Category Archives: Local Government

Red States, Blue States…

The battles over abortion are highlighting some previously under-appreciated differences between life in Red and Blue states. Those differences include health outcomes as well as economic circumstances..

As Jennifer Rubin summed it up in the Washington Post, 

 If you live in a red state, your risk of getting and dying from covid-19 is higher than in blue states. On average, your life span is shorter, your chance of living in poverty higher, your educational attainment lower and your economic opportunities are reduced relative to blue-state residents.

There are–as Rubin also acknowledges– policies being pursued in Red states that are increasingly persuading people to decamp and live elsewhere:  If they have a choice, “diverse” workers–LGBTQ+ folks, women and members of minority groups with skills needed by high-tech businesses– frequently choose to live in places they find welcoming, or at least safe. (As we saw when Indiana passed RFRA, unlike Republican politicians, local business enterprises understand that they are significantly disadvantaged in unwelcoming states. Low taxes– accompanied by a corresponding lack of public amenities and a poor or mediocre quality of life–simply aren’t enough to attract either new business or the skilled workforces on which those local enterprises depend.)

Red states like Indiana that have participated in the unremitting right-wing attack on public education tend not to produce the educated workforces that appeal to companies looking to relocate. Those disadvantages have produced the significant differences between Red and Blue state economies. As the Brookings Institution has reported,

To be sure, racial and cultural resentment have been the prime factors of the Trump backlash, but it’s also clear that the two parties speak for and to dramatically different segments of the American economy. Where Republican areas of the country rely on lower-skill, lower-productivity “traditional” industries like manufacturing and resource extraction, Democratic, mostly urban districts contain large concentrations of the nation’s higher-skill, higher-tech professional and digital services.

Many of these differences have been apparent for years–and as the Brookings report noted, they have recently been accelerating.  But that’s not all. As Rubin writes,

And then came the abortion bans. Thousands, if not millions, of women of childbearing age might reconsider their residence if they want to avoid the potentially life-threatening bans — or if they simply want to be treated like competent, autonomous adults.

There are signs the reality of forced-birth laws are registering with those most affected. Reuters reports: “The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide has some students rethinking their higher education plans as states rush to ban or curtail abortion, according to interviews with 20 students and college advisers across the country.” While the evidence is anecdotal at this point, “in the wake of Roe’s overturn, college counselors said abortion has figured prominently in many conversations with clients, with some going as far as nixing their dream schools.”

Lest you be tempted to “pooh pooh” the effect of Dobbs on the college choices of talented young women, I have an example close at hand. My granddaughter–an excellent student–immediately removed Texas’ Rice University–an otherwise highly desirable school– from her list of schools to consider. She’ll attend the University of Chicago, in Illinois, a pro-choice state.

The Times reports that blue-state governors have begun “depicting their abortion rights policies as a business advantage, reinforcing the appeal of the wealthier and more progressive states that many businesses opt to call home in spite of their taxes.

In fact, multiple data points confirm that, among other things, the GOP’s cult ideology decreases life expectancy and keeps many women out of the workplace. It also contributes to the “brain drain” that sends a state’s college graduates to places with more educated populations and a higher quality of life. And if you don’t think any of this really makes a difference in individual life prospects, Brookings will disabuse you of that belief

With their output surging as a result of the big-city tilt of the decade’s “winner-take-most” economy, Democratic districts have seen their median household income soar in a decade—from $54,000 in 2008 to $61,000 in 2018. By contrast, the income level in Republican districts began slightly higher in 2008, but then declined from $55,000 to $53,000.

Underlying these changes have been eye-popping shifts in economic performance. Democratic-voting districts have seen their GDP per seat grow by a third since 2008, from $35.7 billion to $48.5 billion a seat, whereas Republican districts saw their output slightly decline from $33.2 billion to $32.6 billion.

Retrograde public policies have real-world consequences. And those consequences are substantial. Indiana has long suffered the economic and health results of an unhinged and provincial legislature, but it’s about to get much, much worse.

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A Down-Ballot Threat

A recent article from Time Magazine highlighted yet another threat to American democracy–and this particular threat is especially worrisome, because it involves political contests that voters rarely focus on. In our highly polarized era, most voters no longer split their tickets, and few even bother to look “down ballot”–beyond the more publicized races to local contests.

That lack of attention could be especially costly this year. As the Time article reported, the midterm elections will see numerous election deniers “MAGA hardliners who trumpet former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen” running for positions that oversee elections at the state and local levels.

Inspired by Steve Bannon’s so-called “precinct strategy,” far-right activists have flooded local precincts, signed up en masse to be poll workers, and orchestrated harassment of existing officials.

