Might We Be Better off without Political Parties?

Political parties are a damned nuisance. Are they necessary?

Talking recently with a Republican, he frequently spouted familiar nonsense. Many of his statements seemed so demonstrably wrong that it was hard to believe that he believed them. Mine likely struck him the same way.

But he’s a smart guy. If we had to solve some practical problem, we could collaborate effectively, using our different skills to fashion a reasonable solution. On some governmental issue, absent the party system, we might forge a reasonable compromise.

Party loyalties make us speak less frankly and listen less openly. We may think a national leader is too mired in resentment over a loss to address current issues properly, but if he’s a major force in our party, we avoid disagreeing openly. We may think another national leader we generally admire approved assassinating more people in other countries than is either legal or strictly necessary, but we know our “enemies” in the other party will swoop down on any criticism we make, like a hawk snatching a mouse.

Biden is a good but imperfect man and president. Why deny his flaws, or unduly exaggerate his positive qualities. (I make mistakes often. Even my perfect wife makes occasional mistakes.) Once our climate emergency became a political loyalty test, our slim chances to take serious action evaporated.

Parties get in our way. They’re also the first step to an emotional division among people analogous to rooting loyally (blindly) for opposing football teams. We’re fellow citizens of the United States. You and I. We share a wonderful country that often errs; and, as a rampaging elephant does more harm than a rampaging mouse, our country’s missteps can have out-sized consequences.

I learned in college that the party system was essential. Parties provide informal caucuses and training grounds for political leaders, and organize financial and other support for those leaders; and, as the world grows more complex, maybe we need huge parties facilitating communications among folks with somewhat similar views.

Still, maybe we’d be better off without parties. Maybe we’d do better with a dozen rather than two. Conventional wisdom holds that multi-party systems are more nuanced, but that having just two, with a strong executive, allows faster response to emergencies. (What if the two-party system becomes the dangerous emergency?)

Maybe parties were fine once but a danger now. Many people seriously believe that our national leaders are a conspiratorial band of child-molesters. (How they could all maintain a successful criminal conspiracy for years is beyond me, as is why adults want to have sex with kids.) Others say the parties are just a show, distracting us from the longstanding conspiracy of the powerful to cheat and control the rest of us. (Certainly the elite keeps making our inequitable system more inequitable. The rich get richer no matter who’s in power.)

I don’t have an answer. Certainly if one large, cohesive group is bent on destroying democracy, I’d want a large, cohesive group opposing that. But we should each recognize in ourselves any tendency to coast on “the party line” rather than search for truth, or to suppose (let alone allege) that folks whose actions have bad consequences necessarily sought those consequences.

I’ve met few truly evil people, and good folks from every ideological corner. Rather than focusing on those “evil people” in some party, let’s find a way to come together to improve our world, for everyone.

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[The above column appeared yesterday morning, Sunday, 24 April, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[A comment on the Sun-News site stated:

“The Republican Party - of which I was a member for most of my adult life - quickly devolved into a quasi-terrorist, organized crime syndicate under trump. Almost everything they say is a lie, leading up to THE BIG LIE, in fealty to trump. Very few Republican leaders dare to resist loyalty to THE FATHER OF LIES/REPUBLICAN PARTY LEADER.

“The GOP is a Party in decline, desperate to cling to power by any means and has resolved itself to mendacity and violence in a failed coup against the US Congress. Truth, justice and the American Way no longer exist in GOP culture; the few Republican leaders like Cheney, Romney and Kinzinger are outliers punished by trump's minions.

“Goodman's nostalgic perspective on the two party system is wishful thinking hoping to build a bridge with a Republican Party flirting with Fascism having considered imposing martial law to maintain power during the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021; that too failed.

“About half the U.S. voters wanted to believe in Trumpism and its hegemonic hyperbole to 'Make America Great Again'. And then they lost an election, attacked Democracy writ large and maintain their faith in Trump. Republicans are lying, sore losers devoid of leadership. There can be no reconciliation with sworn enemies of the United States.”

Yeah. That’s what one voice is repeating in my head as I write such a column. Flat facts are, Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators are attacking democracy in illegal ways, and are not open to discussion. Yep. So there’s no point in talking across the divide.

