Category Archives: Random Blogging

War and Peace and Chickenhawks

I rarely write about foreign affairs, because it is a complex policy arena in which I have little or no expertise, but the current right-wing hysteria over the (not-yet-fully-fleshed-out) deal with Iran is incredibly troubling for a number of reasons.

Part of the push-back, of course, can be attributed to the Right’s pathological hatred of Obama. But a lot of it goes well beyond that and into the psyches of the GOP’s “Cheney wing”–those saber-rattling lawmakers who enjoyed multiple deferments or otherwise avoided military service themselves, but who sneer at diplomacy and seem bound and determined to send other people’s children into combat.

That “ready, shoot, aim” approach cost us dearly in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention that it decimated and destabilized large portions of an already volatile region. You’d think we might have learned a lesson…

Of course, American Right-wingers aren’t the only paranoids participating in the debate. Netanyahu (Israel’s Dick Cheney) isn’t helping matters. To the contrary, he is inflicting significant damage on the American-Israeli partnership that is critical to Israel’s continued survival.

As Political Animal reports

As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu continues to decry the landmark deal between the U.S. and Iran, more evidence is emerging that Israel’s current leadership is alienating Americans in droves:

The number of Americans who view Israel as an ally of the United States has sharply decreased, according to a new poll published Thursday. Only 54% of Americans polled said that Israel is their country’s ally, a decline from 68% in 2014 and 74% in 2012.

It isn’t just non-Jews who find Netanyahu’s positions counter-productive and ultimately dangerous to the Jewish state. J Street, a Jewish, pro-Israel lobbying group, is alarmed by his rhetoric, as are numerous Israelis in and out of that country’s defense forces. His unseemly and partisan alliance with Congressional Republican hawks is nothing new, nor is his track record of being wrong about pretty much everything.  His narrow re-election  has made rational debate much more difficult.

Early indications are that the deal struck by Kerry is better than most experts had hoped for. That doesn’t mean it should be uncritically endorsed; the details to be worked out are important, and the stakes are too high for an agreement based only upon “trust me.” That said, the current status is promising, and neither Bibi’s longstanding paranoid fantasies nor the wet dreams of American chickenhawks should derail continuing work on a comprehensive agreement.

As they said in the 60s, all we are asking is to give peace a chance.

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Rational Self-Interest

Sunday “sermon” time…..

Adam Smith argued that a market economy serves the common good by allowing individuals to operate on the basis of self-interest. I agree. The problem is, too many of our contemporary “Captains of Industry” don’t understand where their own self-interest ultimately lies.

The worst thing about avarice is how shortsighted and ultimately unproductive it is, even for those whose pursuit of ever-fatter bottom lines is all-consuming.

That’s because a more equal society is in the long-term best interests of even those people who don’t feel any obligation to feed hungry children or find jobs for ex-offenders or make health care accessible to poor people. First, there’s the fact that– in order to remain competitive in a constantly changing global economy– America needs to use everyone’s talents. Social injustices that prevent people from reaching their potential are a drag on that competitiveness.

Second, it is cheaper to deal with problems at the front end than at the back. When we cut programs that help poor folks, we may save a few dollars in taxes, but (as substantial research confirms) we end up paying far more, in costs ranging from lost productivity to prisons.

But it’s the third argument that ought to make us stop and think. As I have argued before,democracies require stability in order to survive.

In countries where there are great gaps between the rich and poor, in countries where some groups of people go through their lives being marginalized or despised while others enjoy privileges and respect, in countries where some people are exploited in order that others might benefit—that stability is hard to come by. A wealthy friend of mine once put it this way: “I’d rather pay more in taxes than spend my days worrying about angry mobs rioting in the streets or desperate people kidnapping my children.”

