Throwing in the Towel?

Oh, drat.

I’ve been reading a recent book by Ilya Somin, a well-known and respected constitutional scholar, called Democracy and Political Ignorance.

 He begins by reciting several aspects of public ignorance with which readers of this blog are also distressingly familiar. And he argues that certain aspects of that ignorance are particularly troubling:

many voters are ignorant not just about specific policy issues but about the basic structure of government and how it operates….such basic aspects of the U.S. political system as who has the power to declare war, the respective functions of the three branches of government, and who controls monetary policy.

 This makes it difficult to assign credit and blame for policy outcomes; it also means that many voters have a very inaccurate picture of “the scope of elected officials’ powers.”

No kidding.

How many times have I heard liberal voters express disappointment that Obama didn’t “do” this or that? How many times have I heard conservative critics charge the President with “dictatorial” powers when he has (1) done something routine, something all Presidents have done; or (2) when Congress has either enacted a policy they disliked or defeated one they liked (so they attributed the result to a President they dislike)?

Somin notes that the level of political knowledge has barely increased since the 1930s—as he says, this is a “stable level of ignorance” that has persisted even in the face of massive increases in educational achievement and “an unprecedented expansion in the quantity and quality of information available to the general public at little cost.” Television and the internet seem not to have increased political knowledge, with the exception of those who were already well-informed. Somin suggests these media may actually have diverted attention away from politics by providing alternate sources of entertainment.

In the introductory chapter of the book, Somin provides reams of evidence—as if we needed to be further depressed—in support of his contention that the public cannot make fact-based decisions about policies or the merits of public officials when they know virtually nothing of the political world they inhabit. With all of the screaming about Obama’s stimulus bill, for example, 57% of the public didn’t know that a quarter of the stimulus came in the form of tax cuts. Only 34% of the public knew that TARP was enacted by President Bush. Only 39% is aware that defense spending is a larger percentage of the federal budget than education, Medicare and interest on the national debt.

We know that people who are unaware of facts are more easily manipulated.

The question—as always—is “what do we do about this state of affairs?” Somin is convinced that “rational ignorance”—the recognition that one vote is unlikely to matter much in the democratic scheme of things—will prevent us from raising the level of civic knowledge.

His conclusion? We need to change our form of government. I haven’t yet finished the book, or read his recommendations, so I will withhold comment.

Talk amongst yourselves….

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I Devoutly Hope So! (Pun Intended)

Tikkun Daily recently published an article by one David Harris-Gershon (aka “the Troubadour”) that began as follows:

One might think, given the record number of anti-gay bills being proposed across the United States, that the religious right’s legislative influence – and cultural entrenchment – is growing. In fact, they are evidence that the exact opposite is the case.

 What we are seeing right now are the last gasps of religious fundamentalism and its normative influence on the national stage. Just as an individual on his deathbed experiences a momentary flurry of energy and clarity before descending into his final end, we are witnessing the religious right’s final flailing on the national stage. To understand this, one doesn’t need to examine Pew studies on changing attitudes, nor the consolidation of religious fundamentalism into pockets of the Southeast and the West.

All one needs to do is look at legislation being offered right now, and the mainstream ridicule such legislation is garnering.

 As my grandmother might have said, from your mouth to God’s ears, Mr. Troubadour!

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Some Facebook Wisdom

I’ve been mulling over a Facebook comment to my post a week or so ago about the insanity of Indiana’s single-minded focus on low taxes as the magic medicine for everything and anything that ails us.

A reader named Brian wrote

“I left low tax indianapolis for high-tax Madison, WI. My property taxes for my little suburban ranch are more than double what my parents back in Indy pay for their 2 story in an awesome neighborhood. But, those high taxes pay for good police, good schools and good services. My residential street gets plowed every time it snows. I can send my kid to a public school and not have to worry about the quality of her education- there are some private schools here, but not many, because mostly, they aren’t needed. My family back in Indy all have security systems on their homes. Meanwhile, I’ve gone 3 days forgetting to lock the front door. I have a city that cares about my quality of life. My taxes pay for lake access, bike paths and more parks than I’ve ever seen. I could save money on taxes moving back to Indy. But I’d lose every bit of my savings paying for private versions of the services I get here. And I get the extra satisfaction in knowing that everyone has access to these services, not just suburbanites like me.”

I think this comment highlights a reality that all too often gets buried in the zealotry of the Left/Right debate: the fundamental question we face, especially in cities, isn’t whether we will pay for services. It’s how.

Most of us are unwilling to forgo police and fire protection, garbage collection, paved streets, and schools for our children. Most of us, if survey data is to be believed, also want convenient and reliable public transportation, parks and bike paths.  Many of us are undoubtedly willing to forgo sports arenas and cricket fields, but we all want and need  museums and libraries, as well as the more basic necessities and amenities that make life in urban areas attractive.

