Ohio voters decided they wanted reproductive and marijuana rights yesterday. Perhaps it was more of libertarian victory than a Democratic or Republican, progressive or conservative victory.
Republican politicians were against both Issue 1 (reproductive rights) and Issue 2 (marijuana) rights. Both won by double digit majorities. Maybe we should stop thinking of Ohio as a Red state. Maybe it is a purple (libertarian) state where people basically don't want the government whether Democratic or Republican, liberal or conservative, making decisions for them.
Here is an update of the chart I had about the August election in which the Republican effort to amend the constitution to require a 60% vote for future amendments was defeated. In that chart I had compared August No Vote to the Catholic and Black populations for the counties that are part of the Diocese of Cleveland
My conclusion was that the Black vote was largely against the amendment while the Catholic vote was likely split. The percentages in each county that voted for the November reproductive rights amendment were almost exactly the same as those who voted against the August amendment which if it had passed would have meant that this November vote would have failed to make the 60% threshold. The votes in favor of marijuana were similar but not quite as pronounced.
|
County |
MARIJUANA YES |
ABORTION YES |
AUGUST NO |
Catholics |
Blacks |
|
Cuyahoga |
67% |
74% |
76% |
28% |
30% |
|
Summit |
60% |
65% |
66% |
22% |
15% |
|
Lorain |
59% |
62% |
63% |
25% |
9% |
|
Lake |
59% |
60% |
59% |
35% |
6% |
|
Medina |
54% |
55% |
54% |
28% |
2% |
|
Geauga |
52% |
40% |
52% |
34% |
1% |
|
Wayne |
44% |
42% |
42% |
8% |
2% |
|
Ashland |
45% |
42% |
37% |
3% |
2% |
While there was little evidence of official Catholic involvement in the August issue, there was a strong effort in the parishes to get people to vote against Issue #1 this time. I could detect no such effort against the Marijuana Issue by the Church.
In our parish on the Sunday before the vote, a deacon gave the example of a couple who had chosen to have a baby even though they knew it had birth defects that would make it unlikely that it would survive very long, and a husband who continued to see his wife in a nursing home long after she was no longer able to recognize him Both very sincere witnesses by this deacon with very strong family values. They made me wish life was that simple, but of course people face very complex decisions.
I am surprised that the reproductive rights issue passed as strongly as it did. I thought since the issue was broader than abortion and included rights to make decisions about one's gender that it might fail. The Catholic and Republican opposition to the amendment focused upon the possibility that children might decide to have abortions or change their sex without parental involvement.
I think the bottom line for most people was that they were not going to let the legislature in Columbus make decisions for them whether it be about reproductive rights or marijuana. Conservatives should not see this as a vote against family values. Many of the people who voted for both issues probably thought they were empowering themselves and their families.
About the lack of Catholic pushback on marijuana, I think a lot of people consider that it's not a "hard" drug; that we tolerate alcohol and let people make their own decisions about it. I would hope there would be the same penalties for driving under the influence of marijuana as for alcohol.
ReplyDeleteOur state has trouble even getting the use of medical marijuana to pass. I have voted in favor of it because it has been proven to help children with a particular form of epilepsy resistant to other treatment.
My hometown is 30 miles from the Colorado border, which has legalized marijuana. The word I hear from there is that most of the people crossing the state line to stand in line at the dispensaries (I guess that is a thing) aren't youth, but senior citizens with all kinds of aches and pains. Maybe the senior demographic were a factor in the Ohio vote in favor of marijuana.
DeleteI don't see why marijuana should be restricted. I don't think it's a healthy choice unless you need it for medical purposes or to ameliorate discomfort. As for me, I tried it in Alaska in a chocolate delivery system. Thought it would turn me into a laid back hippie.
DeleteAwful experience. Like my first and last cigarette, but worse.
I've never tried marijuana but I've been around people who have. It makes them sound really, really stupid, but they think they're sounding brilliant and witty. I don't need it to sound stupid. I can do that on my own.
DeleteMarijuana initiatives like casino gambling initiatives promise some tax benefits in return for legalizing an activity that creates problems for some people; most of the money ends up benefitting the industries that provide the services.
DeleteI think activities like cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, etc. should be fully taxed so that those who benefit from them are paying for all the harm that they cause. Taxpayers who don’t smoke or drink, etc. should not be picking up the tab.
I voted against the legalization because I was not convinced that the tax revenue promised would offset the problems.
