By Michelle Naranjo 

When I bought my first home in Pennsylvania in late November 2019, I was still relatively new to the state. My domestic partner and I were still trying to find the lids to pots and pans when news of a deadly virus abroad crossed the radio waves. By the time we had finally established which direction the sofa should face in late January 2020, the possibility of hosting a housewarming party had grown dim, but I didn't mind because I didn't have any friends locally, and my partner was exhausted from traveling back and forth to New York City for his job. 

By June of 2020, the pandammit boredom had set into our domestication. His work in the City had gone away, and with little else to do we had started working on the house. An orange breadbox on Facebook Marketplace would look perfect on the slate-gray kitchen countertops I had craftily hand-painted to match the matte black sink and faucet procured in one of many online shopping excursions from before the shutdowns. 

That is how I met "Beth." She was selling things from her mother-in-law's estate, and, like me, her mother-in-law loved anything that came in orange. 

Beth is just a couple of years younger than me and lives just north of us in Carbon County. She is bright, funny, and as we discovered when we met masked in the parking lot of a discount store to exchange a hand sanitizer-wiped $20 bill for a bread box, we have a lot (mostly thrift store shopping) in common. That meeting came in a lull of the COVID-19 epidemic and was just a brief glimpse of blue sky before the infected and dying hockey stick graph began to surge. Our friendship grew the following year over text messages. While I didn't get to see her, I ventured to Carbon County twice to get both of my vaccinations. In early Spring 2021, while vaccine supplies ran low in my county, hospitals in the conservative coal counties were in surplus because no one wanted them. 

Almost 20 months since we moved in and with vaccinations widely distributed, my partner and I have planned a housewarming/joint-birthday party for mid-August. It seemed everyone we know is vaccinated, so we see more of my partner's friends. Beth and I even got to meet up at an estate sale in Carbon County. I was masked; she, like most people in Carbon County, was not, and joked that she could tell when people lived on the other side of the turnpike because we still wear masks in public. 

After confirming that she and her husband would be coming to the party, Beth dropped the information on me that, despite working as a bartender part-time in the evenings and cleaning at several AirBnB vacation homes in the touristy town of Jim Thorpe, she has yet to be vaccinated. Her mother had some side effects from her jabs, and she just isn't sure she wants to risk "it." 

I have childhood friends traveling into town for the event and expect every guest bed to be full. Everyone else invited over the age of 12 has been vaccinated. 

And that, dear reader, is the tale of why now I won't have any local friends from Pennsylvania at this party. 

While I know that any breakthrough COVID cases would not be severe on our vaccinated friends, I won't require everyone else to "mask up" in my home to protect one person who fears vaccination side-effects more than the coronavirus. This event is supposed to be casual and welcoming Beth is unreasonable for friends who are still wearing masks when out with the general public. 

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By Charles Dervarics

For a weary citizenry, renewed calls for indoor masking — even among vaccinated individuals — are already shaping up as a political battle among all-too-familiar fault lines, with most liberals supporting the idea and many conservatives opposed.

Calls for a mask mandate 2.0 have come from health experts and government leaders in response to the delta variant of COVID-19, which experts describe as a more potent and transmittable virus. While the greatest concern is for the unvaccinated, some communities are finding that even those with vaccine protection can get “breakthrough” infections and transmit the virus. That has raised the level of concern among health care experts, who see rising hospitalizations in some communities.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending indoor masking in areas with high infection rates and urging face coverings in K-12 schools this fall. The agency notes that vaccinated individuals can easily transmit the Delta strain, putting the unvaccinated, including children, at risk.

“This finding is concerning and was a pivotal discovery leading to CDC’s updated mask recommendation,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.

While critics cite shifting and confusing guidance from the CDC, Walensky said the situation has changed since May when the agency stopped recommending masks in most settings for fully vaccinated individuals. “Delta is just a different kind of beast. It’s much more contagious.” she said in a CBS interview. 

