Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

     I used to shrug off as cynical the recurring accusations about the influence of money in politics. Now I don’t.

     I am not referring to the corrupting influence of campaign contributions, of which the recent (and growing) Abramoff scandal is the most recent example. I’m talking about more subtle forms of dishonesty, prompted by lawmakers’ desire to be re-elected and enabled by voters’ belief that we can—and should—get something for nothing.

     Recently, the Indianapolis City-County Council authorized borrowing up to $35 million dollars against anticipated County Option Income Tax (COIT) revenues to help “fill the gap” in the 2007 city budget. The funds are presumably to be repaid in 2008 from reserves that the state has withheld. (The state says the withholding is intended to guard against “swings” in COIT collections; local officials say the real reason is so that the state will get the interest earned on those funds in the interim.) 

     Indianapolis isn’t the only municipality borrowing to meet current obligations. Cook County recently borrowed $200 million dollars to meet operating expenses. The 18-month line of credit carries an above-market interest rate of 10%. 

     Evidently, lawmakers would rather pay millions in interest later than face the need to cut services or raise taxes now.

     Government borrowing is not the problem—the problem is government borrowing to meet current operating expenses. Well-managed businesses will often borrow in order to invest in capital improvements—to amortize the costs of new facilities or to upgrade manufacturing equipment. Borrowing to make payroll, or to pay the rent, is a far dicier proposition.

     You can reasonably argue that government should borrow in appropriate circumstances. The question is: what circumstances are appropriate? 

    Unfortunately, political game-playing frequently trumps good public policy. Much has been written about Governor Daniel’s seventy-five year lease of the Indiana Toll Road. Whatever the merits of that decision, it was clearly prompted by the unwillingness of members of the Indiana General Assembly to raise tolls. After all, the State could have issued bonds to be repaid from future tolls, retained control of the asset, and realized more money than a lessee—who needs to make a profit—could pay. But then it would be obvious who raised the tolls, and some lawmakers might suffer at the polls. The Governor and General Assembly essentially “outsourced” authority to levy taxes (which is what tolls are), hoping they would thereby escape responsibility. 

    We see this privatization of taxing authority in other contexts. Homeowners’ associations are given responsibility for local streets, garbage collection and other services that were once public responsibility. The homeowner pays for those services through fees collected by the association, allowing the local government to claim it didn’t “raise taxes.”

    Ultimately, We the People are responsible for all these evasions of responsibility. Until we are willing to pay for the services we receive, until we stop thinking we can get something for nothing, we are just electing people to lie to us. And we are paying extra for the delusions.

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Senate confirmation hearings on General Michael Hayden raised a number of questions about the NSA surveillance program. While the devil is always in the details, let me risk oversimplifying the arguments pro and con: one side says such programs make us safer without unacceptably invading our liberties; the other side says—to plagiarize New Hampshire’s motto—live free or die.

 That’s the wrong debate.

Leave aside the troubling issue of government honesty and accountability. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the Administration played by the rules. Let’s further assume that intrusions on our liberties are, as proponents assert, minimal. What are the risks and rewards of this data mining operation? Is it making us safer—or is it actually compromising our safety?

Whatever its effectiveness in protecting us from terrorists—a hotly debated proposition within the FBI and CIA—this program and the “War on Terror” create significant non-terrorism-related security risks. As one scholar warns, the executive’s power to do whatever he deems necessary to “conduct war” will “displace the area previously assumed to fall within the criminal justice system.” In other words, the President will increasingly have a choice whether to categorize threats as matters of national security or matters of crime and criminal justice. We are already creating a “parallel law enforcement structure” not subject to constitutional restrictions. It will be increasingly tempting to argue that the criminal justice system is too inflexible and outmoded to use during the war on terror.  

If that is too abstract a concern, consider the very immediate, practical dangers posed by the existence of such a database. To begin with, it vastly increases opportunities for identity theft. Even if (as the Administration insists) conversations aren’t being monitored, numbers are. How many times have you used your telephone’s keypad to punch in bank codes or credit card numbers? All it would take to give thieves access to that information is one breach in computer security, or one  NSA employee with financial problems or dubious ethics.

How about blackmail?  What if government had evidence that an annoying activist or legislator was calling a phone sex line? Do you think that information might be used to get votes changed, investigations dropped, or public criticisms muted? It happened to Martin Luther King—and that was before we got so technologically sophisticated. The government has already used NSA information to identify who is leaking information to the press. If whistleblowers know their calls can be tracked, how long before we stop getting any inside information about government wrongdoing?

