It Can Happen Here

One of the (multiple) controversies of the last election cycle concerned efforts in several states to make voting more difficult. Republicans in those states–perhaps most notably Florida–cut back early voting times, required government-issued IDs, “purged” voter rolls of thousands of eligible, properly registered voters, and took other measures designed to limit voting by poor and minority citizens, on the not-unreasonable assumption that most of those votes would go to Democrats.

Here in Indianapolis, the lone Republican member of the Marion County Election Board repeatedly blocked the efforts of Beth White, the County Clerk, to open satellite voting locations. The sites had been extremely popular in earlier elections; they made early voting much more convenient for people who work long hours or have difficulty getting downtown to cast a vote at the Clerk’s office. There was no legitimate reason to block satellite voting; the extra money had been raised from private sources.

Now, with a super-majority in the Indiana General Assembly and fewer impediments to wholly partisan measures, we are seeing additional efforts to limit voting. Two amendments are pending in the Indiana House today to SB 388. That bill was heard in committee last week.  These amendments, sponsored by Rep. Thompson, would reduce in-person absentee voting at the clerk’s office from the current legal requirement of 29 days.

Amendment 1 reduces early voting down to ONLY 15 DAYS.  Amendment 2 reduces early voting down to ONLY 10 DAYS.

Tellingly, neither amendment has been heard in committee or has been reviewed by election officials–at least publicly.  Passage of either amendment would  greatly increase the numbers who turn out on Election Day; we could see long lines of the sort that discouraged an estimated 200,000+ voters in Florida last November. It would also make voting much more difficult for those who need to vote absentee in-person.

There is no policy justification for this proposal. Had there been, it would have been offered in committee and subjected to public discussion and debate. This is simply an effort to tilt the playing field, an effort to sneak in under the radar with a change in the rules that is intended to suppress Democratic votes.

This sort of behavior simply adds to the growing public disgust with government at all levels.

I don’t know how, but We the People need to figure out a way to send a message to our legislators, both here in Indiana and in Washington: we didn’t elect you to play partisan power games. We didn’t elect you to obstruct the operation of government, to refuse to confirm qualified nominees because the other guys nominated them, or to place the interests of your donors above the common good. We didn’t elect you so that you can rig the system to improve your chances of holding on to your job.

Evidently, Sen. Thompson and his cohorts would prefer we dispense with this democratic nonsense and not really elect our legislators at all–they’d undoubtedly prefer the system used in autocratic countries, where 99% of the “vote” turns out to ratify the election of a single nominee.

Comments

A Reform Worth Considering

I have long believed that America’s patchwork, complicated method of financing higher education makes no sense. I watch working students taking one more class than they can really manage in order to meet aid eligibility requirements; I see the university employing dozens of people to shuffle the paperwork; I see parents struggling to complete complex forms–and of course, we’ve all seen the reports of unmanageable student loan debt. The need to repay that debt constrains the choices of graduates who might go into lower-paying but more satisfying jobs, makes periods of unemployment more terrifying, and probably restrains the sort of consumer spending that would boost economic growth.

An article in the recent issue of the Atlantic suggests scrapping the whole system and replacing it with a far simpler, more transparent approach. I hope a couple of paragraphs from that article will tempt you to click through and read the whole thing.

With what the federal government spent on its various and sundry student aid initiatives last year, it could have covered the tuition bill of every student at every public college in the country. Doing so might have required cutting off financial aid at Yale, Amherst, the University of Phoenix, and every other private university. But at this point, that might be a trade worth considering.

….

The under-funding of public university systems and Washington’s attempts to compensate have also helped nourish a giant barnacle on the side of higher-ed: the for-profit college industry. As scarce classroom space at community and open-admission state colleges has filled up, students turned towards alternatives like Kaplan University and University of Phoenix, which charge tens of thousands of dollars for degrees with dubious job market value. They get away with it because of federal aid. I call it the 10, 25, 50 problem: They educate ten percent of students, who take out about a quarter of all student loans and are responsible for about half of all defaults. In the meantime, they suck up about $8.8 billion, or around 25 percent, of all Pell Grant money.

Comments

Words and Pictures

In a recent speech, Noam Chomsky addressed the “controversy” about global warming.

