Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

I Told You So…

Okay, okay…I hate smart-alecks who say “I told you so”– and now I’m one of them.

During my twenty-one years as a university professor, I constantly talked (well, ranted) about the American public’s lack of civic literacy–Americans’ gob-smacking lack of knowledge of our national history and constitutional structure. I established a Center for Civic Literacy at IUPUI (now IU Indianapolis), where researchers documented the gaping holes in public understanding of even the most basic elements of the country’s legal and political structures.

That public ignorance is largely responsible for our ignorant, embarrassing and very dangerous President.

David French connected those dots in a recent “conversation” among opinion writers for the New York Times. The writers had been discussing whether people cared about Trump’s assaults on America’s most fundamental philosophical commitments, and French pointed to the elephant in the room (pun intended): civic ignorance.

I really wish those of us who follow politics very closely understood more, because there’s a another question besides “Do people care?” and that is “Do people know?”

French noted that one thing that distinguishes Trump from other presidents “is the extent to which he has weaponized and exploited civic ignorance.”

One of the things that I think we’re learning is how much the American experiment has depended on the honor system. That presidents of both parties, with varying degrees of truthfulness and honor, by and large, maintained American norms and did not explicitly weaponize American ignorance in the way that Trump has.

I think what Trump and the people around him have realized is that he can do wild things, like some of the executive orders that will thrill MAGA and, of course, enrage his opposition. But then outside MAGA, there won’t be a ripple that any of this occurred at all.

Those American norms were rooted in the political philosophy that undergirds the Constitution and the Bill of Rights–a particular approach to the purpose of government, and especially to the importance of restraints on the exercise of government power. When a majority of the population doesn’t understand that philosophy and/or the centrality of those restraints, would-be dictators emerge.

I have previously posted about the importance of language and the effects of imprecise usage. An example is the way in which the term “limited government” has been transformed from the meaning given to it by the Founders into a belief in small government. The early American public insisted on passage of a Bill of Rights as a condition of ratifying the Constitution, and that Bill of Rights incorporates their insistence upon limiting the power of the state. (And since we are talking about words and their usage, I will note that “the state” in this context means government.)

If most citizens understood  America’s foundational principles, today’s media propaganda would be far less effective–audiences would recognize when claims being made are incompatible with America’s constitutional structure. Fox News and its clones rely heavily on the civic ignorance of their viewers.

In our system, government is supposed to be limited (not small). Among other things, it cannot tell citizens what they can say, what they can read, what they must believe. Government may not base laws on any religion. It may not interfere with citizens’ activities in the absence of probable cause. It must guarantee criminal defendants due process, and may not impose unreasonable penalties on those who are subsequently found guilty.

In the wake of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment added further limitations. Probably the most important was the mandate of equal protection–government cannot treat different kinds of citizens differently. (That amendment also included a provision that anyone born on American soil is a citizen–a provision that can only be changed by Constitutional amendment.)

The original Bill of Rights also explicitly limited the authority of the federal government by providing that powers not expressly granted to the federal government are retained by the states and/or the people.

Trump and his racist MAGA movement stand in opposition to virtually the entire Bill of Rights. It is very likely they have absolutely no familiarity with, or understanding of, that document. Worse, the election of Trump is evidence–as if we needed it–that the majority of Americans (especially those who didn’t bother going to the polls) were unaware of the degree to which a Trump victory would be inconsistent with America’s founding principles; evidently ignoring the campaign rhetoric that clearly pointed to that inconsistency and threatened those principles.

Too many Americans simply fail to understand that–far from making America great– Trump is intent upon destroying the genuine greatness to which America has aspired.

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The Assault On Science

Facts exist whether you acknowledge them or not.

Among Trump’s blizzard of demented, anti-American Executive orders were several that attacked science and evidence. The declaration of an energy emergency was one–no such emergency exists. Asserting that the southern border is under invasion conveniently overlooked the fact that there are far fewer immigrants there than when he left office. The airy dismissal of climate change and the withdrawal from the Paris accords are part and parcel of a diseased mind that rejects irrefutable evidence of what is currently the single largest threat to human life on the planet.

Trump’s attacks on medical science were especially breathtaking, and enormously consequential.

As Talking Points Memo put it, the new administration has “turned off the spigot of funding for a huge amount of cancer research and various other health fields and diseases, and all signs point to a cutoff that will be thorough-going and draconian.”

This comes after a similar halt to the weekly MMWR report which CDC sends to hospitals and doctors every week with information on flu, COVID and other infectious diseases.

