The Public Interest

One of the newsletters I get is In the Public Interest. The most recent one considered the lessons the Los Angeles fires ought to teach us. Don Cohen wrote something so compelling–and so true–that I am quoting it verbatim and at length:

The fires put into stark relief the principles that underlie our work: There are things that government must do and which only government can do. It is the public acting in the public interest.

The more than 7,500 fire fighters and emergency personnel from across the country who have been working around the clock battling these blazes are public employees. They are the ones heading toward the flames when everyone is fleeing. More than 1,000 incarcerated individuals who have volunteered to join emergency crews for 24-hour shifts for about $26 a day are also fighting the fires—our gratitude for their efforts shouldn’t dismiss the deep concerns we have about the program and policies that lead to it.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is, as its title states, a federal agency. It’s what we created that shows that we are all equally invested in handling the aftermath of emergencies, whether we live in hurricane alley, or the path of wildfires. FEMA is already helping, providing the wide range of emergency services that no private, for-profit entity can afford to do. And yet it’s been the subject of constant criticism and misinformation from the right. FEMA currently covers 75 percent of the cost of a national emergency; Project 2025 proposes reducing that to 25 percent.

And, yes, climate change is part of the reason for the severity and spread of the fire, and scrubbing the phrase from the statements of federal agencies, as conservatives have advocated, or calling it a hoax, won’t change the facts.

The fires underscore that land development and water management are not concerns that can be simply left to the market. The market maximizes profit in the shortest time frame. That is not what will build a sustainable Los Angeles of the 21st Century. The future of cities and the entire nation shouldn’t be left up to billionaires, like the one who hired private firefighters to keep his own shopping center safe, and then launched his mayoral campaign.

To say these things doesn’t “politicize” the crisis—the politics are already there. We are always in a fight for what we believe our responsibility is to one another in our communities and in society at large. That fight will get harder, no doubt, as conservatives pledge to drain government of its ability to act broadly for the common good. But we also have faith that more and more people will come to understand the importance of a government that works for us all, not just the very wealthy.

One of the saddest aspects of America’s current political divide is the widespread lack of understanding of the role–the purpose–of government.  (I used to ask my undergraduate Law and Policy students to define “government” and its purpose. Most could not do so.) 

A proper definition is critical, because political philosophy defines legitimacy as government acting in a manner consistent with its proper purposes.

There’s widespread agreement that government is supposed to prevent the strong from taking advantage of the weak, although the extent of that task is contested. Americans mostly agree, for example, that government should prevent obvious harms–theft, battery, murder, rape, etc. etc.–but that agreement dissipates when corporate activities harm smaller enterprises through monopolies or harm communities through improper disposal of toxic waste materials or other unfair commercial practices. 

There is even less agreement when it comes to government’s role in the economy. Ideally–as the cited material suggests–government is our instrument for providing services the market cannot supply or cannot supply in a cost-effective manner. We socialize those services: police and fire departments, provision of roads and bridges and street lights, etc. There are large parts of our common lives that markets are simply unsuited to serve– and situations where leaving a service to the market is unnecessarily expensive and wildly unfair (health) or undermines national cohesion and civic unity (education). 

The basic economic questions all societies must answer are: what sorts of tasks should be done collectively, by the mechanism called government, and which tasks are better left to the marketplace? How much authority should government have to monitor and regulate that marketplace, and for what purposes?

These days, to the dismay of citizens and political scientists alike, we must grapple instead with a different question: what should citizens do when those in power refuse to debate those questions in good faith, and simply use government to empower and enrich themselves?

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Republican Lemmings

Lemmings are small rodents living in the Northern Hemisphere, primarily in the Arctic. They are known for large migrations– but mostly for a myth of their mass suicides, as large numbers follow their leaders off cliffs.

Today’s GOP is filled with the human variety of lemmings. We saw them emerge during the pandemic, as anti-science hysteria led to the rejection of mask wearing and vaccination.  Even after the pandemic, vaccination rates have continued to fall–and that decline has followed a partisan pattern.

There are two ways people can avoid vaccination. Families can get a religious or medical exemption from state laws requiring childhood vaccinations in order to send their children to public school. Or adults can simply fail to take advantage of vaccine availability. In states that voted for Donald Trump, the number of children receiving exemptions has increased.  Adult noncompliance rose in both blue and red states, but more in red states. 

Although states, not the federal government, set vaccine mandates, the incoming administration could encourage anti-vaccine sentiment and undermine state programs. Trump’s nominee RFK, Jr. would absolutely do so. He dismisses out of hand any studies that refute his beliefs. As the linked article notes,

He claims that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism, despite more than a dozen studies performed in seven countries on three continents involving thousands of children showing that it doesn’t.

