Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

Oh, Canada!

Today, my husband and I return from a ten-day trip that took us out of the U.S. and—far more consequentially—much of the time, out of areas in which we had access to the internet. My blog platform allows me to schedule posts, but my ability to share those posts on Facebook was pretty hit or miss. So—apologies to readers for the lack of regularity.

It’s experiences like this that make me realize how utterly dependent I have become upon today’s technology, and how helpless I feel when I can’t immediately read and respond to emails, or consult Dr. Google to find information.

This particular trip was a long-planned cruise vacation with our younger two grandchildren, ages 12 and 14. No parents invited. We began in Boston, and ended with Quebec City and Montreal, Canada. (Along the way, I think we guaranteed the continued profitability of Gray Lines tours…)

In many ways, visiting Canada doesn’t seem different from visiting other parts of the U.S. Even in Quebec, where French is the “first” language, everyone speaks English, and the clothes and customs are familiar. Starbucks and McDonalds and Subway are ubiquitous.

But there are differences, and they reflect well on Canada. And not so well on us.

The news was full of stories about Canadians’ embrace of Syrian refugees, for example. Canadian families wanting to “adopt” a refugee family (in the sense of helping that family acclimate, find housing and employment, and willingness to function as a resource) significantly outnumber available “adoptees.” The articles provided an embarrassing contrast to so many Americans’ deeply suspicious and negative response to that same refugee population.

Then there was the contrast provided by Canada’s physical and social infrastructure.

Quebec’s sprawling historic districts were meticulously maintained. Streets everywhere we went were free of potholes, and public art was everywhere—including on the sides of buildings and on the supports for highways. In both cities, public parks, public squares and other public spaces were everywhere and filled with people. Montreal, we are told, was just named one of the globe’s “smart cities.” (We were duly grateful–we finally had  wifi!)

Canadians all seemed to approve of their Premier. Those with whom we spoke were uniformly grateful for and supportive of the country’s national health care system. Several taxi drivers bragged about the efficiency of their cities’ winter snow removal (given the amount of snow they get, it’s an obvious priority.)

And everyone with whom we interacted was so polite….albeit quite willing to share with Americans that they are appalled and repulsed by Donald Trump.

Travel is generally instructive, if only to make us look at our own cities with fresh eyes—to ask ourselves what our cities and neighborhoods would look like to someone from another country. What would we brag about? What would embarrass us?

A few days as a tourist allows only a very superficial assessment of any city or country. I have no idea what civic or governmental problems bedevil the residents of the charming places we visited, what urban challenges are unmet, what social problems remain unresolved.

Still—it’s hard not to get a bit wistful when you see all that well-maintained infrastructure…..

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This Isn’t Capitalism

There’s a lot of hostility to capitalism in contemporary discourse–on this blog, among Sanders’ supporters and elsewhere. All too  often, however, the problem with that public debate is that we’re not “doing” actual capitalism.

A recent article from the New York Times reported on an “inside baseball” effort to overturn a consumer-friendly regulation promulgated by the F.C.C. It is an all-too-common story–members of Congress who portray themselves as defenders of market economics, but whose actions are those of corporatists, not capitalists.

Last month, 60 lawmakers signed a letter objecting to an F.C.C. regulation that would open the market for cable television set-top boxes. The agency proposed reforming the rules so that consumers can pick any television device to receive cable and online video, rather  than being forced to “lease” the boxes from their cable providers.

The competition would be great for consumers, but it would cut into the industry’s $19.5 billion in annual set-top-box rental fees.

So why, do you suppose, are these defenders of market economics, these critics of socialism, so upset by a regulation that actually frees up private enterprise and encourages free market transactions?

The Times article provides a clue:

Cable industry lobbyists also helped gather the 60 signatures on the set-top-box letter; nearly all of the lawmakers who signed count cable and telecom companies as top campaign donors, according to federal disclosures. The behind-the-scenes activity by cable companies and their industry groups is part of the biggest lobbying push. The trigger? A string of proposed regulations by the F.C.C. …  The target of much of the cable industry’s ire is Tom Wheeler, chairman of the F.C.C. Wheeler has also been joined by President Obama, who endorsed the set-top-box proposal in April.

