Documenting Shameful Behavior

A few months ago, I got a call from a young man who wanted to interview me about Indianapolis’ homeless problem. Why me? He had interviewed service providers, police officers and others involved with Indianapolis’ homeless on a day-to-day basis, but was looking for someone who could address the policy choices involved. I said, sure, come on over.

In due course, three young men came over with camera and other gear, and we talked about the city’s recent forced removal of a “tent city,” the fact that there is nowhere for homeless people to go for anything other than short-term (10 day) shelter, and–especially–the fact that Indianapolis (unlike other cities our size) budgets no public money to address homelessness.

They wanted to know why the city can find dollars to support sports teams, to subsidize development projects and even to build a cricket field, but somehow cannot find resources to help  people dealing with the loss of their jobs and homes–not to mention those with mental health problems. They wanted to know why these vulnerable people were ignored until someone complained of a “camp” at which time they were forcibly removed, their few meager possessions trashed, and they were ordered to go…somewhere else.

And they wanted to know why Mayor Ballard refused to talk to them.

I didn’t have very satisfactory answers to those questions.

The truth of the matter–as we all know–is that the political system responds to people who have “voice,” people who can  volunteer or contribute to campaigns, people who “know people,” who can have dinner or drinks with elected officials, and who can otherwise make their policy preferences known.

The trio left, and I didn’t hear anything more until a couple of days ago. They’d finished the documentary, Uncharted: The Truth Behind Homelessness and invited me to see it. Despite their youth, the product was impressive. Good production values, a thorough and even-handed treatment of the issues involved, and a genuinely gripping story.

Don’t take my word for it, though–watch the trailer, and then buy tickets to the first showing, at 2:30, at the IUPUI Campus Center on Saturday, May 31st. I plan to attend, even though I’ve seen it once.

Perhaps this will spark a conversation that Indianapolis needs to have.

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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….

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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!

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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.

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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.

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