Author Archives: Sheila

Those Neglected Issues

It isn’t simply that our attention is consumed by the daily obscenities of the Trump administration–the increasingly overt and unapologetic racism, the economic damage, the assaults on the rule of law. Reeling from the daily headlines and trying to stem the progress of MAGA’s anti-Americanism takes up most of our policy bandwidth, meaning that we neglect the large number of important issues that we ought to be addressing.

One of those issues is America’s housing crisis.

I have previously posted about various elements of that housing crisis--including out-of-state buyers of homes (My own city, Indianapolis, is now first in the nation for out-of-state ownership of rental property, but such ownership is a real problem in most cities.) More recently, I’ve posted about the escalating rate of evictions, also acute locally, and about the laudable effort by the genuinely religious folks in GIMA-The Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance– to provide permanent housing and supportive services for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness through the Streets to Homes initiative.

Local efforts are important, but housing problems are national. A recent article in The Atlantic took an in-depth look at the extent to which private equity has changed the housing market.The article begins with a recitation of the problem: the country is short by approximately 4 million housing units, and the shortage is most severe in areas like starter homes, moderately priced apartments in low-rises, and family-friendly dwellings.  Among the increasing numbers of Americans who are renting, half of them are spending more than a third of their income on shelter, and in numerous markets, wages are insufficient to cover the rent of a two-bedroom apartment.

It isn’t just private equity, of course. Multiple factors contribute to the housing crisis, including but not limited to restrictive zoning codes, excessively bureaucratic permitting processes, and the escalating costs of labor and building materials. But the problem has been significantly aggravated by the aggressive entry of private equity into the housing market. As the article reports, “Institutional investors have bought up hundreds of thousands of American homes since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, outbidding families and pushing up rents.”

And it matters.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Center for Geospatial Solutions published a report showing that corporations now own a remarkable one in 11 residential real-estate parcels in the 500 urban counties with data robust enough to analyze. In some communities, they control more than 20 percent of properties….These investors are pouring the most money into “buy low, rent high” neighborhoods: communities, many of them in the South and the Rust Belt, where large shares of families can’t afford a mortgage.

These private equity firms are buying up huge numbers of starter homes in low-income, minority neighborhoods, intensifying America’s racial wealth and homeownership gaps. The article notes that, in Cleveland, corporations own 17.5 percent of residential real-estate parcels, primarily in low-income areas. In the city’s predominantly Black neighborhoods, just one in five homebuyers in 2021 took out a mortgage, and in 2022, owner-occupants made just 13 percent of purchases. In a nearby majority-white neighborhood, owner-occupants bought more than 80 percent of homes that same year. In affluent White neighborhoods,  out-of-state corporations owned less than 1 percent of residential parcels.

Private equity isn’t to blame for high housing costs in desirable cities and neighborhoods, but it is distorting markets in low income communities, and pushing thousands of Black and Latino families off the property ladder. And to add insult to injury, renters of these investment properties often find that corporate owners are more prone to skimping on maintenance and upkeep and quicker to evict their tenants than local, individual owners.

Policymakers have advanced a variety of proposals to address the problem. Washington State is debating a proposal to cap the number of units that a corporation can own, but that approach would simply invite investors to set up multiple entities to purchase properties. Other policymakers suggest classifying firms that own more than 10 properties in a given jurisdiction as commercial owners, subjecting them to higher property-tax rates and higher taxes on their capital gains, but there are obvious “work-arounds” to that approach as well.

The most straightforward remedy would be a dramatic expansion of the country’s housing stock–especially the supply of affordable housing. During the presidential campaign, Kamala Harris released a detailed plan to improve housing affordability and increase housing supply, but voters chose to ignore boring proposals aimed at ameliorating real problems, instead choosing to install a bloviating ignoramus who gave them permission to publicly express their bigotries.

I wonder if We the People have learned our lesson…

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It’s Not Your Fault…

Heather Cox Richardson recently explored the success of Trump’s “sales pitch,” which she attributed to his ability to leverage a belief in the victimization of White folks that Republicans have increasingly embraced since the 1980s. As she put it, the message boiled down to “the reason certain white Americans were being left behind in the modern world was not that Republican policies had transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%, but that lazy and undeserving Black and Brown Americans and women were taking handouts from the government rather than working.”

I think this is exactly right.

After all, as a man and a candidate, Trump is repulsive. His “policies” are laughable when they aren’t appalling, raising the question why anyone would support him. Political scholarship has answered that question by linking his ability to generate votes to “racial resentment,” and that link becomes more obvious every time he talks about “shithole” countries, calls Black immigrants “garbage,” or attacks “woke-ism” or DEI. But it isn’t just race–Trump and MAGA have built their appeal on resentment of every American who isn’t a White Christian male: the “uppity” women who’ve forgotten their proper role, the LGBTQ+ folks who had the nerve to open the closet door, Jews and Muslims. Etc.

