People Are Looking For Accountability In 2024

[0:00] The Ohio Ballot Board attempts to screw with a ballot summary to a proposed constitutional amendment that might end the GOP supermajority in the state. During the DNC, we hear from Senator Chuck Schumer, who claims that really, really, really, truly, if you vote Democrat in November, he will really, really, really, really, really, really change the filibuster. Why don’t we believe him? And finally, we are disappointed in an ad from a vulnerable longtime House Democrat that attempts to woo people who won’t vote for her and piss off progressives at the same time. I’m Doug Berger, and this is Secular Left.

[0:50] Music.

[0:59] Ohio has a big election coming up in November, not only because of the presidential election between, what’s his name, the orange guy and Kamala Harris, but there’s also going to be a ballot measure on the ballot. Sorry for the redundancy. There’s going to be a citizen’s initiative put on the ballot that would finally lock down the reapportionment of congressional and state districts in the state that’s been open enough recently to allow the Republicans to have a supermajority in the statehouse for at least a decade. There was two ballot initiatives that were adopted previous to this in 2015 and 2018. 2015, I think, did the state and 2018 did the congressional or the other way around. It might have been the other way around. And what happened with those initiatives was that the state legislature, which was being controlled by Republicans at the time, convinced the backers of those initiatives to accept watered-down language.

[2:21] And so people voted overwhelmingly past these two initiatives in 2015 and 2018 because they were sick of the gerrymandering, the way that they were making up districts, state districts on a whim to favor the Republican Party.

[2:46] But because they accepted this watered-down language, what got passed, there were loopholes in it. And we found out how big those loopholes were. You could drive a truck through them during the last round of reapportionment map drawing when the Republicans in the State House ignored seven court decisions against them to get a fair map. And they lost every time in the Ohio Supreme Court and they just waited it out. That’s how big these loopholes and these previous initiatives were. So a citizens committee got together and composed another initiative and what this initiative would do would be completely cut out politicians from the process. There would be a citizens committee and this is what, I think this was the 2018 amendment initially was going to have a citizens commission appointed by some retired judges, and it was going to freeze out the politicians completely. And then that was what was changed in the deal that they made with Matt Huffman and the people in the Ohio legislature at the time.

[4:07] So, this time they wrote a new initiative, and it’s going to cut out the politicians completely and have a citizens committee made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five non-aligned people appointed by a retired judge. And the people that get appointed cannot be politicians. They cannot be in serving any public service at the time. And the courts would oversee the whole process if there’s any problems. So this Citizens Initiative, they got over 700,000 signatures to put it on the ballot, and they only needed like 400,000. But in these trying times with these super majorities of Republicans, you have to bring your A game and you have to do more work than is necessary because they will nickel and dime you to death.

[5:06] So the next part of this process was that it had to go before the ballot board in order to write the ballot language that’s going to appear on the voting booth for people in November.

[5:23] Republicans, the radical Republicans in the Ohio House, decided to take this opportunity to mess with the initiative. And they weren’t going to accept the, I think it’s like one or two page summary that the committee that developed this initiative came up with and decide to adopt their own. So Frank LaRose, who’s the Secretary of State, who’s an acolyte of Donald Trump, and his henchman, Teresa Gaborone, and some old guy, lobbyist, who’s like, I think in his 90s, that they just wheel in for these votes, decided on a language that doesn’t, it’s just so far off the mark. It doesn’t describe what the initiative is at all. It’s charged language, misleading, deceptive, and they passed it on a party line three to two. There’s three Republicans and two Democrats on the ballot board. And this is the GOP summary. It says, Ohioans would be asked to vote yes or no on an amendment to repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors participating in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018.

[6:52] The summary further claims the measure would eliminate the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts. And as this new substack, the down ballot, points out, the 2015 and 2018 amendments did little to stop the GOP from enacting gerrymandered maps. And those earlier measures were put on the ballot by Republican lawmakers to undermine voter-led efforts at reform and contain major loopholes. So, as a result, voters have been unable to hold their representatives accountable for their redistricting decisions. Republicans have won supermajorities in the legislature in every election for more than a decade, regardless of voters’ overall preferences statewide. They even managed to do so in 2012, when Democratic candidates for the statehouse won a majority of the vote. So Frank LaRose and Teresa Gavirone decided to write the summary to put it as in the biggest negative light as they could for them.

