The Hidden Hand

When I hear the term “hidden hand,”  I immediately think of Adam Smith. But a couple of weeks ago, I came across a very different definition of that term–one that resonated with me.

Published by a think-tank called “Support Democracy,”the article addressed the growing problem of pre-emption, which it dubbed “the hidden hand.” In Indiana, we’ve had that problem as long as I can remember; it’s what I fulminate about when I decry local government’s lack of home rule.

Many of America’s cities, towns, and counties have less power than they did at the start of the year to protect the health and safety of their communities or to respond to the unique needs and values of their residents. That’s because between January and June 2019, state legislatures across the nation continued a troubling trend of passing more laws forbidding or “preempting” local control over a large and growing set of public health, economic, environmental, and social justice policy solutions. This legislative session, state lawmakers made it illegal for locally-elected officials to enact a plastic bag ban in Tennessee, raise revenues in Oregon, regulate e-cigarettes in Arkansas, establish minimum wages in North Dakota, protect county residents from water and air pollution produced by animal feedlots in Missouri, or protect immigrants from unjust incarceration in Florida.

Some states this session went further, with bills aimed at abolishing core powers long held by cities, including their ability to negotiate and set employment terms with their own contractors, enact and implement local land use laws, and control their own budgets and finances.

Here in Indiana, local jurisdictions have long been under the thumb of state lawmakers. The same legislators who bitch and moan about “unfunded mandates” imposed on state governments by Washington blithely operate on the assumption that they know better than the folks running city and county jurisdictions how those officials should do their jobs.

Are there issues that require federal mandates? Sure. Are there issues that ought to be handled consistently statewide? Of course. But the policy debate should center on what those issues are–and it rarely if ever does. Instead, we have the Indiana General Assembly deciding what vehicles Indianapolis can include in our locally-funded mass transit plans (no light rail for us–why, no one can explain).

It’s bad enough that a former Governor whose political savvy outstripped his devotion to rational policymaking (yes, Mitch, I’m looking at you) shoehorned a tax cap into the state constitution. That certainly made him popular. It has also destroyed the ability of local governments to provide appropriate levels of basic services. (Not to mention that provisions of this sort don’t belong in constitutions, which are by definition frameworks prescribing how issues like taxation are to be dealt with.)

State and local governments desperately need to revisit the allocation of power between them. In states like Indiana, state-level lawmakers need to allow local governments to make the decisions that are properly local.

As the report at the link explains,

Preemption is a tool, like the filibuster, that can and has been used by both political parties. In the past, preemption was used to ensure uniform state regulation or protect against conflicts between local governments. Preemption has also been used to advance well-being and equity. State civil rights laws, for example, allow cities to increase protections, but prohibit them from falling below what was required under law. Traditional preemption emphasized balance between the state and local levels of government. While state policy still had primacy, according to Columbia Law School professor Richard Briffault, it was understood that “state policies could coexist with local additions or variations.”This is not what we are seeing now.

“New Preemption” laws, according to Briffault, “clearly, intentionally, extensively, and at times punitively, bar local efforts to address a host of local problems.” Some of this is propelled by a disdain for local lawmaking and urban lawmakers seen as too liberal, intent on “oppressing” the free market and “trampling” on individual liberty…. Another primary driver of new preemption is the opportunity conservatives now have to deliver on a long-promised anti-regulatory agenda – an agenda that disproportionately and negatively affects women, people of color and low income communities. These new preemption laws are being used to prohibit local regulations without adopting new state standards in their place, effectively preventing any regulation or policy remedy at all.The efforts to consolidate power at the state level and end local authority over a wide range of issues are part of a national long-term strategy often driven by trade associations and corporate interests. Much of this effort has been orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an industry-funded organization made up by lobbyists and a quarter of all state lawmakers that writes and distributes model bills.

In my most recent book (which I shamefully keep hyping) I make a case for revisiting federalism, and ensuring that control of issues is lodged with the appropriate level of government.

I doubt I’ll live long enough to see that happen…..

