Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Problem with Ideological Purity

A recent post at Political Animal made a point I’ve pondered frequently as I’ve watched the GOP morph from political party to religious cult.

After a brief discussion of the attack on Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, the post considered the implications of the GOP’s refusal to bend even when voters are likely to punish them for that intransigence:

The most striking fact when it comes to women and birth control is this one: 99 percent of sexually active women use it.

Pundits have often pointed out that historically, neither party tends to dominate the political system for very long. The reason for this is that, like how corporations exist to make money, political parties exist to win elections, and if the party keeps taking positions that alienate huge fractions of the electorate, then they’ll change those positions.

But the GOP isn’t doing this. After the 2012 defeat, driven in large part by being absolutely crushed in practically every minority demographic, Republicans halfheartedly tried to choke down an immigration reform bill to at least stop the bleeding. President Obama signaled his support, and the Senate passed a half-decent measure. But now reform looks dead because House Republicans refuse to let the Senate bill come up for a vote. For the GOP, it’s almost the worst of all worlds: a bill supported by all the prominent Democrats goes down due to extremist Republican intransigence. Now Democrats get to blame the GOP for breaking their promise, and quite possibly increase their share of the minority vote. It would have been better to not do anything.

Something similar looks to be happening for women’s issues. Ken Cuccinelli just went down in the Virginia governor’s race largely due to his antediluvian views on women’s rights. The party as a whole would be best served by this debate just going away. But extremists have strongly-held beliefs, and don’t particularly care about clear-eyed electoral cost-benefit calculations.

Here in Indiana, the culture-warrior contingent of the state GOP remains adamant about the need to pass HJR6, despite pretty convincing evidence that their position is costing them support–especially among the younger voters they will increasingly need.

Politics is the art of compromise. Religion, of course, is a matter of faith. To describe today’s Republican party as “Faith Based” is accurate–but it is not a compliment. It’s another way to suggest that the party’s current course is suicidal.

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Litmus Test

I’m not a fan of litmus tests, mostly because the world is a complicated place, and a person’s position on a single issue is unlikely to shed much light on that individual’s overall philosophical approach or analytical depth.

But I think reactions to the death of Nelson Mandela come pretty close to giving us a window into a person’s worldview, if not his soul.

in the late 1980’s, even prominent Republicans like Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich were acknowledging the injustice and brutality of Apartheid. Dick Cheney, however, continued to characterize the ANC as a terrorist organization and to insist that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist leader who belonged in jail.

It’s one thing to be wrong about a contemporaneous situation; another to maintain a clearly erroneous position after everyone else in the world has recognized how wrong it is.

The problem with people like Dick Cheney isn’t that they make dangerously bad judgment calls. It’s that they stubbornly cling to their initial opinions no matter how much evidence emerges to rebut them. They are incapable of admitting that they were wrong, and thus incapable of evolving and learning–the very capacity that makes us human.

History will treat Nelson Mandela as the extraordinary human he was.

History will not be kind to the self-important, self-serving, delusional and very small man named Dick Cheney.

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What Am I Missing?

I have to admit I frequently listen to a political or policy discussion, and have what might be called a “duh” moment–wondering why I see a rather obvious approach that everyone  else is ignoring.

This week, Governor Pence announced that state revenues have fallen below budget estimates for the past few months, and the only remedy is to cut funds to education and state agencies and sell the state airplane. Leaving aside the airplane gesture (a one-time, largely symbolic “sacrifice”) why is the administration focusing on cutting services rather than delaying or foregoing its beloved tax cuts?

There are two ways to handle revenue shortfalls, after all–cut expenses or raise revenue.

Despite the fervent belief that lower taxes stimulate the economy and foster job growth, there isn’t an iota of evidence supporting that belief. Indiana is already one of the lowest-tax states in the Midwest, our economic indicators still lag those of our higher-tax neighbors, and the case for continued tax cuts is thin, to put it mildly. (Indeed, research indicates that quality of life drives economic development; continued service cuts that diminish quality of life indicators–far from stimulating the economy– are probably counterproductive.)

Then there was the research report presented at a recent meeting of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Working Families. The subject was paid sick leave, which relatively few Indiana employers offer. When researchers talked to those who opposed a law requiring a sick-leave benefit, they found that the major objection wasn’t to paid sick leave, it was to the idea of a government mandate. (Don’t tell me how to run my business!!)

