of protecting us from relief of pain in our illnesses, whittled down what should have been a simple bill by creating complexities that Obamacare drafters could only have written in their dreams.  Talking out of the other side of the mouths that they use to spout stuff about individual freedom, our legislators showed their concern that we not succumb to the evils of the wicked weed by narrowing the type of oil, its point of origin, the specific type of research, and I believe the hours of the day and days of the month it can be accessed.  And probably a dozen or more other stipulations that will keep that plant out of the hands of those in need.

But no prizes to those who worked hard to make the bill meaningless; it's been done already.  Right here in South Carolina, in 1980, the South Carolina Controlled Substances and Research Act had so many inclusions and exclusions that it has never actually been used.  Not once.  While we wait another 35 years for the next attempt at a law that would actually allow people to use medicinal marijuana, we'll just have to keep relying on that oxycodone, the stuff that will get you high and addicted, while PhRMA gets ever richer.  Hey, it's legal.

Well, that was a little too heavy for a clown car award, especially if you start to think about the people you know who experience chronic pain, and/or the drug dependency and side effects of oxy use.  So I'm not even going to talk about Wendy Nanney's work to become god's crusader for exposing (and controlling) women's medical decisions.  But Wendy did give us a lighter moment.

It seems she was driving home one day and noticed a bicyclist do something dangerous.  And in the time it took her to get where she was going, she had devised a bill that would require licensing and classes for cyclists.  Except that the minute it went public, and to her surprise and consternation, friends of hers in the bicycling community were up in arms; two hours later, the bill went down.  Wendy defended her bill by saying that it wasn't really about big government; only those over 15 years old would have to be licensed.

Now this to me is proof that Wendy sincerely cares about life before birth and after age fifteen.  Any life falling in between is on its own.

Wendy Nanney -- You have to be this tall to be required to get a bicycle license.

Another heated battle that should not have been was about whether to bring sex ed into the twenty-first century, which for some of our legislators would have been too much too soon, as we never actually made it all the way into the twentieth century.  Mike Fair, staunch defender of his own religious distortions, sees no need to bring any education, much less sex education, up to the level of "medically accurate."  Seems to me he was back there complaining that "minimally adequate" was too high a standard for educating our children.

The problem may just be that Mike is uncomfortable with the thought that these young kids might end up knowing more than he does.  So after months of serious legislators, organizations and constituents fighting to get it to the point of passage, he put a block on the bill.   Proving that one idiot can move an entire Senate, and in fact, an entire state -- backwards.

In the final minutes of debate on another bill which attempts to provide much needed awareness to our children, one senator wakes up and rises to ask, "Why are we teaching sexual awareness to our four-year-olds?"  The sponsor of the bill informs him that it is not "sexual awareness" but "sexual abuse awareness."  Watching this debate, a wise friend commented, "Forget the kids; our legislators need sex ed."

And so it goes; another year down the tubes.  If it's any consolation, these guys did approve a raise for themselves.  Might be coming out of the savings from denying people food stamps and Medicaid, but it will be well worth it to keep these idiots off the street.

If you have a favorite moment from this year in South Carolina's legislature, please leave a comment and share it with us all.  Sometimes you just gotta laugh.

More About Bicyling and Pregnancy

Yesterday I wrote about the overreaching South Carolina Representative Wendy Nanney's idiotic bill which would require bicyclists and moped owners to get licensed and insured (with the exception of those expendables who are under 15), and her quick about-face after protestations by the cycling association.

It occurs to me that I may have sounded snarky (moi?!) in reference to bicyclists.  That was not at all my intent.  In fact, I believe that we need to make all our streets safe for cyclists.  Good for people, good for the environment.  I have driven too many times, half-awake, in the early morning, swerving to avoid a bicyclist at the last minute, not because they were not riding safely, but because of narrow roads where cars and bicyclers were forced to share too little space.

But the fact is, it is easier for those like Nanney to make laws fattening the pockets of industry, forcing new rules, paperwork and cost on her constituents, creating greater government bureaucracy, and with absolutely no contribution to insuring the safety and well-being of the public.  Easier than making sure that every new and repaved road has safe walking and bicycling lanes.

