An Object Lesson

The most frustrating thing about Indiana’s terrible legislature is the dismissal of empirical evidence by the super-majority of GOP ideologues impervious to any facts contrary to their closely-held beliefs.

When reality conflicts with the religious fundamentlism that permeates their worldviews, Indiana citizens suffer. We are already seeing the truly horrific consequences of Indiana’s abortion ban–women suffering and dying unnecessarily, and large parts of the state becoming ob/gyn deserts. We are also seeing it in the legislative (and gubernatorial) insistence on funding religious schools at the expense of the state’s public schools, despite the amply-documented negative effects on education. (People familiar with education policy have long been aware that vouchers were intended as an Establishment Clause “work around,” not as an educational tool.)

The Republican super-majority–and Governor-elect Braun–are intent upon extending Indiana’s dreadful school voucher program despite its costs, despite the failure of vouchers to do any of the things that were initially promised, and despite the fact that voters have rejected voucher programs in every state where a vote has been allowed.

Not only has the General Assembly continued to send tax dollars to private schools that are overwhelmingly religious, that money has continued to flow with minimal oversight. A recent investigation by Pro Publica has documented what happens when tax dollars support schools while imposing virtually no rules or offering any transparency.

The article began by chronicling  the closing of the “Title of Liberty” private school. The principal informed parents that

They could transfer their children to another private or charter school, or they could put them in a microschool that the principal said she’d soon be setting up in her living room. Or there was always homeschooling. Or even public school.

These families had, until this moment, embodied Arizona’s “school choice” ideal. Many of them had been disappointed by their local public schools, which some felt were indoctrinating kids in subjects like race and sex and, of course, were lacking in religious instruction. So they’d shopped for other educational options on the free market, eventually leading them to Title of Liberty.

Arizona offers Empowerment Scholarship Accounts — a type of school voucher spreading to more than a dozen other states. ESAs give parents an average of over $7,000 a year in taxpayer funds, per child, to spend on any private school, tutoring service or other educational expense of their choice. There is little oversight, and as the article notes, no transparency.

The state never informed parents who were new to Title of Liberty and were planning to spend their voucher money there that it had previously been a charter school called ARCHES Academy — which had had its charter revoked last school year due to severe financial issues. Nor that, as a charter, it had a record of dismal academic performance, with just 13% of its students proficient in English and 0% in math in 2023.

When it was a charter (which is a type of public school), these things could be known. There was some oversight. The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools had monitored the school’s finances and academics, unanimously coming to the conclusion that it should be shut down.

Arizona does no vetting of new voucher schools. Not even if the school or the online school “provider” has already failed, or was founded yesterday, or is operating out of a strip mall or a living room or a garage, or offers just a half hour of instruction per morning. (If you’re an individual tutor in Arizona, all you need in order to register to start accepting voucher cash is a high school diploma.)

You really should click through and read the whole, depressing article.

To the best of my knowledge, Indiana’s program doesn’t pay individual tutors, but there is a similar lack of accountability. (Charter schools–which, unlike voucher schools, are public schools–are supervised and must have institutional authorizers. It’s an important difference.)

Honest folks who numbered among the original proponents of Indiana’s voucher program have conceded the failure of the program to achieve its desired results.  Michael Hicks, for example, who had been an advocate of expansive “school choice,” recently wrote that “school choice effects are smaller than almost anyone hoped or expected. Today, it’s clear that the average student in private school underperforms their public school counterparts (charter schools tend to out-perform both).”

I don’t expect Indiana’s legislature to modify its support in response to the mountains of negative evidence, just as I don’t expect them to reconsider the state’s abortion ban just because women die. Over 90% of Indiana’s vouchers go to religious schools, and supporting those schools is their actual definition of “success.”

And we wonder why educated students flee the Hoosier state…..

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Reclaiming America

In the wake of the November election, I can’t count the number of friends and family members who have declared a moratorium on political news–who have taken a “time out” in order to protect their equilibrium/sanity and avoid descending into depression.

I will admit that I have dialed back my usual immersion in the news, for the same reason. It really has been an act of self-preservation to take a vacation from the evidence that so many  Americans have dismissed the ideals of our founding, and are willing to close their eyes to threats posed to the principles that truly did make America great.

But a vacation is not a departure, and it’s time to determine how each of us can contribute to a massive uprising of people who may have different political affiliations and/or policy goals, but who agree on the importance of protecting civil liberties and participatory democracy in the face of the grifters, autocrats and racists–elected and otherwise– who are preparing to assume control of the government.