But where does that lead? [asks another inner voice] Perhaps we know: to the kind of open, unrestricted animosity that led to Senator Sumner’s caning in the Senate and ultimately to civil war. In Berkeley or Manhattan, it’s perhaps easier to dismiss a substantial minority of our citizens. You don’t see as much of them. Yes, I think Trump should be punished for his crimes, if/when he’s tried and convicted. Yes, some significant share of his followers are fellow racists or folks who’ve somehow become convinced that saving fetuses is so supremely important that we should let our country and world go to seed if necessary; but all are fellow citizens, and many Trump supporters are basically decent folks. If you don’t talk with them, what’s your plan? Get a gun and wear a bulletproof vest, as folks who disagree over politics start sniping at each other? Lose an election to the Trumpists and cry righteously at home? Lose an election to Trumpists and start shooting? I’m curious. What’s the end game?

I agree it’s important to be incredibly vigilant and protect our democracy and our decency against every Trumpian threat? But then what, if we stop talking?]

[A second comment, received privately, read:

“Our system is deliberately designed to thwart democracy.  It is specifically designed to create conflicts and encourage deadlocks. Our definition of liberty is the absolute freedom to do whatever you want without regard to damage inflicted on others.  Our system basically creates a permanent deadlock to prevent our government from ever being effective in administration of genuine justice.  It was designed to protect the rich FROM justice under the shell of the corporate charter.”

Certainly much in the system, including the Electoral College, the U.S. Senate, and the way the House would choose a President in an indecisive election, if it ever had to (by vote of state delegations, with dozens of representatives (plus each state’s two senators) in New York, Pennsylvania, or California having one vote per state, equal to the vote by New Mexico’s three representatives (plus two senators)) are all distinctly antidemocratic, and, collectively, worth a separate column. But good luck changing anything!]

 

Justice Clarence Thomas Shouldn't Vote on Cases Involving Ginny Thomas

 Dear Chief Justice Roberts:

What are you going to do about Clarence Thomas?

Justice is blind. The statue, anyway. Most judges try to blind themselves to extraneous factors like a litigant’s political influence or ideology, as I’m sure you do. Our judicial system depends on folks feeling some level of trust in it.

One basic step (what lawyers call “a necessary but not sufficient condition”) is that judges recuse themselves from hearing cases involving friends and family, or companies they own stock in – or where there’s even the appearance of impropriety. (For example, after two dogs attacked a beloved local artist, the first two municipal judges assigned to the case recused themselves because they knew her.) Many judges curtail their social lives, particularly as regards lawyers who appear in their courtrooms.

Justice Breyer has routinely recused himself from cases involving his brother, a federal judge. Ketanji Brown Jackson says she’ll recuse herself from a case involving Harvard and affirmative action, although they don’t involve her, her family, or her business. (She’s on Harvard’s board.)

Donald Trump and his pals have tried like the devil to overturn a federal election. To veto the choice of the people (and even the electoral college) because they’re bad losers. Something we never saw Tilden or Hoover or Nixon do. It borders on treason, frankly; and Ginny Thomas was right in the middle of it, texting Trump’s cronies, egging them on.

Take the recent case on whether or not documents from January 6 have to be turned over. You and seven other justices, three appointed by Trump, thought it open-and-shut, with no reasonable legal excuse for withholding the documents. Only Justice Thomas didn’t see it that way. Only Thomas, whose wife’s communications might be among those documents, thought they should be kept hidden.

If Thomas’s wife was dealing drugs, and he insisted on presiding over a drug trial related to her, or if she was running a child-prostitution ring out of a pizza joint, and got charged with a crime, no one would countenance it.

This is actually worse! Ginny Thomas has been trying to undermine our democracy by negating our Presidential Election. Still, “Justice” Thomas won’t sit it out.

Ginny Thomas is entitled to the same presumption of innocence we all are. Maybe she didn’t commit or conspire to commit treason or election-law violations. But how will the country ever know, if her husband gets to decide whether the evidence can even be looked at?

