Public Policy and Governance – Page 197

Americans Need To Grow Up

The ubiquity of social media has created a whole new category of problems, especially for lawmakers and parents. Much of the consternation is understandable and many of the concerns eminently reasonable. But when technology and social media meet America’s deeply-rooted sexual prudery, we get some very unfortunate (not to mention marginally insane) results.

A recent case from Minnesota is illustrative.

A 14-year-old girl is facing charges in Minnesota juvenile courts that could lead to her being placed on a sex offender registry—all for taking a nude selfie and sending it to a boy at her school. Prosecutors say that she violated Minnesota’s child pornography statute, which bans distributing sexually explicit pictures of underaged subjects.

Words fail.

A 14-year old girl showed an absence of good judgment. (That’s sort of the definition of a 14-year old…girl or boy.) This sort of behavior clearly calls for parental intervention; what it just as clearly doesn’t call for is placement on a sex-offender registry.

Parents, schools, and law enforcement around the world are wrestling with how to handle teen sexting. In 2014, a teenage boy in the UK was added to an investigative database after sending a nude snap to a classmate. The Supreme Court in Washington state recently upheld the child pornography conviction of a 17-year-old boy who sent a picture of his erect penis to a 22-year-old woman.

We can expect to see more of these cases in the future because surveys suggest that it’s a common activity among underage teenagers. One recent survey found that 12 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds had sent a sexually explicit image to someone else in their lifetimes—including 4 percent who had done so in the last month. That adds up to millions of teenagers who could be classified as child pornographers by the reckoning of Minnesota officials.

I don’t have a solution for this problem, but I’m pretty sure that labeling impulsive and hormonal teenagers sexual predators and giving them criminal records that will follow them through their adult years–affecting their abilities to get jobs, enter universities and rent apartments–isn’t the way to go.

For some reason, Americans have never seen sex as simply a natural part of life. (Hester Prynne isn’t the only woman who has been humiliated by that A.) That historical prudery, ironically, has intensified interest in–and consumption of– pornography and other sexually-explicit materials. Anyone who ever raised teenagers understands the attraction of the forbidden. It’s like drinking–French children who are accustomed to wine with dinner are much less enamored of alcohol than the suburban offspring of uptight parents who lock their liquor cabinets and lecture their children about the evils of drink.

We really need to grow up.

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A Sensible Proposal In the Indiana General Assembly?

Astonishing as it seems, news occasionally emerges of rational proposals at the Indiana Statehouse.

The Indianapolis Business Journal recently reported on one:

An Indiana Senate Republican wants to reward businesses with tax credits when they raise pay for their minimum-wage workers.

State Sen. John Ruckelshaus of Indianapolis has introduced a bill that would provide a credit against state tax liability for employers of minimum-wage workers that give raises to their workers after those workers complete a training program that would improve their education level or skills.

Since being elected to the General Assembly, Ruckelshaus has reminded me of the highly principled Ruckelshauses I used to know. (I believe they were his father and uncle.) They were the kind of Republicans I routinely encountered before the party devolved into today’s iteration–a cross between a cult and a comedy writer’s Mafia. (Senator Ruckelshaus is also sponsoring one of this session’s anti-gerrymandering measures, so kudos to him.)

Ruckelshaus said Senate Bill 15 is designed to incentivize businesses to help their minimum-wage workers move up the economic ladder.

“They’re trapped because they don’t have the skills to move up the ladder,” Ruckelshaus said. “The whole concept is it’s a two-way street between the employer and employee. It’s a tax credit to employers. For the worker that receives an increase in pay, they’re able to raise their skills up and be more attractive in the workforce, and be able to make more than a minimum wage.”

Aside from being good policy, this sort of approach inadvertently illustrates what is wrong with the “trickle down” economic theory that Congressional Republicans always trot out to justify their persistent work on behalf of the already-rich–a theory they repeatedly recited when defending the obvious inequities of their recent tax “reform” bill.

How often have we heard that recitation? If we just give tax breaks to the wealthy (no strings attached)–that money will be used to invest in businesses that will hire workers. Those tax giveaways to the “makers” are necessary in order to create jobs!

I have frequently asked what seems like a reasonable question: if these tax cuts and loopholes so favorable to the wealthy are really intended to create jobs, why aren’t they targeted to that result, in much the same way as Ruckelshaus has proposed; that is, why not limit proposed incentives to employers who can demonstrate that they have provided the intended benefit? It would seem simple enough to attach some “accountability strings” that would base federal tax incentives on jobs created–to provide that, for every added job an employer could document, she would receive a tax deduction. Or better yet, a tax credit.

I’m confident that most Americans would applaud a tax “cut” that was carefully targeted and constructed to reward actual job creation, rather than the munificent giveaways that are not conditioned upon providing any evidence of public benefit. Research confirms that these no-strings-attached windfalls routinely find their way into shareholder dividends and management bonuses rather than job creation or workers’ pay.

Kudos to State Senator Ruckelshaus. May his tribe–and his approach–increase.