There is indeed a controversy: on one side, the overwhelming majority of  scientists, all of the world’s major National Academies of Science, the professional  science journals, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) : all agree that global warming is taking place, that there is a substantial human  component, and that the situation is serious and perhaps dire, and that very soon,  maybe within decades, the world might reach a tipping point where the process  will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with very severe effects on the   possibility of decent human survival.

It is rare to find such consensus on complex  scientific issues.

A couple of weeks ago, a reader of this blog sent me an “info graphic” she had discovered that illustrates the matter. It’s well worth clicking through and viewing.

The question, of course, is: why is there so much resistance to settled science? I understand opposition by the self-interested, the industries dependent upon fossil fuels. But the anti-science cohort is far larger than the special interest groups, and it extends well beyond denial of global warming. It’s larger than the religious fundamentalists who are still arguing about evolution.

There are some kinds of ignorance–willful or not–that are harmless. Rejection of a reality that can literally destroy us is not one of them.

 

Comments

How Not to Run an Airport

It’s Spring Vacation, and we booked a flight to Santa Fe.

The plane left Indianapolis promptly on time, headed for Dallas-Ft. Worth. It landed a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. And then it sat on the runway for nearly 30 minutes, because–the pilot informed us–the gate was broken. Rather than sending us to an alternate gate, we sat there until they repaired it.

Anyone who has had the misfortune to connect through DFW can attest to the sprawl. We arrived at Concourse C and our connecting flight was departing from B concourse–a distance of at least two miles on foot. The original time between flights was an hour; by the time we deplaned, we had fewer than 30 minutes. We rushed to take the Skylink–the tram that runs between concourse–but as the tram approached, an announcement over the intercom informed us that the train would not be stopping at the B Concourse, due to a “security breach,” and to proceed to other concourses on foot. We had no option but to walk.

My husband is 80, with a heart condition that prevents him from sustained  fast walking. We found one of the handicap-assistance vehicles that drives passengers who are unable to make the trek on foot, but by the time we arrived at our gate, the plane had closed, and our seats had been given to standby customers.

By this time, we were out of both breath and patience. The gate attendant informed us that the next flight to Santa Fe was at four, and full. (It was 9:00 am.) Would we be willing to fly into Albuquerque instead, and take a shuttle to Santa Fe? We agreed. At this point, we were standing at the outermost end of Concourse B; the flight to Albuquerque would be leaving from Concourse D. We could get seat assignments at the gate. Once again, we made the lengthy trek to a different concourse; at least this time, the tram operated.

We settled down in the lounge area of the new gate to wait. When the service counter opened, I went up to get our seat assignments–only to be told that there had been a gate change and the flight would now leave from Concourse A!

I am writing this from the waiting area in Concourse A, where we have been informed that the flight will be “slightly” delayed.

I am not in a good mood. In fact, I am definitely cranky.

I’ve been through DFW many times; it is one of my least favorite airports. Somehow, there’s always a problem. It is inexcusable that a malfunctioning gate is allowed to cause a 30 minute delay–especially at an airport where large numbers of passengers connect to other flights. DFW is a prime example of a place that does not work. It’s badly designed, badly run, and judging from what I’ve seen during my unfortunately extensive tour of the place, rarely cleaned.

At this point, I just hope to make it to Santa Fe. Not an auspicious start….blogging may be haphazard this week.

Comments

Shameful

Forget the arguments about whether water boarding is torture. The Guardian has now uncovered irrefutable evidence of full-scale torture during the Iraq War, conducted by Americans under the direct orders of Donald Rumsfeld. The story also implicates General Petraeus.

The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres run by the police commandos across Iraq. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years after he pleaded guilty to leaking the documents.

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the SPC-controlled detention centres. “I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.”

It was bad enough when we could believe that Abu Ghraib and the like were products of “rogue” behavior. But the Guardian provides evidence that torture was a deliberate policy, an intentional tactic employed by high-ranking Bush Administration officials–the same officials who justified America’s invasion of Iraq by pointing to Sadaam’s use of torture against his own people. The same officials who repeatedly proclaimed America’s moral superiority.

Why do I suspect that the people who routinely pontificate about “American Exceptionalism” will try to excuse and defend the indefensible?

Why is Bradley Manning going to jail for whistle-blowing?

Why have Donald Rumsfeld and his co-conspirators escaped prosecution for war crimes? And what did Dick Cheney know, and when did he know it?

Comments