But conservative critics including former President Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, strongly oppose the move, with Cruz labeling the mandate “absurd” given all the limits of the past 17 months. The partisan splits were evident on Capitol Hill, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi instituted a face covering policy strongly opposed by many House Republicans. 

The delta outbreak also is scrambling state and local politics. Cities such as Washington, D.C., Kansas City, Missouri, and New Orleans have instituted new masking policies, while the governors of Florida and Texas signed executive orders banning such requirements. In his order last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott prohibited mask mandates as well as COVID-19 vaccine requirements among government agencies and municipalities statewide. 

“No governmental entity, including a county, city, school district and public health authority, and no governmental official may require any person to wear a face-covering or to mandate that other person wear a covering," the executive order read.

Masking 2.0 also may meet limited enthusiasm among average Americans, including the vaccinated. Movie theaters are reporting increased business, Broadway theaters are preparing to re-open and concerts are ramping up as evidenced by the 100,000 who turned out in Chicago for Lollapalooza last weekend. Concert attendees had to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test for COVID, but pictures from the event showed massive crowds and little masking.

However, one potential difference maker this time is how many employers have quickly joined in to re-evaluate mask requirements. Large companies such as Walmart, Kroger and Target are requiring masks for employees in hard-hit areas, and indoor mask requirements are back for visitors at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Yet one issue for local leaders — and all Americans — is how to determine if your area is experiencing what the CDC considers a high rate of infection. 

The agency calls a community at high risk if it reports more than 50 new cases a week per 100,000 residents. This rate is still far below what many areas of the country experienced during the height of the pandemic. But with schools scheduled to reopen soon and health experts predicting further spikes due to the delta variant, a rapid and prolonged return to “normal” may still be months away.

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By David Iwinski

We hear constant, ominous rumblings from the Biden administration that we are about to be forced by the federal government into mandatory mask-wearing and possible lockdowns, because of the threat of COVID-19 and its delta variant. There are a great many factors that argue against this course of action by the federal government, let’s take a look at a few.

The scientific evidence for mask efficacy in preventing the spread of COVID is widely varied and even within the CDC and other senior officials, for the entirety of the last 18 months, we have heard wildly contradictory reports on whether masks actually do anything at all. What they do, however, is create a pervasive sense of fear, social isolation and a perception that day-to-day life is simply not safe.

We hear all the time this senseless blather about “two weeks to eradicate the risk” when we dang well know that it won’t happen because the last time, we heard that it had been well over a year and counting, with no end in sight. What evidence of any concrete validity should cause us to believe that another period of mass isolation will somehow eradicate the risk?

Numerous experts have said the size of the virus and the nature of the masks means that they will not stop the exhalation or inhalation of the coronavirus. Further, there is contradictory evidence that continual breathing of droplets normally aspirated might lead to respiratory disease, particularly in children. We should add to that the simple reality that many, many Americans are not going to wear the masks, no matter what.

I have seen the angry denunciations by hysterical people demanding utter compliance and that they will take matters into their own hands if they see people not wearing a mask. Of course, this is not going to work and only heightens the distance between those consumed with fear and those who simply want a little evidence that masks have even a minimal positive effect before they put them on their children and their own faces, indoor and outdoor, every single day.

Add to that the inevitable downturn in the economy and what that will mean to people’s ability to keep their homes, keep their savings and keep their livelihoods. There is emerging some clinical data that depression, social isolation and suicide are on the rise. Do we really need to push these trends even harder?

Some may say that these negatives can be offset by adding so-called “stimulus payments” but are we really so naïve to think that the trillions of dollars poured into the country -- often earmarked for expensive programs in a particular legislator’s district -- are never going to have to be repaid and that that debt will not be a burden on the country for decades, if not centuries? Have we really come to believe that we can get something for nothing?

No one is denying that COVID has dangers. Many things in life do. The problem with government enforced mask mandates is that they require acceptance of an enormous range of guaranteed negative effects including social isolation, depression, suicide, bankruptcy, loss of income and loss of homes as well as potentially other respiratory diseases, not to mention the massive disruption in the education process. We are all supposed to absorb these negative effects without question based on a premise that poorly designed, ill-fitting and ineffective masks will somehow prevent infection even after a significant percentage of the population are too fed up to ever wear them again. 

