Parity Would Be Nice….

A friend recently sent me some figures that put the rhetoric about the 1% and the 99% into rather stark perspective.

Big business is once again doing well. Among the nation’s top 500 companies, corporate profits in 2013 averaged $41,249 per employee. That was 38 percent higher than the profit level in 2008, so the Great Recession is evidently over–at least, for those enterprises. Those who run the companies are also doing nicely, thank you very much: CEOs at companies listed in the S&P 500 took home paychecks that were 331 times the pay of the average American worker last year — and 774 times the take-home of minimum-wage workers.

If the minimum wage had just kept pace with income gains enjoyed by the top 1% since 1968–that is, if there had simply been parity in the rate of increase–minimum-wage workers would now be making $31.45 per hour.

What was that old economic premise/promise? A rising tide lifts all boats?

Evidently, the tide has been very selective….

Comments

Chutzpah, Modern Edition

Chutzpah is a yiddish word meaning gall or nerve–but to the nth degree. Remember this oldie? “Question: what’s an example of chutzpah? Answer: a man kills his mother and father, then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.”

The Kansas legislature has updated the concept.

After Kansas courts ordered the state legislature to provide more funding for K-12 education, the legislature passed and sent to the governor a bill (HB 2338) that provides as follows:

1)      It allocates $2 million additional funding for the Kansas judiciary for the upcoming fiscal year;

2)     It increases various court fees;

3)      It strips the Kansas Supreme Court of the power to control local court budgets, personnel systems, and manage other administrative costs;

4)      It strips the Kansas Supreme Court of its existing power to designate local Chief Judges;

5)      And–ta da!– the icing on the chutzpah cake: it provides that if the Court strikes down any of these provisions as unconstitutional, the entire bill fails (including and most especially the extra funding).

File under “we’ll show you!”

The Chief Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court has pointed out that this bill is a direct assault on judicial independence–a major element of our constitutional system.

How much would you like to bet that the lawmakers who passed this measure carry small copies of the Constitution in their pockets, wear flag pins, and piously proclaim their devotion to “original intent”?

Assaulting separation of powers, the very basis of our constitutional architecture, while proclaiming your devotion to the nation’s charter–that’s chutzpah!

Comments

Connecting the Dots

It’s time to say goodby and good riddance to the month of April–the “cruelest” month, presumably because federal taxes are due. And let’s face it, no one likes taxes.

And every year,  the avalanche of anti-tax articles is predictable as April showers.

Over at The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn makes an important point: people resent paying taxes when they don’t see what that money is buying. I’ve made that same argument in the local context, and it is actually easier to see what our local money buys: police and fire protection, garbage collection, parks, schools and the like. Those local public goods are more visible than the goods our federal taxes purchase.

That payroll tax taken out of everybody’s check? It’s buying you Medicare and Social Security, which means a more secure retirement free of crippling medical bills. Your federal income tax? Its effects are a lot more diffuse. But chances are pretty good that you’ve already used some infrastructure today—whether it was a road or railway you took to work, or maybe the information technology connections you’re using to read this article. Federal, state, and local taxes helped pay for that. Is your water and air clean? Are you safe from threats, domestic and foreign? Then you’re getting something valuable from the Environment Protection Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Defense. Your tax dollars paid for those, too.

Sometimes, of course, your tax dollars pay for supports and services you won’t use. And you might resent that. But even taxes that pay for someone else’s benefits can benefit you. Why does the U.S. not have the massive underclass that characterizes many third-world countries—or the incipient danger of violent upheaval that accompanies it? The safety net your taxes purchased, tattered as it is, buys a degree of social harmony, too.

We can legitimately argue about lawmakers’ priorities. We can–and should–monitor government at all levels to insure that its operations are businesslike and efficient. We can debate whether government should do some things at all.

But while we are griping and doing everything we can to reduce our bills, we should take note of Cohn’s admonition, and remember that our tax dollars buy a lot of things that most of us agree–however grudgingly– make our lives safer and better. Things we would miss.

In the private sector, we acknowledge the truth of the old adage: you get what you pay for. Somehow, we ignore that homely truth when it comes to taxes.

Comments

The Bundy Bunch

I haven’t posted about the bizarre episode that Jon Stewart aptly dubbed “Apocalypse Cow,” because–to be candid–I’ve had a huge problem understanding why anyone would rush to the defense of a guy whose claim to fame is that he doesn’t pay his bills.

The facts aren’t really in dispute: when Bureau of Land Management rangers attempted to enforce a court order to confiscate cattle owned by Cliven Bundy, an assortment of militiamen, “patriots” and assorted kooks–all armed–came to his defense. The government, fearing another Waco, temporarily retreated. This bit of adult restraint was celebrated by Bundy’s ragtag army as a great victory.

