Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

Absence of Trust

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, I was once again reminded of how painful it has become to watch what passes for political discussion/debate in this country.

We have always had disputes about policy, about the proper role of government and the reach of the federal courts. We always will have those disagreements, and that’s how it should be. What is qualitatively different about our current discourse is the degree of suspicion and paranoia that characterizes it.  Americans simply do not trust the motives of those in government, and as a result of that distrust, we are unwilling to grant that honorable people of good will can come to different conclusions about the problems we face.

In Distrust, American Style, I investigated the sources and consequences of that distrust. The sources were easy enough to identify: for the past two decades, we’ve seen massive betrayals by businesses and Wall Street, scandals in institutions ranging from churches to major league sports, obscene amounts of money being spent on lobbying for legal advantage and more recently, poured into Super Pacs. There are undeniable reasons for our current levels of cynicism and distrust.

The problem is, when citizens don’t know who they can trust, they don’t trust anyone, and politics becomes impossible.

Yes, there are bad corporate actors–but there are also scores of good corporate citizens. Yes, there are politicians who are “on the take” and/or beholden to those who finance their campaigns, but there are also many, many good public servants who genuinely are trying to do the right thing. Yes, there are judges whose ideology drives their decision-making, but there are many more who divorce their policy preferences from their responsibility to faithfully apply the law.

Wholesale distrust makes for toxic politics.

It is one thing to disagree with President Obama’s priorities and policies–quite another to suggest, as “commentators” on Fox News and others regularly do, that he is a Kenyan Muslim Socialist who wants to destroy the United States. It’s one thing to disagree with Senator Lugar, quite another to suggest that his ability to work with Democrats on national security issues makes him unfit to hold office. You may disagree with the Court’s analysis of the healthcare law (although very few people seem to know enough about the actual law to form a reasoned opinion), but to suggest that Chief Justice Roberts is a “traitor” or (more bizarrely) that his opinion was flawed because he takes epilepsy medication is to embrace paranoia.

We have reached such levels of derangement that we no longer believe anything we don’t want to believe–and thanks to technology, we can choose to inhabit media environments that reinforce our most unhinged conspiracy theories.

We don’t trust the “lame stream” media (or what is left of it). We don’t trust businesses or unions. We don’t trust the courts. We don’t trust the President, Congress or the Supreme Court. Increasingly, we don’t trust each other.

This is no way to run a country.

It won’t be easy, but rational people need to insist on measures that will make our governing institutions trustworthy again–beginning with more transparency and more control of money in politics. If we can restore a measure of basic trust in the good will of those we elect, perhaps we can begin to calm the crazy and actually talk to each other again.

Failing that, maybe Prozac in the water supply??

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Back Home Again in Indiana…

As we walked into the passenger lounge in Chicago’s Union Station on our way home, the TVs were all on “breaking news”–the Supreme Court had upheld the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare” by a 5-4 vote.

There’s much that could be said about the Court’s decision–and virtually all of it has now been said. Initially, most legal scholars had predicted this result, which was dictated by relevant precedent; however, recently, Scalia had gone out of his way to reject those precedents, including his own prior rulings, stirring speculation that the Court might overturn the Act. (Scalia’s behavior, in several recent cases, has been so bizarre as to generate a cottage industry in armchair psychology…with one notable Court observer suggesting that he has “jumped the shark.”)

Lawyers and legal scholars will be in hog heaven dissecting the decision, the dissent, and what many attribute to Chief Justice Roberts’ concern that a contrary ruling would further damage the legitimacy of a politicized Court. I’ll leave those arcane arguments to them. What I have found utterly amazing–and ludicrous–is the public reaction from the right.

It is perfectly acceptable to disagree with the Supreme Court. I do it all the time myself. It is perfectly acceptable to dispute the wisdom of the ACA as policy. I’d have preferred a “Medicare for All” approach myself (although I recognize the political constraints that made such a solution to our health care crisis impossible). But the hysteria that greeted the Court’s ruling is quite simply astonishing. People are threatening to move to Canada (which has truly socialized medicine), comparing Obama’s effort to extend access to health care to Hitler’s Germany…this is the stuff of mass psychosis.

And then there is Mike Pence.

The man who has been blanketing our airwaves with soft-focus, “just a Hoosier like you” thirty-second ads, the man who is skillfully rewriting his own history to obscure his radical persona, just couldn’t stay in (his newly assumed) character. Pence compared the Supreme Court’s ruling to 9/11.

Think about that for a moment. A President and a majority of the legislature recognized that America had a healthcare crisis. Fifty million people could not afford health insurance, while spiraling costs posed a huge threat to the economy. Half of all personal bankruptcies were due to medical emergencies…I could go on, but you know the drill. The President and Congress addressed the problem with a complex piece of legislation.

And this–in Mike Pence’s strange reality–was equivalent to a terrorist attack. Trying to provide universal access to medical care is just like killing 3000 innocent people.

Pence immediately tried to walk this obscene reaction back, by calling it a “thoughtless” remark. As a friend of mine observed, thoughtless is when you forget your anniversary.