He has claimed that “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.” (Childhood vaccines have prevented more than one million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations over the past three decades.) He has encouraged people not to vaccinate their babies: “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby, I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’”

When asked about the polio vaccine, Mr. Kennedy claimed that it caused an “explosion in soft tissue cancers” that killed “many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” Setting aside the fact that an “explosion in soft tissue cancers” hasn’t occurred, studies comparing children who received early batches of polio vaccines with unvaccinated children found no differences in cancer incidence. By 1979, paralytic polio was eliminated from the United States. When Mr. Kennedy says he wants vaccines to be better studied, what he really seems to be saying is he wants studies that confirm his fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs. 

The author of the article, a doctor who previously served at the FDA, explained that the panel authorizing vaccines is composed of actual “skeptics,” who require significant evidence of efficacy before approving them.

Vaccine skepticism is baked into the systems with which health experts monitor vaccines after they’re authorized for use. We know that clinical trials are not enough; we need to constantly ask questions and examine new data. That’s why we have surveillance systems that can detect problems too rare to be picked up in clinical trials. 

That ongoing surveillance allowed the FDA to discover that the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine caused dangerous clotting in about one in 250,000 people.

Detecting such risks allows us to weigh these rare harms against the enormous benefits of these vaccines.

Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, has claimed that the Covid-19 vaccines, which have saved the lives of at least three million Americans, are “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Kennedy routinely misrepresents studies he cites and ignores data that doesn’t support his conclusions. And this is the person that Donald Trump has nominated to be Secretary of Health, presumably as a reward for Kennedy’s political support. 

In one sense, the nomination of JFK, Jr. is no different from Trump’s other choices, none of which have been even slightly based on the suitability of the nominee. Trump rather obviously sees these positions as rewards for loyalty–I rather doubt the notion of qualification has ever occurred to him. (After all, he himself is massively unqualified for the Presidency.–or for that matter, any responsible position.)

All of which brings us back to the issue of those Republican lemmings. At this point, it is more likely than not that this parade of clowns, misfits and ideologues will be confirmed by a Senate controlled by Republican invertebrates who value their own immediate political prospects far–far–above concerns for government competence and/or the common good. (And yes, Indiana’s Todd Young is one of them.)

 It isn’t very nice to point this out, but people who take Kennedy’s anti-vaccine delusions seriously are overwhelmingly MAGA crazies and Christian Nationalists, so–on the bright side– we might see a decline in the number who will survive to vote for GOP troglodytes. 

Meanwhile, sane Americans will watch as the lemmings go over the cliff. Unfortunately, they’ll take rational governance with them.

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Buying Political Office

Americans are about to experience the political results of our new Gilded Age. After some forty plus years of growing financial inequality–where the gap between the rich and the rest has steadily grown–we have inaugurated a government by and for the obscenely rich.

As Heather Cox Richardson recently noted, Elon Musk is expected to have an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Musk–who benefits from government contracts worth billions of dollars–will be in an office adjacent to the White House. (Whatever happened to that old-fashioned notion about the necessity of avoiding conflicts of interest?)

It isn’t just Musk. Other members of the world’s richest men’s club flanked Musk on the dais at Trump’s inauguration. They reportedly included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, who are worth almost a trillion dollars combined, were joined by other obscenely rich panderers: the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman; the CEO of the social media platform TikTok, Shou Zi Chew; and the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai.

During his confirmation hearing, the billionaire nominee Trump has chosen for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, outlined his plans to enrich the rich (and screw over the poor) during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, telling committee members that extending Trump’s tax cuts for the rich would be his highest priority.

Trump has assembled a cabinet notable for the wealth of his nominees (and equally notable for their lack of relevant knowledge and experience), but as the Brookings Institution has recently pointed out, American governance by the rich rather than the competent has grown significantly at all levels.

The linked study documented three major conclusions, of which only the last is at all comforting:

Altogether, across four election cycles from 2018 to 2024 there were 183 candidates who contributed more than $1 million of personal money to their campaigns.

Republicans constituted 68% of all candidates contributing more than a million to their campaigns.

Most rich people who spend personal money on campaigns lose.

The study’s introductory paragraph asked the pertinent question.