Bundy has been illegally grazing his herd on public land since 1993. He never paid the very minimal grazing fees initially imposed by President Reagan, and several courts have confirmed that he currently owes taxpayers over a million dollars.

His “defense” is that he doesn’t recognize the existence of the federal government.

What I don’t get is the Right’s wholesale embrace of this “taker.” Fox News–especially Sean Hannity–rushed to defend a guy who proudly admits to ripping off government and the taxpayers. The network that routinely excoriates “welfare cheaters” evidently saw no irony in its defense of  a brazen moocher.

It turns out that rural radicalism is nothing new. In fact, Catherine McNicol Stock wrote a book documenting a long tradition of rural extremism in the U.S.

As Stock noted, the arrest of Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing gave homegrown terrorism a face, and that face turned out to be white-skinned, blue-eyed and clean-shaven. Networks of home-grown, small-town militiamen, conspiracists, survivalists, and white supremacists who had been there all along, suddenly became visible. They are heirs to “a tradition as old as the country itself, characteristically angry and frequently violent, rendering patriotism as intolerance.”

The recurring themes in rural radical movements are familiar:  anti-federalism, white supremacy, populism, and vigilantism.

Cliven Bundy has proved himself an heir to the entirety of that radical tradition, but ironically, when he shared his overtly racist views, it suddenly became “a bridge too far” even for Fox, which prefers its racism to be (slightly) more subtle.

What I still don’t get, however, is what attracted them to this moocher in the first place.

Comments

Libertarian/Civil Libertarian

Later today, I’ll be speaking to the state Libertarian convention about the ACLU. Here’s the speech I plan to deliver–another longer-than-average read, tendered with my apologies! (After this, I fully expect to return to my much shorter “regularly scheduled broadcasting”…)

____________________________________________________

I think that one of the reasons I was asked to speak today is that—at one time or another—I have been a member of all three political parties: Republican, Libertarian and now Democratic. It really isn’t because I can’t make up my mind. I like to think it’s because I reject an approach to political identity that seems all too common among political partisans: pick a team (sort of like a sports team) and stay loyal to that team no matter what. Get your news exclusively from Fox or MSNBC, read only the blogs that pander to your “team,” ignore information that doesn’t fit nicely with your chosen identity, and of course, vote accordingly.

My changing affiliations do reflect some changes in my personal understanding of policy issues, but they are much more the result of dramatic changes in my original party—the Republican party—over my adult life. As I like to say, I didn’t leave the GOP—the party left me.

That said, no matter what my partisan affiliation, I have always been a civil libertarian—a card-carrying member of the ACLU—and I have always been an advocate of fiscally responsible government. Those positions used to be consistent with Republican philosophy and that was why I originally joined the GOP. I would argue that Republicans can no longer credibly argue that they stand for the principle of limited government.

In 1980, when I left my position as Corporation Counsel in the Hudnut Administration to run for Congress against Andy Jacobs, Jr., I was pro-choice and pro-gay rights (at least, as gay rights were understood back then), and I won a five-way Republican primary. When I lost the general election, most local pundits said I lost because I was much too conservative.

Think about that for a minute.

By 1992, when I became Executive Director of the Indiana  affiliate of the ACLU, the GOP had already undergone considerable change. That was the year that Bill Hudnut was booed on the floor of the Republican National Convention because he was prochoice—the same year Pat Buchanan made a convention speech that people quipped sounded better in the original German.

When the ACLU announced that it had hired me, NUVO, Indianapolis’ alternative newspaper, ran a huge red headline proclaiming “ICLU taken over by card-carrying Republican!” One member resigned: he said my political affiliation was inconsistent with civil liberties and the Board was insane to hire me.

I had been a “card-carrying” member of the ACLU since 1967 and a politically active Republican since 1964, and up to that point, I’d considered the two affiliations entirely consistent. In fact, I finally wrote a book because I got tired of people asking me “What’s a Republican doing at the ACLU?” It’s still in print, but today the title seems quaint: “What’s a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing at the ACLU?”

Now, I should clarify that I was a Goldwater Republican.  Back then, Goldwater Republicans believed that government power is easily misused, and thus must be carefully monitored and limited. They weren’t anarchists; they recognized that government is a necessary mechanism through which citizens establish order and provide for the common welfare. But it was a recognition that concentrated power, even in the hands of the most benign and well-meaning functionaries (maybe especially in such hands) is a potential threat to individual freedom.

If liberty is something we actually value—rather than something to which we pay dutiful lip-service—prudence requires that we limit the ability of the state to interfere with our personal or economic behaviors—that we limit laws to those that are truly necessary.  People of good will can argue about what is necessary, where to impose those limits and where to draw those lines, but restraining the power of government to invade either one’s boardroom or bedroom used to be the Republican message.

