What Do We Know and Who Can We Trust?

I thought I’d share a presentation I made at “Weekend U,” a series of workshops hosted by IUPUI Alumni, focused on our current media environment. It’s a bit long, so my apologies….

It is always tempting to assert that we live in times that are radically unlike past eras—that somehow, the challenges we face are not only fundamentally different than the problems that confronted our forebears, but worse; to worry that children growing up today are subject to more pernicious influences than children of prior generations. (In Stephanie Coontz’ felicitous phrase, there is a great deal of nostalgia for “the way we never were.”) I grew up in the 1950s, and can personally attest to the fact that all of the misty-eyed recollections of that time are revisionist nonsense. The widespread belief that 50s-era Americans all lived like the characters from shows like “Father Knows Best” or “Leave it to Beaver” is highly inaccurate, to put it mildly. If you don’t believe me, ask the African-Americans who were still relegated to separate restrooms and drinking fountains in much of the American South, or the women who couldn’t get equal pay for equal work or a credit rating separate from their husbands.

Nevertheless—even conceding our human tendency to overstate the effects of social change for good or ill—it is impossible to understand the crazy in contemporary life without recognizing the profound social changes that have been both generated by and reflected in our modern communication technologies, most prominently the Internet.

We live today in an incessant babble of information, some of which is credible and much of which is not. Some of that information comes to us through hundreds of cable and broadcast television stations, increasing numbers of which are devoted to “news,” broadly defined twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.   In our cars, we tune in to news and commentary on AM or FM stations, or more recently to satellite broadcasts that have extended the reach of that broadcast medium. Then there’s the Web—streaming incessantly not just through our computers, but also through our smart phones and tablets. The one place we increasingly don’t get our information is from a daily newspaper, or  other sources that might be called the “journalism of verification.”

That’s the reality of our lives today. We read news and commentary from all over the world on line, we shop for goods and services on line, we communicate with our friends and families through email and Facebook, and we consult web-based sources for everything from medical advice to housekeeping hints to comedy routines. When we don’t know something, we Google it.  The web is rapidly becoming a repository of all human knowledge—not to mention human rumors, hatreds, gossip, trivia and paranoid fantasies. Picking our way through this landscape requires new skills, new ways of accessing, sorting and evaluating the credibility and value of what we see and hear. It is not an exaggeration to say that the enhanced communications environment has changed the way we process information and our very perceptions of reality. And we’re just beginning the task of figuring out how to cope with this brave new world.

Let me share a very minor example of how this communications environment affects our perceptions of reality: toward the end of her life, my mother was in a nursing home. Given the limited mobility of most of the residents, the television was a central focus of their day, and it was on continually. Although she had never been a particularly fearful person, nor one who focused on crime, my mother became convinced that crime rates were soaring. They weren’t. In fact, there had been a substantial decline over the preceding few years. But when mother was growing up, with the exception of particularly heinous incidents or crimes involving celebrities, the local media reported only local criminal behavior. Seventy years later, the television relayed daily reports of subway murders in London, train bombings in Spain, and other assorted misbehavior by people from all over the globe. To my mother and her elderly peers, it seemed that predators were suddenly everywhere.  And that was just television. The Internet has had an infinitely greater impact. I’m old, and probably use technology less than my grandchildren’s generation, but when I am driving to a location I’ve not previously visited, I get directions via the web (assuming I don’t have a GPS in my car or—more recently—in my cell phone). I can Instant Message or Skype my granddaughter in Wales, and for free—no long distance telephone charges incurred. I’m kept up-to-date on what my friends are doing via Facebook, and on political news via Twitter. Increasingly, I shop on line for books, office supplies, even clothing and home furnishings. I no longer visit the license branch and wait in line to renew my license plates; I go online and save the time and trouble. If I want to know how a congressman voted, the information is at my googling fingertips. I’m hardly alone. In an unbelievably short period of time, the Internet has not only made the world a smaller place, it has forever altered the rhythm of our daily lives.

Part of that alteration has meant that we are no longer passive consumers of information; the interactive nature of the web allows us to talk back, to post our opinions, to offer rebuttals. It brings us into contact with people of different countries, religions, cultures and backgrounds. It allows each of us, if we are so inclined, to become a publisher. When I was young, if you wanted to publish a newspaper, the costs of the printing press and distribution system were prohibitive, and most broadcast media was owned by the wealthy. Today, anyone with access to the Internet can hire a few reporters or “content providers” and create her own media outlet. One result is that the previously hierarchical nature of public knowledge is rapidly diminishing. The time-honored “gatekeeper” function of the press—when journalists decided what constituted news—will soon be a thing of the past, if it isn’t already.