The base of the appeal, as the Richardson quote suggests, is the festering anger of victimhood. There are thousands of White “Christian” nationalists whose lives haven’t gone the way they wanted or intended. Perhaps it’s that they haven’t accumulated the wealth they once thought they’d enjoy, or generated the admiration or applause or familial love to which they felt entitled. Perhaps they’re among the self-described Incels. 

We have all encountered people nursing these grievances. Sometimes, their complaints are very understandable; other times,  disconnected from their public-facing financial or social positions. Whatever these White “Christian” men feel is missing, whatever the nature of the deeply-felt disappointment, their lives aren’t providing something to which they feel entitled. Not only do they resent the fact that their lives have failed to meet their expectations, they need to believe that–whatever it is–it simply cannot be their own fault. 

They need to see themselves as victims. 

Scholars who have explored the concept of “white victimhood” describe it as a belief that, in today’s America, white people–especially White Christian men– are being systematically disadvantaged, a belief that is then used to justify racial animus and extremist ideologies. It’s sometimes described as “competitive victimhood.” It isn’t related to actual discrimination or oppression; rather, it’s in reaction to a perceived threat: that women and minorities are eroding the historically dominant status accorded to White Christian men in American society. 
 
Weaponizing victimhood may be Trump’s one true talent. As an article from Medium put it,

In the history of American political speech, few phenomena have been as widespread (or as damaging) as Donald Trump’s systematic creation of victimhood stories. From his accusations of “witch hunts” to his depiction of America as a nation “raped” by foreign powers, Trump has turned the language of suffering into a powerful tool for political rallying and authoritarian control. Recent academic research shows that this is not just another example of political exaggeration, but a sophisticated tactic now known as “strategic victimhood”: a deliberate performance intended to justify retaliation, weaken democratic institutions, and strengthen his hold on power.

The bottom line: Trump’s victimhood rhetoric is more than just political theater. It is what researchers refer to as an “anti-democratic, coercive, and illiberal” strategy that both predicts and fosters authoritarian rule, with significant implications for American democracy and social cohesion.

An article in Salon traced the connection between “winning and whining.” 

The article began by questioning how a “once-proud party of masculine self-reliance and personal responsibility” had become “such a bunch of whiny snowflakes?” and reviewed the findings of an academic paper by Miles Armaly and Adam Enders, titled “‘Why Me?’ The Role of Perceived Victimhood in American Politics.”  The authors concluded that feelings of victimhood did explain various (otherwise unfounded) “views of government, society and the world. They found it was especially explanatory with regard to perceived corruption and conspiratorial thinking, and that it was linked to personality traits such as narcissism and a sense of entitlement.

As the article from Medium put it, Trump and MAGA weaponize the grievances by giving these “victims” people to blame– those “others” who are stealing the social status of White “Christian” men.

It explains a lot.

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I Guess I’m A Domestic Terrorist…

Charlie Sykes says if we’re not alarmed, it’s because we aren’t paying attention.

Granted, paying attention to this corrupt and incompetent administration means constant alarm–my own ranges from moderate concern to abject terror–but Sykes was singling out a recent memo issued by the bimbo who is currently cosplaying as US Attorney General, Pam Bondi.

The memo orders the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism.”

And who are these “domestic terrorists”? Apparently, anyone engaged in an activity that “paints legitimate government authority and traditional, conservative viewpoints as ‘fascist.”  Bondi proposes to punish such offenses “to the maximum extent permitted by law.” (If she was a minimally-competent lawyer, she’d recognize that the First Amendment prohibits punishing “activities” that are really just beliefs…)

The memo orders the creation of a massive dragnet that focuses on “Antifa.” As sentient Americans know–but the credulous MAGA base evidently does not–Antifa is simply a word meaning “anti-fascist.” (You. know, like the American soldiers who fought in WWII.) There is no “Antifa” organization, nothing comparable to the communist cells that so terrified patriotic citizens back in the Cold War/McCarthyite days. But Bondi’s use of the term accurately signals her obvious goal, which is focused on ideology, not on terrorism as we have historically defined that word.

As Sykes explains (emphases his):

Although the directive mentions the statutory definition requiring acts dangerous to human life, it directs federal law enforcement to investigate individuals whose “animating principle is adherence” to several viewpoints.