[8:05] Now, they tried this before when they tried to sabotage the Reproductive Rights Amendment last year, and they wrote it pretty negatively as well and misleading. And the group that had that initiative did sue, and the Ohio Supreme Court just made them change a couple of words but kept the rest of it. But fortunately, the voters weren’t put off by that, and they saw for what it was and correctly voted to pass that ballot initiative. Hopefully, that’s what happens here. But the problem is, why this is a concern, is that this ballot language, if it stands, this is what the Republicans are going to use in their TV ads against it. Because they’re going to say, well, just look at the summary. It says it’s going to take away your right to hold people accountable.

[9:13] And so it’s almost like the worst part of Fox News, where one of their pundits says, well, some say this is happening, and then their newsreaders just repeat it. You know, they’re creating this drama that does not exist with this initiative. It’s not taking away the power from the people. It’s actually increasing the power of the people by cutting out the legislators who refuse to abide by the previous amendments.

[9:53] So, you know, I hope I don’t I don’t I’m not I’m not hopeful that they’ll be able to get this language changed to be more neutral and in an actual description of what the initiative does. Because the Ohio Supreme Court now has a majority of Republicans, and the one person that supported anti-gerrymandering was the Chief Justice. She retired, and she helped lead the Citizen Initiative to put this on the ballot. So she’s not there. So they’ll probably defer to Frank LaRose and say, oh, it’s okay. Okay, you know, he did his job.

[10:42] But so that’s why this initiative to get rid of gerrymandering in Ohio is so important. And so the backers of the initiative, they need to come out hard and explain exactly what it is and what it actually does. So that it kind of will cancel out some of the ads that I know is coming from the other side. Where they’re going to quote from the ballot language. And so they’re hoping that low information voters who only get their information from TV ads will then go into the voting booth and say, hey, I’m not voting for this. It’s going to take away my power. And that is not true at all. So, yeah, it gets exhausting sometimes to be a resident of Ohio. Trust me on that one.

[11:34] For more information about any of the topics covered in this episode, check out our show notes at secularleft.com.

[11:42] Music.

[11:48] As many of you know, I am not a member of a political party. I refuse to join a party. It goes back to how the parties operate. I don’t believe that state law here in Ohio should enshrine two-party rule. I don’t believe in two-party rule. I think it should be multi-parties and that they should lower the bar for parties to participate in elections if people want to do parties.

[12:22] And plus, there’s some philosophical differences I have with the people that run these parties. For example, when Barack Obama won his election in 2008, I was all on board. And the reason why I was on board was because they had this 50 state thing where they made sure that they were that they had an office and volunteers and people and they were paying attention to every single state, all 50 states. But they did like an all 50 states thing. I like that. I don’t agree with with only running a campaign to win the electoral college. I think that’s a cheap way of trying to win an election. Of course, it didn’t help that Hillary in 2016 did not do that. She didn’t play the Electoral College and she got sideswiped by Trump, because he happened to win the right number of Electoral College votes and was elected president even though Hillary won the most votes, the most actual vote, the actual vote totals. I think Trump was behind like 3 million votes, and he lost the popular vote in 2020.

[13:48] But Joe Biden won the states that he needed to win for the Electoral College. So that’s another reason why I am not a party person. The Republican National Convention, I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t stand it at all, any moment of it. The racists, the bigots. I mean, they gave people signs that said mass deportations. You know, I just, I have a problem with fascism.

