(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Nebraska GOP's Tyranny of the Majority [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-08-29 Republicans defend the electoral college by claiming it protects smaller red states from an alleged tyranny of the majority led by California and New York. If the Republicans want to make that argument, I would contend that it’s smaller blue states like Rhode Island and Vermont that need to be protected from Texas and Florida’s big government agenda that threatens our freedoms. The Republicans sing a different tune when they control a state government. Large Republican legislative majorities created by extreme gerrymandering have led to a tyranny of the majority in states like Wisconsin, North Carolina and Tennessee. We saw the worst abuse of power in Tennessee when the GOP majority expelled three Democratic state legislators during a debate over the ongoing gun massacres of innocent children. We are now beginning to see a GOP tyranny of the majority in Nebraska. Before 2023, a handful of moderate Republicans kept the MAGA Republicans in check. However, in the 2022 election cycle, three moderate Republicans were replaced by extremists. This has opened up the door to a continuing abuse of power by the Nebraska Republican Party. Just within the last two weeks, the Nebraska GOP flexed its muscle in many different instances. Governor Jim Pillen’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services drew fire for nasty anti-vaxxer and anti-LGBTQ posts on social media. Senator Megan Hunt has pledged to try to block the nomination. In addition, Senators Jane Raybould and George Dungan have told me that they will be joining Hunt in this effort. Pillen followed this up by making a false claim of executive privilege to block access to four emails from disclosure to the press. Former Republican Governor Dave Heineman disputed Pillen’s claim and said he was not familiar with the concept of executive privilege regarding a governors’ emails. “When you’re the governor, you’re a publicly elected official and your records are subject to freedom of information requests, and we routinely complied with those,” Heineman said. “I think that’s important, because the public has a right to know what a governor is doing and the kinds of emails that we get.” Meanwhile, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers issued an opinion in which he claimed that a pair of inspectors general created by the legislature to perform oversight of corrections and child welfare is unconstitutional. “The IGs were created by the Legislature in response to systemic problems that were uncovered by two major legislative investigations in the last decade relating to the operation of the state’s child welfare services and the Department of Corrections,” Former Nebraska Ombudsman Marshall Lux wrote in an opinion piece. “The reason the Inspector General was given these powers, which are common in other states, is because children were literally dying under previous administrations and no one knew about it without legislative oversight. It should also be noted that AG opinions are advisory and hold no power so for DHHS to simply stop following the law because of one is not proper.” Adam Morfeld, former state senator. Hilgers remained in the spotlight last week for all of the wrong reasons. The Nebraska Attorney General was blasted for hiring former state senator and failed mayoral candidate Suzanne Geist, to a position as a policy advisor. The former state senator isn’t a lawyer and doesn’t have a law license. Geist’s career prior to her election to the legislature in 2016 was as a style consultant for two companies that run pyramid schemes. Governor Pillen completed this week of extreme GOP power when he generated a firestorm of criticism by announcing a plan to locate a new prison just outside of Lincoln’s city limits without consulting any local officials. Instead, the location of the new prison was a closely held secret and the decision took everybody by surprise. “Lancaster County Board Chairwoman Christa Yoakum said commissioners were not consulted about placement of the new prison and knew nothing about the site selection before Pillen announced it. It’s concerning, proposing a prison near where an elementary school is located and where neighborhood growth is (occurring) at a pretty rapid speed,” she said. One of the ironies of the decision was that the precinct where the new prison will be located voted for Pillen by a 69% to 31% margin in 2022. Now those same voters are angry about a prison being located in their neighborhood. All of these abuses of power are occurring because Pillen doesn’t have to be concerned about being held accountable by his fellow elected officials in a one party state. No Republican constitutional officers and state senators said anything about Pillen’s exercise of executive power. The University of Nebraska has also been effected by the Republicans’ one party rule. In 2021, then Governor (and now U.S. Senator) Pete Ricketts alleged that the University of Nebraska is “racist” because they teach critical race theory. (Ricketts attended the elite University of Chicago.) In addition, the legislature has paid for a tax cut for the wealthy by cutting the University of Nebraska’s budget. These attacks on Nebraska’s flagship university has caused the leadership of this venerable institution to leave Nebraska for jobs in other states. The loss of University President Ted Carter and Chancellor Ronnie Green is a significant setback for the university and state. These leaders most likely could have been retained in the absence of the GOP’s attack on the University of Nebraska. The entire state is paying a heavy price for this inept one party rule. Conservative economist Ernest Goss said: “More Nebraskans over the last decade have continued to leave than enter from other states. More people have continued to leave than enter Nebraska from other states, and the loss is heavily those with an education level of at least a bachelor’s degree.” Despite these setbacks, there is still real hope for the people of Nebraska. Citizens opposed to one party rule have skillfully used the petition process to do an end run around Republican rule. In recent years, the voters have passed ballot initiatives raising the minimum wage and adopting the Medicaid expansion. Concerned citizens are once again acting as Nebraska’s “second house” and are currently gathering signatures to place several initiatives on the 2024 ballot. At the present time, there are promising petition drives aimed at repealing the GOP private school bailout (LB 753), establish paid family and medical leave, allow medical marijuana and to protect a woman’s right to choose. Other states that have suffered from one party GOP rule in the past have successfully broken the GOP’s grip on power. Colorado used to be a red state but now it is solidly blue. Virginia is now nearly blue. Georgia has transitioned from being a red state to a purple or battleground state. This examples prove that there is hope for Nebraska. George Harrison said it best in his 1987 song: “Got My Mind Set On You.” “But it’s gonna take money A whole lotta spending money It’s gonna take plenty of money To do it right, child It’s gonna take time A whole lot of precious time It’s gonna take patience and time, mmm To do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it To do it right, child” Now let’s get it done! 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