Most of us understand that—as Elizabeth Warren has pointed out–no one succeeds solely by his own efforts. There is a social and physical infrastructure required to support and enable entrepreneurship and wealth creation, and we taxpayers have built and maintained that infrastructure. And that’s fine. Adam Smith was correct that we all benefit when someone builds a better mousetrap, or improves on another guy’s widget. But when someone profits from his better mousetrap, the people who paid for and maintained that infrastructure–the people who invested in his business via the support systems that enabled him– have a right to a return on that investment in the form of taxes.

A genuine devotion to one’s own self-interest requires us to recognize the degree to which we depend on social stability and an adequate infrastructure–both social and physical.

The contemporary Oligarchs–with their greed and contempt for the common good–are  undermining the very system that has allowed them to succeed. What they fail to recognize is that when the system fails, they will fail with it.

 

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No, All Attention Isn’t Good…

There’s an old political saying to the effect that publicity is always good, as long as they spell your name right.

Not so much.

There’s been a lot of attention focused upon Indiana Governor Mike Pence as a result of his RFRA signing and his obvious inability to understand the blowback or handle the subsequent fallout. But aside from generating increasingly serious concern about the damage done to Indiana, the weighing in by pundits and the skewering by late-night talk show hosts, the controversy has also encouraged media exploration of the Governor’s past performance and policy positions–and that exploration has underscored Pence’s deeply-rooted animus to LGBT folks, his contempt for women’s rights, and…how to say this?…his less than adequate analytical skills.

In the wake of the eruption over RFRA, I’ve seen the following:

A 2008 article about Pence’s bizarre 2005 proposal to advance Social Security privatization.  Here’s the first paragraph:

There are very few members of congress with whom I’ve ever had the opportunity to discuss a substantive matter of public policy. But as it happens, one of them — the one with whom I’ve had the second-longest exchange — is Mike Pence (R-IN) who I’ve seen on television today repeatedly discussing the Republican Study Group’s “plan” for the financial crisis. And I can tell you this about Mike Pence: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at.

The remainder of the article explains how the author came to that conclusion–and explains a lot about the “growth” policies the Governor has been pursuing in Indiana.

Then there was “Smoking Doesn’t Kill and Other Great OpEd’s from Mike Pence, which I originally thought was a joke, but apparently isn’t. It reproduces several op-eds penned by Governor Pence over the years; my favorite was on climate change, where Pence wrote that CO2 from burning fuels can’t cause increased global temperatures because they are a “naturally occurring phenomenon in nature.” (He also mixed up India with Indonesia.)

Perhaps the most telling–given the Governor’s protestations to the effect that he doesn’t believe in discrimination– was this article, detailing his long history of anti-gay bias. From Business Insider, no less. That one begins:

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) apparently previously advocated far more controversial positions on gay rights than his state’s controversial new “religious freedom” law.

One thing about the Internet. Nothing ever disappears. But they did spell his name right.
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Inviting Pollyanna Back

Okay, I know this blog can be a downer.

I think a lot of the “what the hell is going on here” tone of too many of my posts is due to the fact that I’m a perpetually disappointed optimist. Had I approached life with lower expectations, I might have simply shrugged and moved on, but I have always believed that despite ups and downs, the human trajectory is ultimately a progressive one. Over the past several years, most of the available evidence has seemed to rebut that presumption, so you can see where I might get testy.

That said, the current “Pence mess” in Indiana, believe it or not, has made me cautiously optimistic.

Granted, our elected officials–and especially our utterly clueless Governor–have inflicted significant and totally unnecessary damage on my city and state. Granted, too, the fact that we elected these bozos testifies to widespread abandonment of political engagement by most thoughtful Hoosiers.

But the overwhelming anger and pushback over the passage and signing of the “Religious Freedom Act”–from citizens, from CEOs, from Universities, from mayors, from faith communities–is an incredibly positive occurrence.

Leave aside the contending analyses of what Indiana’s RFRA would or would not do. What is beyond dispute is that this measure was instigated by, and intended to placate, right-wing organizations smarting from their loss on the issue of marriage equality. Its anti-gay symbolism was intentional, and a negative response from LGBT folks and their allies should have been anticipated (although it clearly wasn’t).