This is nonsense masquerading as government care. This is the erosion of civil liberties based on a dubious and unproven premise that government officials themselves have reversed dozens of times. It is the function of what government does best: Some highly visible and nonfunctioning action they take simply to convince people that they “care” and that they are “doing something” as a way to preserve high-paying jobs controlling our lives. Note how many officials demanding we mask-up rarely wear masks themselves when on camera. Former President Obama just cancelled his big 60^th birthday party on Martha’s Vineyard, but only after public outcry. 

If we continue to give in to this erosion of our civil liberties and our ability to exercise our own judgment, we will soon have no personal liberties left, and every action or thought will require government approval.  

Americans are not going to let that happen.

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By Craig Fahle

Americans spend a lot of time thinking about the concept of the rule of law. Our discussions about protests, violence, drugs, immigration and just about every other contentious issue typically center on the notion that people in the U.S. must abide by the law. Yet there is one area in which that dedication to the rule of law has a lot of wiggle room: our tax system. The late Senator Russell Long of Louisiana summed up the debate on taxes rather cleverly when he said “A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.''  

Arguments about how much people should be taxed, what kinds of income should be taxed, and whether tax cuts “trickle down” to the average person have dominated our political debate since before the American Revolution. Nobody likes paying taxes. Yet everyone likely realizes that taxes are the backbone of a civil society.   

The question is, what to do when you don’t have enough tax revenue coming in to fund the things that make that civil society? 

In their annual report for 2021, The American Society of Civil Engineers found that the 10-year infrastructure investment gap between what we spend, and what we actually need to maintain our systems now stands at $2.6 trillion. That’s a lot of money. With the concept of raising tax rates pretty much dead, where does the money come from?  Here’s a concept … allow the Internal Revenue Service to do its job and collect the money that the U.S. Government is owed. This will take people and resources to accomplish.  

Naturally, the idea of investing more money into IRS enforcement and personnel doesn’t sit well with the anti-tax/small government conservatives. It also doesn’t thrill the wealthy or the corporations, who have found ways in recent years to pay virtually nothing in taxes, especially when compared to the revenue and profits they are generating. Finding ways to minimize taxes, or in some cases evade them, is seen almost as a game by many. They know the IRS is understaffed, and a typical 1040 doesn’t get the scrutiny and full analysis that it likely deserves. The current head of the IRS estimates that the country is losing about $1trillion per year due to lax enforcement. This financial bleed must stop. 

On the issue of gun violence, conservatives often make the argument that the U.S. doesn’t need any new gun laws, it simply needs to enforce the laws that are on the books. If they are intellectually honest, they would apply the same logic to our tax laws and fund the IRS to the level that makes them effective.  

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By Charles Dervarics

It’s hard to think of a policy idea with less public enthusiasm than giving the Internal Revenue Service more money to beef up tax enforcement. Like telling your kids to eat their vegetables or take out the trash, it’s a plea more likely to produce the dreaded stink eye than a hearty endorsement.

But maybe such conventional wisdom is wrong.

The issue of IRS tax enforcement was a flashpoint in President Biden’s plan for more federal spending. Advocates say it could help pay for a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan and other new spending by cracking down on wealthy Americans who don’t pay what they consider to be a fair share of their income in taxes, although bi-partisan negotiators ultimately cut a proposal to use better tax enforcement from the infrastructure bill making its way through the Senate before the August recess.

The idea behind better enforcement is not to conduct more audits but to help close the “tax gap,” or the amount of federal taxes owed but not paid. For most Americans, it’s easy for the government to track their income because they receive W-2 forms every year. But many of the nation’s wealthiest earn their incomes through other means not routinely collected by the IRS.

In a recent investigation, ProPublica found that the 25 wealthiest Americans paid only 3.4% of their income in taxes over a five-year period. By comparison, the average American paid a much higher rate—14%--of their income in taxes. The current IRS Commissioner, Chuck Rettig, says the government is not collecting about $1 trillion of federal taxes owed each year.