This is your watch, Chief. I know that you value the honor and credibility of the U.S. Supreme Court. You’re aware that history will likely recall this period as the Roberts Court. Just as the “Warren Court” outlawed segregated schools by overruling Plessy v Ferguson, recognized the procedural rights of folks accused of crimes but presumed innocent, and decided Roe v. Wade; and the “Burger Court” drew back from some civil rights, limiting or tossing various rights of poor folks.

Will you have folks sneer when they refer to the Roberts Court, on which such Thomas travesties continued, with other justices too timid to speak up?

You’re in a tough spot. Thomas should be impeached; but, in Trump’s words, Thomas could walk down Pennsylvania Avenue murdering people and not be convicted. (Some will accept any misconduct because Thomas votes as they would wish.)

But hadn’t you better try? Something? Some last-ditch effort to save the Court? And your legacy?

                                                 – 30 --

 [The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 17 April, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper’s website ("Supreme Court Justice Thomas Should Recuse Himself or Be Excused") and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[Of course, Thomas, unlike other judges or justices, is not subject to specific ethical laws or rules on this issue; but his conduct is sufficiently out of line with basic judicial ethics that, on the law and his conduct alone, he could reasonably be impeached and convicted. If we were talking not about a politically sensitive issue here but about a garden-variety crime – say, a 4^th Amendment case in which a clearly lawful police search of Mrs. Thomas’s car had turned up 20 pounds of heroin, or the IRS was pursuing back taxes and wanted to to an audit – there’d have been a universal outcry over Clarence Thomas’s conduct. He’d clearly deserve impeachment.

However, impeachment will never happen, because the Republicans and perhaps the Democrats will care more about keeping or gaining “control” of the Court. House Republicans would refuse now to vote for impeachment, or Senate Republicans for conviction, because too many of their voters like how Thomas votes on choice/abortion and other favorite issues, and conviction might allow President Biden to replace him with a young and progressive or moderate justice. Were we under a Trump or DeSantis or Scott regime, Democrats might advocate impeachment, but might mute that advocacy a bit because Thomas might be replaced by someone quite as far out of the mainstream but considerably younger.

So we’re stuck with the guy; but he should be gone. ]

Fred Johnson's Movie

I’d like to see Fred Johnson’s only movie again.

Forty years ago I was a filmmaker here. I edited film in my friend Bud’s [Professor Orville Joseph Wanzer, Jr.’s] office in Milton Hall, at NMSU. Bud taught filmmaking and film appreciation. University filmmaking courses were new, and at better-known schools students didn’t touch the cameras for years. But Bud had figured out that military surplus cameras were available free to New Mexico schools and universities. Our used 16 mm Bolexes and Auricons weren’t state-of-the-art, but we loved ‘em; and Bud could not only discuss the meaning of Ingmar Bergman’s or Federico Fellini’s films, he could fix cameras. His students immediately got to check out cameras, shoot film, have Bud process it, and then edit it.

Fred Johnson wasn’t a film student. Fred Johnson was an idealistic young Dineh man on his way through NMSU on the way to being a lawyer. He lived in married student housing with his wife and at least one child.

If Fred told me just why he took such an offbeat academic byway as Bud’s filmmaking course, I forgot long ago. Bud’s courses were simple: you made a 10-minute film, we watched it, and Bud gave you a grade. No tests, no term papers, no nonsense.

I was often at work on editing. Digression for younger folks: just as there weren’t always telephones or motorcars, video used to not exist. There was no digital editing, no FinalCutPro, baffling ‘til you learn it, then wonderfully quick and easy. You literally cut movie film into strips, hung the strips on hooks in special bins that had soft cloth to keep the hanging film from getting scratched. Then, with actual glue, you spliced it together in the desired order. And refined it as necessary.

Fred shot a film; but on the last week of the semester, he had no clue how to edit it. So one long night, or maybe parts of two nights when we were both in the editing rooms, I taught him how to edit, then answered occasion questions.

When Fred showed his film, it was damned good for a student film; and it’s one I wish I could show some folks even now. His film was a day in the life of his daughter, who was in grade school. It showed her at home, listening to Navajo music, eating with her family, then on the schoolbus, surrounded by shouting kids and loud radios, then in school, then at home again. It showed, without any political or philosophical commentary, how jarringly different portions of her day were from each other. How foreign the school environment was for her. It stuck in my mind.

