Tolerance

I don’t really like the word “tolerance.” Toleration suggests putting up with something that is substandard or otherwise unfortunate in the interests of civil peace. I prefer something more along the lines of “live and let live.” You do your thing, I do mine. Neither of us may approve of the other’s choices, but we respect our mutual right to differ.

My distaste for the word aside, I found it fascinating that The Heritage Foundation–that once-respectable, currently rabid source of right-wing “policy” positions–has announced its approval of a recent proposal out of Idaho, citing it as an example of “tolerance.”

Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho has proposed a new bill that would protect “religious liberty” by issuing licenses to discriminate against gay people. (I know that’s bizarre, but work with me here, people!)  The “logic” of this measure is simple, if daft. Because evidently not being able to discriminate against gay people does discriminate against Christians, the bill provides that there would be no adverse consequences for any organization, business or individual who refuses to recognize same-sex marriage. The text reads as follows:

“The Federal Government shall not take an adverse action against a person, on the basis that such person acts in accordance with a religious belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

Under that language, businesses could refuse benefits to same-sex partners, hospitals could refuse visitation rights, landlords could refuse to rent to gay couples, and pretty much anyone at all could refuse services to LGBT people. Note too that this language isn’t intended to reinforce already robust Free Exercise protections that exempt churches and many religious organizations from compliance with civil rights laws. This language is far broader.

Why do I think that if they could get away with it, these proponents of “religious liberty” would grant a similar “license” to people whose religious beliefs included a distaste for Jews or blacks or Muslims?

In this profoundly upside-down view, after all, any and all anti-discrimination laws can be seen as invasions of my civil liberties. How dare the government tell me I can’t pick on people my religion tells me to dislike?

In what alternate universe is official government approval of  discrimination “tolerance”?

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The Devil and the Details

I see where applications for Indiana’s private school vouchers have doubled, in the wake of the legislature’s action last session relaxing the criteria.

School Choice Indiana’s president was quoted as ecstatic, and noted that participation in the program has quadrupled since it was first introduced.

Happy days. Public schools not up to snuff? Don’t bother fixing them–privatize! (We all know that government can’t do anything right, and the private sector can’t do anything wrong.)

I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything that in Madison, Wisconsin, private schools that are currently participating in that state’s voucher program are vigorously resisting proposed new requirements that they make public their students’ achievement data.

Accountability is evidently only for public schools.

The sponsor of the Wisconsin measure, Senator Luther Olsen, is the Republican chair of the state legislature’s Education Committee. He wants the Legislature to be a “careful steward of taxpayer dollars.” As he put it, “No matter if you’re a public school, a charter school or a choice school, if you get a check, you should get a check up.”

That seems eminently reasonable. If tax dollars are going to private schools, the very least we should expect is information about the effectiveness of the programs those dollars are supporting. Furthermore, if parents are going to make informed choices about where to send their children to school, it seems only fair that they should have access to basic information about the performance of the schools they are considering.

According to news reports, however, Wisconsin’s non-public schools are adamantly opposed to making their results public, and the legislature is unlikely to pass the measure.

Interesting, isn’t it? The most vocal critics of public schools–the advocates and beneficiaries of voucher programs that bleed resources from the public system to support their own institutions, the people who insist upon testing and accountability for public schools–aren’t so enthusiastic about performance reviews when they are the ones being evaluated.

I guess sauce for the goose gets kind of bitter when it’s poured on the gander.

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Not According to Plan…

A colleague informs me that the military has a saying: Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.

Well, batten down the hatches. If you think Indianapolis government hasn’t been performing very well lately, we’re about to see how bad it can get. Not that we’ll see piss-poor results immediately– we won’t. And that’s part of the problem.

The City of Indianapolis has just fired more than half of its planning staff–a staff that was already a bare-bones remnant of what it has been in the past. (And let’s be honest, even in its most robust past it was barely adequate.)

Most citizens don’t see the need for planning. They understand the need for public safety, they appreciate garbage collection and street paving. They know they need sewers.  Planning, on the other hand, seems vaguely bureaucratic and arcane.

Modern urban planning began in the early decades of the 20th Century; it was a response to appalling sanitary, social and economic conditions in the rapidly-growing industrial cities of the time. Today, it can be described as a technical and political process that uses extensive public input to guide land use, transportation, urban design and protect the environment.

Planning is what allows us to use our ever-more-limited public resources efficiently to achieve goals that the public has identified as important.

