From Accidental to Delusional

When Greg Ballard was first elected, many people dubbed him the “accidental Mayor,” in recognition of the fact that virtually no one had voted for him; they had voted against Bart Peterson, who had the bad luck to be in office when the General Assembly raised property taxes. (When voters don’t know that there’s this thing called federalism, they also don’t know who raised their taxes.)

Subsequently, Ballard actually won an election, and we are stuck with him for at least the next couple of years–perhaps more, if the Democrats can’t find a viable candidate pretty soon.

On the one hand, it’s hard not to feel sorry for this or any Hoosier mayor. There is no money to do much of anything. The brutal winter has exhausted snow-removal budgets. The Department of Metropolitan Development is down to three planners. The police force is seriously understaffed. The list goes on.

The problem is, this Mayor came into office not knowing anything about urban policy or administration, and he has not proved to be a quick learner. So we have watched his numerous “economic development” junkets, his enthusiasm for cricket, his lack of enthusiasm for the legislative battles over measures that adversely affect a city in a state with no home rule…again, the list is lengthy.

Now we are told how the Mayor wants to solve the systemic problems that are strangling our city and depriving us of needed revenues: we’ll do it by encouraging higher-income folks to move to Indianapolis and grow our tax base.

Can you spell delusional?

Read my lips: people with the means to decide where they want to live make those choices based upon quality of life. They don’t move to cities with horrendous and growing homicide rates, poorly-maintained parks and streets, badly managed snow removal, struggling schools, abysmal public transportation and dwindling city services. They don’t wake up one morning and say, “Wow, I hear Indianapolis has a cricket field. Let’s move there.”

We’ll be lucky if local people who can decide where they want to live don’t continue to leave Indianapolis. (Marion County had Indiana’s largest absolute net outflow of population over the past decade.)

Our city faces truly monumental challenges. It would be nice if we had an administration capable of understanding those challenges.

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Et tu, L.A. Times?

An L.A. Times story that ran early last week focused on a new clause in Capital One’s credit card agreement–one of those lengthy, small-print “disclosures” that cardholders get periodically, and rarely read.

The story described an unusual clause in Capital One’s most recent contract iteration. The update sent to cardholders specified that “we may contact you in any manner we choose” and that such contacts can include calls, emails, texts, faxes or even a “personal visit.”

The L.A. Times story, written by someone named David Lazarus, characterized the “personal visit” warning as creepy and over the top–an understandable enough reaction. But in the course of criticizing the provision, he suggested that  Capital One might be violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Excuse me while I hit my head repeatedly against this wall.

The L.A. Times used to be one of the nation’s premier newspapers. How is it that they have a reporter who doesn’t know that the Bill of Rights only restrains the government? How is it that no editor caught an error that egregious?

This is civics 101. Private parties cannot violate the Fourth Amendment. Only “state actors” (people acting on behalf of the government) can.  Ignorance of this absolutely foundational principle should disqualify one from being a journalist.

I’ll grant you, banks seem to occupy a highly privileged status, and too many bankers seem to consider themselves above the law. But whatever their pretentions, they aren’t government–at least not yet.

They ought to be worried about being punished for a lot of things, but “breaking” the Fourth Amendment isn’t one of them.

When we cannot rely on reporters to understand the most basic principles of the constitution, is it any wonder that the broader American public is civically illiterate?

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Words of Wisdom

I don’t know Phillip Gulley, although I wish I did. I became aware of him through his essays for  Indianapolis Monthly–essays I wish I’d written. They are gems–both in form and substance.

In the most recent Monthly (not yet online, so I can’t link) he wrote something that expresses my own frustrations so perfectly I just have to share/steal:

Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.” We are in the trying-everything-else days. I have no doubt America will finally do the right thing, that the sun will shine once more, but I am weary. Weary of bumper-sticker answers to complex problems. Weary of lies shouted as facts. Weary of office holders who speak of freedom and opportunity but destroy the bridges that lead to both. Weary of arrogance masquerading as accomplishment. Weary of the scowling dismissal of science and reason, the raging hubris, the manipulation of democracy by the powerful. Weary of allegiance to a party and not a nation.

That says it all–and it speaks for so many of us who are less eloquent.

I just hope he’s right about the sun shining again…..

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That Scary Black Man in the White House

The Right Wing has its panties in a bunch again. According to the usual suspects, President Obama issued a National Defense Resources Preparedness executive order that gives him “unprecedented new powers to appropriate national resources.”

And what does Snopes have to say about this latest evidence of Obama’s usurpation of power and disregard of the law of the land?

The Executive Order itself is nothing more than a restatement of policy that has been in place for decades and grants no authority to the President or the Cabinet that they don’t already have under existing law.

It has become fashionable to attribute the constant hysteria over anything and everything that Obama does to the same hyper-partisanship that prompted “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” And certainly, partisanship bears some blame.

But let’s get real.

