Category Archives: Random Blogging

And the Beat Goes On…

Frank Bruni’s Op Ed in yesterday’s New York Times reinforces a theme that has become all too common on this blog–a lament, really. He titled it “America the Clueless.”

Did you know (I didn’t) that despite the incredible amount of media devoted to “Obamacare” over the past few years, that forty percent of Americans don’t know it’s a law?

Some think it’s been repealed by Congress. Some think it’s been overturned by the Supreme Court. A few probably think it’s been vaporized and replaced with a galactic edict beamed down from one of Saturn’s moons. With Americans you never know.

Sixty-five percent of us can’t name a single Supreme Court Justice. Twenty-one percent believe that UFO really did crash in Roswell, and that the government has been covering it up ever since. As Bruni says, “That we Americans are out to lunch isn’t news. But every once in a while a fresh factoid like the Obamacare ignorance comes along to remind us that we’re out to breakfast and dinner as well. ”

As Bruni points out, engagement doesn’t necessarily correlate with information–just because someone is heavily involved in the political process is no guarantee that he or she possesses actual knowledge about the process or even the particular campaign or issue with which they are involved.

In 2010 in California, I covered a Tea Party rally at which Carly Fiorina, vying for the Republican nomination for a United States Senate seat, was scheduled to speak. I approached a couple whose profusion of hats and buttons and handmade signs — along with their willingness to spend hours in a crowded field under a punishing sun — led me to believe that they were at least somewhat politically engaged. I asked them if they were inclined to support Fiorina. With great seriousness, they said that they hadn’t yet decided between her and Meg Whitman. Whitman was running not for senator but for governor, in a race that hardly wanted for coverage. They didn’t have to choose.

My absolute favorite “factoid” from Bruni’s compendium, however, was this:

Months later a different poll asked voters about President Obama’s religious affiliation, persistently mistaken by some Americans to be Muslim. The good news? The share of voters making the Muslim error had dropped, to 10 percent. The weird news? Eighteen percent said Obama was Jewish.

I guess this answers my repeated question about how people like Louis Gohmert, Michelle Bachmann, Paul Broun et al get elected.

And speaking of religion, I have a favor to ask of those of you who pray. Would you please pray for a more enlightened, more rational America?

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That Was Quick…..

Heritage Foundation analyst Jason Richwine, the co-author of a study claiming the immigration reform bill pending in the Senate would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, has decided to spend more time with his family. Or something. His departure from Heritage was hasty, to say the least.

Among other things, Richwine’s “study,” which was widely panned (even Paul Ryan has criticized its methodology) came to conclusions that were diametrically opposed to a previous study issued by Heritage just a couple of years ago. But that earlier effort was issued before Jim DeMint became Heritage’s new chief.

The study’s conclusions were based in large part upon Richwine’s assertion that today’s immigrants have low IQ’s that they will pass on to their children–a racist assumption for which there is no credible evidence. In the wake of the report, Richwine’s dissertation–in which he espoused similar theories–became public, as did the fact that he had written articles in 2010 for a website founded by Richard Spencer, a self-described “nationalist” who writes frequently about race and against “the abstract notion of human equality.”

Heritage could hardly have been unaware of Richwine’s history; evidently, they saw his beliefs as a feature, not a bug.

The think tank has always had an ideological agenda, but the organization has previously made a show, at least, of actual scholarship. This episode has badly damaged whatever credibility Heritage retained. Richwine’s abrupt departure only underscores the damage.

Ironically, had they issued a less “over the top” report, opponents of immigration reform would undoubtedly have accepted it unquestioningly and used it as ammunition to derail reform. This product was so flawed, however, that it has been left to Rush Limbaugh to defend it. As a Maddow Blog post put it “The irony is, Heritage produced this report for exactly one reason: to provide some semblance of political cover to Republicans who needed a credible excuse to reject a bipartisan reform plan. The goal was to help the GOP and the far-right cause. The extent to which this backfired is extraordinary.”

It’s hard not to wonder how long Jim DeMint–an anti-science zealot who wouldn’t know real scholarship if he fell over it–will last.

