80: House rules 2

Regardless of a community’s politics, structures emerge to protect the status quo’s grip on power

A lot happened this week. The Derek Chauvin murder conviction was, I guess I would say a relief, but I don’t know there are a lot of complex emotions in the mix. I feel like people should celebrate it as a victory, which was won only because of a months-long uprising which is what it takes to hold just one single cop accountable for murder. But like a lot of people I guess I find cold comfort from a court verdict. Policing in America is no less brutal, in fact, after Chauvin murdered George Floyd, use of force in Minneapolis dipped for a few weeks then substantially increased. Defund. Abolish.

More big climate news including Biden’s commitment to reduce emissions in the US along the lines of what climate scientists say actually needs to happen by 2030. So that’s encouraging although you know a climate pledge is as a climate pledge does as old Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump used to say in his little suit sitting on his little bench.

Today I actually want to do an update on a local issue I wrote about a while back but don’t worry I think there is some relevance here for anyone so keep reading even if you could give a shit about Boston.

So back in January, this newsletter issue was about a campaign to reform the rules of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, which is one of the least transparent in the country (watchdog groups once gave it an F and a D+ ), although plenty of other legislatures are not doing so hot either so you might want to check yours out. That lack of transparency—and rules that give outsized power to House leadership—has meant that the state government is far more conservative in the policy it enacts than its average voters. From the earlier newsletter:

House rules have made it easier for leadership to block all kinds of policies, including immigrant rights legislation that has barely moved for decades despite hundreds of people advocating for it every year in a big lobby day; a tenant rights bill that was quietly killed after several years of broad advocacy and compromise; certain police reform measures that were killed behind closed doors. There’s anti-wage theft legislation in play that has two-thirds of the Legislature listed as co-sponsors, a veto-proof majority, but it can’t get a House vote.

When we last checked in on the transparency campaign, myself and a bunch of other people had just met with our Rep on the issue, who was mostly condescending and disinterested. In the four months since then I have followed up on the topic with four very polite and respectful emails (I swear I was really nice) and have heard absolutely not one single whisper back, which is truly model behavior for an elected official.

Meanwhile, pressure from the campaign caused the Speaker to delay a decision on changing the rules, although he indicated the House would also revisit how constituents can interact with legislators, in response to the growing number of advocacy groups contacting lawmakers. The Globe has since published two editorials chastising the House’s lack of transparency. Hundreds of thousands of texts, calls, and emails were sent, dozens of letters to the editor were published. And tensions continued to rise between the old boys club and lawmakers standing up to them.

We did, however, win a partial victory. A big part of the push is for public committee votes, since hundreds of bills are killed in committee for opaque reasons. In February, the legislature debated rules for joint committees (which include the House and Senate—the Senate has more transparent rules), and a big concession will make all joint committee “no” votes public. So that’s a pretty big deal!

But obviously that is not enough, so this week there was a big kickoff meeting for the next phase of the campaign, which is called the People’s House. Notably, the campaign has added a demand for House Speaker term limits. This is a big addition, because it explicitly targets the messed up concentration of power in the chamber, and calls out the Speaker himself (it has only EVER been a white man in the history of Massachusetts) and his wildly disproportionate power, which basically amounts to minority rule.

Here are some fun facts about the Massachusetts Speaker of the House: He pretty much singlehandedly controls the flow of which legislation can be considered by the rank and file reps. He alone decides who heads committees, which not only provides the lucky winners with significant power themselves, but also handsome financial bonuses. The stipend for the Ways and Means Chair is $65,000 a year, which is more than the annual salary of a representative. In other words, the Speaker of the House can double or cut in half a representative’s potential salary, depending on whether they stay in line.

As a result, most House Reps vote 90-100% in line with the Speaker. There was even a case where the Speaker once mistakenly placed the wrong vote, and at least 63 reps immediately voted the same way. When the Speaker realized he made a mistake, he switched his vote and all 63 then did the same. That is some Veep shit.

The kickoff meeting for the campaign was pretty inspiring, especially for a zoom (you can watch it if you want), with close to 200 people showing up from a range of organizations. It was an interesting cross-section of the progressive community here, including speakers from Act On Mass, which leads the campaign, immigration advocate Mijente, Sunrise, and even two legislators. Maybe the best session was led by Sakina Cotton, who I believe is a freshman in high school, representing youth advocacy group Our Climate, now a coalition partner.

So why is this campaign such a big deal? Why are all these organizations and lawmakers throwing weight behind it? I know my riveting prose might lead you to believe otherwise, but this is super dry stuff, right? It’s also worth acknowledging that several Republican lawmakers also support these rules changes, which might make you wonder, shouldn’t progressives just be happy with the Democratic supermajority and keep Dems’ control as locked down as possible?

