Questions abound in the modern political climate

Questions, questions, questions …

What if 5,000 people had gathered in Morro Bay to support Charles Lester at the Coastal Commission — instead of the 500 that showed up? Would the vote have been different?

What if 50,000 people crammed into Morro Bay to protest the firing of Lester? Would the vote have been the same? What if Jacques Cousteau and John Muir had somehow been raised from the dead and showed up carrying “Support Lester” placards? Would the vote to dump the conservation-minded executive director have been the same?

Will the bill (AB 2002) introduced in the state Legislature last week— requiring lobbyists that buttonhole coastal commissioners to report whom they work for, what they get paid, and what specific project they are lobbying for — be enacted into law?

The justifications for firing Lester were “not all above-board,” said Democrat Assemblyman Mark Stone, one of the bill’s authors. There are some “very, very cozy relationships between certain lobbyists and certain commissioners that are not being disclosed,” Stone added.

And if bill number 2002 should become law, will the public truly be well-versed as to what deep-pocket developers and corporations are attempting to ram through mansions and sprawling home sites that would despoil our 1,100-mile coastline?

What if all that yellow-green pollen stuff covering cars, sidewalks and windows in Cambria turned out to be worth money? Would the homeless folks in Cambria be out with brooms and dustpans, madly filling zip-lock bags? Or would they continue panhandling for cash and let the stuff blow away? Let’s skip that question and move on.

With the death of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and others have threatened to refuse to even consider any nominee President Barack Obama might put forward.

But what if McConnell still believed in the position he took in a 1970 law review piece: that unless a nominee represented the American Nazi Party, he or she should be respected and appointed regardless of ideology?

“The Senate should discount the philosophy of the nominee,” McConnell wrote. “The Constitution gives presidents the power to nominate … [and] altering the ideological directions of the Supreme Court would seem to be a perfectly legitimate part of a presidential platform.”

Isn’t that what McConnell and his conservative colleagues fear the most: that Obama could actually nominate a progressive to tip the scales, ideologically, away from the 5-4 conservative majority?

Would the “Citizens United” campaign-finance decision stand the test of time if that happened? A fair-minded majority won’t rubber stamp corporations as citizens, and likely would shoot down the decision to allow a steady stream of “dark money” to be funneled into political campaigns with no accountability or transparency as to the source of the money.

McConnell infamously stated during Obama’s first term: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Jobs and the economy weren’t important? Debt reduction? ho hum. Fighting terrorism wasn’t vital?

Was Scalia out of step with American public opinion when he called the high court’s vote legalizing same-sex marriage “a judicial distortion” and “a threat to American democracy?” Gallup’s polling shows 60 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage in a May 2015 survey.

What if Obama nominated the senior U.S. senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar to replace Scalia? She is a highly qualified and experienced legislator and lawyer whose résumé is about as noncontroversial as they come. Would McConnell block a fair hearing and an up or down vote for a colleague in the United States Senate? Would Sen. Chuck Grassley (chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee) go before television cameras and deny a Senate colleague a fair hearing?

Does McConnell recall what he said in March, 2005?

“I think the president is entitled to an up-or-down — that is a simple majority — vote on nominations … to the judiciary.”

Does McConnell regret that 295 Kentucky mountaintops that have been scraped bare to harvest coal — the great majority of coal then shipped by rail to Texas — leaving gaping scars on the landscape and polluted rivers and streams below?

We don’t know the answer to that, but he’s been re-elected five times. Maybe it’s OK in Kentucky to trash the mountains so Texans have enough coal.

This story was originally published February 24, 2016 at 10:22 AM with the headline "Questions abound in the modern political climate."