The communication revolution isn’t limited to the delivery of news and information. Social networking sites have allowed like-minded people to connect with each other and form communities that span traditional geographical and political boundaries. (The growing global hegemony of the English language has further enabled cross-national communications.) One result is that it has become much harder to define just what a “community” is, and to recognize how those communities differ.

For example, on my most recent trip to Europe, I was struck by how homogenized citizens from western industrialized countries have become—how much we all look and dress alike. Thirty years ago, on our first trip to Europe, cultural differences expressed in clothing and mannerisms made it fairly easy to spot Americans. Over the intervening years, that has changed. Today, we dress alike, drive the same cars, watch the same television programs and listen to the same (mostly American) music. IPhones, IPods and IPads (and their various clones) are ubiquitous, as are Facebook and Google. Evidence of the globalization of culture—at least pop culture—is everywhere.

The participatory nature of the Internet has also encouraged—and enabled—a wide array of political and civic activism. How lasting that shift will be is still an open question, but the ways in which American political life has changed are unmistakable. Early in the development of the web, naysayers worried that the Internet would encourage people to become more solitary. They warned that people were being seduced by this new medium to withdraw from human and social interaction. In some cases, that may be true. For others, however, the Internet has been an “enabler,” facilitating a great wave of political and community organizing; it has become a mechanism for forming new kinds of communities, for finding like-minded people we didn’t previously know, even though they might have been living just down the street. “Meetings” on line have led to internet-facilitated “Meet Ups” and other face-to-face interactions in service of particular social and political goals.

A telling example of the profound change You Tube has wrought in the political landscape was the widely reported “macaca” moment of Senator George Allen during the 2006 campaign season. Allen, who was running for re-election to the Senate from Virginia, was considered a shoo-in for re-election, and a strong contender for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination. While delivering a speech to a small gathering in rural Virginia, he pointed out a volunteer from his opponent’s campaign who was videotaping his talk.

“This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He’s with my opponent. He’s following us around everywhere…Let’s give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”

Depending on how it is spelled, the word macaca can mean either a monkey that inhabits the Eastern Hemisphere or a town in South Africa. In some European cultures, macaca is also considered a racial slur against African immigrants. The Webb volunteer promptly uploaded the videotape of Allen’s remarks to You Tube; a mere three days later, it had been downloaded and viewed 334,254 times. It was picked up and endlessly replayed on the evening news. Print media across the country reported on the controversy, and radio talk show hosts argued about the meaning of the word macaca, and whether Allen had intended a slur. Investigative reporters whose curiosity had been piqued by the controversy dug up evidence of prior racially charged incidents involving Allen. By November, James Webb—initially dismissed as a long-shot candidate with little chance of defeating a popular sitting Senator—was the new Senator from Virginia, and “macaca moment” had entered the political lexicon as shorthand for a gaffe captured on video. Politics has never been the same since.

The 2008 Presidential campaign introduced the phenomenon of “viral videos.” Remember when will.i.am of the group Black-Eyed Peas created the music video, “Yes We Can?” For a time, that video was everywhere—forwarded and re-forwarded until literally millions of Americans had seen it. Humorous and not-so-humorous videos promoting and panning the candidates have since become ubiquitous. Campaign rumors (and worse) are endlessly forwarded, circulated and recirculated. In 2008, John McCain, who admitted never using a computer, and who displayed discomfort with the new media environment, was caught off-guard by videos showing him delivering inconsistent statements. I argued at the time that failure to understand the impact of the internet is failure to understand the world we live in, and that was undoubtedly the point of a pro-Obama blogger’s characterization of McCain as “an analog candidate for a digital age.” By last November, the impact of You Tube was far greater. Mitt Romney was videotaped at a private fundraiser dismissing 47% of Americans as non-taxpaying moochers who would never vote for him. To say that the video damaged his campaign would be an understatement.

The 2008 campaign was probably the first where all political candidates embraced the new technologies and made extensive use of email to raise funds, organize volunteers, counter charges, announce endorsements and rally their respective bases, at a tiny fraction of the cost of direct mail. The impact of all this would be difficult to exaggerate—and older politicians are still having difficulty negotiating the new media landscape.

It isn’t only our political life that has been profoundly changed by new technologies. The ability to communicate cheaply and almost instantaneously with millions of people, the ability to link up like-minded people, and the ability to both spread and counter misinformation are all having a profound impact on our political, civic and personal relationships in ways we cannot yet fully anticipate or appreciate.

This information revolution is particularly pertinent to the issue of trust in our civic and governing institutions. At no time in human history have citizens been as aware of every failure of competence, every allegation of corruption or malfeasance—real or imagined. Politicians like to talk about “low-information” voters, but even the most detached American citizen cannot escape hearing about institutional failures on a daily basis, whether it is reports of high levels of lead in children’s toys (said to be due to government failure to monitor imports properly), the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota (said to be due to government failure to inspect and repair deteriorating infrastructure), or the devastation caused by a drone strike (authorized first by the Bush and now by the Obama administrations). Evidence of the intransigence and partisanship of Congress and the appalling behavior of too many of its members is communicated on a daily basis. It may be true that things weren’t much different in past eras, but it is certainly the case that information about public wrongdoing or incompetence is infinitely more widespread in today’s wired and connected world.