At the same time, election deniers are winning GOP nominations for key election-related roles in major swing states. According to data compiled by States United Action, a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to protecting elections, 13 election-deniers are running for Attorney General in 11 states, 19 are running for Secretary of State in 15 states, and 25 election deniers are running for Governor in 15 states as of July 11. More than one-third of Attorney General and Governor races in 2022 include an election denier, and more than half of the candidates for Secretary of State have embraced some form of the Big Lie.

A newsletter authored by Robert Reich echoed the message, warning about a dark-money group called the America First Secretary of State Coalition. As he wrote,

The coalition was formed by radical MAGA candidates who are running for secretary of state in key battleground states. In most states, the secretary of state oversees elections—including determining who is eligible to vote and with the power to kick voters off the rolls, throw out votes, and declare the winners of elections.

The goal of the America First Secretary of State Coalition is to elect Trump marionettes to the top elections administration in critical swing states so that when the 2024 election comes, they will have the power to declare Trump the winner—no matter the true will of the voters.

As I have previously reported, Indiana has one of those “Big Lie” supporters running for Secretary of State. Republican nominee Diego Morales has called the 2020 election “a scam,” and promised to make “voter fraud” (apparently, people voting for Democrats) a focus of his efforts if elected. Morales has vowed to purge voter rolls, limit absentee ballots and allow voting only on Election Day. 

You need not take my word for it: I’ve previously quoted James Briggs of the Indianapolis Star, who seemed incredulous about Morales ‘nomination. Briggs wrote,

The Indiana Republican Party on Saturday nominated a secretary of state candidate so broadly unacceptable that the selection must be setting some kind of record for political ineptitude.

Their choice, Diego Morales, once worked in the secretary of state’s office. That would normally be a good thing. Experience!

Except…

Except that, well, Morales got fired in 2009 over incompetence and a “lack of professionalism,” according to his personnel file. Morales disputes the record, as IndyStar’s Kaitlin Lange wrote, but his file doesn’t leave much ambiguity as to whether he met expectations in his job as a special assistant under Todd Rokita.

Anyone rational–let alone patriotic– willing to spend even a few minutes contrasting Morales with the Democratic candidate, Destiny Wells, would have no difficulty deciding to vote for Wells. She’s a U.S. Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel, a lawyer and an entrepreneur. She says

I’m running for Indiana Secretary of State to safeguard democracy and the freedom to vote right here at home. I have worked at all levels of government—local, state, federal, and the multi-national level with NATO. As an attorney, I’ve been Associate Corporation Counsel for the City of Indianapolis and Marion County, and Deputy Attorney General for the State of Indiana. And as a military intelligence officer, I have seen first hand the state of democracy across the world.

This choice should be a “no brainer.” But this is Indiana, where far too many voters reflexively choose anyone with an “R” by their name, no matter how flawed, dishonest or otherwise unacceptable. So, Indiana readers, please spread the word. Tell your friends and family. Visit Wells’ website (and send her some money so she can run a visible campaign. I just did.) The last thing Hoosiers need is an incompetent “Big Lie” proponent overseeing our elections.

Help defeat Indiana’s “Trump marionette.”

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Deplorable Rokita

Hillary Clinton’s characterization of Trump supporters as “deplorable” wasn’t a politically savvy move, but in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Republican officeholders have done their best to illustrate its accuracy.

Here in Indiana, where our last Attorney General was sanctioned by the Disciplinary Commission for groping female legislative staffers, the current occupant of that office is evidently campaigning for the title of most disgusting officeholder–and that’s the only campaign he should actually win.

I’ve previously posted about Rokita–several times, in fact. In 2013, when he was in Congress, I explained why he was more embarrassing than then-Governor Mike Pence. In 2014, I explained why he was dangerous and anti-American. (Also in 2014, I highlighted his comparison of himself to Earl Landgrebe, whose most famous quote, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind” was perhaps more telling than he had intended.) When he was elected AG, I posted a compendium of Rokita’s positions and suggested that Indiana had once again elected a guaranteed embarrassment to the position of Attorney General.

You can find links to those posts in “Speaking of Blowhards and Scoundrels”

I also commented on disclosures that Rokita had retained his position with the health benefits firm he’d worked for prior to the  election, even after he assumed his current, presumably full-time “day job”  as Indiana’s Attorney General. A day job that coincidentally gave him investigative jurisdiction over that “other” job…(The publicity led to a resignation–but not to any evident recognition of why it was a problem…)

Most recently, I posted about Rokita’s despicable and unprofessional attacks on the Ob-Gyn who performed an abortion on the ten-year-old rape victim who traveled to Indiana because–after Dobbs— she could not legally obtain an abortion in Ohio.