Knowing where growth is occurring tells us where to put new roads. Planning and zoning decisions protect the value of property (you aren’t likely to spend money improving your home if a gas station can be built next door). Planning projections allow us to avoid unnecessary congestion, provide urban amenities like parks where those are most needed, focus renewal efforts on deteriorating neighborhoods, and deploy public safety officers strategically. Planning allows us to ameliorate or avoid things like urban asthma and lead poisoning, ensure that water supplies will continue to be adequate….in short, it helps us  ensure that our physical and social infrastructure is serving us properly.

Planning allows city administrators to base the decisions they have to make every day on data rather than hunches.  And the public availability of that data allows citizens to hold their government accountable for those decisions–to ensure that they are based on relevant criteria rather than on cronyism or responsiveness to special interests. 

The thing is, planners aren’t “front and center.” They work behind the scenes, and their concerns tend to be long-term. So an administration that wants to save money can get rid of planners, knowing that the negative effects won’t be obvious until he or she is safely out of office.

Next time you drive around Castleton Square–if you are hardy enough, or just unlucky enough to have to do so–consider it the face of the future.

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Talking the Talk, Avoiding the Walk

Tea Party types love to talk about the Constitution. Evidently, the only thing they like more is evading its requirements.

George W. Bush showed the way. With his aggressive use of signing statements, he avoided that pesky “veto override” problem. (Recall the tactic: he would sign a bill he didn’t like, rather than vetoing it, but he’d issue a signing statement to the effect that he wouldn’t enforce the law if he didn’t feel like doing so. That “veto by another name” avoided an override vote by Congress.  Mission–i.e., end run around the Constitution– accomplished!)

Today’s Congressional zealots are doing George one better. As Robert Reich recently pointed out,

The Constitution of the United States does not allow a majority of the House of Representatives to repeal the law of the land by de-funding it (and threatening to close the entire government, or default on the nation’s full faith and credit, if the Senate and the President don’t come around).

If that were permissible, no law on the books would be safe. A majority of the House could get rid of unemployment insurance, federal aid to education, Social Security, Medicare, or any other law they didn’t like merely by deciding not to fund them.

Like it or hate it, the Affordable Care Act was passed into law by affirmative votes of both Houses of Congress. It was signed (without the crossed fingers of a Signing Statement) by the President, who subsequently ran for re-election on a record that prominently included it and who handily won. Its constitutionality has been upheld by the Supreme Court.  There are not nearly enough votes to repeal it using the proper process.

But none of that matters to the arrogant ideologues who want to circumvent the Constitution they claim to revere by failing to fund the law of the land.

The truth of the matter is, the only Constitutional provision they really care about is (their version of) the Second Amendment.

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Indiana’s Train to Nowhere

The past several years have not been kind to Indiana.

National indicators show the state at or near the bottom of numerous categories: education, personal income, transportation, entrepreneurship…In their zeal for low taxes, our elected officials have proudly handed us a state where we get what we pay for–which is to say, not much.

Now, this “good enough for Hoosiers” mindset is threatening the Hoosier State, one of the last trains serving Indiana.

The Hoosier State is certainly not state of the art, but it does run every day from Indianapolis to Chicago. That’s a far cry from the 10 trains a day in each direction that ran on that corridor until the late 1950s, it’s an even farther cry from the multiple 110 mph trains being built in Illinois and Michigan, but it is at least something.

The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 requires states with passenger rail service of less than 750 miles to take financial responsibility for those routes by October 1, 2013, or lose them. Fifteen states were thus required to invest in their short haul routes; Indiana is the only state that has not agreed to do so. Once again, we are the only holdout.

Keeping the Hoosier State will cost just under 3 million dollars a year. (To put this in context, Indiana subsidizes a non-stop flight to San Francisco with a 1.5 million revenue guarantee.)

So what do we get for that money? What will we lose if we lose the Hoosier State?

  • Amtrak boards over 35,000 passengers a year at Union Station. (That number would increase dramatically if the quality of the service increased, but that isn’t “on the table.”)
  • Sixty percent of our convention visitors come from Chicago, and passengers can walk to most downtown hotels from Union Station. That gives us a strategic advantage over places like Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, etc. when we are pitching convention business (or Super Bowls).
  • The 539 jobs at the Amtrak Beech Grove facility are important to our local economy; losing the Hoosier State probably means losing those jobs.

The transportation committee of the Indiana Legislature will have a hearing at 10:00  tomorrow, and there will also be a rally at 4:00 outside the Statehouse. But time is running short, and few lawmakers have shown a recognition of what is truly at stake.

Economics are one thing. Quality of life is another. But trumping both is the less tangible issue of self-image.

How long do we want to keep being the backward state–the “middle finger of the South”? How long will “good enough” be good enough?

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