I think we’re at the point in this where you can’t yet categorically say that this is being done for RFK Jr.-adjacent anti-research nuttery, but basically all signs point in that direction. And there is at least a temporary and disruptive halt to how health research gets funded in this country.

The American Prospect reported on the assault on NIH.

All travel has been canceled, ruining many important conferences. All agency communications have been banned until further notice, blocking a highly anticipated report on the festering avian flu outbreak that has killed millions of birds, and could cause another pandemic if it mutates to enable human-to-human transmission. Worst of all, all study sections, which are required to disburse NIH’s $40 billion in grants—supporting some 300,000 working scientists at thousands of universities—are also halted indefinitely.

Before 1933, Germany was the clear world leader in academic research and achievement, winning far more Nobel Prizes than any other country. Hitler and the Nazis blew that up in a crusade against liberalism and “Jewish science,” driving most top researchers across Europe (like Albert Einstein) to Britain or the U.S., where many of them worked on the Manhattan Project. German science never recovered fully…

All agency communications have been banned until further notice, blocking a highly anticipated report on the festering avian flu outbreak that has killed millions of birds, and could cause another pandemic if it mutates to enable human-to-human transmission. Worst of all, all study sections, which are required to disburse NIH’s $40 billion in grants—supporting some 300,000 working scientists at thousands of universities—are also halted indefinitely.

As the Prospect concludes, Trump heads up a “rising tide of vengeful, crackbrained irrationalism” that is likely to end American scientific pre-eminence.

The Week reported on the Executive Order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization.

The problem is there is no similar organization ready to take its place. Meanwhile, global health threats continue to proliferate thanks to mass travel, rising urban populations and human encroachment on wildlife habitats. Without WHO, we leave ourselves unprepared.

Why, you might ask, has Trump withdrawn us from an organization that might protect us from (or at least alert us to) the next pandemic? Evidently, because the organization’s acceptance of medical science on matters like abortion and gender care is “woke.” (That’s the trouble with science and reality…they do tend to be “woke.”)

Trump hasn’t simply disrupted ongoing medical research–he has also censored medical information. Federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes for Health, have all been ordered to pause all external communications, including health advisories and scientific reports.

So–American doctors and scientists not only won’t be pursuing research into diseases and public health, We the People won’t be informed about evidence they’ve previously uncovered. If we experience another pandemic, we will once again be told to ingest bleach or a horse medication–or perhaps, given the overwhelming influence of anti-science White Christian Nationalists–we may just be told to pray the disease away.

Trump’s cuts to foreign aid included numerous assaults on global heath. He’s stopped bird flu monitoring in 49 countries; halted efforts to eradicate polio; cut off support for vaccination of 90 million women and children; halted drug supplies keeping 20 million people living with HIV alive, and services for 6.5 million children affected by HIV in 23 countries.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been recognized as central to both America’s prosperity and its geopolitical influence. As one article put it, the social and strategic benefits of owning such an immensely successful research complex are immense.

The benefits to individuals of living in a humane and fact-based world are also immense.

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Words Fail

In a recent article titled “The New Rasputins,” , Anne Applebaum argued something I’ve long believed: the words “right” and “left” are not remotely accurate descriptors of the political world we currently inhabit. 

Believe it or not, I was long considered–and long considered myself–a conservative. During those years, the term was defined as someone concerned with fiscal prudence, respect for legal tradition and the rule of law, and for conserving the rights protected by the Bill of Rights. Fidelity to what used to be seen as conservative principles now label me “progressive” or “liberal” or–for MAGA folks–a “commie.”

As Applebaum correctly noted, “left” and “right” are outmoded descriptors of today’s GOP and Democrats. The GOP is currently a White Christian Nationalist cult with a corporatist (crony capitalist) economic agenda. The Democratic Party has been left with a nearly-impossible-to-corral amalgam of Americans ranging from center-right conservatives and former Republican “never Trumpers” to actual Leftists. And everyone in-between. We are experiencing the downside of a two-party system–it cannot function properly when one party goes off the rails.

The current misuse of terminology matters, because when language loses its connection to reality, political life is threatened. Authoritarianism thrives when the words citizens use are insufficient to convey an accurate meaning. Worse, when terminology is not just inadequate but misleading, we fail to recognize the reality we inhabit and the nature of the threats we face.

Applebaum’s point was expanded upon by Jennifer Rubin in the new publication Contrarian (link unavailable). 

