Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

When Voters Can’t Connect The Dots…

Thousands–probably, millions–of words have been written about Republicans’ religious devotion to anti-tax beliefs. Unfortunately, that dogma is matched by a pervasive lack of understanding of how tax dollars are spent, and what citizens get for our money.

There are plenty of. wasteful programs, of course, not to mention subsidies that have long outlived whatever merit they may once have had. These wasteful and unnecessary programs allow politicians to make the case that all taxes are theft. It then follows that any and all efforts to reduce taxes are by definition laudatory.

Which brings us to Donald Trump’s recent plan to end or defer the payroll tax.

 As a number of media sources have explained, payroll taxes support Social Security and Disability Insurance. Social Security’s Chief Actuary, Stephen C. Goss, evaluated the Trump proposal; he concluded that it would end Disability Insurance in mid-2021 and destroy Social Security by mid-2023.

When those of us who are fortunate enough to still be employed look at our pay stubs, we see hefty deductions for FICA.  Most of us have undoubtedly thought about how nice it would be to have those dollars right now.  Reasonably informed adults,  however, who realize that they will need Social Security at some point, understand that deferring instant gratification is in their long-term best interests. (It’s true that some small portion of the population would be able to invest on their own behalf, but since most people couldn’t or wouldn’t, massive poverty among the elderly would result.)

Those who don’t know what the payroll tax deduction pays for see it as just another tax to attack.

I understand that tax policy can be complicated. When I pontificate about Americans’ lack of civic literacy, I’m not suggesting that we all need to know the ins-and-outs of the various ways government assesses us to pay for services–but it would  be helpful if people recognized that we need to pay for services that are widely popular and obviously needed at the local, state and federal levels.

Actually, it would be more than helpful if Americans could agree on the essential components of both our physical and social infrastructure. At the  local level, there’s a public outcry if streets,  roads  and bridges aren’t properly maintained. Whatever our concerns about policing, a vast majority expect local government to provide for public safety.  Most of us think cities should provide public transit, garbage and snow removal, and a variety of other services. 

Survey research leaves no doubt about the popularity of federal social welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare. Survey research also tells us that far too many Americans fail to connect the dots between the taxes they pay and the services they demand.

Should thoughtful and competent individuals  and organizations monitor government. programs to ensure that our tax dollars are being wisely and appropriately spent? Absolutely. Are there programs that should be eliminated? You betcha! But ensuring the efficiency of public administration is a far cry from across-the-board anti-tax dogma–and a very far cry from uninformed and dangerous efforts to keep today’s dollars by selling the future short.

As usual, Trump and his administration are counting on the ignorance of his supporters. And to be fair, eliminating the payroll tax is (marginally) less dangerous than drinking bleach…

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American Exceptionalism?

When we hear the term “exceptional,” we tend to think in terms of merit–someone who is exceptionally good at something. But exceptional has another meaning: unusual. As in “not typical” or “abnormal.” Even before the disaster of the past four years, I’ve come to see American exceptionalism as more of an illustration of that less desirable definition than the former. Our current struggle with COVID-19 has certainly undercut the widespread belief that Americans are exceptionally competent.

My cardiologist cousin recently shared an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that focused on the prevalence of biases that have inhibited our national response to the pandemic–biases that, when added to the utter lack of competent national leadership, certainly help to explain our inability to contain it.

The article began with a discussion of ventilators. One of the first decisions made by the Trump administration in response to the pandemic was to spend $3 billion dollars to build more ventilators. As the article noted, however,

These extra ventilators, even had they been needed, would likely have done little to improve population survival because of the high mortality among patients with COVID-19 who require mechanical ventilation, which acts to divert care-givers away from more health-promoting endeavors. Yet most US residents supported this response because they believed that enough ventilators would lead to better overall survival from this scourge.

So why are so many people supportive of ensuring a sufficient number of ventilators but not similarly supportive of efforts to implement earlier, more aggressive physical distancing, testing, and contact tracing– policies that would have saved far more lives? The article attributes that (illogical) response to the referenced biases, beginning with our human tendency to “prioritize the readily imaginable over the statistical, the present over the future, and the direct over the indirect.”

In other words, to prioritize emotion over science.

This causes humans to respond more aggressively to threats to identifiable lives, ie, those that an individual can easily imagine being their own (or representing of people they care about such as family members) than to the hidden, “statistical” deaths reported in accounts of the population-level tolls of the crisis. Similarly, psychologists have described efforts to rescue visible, endangered individual lives as a highest priority goal, even if more lives would be saved through alternative responses.

Anyone who has ever wrestled with the Trolley Problem has encountered that bias.

This very human trait is why descriptions of the millions of people killed by the Nazis and the Soviets, or reports of the Rwandan and Chinese genocides–or our own near eradication of Native Americans– are less moving, less likely to cause outrage, than the individual stories that emerge from those and other horrific episodes in human history.

The article also cites “Optimism Bias,” our human tendency to predict optimistic outcomes.

Although early pandemic prediction models considered both best and worst-case outcomes, sound policy would have attempted to minimize mortality by doing everything possible to prevent the worst case results, but human optimism bias led many to act as if the best case was in fact the most likely. President Trump provides one of many good examples of this bias.