I was gratified when the doctor’s lawyer served Rokita with a “cease and desist” letter, and followed it with a tort claim notice–a legal precursor to a defamation lawsuit. But I was especially pleased when Lauren Robel (a former dean of IU’s law school, former Bloomington provost and former Executive Vice President of Indiana University) filed a complaint with the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission against Rokita, accusing him of “recklessly” making claims that weren’t backed by fact.

Unlike Rokita, Robel is widely respected and admired. She readily admits that this is the only time in her 40 years as a lawyer and law professor that she has ever lodged a disciplinary complaint.

In Robel’s complaint, she argued Rokita failed to perform due diligence before making accusations about Bernard.

“What General Rokita did, in essence, was identify a private citizen whose political views he disagrees with and suggest repeatedly, on national television, and on the Attorney General’s official website, that she had broken the law, with no evidence to support those claims,” Robel wrote. “If he can throw the entire weight of his office without consequence to attack Dr. Bernard, he can do so to target any private citizen with whom he disagrees. This is the opposite of the rule of law.”

“It was also about as clear as it could be that he went after this doctor who was performing a legal medical procedure in Indiana because he opposes abortion, not because he had evidence against her of any sort,” Robel said. “The deputy for Stalin was reported to have said, ‘Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.’ That’s just not the way we do things in the United States.”

Robel’s request for an investigation came on the same day fourteen Indiana law professors sent a letter to Rokita, demanding he walk back his previous statements and issue a public apology to the doctor.

“You maintain the false statements, uncorrected even today, on your Webpage and on Twitter,” the law professors from Indiana University and University of Notre Dame wrote. “Your actions are inconsistent with your responsibilities as a lawyer and a prosecutor.”

Rokita’s office has responded that it has no plans to back down or correct the AG’s previous statements.

This isn’t about abortion. It is about attorney ethics–a subject that Rokita rather obviously has never encountered (and probably can’t spell). It is about respect for evidence and truth. It is about the abuse of power, and contempt for the most basic rules of legal practice that we expect an Attorney General to uphold.

Deplorable is the nicest description of Todd Rokita available. My own description would involve more profanity than is appropriate to include on this platform. He has zero redeeming characteristics.

He’s a disservice to the profession–and a blot on humanity.

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National Service

There are multiple reasons for the current unsustainable degree of American polarization. A primary one, as I have written repeatedly, is a media environment that allows people to choose the reality most consistent with their particular biases. Another is the extreme individualism of today’s culture.

The United States has historically swung between an emphasis on community norms and an insistence on individual rights. (We rarely hit the “golden mean” promoted by the Greeks..) Too much “community” and we live in a society that demands conformity and ignores fundamental liberties; too much emphasis on the individual, and we neglect important–even crucial–aspects of the common good, and what is sometimes called “civil religion”–allegiance to the American covenant that creates community from our diversity. E pluribus unum—out of the many, one.

One of the reasons I have long advocated for universal national service is that programs like Americorp create community. Such programs bring together young Americans from diverse backgrounds and introduce them to the multiple tasks that demand civic collaboration and create a polity. I have always supported national service in the abstract, but during the pandemic, I had the opportunity to see it “close up and personal,” as the saying goes. My youngest grandson took a gap year with Americorp after his high school graduation.

My very urban, upper-middle-class grandson, raised in downtown Indianapolis, joined a group of young people from a wide variety of urban and rural environments. They were headquartered in Mississippi (address of headquarters: Confederate Avenue…) He had always been public-spirited, but he learned a lot from his Americorp teammates and the various states and environments to which they were deployed. It was an altogether salutary experience.

Given the fact that our national government is effectively gridlocked–unable to pass anything other than the most trivial measures–I don’t look for the establishment of a universal or mandatory federal program any time soon. But the Brookings Institution recently reported on the growth of service organizations at the state and local level.

Investing in educational and career opportunities for young adults is a smart bet on the future. And that is exactly what many states, cities, and counties are doing with American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) funds.

More specifically, they are directing portions of the $350 billion in ARP’s Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds to create or expand service and conservation corps. In corps programs (also referred to as service or national service programs), members serve their community for defined periods of time, working on projects that provide clear societal value, such as building affordable housing, tutoring K-12 students, supporting public health efforts, aiding disaster response and recovery, and contributing to climate resiliency. In return, corps members earn a modest living allowance, gain valuable work experience, build skills, and, in some cases, receive a small educational scholarship. National service programs can offer a structured and supportive pathway into the labor market and postsecondary education, which is especially valuable for young people who otherwise might flounder. And they offer a solid return on investment: An analysis of AmeriCorps identified a cost-benefit ratio of 17.3 to 1. For every $1 in federal funds, the return to society, program members, and the government is $17.30.

President Biden’s “Build Back Better” Act–like so many other measures we desperately need–was stymied by the Senate filibuster. It included a robust Civilian Conservation Corp and other programs that promised a rebuilding of community and civic solidarity.