Contrarian contributor Ruth Ben-Ghiat has written: “[A]uthoritarians turn language into a weapon, as well as emptying key words in the political life of a nation such as patriotism, honor, and freedom of meaning. We are well on our way in America to what I call the ‘upside-down world of authoritarianism,’ where the rule of law gives way to rule by the lawless; where those who take our rights away and jail us pose as protectors of freedom; where the thugs who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6 are turned into patriots; and where ‘leadership requires killing people,’ as Tucker Carlson recently put it, justifying Vladimir Putin’s killing of Alexei Navalny.”

 

We cannot accept MAGA terminology. Since an “executive order” denotes a proper, legal exercise of power, that term should certainly not be applied to President Trump’s cascade of executive pronouncements (most over-reaching and unconstitutional, others just meaningless). They may be “edicts” or ‘bogus decrees,” as historian Jonathan Alter noted in our recent Talking Feds podcast. But they do not dignify the term “executive order.”

“Pro-life,” is another example, in that it no way defines a movement that supports forced birth laws that kill women and have increased infant mortality. In the abortion arena, the right-wing comes up with non-words like “post-birth abortion”)to express fantastical charges. And while we are at it, “abortion ban” is not nearly descriptive enough. Laws robbing women of bodily autonomy and forcing them to go to term with a pregnancy should properly be called “forced birth.”

For years, the culture warriors of the GOP have used coded and inaccurate language to hide their true identity, which is anything but conservative. It is radical and reactionary, irredeemably racist and misogynistic. To label these people “conservative” is to deprive that term of all meaning.

Those of us who are appalled and terrified by the coming administration are constantly asking ourselves: “What can I do?” At the recent Hoosiers 4 Democracy rally, the “call to action” identified a number of organizations we can join and/or support. But there’s one thing everyone can do–even people unable to volunteer or donate: we can refuse to use inaccurate language. We can call fascism what it is.

And it sure isn’t “conservative.”

 
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The Public Interest

One of the newsletters I get is In the Public Interest. The most recent one considered the lessons the Los Angeles fires ought to teach us. Don Cohen wrote something so compelling–and so true–that I am quoting it verbatim and at length:

The fires put into stark relief the principles that underlie our work: There are things that government must do and which only government can do. It is the public acting in the public interest.

The more than 7,500 fire fighters and emergency personnel from across the country who have been working around the clock battling these blazes are public employees. They are the ones heading toward the flames when everyone is fleeing. More than 1,000 incarcerated individuals who have volunteered to join emergency crews for 24-hour shifts for about $26 a day are also fighting the fires—our gratitude for their efforts shouldn’t dismiss the deep concerns we have about the program and policies that lead to it.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is, as its title states, a federal agency. It’s what we created that shows that we are all equally invested in handling the aftermath of emergencies, whether we live in hurricane alley, or the path of wildfires. FEMA is already helping, providing the wide range of emergency services that no private, for-profit entity can afford to do. And yet it’s been the subject of constant criticism and misinformation from the right. FEMA currently covers 75 percent of the cost of a national emergency; Project 2025 proposes reducing that to 25 percent.

And, yes, climate change is part of the reason for the severity and spread of the fire, and scrubbing the phrase from the statements of federal agencies, as conservatives have advocated, or calling it a hoax, won’t change the facts.

The fires underscore that land development and water management are not concerns that can be simply left to the market. The market maximizes profit in the shortest time frame. That is not what will build a sustainable Los Angeles of the 21st Century. The future of cities and the entire nation shouldn’t be left up to billionaires, like the one who hired private firefighters to keep his own shopping center safe, and then launched his mayoral campaign.

To say these things doesn’t “politicize” the crisis—the politics are already there. We are always in a fight for what we believe our responsibility is to one another in our communities and in society at large. That fight will get harder, no doubt, as conservatives pledge to drain government of its ability to act broadly for the common good. But we also have faith that more and more people will come to understand the importance of a government that works for us all, not just the very wealthy.

One of the saddest aspects of America’s current political divide is the widespread lack of understanding of the role–the purpose–of government.  (I used to ask my undergraduate Law and Policy students to define “government” and its purpose. Most could not do so.) 

A proper definition is critical, because political philosophy defines legitimacy as government acting in a manner consistent with its proper purposes.

There’s widespread agreement that government is supposed to prevent the strong from taking advantage of the weak, although the extent of that task is contested. Americans mostly agree, for example, that government should prevent obvious harms–theft, battery, murder, rape, etc. etc.–but that agreement dissipates when corporate activities harm smaller enterprises through monopolies or harm communities through improper disposal of toxic waste materials or other unfair commercial practices. 