There were others: A preference for benefits in the “here and now” to larger benefits in the future,  leading us to place greater value on saving a life today than a life tomorrow, and something called Omission Bias–a desire to avoid an imminent “harm” (like the pain of a vaccination) even when avoiding it is likely to lead to significantly worse results down the road.

It’s one thing to recognize the prevalence of these very human biases. It’s another thing, however, to indulge them–and it is unforgivable to cater to them through public policies rather than basing those policies on medical and scientific knowledge.

If we really want to achieve that first definition of American “exceptionalism,” we will stop denigrating and dismissing scientific and other expertise, stop scorning people who know what they’re doing as “elitists,” and stop electing people. who pander to our biases rather than those willing to base policy decisions on the best information available.

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I Was Wrong

During the Democratic primary–as regular readers of this blog will remember–I was pretty adamant about America’s need for generational change. I was convinced that both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were simply too old to tackle the monumental task of rescuing the nation (or what is left of it in the wake of the train wreck that is the Trump administration). I thought that a restoration of hope, of possibility, required a younger, more energetic, more “woke” set of actors.

What I failed to take into account was the immense importance of competence borne of experience, especially at a juncture as perilous as the one we approach.You would think that–as an old woman myself–I would have recognized the value of lessons learned over a lifetime, many of them the hard way.

The Democrats have a truly impressive “bench” of very smart, very idealistic young people: Mayor Pete, AOC, a number of others. But they will still be smart (and hopefully, still idealistic) 4 or 8 or 12 years from now, and the experience they will have gained in those years will deepen their understanding of the political process and sharpen the skills it takes to negotiate the convoluted structures of governance.

The (virtual) Democratic Convention reminded me that Joe Biden–who was also a smart and idealistic youngster “back in the day”– offers America fifty years of successful public sector experience. Unlike the reality-show buffoon who currently occupies the Oval Office, he knows what it like to do the hard, grunt work of governing. He knows what it is like to encounter new facts and perspectives that make you recognize and admit that you’ve been on the wrong side of  a policy issue. His deep experience with foreign leaders has allowed him to forge relationships that will be critical to re-establishing America’s reputation abroad (younger people simply haven’t had the time to establish those relationships, and President Obama drew heavily on them during his first term in office.)

His relationships with others in government, on both sides of the political aisle, have established his reputation as a person who can be trusted to keep his word, honor a commitment, and “tell it like it is.” That reputation simply cannot be established overnight; it requires time.

There’s another relationship that has been established over the years–Biden’s relationship with the American public. He’s a known quantity, which is why the efforts of the Crazy Guy In Chief to define him have fallen flat. GOP spin doctors may be able to paint AOC as some sort of communist (after all, she wants rich people to pay taxes! and she wants to save the environment!), but Joe Biden has already defined himself in the years that he has been a public figure.

These are assets that only come with experience.And time.

I still favor a generational shift, probably sooner than later, but I failed to appreciate the value and importance of Biden’s self-described status as a “transitional figure.” Assuming (as sane people must) a Democratic victory in November and a successful (probably ugly) transition of power, Joe Biden will bring extensive knowledge of government and how it does– and doesn’t– work to the monumental effort of repairing the damage.

If we are very lucky, if we give him the tools to work with by electing a sufficient number of thoughtful, non-lunatic people to the House and Senate, the government he hands over to a younger generation will be recognizably American again.

So,  mea culpa. And think about Joe Biden, a competent and empathetic adult, as you watch the GOP convention nominate– and genuflect to– the child-sociopath who currently occupies the Oval Office.

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What Must We Do And How Must We Do. It?

A couple of days ago, Steve Bannon was indicted for defrauding Trump supporters, who had been enticed into sending money to Bannon and three co-conspirators to “build the wall.” The money went into their pockets, not into construction.

It’s tempting to find this sordid little episode of predators taking advantage of bigots a parable for “just deserts,” (as Michelle Goldberg wrote, “In the MAGA movement, you’re either a predator or a mark” and that seems about right) but that isn’t the lesson to be taken from this unsurprising, add-it-to-the-list evidence of moral rot in Trumpworld.

Reuters has a list of  those who have been arrested and convicted of criminal behavior so far, and there is ample evidence that–with or without including the ethically-challenged saboteur at the Post Office– the current list is only the tip of a very large iceberg.

And at the center of that iceberg is Donald J. Trump.

Last week, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the Trump Campaign’s co-operation with Russia that was far more damning than the Mueller Report. CNN called it the most comprehensive and meticulous examination to date.  It explained in detail the ways in which Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election,  confirmed that the Trump campaign welcomed that help, and revealed multiple contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates both during and after the campaign.

Prosecutors with the Southern District of New York look increasingly likely to get Trump’s tax returns, although probably not before the election, and they already have the paperwork he submitted in support of his loans from Deutsch Bank. The results of that ongoing investigation are likely to confirm a history of tax evasion, money laundering and bank fraud.

Michelle Goldberg has explained why America needs accountability for the corruption of this administration–and why genuine accountability can’t be reduced to political slogans like “lock him up.” As she notes,  “a president who runs the White House as a criminal syndicate creates a conundrum for liberal democracy.”