Exactly the same logic impelled my membership in the ACLU. If free markets are good for our economic health, surely markets for ideas are equally desirable. Furthermore, liberty isn’t divisible—a government that can dictate my reading material or religious beliefs or my associations can just as easily deprive me of the use of my property, and vice versa. How secure are any of our rights—political or economic—against a government that can decide who gets rights and who doesn’t?’ The issue is the same: the power of the state.

I spent a substantial portion of my tenure at the ACLU explaining the organization to people who had a very distorted image of who we were, people who simply didn’t understand what we did.  In the process, I discovered that very few people–even politically active, aware people–know what civil liberties are. Fewer have read the Bill of Rights, let alone the Federalist and anti-Federalist arguments that accompanied its adoption. American ignorance of our own history and legal system is one of the unremarked scandals of our educational system, and it’s the reason I have recently established the Center for Civic Literacy at IUPUI.

During my six years at the ACLU, I found that there are three major misconceptions about the organization. The first involves what I call “endorsement confusion.” For some reason, people have a real problem separating the defense of someone’s rights from an endorsement of the way he or she is exercising those rights. So if we say the KKK has a right to use the public streets just like everyone else, we are accused of agreeing with the KKK.

That’s nuts. The ACLU can defend your right to choose the books you read without approving of the books you choose, or oppose police brutality without being pro-criminal.

The issue for civil libertarians is who decides? Not what decision is made, but who has the power to make it. In a free country, people will make lots of decisions I don’t like. Some of those decisions will be harmful, or even dangerous. But the alternative is to allow government to make them—which can be a far more dangerous proposition.

The second misunderstanding comes from those who believe that the Bill of Rights is some sort of free-floating protection against all unfairness in society. They don’t understand that the Bill of Rights restrains only government, and that no matter how obnoxious or evil Walmart or Chik-Fil-A may get, they aren’t violating your civil liberties. Only the government can do that.

The most troubling misunderstanding is also the most fundamental: people really do believe that the United States is a majoritarian democracy. When I spoke to high school classes, I would typically begin by saying “This is America, so the majority rules, right?” And virtually every time, all the hands would shoot up and all the heads would nod. Then I would ask  “So you can vote to make me an Episcopalian, right?” That would generate confusion; they knew enough to know that they couldn’t vote to make me join a particular church, but they really didn’t know why. The “why,” of course, is the Bill of Rights, which limits what government can do even if a majority authorizes it.  So we don’t take votes to decide what prayer you can say, what book you can read, what groups you will associate with.

The entire purpose of the Bill of Rights was to remove certain matters from the reach of popular opinion—what the founders called the “tyranny of the majority.” Of course, the majority generally doesn’t deny rights to attractive and popular people, so the ACLU ends up representing some fairly unpleasant people.

Contrary to popular opinion, very few ACLU staff are politically active Democrats. Virtually all of them celebrate the non-partisan nature of the organization. Most of them agree with the director of a western affiliate who began all his speeches by asserting that the ACLU is a conservative organization because its mission is to conserve the values of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

When I joined the GOP, back in the Ice Age, and for the 35 years I actively worked for the party, traditional Republicans (and I stress traditional) and core civil libertarians really agreed on most such issues, although neither seemed to recognize that.

Both believed in limiting the power that the state may exercise over the individual. Both supported the concept that majority rule must be subject to the restraints of law; that certain rights are too fundamental to be subject to the whims of voters, or to popular passions. And both believed that rights are individual; that is, that government has the obligation to treat each of us as an individual and not as a member of a group.

Over the years, the GOP abandoned those principles in favor of a majoritarian culture war, and I left the GOP. I made a brief stop with the Libertarian Party before deciding that I support a more robust role for government than you do.

When I was Executive Director of the Indiana ACLU, I often made a point that libertarians frequently make: the political spectrum is not a straight line, with “liberals” on the left and “conservatives” on the right. It’s a circle, where the far left and far right touch.  And the only thing extremists on both ends are arguing about is whose agenda government should impose on the rest of us.

We live in a complex and interdependent world, and I have come to understand that there often is no reasonable substitute for collective action. (My libertarianism has much more in common with Friedrich Hayek than it does with Ayn Rand.) Markets are wonderful, but there are areas in which markets do not and cannot work. There are things governments simply have to do.

But Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians should all be civil libertarians. Whatever one’s position about government’s role in the economy, whatever tax or economic policies you support, we should all agree about the importance of defending individual liberties. We should all resist government’s efforts to prescribe our beliefs, censor our speech or surveill our behaviors without probable cause.

We should all be card-carrying members of the ACLU.

Thank you.

Comments