Fred became a lawyer, and a Navajo Tribal Council member. When protesters occupied a place on the reservation, Fred was one of the few outsiders they trusted. He flew in and out, negotiating. One flight crashed, killing him. It was a sad end to someone who might have done much good for the Navajo Nation. Good guy, too.

Recently, in connection with a documentary about Bud, folks found Fred’s film, and other student films from that era. It’s been copied onto video. But without Fred’s permission – or, now, his family’s – it can’t be shown.

I want to see it again. I want to make sure Fred’s family has a copy. If anyone reading this can help us reach them, please do. Thanks!

                                               – 30 – 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 10 April, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[If someone knows Fred’s widow or children, please contact me, or have them do so, and I’ll put ‘em in touch with the people at NMSU who digitized his film and others from that era. Similarly, anyone else who made a film in Bud Wanzer’s class around the early 1970s and doesn’t have a copy of it should let us know.] 

[I liked Fred, but didn't know him well.  As someone who also sought political change, I liked that in becoming a lawyer he was still fighting for change.  (A caller just now who read the column and had known Fred as a young lawyer said Fred was head of the Coalition for Navajo Liberation.)  As a decent, thoughtful fellow who was both a fighter for change and a member of the Tribal Council (and a lawyer), Fred might have done a lot of good.]

[He's remembered, too.   A 2017 letter to the Navajo Times recalled:

"Prior to AIM, I, like so many others, was still recovering from historical trauma of the attempted genocide of our people. The younger generation had not yet been told the truth. The elder generation was silent due to fear of the federal government. There was discontent among the Native Americans and it could no longer be tolerated by those who were living the horror occurring in the cities. Natives were being targeted.

"Natives were being murdered. Leaders like Dennis Banks and locally, the late Fred Johnson, began addressing the problem. Natives were politically known as the “silent minority.” It was unheard of for Natives to speak out and when they did it caused waves of anger."

[I've mentioned Bud in four previous columns: Celebrating Lives and Llife (19March 2019);  Teachers, Actors, and Time (30Sept2012);  and Going to Derry (14July2019), and The Devil's Mistress Comes Home (1December2019).   "Celebrating" was written soon after he died; "Derry" was about a trip with younger filmmakers (videographers) to our land in Derry, where Bud lived for 26 years after he retired, and has pictures of him, the place, and his stained-glass; and the 2012 piece was about recalling meeting Bud, Mark Medoff, and Keith Wilson in August 1969, when I first arrived here.   The fourth described a showing of Bud's film, "The Devil's Mistress," in the Rio Grande Theater, where it had premiered with such joy and high hopes in 1965.]

 

Bud on Blue Mesa (1979)

Our Inspection of Public Records Act

While we watch Russia illustrate the dangers of authoritarian governments, let’s not take for granted our open meetings and freedom of information laws, which help make democracy almost a reality.

As New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) states, because “a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate, . . . all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information” about their government. IPRA mandates that, for all levels of government, “to provide persons with such information is an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties of public officers and employees.” Read that to officials who act as if your requests for information are interrupting their real work. Answering you IS their real work.

Putin would jail you for suggesting that. Some authoritarians in this country evade these basic principles.

Courts have taken those words seriously. They’ve ordered governments to comply, construed IPRA’s exceptions narrowly, as the law commands, and used IPRA’s penalty provisions to punish government offices for violations. The law requires courts to make those offices pay attorney fees of citizens who win IPRA cases. It authorizes additional damages, which the courts have been less likely to award, partly because many cases involve newspapers and TV stations that want the documents, but aren’t as concerned about compensation for wasted time and effort. For some violations, courts can sock offices up to $100 for each day they’re not in compliance. Yeah, it comes from the public treasury; but the unnecessary expenditure is public information, and might help the public contemplate change.

IPRA’s exceptions are few and limited, though officials try to hide behind them, often with no lawful basis. Confidential attorney-client communications, legitimate trade secrets, and inmates’ physical/mental exams, are exceptions, as they should be. So are court filings that are under a protective order. (You can ask the court to lift such an order.)

