The other day on Facebook, a friend posted one of those perennial whines about hard-working Americans who resent watching their tax money being wasted on support for slutty welfare moms and assorted lazy bums. This one was attributed to Bill Cosby, despite the fact he has repeatedly denied authorship, but it doesn’t really matter how many times Snopes.com “debunks” this and similar aggrieved diatribes–the myth that we are working to support legions of welfare queens persists.
I’m sure there are poor people who take advantage of “the system,” but they can’t hold a candle to the big boys–the sophisticated corporate welfare recipients who’ve been milking the taxpayers for years. For every single mom making minimum wage who depends upon our diminishing social safety net to feed her children, there’s a well-connected industry costing taxpayers and consumers billions.
Before you dismiss that assertion because it came from a “bleeding heart liberal,” it might be enlightening to hear what noted liberals Richard Lugar and Pat Toomey recently had to say about one of the most egregious offenders: big sugar.
In a blog post published by The Hill, Lugar, Pennsylvania’s Toomey, and New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen wrote of their support for reforming “an extravagant sugar price-support program that costs consumers and businesses an estimated $3.5 billion and 20,000 jobs each year.”
Sugar is the most tightly controlled–read “subsidized”–agricultural commodity in the country. The favorable policies that operate to keep sugar prices artificially high benefit approximately five thousand wealthy farmers at the expense of the rest of us. These aren’t family farmers, either–they are large corporate farmers like Archer Daniels Midland and United Sugars Corporation. In 2000, we taxpayers forked out more than a billion dollars to keep the price of sugar high enough to protect their profit margins.
Sugar subsidies artificially inflate the price of candy, breakfast cereals and other foods that use sugar, ensuring a price for sugar that is about three times as much as its price on the world market. Americans’ bodies may be getting fat from sugary foods and beverages, but our wallets are getting much, much thinner; the General Accounting Office reports that thanks to sugar subsidies, U.S. consumers pay in excess of two billion dollars per year too much for our sugary foods.
We’re not only paying extra–we’re depressing job growth. A 2006 study by the Commerce Department found that for each job the program saved in the sugar industry, it cost three jobs in food manufacturing.
The Agriculture Department guarantees sugar growers a set price, and protects domestic sugar interests from competition through the imposition of import barriers and domestic production control. If that isn’t welfare, what is? (It’s sure as hell not market capitalism!)
If the financial costs of this welfare program aren’t outrageous enough, sugar subsidies are also causing environmental degradation–large areas of the Florida Everglades have been converted to cane sugar production as a direct result of the sugar protection racket, causing damage fro drainage, runoff of chemical fertilizers and destruction of the natural habitat.
The next time someone complains about the “culture of dependency” and the costs of welfare, ask them about sugar.
Heartbreaking. Yesterday in Chicago, a fifteen-year-old was shot dead–evidently caught in the crossfire of a gang shoot-out. Just the week before, she’d been thrilled to participate with her school’s band in the Presidential inauguration. Like the children at Sandy Hook in Newtown, she was an innocent child who had her whole life ahead of her.
As we ate dinner last night, the television news reported on two other shootings. It also covered a portion of the Congressional hearing on the administration’s proposals for background checks and restrictions on the sales of large “magazines” that allow a shooter to rapidly fire multiple shots without reloading–including, poignantly, halting testimony from Gabby Gifford, the Congresswoman shot in the head in Phoenix while meeting with her constituents. The cost of her miraculous survival was on full display–this formerly vibrant woman is now partially blind, able to form words only with great effort, partially paralyzed.
A colleague shared with me an article from Slate, featuring a graphic and an interactive map of all the firearms deaths since Newtown. You can access it here. As of a couple of days ago, the toll stood at 1440. Just since Newtown.
Can we craft laws that will eradicate all this violence? No. Will background checks eliminate the ability of criminals to get their hands on weapons? No. In a country with a toxic gun culture and an estimated 300,000,000 guns, we aren’t going to be able to wave a policy wand and make it all go away. But surely, we can make it incrementally more difficult to kill and maim, to destroy lives and terrorize law-abiding citizens.
The survivalists (one of whom, the news just reported, has killed a school bus driver and abducted a young boy) and the paranoid see every modest measure to protect the public as part of a plot to disarm them. Newtown has had one salutary effect: it has pulled back the covers and given the American public a good look at that worldview, as expressed by Wayne LaPierre and his fellow crackpots at the NRA, and most of us–including responsible gun owners–have been understandably appalled. (Until now, like many other Americans, I had considered the NRA simply another lobbying group, rather than a cult. I was wrong.)