American privacy is vanishing. Our telephone companies willingly sold the records on each of us to the government. For money. Other businesses—Amazon, Google, your doctor, your insurance company—amass huge amounts of data on us all. We trade this information for convenience, and like many people, I have considered that trade mutually beneficial. If I knew the information might be turned over to government, I would have second thoughts, and I imagine many other people would as well.

For most Americans, Big Brother poses a much greater threat than Osama Bin Ladin.

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This is the time of year when I envy colleagues who teach math and science—courses where final examinations are filled with questions to which there are clear right and wrong answers. Students are comfortable with the certainties of such subjects; they have far more difficulty dealing with questions that are often answered—at least in part—with “it depends.”   

 

When undergraduates are told that the “right” answer consists of identifying and analyzing the issue—and not just choosing the correct outcome—they can find it positively disorienting. They tend to want clarity and bright lines–rules that can be memorized and regurgitated. That works when the question is two plus two; it’s dicier for most areas of real life.   

 

Despite all the rhetoric that gets thrown around these days about the differences between conservatives and liberals (whatever meaning those abused terms currently retain), I think it is this discomfort with the ambiguities of reality that best defines the contemporary political divide. Conservatives and liberals may be guided by different philosophies of government and different views of virtue, but most recognize the inherent messiness of life and acknowledge the dangers of too-rigid, too-doctrinaire approaches to our common civic life.

 

There are people of all political persuasions, however, who find the absence of moral certainty unbearable. We all know folks who began their civic life as passionate believers in one “ism” or another, and who reacted to disillusionment by embracing an opposing, equally extreme philosophy. Talk radio and shout television programs are filled with ex-communists who have fervently embraced right-wing dogma. Bookstore shelves display manifestos by former right-wing activists now devoted to unmasking the agendas of their erstwhile culture-war colleagues.

 

These are people who find the inevitable ambiguities of real life not just distasteful, but terrifying. Much like those ex-cons who can’t cope with life outside the predictability of prison structure and who purposely re-offend in order to be sent back, they need the psychic comfort that comes with imposed discipline—no matter how confining.

 

For better or worse, however, political and civic life requires compromise. Thoughtful conservatives, libertarians and liberals can generally find some common ground that makes governing possible. They understand that no one gets his own way all the time, and that an acceptable middle-ground is no small achievement in a society as diverse as ours. Zealots, however, find compromise not just distasteful, but evil. They don’t acknowledge the ambiguities; they not only don’t see shades of gray or moral complexity, they believe that people who do are the “real” enemy.

 

This dynamic plays out on both sides of the political spectrum, but in Indiana it has been most notable in the Republican primaries of recent years, where moderately conservative lawmakers have been defeated by people campaigning on the proposition that moderation itself is evil. Larry Borst and Bob Garton were not defeated by opponents debating the nuances of policy. They were victims of holy wars.

 

And even undergraduates understand that holy wars will ultimately victimize us all.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of our current political leaders is their willingness to lecture the rest of us on the importance of morality. Whether it is a self-righteous diatribe about a “culture of life” or an insistence on “abstinence-based” sex education, this fixation on our personal behaviors evidently consumes far more of their time and energy than trying to making health care affordable, or balancing the budget.

 

We’re beginning to see just how “moral” these people who’ve cornered the market on virtue really are.

 

I’m not talking about the morality of things like the war in Iraq, or efforts to deport all illegal aliens, or tax policies that line the pockets of campaign contributors at the expense of the most vulnerable, although those are undoubtedly appropriate topics of discussion. No, I’m talking about the garden-variety, “don’t lie, don’t steal” kinds of morality. How are the guys in charge doing on those homelier virtues?

 

In Congress, the Jack Abramoff scandal has put Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham in prison, and has led to the indictment of so-much-holier-than-thou Tom Delay. As many as twenty more lawmakers may be implicated before it’s all over. Bill (“Terri Schaivo looks fine”) Frist is under investigation for securities fraud.

