Category Archives: Random Blogging

Listen To Peter

A former member of the Reagan administration issues occasional broadsides about social welfare policies, using the pseudonym “Peter the Citizen.” I almost always agree with his positions, which are deeply informed and far from the dismissive and inhumane proclamations of too many of today’s Republicans.

Recently, he sent comments on an exchange about “The Dignity of Work.”

He began by examining an assertion by Matt Weidinger of the American Enterprise Institute, to the effect that “FDR’s vision promoting the dignity of work is under assault by Democrats providing relief to able-bodied adults.” Weidinger was taking issue with the (widely lauded) expanded child tax credit, arguing that

These “child allowances” replace a program that today provides tax relief and associated assistance only to parents who work, amplifying the new program’s embrace of relief over work.

As Peter points out, many of Weidinger’s arguments about the “success” of welfare reform and the potential negative effects of a child allowance are misleading when they aren’t simply wrong. They certainly don’t reflect the mainstream view of researchers and experts who study anti-poverty programs.

Indeed, they also seem to be out-of-step with his one-time colleague, Ron Haskins, who is considered by many to be the “architect” of welfare reform.

Peter quotes from Haskins–another conservative, albeit one who seems much more knowledgable about the history and current status of welfare reform– on several points, and I encourage readers to click through for a broader, more in-depth analysis, but I was particularly struck by the back-and-forth on restricting child support to children whose parents work. As Peter writes, Weidinger is simply wrong to suggest that supporters of a child allowance are rejecting “work in favor of relief.”

Haskins served as a member of the Committee on Building an Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in Poverty by Half in 10 Years. That committee produced a report that recommended a child allowance.

In testimony summarizing the findings, conclusions, and recommendations from the Committee’s report, A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, Haskins describes the possible pro-work effect of a child allowance: Because child allowance benefits are not reduced as earnings increase (at least not until incomes reach 300 percent of the poverty line in Policy, they provide a more secure floor than means-tested benefits, one that does not penalize intermittent work.

At least 17 developed nations have some form of a child allowance. The U.S. federal tax system’s current $2,000 child tax credit is akin to a once-a-year child allowance. Many families with children benefit from its $2,000 per child reduction in taxes. However, currently, these benefits are not universal: families with no or very low incomes (and the very rich) are not eligible. Haskins also explains the importance of extending aid to poor children living in “families with no or very low incomes,” citing the possible long-term employment (and other) benefits for children themselves. Child poverty compromises the health, learning and development of our children and their future employment opportunities and well-being. …

I would file this last observation under “duh.” An enormous amount of data demonstrates that children raised in poverty are stunted in later life–they are less productive, and less likely to be steadily employed. But even if that were not the case, what sort of person says “if your parent doesn’t have acceptable employment, kid, we’re taking it out on you”?

Weidinger echoes GOP talking points to the effect that welfare checks under AFDC “flowed mostly to households in which no one worked and many remained on benefits and in poverty for years.” As Peter notes in response,  AFDC checks “flowed mostly to households” without earners because it was targeted to very poor families.

In most states, a job would make a family ineligible for assistance because the income eligibility limits in all states were very low and recipients faced a high marginal tax rate when they went to work (100 percent for AFDC after four months of work).  Notably, the expanded child tax credit will be very different than AFDC, because checks will “flow mostly to households” with earnings.

The Weidingers of this world act on the longstanding and pernicious American premise that being poor equates to being morally defective–and evidently, they don’t want to feed poor children if that will help their morally-defective parents.

I understand arguments that focus on the best way to deliver social benefits. I will never understand the argument that we shouldn’t feed and clothe children if we disapprove of their parents.

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As Long As We’re Defining Terms….

One of the biggest problems Americans face in our (diminishing) attempts to debate policy in a civil and productive manner is that Americans often use the same words to mean different things–that is, when we aren’t simply using them as insulting labels devoid of discernible content (“libs” “socialists” “Nazis,” etc.)

Sunday, I considered the definition of infrastructure. Today, I’d really like to “poke a bear” and broaden the definition of what should count as religion.

