The theme of this week is “democracy prevails!” Here are some highlights of democracy prevailing at home and abroad.
In Germany, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (say that five times fast), the state agency for Constitutional compliance, has placed the opposition AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) Party under government surveillance. This comes after the BfV alleged a regional branch of the AfD had normalized dehumanizing rhetoric and downplayed Nazism.
AfD, now the largest right-wing opposition party in Germany with 12% representation in the Bundestag (German Parliament), has been considered a black sheep of the German political system since they rose to fame and prominence following the Syrian Migrant Crisis. Their support grew in East Germany, specifically in regions like Saxony. Their political rhetoric is strongly nationalist, anti-Islamic, and anti-immigrationist.
It is alleged by AfD politicians that Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, whose appointees staff the BfV, are using the powerful state spy agency which was established after WWII to suppress their political opponents. But surely the kindly Chancellor Merkel is above such petty antics, and we can rest satisfied knowing that state spy agencies have delivered another win for Democracy™. Read the full story from NPR here.
In other news, Democrats plan to introduce a new version of the For the People Act, a bill that would set universal, federal standards for elections. The bill would mandate measures like early voting and same-day registration which has drawn the ire of Republicans before. Most interestingly, in my opinion, the bill seeks to give the job of redistricting to “independent commissions.”
There are some aspects that recommend the bill. On the one hand, it is true that a more uniform federal process would make elections, at the very least, a bit simpler. Much of the confusion of the 2020 election resulted from the rules for said election, which were different in basically every state. Accusations of election fraud, which are these days tantamount to sedition, were fueled in large part by the disparate rules across state lines that were perceived to make it easier for party officials in some states to cheat, or stack the deck in Biden’s favor. Yet, there’s also no doubt that some provisions, like universal same-day registration, are intended to help Democrats.
So more voters at the polls helps Democrats? I agree, so what. That’s not my problem. It’s perfectly normal for political parties to want to jerry-rig the rules to help their side. Republicans do the same thing with voter-ID laws. The most interesting bit to me was the part about the “independent” commissions tasked with redistricting. We all know that gerrymandering is a problem and that both sides do it, but it looks like the Democrats might be playing for keeps. If redistricting were done on a federal level, with a Democratic Congress and White House appointing these “independent” commissions you might suddenly see North Carolina, but blue, everywhere.
Read the whole story on the For the People Act from The Associated Press here.
Finally, bringing it home to the great state of Tennessee, Gov. Lee’s K-12 education agenda has mostly passed the state legislature with flying colors. Of note, the Republican-floated initiative to strip schools of their funding if they don’t reopen for in-person instruction was left on the cutting room floor.
This, in my opinion, is an unironic win for the demos, the people, who certainly didn’t need the funding of their kids’ schools revoked because of the high case count in their area. Personally, I agree that schools should reopen for in-person instruction. After all, more than half of third-graders are shoe-ins to flunk the basic competency literacy examination. However, I would hate to be in the position of a school administrator juggling the safety of the community with literally receiving funding to run your school. Tennessee lawmakers, you hate it when the federal government dangles money in front of your face to get you to do stuff, don’t turn into everything you hate.
You can read the full story from the Chattanooga Times Free Press here.
Photo Credit / Associated Press