 

In the Administration of our current moralist-in-chief, we have a bonanza: Scooter Libby has been indicted for felony obstruction of justice (and Karl Rove is still under investigation) in the Valerie Plame “outing.” Domestic policy advisor and self-proclaimed Christian conservative Claude Allen has been arrested for felony shoplifting. White House procurement officer David Safarian has been arrested for corruption. At Homeland Security, the agency created by the President to protect us all from the bad guys, not one but two high-ranking officials have been arrested—one for kiddie porn, and the other for trying to have sex with a 14-year-old he “met” over the internet.

 

These are the guys who have been lecturing us about godliness and morality!

 

Maybe these are just examples of age-old “do as I say not as I do” moral smugness. Or maybe these politicians are using religion and religious folks for cynical political advantage. (A recent study called “False Promises” accuses the GOP of deliberately using homophobia to win support from African-Americans; others have suggested that immigration fears are being used in 2006 in much the same way gays were used to mobilize the Republican base in 2004.) Whatever the explanation, the consequences for the country are nothing short of appalling.

 

These Republican leaders have used the language of morality to set American against American. The older rhetoric of “we the people” has been eclipsed by dark references to “them” and “us.” Now, as these favorites of the Religious Right turn out to be considerably less than godly, Americans are reacting by becoming more cynical. As GOP apologists claim “everybody does it,” many citizens assume that’s true. It isn’t—but the perception is profoundly corrosive of trust, and without trust, democratic government cannot endure.

 

It’s enough to give morality a bad name.

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If I were one of those Christians who believed in the Rapture, I have to admit it would be looking pretty imminent.

 Every time I think things can’t get any grimmer, they seem to: we’ve got global warming (yes, Mr. President, whether you think so or not—one aspect of that inconvenient thing called reality) melting the polar icecaps and threatening to inundate the coasts; more and more people are dying in Iraq, while the Iraqi “government of national unity” shows none of the characteristics of government or unity; the deficit is so big even my great-grandchildren won’t be able to pay it at this rate; Congress wants to round up all the immigrants (except for their grandparents, of course) and expel them; our shortsighted energy policies are getting ready to bite us in the you-know-where…and of course, all of these problems, and any others you can think of, are clearly the fault of the powerful, rich ho-mo-sexual (drool and sneer when you say that) lobby. (We’ve gotta do something about them queers, you know.)

 Sometimes, it really doesn’t seem worth getting out of bed in the mornings.

 I do try to look on the bright side. Honest. Okay, so the sea waters rise three feet—I always wanted to live by the ocean, and pretty soon, Indiana will have a beach! No oil? I always worry when my kids and grandkids drive, and pretty soon, they won’t be able to. What a relief! I don’t have to worry about war with China, because China obviously decided some time back to just buy America instead…..and now that they own all our debt, there’s no reason to invade. And the President assures us that things in Iraq are really just peachy—if the liberal media would just concentrate on covering school openings instead of suicide bombings, we’d all feel better.

 Okay—so I’m not too good at looking on the bright side.

 I would really love to live in the alternate universe that so many of our fellow-citizens evidently inhabit, but I can’t seem to summon up the will power to do that. I keep bumping into hard-working immigrants who just want a chance to make a better life for their kids, or gay neighbors who just want the same rights everyone else has, or people who just want the environment to be clean for their children to grow up in.  I keep encountering reality.

 A lawyer I worked with early in my career used to say that at the end of the day, everything boils down to one question: What should we do? I think that may be the question for our time.

 If you live in what some of us have taken to calling “the reality-based community,” what should you be doing? (Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you have decided against just drinking yourself into a stupor, screwing yourself to death, or finding a deserted tropical island somewhere.) What are the options available?

 I think we have to send a message to the people who are running things. That’s not just the people who hold political office; it’s also the people who pay the lobbyists who bribe the people who work for the people in office. I think we send our message two ways: first, by refusing to spend our dollars—to the extent possible—with those who support the current regime; and second, by working as hard as we can to vote out the current crop of officeholders.

 Is Company A refusing to fill prescriptions for the morning-after pill? Okay—but I don’t have to shop at Company A. Is Company B supporting homophobic candidates, advertising on Pat Robertson’s television network, or otherwise enabling the dark side? Fine, but they’ll do it without my patronage.

 Is the Republican leadership in Congress intent upon dictating my religion, my sex life, my procreation and the way I express my patriotism? Are they supporting a President who routinely and brazenly breaks America’s laws? Are they contemptuous of the very people they are pandering to? Then let’s do our damnedest to throw them out—so we can start cleaning up the mess they’ve made.

 Now that would cheer me up!

 

 

 

  

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