Now Who Is Treading On Your Freedom?

by Bob Henderson

A couple of months ago, I wrote that Democrats envy voters’ almost universal understanding of the Republican governing principles of low taxes, small government and a strong defense. What we Democrats stand for is not nearly so well known to the general public, at least not here in Oklahoma.

Now I write to alert my Republican friends of what newly elected Republican governors and state legislatures are doing in your name. They are violating the small government principles that you hold sacred. Unfortunately, you will not learn about this on Fox News. I learned the extent of it on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.

Much of Republican dissatisfaction with Democrats is belief by Republicans that big government intrudes on their Constitutional rights and threatens their freedoms. Was that not the primary genesis of the Tea Party movement?

Shockingly, intruding into citizens’ daily lives is just what Republican-controlled state governments now are doing. Evidence to prove this startling charge will consume the rest of this column, and more. Here goes:

In 15 states, Oklahoma included, Republican legislatures have passed laws interjecting government between doctors and patients, dictating what doctors even may say to some patients.

In nearby Kansas, the Republican governor recently signed a law requiring voters to present their birth certificates when registering. Here in Kay County, Republicans and Democrats both register new voters at the county fair. If we required birth certificates, the percent of Oklahomans voting would sink even lower. This Kansas law harkens back to the days of Jim Crow laws in the South, when laws specifically were passed to prevent African-Americans from voting.

In Wisconsin, the Republican governor and legislature recently overturned a vote of the people, passed by a 69 percent majority, that protected sick leave for public employees.

In Missouri, the Republican governor and legislature have overruled a vote of the people banning puppy mills, where animals are treated inhumanely.

In Florida, Texas, Arkansas, North and South Carolina, new Republican-passed laws require drug testing before citizens may receive unemployment.

And in Michigan, in perhaps the most shocking intrusion of big-brother government into local affairs, 200 new Emergency Financial Managers, EFMs, are being trained to take over city governments and supplant local officials.

In one particularly shocking example, Michigan EFMs have seized the government of an 85 percent African-American city (Benton Harbor) in order to take control of a small beach park that, in 1917, was deeded to Benton Harbor, “in perpetuity,” by a local doctor. Why? The beach park is in the way of a $500,000 golf-hotel development. City officials have been stripped of all power. Benton Harbor’s citizens were allowed just two minutes each to register their angry, albeit totally ignored, objections.

If such a thing were to happen here, everyone, Republicans, Democrats and independents, would be up in arms. With our new carry law, I mean that, literally.

In Arizona, of course, the legislature passed, but fortunately Jan Brewer, of all people, vetoed a law requiring presidential candidates to present a birth certificate, or papers documenting their baptism or circumcision, in order to be on the state’s presidential ballot. I know citizens who have been neither baptized nor circumcised. Where is that in the U.S. Constitution?

I do not believe most Republicans would endorse any of these governmental intrusions into the lives of American citizens. I believe the 2010 election was a Republican landslide because voters were frustrated with high unemployment, and hoped Republicans would be better at creating jobs.

Just where are the efforts, nationally or locally, by the new Republican majorities to create jobs? Have Republicans in Washington passed even one such law? Instead, Republican officials are treading heavily on the rights and freedoms cherished by the very voters who put them into office.

How do you feel about this? I’m furious.

(This column runs here every other Monday.)