To address the problem, the administration would fund technology upgrades and give the IRS access to more income information. Biden also would increase staffing to reverse recent declines that occurred despite greater complexity in the U.S. tax code. The White House has said the provisions could yield at least $700 billion in new revenue over the next decade, enough to pay for several new government initiatives.

But the plan has met strong opposition from congressional Republicans who favor smaller government and have a deep distrust of the collection agency. For critics such as Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform president, the IRS is often a political agency that undermines conservative groups. During the Obama administration, the agency acknowledged it targeted groups for extra scrutiny if they used words such as “tea party” and “patriot,” and an acting IRS chief resigned as a result. 

“It’s wrong at every level,” Norquist said of the new IRS plan.

Although Republicans have beaten back attempts to add IRS provisions to the infrastructure bill, many Democrats are still looking to insert the plan into one of its new spending initiatives. Democrats also got a boost recently when three former IRS senior leaders–all serving Republican presidents—spoke out in favor of Biden’s plan.

In a Politico column, Charles Rossotti (Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations), Fred Forman (G.W. Bush administration) and Fred Goldberg (G.H.W. Bush administration) all endorsed the idea of more scrutiny for the richest taxpayers.

“The IRS expansion was based on a smart idea, which could also be good politics and serve the interests of both parties: Not more audits, but better technology and income tracking to catch wealthy cheaters,” the former leaders wrote.

They said one critical element of Biden’s plan is that banks and other financial institutions would have to report total inflows and total outflows from certain accounts, giving the IRS more information via 1099 forms on the earnings of wealthy Americans. This move, they noted, “will help taxpayers file more accurate returns and will enable the IRS to better determine where to look for scofflaws.” More IRS funding also may improve services for ordinary taxpayers, the three argued. 

For now on this topic, however, the ball remains on Congress’ court with no signs of bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill anytime soon.

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By Stephen Macaulay

I recently had the misfortune of calling an airline about a ticket. I had the “elite” number, meaning, so I supposed, that I would get quicker service. The digital system told me that I had the opportunity to leave my number and get a call back without “losing my place in line.”

When was the call projected to hit my phone? Three hours later. Fortunately, I was able to figure out how to get my question answered online.

Apparently, the Internal Revenue Service, which has lost staff (which makes it like almost every organization, be it a restaurant or an appliance manufacturing firm), has long phone wait times.

It is one thing to have to wait to find out about a trip to a pleasant place. It is entirely something else to have to call the IRS, which is best thought of in the context of calling an endodontist. Yes, you may have to do it, but you don’t like it.

So if the IRS is going to get more funding, shouldn’t it go toward adding phone service?  Certainly, billionaires and corporations are not going to be calling an 800 number to get tax questions answered. But regular folks will.

The Biden plan called for the hiring of 87,000 new IRS workers.

But it seemed that the objective was to hire, as they are colloquially called, “’Revenuers.’”

When they show up, it isn’t good for you. And odds are, you are not a billionaire.

One of the arguments that is raised vis-à-vis de facto legitimacy when it comes to the wealthy not paying in a manner that the 99% does is that the wealthy are the ones who actually invest their monies in ways that creates jobs. Warren Buffett may pay a lower rate than his secretary, but Warren Buffett creates more jobs than his secretary.

What doesn’t get the sort of attention that it should is that the tax code is so convoluted that those who can afford to hire Theseus-like tax experts to allow them to escape paying what they “should.”

Why not reform the tax code so that it is so transparent that regular folks won’t have to make phone calls and the wealthy won’t have the out of hiring the smart people who will allow them to dodge tax responsibility?

To be sure, that would be a heavy lift. And it would not happen quickly.

But let’s think about this for a moment. Hiring more people to chase down people and corporations that are making sophisticated swerves is to simply continue the existing system which is clearly deficient if it allows the underpayment of taxes to the extent that it does.

The Biden administration had projected that there could be as much as $700-billion captured over a decade.

An analogy: Almost every kitchen has two implements: a colander and a sieve.

