Category Archives: Random Blogging

Rules of the Game

When you teach political science or public administration, you try to explain to students the importance of systems–the rules of the game.

Most Americans watch political campaigns much the same way as they watch football or baseball–as a contest between two (or more) competitors. May the best team win. We recognize that there are rules, that fouls should be punished and not rewarded, but it all seems pretty transparent.

The rules that govern elections aren’t so easily observed, and partisans work hard to rig them. As the Indianapolis Star observed in an editorial this morning,

“state law also has discouraged voter turnout. Indiana’s polls, for example, close at 6 p.m. on Election Day, an earlier cutoff than in many other states. The early close at the polls makes it difficult for many workers, including those with children to drop off or pick up and those with lengthy commutes to work, to show up on Election Day. Indiana also has been slow to adopt innovations such as early voting centers and Election Day voting centers, which eliminate the need to turn out at a specific polling site on a specified day.

Indiana also presents third parties with a higher threshold for ballot access than many other states. The inability to get their candidates on the ballot discourages would-be voters who don’t fit within Democratic or Republican silos.”

This year, Indianapolis voters saw a particularly egregious example of efforts at vote suppression, when the local GOP adamantly refused to authorize satellite voting centers. The rule is that such changes must receive a unanimous vote from the Election Board, and the Republican member consistently blocked the Clerk’s effort to establish convenient polling places. Initially, he argued that setting up satellite sites would be “too expensive.” When a local union offered to pay the (really pretty modest) cost, he still refused–although if he offered a justification for his intransigence, I didn’t hear it.

Coming on the heels of Todd Rokita’s efforts to make voting more difficult for the poor and elderly, by requiring the sort of IDs that most of us privileged folks–who are more likely to vote Republican-already have, it is hard to see this as anything but a continuation of efforts to make voting more difficult for populations that skew Democrat.

The pious justification for the ID requirement was prevention of fraud (although the only documented cases of voter fraud involved absentee ballots, which were not part of the “reform” effort). There is no justification for prevention of satellite voting centers.

As the Star points out, it’s the height of hypocrisy to bemoan Indiana’s low turnout at the same time lawmakers are doing everything possible to keep people from the polls.

Comments

What’s the Matter with Kansas Now?

Last night in class, one of my students asked me if I was aware that Topeka, Kansas had decriminalized domestic violence, to save the cost of prosecution.

She wasn’t hallucinating.

Who was it that decried a society in which people know “the cost of everything and the value of nothing?” How insane has criminal justice policy become when we spend upwards of 40 billion dollars every year on a drug war to (ostensibly) prevent people from harming themselves, but we won’t spend money to prosecute people who harm others?

What do these examples say about our cultural norms?  One possibility: our puritan impulses to insure that our neighbors are behaving “morally” drive policies from blue laws to censorship to alcohol and drug prohibition; while a still-lingering sexism convinces us that a man sometimes has to “assert authority” over his wife? (Never mind that men can also be the victims of domestic violence).

Social priorities really come into focus when money is tight.

Comments

What Matters Most

Yesterday I had a major birthday, and such milestones are occasions for considering “the meaning of it all” (a question that my husband insists on answering with “42”–a response no one understands unless they’ve read “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.”)

My children surprised me with a party (shocked me, actually), and as I was hugging good friends and relatives, I was forcibly reminded that, in the end, what matters most is those human connections. Not to be maudlin, but it’s love that makes our lives worthwhile.

Yesterday, messages from my Facebook friends and from family and friends at the surprise party reminded me once again that no matter how screwed up the world is, if we’re lucky, we each have the opportunity to create an island of sorts–a place that may not be found on any map, but that is nevertheless a haven and a retreat, a place where we can enjoy the company of the people who are important to us.

I’ve been very lucky, and I’m so grateful for my family and friends. I’ll undoubtedly keep bitching about dumb policies and inadequate/hateful/corrupt public servants and all the other things I complain about on this blog, but I really do recognize how incredibly fortunate I am when it comes to the things that matter most.