If those of you reading this are like me, your inbox has been filling up with notices from political and nonprofit organizations, both local and national, outlining their preparations for sustained activism in the face of those threats. One example–Democracy 2025–lists 280+ member organizations, and over 800 Lawyers, advocates, and experts already engaged in the work.

Despite claims, no President or their allies can just snap their fingers to implement an anti-democratic vision. Our laws and Constitution provide real protections and tools through the courts and in our communities to stop abuses of power and harms to people. Still, these threats are real, so we’re prepared to confront them.

Learn more about the threats we’ve identified, and check back often as we release additional analysis, tracking, and tools to respond.

I’ve received dozens of other, similar announcements, although none with as extensive a list of participants.

Local organizations–including numerous bipartisan and nonpartisan ones– are also gearing up to defend fundamental constitutional values, recognizing that what we are facing is not a partisan political confrontation, but a civic, social and indisputably moral conflict. We can go back to arguing about politics and policy when we have restored the rule of law and respect for time-honored democratic norms.

As Mark Twain once wrote: Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

A group of local organizations that define patriotism as Twain did is planning a rally at University Park, in downtown Indianapolis, on January 20th–the same day as the Inauguration and also, coincidentally, Martin Luther King, Jr. day. The rally is intended to reaffirm attendees’ commitment to King’s vision and opposition to the restoration of White Nationalism and patriarchy. There will be uplifting music, readings that remind us of America’s historical aspirations, and messages from clergy of different faith traditions. (Yours truly will also participate in the program.)

We will pledge allegiance to the America we love and believe in–a generous and welcoming country devoted to liberty, inclusion and equal civic participation.

The rally– titled Reclaim, Rebuild and Resist– will begin at 10:00 a.m and end at noon. It is intended to demonstrate a firm and unyielding commitment to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and espoused by Dr. King—to reaffirm our support for the original American motto: e pluribus unum (out of the many, one), and our concerns for the threats posed by members of the incoming state and federal administrations to the values of inclusion, equality and the rule of law.

We will pledge to reclaim the visions of Dr. King and other social justice warriors, to help in efforts to rebuild and reinforce America’s democratic institutions, and resist attacks on foundational American values from any and all sources.

If you live in central Indiana, I hope you will attend. And bring your friends and families.

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And So It Begins…..

As predicted, it’s beginning. “It” is the regulatory dismantling that became inevitable when our rogue Supreme Court overruled “Chevron deference” and held that judges, rather than subject-matter experts, should decide regulatory policies.

A court has now struck down Net Neutrality.

If you are unfamiliar with this policy, or unsure why it matters, Vox had a comprehensive explanation back in 2016, when the Trump administration attacked it. Basically, Net Neutrality prohibits Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from discriminating among users.

Trump’s prior assault on Internet equality was just one of his efforts to make America “great” for the powerful and wealthy. Now, Trump’s remade Court has super-charged the fight against the government’s ability to impose fair “rules of the road.”

As the New York Times reported,

A federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s landmark net neutrality rules on Thursday, ending a nearly two-decade effort to regulate broadband internet providers as utilities.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, said the F.C.C. lacked the authority to reinstate rules that prevented broadband providers from slowing or blocking access to internet content. In its opinion, a three-judge panel pointed to a Supreme Court decision in June, known as Loper Bright, that overturned a 1984 legal precedent that gave deference to government agencies on regulations….

The F.C.C. had voted in April to restore net neutrality regulations, which expand government oversight of broadband providers and aim to protect consumer access to the internet. The regulations were first put in place nearly a decade ago under the Obama administration and were aimed at preventing internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast from blocking or degrading the delivery of services from competitors like Netflix and YouTube. The rules were repealed under President-elect Donald J. Trump in his first administration.

I have previously explained why the Loper Bright decision was so wrongheaded–and another stunning departure from longstanding precedent.

Robert Hubbell has addressed the ruling with his usual common sense explanation.

One of the major controversies of the Court’s 2024 term was the termination of the Chevron doctrine that afforded deference to federal experts charged with rulemaking pursuant to congressional regulation. The reactionary majority on the Supreme Court concluded that federal judges—with crushing caseloads—are better equipped to make discretionary policy judgments about rules authorized by Congress to regulate industries as varied and complex as nuclear energy, general aviation, drug testing, coal mine safety, and deep-water oil drilling. See Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo,

In short, the Roberts’ Court substituted itself for tens of thousands of subject-matter experts with hundreds of thousands of years of experience regulating complex industries.

The first significant casualty of the Court’s hubris in Loper Bright was the “net neutrality” doctrine. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit overruled the FCC’s interpretation of whether broadband internet service is “an information service” or a “telecommunications service for purposes of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.” 

