Author Archives: Sheila

It’s the Little Things

As good novelists know, it is often the small, seemingly unimportant choices people make that tells you volumes about their character and values.

This week, in the U.S. House, the new Republican majority reversed a decision by Nancy Pelosi that had required the House cafeteria to use compostable cutlery and recyclable paper cups. Instead, the cafeteria will go back to using Styrofoam coffee cups and plastic cutlery.

Tells us a lot about their arrogance, contempt for science, and unwillingness to make even the simplest personal accommodations to benefit the environment.

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The Kids Are All Right

Republican Presidential hopefuls keep playing to their (aging and shrinking) base.

Mike Huckabee recently said something to the effect that President Obama isn’t “really” American, because he wasn’t a Boy Scout with a father in Rotary. For his part, Newt Gingrich, that intrepid defender of traditional marriage, wants to impeach President Obama for his decision not to defend the constitutionality of DOMA in court.  (Lest you question Gingrich’s  commitment to “traditional” marriage, I would point out that he’s had three such marriages himself, and in each one, he dutifully behaved the way men “traditionally” behaved–at least in 19th Century France–by cheating on his wives.)

I hate to tell Newt this, but in the 21st Century, traditions are changing.

A new survey from Pew has confirmed what any objective observer can see: a continuing and rapid rise in support for same-sex marriage since 2009. Currently, 45% say they favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, while 46% are opposed. In Pew surveys conducted in 2010, 42% favored and 48% opposed gay marriage and in 2009, just 37% backed same-sex marriage while 54% were opposed.

And despite the current war on women being waged in Congress, Pew found that opinions about abortion have also liberalized. In 2009, for the first time in many years, the public was evenly divided over whether abortion should be legal or illegal in all or most cases. But support for legal abortion has recovered and now stands at 54%.

Independents have become more supportive of both gay marriage and legal abortion since 2009. Roughly half of independents (51%) now favor same-sex marriage, up from 37% in 2009. And 58% of independents say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 47% in Pew Research Center surveys two years ago.

When you look at the age breakdowns in these and other polls, you’re left with an inescapable conclusion: if we can just hang in there until the old farts in my age cohort die off, the kids will be all right.

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There’s the Talk, and There’s the Walk…….

I continue to be amazed by how blatant right wing hypocrisy has become.

The most recent example (okay, one of the many recent examples) occurred last week in Washington.  House Democrats offered a motion to cut the budget by putting an end to taxpayer-funded subsidies to large oil companies. Rep. William Keating (D-MA) offered the motion on the House floor saying “let’s stop sending taxpayers’ money to the most profitable companies in the world.”

Republicans voted unanimously against the motion, defeating it by a vote of 176-249. Those would be the same Republicans who are constantly talking about the need to reduce the deficit. Evidently, what they mean by “reduce the deficit” is “reduce the deficit to the extent we can do so on the backs of middle-class taxpayers.”

And speaking of talks and walks, it will be interesting to see what Indiana Governor Mitch “Social Issues Truce” Daniels does when the anti-immigration bill hits his desk.

Daniels has certainly talked the talk of fiscal responsibility. Lately, in fact, he’s “talked the talk” incessantly, as he clearly is positioning himself to run for President. The Indiana business community, Indiana’s Mayors (with the curious exception of Greg Ballard), Indianapolis’ convention bureau and many others–including Mitch’s former employer, Eli Lilly & Company–have all argued that Senator Delph’s bill would hurt Indiana’s economy and intensify the state’s fiscal woes, and Daniels clearly knows that they are correct. In any sane world, the Governor would veto the bill. But in order to have a shot at the Republican nomination, he has to play to the prejudices of the far right zealots who have for all intents and purposes captured the party.

We know he can talk the talk. It will be interesting to see if he can also walk the walk.

Gasp–An Actual Exhibit of Political Courage!

We have all become used to elected officials who approach their duties with their fingers raised to test which way the wind is blowing, and their ears to the ground to see which way the crowd is going.  As one wag put it, it’s hard to look up to someone in that position. Once elected, all too many of them put being re-elected at the very top of their “to do” list, and conclude that laying low is the best way to accomplish that.

So it was both surprising and gratifying to see Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry come out against Senator Delph’s ill-conceived and mean-spirited immigration bill.

Curry pointed out the bill’s legal flaws, including the fact that immigration is a responsibility of the federal government. But he went farther, describing the proposal as a waste of resources–not only because a legal challenge would be inevitable, but because the law would further erode the ability of local law-enforcement to focus on their primary duty to ensure public safety.

Curry is correct on all counts, of course. But more importantly, he was willing to speak out against a proposal that would marginalize some of our citizens in order to play to the prejudices and misconceptions of others.

A prosecutor who wants Indiana to respect the Constitution and the law and is willing to say so–how incredibly refreshing!

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When Privatizing Met Public Infrastructure

As readers of this blog know, I’m not a “believer” in contracting-out–what we Americans quaintly call “privatization.” I’m not necessarily opposed to contracting, either–it’s a tool that can be appropriate in many circumstances. Call me an agnostic.

It’s important to examine claims about privatizing, because contracting is too often a form of patronage–a way of rewarding campaign contributors–or, as we’ve seen in Indiana, a way that canny politicians can borrow from the future to provide services that should be paid for from current tax revenues.

When we start privatizing public infrastructure–toll roads and parking meters, for example–it is even more important to ask what the research shows. We know what the politicians who are pushing these deals say; what does the evidence say?

Ellen Dannin is a law professor who is a national expert on contracting, and she has just published an important (and sobering) analysis of what happens when public infrastructure is privatized. In “Crumbling Infrastructure, Crumbling Democracy: Infrastructure Privatization Contracts and Their Effects on State and Local Governance,”
Dannin finds that these agreements typically make the public the guarantor of private contractors’ profits, and ” give private contractors quasi-governmental status, with power over new laws, judicial decisions, propositions voted on by the public, and other governmental actions.”

Well worth a read!


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