| Part of what's broken in Lansing is that the entire mess is contructed to perpetuate itself. Partisan redistricting means legislative races are decided in primaries, which cater to extremist candidates. Term limits means that lawmakers have to be more loyal to staff and lobbyists as sources of institutional knowledge than their own experiences. And, simply re-electing the same bad leadership as last year means that we have a House Speaker who might be indicted for perjury ... and he only gets two votes against him. When I hear the phrase “symbolic vote,” I think of a resolution honoring the Detroit Tigers on a great season or MSU on winning its bowl game. Things that any Michiganian should celebrate. Symbolic isn’t casting a vote for the person who decides which legislation will or be brought to the House floor and which will be sentenced to committee. Symbolic doesn’t describe a job that allows a lawmaker set the House’s rules and decorum and, as Lisa Brown and Barb Byrum learned last year, can silence a member from speaking on the House floor, for any reason or no reason.
He's exactly right. Both parties came together and voted almost unanimously to endorse Bolger's Speakership. One assumes that Democrats might have done this because they feared an even bigger jerk named to replace him. After all, this is the same Republican caucus that responded to the recall of Paul Scott by naming Tom McMillin to chair the education committee. Still, the job is important enough that ballots cast for it ought to be based on trust in performance and accountability for actions, not because it's just the thing people do. |