The continuing gridlock at the federal level doesn’t tell the whole story, however. The linked Brookings report highlights examples of how state and local governments are using  fiscal recovery funds to support service programs.

The list focuses on climate-oriented corps programs, but there are also ARP-funded service programs focused on community needs such as promoting literacy and stemming learning loss among K-12 students.

Much of the activity, interestingly, is at the municipal level. The report cites Austin, Texas; San Jose, California; and Boston, Massachusetts.

The pandemic illustrated another virtue of service programs: flexibility. During the pandemic, these programs adapted to meet the changing emergency needs. The report tells us that AmeriCorps and conservation corps programs “pivoted to address immediate problems: distributing food to people in need; serving as contact tracers; staffing call centers; and setting up beds and triage centers.”

As helpful as these activities were, the likely long-term effects of participation in delivering them will be even more positive. When Americans from all sorts of communities and backgrounds collaborate for the common good and work together to help equally diverse communities, they learn the importance of community writ large. They learn that not everything in life revolves around the individual and/or his tribe.

They are re-introduced to the American covenant.

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What Is Government’s Role?

Americans love to defend liberty–and oppose government actions that they believe intrude on that liberty. (Granted, all too often they are perfectly willing to have government limit other people’s liberties, especially when those other people don’t espouse the same religious beliefs they hold, but that’s a subject for another day…)

We’re just emerging from one of those periodic, heated debates, triggered by “patriots” offended by government’s effort to prevent the spread of a deadly disease. Again, I’m not spending many pixels on the anti-mask, anti-vaccination folks, because (with very few exceptions) they are so clearly wrong–not just on the science, but on the role of government–not to mention remiss in discharging their most basic obligations to other humans. People who don’t believe public health is a public good that governments are bound to protect are beyond the reach of logic and reason.

In many other areas, we get into various shades of gray. There are plenty of issues that raise legitimate questions about the proper role of the state. I’ll admit to qualms, for example, about things like seat belt laws and similar”nanny state” measures, meant to protect individuals from their own heedless or self-destructive behaviors.

I was recently prompted to think about the proper and improper use of government authority when I read a recent “Eye on the Pie” column written by my friend Morton Marcus. Marcus, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is an economist and former director of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University. In this particular column, he defended governmental “intrusion” on the most hallowed of rights: property rights. He argued (I think persuasively) that your house may be private property, but it also has characteristics of a public good.

My house can be seen by anyone driving down my street. Unless I go to great trouble, I can not stop you from seeing my house. I can’t charge you for looking at my house.

But what you see of my house influences your opinion of my block and the price you’d pay to live near me.

Broken windows, leaky roofs, sagging gutters, piles of trash, and abandoned furniture are not inviting signs of habitation. Such a house may be a fire hazard and a danger to its neighbors.

At the same time, if my house has rats or unhealthy conditions, it may pose a health hazard not only to my family, but to yours as well. My children play with your children. I meet you in the grocery. We family may be carriers of disease, my house a public health menace.

Governments have limits on private behavior when public health and safety are at risk. Yet, we’ve seen great resistance to action that infringes on presumed private rights.

We don’t enforce building codes. We allow structural deterioration and abandonment. We don’t insist houses have adequate insulation from the cold of winter and the heat of summer to protect residents from chronic illness..

Our collective neglect is excused because we believe we’re protecting the poor and/or elderly who cannot afford repairs or adequate weatherization.

Yet our housing stock is one of the most vital aspects for the economic development we seek. Our state provides funding to restore abandoned, old movie theaters, but does little to resurrect declining houses.

Our reluctance to infringe on the “rights” of a property owner conflicts with the community’s need to preserve its critical assets.

Morton argues that there are many negative consequences of not treating housing stock as a public good: decay of our central cities, abandonment of our smaller towns,  encouragement of urban sprawl and environmental degradation.  He blames the  “infatuation with the myth of unlimited private property rights.”

Of course, as any lawyer will confirm, there are few if any rights that are “unlimited,” and property rights are no exception.  Laws against nuisance, and minimum upkeep regulations–neither very well enforced, unfortunately–are meant to protect the considerable investments people make in their homes.

Morton’s column raises some thorny issues: does government have an obligation to ensure that people’s homes are humanly habitable? How far does that obligation extend before it becomes an unconstitutional invasion of property rights? What about the rights of homeowners whose properties are adjacent to homes that have been allowed to deteriorate?

If we are talking about property values, it is interesting to note that, in historic areas that are subject to more stringent government regulation, values are not only stable, but tend to be higher.

I’m not entirely sure where I come down on what are often very technical/legal questions of property regulation, but I am sure that these are precisely the sorts of questions our elected officials ought to be debating–rather than worrying about my uterus, Jewish space lasers, or being “replaced.”

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