[14:19] I have too much historical knowledge about fascism. I just can’t, I can’t stand it. And I’m like, why are you guys so angry all the time? You hate everybody. You know, and then the latest thing is that they’re carrying around cups, specimen cups with J.D. Vance’s picture on it, and they think they’re being funny. They have no sense of humor. They don’t actually have a sense of humor. They do shit and think it’s funny, and it’s not. But anyway, they’re kind of like a bad comet. They’re kind of like Joe Rogan when he tries to tell a joke, and he ends up telling a joke and punches down, and it’s not funny. He thinks it’s hilarious, but it’s not funny. That’s why I don’t like Joe Rogan. Anyway, so I was partaking in some of the Democratic National Convention. Just to check it out, I watched some of the speeches. I watched the roll call vote, which was pretty neat. The music was too loud for my taste, but maybe because I’m just getting old.

[15:29] So, you know, and I watched Michelle Obama’s speech, which was excellent. And President Obama’s speech, that was also excellent. Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, he gave a good speech. And it’s pretty clear, you know, which candidate that I would prefer.

[15:56] Even though I’m not a member of the party. And so I didn’t watch all the speeches because, you know, That convention’s for people in the party, and I’m not one of them. I’m not the demographic. But what I do do, do, do, do, is I check out the news coverage. And, of course, it’s the classic news coverage. Kamala is running, and so the press is pissed off because she refuses to have interviews, which is technically true but not true.

[16:33] Um, and that she doesn’t have her policy positions completely formed, documented, and ready to go on day one. The media. And, of course, some of the MAGAs, uh, latch onto that, like our esteemed lieutenant governor, uh, corrupted lieutenant governor, John Husted. He’s like, uh, uh, where’s their policies? There’s not even on the website. side. We know what Kamala stands for. She says it in her stump speech all the time. She’s part of the Biden administration. And from what I hear, she plans on continuing a lot of Joe Biden’s policies going forward. So we’re not totally ignorant of what she stands for or how she’s going to do it. Like all politicians, when you’re running for election, you don’t have everything completely formed. You don’t have details. The details come later. It’s like.

[17:38] When they’re talking about tax breaks for children, children tax credits or whatever they’re called, a president can say, hey, I’d like to get some tax credits for children, but it still takes Congress to enact that into law. A president can have aspirational ideas, but they’re limited in what they can actually do on day one. You know, they need to have Congress help them out in a lot of things to pass laws. Because, again, the president is the chief executive officer. They’re the ones that enforce the law. And they can suggest laws. That’s why they work with their party members in Congress to, you know, hey, I want to do this. And then somebody will introduce a bill that does that. Okay, so that’s how government typically works. So the fact that I don’t know, she doesn’t have like a 10 point plan. She’s going to enact this and do this and do that. I’m not worried about it. Well, for top of the reason is because she’s not Trump. I don’t care. I mean, it could be the yellow pages could be running against Trump and I’d vote for the yellow pages.

[19:01] But I am less likely to be affected, well, like I always say, I’m a white, cisgendered man. It doesn’t matter to me who gets elected president. I’m good. I’m the default.

[19:18] For good or for bad, I’m the default. But I care about my friends and loved ones who are not white, cisgendered men.

[19:30] You know, I know one or two trans individuals. I know a few LGBT friends of mine. I care about what happens to them. And I know that from her history and what she’s done as a vice president so far, what she did as attorney general, I know that she’s going to be somebody that’s not going to hurt my friends and loved ones intentionally. She doesn’t have an idea that she’s going to ban gender-affirming care. She doesn’t have a plan to ban abortion. You know, I know what her policies are going to be conceptualized, conceptuals, okay? And I think some people, especially the pundit class and the beltway media, they get upset about that because they want to compare and contrast and label. And, you know, if you don’t know what the difference is between Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump.

[20:50] You might be having a mental breakdown or something because it’s just so obvious.

[20:57] But the reason why I’m bringing all this up, It’s because the one part about these conventions and elections in general, one of the reasons why I hate party politics in the first place is that Crooks and Liars website had an article up today. It says, the title is, Schumer Eyes Changes to Filibuster for Abortion and Voting Bills. And it subheaded it with a quote, Of course, Seminoff and Manchin voted no. No, that’s why we couldn’t change the rules. Well, they’re both gone, Schumer told reporters. Well, we’ve been down this road before. Because back in 2022, after the Dobbs decision came out, before the election that fall, the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate. And of course, then they had Joe Biden in the White House. The Dobbs decision comes out in June.