I enjoyed smoking dope in college. One of Raber's friends brought some over about 35 years ago, and the potency was about twice that of those seedy dime bags we used to buy. Haven't been interested in it since. Some people in my cancer group prefer it to prescription drugs because it doesn't have the constipating effects. But its effectiveness is kind of hit or miss. Michigan municipalities can vote to keep out the dope stores. We don't have them in town because we don't have enough cops to oversee the miscreants we have as it is.
Delete"I think activities like cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, etc. should be fully taxed so that those who benefit from them are paying for all the harm that they cause. Taxpayers who don’t smoke or drink, etc. should not be picking up the tab."
DeleteGranted, I live in one of the highest-tax areas for cigarettes. According to numbers I've plucked from Google and other sites, the average price for a pack of cigarettes in Cook County, IL is $10.60. That amount includes a federal tax of $1.01, a state tax of $2.98, and a county tax of $3.00. (Whether my municipality sticks another tax on top, I haven't been able to ascertain.) That $6.99 in taxes represents a 66% tax.
By comparison, in 1979 when I was driving around in a '74 cherry red Camaro and fondly imagining my parents didn't know I was smoking cigarettes, I could get a pack of cigarettes for $.65 at one of the local gas stations. According to an inflation calculator I found, that would be $2.76 in 2023 dollars. To me sure, an awful lot has happened in the world of tobacco smoking since 1979: huge legal judgments, and a social shift in the moral propriety of smoking. And on the whole, governments are a lot broker now than they were then, so they've really cranked up the taxes on tobacco around here.
Whether any of that cigarette-generated tax money actually goes to medical treatment for smoking-related illnesses, I am not sure.
Conceptually at least, it would seem better that pot be legal than otherwise, for a few reasons:
Delete* criminalizing it means saddling persons with criminal records for offenses that many/most Americans don't consider to be very serious;
* The previous experience with Prohibition suggested that legalizing the substance should cause the criminal enterprises to exit the business;
* It should generate revenue for the states and municipalities
Nevertheless, I understand there is some evidence that it hasn't panned out as planned. This article reports that the illegal dealers have figured out how to continue to thrive alongside the legal dispensaries, not least by underpricing the legal pot; the dealers don't have to charge taxes.
https://alcoholstudies.rutgers.edu/cannabis-black-market-thrives-despite-legalization/
Back when I was a college kid working in a summer job in a grocery store cigarettes were 33 cents a pack. I was 18, nowadays it's against state law at least, for minors to sell cigarettes. My boss told me not to sell cigarettes to kids unless they had a note from home saying it was for their parents (of course no possibility for that to be abused!)
DeleteWow! If Heron Distilleries and RJ Reynolds reimbursed family members for medical booze and tobacco treatment of my loved ones, I'd be RICH! But sin taxes usually just get dumped into the general fund. I think there was controversy in Michigan many years ago when the Republican Engler administration decided to put the big tobacco settlement money into something not into tobacco-related.
DeleteOhio looked like a replay of the Michigan abortion rights amendment in most respects: it passed with a large majority despite RTL organizations and clergy warning of dire, unintended consequences.
ReplyDeleteJust this week, a move in the Mich legislature to sweep away abortion restrictions on abortion established under Roe was partially defeated, when one Democrat legislator voted with the GOP to keep a 24-hour waiting period that requires informed consent.
There was some blah blah from clinicians that this was burdensome, but younger people now don't realize that a waiting period and counseling was the general policy of abortion clinics themselves in the 1970s just after Roe was handed down. Most also required birth control advisement and took the tack, let's make sure you never have to go through this again.
The screaming on both sides of the issue later radicalized both sides, like screaming always does, and I am VERY cautiously optimistic that Dobbs might usher in some common-sense compromises.
I don't sense that support for abortion is grounded in the old feminist paradigm that women should be able to have it all. It's driven by the fact that Millennials are not having kids because they can't afford it, especially if something goes wrong that requires one parent to quit work and results in big medical bills.
It will be interesting to see what, if anything, local parishes might do to promote family life to Millennials and Zs to whom it the Church just seems bigoted, out of touch, hypocritical, and scandal-ridden.
You are, unfortunately, correct. It seems the Church lost its morally persuasive voice and opted for gummint control. And that's not working out, either.
DeleteWe all deal daily with bureaucracies (government, churches, healthcare) that tend to make life more difficult.
