A Mindless Syllogism

It seems like every time I’ve turned on the television recently, or clicked on an on-line link, I’ve been subjected to House Speaker Austin Knudsen’s repeated video entreaties to call Sen. Tester and insist that he confirm Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Unless you’ve been in a coma or unplugged from the internet, you too have probably seen the Knudsen video. But in case you haven’t, here it is:

Now, admittedly – and this is particularly true in the era of Donald Trump – when it comes to political advertising, tweeting and the like, we can’t expect much in the way of logic or respect for the facts. But I figure that if Knudsen is going to beat us on the head with the same message over and over again, which presumably means he thinks he’s got something worthwhile to say, he’s fair game for a little critical deconstruction. Here then, verbatim, is Knudsen’s pitch:

I’m Montana House Speaker Austin Knudsen. I know what it’s like to fight against Washington’s War on the West.  That’s why we need Judge Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. A judge who will interpret the law, not make the law.

The Senate must confirm the President’s nominee. Senator Daines is supporting Judge Gorsuch, but Senator Tester, what’s he waiting for? Call Senator Tester and tell him it’s time to confirm Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

Nobody, not even Knudsen himself, could possibly regard this statement, taken at face value, as anything other than absurd. Whether or not we need Judge Gorsuch is an open question, but surely the answer to it doesn’t depend on what Austin Knudsen does or doesn’t know. If Knudsen had stayed home in Culbertson tending to his law practice and had never become familiar with “Washington’s War on the West,” would we not need Judge Gorsuch? Is that what he's telling us?

Well of course not. He’s offering us this ridiculous non-sequitur because as lame as it is, it’s better that the mindless syllogism it’s attempting to cover for. That, apparently, goes something like this.

There is some undefined thing called Washington’s War on the West which is inimical to our (read Tester’s constituents’) interests.

There are laws that would protect these interests from Washington's assault if they were properly upheld.

These laws will be upheld if the Supreme Court is populated by justices who “interpret the law, not make the law.”

Judge Gorsuch will be such a justice.

Ergo, Sen. Tester should support the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch.

While the logic in this line of reasoning makes sense, the problem is with the premises, all of which lie somewhere between being at best arguable and at worst figments of Knudsen’s fevered imagination. So really, it's best not to lay out the argument at all. Just stick to the illogical soundbites.

When it comes to Knudsen’s question – what is Sen. Tester waiting for? – the answer is really pretty simple. As Knudsen says, senators “must confirm the President’s nominee.” Presumably, in doing that, we would like them to know who they are dealing with. Tester recognizes that there is a lot more involved in confirming Gorsuch than discovering his views on the War on the West, whatever that may be. There’s corporate involvement in elections, clean air and clean water, women’s health care, and the sovereignty of tribal nations, for example. Here’s a link to Tester talking about his meeting with Gorsuch on those very issues.

So, Speaker Knudsen, what’s delaying Sen. Tester is the need to act with due diligence, and we should all be glad that’s true. It’s something you might recommend to Sen. Daines, who apparently wouldn’t recognize it if it slapped him upside the head. He certainly didn’t think it was necessary as long as the nomination came from Donald Trump, and when Barak Obama nominated Merrick Garland, he refused to even consider it.

A Brutal Disgrace

Seven years ago, when the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Baxter, it freed  Montana physicians from the fear of criminal conviction for providing aid in dying to the terminally ill. Dying patients could request a life ending medication that would allow them to end suffering, to avoid the loss of autonomy that the treatment of terminal illness often brings in its wake, and to have a small measure of control over when and where and with whom to spend their final hours. The court said that in acceding to these requests from adult, terminally ill and mentally competent patients, doctors were clearly acting with their patients’ consent, and accordingly would have an affirmative defense if they were ever charged with a crime.

If that all sounds a bit legalistic, read the decision, because the court also made clear that in providing aid in dying, doctors would be acting in harmony with the rights of the terminally ill, established in law, to be autonomous, to make decisions about their own treatment, and to refuse treatment - even food or water - to hasten their own deaths. Providing aid in dying would recognize these rights and be an act of compassion and respect.

But now Rep.Brad Tschida wants to make it an act of murder.

House Bill 536, which Tschida brought to the House Judiciary Committee last Friday, is brutal in its simplicity and intent. Under the bill, physicians who respond to a request from their patients for aid in dying will no longer be protected. No matter how heartfelt the request, no matter how badly the patient is suffering, no matter how immanent death is, no matter how clear-headedly the patient is acting – no matter any of this, a doctor who honors a request for aid in dying can be charged with murder. The clear desires of the dying patient will be to no avail.

If there is anything more outrageous than this bill itself, it is the hearing it was accorded in the House Judiciary Committee. Because bills like this have been heard in the past, much of the testimony was familiar. Proponents claimed, as they have done over and over again, that providing aid in dying is susceptible to all sorts of terrible abuses, while producing not the slightest shred of evidence that these abuses have ever occurred anywhere, let alone in Montana. Opponents pled for their autonomy and liberty to be respected and told stories of how spouses, or children, or parents died at home, peacefully, and surrounded by family.

All that was to be expected. But what was not to be expected was the careless and callous way in which the hearing was conducted. Faced with a bill of significant social, legal and moral consequence, the committee chairman, Rep. Alan Doane, would allow only half an hour of testimony - fifteen minutes per side. After that time was up, he cut off testimony from opponents who had traveled across the state to testify. When members of the committee tried to elicit testimony from the opponents, he refused to recognize further committee questions.

 I have been in a lot of hearings on a lot of bills, but I have never seen a chairman act as abusively and recklessly as Doane did in the hearing on this bill. His performance was a gross disservice to the public, to his colleagues in the House, and to the duty to govern with intelligence and compassion. You can watch video of this entire sorry episode here.

HB 536 is ugly legislation, and its hearing was an utter disgrace. It is unworthy of the Montana legislature and the people of this state.

Very, Very Unfair

There was a lot of head shaking going on in the Senate Energy Committee recently at the very thought of taxing pollution control and carbon sequestration equipment. How could it possibly be right to impose the business equipment tax on that stuff? After all, companies only install it because the government forces them to, and having it around certainly doesn’t help them make money and stay in business. As Donald Trump would put it, "Very, very unfair!" Right?

Well no, not really. In the interests of both efficiency and fairness, we usually expect any firm that wants to stay in business to cover its costs.  That includes the environmental costs it imposes on the public, which are just as real and economic as wages, utility bills, rent, bank charges, raw material purchases and other costs incurred in markets. How we get firms to internalize (that is, actually pay for) environmental costs varies from case to case. Sometimes we actually price pollution (think carbon tax), but more often we simply cap pollution levels or require the use of pollution control equipment.

So having mandated pollution control equipment on hand does help firms stay in business and make money because it reduces the environmental damage they would be financially responsible for if they didn’t have it. If they complain that pollution control equipment is not a valuable and productive asset, these companies are implicitly claiming that were it not for government, they would have the right to wreak havoc on the environment with no financial consequences.

And if they claim that being made financially responsible for the environmental damage they might do will drive them out of business, so be it. That simply means that whatever they’re producing isn’t worth what it costs to produce it. By the cold logic of the market, they are just too inefficient to keep the doors open.