When you have boiled pasta and need to drain the water, you pour it through a colander. The holes are large enough to let the water go through and the pasta to stay put. When you are sifting sugar, you use a sieve. The fine grains of the sugar go through while the lumps stay put.

Apparently, the existing system is like using a colander to sift sugar. How does that work out? … $70-billion a year?

So why not fix the tools? Why not make it easier for the regular taxpayer as well as for the one who would otherwise dodge: If the procedures are sufficiently transparent, then accountability will be fairly straightforward.

Let’s not be naïve. No one likes to pay taxes. The funny thing is that while no one, not even the rich, likes driving on a road rife with potholes the only way to fix the roads is through funds that are acquired only through taxes.

Does the IRS need more funding? Probably. When cryptocurrency takes hold of a bigger part of private wealth, things are going to get even trickier. In effect, the IRS is going to need a quantum computer, but they’ve got an old Dell running Windows 95.

Funding or not, the system needs to be simplified. The system needs to be fixed.

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By Craig Fahle

Last week, 56 Democrats serving in the Texas legislature bolted Austin for Washington, denying a quorum necessary to pass a package of bills aimed at changing voting rules in the state. It is at best a way to stall the bills and refocus public attention onto voter suppression efforts around the country, and to prod Democrats in the US Senate to eliminate the filibuster and pass meaningful updates to the voting rights act. It is likely doomed to fail, but the fight is just, and necessary.  

Targeted changes that potentially affect a specific group of voters used to be subject to federal judicial review but has pretty much been wiped out by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder and its 2021 decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. Both decisions negated major parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Republican controlled legislatures around the country have been nibbling at the edges of these bills for years … now, it is a feeding frenzy.  

Why now? Because Trump’s “big lie” about the election somehow being stolen gave these legislatures the excuse they needed to pass bills they didn’t have the guts to try before. Despite any evidence of widespread fraud, and a jaw-droppingly poor performance in trying to adjudicate the “big lie”, legislators can now with a straight face claim that people’s faith in our electoral system is at risk. 

“Election integrity” is the cover Republicans have been looking for to go back to the days of voter repression. It is not a coincidence that dozens of states have passed or are considering bills that place new restrictions on voting, including reducing access to mail in and absentee ballots, reduction in the number of polling places, reducing drop box locations, reducing early voting hours and locations, and tougher ID requirements. In many states, they have the votes to do it, and the courts have decided that they have no role in ensuring that voting is fair and equitable.   

What is the proper response from Democrats? How does one fight for something as fundamental as the right to vote without impediments that are rooted in a bad faith argument? Leaving the state to prevent a quorum seems extreme, but this is exactly what their voters want them to do: Fight the good fight as hard as they can, and as long as they can. Denying a quorum is the state legislative equivalent of a hail Mary pass: there is a slim chance of success, but it shows that you won’t back down. Unlike the minority in the U.S. Senate, who can gum up the works behind the allegedly sacred cloak of the filibuster, state legislators are limited in the tools they possess. 

Republicans and Democrats alike have used this tactic recently. It rarely works. Symbolically, though, it matters. Democratic voters have argued for years that their party needs to fight as hard, and as dirty as they believe the Republicans do for the things they want. If Democrats give up now, they run the risk of alienating their own, which will do more to crush them in the midterms than anything the Republicans and their sudden feigned interest in “voter integrity” ever could.  

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By Todd Lassa

Democratic state lawmakers must return to Texas from Washington, D.C., sooner or later and face Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s threat to have them arrested. Abbott promises to extend special sessions of the Texas legislature in order to force a vote. 

The Democrats’ swift departure to avoid a quorum for a special session of the bi-cameral state legislature drew added attention to the U.S. Congress’ For the People Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which will require Democrats in the US Senate to end the legislative filibuster too late to help pass them. 

Like Georgia’s new voting laws, the Texas proposals – SB 1 in the Senate and HB 3 in the House of Representatives – are high-profile for acceding to former President Trump’s untrue claim that Electoral College votes in these states were “stolen” from him in last November’s election. But the states also have encouragement from the eight-year-old Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which essentially removed Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and this year’s decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which guts its Section 2.