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Tribal Nihilism

A recent study found that self-identified conservatives were less likely to buy a product, even if the purchase was cost-effective (i.e., better price or longer-lasting product), if it carried a label indicating that the item was good for the environment. This was true even if they had previously purchased the same item–an energy-efficient light-bulb, for example–when it didn’t carry the environmental endorsement.

Evidently, these political conservatives are so hostile to environmental protection measures, they will prefer–and purposely choose to purchase–products that increase environmental degradation.

Words fail.

Andrew Sullivan’s take on this study’s result is absolutely correct. “This is really a form of tribal nihilism. One party has become entirely about a posture, not a set of feasible policies. I can see no reason whatever that conservatism must mean destroying the environment – or refusing to do even small ameliorative things that can help…Snark is not a policy, although it may be a successful talk radio gimmick.’

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Mom and Pop and Skin in the Game

A 2006 study by sociologists Stephan Goetz and Anil Rupasingha documented a decline in civic participation, including voter turnout and the number of active nonprofit organizations, after Walmart moves into a community. Those behaviors are markers for social capital, the connections citizens have to each other, characterized by what scholars call “norms of trust and reciprocity.” The importance of social capital had been studied by others, but was most prominently  highlighted by Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist, in Bowling Alone, published in 2001.

The Goetz and Rupasingha study also showed that with each Walmart store that opens in a city, social capital further erodes.

I was intrigued when I came across this study, so I did a bit more research.

It’s not just that cities with more social capital are better able to foster local enterprises and resist corporate consolidation, although they are. According to the research, the causality may actually go the other way as well. Where economic power is diffused, political power is more widely and democratically exercised. As economic power becomes more concentrated, civic engagement slumps.

This research tends to support what most economic development professionals believe–a city or town with a widely diversified economic base is healthier. That belief is grounded in a very practical calculus: in cities where there are many employers, the failure of one business is far less consequential than in cities where a substantial percentage of the workforce depends on one or two large employers. That logic is persuasive (and pretty self-evident), but it turns out that there is a substantial body of research supporting the thesis that a diversified economy composed of many relatively small enterprises is not only better able to withstand downturns, but also better able to generate higher levels of civic engagement and a higher quality of life.

According to an article in Grist,

In 1946, Walter Goldschmidt, a USDA sociologist, produced a groundbreaking study comparing two farming towns in California that were almost identical in every respect but one: Dinuba’s economy was composed mainly of family farms, while Arvin’s was dominated by large agribusinesses. Goldschmidt found that Dinuba had a richer civic life, with twice the number of community organizations, twice the number of newspapers, and citizens who were much more engaged than those in Arvin. Not surprisingly, Dinuba also had far superior public infrastructure: In both quality and quantity, the town’s schools, parks, sidewalks, paved streets, and garbage services far surpassed those of Arvin.

At about the same time, two other sociologists, C. Wright Mills and Melville J. Ulmer, were undertaking a similar study of several pairs of manufacturing cities in the Midwest. Their research, conducted on behalf of a congressional committee, found that communities comprised primarily of small, locally owned businesses took much better care of themselves. They beat cities dominated by large, absentee-owned firms on more than 30 measures of well-being,including such things as literacy, acreage of public parks, extent of poverty, and the share of residents who belonged to civic organizations.

……

Residents of communities with highly concentrated economies tend to vote less and are less likely to keep up with local affairs, participate in associations, engage in reform efforts or participate in protest activities at the same levels as their counterparts in economically dispersed environments,” sociologists Troy Blanchard and Todd L. Matthews concluded in a 2006 study published in the journal Social Forces. In studies of both agricultural (2001) and manufacturing (2006) communities, the late Cornell sociologist Thomas Lyson also found that those places with a diversity of small-scale enterprises had higher levels of civic participation and better social outcomes than those controlled by a few outside corporations.

When you think about it, this makes sense. Here in Indianapolis, many of us have expressed concern at the loss of the traditional business and banking headquarters from which so many of our civic leaders were drawn. Even our major law firms are merging with others to form “national” enterprises; their lawyers are likely to be less involved in the civic life of Indianapolis when it is just one of their many locations.

At some point, we need to consider the “big box” stores headquartered who-knows-where, and ask ourselves whether those cheap tube socks are really such a bargain.

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