Obviously,  merely losing an election is not a crime, and it shouldn’t create legal liability.

But you can’t reinforce the rule of law by allowing it to be broken without repercussion. After four years of ever-escalating corruption and abuses of power, the United States cannot simply snap back to being the country it once was if Trump is forced to vacate the White House in January. If Biden is elected, Democrats must force a reckoning over what Trump has done to America.

Of course, a Biden victory is far from assured, and if he loses, there may be no stopping this country’s slide into a permanent state of oligarchic misrule. But right now, while there’s still hope of cauterizing Trumpism, ideas about post-Trump accountability are percolating in Democratic and activist circles.

Those  “percolating ideas” come from a number of quarters: the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, recently released a report titled, “How a Future President Can Hold the Trump Administration Accountable.” Protect Democracy is a legal group founded by a former associate White House counsel during Obama’s Administration. It has been investigating the experience of countries around the world that have transitioned to democracy from authoritarianism. Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the most thoughtful members of the Senate, has suggested a tribunal modeled on South Africa’s Truth Commission.

America is facing a whole lot of “ifs.” If Biden wins, if the Democrats take the Senate, if there is an orderly transition of power…then, there will need to be a thorough housecleaning. That housecleaning needs to be conducted in a manner that is both transparent and meticulously fair. The. Qanon folks, the Neo-Nazis and Proud Boys and KKK are beyond reason, but the rest of us aren’t, and we desperately need an administration that understands and fairly enforces the rule of law–and holds itself to a high moral, ethical and legal standard.

Voting blue up and down the ballot is only a first step, but it’s an absolutely essential first. step.

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A Measured And Accurate Rebuttal

Richard Hasen– probably the pre-eminent American scholar of voting and elections–had a column in last week’s  New York Timesin which he patiently dismantled Trump’s barrage of criticisms of mail-in-voting.

Not that anyone who listens to or actually believes anything Trump says would be likely to read the Times. 

I have only one quibble with Hasen’s essay–his assertion that Trump’s relentless attacks on mail-in voting are part of a “strategy.” After watching Trump for nearly 4 years, it is my considered opinion that the development of a strategy–let alone adherence to it–is far beyond his capacities.

Be that as it may, Hasen says there are two possible reasons for the assault: to create an excuse in advance of a loss, or an effort to create chaos that will both drive down turnout and undermine the legitimacy of the election. Hasen “very much fears” that the latter is correct, and that Trump is laying the groundwork for contesting his loss in a close election.

You can’t say he isn’t giving it his all. As Hasen reports,

Mr. Trump has made at least 91 attacks on the integrity of voting so far this year (and more than 700 since 2012) and backed up his complaints about mail-in ballots with lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Iowa. He has repeatedly tweeted the unsupported claim that increased use of mail-in ballots in November, necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, will lead to voter fraud and a rigged election.

These attacks have been more than a little contradictory–evidencing Trump’s usual scattershot and illogical approach to most issues–and raising a not-insignificant possibility that they will end up hurting Republicans as much as–or even more than–the Democrats who are his targets.

The end game here is a bit curious because Republicans traditionally have relied on mail-in balloting to get out the vote, and there are already signs that Republican turnout might be hurt by his rantings. How else to explain the president seeking to distinguish between good “absentee” voting and bad “mail-in” balloting and urging Floridians to vote by mail? And how else to explain the president not only repeatedly voting by mail but using a third person — what Mr. Trump refers to as “ballot harvesting” — to deliver his own ballot to election officials in the Florida primary on Tuesday?

Hasen patiently explains why Trump’s claims of fraud are bogus (or as he phrases it, “unsupported by the evidence.”) Absentee ballot fraud is rare. There have been fewer than 500 prosecutions for such behavior over a 12 year period in which more than a billion ballots were cast, and Hasen tells us that they tended to involve small elections “when there wasn’t an active press looking for chicanery.”  (An observation that reinforces the importance of a robust local press…but that’s a subject for another day.) Furthermore, Hasen says that the relative rarity of cases shouldn’t surprise us, because states have all kinds of security measures in place. Those security measures go well beyond signature matching, to include ballot tracking and statements signed under penalty of perjury.

The real danger posed by this campaign of disinformation is in the event of close election results on November 3d.

A “blue shift” toward Democrats as later votes are counted is now a well-established phenomenon; as Democrats vote later, their ballots are counted later, leading to a good number of elections where Republican leads on election night turn into Democratic victories when the full and fair count ends.

Trump could claim, as he did in a 2018 U.S. Senate race in Florida, that later-counted ballots are fraudulent (a claim he abandoned when Rick Scott, a Republican, won the race). It could lead millions of his supporters to believe that Democrats stole the election, when in fact all that happened was that battleground states engaged in a close and careful count of ballots to ensure the election’s integrity.

To the extent that Trump has a “strategy,” my guess would be that this describes it. And after years of anti-government rhetoric, topped off by the in-your-face-illegality of this administration, Americans’ distrust of our institutions will feed those suspicions.

Vote early–and if at all possible, in person.

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