As a conservative columnist for the Boston Globe recently noted, true believers are everywhere. They certainly aren’t confined to churches, synagogues and mosques; 
increasingly, the passions of faith are being expressed through politics and culture wars.

A Gallup poll last month  reported church membership at 47 percent. “For the first time ever, only a minority of American adults are affiliated with a church.” Jeff Jacoby, the columnist penning the cited column, bemoaned this statistic. He expressed his concern that the continuing disappearance of religion from American life is a negative occurrence.

I’m not so sure. Although there is, as Jacoby notes, a positive correlation between church attendance (note, attendance–not membership or religious belief) and physical, mental, and social health, more careful research studies attribute that correlation to the social support that comes from such gatherings of generally kindred folks–and many people get similar socialization from other, more secular groups.

Where Jacoby is right, however, is in the worrisome transfer of “religious” passion to politics.

A very different effect of religion’s disappearance is already all too visible: The unwavering faith and passion of true belief is increasingly being channeled not into religious observance but into identity politics and the culture wars.
“Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations,” remarks Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution in The Atlantic. “This is what religion without religion looks like.”

On issue after issue, Americans increasingly treat political disagreement as blasphemy and dissenters as apostates. From climate change to immigration, from face masks to guns, debates take on the fervor of crusades, and true believers portray the stakes as all-or-nothing — a choice between salvation or damnation.
At its most extreme, this “religion without religion” is giving rise to dangerous political cults.

Jacoby says that “Religion without religion” is aggressive, intolerant, and scary. What he fails to acknowledge is that the same can be said for fundamentalist religions and their true believers.

Perhaps what we need is recognition that any belief system that is intransigent, intolerant and determined to impose itself on those holding differing values and beliefs merits being described as a religion.

To be fair, there is a truth buried in the hysteria of today’s culture warriors. In order for inhabitants of a country to function as at least a semi-coherent polity, a majority of citizens need to  share what sociologists call a “civic religion.” In the increasingly diverse United States, the only workable content of such a civic religion would seem to be devotion to the principles and aspirations of the country’s constituent documents: the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

 Of course, the same folks who “cherry pick” their biblical readings are also noticeably selective in their reading of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

And it would help if more Americans actually knew what was in those documents.

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A Perfect Representative

Okay–I can’t resist. Let’s talk about Matt Gaetz–not because of his evident sexual misdeeds, but because even without considering those, he is an almost perfect example of  the caliber of individual representing today’s GOP.

Gail Collins captured his essence in a recent New York Times column.

As it stands, Gaetz is a spectacularly unproductive Florida Republican who never managed, during his first two terms in the House, to get a single bill that he sponsored signed into law. (We are still crossing our fingers for that post-office-naming he co-sponsored.) Meanwhile, by Forbes’s count, he has appeared on Fox News at least 179 times since taking office.

Collins had a lot of snarky fun comparing Gaetz’ current situation to past scandals (Tidal Basin, anyone?), but most of those involved people who had actually accomplished something–people of at least some substance who betrayed their promise or otherwise fell from grace.

Gaetz–whom Collins accurately calls a “fanboy”–spent the Trump years with his attention  focused on building his “personal brand,” rather than on learning the intricacies of legislating, or  forging relationships in Congress. He was much more interested in getting on television and getting close to the new president.( He was especially interested in being on what one colleague called “The Trump Train.”) There are multiple reports that he bragged about his relationship with Trump and about his own sexual “exploits”–including reports that he repeatedly showed Congressional colleagues pictures of naked women with whom he claimed he’d slept.

A CNN article listed some of the reasons Gaetz is considered “unserious” by even his Republican colleagues. (“Unserious” is a nicer word than “asshole.”)

Gaetz courted controversy in numerous ways, earning him notoriety in the House — along with television appearances in conservative media.

In 2018, he was criticized after he invited a conservative troll with a history of Holocaust denial to the State of the Union.

A year later, Gaetz threatened Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen ahead of his 2019 House testimony, tweeting, “Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat.”

He was admonished by the House Ethics Committee and investigated and cleared by the Florida Bar over the tweet, which he deleted and apologized for.