According to The Texas Tribune, Republican state lawmakers see SB1 and HB3 as “starting points” for a new electoral bill to which the 67 (of 200) Democratic state representatives could contribute, if only they would come home. 

The two bills’ key provisions:

•Require a monthly review of the state’s massive voter rolls (Texas’ total population is 29 million) to identify possible non-citizens and prevent them from voting.

•Ban drive-through voting (which Harris County offered in 2020).

•Impose new regulations for early voting hours.

•Ban 24-hour voting (another Harris County initiative). 

•HB 3 requires a maximum election day window of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., while SB1 proposes 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

•Both bills add an extra hour of required early voting hours for local elections, for a nine-hour window.

•Lowers the population threshold for counties required to provide at least 12 hours early voting. Currently, counties with population of at least 100,000 are required to provide early voting; SB1 would require the early voting standard for counties of at least 30,000 population, while HR3 would require the standard for counties of at least 55,000.

•Both bills would add one weekend hour of voting, to require six hours of weekend voting. The state Senate and House have retreated from proposed restrictions on Sunday voting, known as “souls to the polls,” at Black-majority churches.

•A ban on unsolicited distribution of mail-in ballots – the House version would make it a state felony subject to a jail term, and both HB3 and S1 would prohibit state funds to “facilitate” unsolicited distribution of applications by third parties. These proposals are a direct response to Harris County’s attempt to “proactively” send mail-in apps to all of its 2.4 million registered voters last year, the Tribune reports.

•New ID rules that would require voters to provide their driver’s license numbers, or if they don’t have one, social security numbers, on ballot applications, with matching information on the return envelopes for their ballots. 

•New correction process for ballots normally rejected because of a missing signature or an endorsement a local review board determines does not belong to the voter who returned the ballot (this appears to be a concession to Democrats, the Tribunenotes).

•Monthly citizenship checks of the state’s voter rolls to identify non-citizens, requiring the Texas secretary of state’s office to compare the statewide voter registration list with data from the Department of Public Safety to pinpoint individuals who told the department they were not citizens when they obtained or renewed their driver’s license or ID card.

•The “Crystal Mason provision” in HB 3 would require judges to inform potential voters if a conviction prohibits an individual from voting and would require proof beyond a provisional ballot for an attempt to cast an illegal vote to count as a crime. Crystal Mason was on supervised release for a federal conviction when she cast a provisional ballot in 2016 and said she did not know her conviction made her ineligible to vote. This is another apparent concession to Democrats.

•Language to strengthen the autonomy of partisan poll watchers by granting “free movement” within a polling place, except for being present at a voting station when a voter is filling out his or her ballot. Both HB3 and S1 would make it a criminal offense to obstruct their view or distance the observer “in manner that would make observation not reasonably effective.”

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By Bryan Williams

Legislators walking out of their duty is no new thing. It has happened before in Oregon (where it was the GOP who walked out in order to stymy legislative work), and Republicans in the California legislature have pulled similar stunts earlier in this century. Is it effective? No. It’s a stunt that doesn’t make any positive point. As the old saying goes, “90% of completing anything is just showing up.”

When I worked in the California Assembly earlier in this century, the GOP still had sway within state government. Republicans in the California Senate blocked passage of a budget for nearly three months. During that time, already underpaid legislative staff (me included) didn’t get paid, along with millions of others across the state, all to make a point about not raising taxes. But in California, taxes will be raised one way or another, “whether you like it or not,” as our current governor, Gavin Newsom, has said about another issue (gay marriage) that a minority in California opposed.

Republican proponents of the Texas legislation note that the net effect of the state law that Democrats are trying to kill would extend voting hours, not constrict them. As the center column outlines, an extra hour of early voting would expand the poll window to nine hours, an extra hour of voting would be added to weekends, and the early voting minimum of 12 hours would be required for counties with fewer than 100,000 population; to either 55,000 (state House bill) or to counties with just 30,000 population (state Senate bill). 

