A jaundiced look at the world we live in.
As a visual person who prefers text, I find some tables and charts more confusing than helpful.
These, however, are illuminating.
If you want to understand how money affects our political system, these charts tell the story–no propaganda, no spin, no explaining away the data. As Sgt. Friday used to say, just the facts, ma’am.
CommentsThese days, “us versus them” seems to describe the whole world: Israel versus Gaza, ISIS versus non-Muslims, cops versus African-Americans, theocrats versus secular folks, Republicans versus Democrats… Choose your team–there are plenty of them.
When I wonder why Americans can’t “just get along,” as Rodney King memorably put it, I think back to a wonderful rant published by the editors of The Stranger, an alternative newspaper published in Seattle, in the wake of the 2004 elections. Looking at the red and blue of the election map, they noted that cities were bright blue dots in even the reddest states–that urban areas comprised an “urban archipelago” with political values and attitudes vastly different from those of rural America.
Researchers have confirmed their observation: virtually every major city (100,000 plus) in the United States of America has a political culture starkly different from that of the less populous areas surrounding it.
As New York Times columnist Gail Collins noted a couple of years ago, people living in densely populated urban areas understand the need for government–paved roads and public safety and garbage collection. That farmer out at the end of the gravel road who rarely gets a visitor (and isn’t worth the effort of the burglar), doesn’t see much reason to pay taxes.
Living with lots of people who are different from you shapes a certain worldview, an identifiably urban value structure. As the authors of the Urban Archipeligo wrote in that seminal essay,
Look around you, urbanite, at the multiplicity of cultures, ethnicities, and tribes that are smashed together in every urban center…: We’re for that. We’re for pluralism of thought, race, and identity. We’re for a freedom of religion that includes the freedom from religion–not as some crazy aberration, but as an equally valid approach to life. We are for the right to choose one’s own sexual and recreational behavior, to control one’s own body and what one puts inside it. We are for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…..
Unlike the people who flee from cities in search of a life free from disagreement and dark skin, we are for contentiousness, discourse, and the heightened understanding of life that grows from having to accommodate opposing viewpoints. We’re for opposition…. Republicans have succeeded in making the word “liberal”–which literally means “free from bigotry… favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded”–into an epithet….
Let’s see, what else are we for? How about education? Cities are beehives of intellectual energy; students and teachers are everywhere you look, studying, teaching, thinking…. It’s time to start celebrating that, because if the reds have their way, advanced degrees will one day be awarded based on the number of Bible verses a person can recite from memory. In the city, people ask you what you’re reading. Outside the city, they ask you why you’re reading. You do the math–and you’ll have to, because non-urbanists can hardly even count their own children at this point. For too long now, we’ve caved to the non-urban wisdom that decries universities as bastions of elitism and snobbery. Guess what: That’s why we should embrace them. Outside of the city, elitism and snobbery are code words for literacy and complexity. And when the oil dries up, we’re not going to be turning to priests for answers–we’ll be calling the scientists. And speaking of science: SCIENCE! That’s another thing we’re for. And reason. And history.
Is this stark “we versus they” picture fair? Of course not. There are plenty of thoughtful and measured inhabitants of rural precincts. That said, the inclusive culture created by the urban worldview is one of the reasons so many marginalized folks–LGBT people, Jews, atheists, artsy nonconformists– tend to migrate to cities.
The problem is, the people who live in densely populated cities have demonstrably less political voice than their country cousins; most states don’t really have “one person one vote” and the result is that rural values are vastly overrepresented. State taxes paid by city dwellers go disproportionately to rural areas, and the people who populate state legislatures have gerrymandered voting districts to keep things that way.
Representative government just isn’t very representative these days.
Until we address gerrymandering—and the efforts to suppress the votes of minority voters—the values of rural areas will continue to be over-represented, and the views of folks living in the urban archipelago will continue to be ignored by policymakers.
And that’s not good for democracy.
CommentsCan we talk?
The Chamber of Commerce has been getting a lot of grief for championing a commuter tax to be paid by folks who work in Indianapolis and reside elsewhere. But the Chamber is right.
Some folks may still picture Indiana as a patchwork of small, quaint towns and family farms, but those days are gone. Indiana’s workforce and population are increasingly metropolitan. Indiana’s growth has been and will continue to be in our urban centers.
The entire state economy depends upon a strong, thriving Indianapolis. Much as our legislators like to ignore fiscal reality, Marion County, along with the state’s other metropolitan counties, is—and has long been—a donor county. Our taxes support more rural areas. (A report published by the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute in 2010, identified the donors: in addition to Marion County, they included Lake, Allen and Vanderburgh.)
If we want to talk about “makers and takers,” Indianapolis is a maker, and rural Indiana is a taker. Big time.
Despite the GOP’s resistance to taxing most wealthy “makers,” Republicans in control of the Statehouse have continued to ensure that Indiana’s tax structure–which has historically disadvantaged the very areas that generate Hoosier jobs–will continue to bite the hand that feeds the rest of the state. The disastrous, politically-motivated decision to constitutionalize property tax caps has only made matters worse.
Here in Marion County, we are further disadvantaged by the large number of government and nonprofit institutions that pay no property tax. Add the tax caps and the exempt properties together, and we have a revenue crunch of massive proportions—one that cannot be relieved by reliance on the local income tax, or by naïve demands to “cut fat and waste.” We can all argue about the wisdom of certain expenditures (cricket, anyone?), but the amounts involved are—in the larger scheme of things—a drop in the bucket. We’ve cut fat, we’ve cut muscle, and we’re now into bone.