It shouldn’t take another Newtown, or the death of another promising 15-year-old, to shake well-intentioned lawmakers out of their complacency. As for those elected officials whose inaction has been purchased with NRA support, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I will no longer vote for a candidate who accepts campaign contributions from that organization.
Just because we can’t wave a magic wand and make everyone safe doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take reasonable measures to reduce the violence and mayhem. And “reasonable measures” do not include arming kindergarten teachers. It’s past time to stop the crazy.
Democrats and liberal pundits are all up in arms about proposals emerging in some states that would allocate the electoral vote by Congressional District. The reason they oppose such a measure is strictly partisan: given the current effects of gerrymandering (largely by Republicans at the state level), it would disadvantage Democrats. Why do I think that if Democrats had been doing the gerrymandering, the whole concept would be less offensive?
Let’s review the current situation and our options.
The Electoral College–whatever its original purposes or merits–is outmoded. It is certainly inconsistent with our current goal of “one person, one vote.” But eliminating it will require a constitutional amendment, and that would take years and be very difficult. Currently, most states award all of their electoral votes (a number equal to the number of Senators and Representatives from that state) to the candidate who wins a majority of the popular vote in that state–no matter how thin the victory.
In red Indiana, that means that voters who opted for Barack Obama in November might just as well have flushed those votes down the toilet. Ditto New York voters who preferred Mitt Romney. Winner take all effectively erases the votes cast for the loser, even if that loss was by a mere fraction.
The Constitution permits each state to decide how its electoral votes will be allocated, and two states–Maine, and (I think) Nebraska–have long allocated them by congressional district, awarding the district vote to the winner of that district and giving the two additional votes to the candidate who wins statewide. Since congressional districts are supposed to be roughly equal in population, the result is an allocation that more closely approximates the breakdown of the vote statewide.
The kicker here, of course, is gerrymandering. Not surprisingly, the sudden interest in electoral fairness is being seen in states where the Republicans have been most successful in rigging the boundaries in their favor. But only the most naive among us would expect a different result if the situation were reversed; Democrats have been just as eager to draw squiggly lines that benefit them when they’ve had the power to do so.
If we really want a system in which everyone’s vote actually counts, a system that doesn’t give politicians of either party the opportunity to game the system, there is an easy fix: allocate the electoral vote to reflect the popular vote.
If candidate A gets 55% of the popular vote and candidate B gets 45%, allocate the electoral votes 55/45.
We talk a lot about the importance of voting, and each election we hear that “every vote counts.” That may be true of votes for local offices (unless gerrymandering has been at work at the local level), but with respect to our votes for President, it’s bull-hockey. Under our present system, red votes in blue states don’t count. Blue votes in red states don’t count.
If we really cared about electoral fairness, and not just about comparative advantage–not just about whose ox is gored–we’d allocate the electoral vote to represent the actual voice of the people.
My post a few days back ignited a pretty lively discussion of climate change. But here’s what I don’t understand: let’s say the science is far less compelling than I think it actually is. Let’s say it’s 50/50, rather than 98/2. It would still make sense to take steps to ameliorate it.
There are zero negatives to cleaning up the environment. No downsides–even if we are wrong. For our efforts we get an investment in cleaner air and water, and we create a lot of new jobs. On the other hand, if we do nothing and climate change continues at its current pace, we face increasing numbers of disasters–hurricanes, tsunamis, rising sea levels…Aside from the human suffering such effects would cause, they will require massive outlays of money and other resources–far more than an investment in green energy and environmentally-friendly technologies.
I understand why those with a financial stake in coal, oil and other pollutants are advocating that we ignore the science. But wouldn’t good policy require that we play the odds, even if they were far less lopsided than they are?
If you lived beneath a volcano and were told it only had a 50-50 chance of erupting, would you keep your family there?
IUPUI’s Spring semester started yesterday. Mid-day, I convened 42 undergraduates, and last night faced 19 graduate students. As with all new classes, some students show promise and others not so much. Time will tell.
An interesting exchange in my graduate Law and Public Affairs class raised a question that has nagged at me since: I had asked the class to describe the differences they would expect to see between the behavior of public officials serving in an autocratic regime and those serving in a democratic one. How would the nature of the regime affect the practice of public service? A student suggested that accountability would be different–that in liberal democratic regimes like our own, public administrators are accountable to the people; in an autocratic system, accountability runs up the bureaucratic chain of command.
It was a good answer. In theory, he is exactly right. But in practice, the increasingly complex and technocratic nature of our government is making a mockery of genuine accountability in multiple arenas.
As Indiana enters the 2013 legislative session, the influence of the investor-owned gas and electric utility companies looms large. Not that they didn’t have influence before. Whether the Democrats or Republicans have control of the Indiana House (the Indiana Senate was gerrymandered into a permanent Republican stronghold long ago), utility companies and their friends in the coal industry (namely, Peabody Energy) dominate the discussion.