There is even less agreement when it comes to government’s role in the economy. Ideally–as the cited material suggests–government is our instrument for providing services the market cannot supply or cannot supply in a cost-effective manner. We socialize those services: police and fire departments, provision of roads and bridges and street lights, etc. There are large parts of our common lives that markets are simply unsuited to serve– and situations where leaving a service to the market is unnecessarily expensive and wildly unfair (health) or undermines national cohesion and civic unity (education). 

The basic economic questions all societies must answer are: what sorts of tasks should be done collectively, by the mechanism called government, and which tasks are better left to the marketplace? How much authority should government have to monitor and regulate that marketplace, and for what purposes?

These days, to the dismay of citizens and political scientists alike, we must grapple instead with a different question: what should citizens do when those in power refuse to debate those questions in good faith, and simply use government to empower and enrich themselves?

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Republican Lemmings

Lemmings are small rodents living in the Northern Hemisphere, primarily in the Arctic. They are known for large migrations– but mostly for a myth of their mass suicides, as large numbers follow their leaders off cliffs.

Today’s GOP is filled with the human variety of lemmings. We saw them emerge during the pandemic, as anti-science hysteria led to the rejection of mask wearing and vaccination.  Even after the pandemic, vaccination rates have continued to fall–and that decline has followed a partisan pattern.

There are two ways people can avoid vaccination. Families can get a religious or medical exemption from state laws requiring childhood vaccinations in order to send their children to public school. Or adults can simply fail to take advantage of vaccine availability. In states that voted for Donald Trump, the number of children receiving exemptions has increased.  Adult noncompliance rose in both blue and red states, but more in red states. 

Although states, not the federal government, set vaccine mandates, the incoming administration could encourage anti-vaccine sentiment and undermine state programs. Trump’s nominee RFK, Jr. would absolutely do so. He dismisses out of hand any studies that refute his beliefs. As the linked article notes,

He claims that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism, despite more than a dozen studies performed in seven countries on three continents involving thousands of children showing that it doesn’t.

He has claimed that “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.” (Childhood vaccines have prevented more than one million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations over the past three decades.) He has encouraged people not to vaccinate their babies: “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby, I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’”

When asked about the polio vaccine, Mr. Kennedy claimed that it caused an “explosion in soft tissue cancers” that killed “many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” Setting aside the fact that an “explosion in soft tissue cancers” hasn’t occurred, studies comparing children who received early batches of polio vaccines with unvaccinated children found no differences in cancer incidence. By 1979, paralytic polio was eliminated from the United States. When Mr. Kennedy says he wants vaccines to be better studied, what he really seems to be saying is he wants studies that confirm his fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs. 

The author of the article, a doctor who previously served at the FDA, explained that the panel authorizing vaccines is composed of actual “skeptics,” who require significant evidence of efficacy before approving them.

Vaccine skepticism is baked into the systems with which health experts monitor vaccines after they’re authorized for use. We know that clinical trials are not enough; we need to constantly ask questions and examine new data. That’s why we have surveillance systems that can detect problems too rare to be picked up in clinical trials. 

That ongoing surveillance allowed the FDA to discover that the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine caused dangerous clotting in about one in 250,000 people.

Detecting such risks allows us to weigh these rare harms against the enormous benefits of these vaccines.

Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, has claimed that the Covid-19 vaccines, which have saved the lives of at least three million Americans, are “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Kennedy routinely misrepresents studies he cites and ignores data that doesn’t support his conclusions. And this is the person that Donald Trump has nominated to be Secretary of Health, presumably as a reward for Kennedy’s political support. 

In one sense, the nomination of JFK, Jr. is no different from Trump’s other choices, none of which have been even slightly based on the suitability of the nominee. Trump rather obviously sees these positions as rewards for loyalty–I rather doubt the notion of qualification has ever occurred to him. (After all, he himself is massively unqualified for the Presidency.–or for that matter, any responsible position.)

All of which brings us back to the issue of those Republican lemmings. At this point, it is more likely than not that this parade of clowns, misfits and ideologues will be confirmed by a Senate controlled by Republican invertebrates who value their own immediate political prospects far–far–above concerns for government competence and/or the common good. (And yes, Indiana’s Todd Young is one of them.)

 It isn’t very nice to point this out, but people who take Kennedy’s anti-vaccine delusions seriously are overwhelmingly MAGA crazies and Christian Nationalists, so–on the bright side– we might see a decline in the number who will survive to vote for GOP troglodytes. 

Meanwhile, sane Americans will watch as the lemmings go over the cliff. Unfortunately, they’ll take rational governance with them.

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