On August 2, voters in Kansas rejected an amendment to the state constitution which would have increased the legislature’s power to regulate (or ban) abortion.

Pro-choice groups hailed the outcome as evidence that abortion rights are a “winning issue” this year; partisan Democrats have reason to look more hopefully toward their chances of holding on to majorities in the US Senate, and maybe even the House of Representatives, this November.

More interesting, I think, is what the result tells us about where the “moderate center” is in American politics. Letting people vote on one specific issue often produces very different outcomes from letting people vote on “representatives” based on the candidates’ baskets of multiple issues.

In order to understand where Kansas is going after the referendum, it’s useful to consider where it started prior to the referendum and what passage would have changed.

Per existing Kansas law, abortion is already banned after 22 weeks. Parental consent is required for minors seeking the procedure. There’s a 24-hour waiting period for the procedure.  Government funding for abortion is only available if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life.

In other words, Kansas without the amendment was neither paradise for the “ban it from conception” crowd nor Utopia for the “it’s an absolute right up to the moment of birth” crowd.

Had the amendment passed, the constitution would have explicitly stated that abortion is not a “right” and that the state legislature could impose additional restrictions on it.

By defeating the amendment, Kansans chose to keep things just as they already were.

Had this been a legislative election, the voters would have likely faced a binary choice between Republicans who wanted more government regulation of abortion, and Democrats who wanted less government restriction of abortion.

The voters comprising the big “center” — those who may or may not be comfortable with abortion, but resemble neither of the polar “ban it” or “don’t touch it” ends of the issue — wouldn’t have had an option there. They’d likely have gone with one of the two parties based not on (or at least not JUST on) abortion, but on a whole raft of issues and personalized identity affiliations.

In a close election, the “extremist” voters on either side might  provide the margin of victory to one side or the other, and would certainly claim that victory as indicating support for their positions, but that claim would ring hollow.

In this single-issue referendum, “extremist” voters were swamped by “moderate” voters who might or might not support the existing restrictions, but see no reason to expand those restrictions — or at least no reason to trust legislators with that power.

As someone who doesn’t always trust the collective judgments of “the people,” but who trusts the judgments of politicians even less, I find that result quite pleasing.

Unfortunately, this outcome highlights why a “centrist” party can’t win in “representative” elections. Our system is designed to divvy up the “center” into large, roughly equal partisan blocs so that “extremists” control the balance of power.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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With inflation rampaging across the US Economy, USA Today reports, Social Security recipients can expect a 2022 cost of living adjustment (“COLA”) of up to 10.5%.

For victims of the New-Deal-Era Ponzi scheme, which offers a measly return on “investment” (paid for, like all Ponzi payouts, from new revenues), and which mostly functions as a way of subsidizing the retirements of longer-lifespan white middle-class women at the expense of shorter-lifespan black low-income men, a raise is always good news.

Well, almost always.

Other things will likely be going up as well, including those same seniors’ Medicare Part B and Part D payments, (Part D increased by 14.5% this year, while the Social Security COLA was only 5.9%).

And other things won’t go up. For example, the amount of income seniors can have before that income starts getting taxed, or the amount below which they receive adjusted Medicare and prescription drug benefits for “low-income” retirees.

In at least some cases, the COLA may end up costing seniors more than they get. As Martin Luther observed of certain people in his Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, government’s “giving is of such a character, that the right hand gives, but the left hand takes.”

The best solution to this problem, of course, would be to get America off government “giving” merry-go-round, including but not limited to the Social Security scam.

But until we can figure out how to get there (or, more likely, the system collapses), there’s another worthwhile solution — not just for Social Security recipients, but for everyone.

That solution is “indexing” tax rates and benefit thresholds to inflation.

With “indexing,” every year, the personal exemption and/or standard deduction for the federal income tax would increase by the same percentage as the previous year’s inflation (or, better yet, a little more, so that we can get real tax cuts). Maximum income levels to qualify for government benefits would likewise increase.

“Indexing” only seems fair. After all, inflation is itself a tax, and a highly regressive one that hurts the poor far more than the rich. It occurs when the government creates new money out of thin air faster than the productive economy produces goods and services to buy with that money, making your existing dollars worth less, so that it can have more to spend on its priorities rather than yours.

Not “indexing” taxes and benefits for inflation is, essentially, taxing you … on your taxes!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Near the end of July, Andrew Yang — whose previous political projects include an unsuccessful run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, an unsuccessful run for the 2021 Democratic mayoral nomination in New York City, and what initially looked likely to be an unsuccessful new “third party,” the Forward Party — announced a re-launch of that last effort.

While it’s still called the Forward Party, Yang’s vehicle is merging with two other (also previously unsuccessful) “third party” efforts, the “Renew America Movement” (co-founded by Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey, who will co-chair “new” Forward) and the “Serve America Movement” (chaired by former Republican congressman David Jolly of Florida).

The merger, Yang tweeted, creates “the biggest 3rd party by resources in the United States.”

He may be right about that: The Libertarian Party, which previously held claim to the title of “third largest political party in America,” seems to be circling the drain after after a four-year internecine fight culminating in a Memorial Day weekend “takeover” by a Republican astroturf operation, the “Mises Caucus” (disclosure: I’ve been a partisan Libertarian since 1996, but have re-registered in my state as “no party affiliation” and cut off my meager financial support for the national organization pending a hopeful libertarian re-“takeover” of the party).

But are the “resources” Yang speaks of enough for the Forward Party to realize its vision?

In a July 27 Washington Post op-ed, Whitman, Jolly, and Yang tick the usual “moderate” boxes. They’re against “polarization.” They believe most Americans “want to move past divisiveness and reject extremism.” They want (and are trying to create) a party that “reflects the moderate, common-sense majority.”

And therein lie two problems.

First, while most Americans seem to agree that “polarization” sucks, most Americans are also, well, polarized. They may think of themselves as “centrists” or “moderates,” but so do their neighbors, who all have very different ideas about where the “center” really is.

Second, to the extent that a “center” exists, it’s already well-covered by a Venn diagram of Republican and Democratic policies and constituencies.

As the late L. Neil Smith once wrote, “great men don’t ‘move to the center’ — great men move the center.” Within the context of electoral politics, the same is true of any party that hopes to actually create systemic change. The Overton Window (the spectrum of the politically “acceptable”), like most windows, has its handle on the edge, not in the center. Change comes from the edge and its ability to change the minds AT the “center.”

The news may not be all bad for the Forward Party’s prospects, though. While its rhetoric is “centrist,” its stated priorities focus on individual freedom and its specific policy proposals — Ranked-Choice Voting, Nonpartisan Primaries, and Independent Redistricting Commissions — are at, not beyond, the edge of the aforementioned Overton Window: Good ideas that most people like but that the “major” parties refuse to touch.

Will they excite voters enough to move the needle? Time will tell. But time may be running out on American democracy.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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