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Does Deutsch Bank Have The Goods On Trump?

A journalist friend tells me that some early “newspapers”– more accurately described as pamphlets compiled from recently circulated broadsides–used to have a tag line beneath their mastheads. It read “Interesting, if true.”

Lawrence O’Donnell recently supplied us with a humdinger of “interesting if true” news.

According to Raw Story–and subsequently, several other news outlets, including Salon–Deutsche Bank may have the evidence the Mueller investigation was unable to find.

Fast-tracked impeachment hearings will occur this fall if the bombshell report is true that President Donald Trump had loans with Deutsche Bank co-signed by Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.

 “The source close to Deutsche Bank says that the co-signers of Donald Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans are Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin,” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell reported Tuesday.

If true, this would explain why Trump was so agitated (I know, he’s always agitated, but this was notable even for him) when Congress issued a subpoena to the bank for records of their loans to Trump and the Trump organization. It would explain the lawsuit he filed in an effort to quash that subpoena.

It would also explain his slavish attention to Putin’s interests, most recently highlighted by his behavior at the recent G7 meeting. According to several reports, Trump cornered the other heads of state and aggressively lobbied for Russia’s re-admittance to the group.

Finally, it would explain why Deutsche Bank continued to make loans to Trump after American banks would no longer do so. After several of Trump’s business disasters and bankruptcies left lenders with enormous unpaid obligations, American bankers cut Trump off. That cutoff is not speculation, and Don Junior has been widely quoted for a speech in which he bragged that the Trump Organization no longer needed homegrown lenders, because Russia was supplying all the cash they needed.

Salon quoted journalist and tax expert David Cay Johnston, who has covered Trump for years.

“Deutsche Bank, in making these loans, had to have someone in the background that was guaranteeing these loans. It would be surprising if they’re actually co-signers,” Cay Johnston said in response to the news.  “That would be absolutely astonishing, and I would think mandate his removal from office.”

The only thing Deutsche Bank has confirmed (to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals) is that the bank has possession of the tax returns of at least one member of President Donald Trump’s family.

A lawyer for Trump has now threatened to sue O’Donnell for “false and defamatory” statements. It would be extremely difficult to win such a suit, since O’Donnell himself cautioned that his bombshell report was based upon information provided by a single source–a person who works with Deutsche Bank–and that he had been unable to verify it. (He may have breached journalistic ethics by reporting an unverified accusation–spreading gossip, essentially– but proving intentional defamation would be extremely difficult given his transparency about the source and his inability to confirm that source’s account.)

That said, the information seems so accurate, because it’s so incredibly plausible. Russian oligarch guarantors or co-signers would explain a number of otherwise inexplicable things…

It’s VERY interesting…if true.

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Minimum Wage Again

It has long been a GOP article of faith that raising the minimum wage is a recipe for disaster–that businesses will fire some workers in order to raise the pay of others, and that the increased wages will be passed along to consumers and that the higher prices will depress demand.

That last warning has been especially shrill when the effort to raise the minimum wage has focused upon food service workers. (Five cents more for a McDonald’s hamburger? No one will buy it!)

It doesn’t matter that in places that have ignored the naysayers and raised the minimum wage, these disasters have failed to materialize– ideology ignores evidence. (There’s an analogy between the hysteria over raising the minimum wage and the equally fervent belief that cutting taxes on rich people will generate job growth, despite the fact that it has never, ever happened.)

A recent article from Business Insider–not one of those “socialist” publications–confirms the hollowness of these economic chestnuts.

New York City restaurant workers saw their pay increase by 20% after a $15 minimum-wage hike, and a new report says business is booming despite warnings that the boost would devastate the city’s restaurant industry.

As New York raised the minimum wage to $15 this year from $7.25 in 2013, its restaurant industry outperformed the rest of the US in job growth and expansion, a new study found.

The study, by researchers from the New School and the New York think tank National Employment Law Project, found no negative employment effects of the city increasing its minimum wage to $15.

