To be fair, Liz Cheney never said she'd drain the swamp

As the government shutdown moved through its 19^th day, Liz Cheney’s 2020 campaign brochure appeared in every mailbox in Wyoming. While 800,000 federal employees remained uncertain about whether they would see a paycheck any time soon, there it was.

Liz Cheney made a big deal of asking that her congressional pay be suspended during the government shutdown. Review her Financial Disclosure Report at clerk.house.org and ask why an elected official with that much personal wealth is drawing a taxpayer-subsidized paycheck in the first place.  

This multi-millionaire wants us to think she is making a sacrifice akin to that of federal workers whose lives she and her colleagues have thrown into disarray. Interestingly, her sacrifice doesn’t extend to paying for her own campaign material.

The glossy, multi-color tri-fold brochure was, it said in the tiniest print known to humankind, paid for by you and me. “This mailing was prepared, published, and mailed at taxpayer expense.”

At the same time the government has no money to pay workers who still have to show up for every shift, it had the funds necessary to pay for Liz’s fancy campaign brochure.

In fairness, the taxpayers should be proud of this piece of work. It is beautifully laid out with a picture of the mountains on one side and an “Official White House Photo” on the inside. It’s a photo of President Trump at his uniquely empty desk, scribbling his signature on a piece of paper while surrounded by adoring lawmakers.

Blue as the Wyoming sky background to a lengthy text tells us how great she is.

There is even a card, perforated around the edges so you can answer her poll questions and return it. I couldn’t help but note the brochure advertises Liz’s “Telephone Town Halls.” That’s the mechanism Liz uses to avoid actual contact with voters who may disagree with her. If you’ve ever taken part in one, you know the time is taken up with fawning supporters telling them how great they are and never is heard a discouraging word.

In any event, Liz’s brochure gives you an opportunity to join the so-called Telephone Town Hall. Just sign your name on the dotted line and send the card back to her. But, you, unlike Liz, will have to pay for the postage out of your own pocket.

I suppose Liz will take umbrage at the document being called “a campaign brochure.” Most politicians who abuse taxpayers take umbrage when we take notice. But we know a campaign brochure when we see it, and that is exactly what this is.

It’s Washington at its usual. They would much rather use your money than their own. And it’s not like Liz doesn’t have enough campaign cash on hand in addition to her personal stash to pick up the tab for this blatant campaign tool.

To be fair, no one ever heard Liz Cheney promise to drain the swamp and clean up Washington’s “politics as usual.”

Her final 2018 campaign spending report discloses she raised $858,530 in 2017-1018. Inexplicably for a candidate who was virtually unopposed, she spent $695,260 of that. At the end of the day, she had a surplus of nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

These reports tell voters more about Liz Cheney than this fancy brochure. For example, of all thousands of dollars she raised, 1.04 percent came from small donors defined as giving $200 or less. But, 36.95 % came from “Large Individual Contributions” and 57.88% from Political Action Committees.

Inasmuch as the campaign brochure she mailed to us expends a great deal of space touting all she’s done for the oil and gas boys who gave her $69,000, and wealthy individuals who benefited most from the Cheney-Trump tax cuts, it would not have been inappropriate for her to spend some of their money or her own on the document rather than stiffing us with the whole bill.

At the very least, she could have charged it to the people of her home state…Virginia.

The WYO Legislature isn't quite as WASPY as before

“The best argument against democracy,” said Winston Churchill, “is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Sometimes I wonder why it took him that long. There are other times I think he had it wrong. The 2018 election produced evidence to both uphold Churchill’s claim and to debunk it.

As Congress and the Wyoming legislature swears in their newly-elected members, it’s fair to note that some of our fellow Americans used their sacred right to vote in frightening ways. Two congressmen, campaigning while free on bail, received a majority of the votes in their districts. Other voters chose the deceased owner of a Nevada brothel. A handful of Iowa voters re-elected a racist congressman his own party condemned.

Around the country, some voters were more thoughtfully democratic, electing a Muslim and the first female Native Americans to Congress. Coloradoans chose an openly gay governor, another state elected a bisexual woman to the governorship, one reelected a lesbian to the Senate. Minnesota voters sent a one-time Somali refugee, now U.S. citizen, to Washington. Texans chose the first Hispanic women to represent them in Washington. Across the country a record number of women won elections.

Churchill should have conversations with Wyoming’s bold voters who used their ballot to make our legislature look more egalitarian, representing the state’s great diversity. While candidates who succeed here typically represent rural, white, conservative Christian values, the state is more diverse than that. Now the state legislature is.

Teton County voters elected Mike Yin, the state’s first Chinese-American lawmaker. Representative-elect Yin says he will use his position to represent the state’s racial minorities and, as he told the Casper Star-Tribune, to “say that there are other people besides Caucasian-Americans” in the Equality State. That is a welcomed message among the totality of the composite of citizens who actually live, work, and raise families in Wyoming.

