Reply: Who Will Champion the Sensible Center of PA Politics?

Recently, Tim Potts posted a column he’d written in support of a Constitutional Convention in PA. I think he’s misguided. But hey, its America. Tim’s been pushing his “all-legislators-are-evil-and-corrupt” nonsense for years (it’s just tragic that Tim isn’t running the state. We’d definitely be a utopia by now!) and nobody pays all that much attention. However, a Google Alert notified me that I was mentioned in the column so I read it and after doing so felt compelled to respond.

Tim and I had debated this issue a week or so earlier. I don’t mind Tim disagreeing with me and he was certainly nice enough during the debate. But his column so thoroughly misrepresents and distorts my position that it is unrecognizable. I’ve always been taught that when someone resorts to distorting your argument, it's because they don’t have a good rebuttal to your actual one. This appears to be the case here.

I oppose a Constitutional Convention. Tim claims that in articulating my opposition, I stated in effect that we should be “terrified and mistrustful of each other.” He then claims that I said (using quotation marks) “Just look at your neighbors. We may be crooks, but at least we dress a lot better than you do.”

Let me first set the record straight and then tell you what I actually did argue. First, with the exception of the pronouns, I never actually said any of those words. Further, I never said, nor do I believe, that we should be terrified or mistrustful of our neighbors. I never would say that we (legislators) are all crooks because I know for a fact that 95% of us are not crooks and I consider it offensive for someone to call a whole class of hardworking honest people crooks. And anybody who knows me even slightly knows that I don’t dress better than anybody. I have no idea what Tim is talking about in any of his representations of my position. And again, the fact that he won’t tell you what I really said suggests that he doesn’t have a compelling reply.

Here’s what I do believe: A Constitutional Convention is a bad idea for several reasons. First, it is not clear that it could be legally limited in scope. If it is not, we could have 40 or more issues decided in a few days in an almost unchangeable way. We could have a new Constitution that permanently enshrines public policy on everything from abortion to gay marriage, to caps on malpractice damages, to guns to legislative pay. We could require unattainable super-majorities to pass legislation that this or that interest group doesn’t want to see passed. And we could have it all come to the voters for approval in one up-or-down vote.

There are changes I’d like to see in the Constitution. I’ve actually introduced the bill to amend the Constitution to change how we do redistricting. However, I think the difficulty of the amendment process which makes every change in the Constitution semi-permanent, requires us to be thoughtful before making such changes. The idea of making hundreds of changes all at once is risky, and our current constitution is not so broken as to justify that risk.

Even if a Convention could be limited, I look at the bills that have been introduced to authorize and limit a Convention and I’m troubled by the limits they purport to set. They allow discussion of issues that the right in Pennsylvania politics supports, like caps on damages and limits on the ability of the legislature to raise taxes, but they are not only silent on, but actually explicitly say that things liberals might be interested in talking about, like creating a graduated income tax, are forbidden to even be raised. In other words, a lot of this movement seems to be an effort to make conservative policies the permanent status quo, regardless of who may win a given election.

These are my concerns as expressed in my debate with Mr. Potts. Reasonable minds can differ on the merits of what I’ve said. But you’ll notice I never expressed terror at my neighbors or anybody else. And I certainly never played the Wardrobe Card. When I was a lawyer trying cases, the judge used to instruct the jury that if someone misleads you on one fact, it is reasonable that he or she may mislead you on other things as well.

If Mr. Potts is so willing to mislead you about my arguments, what else is he misleading you about?


Daylin



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Who Will Champion the Sensible Center of PA Politics?


By: Tim Potts

It’s been more than four and a half years since the Pay Raise of 2005, three years since the beginning of the Bonus Scandal investigation, and a year since the beginning of one of the most grotesque displays of lousy priorities that any budget process has ever seen.

In a land where common sense and political sense were congruent we would see by now a much different political landscape in PA than we have. We would see a new method to ensure that pay raises are determined and awarded through a public process. We would see an Integrity Caucus of lawmakers determined to ensure that taxpayers aren’t bilked for millions of dollars to rig elections and reward the riggers. We would see lawmakers, who get an extra tax-free $163 per day just for showing up and who are sitting on a surplus of $180 million, refuse to cut $12 million from the elderly and disabled who must rely on SSI.

So where is the new law to rationalize compensation for public officials? Where are the laws with clear lines between right and wrong that can be easily enforced and that carry penalties harsh enough to prevent wrongdoing? Where is the mandate to adopt, on time, priorities that meet the needs of citizens?

Nowhere. The response has been, “We’re sorry, sort of. You can trust us now, sort of. We won’t do that again, at least not while you’re looking.”

Citizens sometimes can count on the minority in the House to make a little noise, but no one – no one – has been as aggressive about integrity as they are about unconstitutional WAMs for sidewalk beautification, Little League fields, minor league hockey rinks and anything else that will make them look good even as they continue to do bad.

Senate Republicans lately are putting on a happy face with their proposed new “ethics” rules. Forget that they haven’t enforced the rules they already have. Forget that these and much tougher rules should have been in place for the last, oh, 200 years.

The great leap forward for which they want lavish credit is just marking time. If their rules are tougher than current law, where is their plan to enact a tougher law? If their rules are weaker than current law, what the hell good are they? Rules are the junk food of governance, and they know it.

Our political leaders can’t even say “integrity” much less enact it. The best they can do is talk about “reform,” a word so meaningless that it ought to be banned from the political lexicon. If they mean “improvement,” they should say it and prove it. And if it’s a fig leaf for more hidden nasty bits, there’s a better word than “reform” for that, too.

Instead of leading PA to a less corrupt and more honest future, they’re simply waiting for citizens to get even more discouraged than we already are.

At the end of January, the disconnect between government and governed was stark in a Franklin & Marshall College Poll. Among voters, 69-72% percent don’t know who they want for governor, but 72% know what they want from government. They want a Constitution convention where they can repair a government that doesn’t give a damn about ordinary citizens if it gets in the way of politicians’ egos, ambitions and tax-funded venality.

Last weekend’s PA Progressive Summit brought all of this home to me anew. At the Friday night presentation of Democratic candidates for governor, no one tried to narrow the divide between the 72% who don’t care about any of them and the 72% who do care about integrity in government.

Then in my Saturday afternoon “debate” with Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, more of problem became clear. His chief argument against a Constitution convention was that we should be more terrified and mistrustful of each other and how we might change our government than we are of our lawmakers and how they already have dismantled democracy.

Instead of accepting the challenge to ensure that the sensible center of our citizenry has the chance to repair the manifest wrongs of the most criminally prosecuted legislature in America today, opponents of a convention like Leach say, in essence, “You think we’re bad? Just look at your neighbors. We may be crooks, but at least we dress a lot better than you do.”

With leadership like this, the best we can expect is a new economic development and tourism campaign: “Welcome to PA, where no one can trust anyone, so please just empty your wallets and go away quietly.”

To the best of their ability, our political parties and leadership seek to ensure that the voices of most citizens are never heard. Whether through excessive partisanship, gerrymandered legislative districts, onerous restrictions on voting and running for office, and other insults to representative democracy, what passes for political leadership in PA is doing its best to make elections contests that produce nothing but bragging rights for themselves.

There is a sensible center in our citizenry. Who among the politically ambitious will have the guts to champion their agenda?

The first step is to sign the petition for a referendum this fall where citizens can decide whether to have a Constitution convention. Go to www.democracyrisingpa.com.

Lawmakers who don’t want one can say so. But we all deserve the chance to vote on it.

The writer is the President of Democracy Rising PA