So, of course, is misinformation.

As wonderful as some of the new technologies can be, there’s a downside—and the growth of propaganda is part of that downside. In my opinion, the most damaging side effect of this paradigm shift in the way we access information is the perilous state of journalism at a time when we desperately need verified, factual, objective information about our world, our government and our environment. Don’t let the bravado mask reality: newspapers as we’ve known them are dying.  Since 1990, a quarter of all newspaper jobs have disappeared. Once robust publications have closed their doors. Others have drastically curtailed delivery. Last year, the textbook I used in my Media and Policy class was “Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights.”

Like it or not, we are increasingly dependent upon the Internet for our news. And that presents us with both an opportunity and a problem.

Eli Pariser was one of the founders of MoveOn.com, and an early believer in the power of the Internet to increase and improve democracy. But as he documents in an important book, “The Filter Bubble,” the technology that promises (and delivers) so much is moving us into what he calls a “mediated future”—a future in which each of us exists in a personalized universe of our own construction.

In an effort to give each of us what we want, sites like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are constantly refining their algorithms in order to deliver results that are “relevant” to each particular searcher, and they have more data about our individual likes and dislikes than most of us can imagine. As a result, two people googling “BP,” for example, will not necessarily get the same results, and certainly not in the same order. Someone whose search history suggests interest in investment information may get the company’s annual report, while someone with a history of environmental interests will get stories about the Gulf spill. Similarly, Facebook delivers the posts of friends and family that its algorithm suggests are most consistent with the member’s interests and beliefs, not everything those friends post.

Pariser calls this the “filter bubble,” and points out that—unlike choosing to listen to Fox rather than PBS or MSNBC, for example—the resulting bias is invisible to us.

Little by little, search by search, individuals are constructing different–and often conflicting–realities. At the same time, traditional news sources aimed at a general audience—the newspapers and broadcasts that required reporters to fact-check assertions, label opinion and aim for objectivity—are losing market share. How many will survive and in what form is anyone’s guess.

We can live without newsprint, but we desperately need real journalism—where reporters monitor what governments and businesses do, where they fact-check and provide context and background. Instead, we have mountains of unsubstantiated opinion, PR and spin. Good citizens have to be able to separate fact from fantasy. They have to live in the world as it is, not in a bubble where they listen only to things that confirm what they already believe—and the Internet makes it so easy and tempting to construct that bubble.

A favorite catchphrase of traditional media is “news you can use.” This catchphrase has come into increased use as newspaper readership has continued to decline–not just in Indianapolis, but nationally. The problem is that no one completes the sentence. Those who toss off the phrase don’t proceed to the important issue, which is: use how, and for what?

In my somewhat jaundiced opinion, the news citizens can use is information about our common institutions–including but not limited to government, and especially local government. Judging from what the newspapers are actually covering, however, they consider “news you can use” to be reviews of local restaurants, diet and home decorating tips, and sports. Not–as they used to say on Seinfeld–that there is anything wrong with that. At least, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that if these stories were being served as “dessert” rather than the main course.

What we can use is a return to journalism’s time-honored watchdog role. But genuine watchdog coverage requires resources–enough reporters with enough time to investigate and monitor a wide variety of important government agencies and functions. Newspapers around the country that have survived have done so by engaging in wave after wave of layoffs. Those layoffs have left them with skeletal reporting operations, drastically compromising their capacity to provide genuine journalism.

Let me just conclude by describing what I mean by “genuine journalism.” Real journalism is accurate, objective, fact-checked reporting on what Alex Jones calls the “iron core,” fact-based accountability news.   Such news isn’t “fair and balanced,” because often, balance is neither fair nor accurate.

A couple of years ago, National Public Radio—one of our most reliable purveyors of “real journalism”– adopted new ethics guidelines. The new code stresses the importance of accuracy over false balance; it appears–finally–to abandon the “he said, she said” approach (what I have elsewhere called “stenography masquerading as reporting”) that all too often distorts truth in favor of a phony “fairness.”

The policy reads: “At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.”

One of my biggest gripes over the past several years has been the wholesale abandonment of precisely this tenet of good journalism. A good example has been environmental reporting–how many times have media sources reported on climate change, for example, by giving equal time and weight to the settled science and the deniers, without ever noting that the deniers constitute less than 1% of all climate scientists, and are generally regarded as a kooky fringe? That’s “balance,” but it certainly isn’t “fair to the truth.”

