LTE: Race to the bottom

Editor, Gettysburg Times,

Ever since the 2010 mass gerrymandering that all but assured semi-permanent control of state legislatures for the minority party, Republican-dominated states like Texas and Florida have been engaged in a sort of “Can you top this?” contest for crazy legislation. Each year, they introduce new legislation to make last year’s bad legislation even worse. Stricter voter laws. Looser environmental restrictions. Right to work laws in unionized states. Loosening gun laws even more. More attacks on teachers.

With a democratic governor, Pennsylvania has largely been immune from the GOP “race to the bottom.” But if Mastriano is elected, he’s the man who can out-Abbott the Texas governor and out-DeSantis the Florida governor.

Like all hard-right GOP governors, Mastriano’s program will combine the Christian right agenda against schools, gays and liberals, and the pro-business agenda of tax and regulation cuts, a massive return to fossil fuels and attacks on worker benefits.

He proudly promises an outright ban on abortion, perhaps even to criminalize it (Mastriano once said giving or receiving an abortion should be treated as murder); adoption of an “Abbott” agenda for guns and school safety; more restrictions on what schools can teach and a “rat-out your neighbor” mechanism to make sure no teacher ever again teaches genuine US history; and vouchers for Christian academies and virtual schools. And like Mississippi developed the law the Supreme Court used to toss Roe v Wade, who would be surprised if Christian Nationalist Mastriano pushed through a law over-turning the ban on public prayer in schools?

The pro-business agenda would include tax cuts; legislation to restrict the right to sue, give corporations immunity, and set limits on damage awards; legislation to “unleash” coal and fracking; tax and regulatory cuts; and reduction of incentives for wind, solar, and other technologies of the future. State parks and game management lands? Who needs them?

The nation’s two worst governors combine incompetence at actually managing things with short-sighted meanness (De Santis and his use of government’s power to retaliate against anyone who displeases him in any way) and paranoid belief in conspiracy theories (Abbott and the Jade Helm “Army takeover” of Texas). With Mastriano, Pennsylvania will get a lethal combination of both.

Many years ago, James Carville commented that, politically, Pennsylvania was “the two big cities and everything else is basically Alabama.” Nobody thought he meant it literally. Hello, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the bottom.

Leon Reed,
Gettysburg