A jaundiced look at the world we live in.
All I want for Chanukah/Xmas/Kwanzaa is civic sanity and political integrity.
I may have to wait awhile…
Thanks from the bottom of my heart for all the kind messages on my retirement. They are more appreciated than you can know!
Wishing everyone who visits this blog as enjoyable a holiday as possible in this year of the Pandemic.
See you tomorrow.
CommentsI hope readers will indulge some personal nostalgia today….
Last Saturday, I posted grades for the students of my final class as a college professor. The semester was surreal –for the first time, I taught remotely, and to be honest, I hated it. In normal times, when I teach, I walk around the class asking questions, looking for puzzled faces that tell me I need to back up and explain something more clearly…I meet with students outside of class to answer questions/concerns. I get to know them.
None of that happens virtually.
That said, I was really pleased with my graduate students’ performance. My midterm is something of a killer, and several did poorly on it. But their research papers and especially their final exams were almost uniformly excellent. The midterm is intended to determine whether they understand constitutional provisions and–more importantly–can apply them correctly to “real world” fact situations.
The final is intended to determine whether they understand what government is for. Below is this year’s version.
___________________
There are three essay questions in this take-home final examination. Choose one of them to answer. Your answer should not exceed three (3) typed, double-spaced pages.
I. Earth has been destroyed in World War III. You and a few thousand others—representing a cross-section of Earth’s races, cultures and religions—are the only survivors. You have escaped to an earthlike planet, and are preparing to establish a new society. You want to avoid the errors of the Earth governments that preceded you. What institutional choices do you make and why? You should consider:
A. The type/structure of government you would create;
B. The powers it will have;
C. The limits on its powers, and how those limits will be enforced;
D. How government officials will be chosen and policies enacted;
E. The social and political values you intend to privilege.
II. It is 2020 in an alternate universe, and you have been elected President of the United States. You are following an administration that has made significant—even monumental—changes to American public policies and democratic norms. Which of those changes would you accept and follow, if any? Which would you change? (I am not looking for exhaustive lists; choose one or two areas to discuss, and justify your decision to accept or reject the current administration’s approach.) For each policy you would retain or reverse, explain why it is or is not supportive of the common good and/or consistent with American Constitutional values.
III. During every American election season, there will be a number of candidates from the business sector running for public office who have neither studied public administration nor previously served in a governmental agency or government position of any kind. They usually argue—and many Americans will agree—that success in a private business venture is a qualification for public office, that the skills that are necessary to success in the private sector are transferable—that they are the same skills that will enable them to be successful public servants. Do you agree or disagree with this assertion? Why?
You may make use of any materials you wish in composing your answers. Organization, grammar and spelling, and clarity will count, as will the originality and persuasiveness of your essay.
________________
The essays I received were unusually perceptive. Almost all of them explicitly addressed the responsibility of government to provide for the general welfare/common good, and the similarities and differences between public and private sector values. The new world governments they created, their critiques of policies of the “preceding” (Trump) Administration (students who chose #2 were uniformly–and highly–critical), and their ability to distinguish between private sector skills that would or would not qualify someone for public service were all excellent.
It was a reassuring response to exit on.
So–I have now retired after spending the last 22 years at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. (It was my 5th and last “career”). Aside from continuing this blog, I’m really not sure how I will spend my time. There are things I won’t miss–many of the bureaucratic elements of academic life–but I will really miss interacting with students.
As I learned from leaving my prior work lives, such departures are bittersweet…..
They are also inevitable. Happy Holidays.
CommentsMost of us of a “certain age” remember Arte Johnson’s Laugh In character who would emerge from undergrowth at points in the show and declaim “Veery interesting!”
A reader sent me a column that elicited a similar sentiment from me as it had from him. He wanted to know whether the legal points being raised were accurate. As I indicated, it’s an area far beyond what expertise I still–or ever–had, but I promised to do a bit of research.
The article itself, titled “Who’s Afraid of Mitch McConnell,” asserted that even in the absence of wins in Georgia, Kamala Harris has authority under the Constitution to call on any senator who will call up one of the numerous bills on which McConnell has refused to allow a vote. Lawyers who read this blog can click on the link and draw their own conclusions.
I did some limited research, but Dr. Google let me down, so I turned to a couple of lawyers I know, who met my very stringent criteria: they had to be good lawyers, they had to be politically savvy, and they had to be nice people who were likely to humor me. (So–one of my sons and a friend who is really, really smart. Both named David.)
That friend summed up the problem with the article’s thesis thusly:
Certainly not my area of expertise, but I see three problems with the analysis.
