The people of Kentucky have just bore witness to the horrifying consequences of electoral apathy. Newly-elected governor Matt Bevin, a Tea Party Republican, has just unilaterally undone monumental progress the state of Kentucky made under his predecessor, former Gov. Steve Beshear.
On Tuesday, Gov. Bevin issued executive orders that threaten the welfare of Kentuckian’s across the state. In spite of repeated promises he made during campaigning, he reversed a previous order by Gov. Beshear that restored voting rights to around 140,000 non-violent felons who had already served their time.
The ideology motivating Bevin to undo Beshear’s order is hinged on the idea that personal deficiencies in people influence rates of criminality, without any kind of consideration given to social factors such as poverty. This ideology maintains in the far-right, despite studies showing that re-enfranchised convicts have significantly lower rates of recidivism. This means that re-enfranchised convicts are far less likely to re-offend.
Former Gov. Beshear’s move to restore voting and civil rights to felons was historic and had the potential to reshape Kentucky politics for the better. But, Gov. Bevin undid that progress with a stroke of a pen.
Another reform implemented by Gov. Beshear was a raising of the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for state workers and contractors. Gov. Bevin brought that minimum back down to the federally-mandated $7.25 an hour, a rate that requires minimum wage employees to work a near 60-hour work week just to safely afford rent on the average one-bedroom apartment in Kentucky.
Bevin has also made comments that he would like no federal minimum wage laws at all, instead allowing the labor market to determine how high or low employee wages are, because as we all know, nobody knows how to treat employees better than the guys who get rich off their backs.
Gov. Bevin also became Kim Davis’ genie in a bottle when he issued an executive order that removed all clerks names from Kentucky marriage licenses on grounds that there are state clerks who object to issuing said licenses to LGBT citizens due to their religious convictions.
I can’t say I’m surprised this happened, considering Gov. Matt Bevin has never been shy about his opposition to marriage equality. At one point, he said that allowing LGBT Americans to marry will eventually get to a point where parents can marry their children, because as we all know, allowing a same-sex couple to marry is the same as allowing a father to marry his daughter after attending a magical night at the Purity Ball.
Kentuckian’s messed up with this one and while it is not right to completely absolve the populous, as the state’s voter turnout in November was atrocious, their apathy does come in part from a dynamic play by far-right conservatives to faction and disenfranchise voters, because let’s face it, if every able-bodied American voter went to the polls and voted logically, there is no way asshats like Gov. Bevin would be in office.
Tea Party politics are as delusional as they come and have no place in a political system that requires informed, rational thought to function adequately. Thus, the solution: misinformation by irrationality. A misinformed, irrational populace is one prone to disenfranchisement and a misinformed, irrational, disenfranchised populace is good for Tea Party business.
