Charlie Janssen is a Terrible Person and He Wants to be Your Governor

Nebraska Senator Charlie Janssen is a terrible person and he is running for Governor. He is currently a state Senator from Fremont (more on that later). In the current legislative session, he has introduced LB 381, a bill that would require registered voters in Nebraska to present a valid photo ID before being permitted to vote. This is the second time he has introduced such legislation. Last time around, in 2010, the bill died in committee. This time around, it seems to have some "traction." In Sen. Janssen’s testimony in support of the bill (March 7, 2013), he testified that requiring registered voters to present photo ID before being permitted to vote was a way to “head off voter fraud” and to ensure that Nebraska uses “best practices” when holding elections.

A couple of things strike me about this testimony. First, if you’re trying to “head off” something, that kind of implies that the thing you are trying to “head off” hasn’t happened yet. In other words, there really is no voter fraud in Nebraska, or at least not much. Secretary of State John Gale, kind of an expert in this stuff, also testified at the hearing, stating that “since we have not experienced any systemic fraud in Nebraska, despite some occasional and isolated incidents, I'm not sure the strict standards of LB 381 and the costs involved are necessarily the best answer for Nebraska.”

I imagine there are “occasional and isolated incidents” of a great many things in Nebraska which Charlie “small government” Janssen would not find worthy of creating new laws to prevent.

The second, and to me even more troubling part of Sen. Janssen’s testimony is his use of the phrase “best practices.” Now, I realize that Sen. Janssen is not an attorney and that he did not attend law school, but at some point I’d like to believe that he may have read the U.S. Constitution, or at the very least, had some one explain the gist of it to him. The right to vote is guaranteed in the Constitution. (No, seriously, look it up.) It is a “right” of all “citizens.” It is not a “best practice.” This may surprise Sen. Janssen, but the phrase “best practices” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. In fact, the phrase “best practices” has no real function in the English language at all. It is, rather, what we refer to as “business jargon.” It’s the kind of phrase you hear at seminars, along with other such doozies as “take-away points”, “paradigm shift”, “mission-critical”, “synergize”, etc. No doubt, Sen. Jenssen, a semi-successful businessman, is familiar with these buzzwords and could probably rattle off dozens more.

“Best practices” is a phrase used, for example, by employers to explain, at company meetings, to their employees that their benefits are being reduced, while making them believe that their working conditions are actually improving. Business jargon, in other words, is bullshit-speak. It is intended to confuse, to obfuscate, to trick. The kind of things that businessmen are well-versed in. I would love to have been at the City Council meeting where then-Councilman Janssen convinced his fellow Fremont City Councilmen to lend his business (RTG Medical) $225,000, interest free, with payments deferred for the first year. He must have really dazzled them. He must have really "brought it to the table", "incentivized" them, "taken things to the next level", "gained traction", spent a lot of "facetime" with them, really emphasizing the "optics", and, "at the end of the day", really convinced them of the "core competencies" of his business. In any event, he won. He got his money, interest free, with the first year’s payments deferred. Nice deal.

By the way, this is the same City Council that passed an ordinance which effectively made the condition of being Hispanic presumptively illegal. Janssen supported this ordinance. More than that, he was positively crazy about it. (It was eventually ruled to be unconstitutional, at least in part).

What we know about Sen. Janssen is that he is a gifted jargon-slinger, and that he is not crazy about Hispanic people. (“Let’s make it clear that the unlawful parties here are the immigrants that chose to break federal and state laws by coming here illegally in the first place.”) He also voted (twice) against a bill that would have provided prenatal care for children of undocumented immigrants. “Undocumented immigrants,” by the way, is a term he does not care for. He prefers the more traditional “illegal aliens.” You have to admit, it’s more effective with his racist constituency.

What he does not seem familiar with is the Constitution, which is disappointing and unfortunate, given that he is currently in the “business” of drafting legislation. Words and phrases like “Justice” and “Liberty”, “Law” and “Equity”, “Election”, “Habeas Corpus”, “well regulated militia”, “Impeachment,” and of course I could go on, but you get the idea. These are not buzzwords. This is not business jargon. This is the language of the Constitution. These are important words that mean important things. Sen. Janssen would do well to learn them, though he does not seem motivated to do so.

The Right to Vote (guaranteed by the Constitution), is not an issue to be solved with bullshit-speak and business jargon. “At the end of the day,” Constitutional Rights are simply too goddamn important to be dealt with using “optics” and “taking things to the next level” by implementing “best practices.” Businessmen have their place, to be sure, but it should be as far away from government as possible. Some things are just too important to leave to people who have no conception of promoting the general welfare, or securing the blessings of liberty. Some things are too important to allow terrible people like Senator Charlie Janssen to be involved in at all.