[21:55] And everybody’s just, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? Well, somebody said, let’s codify Roe and get that done. All right. They had they had the chance and and they couldn’t get it done because Seminole, I think it was Seminole and Manchin both filibustered it in in the Senate. And then you had Joe Biden during the campaign season saying, you know, hey, if we keep the House and the Senate, you know, we’ll codify Roe and you got to vote for us. And so they stopped trying to do it because they could have changed the rules and got it done. Trust me, it’s a Senate rule. It’s not in the Constitution. The filibuster is not in the Constitution. All they needed was a simple majority to change the rule.

[22:50] And this takes me back to when Harry Reid was the majority leader, the Democrat majority leader in the Senate during, I think it was when President Obama was president. And he used to tell people, well, I can’t do a vote for that because I don’t have 60 votes. He wanted a filibuster-proof vote count before you would even consider anything. And that’s just wrong. The filibuster is stupid.

[23:24] Like I said, it’s just it’s just a Senate rule. It’s not in the Constitution. So, like I said, we’ve been down this road before. Schumer’s like, you’ve got to vote for us and we’ll do all these things. And I just don’t believe him. I don’t believe the Democrats because there’ll be some other thing that comes up. You know, yes, Seminole and Manchin are leaving and leaving the Senate. And more than likely, the Democrats are going to lose Manchin’s seat to the Republicans, the actual Republicans, not Joe Manchin, not a blue dog Democrat, but actually lose it to the Republicans. So if they retain all of the elections that they have now, which is likely, more than likely, then they’ll have a majority of just one vote. It’ll be 51 to 50.

[24:26] 51 to 50? Yeah, 50, yeah, it’ll be split. So it’ll be too close. So I can see when we come up, it’s all it’s going to take is just one senator to filibuster. That’s all it takes, is just one senator. And like I said, they could change the rules like they did for the judges. You know, they couldn’t get any judges confirmed when Mitch McConnell was in charge and they got a deal where they allowed these judges to be appointed and they would be exempt from the filibuster rule. See, they can change it. So, you know, I’m sorry. I just don’t believe Chuck Schumer when he says during the election campaign, campaign if you vote for us and keep us keep us in in the senate and uh uh get back control of the house you know we’ll do all this stuff for you because i just don’t believe it because they’ve they’ve had their chance and they didn’t do it they decided to use that idea as an election pawn, as a gimmick to try to get elected that’s why i really do not like party politics Hello.

[25:48] This is Doug, host of Secular Left, reminding you that I like to be validated. If you like this podcast and want to thank me, feel free to buy me a coffee. Go to buymeacoffee.com slash secular left and donate some cash to help make this a better show and validate me as a person. You’ll feel better in the morning. The bane of my existence during election season is the television political ads. They can go anywhere across the gambit of.

[26:28] Being basically boring, just saying, hey, I’m running for office, vote for me to very, very condescending and telling misinformation, you know, saying, you know, like my my opponent supports letting criminals out of jail without without serving their sentence. You know, stuff like that. So usually what happens is I might listen once or twice to an ad and then the next time it comes on, I hit the mute button on the TV or change the channel or something because they get to be repetitive and I don’t like them. I was I’m not shocked by some of the derogatory and negative ads that come from Republicans, because that’s all they’ve got. They can’t they can’t do any ads or talk about policy because they don’t have any.

[27:23] You know, as Governor Tim Walz from Minnesota is running for vice president, as he said, they’re weird. They just do weird stuff in their ads. And a lot of times their ads are falsehoods or misleading. And unfortunately in this country, political ads are protected by the First Amendment. So a politician can lie mercilessly through their ad and there’s nothing that can be done about it. You know, if the local lumberyard lies about an ad in their ad about a sale and they call it a bait and switch where they claim something’s on sale and it’s never in stock. So you have to buy the more expensive. They can get in trouble. They can get fined.

[28:11] They’d have their ads taken apart, taken off the air. But for politicians, if you lie, knowingly lie and get caught in a lie, nothing happens to you. And people are like, well, we need to have the people make that determination. Well, I don’t see it that way. I figure if you’re going to lie in your ad, you’re a terrible person.