Fremont County voters crossed over from the white side of the ballot, electing a Native American woman. Andi Clifford was raised on the Wind River Reservation and, importantly, continues to work there, serving its people’s needs. Representative-elect Clifford will offer a thoughtful voice as she educates colleagues on the urgent, often overlooked obligations of the state to the reservation.

Perhaps the most improbable 2018 winner was Sara Burlingame. Sara is one of Wyoming’s most effective, eloquent advocates for gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender citizens.

Wyoming has steadfastly refused to join 46 other states in passing hate crimes legislation. The state legislature is a place where proposals making it illegal to discriminate against citizens based on sexual identification go to die and be ridiculed. A majority of the Legislature’s Management Council recently voted to strip LGBTQ citizens protection from discrimination.

Those whom the legislature marginalizes have a voice now that the executive director of Wyoming Equality is State Representative Sara Burlingame.

Sara’s heart for compromise leads her to seek understanding rather than conflict on the most difficult issues. She won a seat in the House because of her ability to develop personal relationships.

She listens. Because of that, she will be able to open the hearts and minds of LGBTQ opponents to an understanding of the suffering of the marginalized, particularly Wyoming youth, who often struggle on the margins of life, suffering rejection from family and bullying from classmates.

Sara’s kindness combines a deep appreciation of differences with the use good information, rather than sheer emotion, to bring others along on difficult issues. Before her first 40-day session ends, she will soften the hearts of the most of her ardent anti-gay colleagues.

Because Representatives Kim, Clifford, and Burlingame are there, legislators and their constituents will meet people they know only through stereotypes. They will have an opportunity to consider arguments, and information to which most of them were never exposed. These Representatives will leave their marks on a conservative legislature not known for its appreciation of Wyoming’s diversity.

To paraphrase Churchill, the best argument for democracy is a five-minute conversation with the voters who chose these three freshmen legislators.

Anti-LGBTQ 'Christians" serve a different god

Conservative Christians played a significant role in the Legislature’s refusal to shield LGBTQ citizens from the indignities of discrimination. They believe God answered their prayers when legislators voted. Other Christians heard God exhort them to work harder for justice. When two voices say decidedly different things, they cannot both be attributed to one God.

This shines light on the 900-pound elephant in the sanctuary. I mean no disrespect. We are entitled to our own religious views. But, it is reasonable to acknowledge that conservative Christians and progressive Christians do not worship the same God.

Lincoln said both Northerners and Southerners invoked one God in seeking victory on the battlefield. It’s true, humans may ask one God for opposing outcomes. However, it’s not possible for one God to support two diametrically opposed causes.

Progressive and conservative Christians focus on differences over Biblical interpretation and creedal doctrine. These differences cannot explain our discord over the very nature of the Divine. We are confronted with irreconcilable views defining the existential essence of our bond with God.

The God of conservative Christianity teaches there are caveats to scriptural commandments to love your neighbor. The God of progressive Christianity sanctions none. That God opens hearts, cuts through prejudices, and places radical hospitality for all God’s children at the center of our relationship and does not ask us to fear those who are different.

Witnessing how scripture is used in their sustained campaign against the LGBTQ community. it seems reasonable to conclude that the God of conservative Christians encourages discrimination regardless of the harm. The contrast between how some and not others are called to treat God’s children with sexual orientation or identity different from our own makes it unlikely we serve the same God.

There are other related differences in voices each hears from the Divine, such as Jesus’s teaching that what we do for “the least of these,” we do for him. The two versions of Christianity diverge on a Jesus-followers duty to care for the marginalized. These are not superficial differences. They go to the heart of our relationship with the God of Creation. 

Comments made during public testimony over whether legislators should defend LGBTQ legislators, staff, and constituents from discrimination recall ancient parables establishing the centrality of loving, welcoming, and protecting the vulnerable.

It was accepted in polytheistic societies long before monotheism. Homer’s classic tale tells of Odysseus’s son Telemachus sailing the seas, searching for his lost father. His entourage happens upon an island. They know no one. The islanders “saw the strangers coming, they all stood up with open arms to greet them.” Not until they were welcomed and offered a lavish feast, did anyone ask these strangers their purpose in coming to the island.

Such lessons were not lost on ancient Hebrews as they assembled the writings of the Old Testament. Throughout, God tells us to welcome vulnerable people, cast to the margins by the dominant community. God recognizes these folks are especially susceptible to exploitation and abuse.

The God of progressive Christianity demands their protection. The Bible includes a parable about the consequences of a community’s failure to do so. Genesis 19 is the story of Sodom.

The myth provides further evidence of the divide in Christianity. Conservatives see it as judgment against homosexuals. Progressive Christians and, more importantly most Jews, to whom the story belongs, see it as God’s judgment on those who fail to offer hospitality and sanctuary to strangers.

One God countenances saying, “Love the sinner while hating the sin,” though followers believe the sinner is, in fact, the sin. The God of progressive Christians says loving one another includes caring whether people lose their livelihood or are otherwise deprived of human dignity because of how God created them.

Unlike the other, this God informs our belief that the more some of God’s children are despised by the culture, the greater our responsibility to love them as God loves us.

God cannot invoke two vastly different views and be the same God.