Even as Democrats walk out on this, they retain their salaries and perks. What’s so hard about voting yes or no on something? There is more to be said about going on record and voting up or down on a bill than by walking out.

Since their exodus nearly two decades ago, California Republicans have become a much smaller, less effective presence in the state legislature than Democrats in Texas, with only 19 seats out of 80 in the Assembly (they had 32 in 2010) and a pathetic nine of 40 seats in the state Senate. Texas Democrats are in much-better shape, with 13 of its 31state senators and 67 – the members who flew off to Washington – of 150 in the bi-cameral legislature’s House of Representatives. 

If I were a Texas Democrat, I would vote “yes” for legislation that would expand voting hours and clarify when and where the polls are open. Just as with the much-maligned Georgia law, the Texas proposals seem common sense to me. We should also expect state and local governments to cull their ballot rolls regularly. In 2021, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out if someone has tried to vote more than once, or for that matter hasn’t voted since 1994 – who may be dead voters, or maybe just recalcitrant Texas Democrats.

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Comments by affirmative debaters in the July 15 Braver Angels national debate:

“It does a disservice to the depth of experiences [by the nation’s numerous groups and tribes] that racism is not one one of the things that has to be overcome.”

--Luke Nathan Phillips

“One of the things I’d have to agree with is America is changing.” …

[Question: Who is America’s first black president?]

“Technically, Barack Obama’s mother was not black. (Thus) he was white. … But one drop of blood in the South [before the Civil Rights Act] protected [white] property rights.”

--Russell Ballew

“I absolutely believe you can love your country and love your heritage and believe America is racist, just as you can love your family if they’re racist. There can be no reasonable argument that America was not a racist nation to at least the late 1960s. … The burden of proof is on everybody who believes things are different now.”

--Silas Kulkarni

“Is America a racist nation? My answer is ‘yes,’ and our story is not finished. … But unfortunately, race continues to be part of legislation [restrictive voting bills in Georgia, Texas, etc.] … The legacy of racism, while it is less overt than in the past, continues to be real … Indifference to the plight of others contributes to racial indifference [rather than] racial justice. …”

--Bruce MacKenzie

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By Todd Lassa

If there is a more provocative debate topic than “Resolved: America is a racist nation,” it has yet to be written down. When liberal and conservative members of Braver Angels tackled the resolution in a national debate Thursday evening, they generally dug to the core of the issue, citing both American and personal history, with far less concentration than usual on current events. There was much more nuance than one might expect from this resolution.

Braver Angels debates are not held to declare a “winner” or to convince liberals or conservatives to switch sides. In fact, while the “affirmative” side of the resolution, that America is a racist nation, is generally associated with a left-side point of view, the first debater to speak on this side was Luke Nathan Phillips, a self-described conservative and Braver Angels staffer. As the first affirmative debater, he “urged fellow conservatives to take [the issue] more seriously.”

“Over the course of our history, it has [become] an even bigger deal than people make of it,” Phillips said.

Conversely, the debate’s third speaker in the negative, arguing that America is not a racist nation, was another Braver Angel staff member, Monica Guzman, who usually identifies as a liberal. 

“To me this is not just about a story, this is about a headline,” Guzman said. When I look at the resolution, (asking) ‘Is America a racist nation?’ I’m looking at a headline.”

While Guzman has “deep concerns about how seriously people are taking the racism that has (permeated) American society,” she believes the goal in raising the issue is progress against such racism.

In the end, affirmative and negative Braver Angels debaters almost rendered the resolution moot. Both sides seem to agree that the people of the United States have by a plurality always strived to reach for the ideals that our Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution, even if most of those Founding Fathers owned enslaved men and women. They agree that the American experiment is a work-in-progress, and affirmatives and negatives alike believe we have come a long way since the Civil War, since Reconstruction and resulting Jim Crow, and since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If you are at all interested in this debate topic – and why wouldn’t you be? – please watch the debate on Braver Angels’ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlZ4t6aS4rAJoPyYD9DGLA

Meanwhile, read the left column for a few select comments by affirmative debaters, and the right column for select comments by negative debaters on the subject of racism in America.