First, custom becomes rule. The idea that a VP could come in and do this without a massive response is pie-in-the-sky. The pushback would come from Democrats as well as Republicans, protecting Senate privilege and custom from interference from the Executive.
Second, it ignores the elephant in the room, cloture. Even if Harris could do this, it still takes 60 votes to stop debate, and Republicans not only have them, but such a strong-armed move would guarantee a complete shut down of the Senate, with no negotiation or compromise.
And third, it assumes today’s Republicans are capable of shame. The idea that bringing a vote to the floor would change their behavior is akin to assuming that putting a bow on a rabid pit bull will make it a poodle.
My son was–if possible–even more negative. His comment (edited slightly for profanities–he takes after his mother):
I agree with David. I would add (as I mentioned on the FB page of the guy who circulated this point a few weeks ago) that the ONLY thing the applicable clause of the Constitution says about VP and Senate is that the VP is the President of the Senate and gets NO vote unless the body is evenly divided…. hardly a textual position of strength to argue that the VP can come in and dictate who gets to preside and run the show.
Also, the argument is somewhat internally contradictory — on the one hand, the Constitution grants her sweeping powers to override longstanding, informal rules, on the other hand, the VP’s “priority recognition”-power IS one of those informal rules.
Of course, all the other practical/political/prudential reasons David noted are also at work.
I think it’s a fantasy, particularly in a world where EVEN IF Dems retake the Senate by winning both Dem seats in Georgia, f***ers like Manchin and Feinstein stand ready to kill any attempt to even soften the Filibuster that would defang McConnell.
Actually, his last sentence suggests his current mood, and may indicate a need for intervention–or at least, strong drink:
The country is doomed. The sooner we all move away, the more peace of mind we’ll have.
It would be lovely if the Constitution or some other part of the legal system had a shortcut we could use to repair what is broken. It doesn’t. We have a lot of work ahead of us–and failure to do that work would doom the American experiment.
As the crazy coming out of the White House intensifies, a question lawyers are asking each other is: why aren’t the courts sanctioning the lawyers who are bringing these clearly frivolous election lawsuits?
Even judges that Trump appointed are ruling against him, and that’s certainly comforting. But most practicing lawyers would expect a reprimand or even disbarment for behaviors similar to those that have been displayed by Rudy Giuliani and crew.
At least the courts have uniformly dismissed the wild allegations of these lawsuits, and that consistency means that even if these sleazy lawyers escape retribution, a couple of threatened lawsuits by election technology companies promise to hit their counterparts in the dishonest right-wing media where they will hurt–in their pocketbooks.
Rudy Giuliani has suggested that one company, Dominion Voting Systems, had a sinister connection to vote counts in “Michigan, Arizona and Georgia and other states.” Giuliani further tweeted that the company “was a front for SMARTMATIC, who was really doing the computing. Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?”
Sidney Powell is out there saying that states like Texas, they turned away from Dominion machines, because really there’s only one reason why you buy a Dominion machine and you buy this Smartmatic software, so you can easily change votes,” the Newsmax host Chris Salcedo said in one typical mash-up on Nov. 18. Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business reported on Nov. 15 that “one source says that the key point to understand is that the Smartmatic system has a backdoor.”
These wild allegations finally tried the patience of the companies being smeared. As it happens, Smartmatic wasn’t even used by the contested states. The company is a major global player, but it pulled out of the United States in 2007, due to a controversy over its founders’ Venezuelan roots. Its only U.S. contract in November was a consulting arrangement with Los Angeles County.
Last week, Smartmatic’s lawyer sent demand letters to Fox News, Newsmax and OAN, demanding that they “immediately and forcefully” clear his company’s name. He also demanded that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit.
According to legal experts, Smartmatic has an unusually strong case. And evidently, an equally strong lawyer, J. Erik Connolly. Connolly won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, when he represented a beef producer whose “lean finely textured beef” was described by ABC News as “pink slime.”
Now, Mr. Connolly’s target is a kind of red slime, the stream of preposterous lies coming from the White House and Republican officials around the country.
“We’ve gotten to this point where there’s so much falsity that is being spread on certain platforms, and you may need an occasion where you send a message, and that’s what punitive damages can do in a case like this,” Mr. Connolly said.
Dominion Voting Systems has also hired a high-profile libel lawyer, Tom Clare, who is also threatening legal action against Ms. Powell and the Trump campaign.
Mr. Clare said in an emailed statement that “we are moving forward on the basis that she will not retract those false statements and that it will be necessary for Dominion to take aggressive legal action, both against Ms. Powell and the many others who have enabled and amplified her campaign of defamation by spreading damaging falsehoods about Dominion.”