The article noted that numerous restaurant workers saw a pay increase of 20% to 28% as a result of the raise in the minimum wage, and that it represented the largest increase for  low-wage workers since the 1960s. New York’s decision to raise the minimum wage had been met with considerable skepticism and warnings of dire consequences.

Across the US, the restaurant industry has the most to lose from a $15 hike. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in 2016 the food-preparation and serving industry employed the most workers paid at or below the minimum wage, at 1.1 million. Sales, the industry with the next-highest low-wage workforce, employed 200,000 such workers.

“New York City’s restaurant industry has flourished overall,” the study said.

Excuse me while I repeat–once again–my mantra: public policies should be based on evidence. Theories are fine–they’re even necessary–but when evidence demonstrates that a theory is flawed, the evidence should prompt revision of the theory.

Apparently, however, that’s just too painful…..

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The War On Women

Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Planned Parenthood request to delay implementation of a new Trump administration rule forbidding Title X recipients from making abortion referrals. The ruling allowed the policy to take effect while lawsuits from states, medical groups and reproductive rights advocates continue.

The following Monday, Planned Parenthood exited Title X, forfeiting millions of dollars in federal grants. Planned Parenthood serves nearly half of the approximately 4 million low-income women covered by Title X, providing free and subsidized birth control, STD  and breast cancer screenings and other health services.

There has rarely been a better illustration of why “pro life” people are anything but pro-life.

Numerous observers have pointed to the disconnect between the movement’s obsessive concern for zygotes and fetuses, on the one hand, and its utter lack of interest in the health and welfare of poor children who are already born on the other. Others have noted that activists’ zealous efforts to ban abortion aren’t accompanied by even tepid efforts to ban assault weapons. But this attack on the health of over two million poor women is an even more compelling example of the movement’s deep hypocrisy.

In order to impose a gag order on medical personnel working at family planning clinics–in order to ensure that they don’t utter the word “abortion” or tell women where they might obtain one–these “pro-lifers” are perfectly willing to deny women access to lifesaving breast cancer screenings, STD treatments and other medical services totally unconnected to abortion.

In addition, it’s hard not to notice that the “pro life” movement has moved beyond its purported emphasis on preventing abortion to an all-out effort to limit access to birth control. (Logic tells us that increased access to birth control reduces the incidence of abortion. If reducing the number of abortions was really the focus of “pro-life” efforts, you would expect these activists to be dispensing birth control pills on street corners.)

To be fair, there are undoubtedly some among these single-issue zealots who genuinely believe that a fertilized egg is equivalent to a human being, and that the rights of that fertilized egg take precedence over the rights of the human woman who carries it. I have trouble with that viewpoint, but some people–for whatever reason–really do hold it, and they are obviously entitled to do so.

However, it has become abundantly clear that a far greater percentage of those who label themselves “pro life” are actually “anti choice.” These are people (mostly men, but some women) who would deny women the personal autonomy that men in our society have always enjoyed. They fear the loss of “traditional values,” by which they mean the continued dominance of White Christian males.  If a few thousand women need to die from an undetected cancer in order to preserve their privileged status, they consider that a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.

I still recall a conversation with a partner in the law firm I joined immediately after graduation from law school. I was the first woman hired by that firm–which had over 50 lawyers at the time. The partner attributed the growing number of female law students to the (then-relatively-new) birth control pill; thanks to that pill, women were no longer hostages to reproduction. They could plan their pregnancies. Consequently, they were better able to enter and thrive in the workforce, and less dependent upon a man to support them and their (often-unplanned) children.

Both he and I thought that was a good thing.

Obviously, there are a lot of people who disagree, and who find a woman’s ability to control her own reproduction existentially threatening. If denying them access to healthcare is the only way to prevent women from exercising autonomy and controlling their own destinies, they’re more than willing to make that trade.

You can call such people many things, but “pro-life” isn’t one of them.

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Just Get Them To The Polls…

These days, good news is rare, so a recent article in The Atlantic–-one of my favorite publications–brightened my entire week.

It appears that Trump has “reshaped” American public opinion, but not in the way I  feared he would.