Two key exceptions that officials stretch way out of shape to shield information involve law-enforcement records and “matters of opinion in personnel files or students’ cumulative files.” Officials who withhold whole files cost the public money. Officials must produce documents, redacting (or blacking out) opinions. If a police report includes an opinion about some officer’s performance, that exists outside someone’s personnel file and must be produced. So must citizen complaints.

With law-enforcement records, the law exempts only records which reveal “confidential sources, methods or information” or names and personal information about (a) persons suspected of but not charged with a crime or (b) victims of or witnesses to certain sex-related and/or violent crimes, such as violence toward a family-member, stalking, or criminal sexual penetration. (Names of law-enforcement witnesses are public information.) Obviously you can’t shield entire investigative files; but try telling that to some sheriffs.

The law makes it easy to request records. Describe the records, and include your name, address, and phone number. No need to say why you need the records. If you don’t want to use your name, have a lawyer or friend make the request. (If you ask orally, officials should supply records but can’t be punished for failing to.) Government offices can charge copying costs, but not for the time it takes to identify, locate, and collect documents.

These are rights we all share. Don’t let a cop or government clerk tell you otherwise. Hindering your investigation effectively censors whatever you might write about that investigation’s fruits.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 3 April, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[In the statute books, or on-line, IPRA is Chapter 14, Article 2, starting with 14-2-1. A useful tool to look for is the Attorney-General’s Guide to IPRA, which clarifies a few things. (I do not know whether that’s been revised since the 2019 changes, and am too lazy too look on this sunny sunday morning, but even if it hasn’t, almost everything in it is still valid. The main change in 2019 was to clarify the exceptions and delete at least one. Basics about public offices’ obligations, the procedures, the deadlines, and the penalties remain pretty much the same. The major exceptions have been clarified, in a way that’s helpful to folks seeking records. ] 

In my experience, a lot of IPRA disputes are avoidable. Too many result from some official getting irritated about some citizen and “having an attitude,” compounded by attorneys who are trying to do what their “clients” want, or are trying to prove something. There are lessons there:

1. While you should be firm in your requests and knowledgeable about the law, it’s not helpful to assume the records custodian is your enemy. S/he may actually be positive about following the law; and if the person or persons trying to hold back records are acting like jerks with you, they may also act that way with the custodian. So avoid unnecessary personal irritations. These folks are public servants: that means they should fulfill your lawful requests, but not that you should browbeat or insult them.

2. Lawyers should recognize: (a) that their “clients” are the public, as represented by elected or appointed officials, not underlings who may be withholding records to protect themselves or because they’re annoyed; and (b) that lawyers (both in-house or outside litigation attorneys) owe it to their clients to understand IPRA and explain it when necessary, even when the explanation is unwelcome, rather than getting all macho about these things or letting the client bully them into bad acts that will cost the public dollars. I’ve seen lawyers exemplify the best and the worst here.

3. Often either the public agency (and/or its lawyer) doesn’t fully understand IPRA, but will listen – and/or look up the law when you explain something. Recently I’ve had several situations where politely articulating the law, reiterating the penalties non-cooperation could elicit, and listening to the public agency’s legitimate concerns led to folks (or I) getting the requested documents without any big fuss. All things being equal, most people want to do the right thing. If egos, ignorance, ruffled feathers, or misplaced ambitions are getting in the way, deal with those if you can. Maintaining a reasonably friendly demeanor while sticking to your substantive rights is a helpful combination.

4. NMFOG – New Mexico Foundation for Open Government – can be extremely helpful. They welcome your calls, at (505) 764-3750, or your emails, to info@nmfog.org. At a recent presentation I did on IPRA, NMFOG Executive Director Shannon Kunkel advised us that FOG has now hired a full-time attorney to help with these sorts of issues. That means they can give you advice, and may also be able to refer you to a lawyer in your area who handles IPRA cases. (FOG’s website says FOG is in the process of hiring a full-time attorney, so I may have misunderstood Ms. Kunkel; but, either way, they can help. They also have information on the actual laws and on recent cases and attorney-general’s opinions on our sunshine laws, as well as copies of the AG's guides..]