Hubbell goes on to quote Chris Geidner’s Substack.

In the relatively brief, 26-page decision, [Judge] Griffin declared that three judges sitting on an appeals court representing four states in the middle of the country were better suited to decide what a law in place since the mid-1990s means than the experts or political appointees at the FCC.

Instead of the executive branch issuing its interpretation, subject to electoral constraints and judicial review (and with the benefit of those subject experts on the agency’s staff), a man who has been a judge since the 1980s wrote the Sixth Circuit’s opinion deciding the matter on Thursday . . . .

Welcome to the brave new world of federal judges overruling experts charged with rulemaking by Congress.

As I have previously explained, Chevron deference was a well-considered judicial doctrine that had been applied for 40 years in over 18,000 decisions. It applied to the multiple situations in which Congress sends “ambiguous” directions to executive agencies staffed with people who are experts in the particular area. That ambiguity is intentional and necessary; Congress isn’t equipped to determine the proper levels of contaminants in water or to identify carcinogenic chemicals–and even if such specifics were part of the legislation, they would be incredibly difficult to monitor and/or update as technical knowledge advances.

Under Chevron, technocrats didn’t have the last word–if a plaintiff could show that a regulation was unreasonable, courts could and did overrule it. The rule simply recognized the complexity of the world we inhabit–and the importance of specialized expertise–an importance this arrogant Court dismisses.

As Tom Nichols has amply documented, in the age of MAGA, education, knowledge and expertise have become unacceptably “woke”–and certainly not entitled to respect.

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Defunding The Police

I’m on record describing the slogan “Defund the Police” as one of the all-time stupidest political phrases ever. Not the actual intent of the proponents, which was more than defensible; as I understand it, it was an effort to limit police activity to a focus on actual crime by creating specialized “helpers” to respond to non-criminal episodes like mental health crises. But the slogan not only failed to convey that intent, it screamed support for lawlessness and a mindless anti-police–even “pro crime”– bias.

After all, sneered Republicans, who–other than those who want to evade the rules– would be interested in hobbling law enforcement?

An excellent question, with a not-surprising answer: the obscenely rich plutocrats who–despite MAGA illusions–are really in charge of the contemporary GOP. Following the fiasco triggered by co-President Musk when he torpedoed a bipartisan bill to keep the government open, The New Republic reported on a true “defunding” of authority that has received far too little publicity:

During last week’s negotiations to avert a government shutdown, Congress quietly slashed $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service.

Republicans have long targeted the tax agency, and their cuts will hurt its efforts to go after rich tax evaders and improve the IRS’s functionality. It’s their second successful cut from President Biden’s $80 billion funding boost to the agency in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, as the GOP took away an earlier $20 billion in a 2023 budget deal.

The latest cuts to the IRS will come automatically thanks to the 2023 deal, as the language was repeated in last week’s bill. The Biden administration said the cuts would end up adding $140 billion to the national debt, as they hurt the tax agency’s ability to audit big corporations and the wealthy.

This bit of legislative game-playing shines a corrective light on two of the most egregious lies told by Republicans: that the GOP is a fiscally responsible political party opposed to increasing government debt; and that it is the party of “law and order.”

When Republicans pontificate about excessive government spending, what they are really opposing is anything approaching fair and adequate taxation of the very rich. Deficits, after all, occur when income is insufficient to fund all expenditures. Constant giveaways in the form of tax cuts awarded to the wealthy Americans who disproportionately belong to the GOP increase deficits; the GOP’s “solution” isn’t to raise taxes on the rich; it’s to cut “government waste”–defined as programs that help low and middle-class Americans.

Even under the current tax laws that favor the obscenely rich, however, tax “avoidance” strategies (i.e. cheating) employed by those wealthy Americans allows them to evade paying significant portions of what they owe. Their success in evading payment has been largely due to the (intentional) under-resourcing of the Internal Revenue Service.

The Biden administration addressed the obvious problem by budgeting adequate funds for the agency–which led to action by the GOP that can only be described as “defunding the police.” Depriving the agency of funds to audit tax dodgers can only be attributed to one purpose: allowing rich scofflaws to cheat successfully. There is no other conceivable reason.

The cuts mean that the IRS will conduct 400 fewer major business audits each year, and 1,200 fewer audits of rich individuals. Customer services for taxpayers will also be hurt. According to an agency spokesperson, by 2026, the IRS will only have the resources to answer two of every 10 phone calls to its helplines, and wait times will increase to an average of 28 minutes.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s boost to the tax agency helped relieve a long backlog of tax filings, and created a well-liked free tax filing pilot program. All of that is on the chopping block now, fitting in with Donald Trump and Republicans’ plans to weaken the IRS. The president-elect plans to appoint anti-tax extremist Billy Long to take over the agency next year, who repeatedly tried to abolish the IRS as a member of Congress.