This is the way it is also for her fight against pregnant women.  Far easier, and apparently more satisfying, to make laws to force a woman to be pregnant than to ensure a better life for women.  The rate of teen pregnancies could be lowered by better education -- not just sex education, but an education that brings hope to teens for a good future.  Family planning, including contraception, would go a long way to provide families with financial and emotional security, so that wanted children will grow healthy.  Guaranteed health care and nutrition may eliminate the need for some of those twenty week abortions, and certainly reduce the rate of infant mortality -- a statistic of which Nanney should be embarrassed.

But, as the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  And our representatives here in South Carolina, mostly see their job as making laws to make us do stuff that won't make our lives any better.  Getting a license to ride a bike on streets that aren't safe won't make cyclists any safer.  Making children and women get pregnant and stay that way rather than providing good education and health care is also the cheap way out.  And I mean cheap in the sense of quality as well as cost.

So my apologies to any cyclist that may have been offended yesterday.  It may not appear so at first glance, but you have a lot in common with those girls and women who have come under fire from our fierce and fanatical legislators.  And I will fight for your right to better roads if you will fight for a woman's right to reproductive health care.

    

When Nanney Backs Down

This morning I read that the appropriately named Wendy Nanney, House representative from Greenville, had introduced a bill that would require bicyclists and moped operators to be licensed and insured.  "Hmph," I muttered, there goes Mama Nanney again.  I gave a wee bit of thought to what a boondoggle that would be for the insurance industry, one of the groups that our legislators take good care of here in South Carolina, and then went on to other matters.

Hours later the headline in The State informed that after great protest, Nanney had withdrawn the bill.

Now, let's back up a little here.  Wendy Nanney is the legislator that is pursuing with no less than religious zeal the bill that would prohibit abortions after twenty weeks.  She has brought all the power that the Bible and bad science can bear, and many of her partners in crime lined up to co-sponsor the bill.  It mattered not that scientists had proven that the "facts" of her bill were wrong.  And she cared not that women's health and medical care were being invaded and compromised by the requirements of the bill.  Wendy was out to save "lives."

Yet, when she looked out on the street and saw that bicyclists were being careless, and decided that it was her duty to write a law forcing them to, well, take a course and then pay for a license, there was such an outcry that she dropped the cause immediately.

So why are some "lives" more expendable than others?  Why would a woman making decisions about her own body be so much more important than a cyclist riding in a way that endangers themselves and puts others at risk?  In fact, Nanney points out that her bill would only require licensing for those fifteen or older.

Please, please explain to me why a child would not need the safety precautions that an adult cyclists requires???  This makes about as much sense as requiring a woman whose pregnancy is at risk to carry the pregnancy to term, while not making health care available for all pregnant women.

I worry about the mental health of many of our legislators.  It seems that they work so hard to prove their worth that their judgment fails.  And then they are rewarded with way too much power over us.

I also wonder that the Palmetto Cycling Coalition has more political clout than groups like the ACLU and the National Organization for Women.

Or it may be something else entirely.  After all, the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association was quiet while a bill was passed allowing guns in bars and restaurants.  While they claim that was because owners were split on whether they were in favor of the bill, many owners say they were not made aware of the bill.  Of course, the NRA has more clout with legislators than both the Restaurant and Lodging Association and the Palmetto Cycling Coalition (and throw in NOW and the ACLU).

Which must make you want to ask who has so much clout that Nanney and her buddies would tirelessly pursue abortion bans and personhood bills?

As with the NRA, we need to follow the money.  It's not the right-to-life groups, really, that are keeping these horrible bills afloat, year after year.  They are merely the very loud and committed spokespeople.  They are being controlled by groups like the NRA, groups like the American Enterprise Institute, groups run by Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers.  It may not seem like they are being controlled; maybe it is really just the Partnership from Hell.  But it amounts to the same thing.

The people with the money and power, who stand to lose some of that money and power if we unite against issues like living wage and health care, have learned that they can get followers to rise up and pledge their support for the candidates who will further their power agenda.  All they have to do is create a smokescreen of "moral issues."  Nixon did it with his "law and order" campaign.  Reagan's handlers realized that there were millions who could be turned to their advantage by pretending that the quest for power was a religious quest.

And today we have anti-abortion groups, anti-gay groups, anti-Moslem groups, all working to foment fear.  They support the candidates (and the candidates support them)  so that none of us can muster the strength or the dollars to fight the people who control the country:  big agriculture, pharmaceuticals, oil, Wall Street.  Fortunately for bicyclists, Wendy Nanney didn't think their lives were important enough to turn into a cause.