DeleteRecently my urologist’s office left me a message that I would need to reschedule my annual exam. Earlier this year Universities Hospitals took over the Lake Hospital System which was the largest provider in our county. That caused all sorts of scrambling among semi-independent providers. The urologist who had left the University Hospital System decades ago to become affiliated with Lake Hospital decided he wanted to become affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic. That meant a change of location for his offices.
When I called in for my appointment, it got me into the Cleveland Clinic system which meant that I had to listen to fifteen minutes of advertising from the Cleveland Clinic while I waited for the next available operator. She treated me as if I were a new patient, asked me for insurance information, etc. and told me the next available appointment would be in January. I demanded to talk with someone in his office to reschedule the appointment, and of course there was an opening in late November.
Obviously, any church, or doctor’s office that can make dealing the endless problems created by bureaucracies is going to win favor and those who make life more difficult for us by increasing the bureaucracy are going to be shunned.
"I don't sense that support for abortion is grounded in the old feminist paradigm that women should be able to have it all. It's driven by the fact that Millennials are not having kids because they can't afford it, especially if something goes wrong that requires one parent to quit work and results in big medical bills."
DeleteYeah, that's an interesting insight. It jives with something I've written here before: when working as an election judge, I've noticed that the young women in particular are very motivated to want to vote to keep abortion legal (even in Illinois, where there isn't a prayer of a chance that any further restrictions would be imposed; the legislature and governor have been busy since even before the Dobbs decision to remove whatever restrictions were still in place). I attributed it to a general wish for those who are the most direct stakeholders in legalized abortion (young women) to simply not want the option to go away, whether or not they would ever wish to take advantage of it.
Jim, yeah, what you said at your last sentence. Its possible to hold two thoughts at the same time: to feel that all life is sacred and that you would never have an abortion yourself; but also to be reluctant to force someone else to make the same choice.
DeleteI think there are practical reasons that women do not want to fetter doctors with a lot of abortion restrictions, especially since there is a shortage if obstetricians who already carry heavy insurance burdens. Youngkin in Virginia tried to tout a 15-week ban. I'm not against it in spirit, but it assumes that determining fetal age is easy in all cases, no gray areas for doctors. Plus I want to smack something when male politicians start jacking their jaws about the kind of medical procedures women can and can't have, even if I agree with them. If you're a certain age, you likely know women railroaded into a lobotomy, a mental institution for "incorrigibility," an unnecessary hysterectomy, or hormone replacement therapy because laws made by men allowed it.
DeleteFrom an AP article from a couple of weeks ago:
ReplyDelete"Supporters of a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution far outraised their anti-abortion opponents in the months leading up to the November election, bringing in nearly $29 million from donors since Sept. 8, the campaign’s latest filings show."
"The effort against Issue 1, which would amend the constitution to protect abortion rights, raised just under $10 million in the same period, according to Thursday’s filings."
https://apnews.com/article/ohio-abortion-amendment-election-campaign-fundraising-f14d984b5b22ce64a2cfa8f53ac4ce24
So about $40 million spent to move the needle in one direction or another since the August amendment - and according to Jack's numbers, the needle basically didn't budge.
Michigan RTL and GOP lawmakers are filing a lawsuit to challenge the state constitutional amendment passed last year here claiming that it violates various elements in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. There was a big rally at the Capitol ("Make Babies Great Again!!" was one of the signs) in a godawful cold rain, so I can't fault their sincerity.
DeleteBut at some point I have to wonder whether at least SOME of the mega-bucks going into these lawsuits couldn't be better spent lobbying for improved prenatal care, defraying costs for babies in NICU units, daycare for children of single working parents, alleviation of child hunger, malnutrition, early testing and treatment for learning disabilities, finding the 500 kids who are missing from foster care at any given time, and reducing exposure to hazardous substances like lead.
I get the argument that we need to stop the killing before we can even think about the rest of it. But without some nod to larger issues affecting young children and mothers in the state, RTL and affiliates aren't winning hearts and minds.
As usual, Jean is on target.
DeleteIt’s been a really tough day. I’m terrified that he is gradually slipping away. Tyeu are running more tests. Please pray.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry, Anne. Will continue to pray.
DeletePsalm 139 is sometimes helpful for me. I will say it for you. https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/common-material/psalter/psalm-139
DeleteAnne, I'm sorry things aren't going well. I am continuing to pray.
DeletePsalm 139 is one of my favorites too. I like this musical setting of it by Bernadette Farrell:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=broBTwmATx0
Our prayers are with you. Hope that things get better.
Delete