These cuts combined with Long’s planned appointment mean that tax season next year will almost certainly result in headaches for the average taxpayer and windfalls for the wealthy and powerful. A ballooning national debt is also on the horizon. The question is whether Trump and the GOP will be able to get away with all of it.

The reason the “Defund the Police” slogan was so idiotic was that it sounded like a plea to protect transgressors, even though that wasn’t what was meant. Defunding the IRS not only sounds like protecting criminals, it has absolutely no other purpose.

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The Walmart Effect

I’ve written before about Walmart-as-an-object lesson. The last time I looked, the company was averaging profits of $15.5 billion dollars annually, the Walton family’s net worth was over $129 billion dollars, and the company was still declining to pay employees a living wage. Instead, it relies on taxpayer dollars to make up the difference between its workers’ paychecks and workers’ cost of living.

After all, when an employee must rely on food stamps or other safety-net benefits, taxpayers are paying a portion of that employee’s wages.

Walmart (including Sam’s Club) is the largest private employer in the country–and one of the largest recipients of corporate welfare. (Walmart employees receive an estimated $6.2 billion dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies each year.)

Money not paid out in salary, of course, goes directly to the bottom line, so we taxpayers are also funding shareholders’ profits. 

All this is, as they say, old news–along with the recognition that Walmarts located on the outskirts of small towns have emptied out the retail centers of those communities.

Recently, however, research has added another layer to what I’ve come to see as the Walmart scam.

No corporation looms as large over the American economy as Walmart. It is both the country’s biggest private employer, known for low pay, and its biggest retailer, known for low prices. In that sense, its dominance represents the triumph of an idea that has guided much of American policy making over the past half century: that cheap consumer prices are the paramount metric of economic health, more important even than low unemployment and high wages. Indeed, Walmart’s many defenders argue that the company is a boon to poor and middle-class families, who save thousands of dollars every year shopping there.

Two new research papers challenge that view. Using creative new methods, they find that the costs Walmart imposes in the form of not only lower earnings but also higher unemployment in the wider community outweigh the savings it provides for shoppers. On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all. Sometimes consumer prices are an incomplete, even misleading, signal of economic well-being.

As the article notes, it’s relatively simply to calculate cost savings for consumers, but those cost savings don’t represent a company’s total effect on a community.  When a new Walmart opens, consumers change their shopping habits, workers switch jobs, and competitors shift their strategies–or often, close. 

One research project found that In the 10 years after a Walmart Supercenter opened in a  community, “the average household in that community experienced a 6 percent decline in yearly income—equivalent to about $5,000 a year in 2024 dollars—compared with households that didn’t have a Walmart open near them. Low-income, young, and less-educated workers suffered the largest losses.”

In theory, however, those people could still be better off if the money that they saved by shopping at Walmart was greater than the hit to their incomes. According to a 2005 study commissioned by Walmart itself, for example, the store saves households an average of $3,100 a year in 2024 dollars. Many economists think that estimate is generous (which isn’t surprising, given who funded the study), but even if it were accurate, Parolin and his co-authors find that the savings would be dwarfed by the lost income. They calculate that poverty increases by about 8 percent in places where a Walmart opens relative to places without one even when factoring in the most optimistic cost-savings scenarios.

A second study found that the losses weren’t limited to workers in the retail sector. They affected every sector from manufacturing to agriculture. But why would this be?

When Walmart comes to town, it uses its low prices to undercut competitors and become the dominant player in a given area, forcing local mom-and-pop grocers and regional chains to slash their costs or go out of business altogether. As a result, the local farmers, bakers, and manufacturers that once sold their goods to those now-vanished retailers are gradually replaced by Walmart’s array of national and international suppliers. (By some estimates, the company has historically sourced 60 to 80 percent of its goods from China alone.) As a result, Wiltshire finds, five years after Walmart enters a given county, total employment falls by about 3 percent, with most of the decline concentrated in “goods-producing establishments.”

I wonder what will happen when Trump’s China tariffs force Walmart to raise prices…

For now, Walmart is a monopsony— a company that can pay low wages because workers have few alternatives. This helps explain why Walmart pays lower wages than competitors like Target and Costco.

In a properly functioning capitalist system, we taxpayers wouldn’t be subsidizing monopsonies.

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