The foregoing are simply facts. Here’s the sermon: Government is not an irrelevant luxury. Businesses as well as individual citizens depend upon the services provided by municipalities—infrastructure, public safety, transportation, garbage collection and a myriad of other services that collectively comprise a city’s quality of life. If we want to continue receiving those services—if we don’t want to be Detroit—we have to pay for them. Taxes are not theft; they are the dues we pay for civilization. We cannot survive without them; the best we can do is ensure that government operates responsibly and that the “dues” we pay are fairly assessed.
That fairness is what has motivated the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce’s proposal for a commuter tax.
More than two hundred thousand workers commute into Indianapolis each day. They use our streets, are protected by our police and firefighters, flush toilets into our sewers, and enjoy the other elements of the quality of life our taxes have provided, but they don’t contribute to their cost. They pay their taxes to the places where they live.
Paying taxes to the county where your income is generated is hardly a new and oppressive idea. A good number of Indianapolis’ peer cities around the country have adapted to the realities of regional economies and regional workforces. The Indianapolis Chamber has studied commuter taxes extensively, issuing reports in 2002, 2006 and 2007. Its current advocacy is informed by those studies and by the experience of other cities.
Every economic analysis of the Hoosier state confirms that the health of Indiana is inextricably bound up with the health of the Indianapolis metropolitan region. Starving Indianapolis—making it impossible for even the most creative public servants to deliver the services we all depend upon (and incentivizing “smoke and mirror” solutions that give away the store)—is simply not an option.
CommentsA Facebook friend shared this statement from Indiana congress-critter Todd Rokita:
After many emails, phone calls and letters, as well as meetings with all involved, I’m pleased to announce a long-term solution to low-flow situations along the Tippecanoe River: Late last week, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service agreed that NIPSCO, operator of Oakdale Dam, should allow the river to flow more naturally.
My office continues to work on shorter-term ways to alleviate the situation on Lake Freeman — but we find ourselves in this situation due to the Endangered Species Act, which places endangered species, including six species of mussel along the Tippecanoe, ahead of the economic interests and safety of human beings. There is no economic balancing test under the law by design.
The Senate passed it unanimously, and the House passed it 355-4, in 1973. Only one Indiana Congressman, Earl Landgrebe, opposed the law.
Given the situation on Lake Freeman today, would you support repeal of the Endangered Species Act? When I posed that question at my Monticello Town Hall last week, several people raised their hands. Others said no.
What say you?
Well, Congressman, I say that the “economic interests and safety of human beings” is rather obviously connected to the health of the environment, and that protection of the ecosphere is a rather obvious element of environmental health.
I also say that, in sane times, comparing yourself to Earl Landgrebe (most famous quote, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind”) wouldn’t be seen as a particularly helpful career move.
CommentsI haven’t blogged about the depressing situation in Ferguson, Missouri, for a number of reasons: first of all, unlike left- and rightwing partisans, all of whom are convinced they know exactly what happened, I’m not in possession of all the facts.
So what do I know?
I know that everyone in a position of authority, including the police chief, the Mayor and the Governor, has demonstrated what world-class bungling looks like. It’s hard to imagine more ham-handed and counterproductive efforts to deal with an already difficult situation.
I know that Ferguson’s population is two-thirds African-American, and that virtually all of the power structure–elected officials, police officers–are white. I also know that–at least according to press reports–turnout in the last municipal election was twelve percent. Maybe there is a reason the residents of Ferguson are not exercising their franchise, but on the surface, it is puzzling that members of the African-American community haven’t used the ballot to address their grievances.
But most of all, because I have a lot of black friends and because I used to be the Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU, I know that–Sesame Street et al to the contrary– the policeman isn’t always your friend. Most police officers are good guys, but there are far too many who use the badge and the gun to compensate for whatever demons they fight, to reassure themselves that they are superior to the people they are supposed to be protecting, and as a license to frighten and dominate people they don’t like. (A police officer who was a recent contestant on “Wheel of Fortune” described her job as “Trash Management,” because she “takes out the human trash.” That’s an attitude we can do without.)
One of the blogs I follow is “Juanita Jean: The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Parlor.” This recent post from”Juanita” helps explain the concerns and the anger, not just of African-Americans and Latinos, but of all fair-minded citizens.
True story: the first time a met a Texas Ranger, the legendary Texas lawmen not the baseball team, I was wearing a gorgeous hand loomed sarape from interior Mexico. It was one of my prize possessions because of its beauty and utility in Houston winters. The Ranger, meeting me for the first time, said to me, “Don’t you know not to wear a poncho around a Texas Ranger?” I asked why. “Because that’s what we take target practice on. Har. Har. Har.” My stomach turned. It was a life-altering moment.
That’s not funny. Not at all. And the reason it’s not funny is that there is too much truth in it. Twenty-five years later, I met the first black female Texas Ranger. I asked her if I could hug her. I didn’t tell her why but I think she saw it in my eyes. She hugged me.
I am in pain over Ferguson. We’ve fought this crap for my entire life and we still haven’t won.
I still have some fight left in me. I do.
We all need to fight–for justice, and also for forbearance. We all have preconceived notions that dictate knee-jerk responses to tragedies like Ferguson. Those preconceptions only drive us further apart, when what we really need is a narrative and definition of justice that will allow us to come together.
And really, military gear doesn’t help.
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