Well, in the Massachusetts Legislature, the Democratic Party holds pretty much all of the power, so any progress needs to be won within the party. Contrary to hand-wringing about partisan polarization, many progressives and even staunch Democratic voters recognize that in a two party system, your party being in power does not inherently serve the public very well. Another way to put this is, regardless of the majority politics in any particular community, structures tend to emerge to protect the status quo’s grip on power, at all costs. In our case, it’s conservative Democrats within the majority party who block policy that would challenge both excesses of state power like police brutality, and excesses of corporate power like exploitation of workers and tenants. And without transparency, it’s difficult for the public to even organize for change, as legislators will sometimes even vote to kill bills they publicly co-sponsored.

So at stake is not just a wide range of progress on specific issues, as reflected by the breadth of the coalition involved, but also the underlying structures that control how we govern and are governed. The different interests involved recognize that. As Somerville’s State Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven said in the campaign meeting, “Underneath the policies and issues, and all the things that are very explicit and on the surface, are relationships, culture, how we interact with each other, how we hold power accountable. … The reason this work is so exciting is because you’re all challenging what it means to interact with power.”

The reality that there is something screwed up in these power structures, at different levels of government, seems to be more widely recognized these days. We’re seeing heated public debate about the role of the Senate parliamentarian for god’s sake. We all see the increasingly blatant minority rule in federal government through Senate rules, the electoral college, and hundreds of voter restriction bills in state legislatures across the country. We see it in the campaign finance laws that allow special interests like the oil and gas industry to endanger humanity’s future to protect their business model. If all that weren’t enough, images that flashed before us of frothing, shirtless men smashing Capitol windows and dragging out literal chunks of the public sector as souvenirs, cheered on by members of a minority party, made it frighteningly clear that democracy isn’t something that we automatically get, and the version we do have is often not all that democratic. This is something a lot of people once took for granted, but perhaps not anymore.

Links

• Cutting emissions in half by 2030 here we go.
• The country’s largest coal miners union says it’s open to transition away from fossil fuels if it can guarantee financial aid and jobs in renewable energy for workers.
• Sorrow and relief in Minneapolis.
• A huge photo essay on how Black Lives Matter reached cities and towns across the country.
• The “Thin Blue Line” flag and America’s history of police violence.
• “There is no climate justice without abolition.”
• A Baltimore land trust pursues development without displacement.
• The West braces for the first federal declaration of water shortage. The housing market in Phoenix is also bananas right now so that will be interesting. I can’t remember if I shared this before, but this is a good article on how climate change is impacting the Colorado River.
• The “whitest paint ever” reflects 98% of sunlight, and could offer big energy savings benefits.
• Vegas is looking to ban ornamental grass.
• Influencer compounds are the stuff of nightmares.
• A Boston musician left a $10,000 flute in the back of a cab and nine years later she just got it back.
• The absurdity of the New York Times trying to “both sides” threats to democracy.
• Denver’s horror-themed bar looks fun, including Midsommar-themed drinks.

Superlink

There were a couple of disturbing articles on carbon removal this week. It’s becoming almost gospel in climate discourse that some level of carbon dioxide removal is necessary to reign in the worst of climate change, which climate models mostly indicate, although what form that takes is up for debate. But it’s also clear that this narrative is going to be used to advance massive investments in a carbon removal industry that oil and gas companies believe will allow them to keep burning fossil fuels for many years to come—churning out more CO2 pollution, sucking it up, and burying billions of tons of it underground in liquid form.

Couple of key excerpts, one from the LA Times:

Pipelines need to be built, vast geological reservoirs deep underground need to be fashioned into carbon dioxide storage facilities, costly new technologies for vacuuming carbon from the air and factories need to be brought up to scale….

The vacuums are just one of many technologies California and other states are investigating in their sprint toward carbon removal. Back in Washington, there is a bipartisan push to allocate billions of dollars to the construction of pipelines and storage facilities for all the carbon dioxide lawmakers envision will be diverted underground in the coming years.

And one from Politico:

Exxon and other oil producers are embracing carbon capture as a technology that will enable their oil and gas businesses to continue to operate in a carbon-constrained environment. … Exxon, unlike European rivals like Shell and BP, has not vowed to transition away from fossil fuels, arguing that oil and gas will remain key to the global economy for decades as building blocks for plastics and to drive global expansion of electricity. Instead, the company plans to devote its attention to capturing and storing the carbon emitted from oil and gas — and capitalizing on the massive new business opportunity.

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Watching

I have put a pause on all new TV series so I can catch up on movies I’ve been meaning to watch and the best one so far was Booksmart, which was very funny and very good.

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Listening

Sea Life Sandwich Boy, by Horsegirl

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Still getting the new newsletter platform set up, stay tuned. At long last got my first vaccination in a CVS in East Boston next to a display of Beanie Babies which was an interesting place to experience such a life-changing moment but you know capitalism always has to make it weird. Regardless, it was very moving and joyous and all of the things that everyone is saying about the experience. I did not do any card selfies but we did pick up burritos at Taqueria Jalisco and ate them in a little park right next to the Mass Pike which felt like a very Boston thing do like nature was healing.

How about you all, getting shots? I hope so. If you want to do a selfie with your little card just do it who cares. If you want to get a burrito after you can do that. Whatever makes you happy I just want you to be happy readers.

Tate