It isn’t only set-top boxes. Cable industry lobbyists also object to proposals that would be more protective of consumer privacy–that would restrain the practice of selling personal information to companies engaging in targeted advertising, among other things. But the effort to overturn the set-box regulation speaks volumes (no pun intended) on the hypocrisy of our “free market” politicians.

The problem is, very few Americans who truly do have a dog in this fight will ever hear about this particular effort to protect the bottom line of cable companies, or the other obscure and technical wheeling and dealing that protects the perquisites of the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

After all, it’s just a few dollars more each month to lease that box….

Who was it who said “a few million here, a few million there–pretty soon, you’re talking real money…”?

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Who Are We?

It’s bad enough that after the tragedy in Orlando, despite a Senate filibuster and a House sit-in, lawmakers remained in thrall to the NRA, refusing to pass even the most tepid gun control measures.

Less publicized was the fact that– even as they were offering their “prayers” for the victims–House Republicans once again refused to allow a vote that would have extended equal civil rights to LGBT citizens.

After a Democratic congressman offered an LGBT measure as an amendment to the Defense Department spending bill, the House Rules Committee would not let the measure come up for a vote on Tuesday night, The Hill reported.

This is the third time that Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) has introduced the measure that would affirm anti-discrimination protections for LGBT employees of federal contractors as an amendment to a spending bill. On Tuesday, he said he hoped a vote on the amendment would send a positive message to the LGBT community in the wake of the deadly shooting in Orlando, Florida….

Maloney  had first introduced the measure as an amendment to a Veterans Affairs spending bill in May. At first, it looked likely to pass, but a handful of Republicans switched their votes from “yes” to “no” and defeated it. Maloney then tried to make it an amendment to an energy and water bill; the House GOP killed the whole bill rather than pass a pro-LGBT amendment.

It isn’t just the gay community arousing Republican hostility. The unrelenting attacks on immigrants and Muslims (among others) by the party’s Presidential nominee is contributing significantly to social division and expressions of bigotry.

A recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center traced what it called “the Trump effect” on the nation’s schools, and the conclusions were chilling.

Every four years, teachers in the United States use the presidential election to impart valuable lessons to students about the electoral process, democracy, government and the responsibilities of citizenship.

But, for students and teachers alike, this year’s primary season is starkly different from any in recent memory. The results of an online survey conducted by Teaching Tolerance suggest that the campaign is having a profoundly negative effect on children and classrooms.

It’s producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom. Many students worry about being deported.

Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.

Other reports show anti-Semitism on the rise, anti-Muslim prejudice growing…and you’d have to live under a rock to ignore the level of racist bile directed at President Obama.

We really are at a turning point in America. The 2016 elections have not created the tensions that threaten to tear us apart, but they are certainly bringing those tensions to a head. When Americans go to the polls in November, we will be confronted with a stark choice, not just between political parties and candidates, but between vastly different ideas about the real America, our fellow-citizens and the nature of our republic.

We will be deciding what sort of country we want to be.

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Ah..Those Laboratories of Democracy…

When I introduce students to America’s constitutional architecture, I sometimes begin by asking them to define federalism. Judging from the blank stares and efforts to avoid being called on, I think it’s fair to say that our federalist system is not widely understood.

That’s too bad, because one of the policy debates we should be having–but aren’t–is how such a system should operate in a time when transportation and communication technologies have changed the way we view state lines. What sorts of rules and policies need to be national in scope, and which are best left to state and local government?

However we answer that question, one important role that states will undoubtedly continue to play is in the development of new approaches to governing.

Justice Louis Brandeis famously referred to the states as “laboratories of democracy;” the idea was that state governments would try new ideas and programs, acting as “pilot projects,” that would allow the rest of the country to evaluate the merits of those approaches before adopting them.

Inevitably, some will be cautionary tales, and pre-eminent in that category is Kansas or, as Charles Pierce calls it,

the failed state of Kansas, now in the fifth year of the Brownbackian Dark Ages, as such things are reckoned. Somehow, the fact that Kansas’ status as a supply-side lab rat has dropped the state down a political garbage chute the likes of which hasn’t been seen since they shredded the Articles of Confederation is beginning to seep under the guardhouses of the gated communities. The head of a healthcare company is fleeing to the Missouri border and he’s not shy about telling the world why.