[28:34] But I think that media outlets should refuse to air ads that they know knowingly lie. You know, if they fact check an ad before they run it, and it’s nothing but lies, you just don’t run the ad. But, of course, then they get sued and all that stuff. Anyway, but I’m not talking about the obvious lies, you know, from conservatives and Republicans. Republicans, one of the ads that’s bothered me recently is actually from a Democrat. Representative Marcy Kaptur of the 9th District here in Ohio, the district that I live in, is running for re-election. When they recently had a court adopt a gerrymandered map, it had moved the 9th District. It used to go from Toledo along the shore of Lake Erie to Lorraine. Now it shifted to the West where it includes Toledo and goes out into the reddish reddest of red Trump country in, in Fulton and Williams County and over to the West of Toledo.

[29:48] So Marcy’s got a challenge to try to get her seat. I think she’s been in Congress for something like 20, 22 years or something like that. And so she’s going to have a struggle on her hand because a large swath of her constituents aren’t going to vote for her because they are not Democrats. They don’t support her policies. They don’t support her. They don’t like her. And they got a Trump-endorsed MAGA candidate, Derek Maron, who’s a zealot Christian nationalist who wants to ban abortion, and so he’s running against her.

[30:31] So I get why she did this ad, but it’s still very disappointing. I’m very disappointed by this ad. I just am. So let me go ahead and play the full ad, and then I’ll explain why I’m disappointed by it. So here’s her ad. It’s titled, Who Am I or Who I Am or something like that from Marcy Kaptur. America has gotten off course. The far left ignoring millions illegally crossing the border. And trying to defund the police. The far right taking away women’s rights. And protecting greedy corporations at every turn. I’m Marcie Kaptur and I’m fighting for what matters to us. Like stopping illegal immigration. Bringing our jobs home and growing new jobs right here. I’m fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare and to fix the offset. Because that’s your money. I insisted on some of the largest penalties on China ever. because I always protect Ohio jobs. And I reject my opponent’s demand to ban abortion with no exceptions because no government should ever force the victim of rape to bear a child. Look, I don’t work for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. I work for you. I’m Marci Kaptur. I approve this message because I have always fought for what matters most to you, and I always will.

[31:54] Okay. OK, so for those that don’t understand, the ad opens up with with Marcy saying America has gotten off course.

[32:04] And then she claims the far left ignores the millions of illegal immigrants that stream over the border. And the far left wants to defund the police.

[32:17] To me, that’s a cheap shot. She took a cheap shot at the far left. And so if you look at the ad, they actually provide a source for her claims, which is good. I like political ads that do that. But the first source is a statement by fellow Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who supposedly said at the time that she wanted to see the Department of Homeland Security dissolved. solved. OK, so Marcy takes that as saying that the far left ignores the millions of illegal immigrants that stream over the border. But that’s not what AOC statement, that’s not what she talked about. Well, the first thing is that, oh, AOC doesn’t speak for the entire far left, whatever that means. That’s a code word. That’s a dog whistle, far left. But the source that is cited in the ad is from 2019, and that was during the time that the Trump administration was using the Department of Homeland Security to separate families at the border. And many of those families never got back together. Parents never got reunited with their children. And sometimes the children got sent back, got deported.

[33:44] And there were reports of squalid conditions at some of the detention facilities. So basically, the Department of Homeland Security was falling down on its job to take care of the border, keep the families together, and take care of the ones that they decided detained.

[34:01] And so AOC and many progressives, like myself, talked about reforming the immigration system. We’ve been talking about reforming the immigration system for decades.