Comments

Personal Responsibility

I noticed a letter to the editor this morning that sounded a familiar theme. The writer dismissed the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, characterizing them as whiners wanting handouts, and ended by lecturing them to take “personal responsibility.” Clearly, in his view, “personal responsibility” means taking care of oneself and not expecting anyone else to lend a hand.

There’s a lot wrong with this diatribe–ironically, the major complaint of the OWS protests is the distortion of our social structures that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for many people to exercise that sort of personal responsibility–but for some reason, I was struck by the fact that we rarely hear anyone explain what they believe is involved in taking personal responsibility.

At a minimum, personal responsibility is understood as taking care of oneself. (In this sense, it always reminds me of the 15th Century English poor law that prohibited giving alms to the “sturdy beggar.”) In America, the able-bodied are expected to work. But doesn’t personal responsibility also include a responsibility to work for a system where work is available?

In other words, doesn’t personal responsibility entail responsibility for our communities? And if it doesn’t, how are we different from the “state of nature” described by Hobbes as “nasty, brutish and short.” This nation’s founders were heavily influenced by John Locke’s theory of the social contract; surely that contract demands a measure of social responsibility of our citizens.

This morning’s letter-writer uses “personal responsibility” much as the English used to use the phrase “I’m all right, Jack.” In other words, I’ve got mine and I expect you to get yours, and if you can’t, tough. Don’t whine to me.

I think that is a crabbed, unsatisfactory and ultimately self-defeating definition of personal responsibility. I believe the correct interpretation of responsibility is that I have a duty not just to take care of myself and my family, but to contribute to my community: to work for good government, to assist those who are less fortunate, and to work with others to create a society where all people have an equal opportunity to be personally responsible.

When we participate in the ideological babble that substitutes for civic discourse these days, we really need to define our terms.

Comments

Priscilla–15 Years Later

We are in New York for a long weekend, and last night, my husband, son and I went to see the Broadway musical version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. We’d loved the movie when it came out in the early 90s…a poignant, funny depiction of life from the perspective of three Australian drag queens.

The show was full of energy–with fabulous consumes, special effects and good music. The audience clearly loved it; there was lots of laughter and a standing ovation. But it was no longer the bittersweet portrayal of nonconformity that I remembered.

The world has changed a lot in the last 15 years, and as much as I use this space to complain about our increasingly bizarre political class, our gilded age economics and our collective historical amnesia, much of that change should be applauded.

When I first saw Priscilla, a lot of people still equated “gay” with “drag queen.” And those who were drag queens were objects of scorn within what a friend of mine called the “straight” gay community. The violence encountered by the protagonists was pretty common, and the notion that each of us should be free to be whatever it is we are was not part of the culture’s messaging.

As we were walking back to my son’s apartment, we talked about the cultural shift that made Priscilla resonate so differently a mere fifteen years later. While homophobia is still present and violence not nearly as rare as it should be, we have seen a sea change–especially in cities. (Rural and small-town America is a different story, although even there, things are better.) And it isn’t just better for the GLBT community; it is better for women and other minorities. When I was growing up, all the social messages I received defined a woman’s role very narrowly; women weren’t lawyers or college professors unless they were too unattractive to find a husband, and our worth was judged largely on how successful that husband was and how well our children turned out. Most of the African-Americans I met were servants, and if I knew anyone who was Hispanic or Muslim, I was unaware of it.

I’m approaching a very big birthday, and I’ve been mulling over the challenges and lessons that come with getting old. But living a long time also gives you a perspective that isn’t available to young people. From my perspective (which is clearly not shared by a whole lot of people), the cultural shifts during my lifetime have been primarily positive.

Constructing a society that celebrates our individuality and enables personal autonomy is a good thing, even if it makes an occasional Broadway show seem like a period piece.

Comments