(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ goes on, and where there’s a wicked wind still blowin’ on that upper deck.

We begin in Kansas, where professional snipe-hunter and vote-suppressor Kris Kobach has had a further lesson in why federal judges don’t find him, his half-baked conspiratorial ideas, his anti-democratic approach to democratic elections, or his clever wordplay amusing. From The Kansas City Star:

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in Kansas City, Kan., referred repeatedly to Kobach as acting “disingenuously.” She chastised him for failing to treat the voters affected by the ongoing court case the same as all other registered voters in accordance with a previous court order. “The term ‘register’ is not ambiguous, nor should there have been any question that these voters were to be treated just like any other registered voter,” Robinson said in her order. Instead of a fine in the contempt matter, Robinson ordered Kobach to pay attorneys fees for the plaintiffs in the case. “The Court is troubled by Defendant’s failure to take responsibility for violating this Court’s orders, and for failing to ensure compliance over an issue that he explicitly represented to the Court had been accomplished,” Robinson wrote.

Kobach is as much a recidivist offender as any serial criminal can be. He persists in misrepresenting himself to the court, ignoring court orders, and generally behaving in such a fashion that, were he a young black man with a penchant for robbing bodegas instead of a secretary of state with a pronounced contempt for all courts, he’d have been hauled off in irons long ago.

In 2016, Robinson ordered Kobach to fully register thousands of Kansas voters who had registered at the DMV but had failed to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, as required by a Kansas law that Kobach crafted. Robinson had earlier scolded Kobach for initially informing the voters covered by her order that they were registered only for the 2016 election and for failing to ensure that they receive the same postcard notifications about their registration as other voters. Robinson told Kobach during a 2016 telephone conference that she would hold him responsible for directing counties to send out these postcards. He promised to do his best and narrowly dodged a contempt hearing in 2016 because of this agreement. “He admitted several times during the hearing that he understood the Court’s order meant he was to treat those covered by the preliminary injunction the same as all other registered voters, which included sending the standard postcard upon registration,” Robinson said in Wednesday’s order.

With all this, Kobach is still a decent bet to be the next governor of Kansas. One thing this president* has taught this generation of Republican politicians is a whole new refinement of the technique of brazening things out. You can see it with how Scott Pruitt has bulletproofed himself for the moment, and the way Eric Greitens is clinging to the governorship of Missouri despite a collective bipartisan nausea at the very idea. Kobach has learned this very well, although it sounds like Judge Robinson isn’t giving Kobach any marks for artistic merit.

Of course, Kobach is only the walking symbol of the continuing efforts of various state Republican parties to avoid responsibility at the ballot box by preventing inconvenient populations from casting votes. For example, in Arizona, the Republicans in the legislature made a ghoulish attempt to rig any possible special election for John McCain’s senatorial seat. From AZCentral:

The effort emerged Tuesday as the state Senate put an emergency clause on a bill changing how members of Congress who die or resign are replaced. U.S. Senate vacancies are filled by a governor's appointee, with the seat on the next general election ballot. The secretary of state has interpreted that to mean that if McCain's seat is vacated by May 31, it would be on the August primary and November general election ballot. The new proposal changes that to 150 days before the primary, or March 31 of this year. That takes McCain's seat out of play.

This is Arizona. Republicans are still solid bets in any statewide election, so they probably could have missed this trick. Maybe they could have demonstrated a smidgen of an iota of humanity. In any case, the Democrats in the legislature got together to block it and save at least some of their Republican colleagues from spending eternity in hell.

Getty Images

Meanwhile, up in Wisconsin, Republican AG Brad Schimel said one of the quiet parts out loud, and the indefatigable Ari Berman of Mother Jones caught him.

“We battled to get voter ID on the ballot for the November ’16 election,” Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who defended the law in court, told conservative radio host Vicki McKenna on April 12. “How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Sen. [Ron] Johnson was going to win reelection or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?”

Well, that’s one way of looking at it. If you’re Kris Kobach, that is.

AP

We skip on down to Tennessee, where the state House of Representatives has determined the state capitol in Nashville to be under-adorned. From The Tennesseean:

Legislation from Sen. Steve Southerland, R-Morristown, and Rep. Jerry Sexton, R- Bean Station, to erect a monument to the unborn on Capitol grounds has lingered throughout the legislative session with several lawmakers unsure what to do with it. The bill, as it has been described by its sponsors, is meant primarily to memorialize the unborn who were aborted. Lawmakers have heard from a number of experts on the issue, including one last week who said a similar monument already exists.

Meanwhile, as the legislature prepares the process of taking bids on who will build the monument to uterine regulation, the Tennessee prison system, especially its privatized portion, is a complete mess, and the Republican majority in the legislature is bound and determined to complicate the oversight process as much as possible.

Meanwhile, during the same legislative hearing, the head of the state's largest private prison admitted the state had fined his facility more than $2 million since the start of 2018. In something of a surprise move, the House Operations Committee delayed voting on an amended bill that would reauthorize the Tennessee Department of Correction for four years. During the committee, lawmakers changed the reauthorization period from one year to four, in effect curbing mandatory audits of prison practices. "I can't imagine a committee extending the Department of Correction four years, when there's no evidence any of the issues raised by the comptroller have been remedied," said House Democratic Caucus Leader Mike Stewart, D-Nashville. "You can describe what we're doing in 100 different ways. The only point to what is being proposed, a four-year extension, is to get the department out of a comptroller review."

But there’s going to be a new giant fetus on the capitol lawn! You can’t have everything, dammit.

Getty Images

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Schist Kicker Friedman of the Plains, fresh from the tropics, returns to bring us a tale of the fast shuffle. From News9:

A bill that changes which fund money from the fuel tax increase goes into has passed in the state House of Representatives Tuesday. The bill creates sort of a financial shell game, moving money around to fund education -- and that raises some concerns. "What assurances do the members of this body and the people of the state of Oklahoma have that 100 percent of the fuel tax increase that's generated by the 3-cent fuel increase and 6-cent diesel will perpetually be used for education?" asked Rep. David Perryman (D-Anadarko). "I believe it will. It goes into general revenue fund then from general revenue it goes into education department," said Dustin Roberts (R-Durant). The raise in the fuel tax was pitched as a way to fund the state's $2.9 billion education budget, which includes an average $6,100 raise for teachers. However, the way the bill works, money raised from the increase in the fuel tax would go to the roads and bridges fund, reducing the need for money from the general fund. Then that general fund money could be used to fund education.

I never will understand the overwhelming temptation among state politicians to play mischief with the money for public education. They know that education is the solution to a whole mess of social problems. But they have to be bludgeoned into creating even a system that will fund education through some kind of two-rail shot within the state budget. Strange and sad.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Respond to this article on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io