The richest man in the world now sits close to the President elect and uses his powerful social media platform, X, to opine on everything from daylight savings time to visas for skilled workers. As the new administration takes shape, the number of multi-millionaires and billionaires moving to Washington grows. While this is good for Washington area real estate agents, is it good for democracy? Will someone who earns $14 million per day be able to appreciate how important $1,976.00 (the average monthly social security payment) is to millions of Americans?

The obvious answer to the question posed by that last sentence is no. The Brookings article cited a previous study that looked at the political priorities of the rich.

In 2013, three political scientists studied the political views of over 100 rich Americans, whose median wealth was $7,500,000.00. They found large differences between the policy preferences of the rich compared to average Americans. 

Ya think?

Every so often, I cite a musical lyric that seems (at least to me) to illuminate a current political issue. Here’s one: the flower girl in My Fair Lady sings that all she wants is a “room somewhere, far away from the cold night air”–somewhere where she can have “warm hands, warm face, warm feet.” There are far too many Americans who fall into that category–people struggling every day to find lodging or keep the heat on and the car running and the baby fed.

I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires have absolutely no understanding of those struggles, no comprehension of the choices facing millions of America’s working poor–and rather clearly, no sympathy for them.

There are certainly wealthy individuals who do understand that their own ability to thrive depends upon a government that supports an economically stable middle class–who understand that job creation depends upon the existence of a public with enough disposable income to buy their widgets, rather than on the whim of an “entrepreneur” waving a magic wand. Those individuals didn’t share the dias with the fat-cat, self-satisfied billionaires who will have effective control of America’s government and who are interested only in amassing greater wealth and power. Trump’s billionaire toadies have evidenced zero understanding of the purpose of government and no interest whatsoever in the notion of the common good. 

President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, and he was right. President Biden warned us about the coming oligarchy, and he was also right.

Between the White Christian Nationalists and the oligarchs, the next few years will be…challenging. To say the least. 

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White Sheets And Red Hats

There is no longer any way to pretend that the MAGA movement is not all about racism. The only difference between Trump and a Grand Dragon is that the white sheet has been exchanged for a red hat. (KKK members at least understood that they should hide their faces; MAGA’s racists are “out and proud.”)

Spineless fellow-travelers in the GOP can no longer pretend that clear signs of bigotry are being “misinterpreted”– that Nazi salutes are just signs of exuberance. Trump has removed any ambiguity those quislings might hide behind.

Trump’s Executive orders attacked diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, ordered the Justice Department to stop civil rights prosecutions already in progress and to cease any investigations of racist discrimination currently underway. As part of that purge of diversity programs, he ordered federal workers to report colleagues who keep such programs alive and  threatened those who don’t comply. In a related order, Trump revoked a 60-year-old rule banning discrimination at federal contractors.

Even his assault on the Department of Education is motivated by the fact that it investigates civil rights complaints at K-12 schools and higher education institutions.

Robert Hubbell has noted a particularly heartless coda to Trump’s effort to make bigotry great again:

Trump expanded “DEI” to include an “A” (for “accessibility”)—apparently indicating an attempt to root out efforts to expand the representation of disabled individuals protected by the Americans with Disability Act (ADA). See Mother Jones, Trump Shuts Down Diversity Programs Across Government.

The New York Times has reported that Trump’s Justice Department has not only halted new civil rights investigations, but has also signaled that it might back out of agreements with local police departments to address misconduct–sending a clear message that police officers accused of unnecessary violence against minority citizens are unlikely to face any penalties.

Hubbell also reported the contents of chilling internal memos:

Internal memos at federal agencies announced the immediate abolition of “DEIA” in ominous language that suggested a police state. The memos said,

The Department [AGENCY” NAME] is taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders titled Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions.

These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.

We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language. If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024, to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to [omitted email address] within 10 days.

There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.

Worse, the email threatens federal employees with punishment if they fail to “snitch” on other federal workers who fail to comply with vague, retrospective regulations designed to sniff out alleged “underground efforts” to promote diversity. The analog to Nazi Germany is direct. No similes or metaphors are needed. The memo is a complete one-to-one mapping onto the tactics of Hitler’s SS.

Republican assaults on the very concept of fairness and non-discrimination aren’t limited to the federal government. Here in deep-Red Indiana (former headquarters of the KKK), a bill working its way through the General Assembly would ban diversity, equity and inclusion in state agencies, educational institutions and any organization that receives money from the state.

Under SB 235, DEI’s definition includes social justice, systemic oppression and antiracism. And it bans taking positions on those issues. It also limits training related to race, sex, color, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation. And it bans “influencing the composition” of employees related to race, sex, color or ethnicity.

