Category Archives: Random Blogging

Drawing the Wrong Conclusions

Curt Smith and Micah Clark have been quoted extensively in the wake of Tuesday’s primary, celebrating the social conservatives–especially “defenders of marriage”–who won their races. According to Micah, this proves that Indiana voters are “pro-life and pro-traditional marriage.” (Translation: anti-woman, anti-gay.)

Micah Clark began his post-primary newsletter with that message.

Yesterday’s primary election was as close to an across the board sweep as you will ever see in politics.   Republican voters finally got their chance in a few state legislative districts to express their anger over the failure of the GOP dominated statehouse to pass a marriage protection amendment.  If only there had been more conservative challengers in legislative races where establishment Republicans had voted for the unraveling of marriage.

In addition, incumbents targeted for their defense of social conservatism won as well.   You may recall when Rep. Bob Morris stood alone under immense criticism for pointing out that the Girl Scouts of America’s national organization had grown closer and closer to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.    The establishment loathes conservatives whom they cannot control and Bob is one of those.  In spite of a misguided high-profile pro-life endorsement of his pro-homosexual marriage opponent, Bob won the primary re-election yesterday.

Actually, as I recall, Morris made the bizarre claim that the Girl Scouts promoted abortion and turned girls lesbian….but I digress.

The newsletter went on (and on) in that celebratory vein. Micah went so far as to suggest that Eric Turner’s recent ethics problems were the result of leaks by “pro-homosexual” lawmakers. (Because Jesus would have been A-OK with his behind the scenes arm-twisting to protect his own pocketbook….)

So, are Micah and Curt right? Do the primary results vindicate their views? This is Indiana, after all.

Unfortunately for that conservative thesis, it ignores two very inconvenient facts: turnout was unusually low, even for a primary; and the social conservatives who won were Republicans running against other very conservative Republicans.

Reported statewide turnout for both parties was around 10% (in Marion County, it was a pathetic 7.9%) and a number of races on both sides were uncontested. Furthermore, primary voters in both parties are notoriously more ideological–the right wing of the GOP and the left wing of the Democratic party are the reliable primary base.

What the results do unequivocally tell us is that the Republican party is moving farther and farther to the right. Clearly, supporters of candidates running against the Very Most Rabid Righteous did not come out to vote on Tuesday. The primary left Indiana’s GOP ever more firmly in the hands of its radical fringe.

Today’s GOP is the party of Richard Mourdock, Curt Smith and Micah Clark.  The party of Richard Lugar and Bill Hudnut is long gone.

The question is: will Indiana Democrats (or Libertarians) mount respectable challenges to these candidates in November? Will voters have a reason to come to the polls, and an actual choice when they get there?

If that happens–if there is decent turnout and reasonable opposition–and the Christianist Caucus prevails in November, Curt and Micah will have a legitimate victory to celebrate.

Tuesday’s results, however, just reminded me of the old Bob Newhart line: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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It’s Out!!

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June 2014
Talking Politics?
What You Need to Know before Opening Your Mouth
Sheila Suess Kennedy
Honest, objective, and informed political debates are all too rare in today’s polarized and partisan climate. Public policy is increasingly driven by ideology while political spin, distortions, and even demonizing opponents by disseminating outright lies are routine practice from Washington to the local city council. Super-heated and hyper-partisan rhetoric, increasingly homogeneous political and ideological communities, and the public’s spotty knowledge about our political system all undermine informed and considered responses to policy debates.

This digital short identifies common areas of confusion or misunderstanding about our political system—clarifying many distortions of accepted history, constitutional law, economics, and science—to help readers distinguish documented facts from the different conclusions and interpretations that may be drawn from those facts. Sheila Suess Kennedy aims to create a more informed electorate and to better ground debates in fact, from Capitol Hill to the family dinner table. Talking Politics? What You Need to Know before Opening Your Mouth provides a solid starting point from which Americans can build more persuasive arguments for their preferred policies, whatever they may be, and will interest students of political science, civics, and history, from high school to undergraduates, and the general public interested in politics and informed discussion.

Sheila Suess Kennedy is a professor of law and public policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and director of the Center for Civic Literacy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). She is the author of several books, including American Public Service: Constitutional and Ethical Foundations and Distrust American Style.

– See more at: http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/talking-politics#sthash.3mni0sXL.dpuf

Does “Right to Work” Work?

Recently, the Washington Examiner interviewed Indiana Governor Mike Pence. It ran the subsequent story under a banner headline:  “Indiana’s Right to Work law has sparked economic rebirth for the Midwest.”

I’d never heard of the newspaper, so I consulted Dr. Google, and discovered (surprise!) that it is owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz[4] who also owns the influential conservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard. In other words, the paper has a very definite point of view.

But…”economic rebirth”? Sparked by Right to Work?