Those necessities and amenities cost money, but they cost less when we provide them collectively.

Some day, when time permits, I want to do an experiment. I want to calculate what it would cost to procure these services in the private marketplace. How much would I have to spend to hire private security, contract for fire protection, find a scavenger service to pick up my trash, etc.? (I don’t know how I would even arrange street paving and snow removal–perhaps through a cooperative with my neighbors? And what about sewers? Would private providers charge to hook in, or would we all further damage the environment with private septic systems?) I could pay to use private parks–or join a country club if I could afford that–and of course I’d have no option but to have the considerable expense of a car.

That sort of transactional existence doesn’t sound very attractive, and it would significantly disadvantage poor folks, but let’s assume those considerations aren’t relevant. (They sure aren’t to many of our lawmakers.) One thing seems clear: the costs involved would be far in excess of what I pay in property taxes.

The point is, our interminable debate about “taxes” and “tax rates” is profoundly misleading. We have no choice but to provide local governments with the funds needed to provide a reasonable quality of communal life.

We can legitimately argue about cronyism, whether a given administration is operating efficiently, and about whether obvious “extras” like sports arenas are justified, but when we make a virtue of starving the public sector of basic operating income, we shouldn’t be shocked when local politicians rob Peter to pay Paul by selling off public goods and trading our long-term interests for short-term cash.

Think about that the next time you flush.

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Civics Education Should Start with Legislators

I’ve been pretty hard on Indiana’s General Assembly, and I’d argue deservedly so, but I certainly don’t want to give anyone the impression that we Hoosiers have cornered legislative incompetence. Over at Peacock Panache, for example, Tim Peacock reports on a bill introduced in Arizona, in the wake of Governor Brewer’s veto of that state’s badly misnamed “Religious Liberty” bill.

HB-2481, also called “Arizona’s First Freedom Act,” seeks to protect those solemnizing marriage in Arizona to protect them from ceremonies they do not want to participate in. Specifically, the GOP is marketing the legislation as protecting ministers from having to marry LGBT couples as it violates their freedom of religion.
Are the bill’s sponsors really that ignorant, or are they just playing to the perceived ignorance of their constituents?
The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause already allows ministers to limit religious services as they alone see fit. No minister can be forced to preside over the nuptials of people in violation of his or her beliefs. Free Exercise allows any cleric to decline to perform any wedding: intermarriages, marriages of divorced people, same-sex unions….whatever his or her doctrine proscribes.
These clerical decisions cannot be overruled by government, thanks to the Separation of Church and State that so many conservatives insist we don’t have.
No statute is necessary to preserve this right. Any first-year law student who didn’t know that would be unceremoniously booted out of law school, and any lawmaker who is ignorant of so basic a principle of American law should forfeit re-election.
I really wish the people demagoguing about religious liberty would visit a high school class on the Constitution and discover what rights they actually do and don’t have. That won’t happen, of course, because they are thoroughly uninterested in accuracy. They are pursuing an agenda.
And people with an agenda read the Constitution the same way they read their bibles, if they read them at all: very selectively.
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Can We Define “Liberty”–Before Someone Gets Shot?

For a bunch of lawmakers who just love to talk about liberty, the cowboys at the Indiana General Assembly seem to have embraced a very odd definition of that term. In their view, “liberty” means their right to make decisions for everyone else.

Funny, I thought that was a description of autocracy.

Case in point: A bill is proceeding through the General Assembly that will allow guns to be brought to schools and school events. The measure also says that no school board (public or private) can enact a policy forbidding legally authorized persons to have guns in their cars on school property.

The NRA must be so proud.

Ignore, for a moment, the lunacy of encouraging people to bring weapons to schools. Pretend that 26 children weren’t gunned down last year in Connecticut. Ignore the fact that gun violence is an epidemic in this city, state and country. Those arguments–while important– really are beside the point. (Although for a pointed and effective, albeit snarky, takedown of the “let’s arm the world” lunatics, you really should read this Op Ed about an Idaho bill permitting guns on campus..)

The real question is: Why in the world does the Indiana General Assembly get to tell public and private schools what safety precautions they may not choose to employ?

Municipalities have long complained about the lack of home rule in Indiana, but as the years have gone on, it has only gotten worse. The micromanaging and increasing high-handedness of the General Assembly is hard enough to stomach; the undeniable fact that campaign donors and special interests are all too often served at the expense of both sound policy and Indiana’s citizens is getting intolerable.

At what point do we ordinary Hoosiers demand some “liberty” of our own?
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