And the“extreme viewpoints” and ideological frameworks the Attorney General instructs federal law enforcement to prioritize include? (These are direct quotes)

• Opposition to law and immigration enforcement…

• Extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders…

• Adherence to radical gender ideology…

• Anti-Americanism…

• Anti-capitalism…

• Anti-Christianity…

• Support for the overthrow of the United States Government…

• Hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality,,,

Sykes accurately describes this as “clowns-with-flamethrowers territory.” and notes that Bondi appears to be quite serious– that she’s providing “heavy hitters  with legal hammers, writing that “The JTTFs [Joint Terrorism Task Forces] shall prioritize the investigation of such conduct.”

Needless to say, an attack that characterizes “antifa” as the cause of domestic terrorism ignores reality and the mountains of data confirming that far-right attacks –especially those from white supremacists–vastly outnumber all other forms of domestic violence. (That documented and fact-based conclusion has now been deleted from the department’s website.)

I am fascinated by Bondi’s list, which certainly establishes that–at least in her opinion–I’m a “domestic terrorist.” I may not own a gun or other weapon (I certainly don’t!) and I may run from anything remotely like a physical confrontation (yes, I’m a big coward), but I am firmly opposed to the current administration’s “immigration enforcement” tactics. I definitely adhere to what MAGA considers “radical gender ideology” (I support same-sex marriage and the right of trans people–including young people–to access appropriate medical interventions). I have a sneaking suspicion that Bondi would consider my strong objections to Trump’s war crimes and pathetic pro-Putin betrayal of Ukraine to be “anti-Americanism.”

I’m equally sure that my disdain for White Christian nationalism and my practice of putting quotation marks around “Christian” to recognize those using the label inappropriately would be sufficient for Bondi to consider me “anti-Christian.”

And I am absolutely hostile to the “traditional views” that have kept women in the kitchen and out of the workforce, LGBTQ+ people in the closet, and dark-skinned folks in servitude. You might call any of these hostilities my “animating principles.”

When I look back at the comments that are routinely posted in response to my daily rants on this site, I have to conclude that most of my readers are “domestic terrorists” too. In fact, if survey research is to be believed, a majority of Americans run afoul of several of the vague descriptions on Bondi’s ridiculous culture-war list.

For that matter, Trump, Bondi and this entire clown car of an administration are the ones guilty of “Anti-Americanism.” Bondi’s list is just additional evidence of that fact.

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Legal Nostalgia

A former student recently needed a copy of the syllabus I’d used in her graduate Law and Policy class back in 2010. When I reviewed it, I was struck by the changes effected by Trump, MAGA, and our current, corrupt Supreme Court majority. I became positively nostalgic for the legal environment of my time in the classrooom–nostalgic for the “black-letter law” and for precedents that were considered settled by my cohort of lawyers and law professors.

In that syllabus, I explained the course as follows:

___________

This course will examine the response of the American legal system, with its historic commitment to individual liberty and autonomy, to the growth of the administrative state and to an increasingly complex social environment characterized by pluralism and professional differentiation. We will discuss conflicting visions of American government and different approaches to public administration, and consider how those differences have affected the formation and implementation of public policy within our constitutional framework. Throughout, we will consider the constitutional and ethical responsibilities of public service—the origins of those responsibilities and their contemporary application.

While relatively few people will become public officials or public managers, all Americans are citizens, and most citizens will participate in the selection of public officials and will take positions on the policy issues of the day. Accordingly, this course is intended to introduce all students to the constituent documents that constrain public action and frame policy choices in the American system. These explorations will inevitably implicate political (although not necessarily partisan) beliefs about the proper role of the state, the health of civil society, and the operation of the market. To the extent possible, these theoretical and philosophical beliefs will be made explicit and their consequences for policy and public sector behavior examined. The goal is to help students understand why certain policy prescriptions and/or public actions attract or repel certain constituencies, and to recognize the ways in which these deeply held normative differences impact our ability to forge consensus around issues of public concern.

In the course of these inquiries, we will consider the implications of the accelerating pace of social change on issues of governance: globalization, especially as it affects considerations of legal jurisdiction; the increasing interdependence of nations, states, and local governmental units; the blurring of boundaries between government, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and the effect of that blurring upon constitutional accountability; the role of technology; and the various challenges to law and public management posed by change and diversity, including the  impact and importance of competing value structures to the formation of law and policy.

By the end of the semester, students should be able to recognize legal and constitutional constraints on public service and policy formation, and to identify areas where public policy or administration crosses permissible boundaries. They should be able to recognize and articulate the impact of law and legal premises on culture and value formation, and to understand and describe the complex interrelation that results.

_________

During my years on the faculty teaching law and policy, it never occurred to me that I would live in an America where a President and virtually everyone in his administration would find the foregoing paragraphs incomprehensible–where individuals in positions of authority would reject–indeed, be unfamiliar with– the very concept of Constitutional restraints, let alone the existence and importance of civil society and/or competing arguments about the proper role of government.