[34:13] And Marcy’s take that the far left is ignoring millions of illegal immigrants is misleading, especially about the actual views of people like AOC. You know, none of these people, AOC and other progressives, weren’t saying have no borders and just let anybody in. It just needed to be reformed. And I think that came about with the bill that the Biden administration brokered with Republicans before Trump put the kibosh on it. And that was one bill to reform it. But during the Trump administration, nobody did anything to try to reform it. And so that’s why she stated, well, maybe we need to get rid of Department of Homeland Security, which was created after 9-11. So it’s not a very new, not a very old agency. So, you know, it just, that’s all she has thought about was reform. form. And I believe that, in fact, the phrasing that Marcy used in the ad sounds like a Trump talking point. And it is not a fact about an important issue. There is nobody on the quote far left unquote that is talking about it. And I should know I am familiar with some of the people on the left side of the aisle.

[35:37] So that debunks that part of the ad. Then Marcy uses another quote from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And again, AOC is a Democrat representative from New York known as part of the, quote, squad, unquote, and a lightning rod for a lot of conservatives. And so Marcy decided to use another quote, saying that she plays into the false narrative that the, quote, far left, unquote, wants to defund the police.

[36:16] And so to be sure, AOC made those comments. But again, that came during 2020, just after the murder of George Floyd. When a lot of people, a lot of progressives were talking about defunding the police. And that was mainly talking about reforming police. And that was shifting some of the funding that they used to pay for more cops and more guns and more militarization, and moving it into programs, social welfare programs that deal with mental health issues. Because a lot of people that get needlessly murdered by cops, they get, it’s called suicide by cop, where they’re having a mental health issue and they force the cops to shoot them. That’s some of it. Other parts, too, is some cops just don’t know how to handle somebody that’s having a mental health break. And so all AOC and progressives were talking about was moving some of that money that’s used to hurt people and police people and unfairly police people of color and move that into areas of dealing with mental health issues, sending…

[37:35] Sending social workers to a scene rather than the SWAT team and also working on training to de-escalate the de-escalate situations before police have to use deadly force. That’s another thing a lot of police don’t do. You know, they’re all about the power. They got the gun and they start throwing their weight around. So that’s all they were talking about. And it got tagged in the media as defund the police. And it got twisted by conservatives to mean that people wanted to do away with the cops completely. And now some people on the far left, the actual far left, want to get rid of the cops. They think community policing is the way to go instead of having a militaristic band of people that don’t even live in your community riding around in armored vehicles with body armor and helmets and machine guns. You know, they’re talking about a more sedate, relaxed policing, form of policing. You know, instead of instead of hitting somebody overhead with a billy club, you’d be nice to them and you try to get them the services and help that they need. Then maybe they won’t be violent or rob a store or things like that. That’s all they were talking about.

[39:04] And so basically AOC was trying to prevent the same situation that happened to George Floyd.

[39:15] And then again, I was troubled by the phrasing that Kaptur used in the ad. It sounded more like something that I would see in a J.D. Vance ad than from a Democrat. And I get it. I understand completely why she did it that way. Probably her media consultants or consultants said that attacking AOC and the far left would appease the MAGA members that now populate her 9th district. But she wasted a cheap shot on allies in the false hope that people that don’t like her, that would never vote for her anyway, would vote for her if she used their language. The truth is, they won’t vote for her no matter what. But, you know, they won’t vote for her because she has a D after her name. Now I’ll have to hold my nose to make sure that Derek Maron isn’t elected to that seat. Because he’s going to be ten times worse than Marcy. But that still doesn’t justify her ad and what she said in the ad. And that’s why I’m very disappointed. And I’m not sure why she wanted to make her hard election even harder by also burning all her bridges with the progressives, because ironically she voted for a bill that was named after George Floyd to demand reforming police.

[40:44] Now I could also add that in that that is part of defund the police and she voted for it.

[40:53] But, you know, she wants people to believe that she’s middle of the road, like the last bit of her ad where she says she doesn’t work for Trump and she doesn’t work for President Biden. She is not middle of the road. She’s a bit conservative. She used to be against abortion. She probably personally still is against abortion. And she just wants to throw some red meat to the rural areas of her district,

[41:22] thinking that that’s going to get over them. And just like me calling her out on it, she’s going to get called out on it on that side too. And I just thought it was a waste of time. Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website, or by sending us a note at comments at Secular Left dot US. Our theme music is Dank and Nasty, composed using Amplify Studio.

[42:20] Music.