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Comments by negative debaters in the July 15 Braver Angels national debate:

“A lot of this discussion is a semantic one … [Citing a Pew Charitable Foundation study that 8% of Americans of all races and ethnicities are ‘bigots’:] “Lots of people are bigots because a lot of people are jerks and jackasses. But that doesn’t mean America is a racist nation.”

--Prof. Wilfred Reilly, Kentucky State University, and author, Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War

“The country has changed greatly. My kids have changed the country … [Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, who made many incendiary speeches about American racism] “spoke as if America is static. Racism is still present in this country, and every country in the world. I am a proud conservative, but I agree with Presidents Obama and Clinton when they say there is nothing wrong about America that cannot be cured by what’s right with America.”

--Steve Saltwick

“If we define ourselves by the worst thing we have done, we reduce our ability to rise above them. … America as a racist nation can be part of our story of redemption. … If America is a racist nation is argued as a headline, I’m afraid it will do us in.”

--Monica Guzman

“America is much more than can be contained in a single word. … Just because we are pluralistic does not mean we cannot be united. … America, my friend, cannot be a racist nation, because the natural condition of human equality can never be racist.”

--Christian Watson, Spokesman, Color Us United

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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

Whether or not you plan to participate in Braver Angels’ July 15 national debate on race in America, we want to know your opinions on this most contentious of issues. 

To register your opinion, please email editors@thehustings.news, or go to thehustings.substack.com and leave a comment. Please include your name and your home town, or region of a state. 

We will only post comments that adhere to our standards of civil discourse. Comments will be edited for length and clarity and will be published in this column and in the right column on Friday, July 16.

Scroll down using the vertical scrollbar on the far right of the page to read David Amaya's comments on critical race theory in the left column.

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(Please click on the date above for today's News & Notes.)

Race in America is the subject of constant argument in the U.S., and this year, it has touched nearly every political issue under discussion, from Thomas Jefferson’s slave ownership to removal of Confederate leaders’ statues, from the economy and the environment to policing and of course, voting rights. This Thursday, July 15, Braver Angels will hold its next national coliseum debate on the bold resolution: “America is a racist nation?” beginning 8 p.m. Eastern time via Zoom.

The debate is free and open to the public, but you must register in advance at: https://braverangels.org/event/coliseum-debate-national-debate-racism-in-america/

As always, audience members are encouraged to participate as speakers and in the Q&A sessions. 

The Hustings will feature a preview of arguments, in the left and right columns prior to the debate. Come to this page Wednesday to prepare for the arguments. On Friday, we will post your comments on the debate in our left and right columns. [UPDATE: THE PREVIEW SCHEDULED AHEAD OF THURSDAY'S DEBATE HAS BEEN CANCELLED, BUT POST-DEBATE READERS'/AUDIENCE COMMENTS STILL WILL BE POSTED ON FRIDAY. PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO SUBMIT COMMENTS.]

Teaching critical race theory is currently the most contentious issue within the subject of race in America. Scroll down this page to read the post on CRT, with Nic Woods’ explanation of what it is in the center column, and David Iwinski’s conservative opinion of it in the right column and David Amaya’s liberal opinion in the left column.

To submit your comments, email us at editors@thehustings.news or post a comment at thehustings.substack.com.

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For more information on Braver Angels, go to braver angels.org

Whether or not you plan to participate in Braver Angels’ July 15 national debate on race in America, we want to know your opinions on this most contentious of issues. 

To register your opinion, please email editors@thehustings.news, or go to thehustings.substack.com and leave a comment. Please include your name and your home town, or region of a state. 

We will only post comments that adhere to our standards of civil discourse. Comments will be edited for length and clarity and will be published in this column and in the left column on Friday, July 16.

Scroll down using the vertical scrollbar on the far right of the page to read David Iwinski's comments on critical race theory in the right column.

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Subscribe to our newsletter, published weekdays, at thehustings.substack.com