I certainly wouldn’t have anticipated that so many of the ambitious politicians serving in the House and Senate–men and women presumably concerned for the national interest– would neuter themselves in slavish submission to a man whose ignorance of government and policy and whose intellectual and moral deficits were impossible to ignore even before the emergence of unmistakable dementia.

I would have rejected as fanciful the notion that a duly constituted United States Supreme Court would substitute partisan ideology and Christian nationalism for the rule of law, upending years of settled precedents and thoughtful, considered jurisprudence, not to mention the Separation of Powers that lies at the very heart of our constitutional architecture.

And yet here we are.

Forgive this somewhat whiney post, but coming across my old syllabus has made me nostalgic for the legal world I once inhabited. It wasn’t perfect, but it was infinitely preferable to our current reality, and we need to recover, reinstate, and improve it.

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The Pro-Death Administration

One of the outcomes of Trump’s “culture war” approach to the pandemic during his first administration was the documented excess death rate of the MAGA partisans who refused to wear masks or get vaccinated. Although I’m unaware of research into the survival rates of the even more hard-core cult members who imbibed bleach and/or Hydroxychloroquine per Trump’s suggestions, I assume those outcomes were similarly unfortunate.

This time around, Trump is doubling down on his “angel of death” approach. 

Thanks to his “Big Beautiful Bill,”  health care costs are poised to go through the roof. As a recent essay in the New York Times put it, health spending in the United States since 1975 “has pushed down wages, fueled inequality and left families drowning in unaffordable medical bills.” The essay’s author, who teaches public health and economics at Yale, says the administration is making it worse, and that  rising health care spending is killing the American dream.

The imminent sharp rise in health insurance premiums has been front page news for several months, but unaffordable costs are just one of the health threats faced by the vast majority of Americans who cannot pay exorbitant costs out of pocket. The installation of Mr. Brain Worm as Secretary of Health and Human Services has turned America’s public health agencies over to cranks who elevate conspiracy theories over vetted medical science.

Lincoln Square recently enumerated the threats. For example, as we’ve just seen, the CDC just voted to end universal Hepatitis B vaccine recommendations for newborns, despite the fact that the mandate has demonstrably saved lives.

Now, under Trump guidance, only infants of mothers who test positive (or whose status is unknown) receive the recommendation. Everyone else? Optional. Delayed. A ‘maybe’ if the parents decide to go that route in two months.

And here’s the thing RFK Jr. and the Trump regime aren’t talking about:

Medicare and Medicaid only cover vaccines that are recommended by federal bodies like the CDC. If you cut the recommendation, you cut the coverage. And when you cut the coverage, vaccinations become a commodity. The wealthy will pay out of pocket to protect their kids. The poor will hope and wait – and hope doesn’t prevent liver cancer.

As the article points out, this most recent assault is part of a pattern that has emerged during Trump’s second term. Health protections have been shifted from a public good to a private luxury, and preventative care is being turned into something you buy, not a human right. The wealthy get immunized; the poor get sick.

The Trump administration has raised healthcare costs, reduced Medicaid access, and increased premiums and deductibles. Working individuals can’t keep up with the costs–and fewer Americans are working. 

Americans have now watched 1.1 million jobs vanish in 2025 – the most since 2020 – with Amazon alone cutting as many as 30,000 corporate positions. Not part-time workers, but white-collar analysts, engineers, and project managers who were told they would be insulated from the automation. And rather than sounding the alarms, the Trump regime has been covering for their billionaire buddies. Jobs reports? Non-existent, because the truth is politically inconvenient when corporations are firing workers in droves during the holidays.

And in a country where healthcare is tied to employment – where those who lose work fall back on Medicaid, and Medicaid only covers vaccines recommended by the CDC – the consequences compound quickly. If parents can’t access affordable healthcare, can’t find work, can’t afford fresh food, and can’t protect their children from preventable disease, then the future looks less like a safety net and more like a prison shiv. A slow attrition of the working class. A world where the wealthy live longer, healthier lives while everyone else is riddled with disease, hungry, and desperate.

For much of my adult life, I have marveled at the idiocy of America’s approach to healthcare. We pay far more–and get far less–than other first world countries, countries that long ago recognized that healthcare is a human right, and incidentally, that national coverage offers efficiencies leading to very substantial cost savings.

Trump and his MAGA GOP are rolling back Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act–America’s incremental “baby steps” toward more universal coverage–and substituting magical thinking for medical science. They are also ensuring that only the rich will be able to protect their health and that of their children.

As the linked article asks, “Is this the collateral damage of incompetence, or the blueprint of a ruling class preparing for a future where most of us just aren’t needed?”

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