The blistering indictment of Brownback’s Kansas by that company’s CEO is illuminating; noting that Kansas has become a test center of “trickle down” economics, he pointed out that those policies have led to a “dramatic failure of government.”

Brownback implemented unprecedented tax cuts in 2012. The largest cuts were in the highest tax brackets, and Brownback promised that they would provide a “shot of adrenaline” for the Kansas economy. They actually had the opposite effect, with Kansas lagging neighboring states in job growth and missing revenue targets in 11 of the past 12 months. In the face of ever-deeper debt and another round of degraded bond ratings, Brownback has asked his citizens to pray and fast to solve the budget crisis.

That should turn things around. Not.

It is tempting to look at the hot mess that is Kansas and feel better about Indiana. And granted, our fiscal problems–while substantial– are less severe. But our Governor has  generated his own cautionary tales.

Take, for just one example, his attack on public education and his fervent support of school vouchers. Indiana now has the largest voucher program in the country–and some of the most consistently under-resourced public schools. The public justification for expanding the voucher program is that allowing parents to choose private schools will improve education, at least as measured by test scores. (Given the percentage of families using those vouchers at religious schools, however, it is likely that the Governor’s preference for church over state– his consistent effort to bolster religious institutions and practices– is implicated.)

So how has Indiana’s “laboratory experiment” been working out? Not so well.

Recent research on statewide voucher programs in Louisiana and Indiana has found that public school students that received vouchers to attend private schools subsequently scored lower on reading and math tests compared to similar students that remained in public schools. The magnitudes of the negative impacts were large. These studies used rigorous research designs that allow for strong causal conclusions. And they showed that the results were not explained by the particular tests that were used or the possibility that students receiving vouchers transferred out of above-average public schools.

Perhaps Governor Pence can call for a day of prayer and fasting to raise the test scores of those voucher students. In the meantime, other states can be grateful for a federalist system that lets them learn from–and avoid– others’ disasters.

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Polling and Gerrymandering

A couple of days ago, I ran across one of those proliferating “wow, look what Trump is doing to the GOP” polls. It showed Clinton crushing Trump, the Senate going Democratic, and in the House, “generic Democrats” beating “generic Republicans” by 11 points.

The problem is, those “generic” preferences are meaningless. In the last House elections, Democrats nationally received a million more votes than Republicans. Have you noticed who controls the U.S. House of Representatives–by a very healthy margin? Republicans.

There are two reasons national generic preferences are irrelevant. The most obvious is that in individual congressional districts, voters do not have a choice between Generic Candidate A and Generic Candidate B. They are faced with real people, some of whom are appealing and some of whom are appalling, and party doesn’t predict those characteristics.

There is also a reason that voters face lopsided choices, or in some cases, no choice at all, and that reason is gerrymandering–partisan redistricting intended to make districts “safe,” aka uncompetitive.

As I have argued previously, this lack of competitiveness breeds voter apathy and reduced political participation. Why get involved when the result is foreordained? Why donate to a sure loser? For that matter, unless you are trying to buy political influence for some reason, why donate to a sure winner? Why volunteer or vote, when those efforts are clearly irrelevant?

It isn’t only voters who lack incentives for participation: it’s very difficult to recruit credible candidates to run on the ticket of the “sure loser” party. The result is that in many of these races, voters are left with a choice between the incumbent and a marginal candidate recruited to fill the slot, a placeholder who offers no new ideas, no energy, and no genuine challenge. In other safe districts, there is no challenger at all; in either case, the primary is the real election. Such contests simply exacerbate cynicism and voter apathy.

Here in Indiana, a legislative study committee has been convened to consider the possibility of changing the way our legislators draw district boundaries. As one legislator noted during the last public meeting, the current system, which allows representatives to choose their voters rather than the other way around, is a clear conflict of interest. Several states have established nonpartisan redistricting commissions, and others are considering similar reforms.

Study committees tend to be places where legislation goes to die. In this case, citizen turnout at Study Committee meetings and pressure from large numbers of citizens–mostly mobilized by the League of Women Voters and Common Cause–has given us hope that we can actually get something done. The next meeting of the Interim Study Committee will be July 7th at 1:00 in the afternoon in the Indiana Statehouse. If there is once again a robust turnout from members of the public, that will send a very important message to legislators who want to hang on to a status quo that benefits them.

If you can attend, I hope you will.

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