The depth and breadth of that response, however, wasn’t foreseeable. Three thousand people turned out to a protest organized a mere two or three days before–many of them people I know who have never before participated in a demonstration. The business community, the civic community, religious communities, the media–rose up as one to say “This mean-spiritedness does not represent us. Hoosiers are better than this.” (And by the way, Governor, insisting that you oppose discrimination rings pretty hollow when you also oppose civil rights for LGBT folks.)

The NCAA and even Nascar have piled on.

Dare I let Pollyanna whisper in my ear once more? Might it be that a period of apathy and resignation, a period when nice people just bemoaned bigotry and “talked amongst themselves” on social media and within more inclusive communities, is coming to an end? Might we be seeing the last throes of the Christian Taliban–those who Molly Ivins memorably called “Shiite Baptists”?

Could we be entering into a “Network” age, when people are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?

I plan to stay tuned…

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Indiana–Where Lawmakers Like to Kick You When You’re Down

Hoosiers can be forgiven for thinking that Governor Pence is conducting a vendetta not just against teachers and gay folks, but working people in general. As if the much-hyped “right to work” law wasn’t enough to depress wages in Indiana, now the administration is promoting a measure to get rid of the common construction wage, and yesterday, while attention was focused on RFRA, the House obediently went along (although 13 Republicans did break ranks to join Democrats who opposed the bill).

The Governor touts Right to Work and elimination of the common wage as economic development tools.  (If I may be forgiven a bit of snark, given the amount of economic damage his “Religious Freedom” bill has inflicted, he shouldn’t be surprised if we take his protestations of concern about the state of our economy with a pillar of salt.)

So–what are the actual facts that the Senate should consider as this latest assault on middle-class Hoosiers comes up for a vote in that chamber?

The Institute for Working Families (disclosure: I serve on the organization’s advisory board) issues a biennial Status of Working Families Report; it  examines data on poverty, the labor market, wages and taxes.

“From the time the recession started, the rate of poverty, child poverty, and the share of low-income Hoosiers have all increased at rates greater than all neighbor states and the U.S. Moreover, while in all states around us, poverty is declining, it’s still rising in Indiana, as is the share of low-income Hoosiers. Inevitably, this means that Indiana’s middle-class is shrinking.”

 Additional research findings included:

  • Median household income has been on the decline since the beginning of the century – down by nearly $8,000 since 2000, and still declining as of last count. Again, while all neighbor states’ median household incomes are growing, ours is still declining.
  • Median hourly wages and 20th percentile wages – which are still declining – are down by about $0.80 each since 2007.
  • Of the half-million jobs in the top three industries, 74% pay below $13.00 per hour
  • During the growth period from 2001 – 2007, Indiana netted only around 18,000 jobs, while the population grew by hundreds of thousands. Only the low-wage category experienced a net gain (97% of which pay less than $13.00 per hour).
  • Or, since the recession started, only the low-wage category experienced a net gain. Of the jobs lost in mid-wage industries during the recession (2007 – 2010), 43% were manufacturing jobs and 38% were construction and contracting jobs. Despite a strong comeback in manufacturing, both of these middle-class jobs are still well below pre-recession levels.

Only two other states saw larger increases in income inequality than Indiana last year. That gap makes it virtually impossible to grow our middle class and/or create a sustainable economy.

So where does the common wage factor in? As Derek Thomas, Senior Policy researcher at the Institute explains,

By maintaining the common wage – especially at a time when middle-to high-skill jobs are in demand – local governments can enhance the welfare of Hoosier families and communities who desperately need quality, middle-class jobs that pay well enough to meet their most basic needs.

Just once, could Indiana’s Governor and lawmakers stop pandering to their political godfathers/donors, and resist measures to keep us at the level of a third-world nation?

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