Give the GOP credit for “coming out.” MAGA has always been racist and White Christian Nationalist to the core– an effort to reclaim social and legal dominance for straight White Christian males. Pundits who attribute Trump’s (slim) electoral victory to Democratic messaging or Biden policies simply refuse to see the GOP elephant in the room: Kamala Harris was defeated by the deeply-rooted racism and misogyny of far too many American voters.

There is no longer any intellectually honest way to avoid recognizing and naming what really motivates these people. And no way for those of us who don’t share those hatreds to escape the clear moral imperative to resist, speak truth to power, and call MAGA what it so obviously is. 

We are either on the side of Episcopal Bishop Budde or the Red Hats. There is no middle ground.

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House Bill 1136

The assault on democracy and rationality isn’t just at the federal level.

At the start of every session, the culture warriors in Indiana’s terrible legislature introduce all kinds of wacky and extreme bills. Some of them are so wacky and so extreme that they go no farther. They don’t even get committee hearings.

Of course, lots of perfectly reasonable measures–even obviously excellent ones, if sponsored by Democrats–also go to the  bill graveyard.

Media folks who cover the statehouse have learned not to take bills seriously until there are indications that they have some chance of actually passing. That should be our reaction to House Bill 1136, which has received a good deal of publicity and generated significant anguished pushback. H.B. 1136 provides that, if more than 50% of students who live within a school corporation’s boundaries are enrolled in a school that isn’t operated by that school corporation, “the school corporation must be dissolved and all public schools of the school corporation must be transitioned to operating as charter schools.” The bill establishes a new governing board and procedures for dissolving and reorganizing the school corporation.

I tend to lump this bit of legislative nastiness (it’s clearly aimed at urban schools that serve minority and low-income kids) in with the other looney-tune measures that will go to the big bill cemetery in the sky, but it does trigger several of my pet peeves, the most “peevish” of which is lawmakers’ persistent war on public education.

Before I focus on recent evidence bolstering my argument that vouchers are simply a way to evade the First Amendment and allow legislators to send tax dollars to religious schools, I need to focus on a preliminary pet peeve: the public discourse that makes no distinction between charter schools and the private schools that accept vouchers. 

Charter schools are public schools. They operate under restrictions that don’t apply to private schools (like the Constitution). Overall–depending upon their sponsorship and management–their performance has been positive. That’s overall, but–just as with traditional public schools–there are exceptions. (Most of the problems, according to what I’ve read, have come from charters managed by private, for-profit companies.)

Voucher-accepting private schools are another matter entirely, as I have repeatedly documented.

Pro Publica recently added to the huge volume of data on that subject.

In an article titled “On a Mission From God: Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools,” the report focused on the religious underpinnings–and successes–of the voucher movement. The article highlighted three conclusions.

The Ohio Model: Rarely seen letters show how the voucher movement started in the 1990s as a concealed effort to finance urban parochial schools and expanded to a much broader push.

Helping the Affluent: An initiative promoted as a civil rights cause — helping poor kids — is increasingly funneling money to families who already easily afford private school tuition.

The Voucher Deficit: Expanding programs threaten funding for public schools and put pressure on state budgets, as many religious-based schools enjoy new largesse.

I really urge you to click through and read the entire hair-raising report, which documents the real purposes of educational vouchers: they are tools meant to enrich religious institutions and the well-to-do, and undermine separation of church and state.

The risks of universal vouchers are quickly coming to light. An initiative that was promoted for years as a civil ­rights cause — helping poor kids in troubled schools — is threatening to become a nationwide money grab. Many private schools are raising tuition rates to take advantage of the new funding, and new schools are being founded to capitalize on it. With private schools urging all their students’ families to apply, the money is flowing mostly to parents who are already able to afford tuition and to kids who are already enrolled in private schools. When vouchers do draw students away from public districts, they threaten to exacerbate declining enrollment, forcing underpopulated schools to close. More immediately, the cost of the programs is soaring, putting pressure on public school finances even as private schools prosper. In Arizona, voucher expenditures are hundreds of millions of dollars more than predicted, leaving an enormous shortfall in the state budget. States that provide funds to families for homeschooling or education-related expenses are contending with reports that the money is being used to cover such unusual purchases as kayaks, video game consoles and horseback-­riding lessons.

Strategists behind this effort started with targeted programs that placed needy kids in parochial schools. Then they fought to expand the benefits to far richer families — “a decadeslong effort by a network of politicians, church officials and activists, all united by a conviction that the separation of church and state is illegitimate.” 

So much for that pesky Constitution…

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