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That Nefarious DOJ

A number of the tantrums thrown by Trump and his Congressional enablers have focused on imaginary conspiracies at the Department of Justice–especially the FBI. They accuse a so-called “deep state” of waging a “bogus” Russia “witch hunt.”

It’s a hard sell, because it is so obviously defensive horseshit. Besides, any “deep state” worth having would take on Jeff Sessions, who is arguably an obscenity with no redeeming social value.

Sessions’ racist past had been amply documented prior to his appointment (back when the GOP cared about such things, it cost him a federal judgeship). He has been enthusiastic about Trump’s hard line on immigration; re-instituted widely criticized asset forfeiture laws; threatened to withhold criminal justice funds from Sanctuary cities; refused to allow DOJ to engage in oversight of police departments –even those with which it has current consent decrees; and rolled back everything from voting rights enforcement to protections for transgender citizens.

Now he’s threatening to reverse Eric Holder’s policy of respecting state-level prerogatives when it comes to marijuana policy. Per the Brookings Institution:

On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions opted to end a more than four-year-old policy that granted a safe haven for state-legal marijuana companies (and consumers) to engage in the cultivation, processing, sale, possession, and use of cannabis under tightly regulated conditions. This policy, known as the Cole Memo, was initially enacted during the Obama administration, in response to Colorado and Washington legalizing adult-use cannabis in 2012. The Cole Memo effectively told federal prosecutors not to bring cannabis-related cases in states that have legalized if and only if companies and consumers abide by a state-provided regulatory system and do not engage in other bad acts like engaging with drug cartels or selling to children.

Has the policy been perfect? No. Of course, no policy is. However, the Cole Memo did provide a system by which cannabis was no longer sold only by unregulated dealers and/or drug cartels. It provided safeguards and promoted the testing of products. It put states on notice to develop robust regulatory systems. It allowed an industry to move out of the shadows and into a system that taxed and regulated its products.

The Brookings analysis illustrates the utter stupidity of this decision. Ending these safeguards puts people at risk for adulterated product and increases ease of access for underage users. Studies show that legal access to marijuana decreases both underage use and opiod addiction. (Not that evidence has ever been a big part of this argument; our intrepid drug warriors have long ignored overwhelming data showing that weed is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.)

Sessions’ decision is a windfall for drug dealers (as the Brookings’ report notes, “Attorney General Jeff Sessions will find a lot of opponents to his decision today. But hey, at least he’ll have the support of drug dealers.”) And it will be costly for taxpayers.

Chasing after the thousands of legal marijuana growers, processers, and dispensaries and the tens of thousands of people they employ will cost DEA significant amounts of federal tax dollars. Add to that the costs US Attorneys will incur prosecuting those individuals and representing the government on appeals.

Fortunately for Democrats running in 2018, this isn’t just stupid policy, it is terrible politics. As Daily Kos explained:

If Democrats are smart, they will finally nationalize the pot issue, and its impact could spread through the entire map. The more young voters turn out, the bigger the Democratic landslide will be. And a great step toward making that happen would be full-throated Democratic support for full legalization at the federal level. Heck, leave it up to the states to decide for themselves! But the feds need to get out of the business of banning marijuana. And as far as political calculations go, there is little downside to Democrats. The public supports recreational legalization by 2-1 margins, and medicinal legalization by 9-1 margins or even higher.

In the real world–the one that no one in this administration inhabits– insisting that marijuana is illegal won’t stop its production and distribution. It will keep states from imposing sensible regulations that keep it safe and out of the hands of minors, and it will prevent states from generating substantial funds by taxing it.

Where’s that “deep state” when you need it?

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Scott Pruitt Is Toxic

It sometimes seems difficult to choose the worst member of Donald Trump’s cabinet–divided as that motley crew is between ignoramuses and zealots. (And yes, I realize the two categories aren’t mutually exclusive. Betsy DeVos is a case in point.)

But my vote goes to Scott Pruitt, who is genuinely dangerous because he isn’t an ignoramus. That Pruitt is in the pocket of fossil fuel interests is well known; his disregard for public health–for clean air and water–isn’t as widely recognized. And it is hard to understand why anyone, no matter how corrupt, would protect companies that produce poisonous chemicals.

Methylene chloride, N-methylpyrrolidone, and trichloroethylene are toxic. There’s no question about that. The first two are directly related to deaths from inhalation related to their use in paint strippers. The third, commonly used in dry cleaning and in making refrigerants and previously used as an anesthetic, is tied to everything from liver and kidney damage, to a variety of birth defects.

All three chemicals were fast tracked to be banned by the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act. “Were” is the operative term.

The EPA has announced the “indefinite postponement” of bans on certain uses of these three toxic chemicals, despite the fact that the Toxic Substances Control Act was the product of a bipartisan consensus.

The “indefinite postponement” of measures to protect public health joins all kinds of other nefarious and worrisome signals, including the hiring of manifestly unqualified people. Before he was forced to withdraw, Trump’s nominee to head the EPA chemical safety board was a lobbyist who supported manufacture of those not-banned chemicals. Pruitt himself summarily dismissed hundreds of real scientists–replacing them with people like a banking friend who’d been banned for life by the banking industry. (According to The Intercept, Pruitt had received loans from the friend’s bank.)