Several years ago, this sort of false equivalency was illustrated by one of my all-time favorite Daily Show skits. The “senior journalism reporter” was explaining the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on John Kerry to Jon Stewart. “The Swift Boat Veterans say such-and-such happened; the Kerry Campaign says it didn’t. Back to you, Jon!” When Stewart then asked “But aren’t you going to tell us who is telling the truth?”  the response was dead-on. “Absolutely not, Jon. This is journalism.”

Far too often, our remaining reporters pursue artificial balance at the expense of truth. If a Democratic campaign plays a dirty trick, reporters rush to remind their audience of a similar transgression by Republicans, and vice-versa. This search for equivalency may be well intentioned, but it misrepresents reality and misleads those of us who depend upon the media for accurate information. NPR’s recognition of this pernicious practice, and its new Code of Ethics, are a welcome sign that at least some journalists might be returning to Job One: telling us the unembellished truth.

At the end of the day, we need to recognize that the journalism of accountability and verification, the journalism that acts as a watchdog over our common institutions, is irreplaceable. My own favorite journalist, Jon Stewart, put it best in an interview with Terry Gross of NPR. Gross noted his constant criticisms of both politicians and the media, and asked Stewart who he felt was most culpable. Stewart said “Politicians are politicians. If you go to the zoo and monkeys are throwing feces, well—that’s what monkeys do. But you’d like to have the zoo-keeper there saying ‘Bad Monkey.’”

That pretty much sums it up.

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Four More Years

There was a huge crowd on the Mall, and a soaring and thought-provoking speech. Wouldn’t it be nice if people put aside their animus and tried to think about the words of the man who just took the oath of office–the man who is President of all of us?

In case you missed those words, here is the text, as prepared.

“Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution.  We affirm the promise of our democracy.  We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names.  What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time.  For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.  The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.  They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

For more than two hundred years, we have.

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free.  We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.  Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.  For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.  No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.  Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience.  A decade of war is now ending.  An economic recovery has begun.  America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands:  youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention.   My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together.

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.  We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.  We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship.  We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time.  We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher.  But while the means will change, our purpose endures:  a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American.  That is what this moment requires.  That is what will give real meaning to our creed.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.  We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.  But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.  For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.  We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.  We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us.  They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.  We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.  Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.  The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.  That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.  Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage.  Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty.  The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm.  But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law.  We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully – not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.  America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation.  We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom.  And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice – not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes:  tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began.  For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.  Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.  Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.  Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.  Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.

That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American.  Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness.  Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay.  We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.  We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.  We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service.  But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or an immigrant realizes her dream.  My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.

They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope.

You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright.  With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.”

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Unlimited and Unrestrained, or Politics as Usual

It’s bad enough when partisan warfare leads to gridlock and a refusal to operate in the public interest. It may be worse when one party has super-majorities that allow it to pursue political advantage despite the wishes of the opposition and effect on the general public. We have such super-majorities in the Indiana General Assembly, and among the many kinds of mischief being proposed, the one that may be most nakedly self-serving would eliminate the four at-large Indianapolis City County Counselors, and dramatically increase the power of the Indianapolis Mayor to act without Council approval–indeed, in defiance of the Council–in a variety of situations.

Senate Bill 0621 allows the Mayor to unilaterally reduce appropriations approved by the Council (now he must either sign or veto them as passed), essentially allowing him to ignore legislative actions. It eliminates the requirement that the Council approve the Mayor’s appointments of Departmental Directors. It “eliminates provisions that allow the city-county council to require the capital improvement board of managers to make payments in lieu of taxes.” It gives the Mayor effective control of the Development Commission. And it eliminates the At-Large City County Councilors.

Quite the power grab.

This is terrible public policy–whether you approve of the decisions made by the Council or not, in a government of checks and balances, it is inappropriate to strip the legislative branch of its authority and to create an “imperial” Mayoral office. We can debate the necessity of at-large positions, but the purpose of those positions was to elect at least four councilors whose allegiance would be to the voters of the entire county, to balance those whose votes would be geared to the interests of their own constituents.

The irony, of course, is that this naked attempt to reduce the influence of Marion County Democrats is likely to come bite these short-sighted Republicans in the you-know-where. Indianapolis is increasingly a “blue” city. Upcoming Mayors are more likely than not to be Democrats, and the ways in which those Mayors deploy the new powers being provided to that office are unlikely to be palatable to the folks who are promoting this power grab.

That’s the problem with trying to game the system: you can’t always foresee who will be playing the game.

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The Sour Truth

My two favorite columnists are Gail Collins and Leonard Pitts. They often say what I am thinking, but in a much more elegant and/or eloquent way.

This morning, I’m relinquishing this space to Pitts. Read him and weep.

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