I detested George W. Bush. I disagreed with his naive “faith based initiative.” I was appalled when he took the U.S. into the Iraq War. A list of Bush policies that pushed me out of the Republican party would fill pages of text.

But here’s the thing: these were actual policies. When the man was first elected, I found him likable enough–I certainly didn’t detest him before he even took office. And most of the people I knew who came to dislike him intensely (and were probably unfairly critical from time to time) were also reacting to things the man actually did.

Obama hadn’t even taken office when the ugly emails and the out-and-out lies began. The racism that fuels talk radio and “birthers” and insane accusations is too thick and too widespread and too obvious to ignore. The absolute unwillingness of the Republicans in Congress to work with this President–even to implement programs that they originally proposed–has brought this country to a virtual standstill.

One result of this behavior is ironic: those of us who are repelled by what we see as unhinged, vicous and consistently unfair attacks from people who simply cannot come to terms with the fact that we have a black President find ourselves defending Obama even when he is implementing or continuing policies we would otherwise criticize. As I wrote to a good friend,  there’s plenty to legitimately criticize. I’m no fan of the NSA, drone strikes and several other policies this administration has pursued. But calling Obama lawless and a communist, making hysterical accusations about things that previous presidents–including the sainted Reagan– did routinely with absolutely no pushback is so manifestly unjust, people who are fair-minded get protective.

A Facebook post from a (very Republican) friend of mine is a good example of what I’m talking about:

Ok, let me get this straight: Ted Nugent–who during the 2012 campaign declared that if Obama was reelected he (Nugent) would either be dead or in jail within a year (a not-so-veiled threat against the President of the United States)–last month called President Obama a “communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel.” And now, the GOP front runner for the Texas governorship not only welcomes Nugent on his campaign but calls this unhinged racist hater “a fighter for freedom.” What’s wrong with this picture?  The Lone Star GOP needs to find a candidate with the basic decency of Gov. George W. Bush. (I didn’t like him as a president but he was no racist hater. I wonder if the same could be said about Greg Abbott. A man is judged by the company he keeps.)

Allowing buffoons and bigots to become the face of the GOP just pushes moderate folks who might otherwise be inclined to vote Republican into the D column.

Defending racist rants as if they were legitimate criticisms, vowing to block this President at every turn (and damn the common good), repels people of good will who would consider — and perhaps be persuaded by–valid and thoughtful critiques.

There aren’t enough angry old white guys to elect a President. Get over it.
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It Really Sucks to be Poor

It costs a lot to be poor. Just a few examples:

A recent report released by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Postal Service reports that 68 million Americans — more than a quarter of all U.S. households – have no checking or savings accounts.

How do people get along in a society where payments are made by check, or increasingly, electronic transfer? How do the (growing numbers of) people scraping along paycheck to paycheck access short-term loans when they hit a rough spot?

Evidently, by spending a lot more than the rest of us.

According to the report, these households collectively spent about $89 billion in 2012 on interest and fees for non-bank financial services like payday loans and check cashing. That works out to an average of $2,412 per household. The average underserved household spends an astonishing 10 percent of its annual income on interest and fees — about the same amount they spend on food.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote in a column commenting on the report, “The poor pay more, and that’s one of the reasons people get trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.” Poor people disproportionately rely on the check-cashing stores, pawnshops, payday lenders, and other predatory financial services that took customers for $89 billion in interest and fees in 2012.

But poor people have to contend with more than just predatory lending; they have fewer options across the board.

A few days ago, I wrote about the connection between poverty and marriage; it appears that despite the undeniable correlation between the two, we had the cause and effect backward. Poverty prevents many poor single moms from marrying in the first place. Subsequently, I found research (from professors of psychology and and organizational management) demonstrating that poverty also makes it harder for poor couples who are married to stay that way.

The problem is not that poor people fail to appreciate the importance of marriage, nor is it that poor and wealthy Americans differ in which factors they believe are important in a good marriage. The problem is that the same trends that have exacerbated inequality since 1980 — unemployment, juggling multiple jobs and so on — have also made it increasingly difficult for less wealthy Americans to invest the time and other resources needed to sustain a strong marital bond.

Poor people divorce at a rate that is thirty percent higher than their wealthier peers, with all of the emotional and financial distress that divorce brings in its wake.

Back in 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting Along in America, in which she documented the difficulties faced by low wage workers–  the added costs for shelter (the poor often have to spend much more on “rent by the week” fleabags than they would pay to rent a decent apartment because they can’t afford the security deposit and first-and-last month rent payments) and food (the poor often live in “food deserts” and have to buy food that is both more expensive and less healthy).

Let’s not even get into medical and dental care. That’s a subject for an entirely separate diatribe. (Folks who can’t afford regular, preventive care end up very sick in the ER, costing everyone more money.)

If we really expect poor people to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” maybe we should help them afford the bootstraps.

 

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