And then there’s Pruitt’s relentless attack on measures meant to combat climate change, reversing what had been U.S. leadership on the issue. There are daily news releases chronicling the efforts and successes of other countries; China, once the world’s biggest polluter is ramping up its pivot to clean energy. And just recently, headlines announced that Germans are periodically being paid to use energy.

Germany has spent $200 billion over the past two decades to promote cleaner sources of electricity. That enormous investment is now having an unexpected impact — consumers are now actually paid to use power on occasion, as was the case over the weekend.

Although Germany clearly leads the pack, other European countries are also producing energy that is occasionally in excess of what they require:

Several countries in Europe have experienced negative power prices, including Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

But Germany’s forays into negative pricing are the most frequent. At times, Germany is able to export its surplus electricity to its neighbors, helping to balance the market. Still, its experiences of negative prices are often longer, and deeper, than they are in other countries.

In one recent example, power prices spent 31 hours below zero during the last weekend of October. At one point, they dipped as low as minus €83, or minus $98, per megawatt-hour, a wholesale measure.

In other words, anyone who was able to hook up for a large blast of electricity at that time was paid €83 per unit for the trouble.

Of course, giving citizens relief from high power prices–and even occasionally paying them to use power–would come at a cost to the fossil fuel industry that owns Scott Pruitt.

And having a cabinet member who gave a rat’s ass about good policy, the environment or the health and welfare of his country’s citizens would be unthinkable anywhere in the Trump Administration.

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Charles Pierce Identifies It–What Are We Going To Do About It?

My mother used to recite a rhyme that I don’t recall entirely, but the gist of it was that the only difference between men and boys was the size of their toys.

Americans are being “governed”–if you can dignify what is coming from the White House as governing–by a boy with a nuclear toy. (If there were any remaining doubts, Michael Wolff’s new book should dispel them.)

Who among us would ever have anticipated having an occupant of the Oval Office tweeting “mine is bigger than yours” at another, equally demented, world leader? (Do you suppose we could settle this by putting the two of them in an examining room, and measuring their “parts”?)

I used to attribute Trump’s unbelievable lack of self-awareness to privilege. We all know people whose money or power insulates them from contact with people who will tell them the truth; the longer their isolation from ridicule or dissent, the less grounded they become. But I think Charles Pierce has a more accurate evaluation of the problem.

Pierce’s column analyzed Trump’s recent interview with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt. Schmidt had intercepted Trump on a golf course, where are no aides to constrain the free flow of what Trump apparently regards as sentences, and reaction to that interview has been shock and (terrified) awe.

Pierce dismissed criticisms of Schmidt’s conduct of the interview as irrelevant to what it exposed:

In my view, the interview is a clinical study of a man in severe cognitive decline, if not the early stages of outright dementia.

Over the past 30 years, I’ve seen my father and all of his siblings slide into the shadows and fog of Alzheimer’s Disease. (The president*’s father developed Alzheimer’s in his 80s.) In 1984, Ronald Reagan debated Walter Mondale in Louisville and plainly had no idea where he was. (If someone on the panel had asked him, he’d have been stumped.) Not long afterwards, I was interviewing a prominent Alzheimer’s researcher for a book I was doing, and he said, “I saw the look on his face that I see every day in my clinic.” …

In this interview, the president* is only intermittently coherent. He talks in semi-sentences and is always groping for something that sounds familiar, even if it makes no sense whatsoever and even if it blatantly contradicts something he said two minutes earlier. To my ears, anyway, this is more than the president*’s well-known allergy to the truth. This is a classic coping mechanism employed when language skills are coming apart.

Pierce gives several examples from the transcript of the interview–boasts that embarrass rational people, non-sequiturs that most observers (reasonably enough) attribute to ignorance, and Trump’s trademark, repellant grandiosity, which Pierce sees as the desperation of a man who is losing the ability to understand the world around him.

And as he points out, this lack of capacity is oh-so-useful to Congressional Republicans.

In Ronald Reagan’s second term, we ducked a bullet. I’ve always suspected he was propped up by a lot of people who a) didn’t trust vice-president George H.W. Bush, b) found it convenient to have a forgetful president when the subpoenas began to fly, and c) found it helpful to have a “detached” president when they started running their own agendas—like, say, selling missiles to mullahs. You’re seeing much the same thing with the congressional Republicans. They’re operating an ongoing smash-and-grab on all the policy wishes they’ve fondly cultivated since 1981. Having a president* who may not be all there and, as such, is susceptible to flattery because it reassures him that he actually is makes the heist that much easier.

If we had a Vice-President and Cabinet who actually gave a rat’s ass about America rather than their own prospects and assorted zealotries, we could hope for invocation of the 25th Amendment.

If we had Congressional Republicans who were willing to put country above party, we could hope for impeachment.

If the President is seriously mentally ill–and it’s hard to argue with that diagnosis (a number of psychiatrists have already concurred)–that explains his terrifying behaviors.

What’s everyone else’s excuse?

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