In what reality is an effort to fix a national problem, an effort to provide health care to children with pre-existing conditions, an effort to reign in abuses by insurance companies, a national calamity? What accounts for such a bizarre and disproportionate response to a measure that was first proposed by Republicans like Bob Dole, and first instituted at the state level by none other than Mitt Romney?

Someone recently said that if Obama endorsed oxygen, Republicans would suffocate themselves. This irrational response to a piece of well-intentioned legislation would seem to prove the point.

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It All Depends on Your Definition of a Tax….

There was another item in the news this morning about Congressional Republicans’ efforts to “trim” food stamps. The stated reason is to reduce government expenditures without raising taxes.

My husband noted that calling something a “reduction in benefits” doesn’t change the fact that the target of the measure has less money to spend at the grocery. Substantively, the food stamp recipient has been taxed.

This willingness to “reduce benefits” to avoid calling something a tax raises an inconvenient question. Oil companies–which have been massively profitable of late–enjoy generous federal subsidies. If the GOP doesn’t want to tax those they have labeled “job creators,” why not simply reduce their benefits?

Evidently, in the reality occupied by these Congressmen, reducing corporate welfare for big oil is a “tax” to be avoided at all costs, but reducing social welfare for poor children is just budgetary prudence.

I guess it all depends on what your definition of a “tax” is.

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What If? What Then?

Let me start this post with a caveat: I am not an economist. I don’t play one on TV. At most, I’m a reasonably well-informed consumer of economic news.

That news, however, is troubling. Following the various indicators could give you whiplash–housing may be recovering, but unemployment claims are up. No, unemployment claims are down, job creation’s up, but retail is down. No, retail is up this month, but…Well, you get the point.  If the economy were a car, it would be stuck in low gear.

There are as many theories about what ails the American economy as there are pundits and candidates for office. It’s too much government spending or not enough stimulus or the meltdown in the EU or GOP efforts to win the Presidency by delaying the recovery. And all of these  analyses clearly point to contributing factors.

But what if what we are seeing is the start of a long-predicted “structural change” brought about by technology? What if Europe calms down and we get past November only to discover that employment still doesn’t return to previous levels? And since I’m playing “what if” here, what if instead of the toxic political finger-pointing and infantile blaming that characterizes our current politics, we had a serious discussion about the appropriate response to that structural change?

Persistent high unemployment would present a huge challenge to social stability and economic health. Fewer people with money to spend would depress markets; more people needing social welfare support would stress the federal budget and make it more difficult to reduce the deficit. The existence of a persistent underclass would generate resentments and social unrest at a level that would dwarf today’s Occupy movement.

It seems to me–again, an admitted economic amateur–that such a scenario would require government to become an employer of last resort. Surely, hiring people to mow parks, clean streets, assist in classrooms and do similar jobs would be preferable to welfare, both for those being employed and society at large. The tasks being performed would improve the quality of life in our cities and towns, and productive employment would provide people with both self-respect and money to spend in the market.

Right now, of course, the rhetoric is all about heading in the opposite direction: laying off even badly needed government workers and pooh-poohing their value. If we are seeing the start of structural change, it’s going to be awfully hard to turn that tanker around.

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Drink Your Milk (Pasteurized)

There are probably a million policy arguments about food, and what the government’s role in food safety ought to be.

Yesterday, my cousin–a respected cardiologist–sent me a document warning about the documented health dangers of drinking raw milk, and what he assured me is an ill-conceived and dangerous movement to change current laws that make selling raw milk illegal. Proponents of the change insist–in the face of overwhelming research suggesting otherwise–that raw milk is not only safe, but able to cure a variety of diseases.

In New York, Mayor Bloomberg is under attack from everyone from libertarians to Jon Stewart for his effort to ban the sale of sodas larger than 16 ounces. And the movement against genetically-enhanced foods continues to gain adherents. (I confess to sympathy with many of their arguments myself.)

These debates raise the threshold policy question: what is the role of government? Are rules against raw milk evidence that we live in a nanny state, or are those rules precisely the sort of protections for which government must be responsible?

Most citizens do not have access to scientific evidence nor the ability to interpret that evidence. I know I don’t. So what should government do when experts identify a “clear and present” danger?

Unsurprisingly, I think the answer is: it depends.

In some cases–perhaps most–government’s role should probably be limited to that of informer, publicizing the danger and ensuring that individuals possess the relevant information when making personal choices. But in other cases the danger is either too serious or the harm to others who haven’t chosen to risk the behavior too great. The smoking ban falls in the latter category.

The raw milk controversy underlines the most basic tension presented by the libertarian principle that we should be free to live and do as we wish unless and until we harm the person or property of a non-consenting other: what is harm?

To which we might add, what should government do when a harm is confirmed by science but not obvious to reasonable observers? Or when scientists disagree?

In an increasingly complex world, where technology and genetic manipulation make the accoutrements of everyday life more mysterious and impenetrable, these aren’t easy questions.

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