Category Archives: Random Blogging

No Knowledge Required

I was driving to the gym this morning behind an obnoxiously huge SUV sporting a bumper sticker that said “Greg Ballard. Leadership in Action.”

Now, I realize there’s a campaign underway, and that political operatives produce these slogans. I’ve run for office, so I also know that candidates are very tempted to believe their own hype. But all I could think of after reading that bumper sticker was how carelessly we throw words around and how little we value knowledge and expertise.

My personal evaluation of Greg Ballard’s term in office is that he has been anything but a leader, at least as I would define that term. But what’s worse, he has exemplified the widespread belief that you really don’t have to know anything in order to be a public official–a Mayor or Governor or Senator. (Sarah Palin considers it an absolute virtue to be clueless–she ran for Vice President sneering at “elitists” who went to “fancy schools” and I don’t remember anyone calling her out on that particular charge.)

I teach public administration, so I’m pretty touchy about the notion that anyone who’s run a business or led a marine division can run a city. We don’t choose doctors who didn’t bother with medical school, or lawyers who failed the bar exam. We don’t let people drive until they can demonstrate they know how to operate a vehicle. But we make it a political virtue not to understand the differences between public and private finance, be familiar with the tools needed for economic development, or aware of best and worst practices in areas like zoning and transit and public safety.

Greg Ballard is what happens when we elect someone Mayor just because he seems like a pleasant fellow, and showed “leadership” by being a Marine.

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It’s the Little Things

As good novelists know, it is often the small, seemingly unimportant choices people make that tells you volumes about their character and values.

This week, in the U.S. House, the new Republican majority reversed a decision by Nancy Pelosi that had required the House cafeteria to use compostable cutlery and recyclable paper cups. Instead, the cafeteria will go back to using Styrofoam coffee cups and plastic cutlery.

Tells us a lot about their arrogance, contempt for science, and unwillingness to make even the simplest personal accommodations to benefit the environment.

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There’s the Talk, and There’s the Walk…….

I continue to be amazed by how blatant right wing hypocrisy has become.

The most recent example (okay, one of the many recent examples) occurred last week in Washington.  House Democrats offered a motion to cut the budget by putting an end to taxpayer-funded subsidies to large oil companies. Rep. William Keating (D-MA) offered the motion on the House floor saying “let’s stop sending taxpayers’ money to the most profitable companies in the world.”

Republicans voted unanimously against the motion, defeating it by a vote of 176-249. Those would be the same Republicans who are constantly talking about the need to reduce the deficit. Evidently, what they mean by “reduce the deficit” is “reduce the deficit to the extent we can do so on the backs of middle-class taxpayers.”

And speaking of talks and walks, it will be interesting to see what Indiana Governor Mitch “Social Issues Truce” Daniels does when the anti-immigration bill hits his desk.

Daniels has certainly talked the talk of fiscal responsibility. Lately, in fact, he’s “talked the talk” incessantly, as he clearly is positioning himself to run for President. The Indiana business community, Indiana’s Mayors (with the curious exception of Greg Ballard), Indianapolis’ convention bureau and many others–including Mitch’s former employer, Eli Lilly & Company–have all argued that Senator Delph’s bill would hurt Indiana’s economy and intensify the state’s fiscal woes, and Daniels clearly knows that they are correct. In any sane world, the Governor would veto the bill. But in order to have a shot at the Republican nomination, he has to play to the prejudices of the far right zealots who have for all intents and purposes captured the party.

We know he can talk the talk. It will be interesting to see if he can also walk the walk.

Gasp–An Actual Exhibit of Political Courage!

We have all become used to elected officials who approach their duties with their fingers raised to test which way the wind is blowing, and their ears to the ground to see which way the crowd is going.  As one wag put it, it’s hard to look up to someone in that position. Once elected, all too many of them put being re-elected at the very top of their “to do” list, and conclude that laying low is the best way to accomplish that.

So it was both surprising and gratifying to see Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry come out against Senator Delph’s ill-conceived and mean-spirited immigration bill.

Curry pointed out the bill’s legal flaws, including the fact that immigration is a responsibility of the federal government. But he went farther, describing the proposal as a waste of resources–not only because a legal challenge would be inevitable, but because the law would further erode the ability of local law-enforcement to focus on their primary duty to ensure public safety.

Curry is correct on all counts, of course. But more importantly, he was willing to speak out against a proposal that would marginalize some of our citizens in order to play to the prejudices and misconceptions of others.

A prosecutor who wants Indiana to respect the Constitution and the law and is willing to say so–how incredibly refreshing!

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State Workers Pay Taxes Too

During a discussion the other day, a SPEA staff member made a point that seems to be lost in the contending, highly ideological arguments about the standoff in Wisconsin. She noted that public employees are also taxpayers, and that the Governor’s insistence that he is acting in the “interests of the taxpayers” didn’t seem to include the interests of that particular subset of taxpayers.

Her observation has just been quantified and amplified by Robert Russell, a Wisconsin state economic analyst, who pointed out that state workers are not only taxpayers, but consumers.

According to Russell, if public employee salaries are cut through increased withholdings as Walker is proposing, by an amount large enough to fill the $137 million budget gap, the resulting drop in consumer spending will lead to: 1) a loss of over 1,200 nongovernment jobs; 2) a loss of about $100 million in business sales statewide; 3) a loss of nearly $35 million in personal incomes of nongovernment employee households; and 4)  a loss of nearly $10 million in state tax revenues.

This is not about economics. (Indeed,  Governor Walker seems blissfully ignorant of basic economics.) It’s about ideology, hubris, and political payback.

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