Who's power should be limited?

Branches of government are supposed to be balanced and controlled by the people

I’ll admit I’m pretty annoyed. I’ll explain why in a minute.

But first I want to say that I try to avoid commenting on politics. Instead, I try to focus on media issues and avoid delving into the twists and turns of political maneuvering in Lansing or D.C. I report on a wide variety of topics and try to keep a diversity of sources, and in order to not alienate them, I try not to “throw stones” too often.

For someone who watches politics as closely as I do, and writes as frequently as I do, I think I let a lot slide by without saying anything. There is a high bar to meet before I’ll publicly admit to frustrations like this.

But Republican legislators really crossed a line with me this week. (To be clear, they were joined by a handful of Democrats, but it’s really a Republican-powered effort.)

It’s not that they repealed some of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency powers. They’ve wanted to do that for more than a year and it was probably bound to happen after the court case was decided last summer. Frankly, after the first few months of 2021, I was left with some questions about how she and MDHHS handled portions of the pandemic response myself.

It’s not even how they went about repealing the law, with a well-funded and in some ways shady campaign to acquire ballot signatures and a legislative end-run around both the ballot and Gov. Whitmer. Although I do have some issues with the repeated use of this tactic, which I believe effectively usurps two of the checks that are supposed to be built into our system of government; the people’s ballot initiative, and the executive veto.

Those things bother me, but what compels me to break silence on the matter is that, as they snatched the bill up to vote on it, they said they were doing it because Gov. Whitmer was displaying a “disturbing distrust” of the citizens of Michigan, and that they didn’t need her to “do our jobs for us.”

First of all, the governor was doing the job of an executive in a time of crisis. You don’t handle emergencies by committee, ask anyone with experience with emergencies, or committees. If she made mistakes, she should answer for them(Just like Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration and the Flint water crisis), but to tie any executive’s hands in a time of crisis is an incredibly ill-informed thing to do, and I’m being as nice as I can be here. I shouldn’t have to cite any examples, just look at the last two years.

Secondly, the only way that 60 people passing it through the House instead of nearly 10 million people voting on it statewide is actually an improvement is if you believe that the 148 people in the legislature are better equipped to decide what the rules are. That they are somehow more mature than the rest of us because they managed to win an election.

The state Republican leadership wants us to be okay with them infantilizing the whole voting public. They know what we want better than we do (they seem to say), and that’s their justification for not allowing this to go to the ballot.

What a load of crap.

I’ll admit that groupthink and majority rule don’t always result in the best of decisions, but this is simply the blatant erosion of executive power and voting rights in favor of minority rule and oligarchy.

I’m used to seeing politicians play dirty tricks, but the Republican party has become bald-faced in their outright shenanigans, peeing on our shoes and telling us it must be raining.

If Republican leaders weren’t so afraid of the result, they’d spend more time communicating to voters about the value of ballot initiatives, and less time maneuvering to keep the chance to vote away from us.

If they can’t use the tools we’ve given them honestly and responsibly, perhaps it’s time for another ballot measure to take those tools away.