During the House’s first impeachment inquiry, Gaetz led a band of Republicans in a stunt to “storm” the House Intelligence secure committee spaces where the impeachment interviews were being held. And last year, Gaetz wore a gas mask on the House floor to vote on a coronavirus funding package.

 In other words, Gaetz is a perfect representation of today’s Republican Party. He is obviously uninterested in governing. Instead, he seems intent upon performative “conservatism” aka “culture war.”  

In that–if not the behavior that led to his current legal problems–he is a typical Republican.

An opinion piece by Ezra Klein included a perfect description of today’s iteration of the GOP. Klein was trying to explain Joe Biden’s unanticipated willingness to forsake efforts to persuade Congressional Republicans to engage in genuine bipartisanship. 

In a discussion of Mitch McConnell’s role in GOP intransigence, Klein wrote.

Over the past decade, congressional Republicans slowly but completely disabused Democrats of these [bipartisanship] hopes. The long campaign against the ideological compromise that was the Affordable Care Act is central here, but so too was then-Speaker John Boehner’s inability to sell his members on the budget bargain he’d negotiated with President Barack Obama, followed by his refusal to allow so much as a vote in the House on the 2013 immigration bill. And it’s impossible to overstate the damage that Mitch McConnell’s stonewalling of Merrick Garland, followed by his swift action to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, did to the belief among Senate Democrats that McConnell was in any way, in any context, a good-faith actor. They gave up on him completely.

Today’s Congressional GOP is a marriage between terminally unserious “culture warriors” like Gaetz, Nunes, Jim Jordan and their ilk and those who–like Mitch McConnell–are willing to ignore the common good and the needs of the country in their pursuit of self-aggrandizement.

There’s no negotiating with either faction, because they aren’t there to govern.

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I And We

The other day, someone posted the following to my neighborhood listserv:

“An anthropologist showed a game to the children of an African tribe… He placed a basket of delicious fruits near a tree trunk and told them: The first child to reach the tree will get the basket. When he gave them the start signal, he was surprised that they were walking together, holding hands until they reached the tree and shared the fruit! When he asked them why you did that when every one of you could get the basket only for him! They answered with astonishment: Ubuntu. ‘That is, how can one of us be happy while the rest are miserable?’ Ubuntu in their civilization means: (I am because we are). That tribe knows the secret of happiness that has been lost in all societies that transcend them and which consider themselves civilized societies.”

“I am because we are.” When you think about it, that’s pretty profound. In western cultures, it might be considered a way of understanding long-term self-interest.

The post especially resonated with me because I get so annoyed by all the evidence of very short-term self-interest displayed by people who clearly don’t understand how much they depend upon what I like to call “social infrastructure.”

I still recall a discussion with one of those “self-made”businessmen in which he insisted that anyone willing to work hard could succeed, that what I identified as barriers were really just excuses for sloth. I responded that, if that were the case, there evidently were no “hard workers” in the slums of India or Bangladesh. Surely, the rather obvious lack of social and physical infrastructure wasn’t their problem…

I don’t know what keeps so many people from understanding the various ways that social systems operate to enable or deter individual prospects. That “self-made” man was tall, White, college educated, with parents who had also been college educated (and at a very selective college). I assume his social circle simply didn’t include people without the means to access higher education, or people from “bad” neighborhoods or marginalized groups, and he obviously lacked the imagination and/or empathy needed to understand the realities of people unlike himself.

Are there lazy people in every society? Sure. Are there people who lack the skills and/or ambition to succeed (however one defines success)? Of course. In a functional society, the object should be to provide a floor, a starting-line beyond which individuals can go as fast and far as their talents take them. Equality of opportunity–not equality of result– is the goal, but equality of opportunity requires a reasonably level starting-place and an absence of invidious discrimination.

Think of life as a footrace.

If I’m running a race and several of the people competing with me are required to carry ten-pound sandbags on the run, I have an unfair advantage over them. If none of us are made to tote those sandbags, but contestants of color, or those with different sexual orientations or religions are only allowed to start the race five minutes after the rest of us, most of them will be unable to make up the difference.

Removing those impediments is no guarantee that everyone running will get to the finish line at the same time–or at all. But they’ll participate in a race and society that gives its citizens an equal opportunity to go as far as their individual gifts and hard work will take them.