Their lobbyists walk with swagger and always seem unusually relaxed in the heat of the session. They are able to reflect this air of serenity because they are enabled. They are enabled by state regulators at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission as well as many legislators on both sides of the aisle.
The legislature has failed to pass pro-ratepayer legislation on behalf of residential and business customers for 30 years. The sad thing is that the one bill passed to avoid another power plant boondoggle, i.e. another Marble Hill (nuclear) power plant debacle that occurred in the early 1980s, has been rendered useless through administrative fiat. The deal, thirty years ago, was that electric utilities had to prove that a plant was needed and to provide least cost service. Our regulators eviscerated that part of the statute by interpreting the statute on behalf of electric utilities. To them, least cost means that utilities must only review but not implement least cost options. If the statute were interpreted as originally intended, we wouldn’t be dealing with the scandal of Duke Energy’s Edwardsport coal gasification plant. It certainly is not needed in an era of very low projected electric demand and at $3.5 billion and counting obviously not the least cost option to provide service.
It’s absolutely amazing that since the passage of the certificate of need law mentioned above that the IURC has never denied a power plant on its own volition. Never. If a plant did not go forward, it’s been because the utility or the non-utility, power plant developer decided to pull the plug. The Commission was wrong about Marble Hill – prior to passage of the law. The lights, as claimed by Public Service Indiana (now Duke), did not go out because the plant wasn’t built. The additional unit at Northern Indiana Public Service Company’s (NIPSCO’s) Shahfer coal plant was not needed. NIPSCO’s been over-built for years. The Commission even continued to approve merchant power plants (in the wake of deregulation of electric wholesale markets) when it was obvious that the bottom had fallen out of the market. Many of the plants that were built barely ran for years or were sold for pennies on the dollar. Nearly 100 billion dollars were lost nationwide by the industry. Utilities whose subsidiaries built merchant plants not tied to their captive rate base rushed to get regulators to put them in the rate base, as Indiana regulators did on behalf of Cinergy (now Duke) at its subsidiary’s CinCAP VII Plant in Henry County. And with electric demand projected well under 1% for years to come, cheap energy efficiency measures and mature wind and solar technology whose costs continue to decline, Edwardsport was never needed.
How can an institution with vast amounts of expertise and experienced staff inevitably be wrong? It’s always wrong because the regulatory process is rigged. The scandal surrounding Edwardsport and excellent reporting at the Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis Business Journal proved that. The only reason that Duke is eating some of the costs of the plant is that they and the Commission were caught.
What we need is more transparency at the IURC where regulators oversee more money than we pay in income taxes every year. What we need is an elected Commission that is held accountable to the public and not working in the shadows behind closed doors in collusion with utility companies.
As it happens, electric and gas utilities have systematically dismantled ratepayer protections at the legislature and before the Commission. They have become monopolies with little to no business risk. Their business plans and mistakes are dumped on ratepayers in the form of rate increases without the slightest pushback from either elected officials or regulators. They are awarded incentives for what they should be doing anyway. They are systematically throttling the promise of a strong renewables market in Indiana in favor of their obsolete coal plants and, with this strategy, maintaining a status quo that is expensive, dirty, and economically disastrous.
This session they will be back with more risk-shifting legislation to relieve themselves of any business risk or management responsibility they may still face, with no thought to the burden they will impose on their customers. With their captive ratepayers, captive legislators, and captive regulators, they will essentially become unregulated monopolies. What a deal – for their stockholders. What an injustice to the rest of us. And most likely without an opposing word from our regulators.
The IURC is charged with balancing the interests of ratepayers and utility companies. Such balance is regrettably nonexistent. The Commissioners have lost sight of the law and their charge. Many legislatures have been equally negligent, mandating their constituents unwillingly and sometimes unknowingly to rubber stamp utility malfeasance and incompetence.
I dare say that this is the situation in many jurisdictions in the US given the corporatization of government.
Now, I do not have the background to evaluate the particulars of this complaint. But that’s the point–few of us do. References to “certificates of need” and the URC and the intricacies of the rules governing utility rates are at best unfamiliar territory to most of us, and at worst, Greek. How do we ensure accountability of this government agency? How do we know when it has been “captured” by those it ostensibly regulates?
How does the average citizen judge the merits of Grant Smith’s allegations, or the URC’s inevitable defense?
The same question applies to the EPA, the FCC, the FAA….to all of the federal and state agencies charged with regulating activities involving significant specialization and expertise.
Just how accountable is our “democratic” government, really?