Recent polling shows that Donald Trump has managed to reshape American attitudes to a remarkable extent on a trio of his key issues—race, immigration, and trade.

There’s just one catch: The public is turning against Trump’s views.

The article noted Trump’s increasingly obvious racism, characterizing it as a strategic effort to firm up his base. (I’m less inclined to apply the word “strategy” to anything Trump does–I think as he gets more and more out of his depth, he becomes more unhinged and his true “character” emerges…) Whatever the impetus, however, instinctive or strategic, it isn’t working.

Quite the opposite, if survey research is to be believed.

The Reuters analysis also found that Americans were less likely to express feelings of racial anxiety this year, and they were more likely to empathize with African Americans. This was also true for white Americans and whites without a college degree, who largely backed Trump in 2016.

Among the details, the number of whites who say “America must protect and preserve its White European heritage” has sunk nine points since last August. The percentages of whites, and white Republicans, who strongly agree that “white people are currently under attack in this country” have each dropped by roughly 25 points from the same time two years ago.

The article reports that there has been a 10 percent drop in the number of Americans who espouse white identity politics since Trump entered office, and that Trump’s increasingly explicit racist rhetoric turns off voters who may express some degree of racial anxiety, but who aren’t classical bigots.

The article also notes that Trump has radicalized Democrats, especially white Democrats. By several measures, they have become more liberal on race –on some measures, more liberal than Democrats of color.

Reuters found that more Democrats say blacks are treated unfairly at work and by the police than in 2016—remarkable given how coverage of police violence toward African Americans has dropped in the past few years—while Republican attitudes have remained unchanged.

When it comes to immigration, which the article calls “Trump’s signature issue” (and which is clearly race-based),

Reuters found that white Americans are 19 percent more supportive of a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants than they were four years ago, and slightly less supportive of increased deportations. Other polls find related results. A record-high number of Americans—75 percent—said in 2018 that immigration is good for the United States. Although the Trump administration took steps last week to limit even legal immigration, the Trump presidency has seen an increase in the number of Americans who support more legal immigration—not just among Democrats, but even slightly among Republicans.

Ironically, as the article reports, although Trump has managed to force a national conversation around the issue of immigration, rather than bringing more people to his anti-immigrant views, he has convinced them he’s wrong.

And it isn’t simply his bigotry. His obvious ignorance on issues of economics and trade has also moved public opinion.

One big problem for Trump is that voters have now gotten a chance to see him implement ideas that seemed novel or at least worth a shot during the campaign, and they don’t like what they’re seeing in practice. A trade war with China might have seemed worthwhile in summer 2016, but now that there’s actually one being fought, the public is having second thoughts, and fears of a recession are growing. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday found that 64 percent of Americans think free trade is good, up from 57 in 2017, 55 in 2016, and 51 in 2015. Meanwhile, the percentage who say free trade is bad has dropped 10 points since 2017.

As reassuring as these results are, they won’t mean diddly-squat unless the people who hold anti-Trump opinions go to the polls in 2020. As I have insisted ad nauseam, the name of the electoral game is turnout, and in 2020 that is truer than ever.

Fortunately, the Atlantic article even had some encouragement on that score.

Raw polling can, admittedly, be somewhat misleading on its own. Progressives have for years lamented the gap between the fairly liberal policies that the public says it favors and those that its elected representatives actually pursue. One reason for that is not everyone votes, and those who don’t vote tend toward the left.

But the Reuters poll offers reason to believe that the shifts it documents are directly relevant to the coming election. The poll found that “people who rejected racial stereotypes were more interested in voting in the 2020 general election than those who expressed stronger levels of anti-black or anti-Hispanic biases.” That wasn’t the case in 2016, when Americans who held strong antiblack views were more politically engaged.

Again, I repeat: we shouldn’t waste time talking to voters in Trump’s base. Anyone who still supports him is clearly beyond reason. Instead, we need to get every non-racist, non-crazy person who cares about this country–especially those who took a pass in 2016– to the polls!

America’s future depends on turnout.

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