And that takes us back to the insight captured by the post to the listserv: individuals do better, and are demonstrably happier, in a supportive society that looks out for everyone. In the long term, a fair and humane society is in our individual self-interest.

Ultimately, ubuntu is wisdom. Good people really cannot be happy in a society where substantial numbers of other people are miserable.

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Can We Talk?

If there is one thing about which Americans of all political persuasions agree, it is that the electorate is dramatically polarized. Our differences are so profound that a one recent poll found parents more accepting of  a child’s inter-racial or inter-religious marriage than a marriage to a member of the opposing political party.

A commenter recently made me aware of an effort to bridge our political abyss. The organization is called “Braver Angels,” and its website explains its purpose:

The days after the election could begin a dark time of polarization in the land—unless we act together to make it otherwise.  That’s where the With Malice Toward None initiative comes in. The goal is to create a space for people to deal with their emotions (positive and negative), to build our capacities for working together to address our common challenges, and to commit ourselves to a renewed citizenship.  

The organization has mounted what appears to be a sincere and well-meaning effort at understanding and rapprochement. I have not been privy to any of the discussion sessions, and if they have managed to moderate some of the animus that definitely exists between right and left wing voters, more power to them, but I don’t hold out much hope for a kumbaya outcome, for reasons I have previously explained.

The problem is the nature, rather than the extent, of America’s current divisions. 

Discussions of policy differences can be very productive–not only generating increased understanding of where the “other guy” is coming from, but enabling reasonable compromises. I am a big proponent of mass transit, but I have engaged in informative discussions with people who are leery of its appeal to sufficient numbers of riders. I am firmly opposed to gerrymandering, but I understand those who argue that the problem is really the country’s “big sort” into urban Democratic areas and rural Republican precincts. I’m pro-choice, and I’ve had civil conversations with at least some people adamantly opposed to abortion. 

When our political discussions address these and numerous other policy differences, I absolutely agree that they should be encouraged, and that deepened understandings of  others’ positions can result.

The problem today–at least as I see it–is that Americans are not arguing about policy. We aren’t quibbling about what the evidence says about job losses when the minimum wage is raised, or about the specifics of needed immigration reforms. Instead, our truly profound differences are about values.

It is simply not possible–at least for me–to “understand and appreciate” the worldview of someone who is just fine with caging brown children. I cannot overlook the hypocrisy of “family values” voters who are ardent Trump supporters despite his sexual and marital behaviors, or of the “good Christians” who enthusiastically endorse White Nationalism and Trump’s belief that there are “good people” among self-identified Nazis. I cannot imagine  an amicable conversation with QAnon folks who believe that Democrats are sexually abusing and then eating small children. 

Interestingly, in 2012, The Atlantic reported on a team of academic researchers who have collaborated at a website — “www.YourMorals.org” — designed to ferret out value differences, rather than focusing on policy disputes.

Their findings show how profound the chasm is on values questions between liberals and conservatives. Generally speaking, not only do liberals place high importance on peace, mutual understanding, and empathy for those who have difficulty prevailing in competition, they demonstrate concern for equality of outcome, while conservatives place pointedly low or negative importance on such values.  On the other side, conservatives believe that the use of force is a legitimate method of conflict resolution across a range of domains, from war to law enforcement to the discipline of children. Conservatives are more likely to believe in an “eye for an eye,” are more likely to respect received tradition, and are overwhelmingly committed to the proposition that individuals are responsible for their own economic condition — all views rejected by liberals. 

The article was titled “Conservatives are from Mars, Liberals are from Venus.”

Liberals who want to reach out and pursue understanding with today’s Republicans undoubtedly believe that not everyone in the GOP endorses the Trump administration’s racism, lack of integrity and contempt for the common good. What they fail to recognize is the significant exodus of reasonable, genuinely conservative voters from the GOP over the past four years. It isn’t simply the “Never Trumpers”–although they symbolize that exodus.

As my youngest son says, the people who are left in today’s Republican Party either share Trump’s racism, or don’t consider it disqualifying. I think the likelihood of finding common ground with such people–the likelihood of singing kumbaya with them–is vanishingly small.

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