Those “enablers” include Fox News, Newsmax and OAN. As the article points out,
Newsmax and OAN appear likely to face the same fate as so many of President Trump’s sycophants, who have watched him lie with impunity and imitated him — only to find that he’s the only one who can really get away with it. Mr. Trump benefits from presidential immunity, but also he has an experienced fabulist’s sense of where the legal red lines are, something his allies often lack.
“Fabulist” means liar.
OAN and Newsmax have hyped the Trump campaign’s ridiculous election claims. OAN has even refused to call Joe Biden the president-elect. Both are relatively small enterprises, and a successful lawsuit over their roles in Trump’s disinformation/conspiracy campaign could destroy them. Such lawsuits probably wouldn’t destroy Fox, but they could certainly inflict damage.
According to the report, Fox News and Fox Business have mentioned Dominion 792 times and Smartmatic 118 times between them. They’ve already begun to backtrack, airing a “corrective” segment on shows hosted by Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo.
Probably too little, too late.
This damaging, unethical behavior is why we have defamation laws and punitive damages.
I wonder what would happen to the “usual suspects”–the sources of consistently dishonest rightwing propaganda– if everyone they lied about sued them. Maybe we need a nonprofit legal organization that would represent people and organizations who’ve been libeled but can’t afford to sue..
I’d donate to that!
CommentsUrban planners’ debates about gentrification have been going on for many years. How does a well-meaning local government encourage neighborhood improvement without inadvertently pricing longtime residents out?
If you are reading this in hopes that I have a suggested solution to that dilemma, you’re in the wrong place, although there are certainly some intriguing theories floating about. But there is one approach to upgrading deteriorating neighborhoods that I enthusiastically support. It’s an insight I owe to my husband, from his years as Indianapolis’ Director of Metropolitan Development.
The typical downward trajectory of lower-middle and working class neighborhoods starts with a lack of visible maintenance–houses with peeling paint, unkempt yards, perhaps even broken windows. Lack of maintenance is evidence that leads many disapproving observers to conclude that “those people” just don’t care. My husband’s conclusion was rather different: “those people” were applying their inadequate incomes to “frivolities” like food, utilities and transportation to work.
What would those neighborhoods look like if we raised the minimum wage to $15/hour? What if desperately poor people, or those on the cusp of poverty, had some disposable income?
There is an often-overlooked connection between economic health and neighborhood revitalization. Regular readers of this blog have read my rants about job creation before, and are aware of my absolute conviction that jobs are created by demand. The owner of the widget factory isn’t going to hire more people to manufacture his widgets if there aren’t more people willing and able to buy them.
A recent study has added to the already ample evidence for this conclusion–and to the also-ample evidence that “supply-side” economics is, and has always been (as George H.W. Bush memorably labeled it) “voodoo” economics.
“Supply-side” is the economic theory embraced by Reagan and others in the 1980s. That theory dismisses the importance of wages at the bottom of the economy—the demand side. Instead, it rests on the theory that if we “free up” capital at the top—the supply side—wealthy entrepreneurs will create new jobs and a rising tide will lift all boats.
This is the theory that has justified Republicans’ forty-year commitment to tax cuts for the rich. The theory never made sense, and during the past forty years, all evidence has rebutted it. Tax cuts for the rich have never sparked economic growth, although they have certainly made the rich richer.
And that’s what the most recent study has found.
In their study of 18 countries over 50 years, scholars at the London School of Economics and Kings College concluded that tax cuts do not “trickle down.” In fact, they do little to promote growth or create jobs. Instead, they drive up inequality, by limiting their effects to the people who get the tax cuts.
Focusing on the bottom of the income distribution–ensuring that low-wage workers don’t sink into poverty, that they can afford to put food on their tables, buy diapers for the baby, and see a doctor when necessary (a different but equally pressing issue) and still have funds to fix that broken window and repair the lawn-mower–would do more to “revitalize” neighborhoods than many if not most of well-intentioned government programs.
Would there still be people who don’t keep their properties up? Sure. Would there still be landlords who are basically stingy slumlords? Yes. But investments in real estate represent a considerable asset to most owners, and the fiscal incentives to protect those investments by maintaining the properties are strong.
The real lesson behind my husband’s long-ago insight, however, is the holistic nature of our communities, and the importance of not limiting our focus when trying to improve one aspect of our common lives. We need to recognize the inter-relationships of such things as economic development, job creation and neighborhood improvement.
And “bottoms up” isn’t a phrase limited solely to alcohol consumption.
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