It is almost impossible to find credible research on the effect of Right to Work laws. Most researchers–even those who are not ideological–have difficulty controlling for the multiple factors that affect a state’s economy. The little sound academic research that does exist suggests the real impact of the laws–for good or ill– is not nearly as dramatic as the heated debate might suggest.

For example, Michigan State University researchers Dale Belman, Richard Block and Karen Roberts examined state economies from 1998 through 2000 and concluded in 2009 that right-to-work laws “seem to have no effect on economic activity.”

In fact, they found that unions in general “have little impact, despite conventional wisdom.”

The Economic Policy Institute is a left-leaning, but generally credible and unbiased research resource. In a 2011 study, the Institute compared Right to Work states to those without that law.

  • In 2009, the unemployment rate was 1.0 percentage points lower in RTW states than states without the legislation. In RTW states, it was 8.6%, In other states it was 9.6%.[16]
  • Wages in right-to-work states are 3.2% lower than those in non-RTW states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socioeconomic variables as well as state macroeconomic indicators. Using the average wage in non-RTW states as the base ($22.11), the average full-time, full-year worker in an RTW state makes about $1,500 less annually than a similar worker in a non-RTW state. The study goes on to say “How much of this difference can be attributed to RTW status itself? There is an inherent “endogeneity” problem in any attempt to answer that question, namely that RTW and non-RTW states differ on a wide variety of measures that are also related to compensation, making it difficult to isolate the impact of RTW status.”[16]
  • The rate of employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is 2.6 percentage points lower in RTW states compared with non-RTW states, after controlling for individual, job, and state-level characteristics. If workers in non-RTW states were to receive ESI at this lower rate, 2 million fewer workers nationally would be covered.
  • The rate of employer-sponsored pensions is 4.8 percentage points lower in RTW states, using the full complement of control variables in [the study’s] regression model. If workers in non-RTW states were to receive pensions at this lower rate, 3.8 million fewer workers nationally would have pensions.

You’d never guess any of that from the glowing report in the Washington Examiner.

In our current media environment, however, data and verification–let alone nuance and complexity–are less important than creating a reality that will appeal to the audience being targeted.

Remember the old song lyric, “a good man is hard to find”? Try looking for a good newspaper these days.

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Parity Would Be Nice….

A friend recently sent me some figures that put the rhetoric about the 1% and the 99% into rather stark perspective.

Big business is once again doing well. Among the nation’s top 500 companies, corporate profits in 2013 averaged $41,249 per employee. That was 38 percent higher than the profit level in 2008, so the Great Recession is evidently over–at least, for those enterprises. Those who run the companies are also doing nicely, thank you very much: CEOs at companies listed in the S&P 500 took home paychecks that were 331 times the pay of the average American worker last year — and 774 times the take-home of minimum-wage workers.

If the minimum wage had just kept pace with income gains enjoyed by the top 1% since 1968–that is, if there had simply been parity in the rate of increase–minimum-wage workers would now be making $31.45 per hour.

What was that old economic premise/promise? A rising tide lifts all boats?

Evidently, the tide has been very selective….

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Connecting the Dots

It’s time to say goodby and good riddance to the month of April–the “cruelest” month, presumably because federal taxes are due. And let’s face it, no one likes taxes.

And every year,  the avalanche of anti-tax articles is predictable as April showers.

Over at The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn makes an important point: people resent paying taxes when they don’t see what that money is buying. I’ve made that same argument in the local context, and it is actually easier to see what our local money buys: police and fire protection, garbage collection, parks, schools and the like. Those local public goods are more visible than the goods our federal taxes purchase.

That payroll tax taken out of everybody’s check? It’s buying you Medicare and Social Security, which means a more secure retirement free of crippling medical bills. Your federal income tax? Its effects are a lot more diffuse. But chances are pretty good that you’ve already used some infrastructure today—whether it was a road or railway you took to work, or maybe the information technology connections you’re using to read this article. Federal, state, and local taxes helped pay for that. Is your water and air clean? Are you safe from threats, domestic and foreign? Then you’re getting something valuable from the Environment Protection Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Defense. Your tax dollars paid for those, too.

Sometimes, of course, your tax dollars pay for supports and services you won’t use. And you might resent that. But even taxes that pay for someone else’s benefits can benefit you. Why does the U.S. not have the massive underclass that characterizes many third-world countries—or the incipient danger of violent upheaval that accompanies it? The safety net your taxes purchased, tattered as it is, buys a degree of social harmony, too.

We can legitimately argue about lawmakers’ priorities. We can–and should–monitor government at all levels to insure that its operations are businesslike and efficient. We can debate whether government should do some things at all.

But while we are griping and doing everything we can to reduce our bills, we should take note of Cohn’s admonition, and remember that our tax dollars buy a lot of things that most of us agree–however grudgingly– make our lives safer and better. Things we would miss.

In the private sector, we acknowledge the truth of the old adage: you get what you pay for. Somehow, we ignore that homely truth when it comes to taxes.

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