The Urban-Rural Divide Will Define Us For the Foreseeable Future

The urban-rural divide will be the dominant issue in this country over the next decade or longer. It will manifest itself in almost all areas of our society, in job creation, inequality, taxes, access to health care, voting rights, and, above all, corporate and political power.

I have already written about how this divide will impact our electoral system in the not too distant future. According to one estimate, by 2040 70% of the population will be living in cities in just 15 states represented by just 30 US Senators. Conversely, 30% of the population will be represented by 70 Senators. The perverse skewing this will have not only the makeup of the US Senate but also on the already perverted Electoral College is easy to see but also hard to imagine how it will be sustainable in something called a democracy.

Today, the NY Times outlines the current battleground of that divide, describing the various actions that state legislatures are taking to negate the locally-made decisions made in cities. According to the Times, using pre-emption laws, Republican legislatures "aren’t merely overruling local laws; they’ve walled off whole new realms where local governments aren’t allowed to govern at all...As standoffs between red states and blue cities grow more rancorous, the tactics of pre-emption laws have become personal and punitive: Several states are now threatening to withhold resources from communities that defy them and to hold their elected officials legally and financially liable."

States have use per-emption laws to restrict sanctuary cities, minimum wage, LGBTQ rights, paid sick leave, fracking, free wifi, and even bans on plastic bags. Those legislatures are also rewriting laws to restrict and/or punish legitimate protest, potentially leaving protest organizers with crippling financial liabilities. Now they are also trying to legally and/or financially punish duly elected officials who adopt local ordnances that conflict with state policy.

"Texas’ new sanctuary city law imposes civil fines as high as $25,500 a day on local governments and officials who block cooperation with federal immigration requests. And it threatens officials who flout the law with removal from office and misdemeanor charges...Ohio passed a law blocking a longstanding requirement that city construction contracts hire some local workers...North Carolina’s so-called bathroom bill sought to squash a local ordinance in Charlotte adding gender identity to the city’s nondiscrimination policy...St. Louis this year passed an ordinance banning employer and housing discrimination against women who use contraception or have abortions. Gov. Eric Greitens of Missouri, a Republican, called the state legislature back into special session in June in part to undo that law (it would turn St. Louis, he said, into an 'abortion sanctuary city')...In Texas...proposals that would block cities from regulating trees on private land, restricting cellphone use in cars, and allowing transgender residents to use the bathroom matching their identity".

This is just another front on the attack on our democracy that Republicans have been waging for the last two decades or so. For years, "local control" has been a mantra of the GOP, mostly as a response to federal rules and regulations coming out of Washington. But it is clear that just was just another slogan in the Republican quest for raw political power. Any real "local control" that opposes Republican policies or power must and will be quashed. As I continually ask in my writing, can our democracy survive in this kind of environment? I certainly doesn't look good.