If the objection is to the use of a stick, why not offer a carrot? Why not give a tax deduction or other incentive to employers who voluntarily decide to offer paid sick leave? Avoid the mandate, but reward the desired behavior.  Evidently, such an approach hasn’t been considered.

My grandmother used to say there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

What am I missing?

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What I Learn from My Students

I’ve spent the last semester grousing about the various deficiencies of my current undergraduate class–they’re disinterested in the world around them, they can’t write a coherent or grammatical sentence and they clearly have no idea how research differs from stream-of-consciousness-essay.

Fairness, however, impels me to note that my graduate students continue to teach me a lot.

What prompted this post were statistics contained in a student’s paper. She chose to analyze Indiana’s aggressive school privatization efforts. (For clarity’s sake, I should note here that charter schools are public schools, and thus not the focus of her analysis.)

Opponents of school privatization have emphasized the financial benefits to private contractors, and the connections of those contractors to officials in positions to enrich them. Tony Bennett and Mitch Daniels worked tirelessly for policies that–surprise!–benefitted donors and cronies; several large corporations that actively lobby for school privatization have an obvious financial interest in that outcome.  That being the case, it isn’t unreasonable to conclude that corporate profit motives are helping to drive this particular policy approach, and many observers have leveled that claim.

My student’s paper suggested a different set of motivations. She noted that the rhetoric of school choice in Indiana focuses heavily on the right of parents to send their children to a private, religious school. (She reports that public arguments elsewhere have revolved far more around educational quality.) She then goes on to share some illuminating numbers.

The Indiana Department of Education publishes enrollment data of accredited non-public schools (only accredited non-public schools are eligible to receive the Choice Scholarship funds), and according to the list of accredited non-public schools for the year 2013, 95.01% of these schools are religiously affiliated, or 310 schools out of 326 (IDOE, 2013). Of the sixteen schools that are not religiously affiliated, two are military high schools, five are alternative high schools for at-risk and troubled youth, and four are for children with special needs or disabilities (IDOE, 2013). Of the 310 religiously affiliated accredited schools in Indiana in 2013, only five are not affiliated with some denomination of Christianity (three are Islamic private schools and two are Hebrew private schools) (IDOE, 2003). For parents looking to pull their children out of public schools in favor of private schools, these eleven schools are likely too specialized to be considered a choice for any child who does not fit into the mission of those schools. The five remaining non-religious private schools are college preparatory schools, three of which are located in the Indianapolis metropolitan area and the other two in Evansville.

Apparently, the real “choice” parents are being given is between a private religious education and a public secular one (provided by a school system increasingly starved for funds).

Whether that is the “choice” privatization proponents really want to offer is an open–and interesting– question.

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Some Unsolicited Advice to the Warriors

It’s “War on Christmas” time again, so let me suggest a tactic that might make those who don’t appreciate the insulting nature of wishing someone “Happy Holidays” take the Christian Warriors more seriously.

Listen, guys, if you really want to make the case that everyone needs to acknowledge the sanctity of Christmas and implicitly, the cultural and moral superiority of your belief system, here’s a great way to do that: start acting like Christians. Not just in December, either, but all year.

It’s really hard for Jews, Muslins, Pagans, et al to respect your demands for obeisance when you blithely and consistently ignore the rules upon which your claims of Christian superiority are based.

When people see you refusing to pay your employees a living wage, when they see you get all pissy about the very idea of giving poor folks access to health insurance, that doesn’t look very Christian to them.

When elected officials like Mike Pence publicly parade their piety but then screw over  400,000 Hoosiers by refusing to use federal dollars to expand Medicaid–all the while pontificating about the need for poor people to take “personal responsibility”–you can’t blame other folks for wondering whether they missed that place in your bible where Jesus refused to share loaves and fishes with the irresponsible masses.

When you make shit up in order to bolster your political arguments, when you get oh-so-offended because someone wished you well without including the magic words, when you wrap yourself in a blanket of victimization whenever a court doesn’t allow you to impose your beliefs on people who don’t share them….well, it gets really hard to see the light of Christian charity in your behavior.

Maybe you’d have better luck–and earn more respect– if you lived in accordance with the religion you want to cram down everyone else’s throat.

Just a thought.

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