Our Deteriorating Public Services

I’m officially pissed.

The rant I’m about to embark upon was triggered by the City’s recycling contractor, Republic, which–for the third straight time–picked up everyone’s recycling except ours. We’ve had plenty of reasons to be less than enamored of the recycling program, which charges extra for the service (thus incentivizing environmentally irresponsible behavior). My biggest gripe has been the refusal of Republic to come down the alley, as our regular garbage pick-up does. Since we live in the city–the “hood”–that means we have to schlep our container down one alley, then another, in order to get it to the street. Not only is this inconvenient for elderly folks (and we’re pretty elderly!), it means that the street looks cluttered and trashy for two or three days, while cans are taken out and then returned to garages.

It isn’t just recycling. Regular trash pickup has gotten hit-or-miss of late. Crime in our neighborhood has increased to a worrisome degree–initially, the increase was mostly petty thefts, or cars being broken into, but more recently, people have been mugged and homes invaded while the occupants were still there. Scary stuff that we haven’t previously experienced.

When apartments being built a couple of blocks from our house caught fire a couple of months ago, it took IFD what seemed like a long time to arrive. That may have been an incorrect impression, but several people in the neighborhood reported a discomfiting wait between their 911 calls and the first truck. In those minutes, the blaze became a huge conflagration (we could feel the heat on our front porch, which is a good two and a half blocks away, and the flames could be seen for miles).

Not far from where that fire raged is a city park that–despite repeated promises–continues to shows signs of neglect. It has a very nice pool, but the hours of operation have been sharply cut back since it first opened.

It’s hard to remember that during the Hudnut Administration, streets in the Mile Square were swept every day. Now, from the looks of it, they aren’t being swept at all.

Part of the problem is management. Construction and especially street repairs drag on for weeks more than necessary (and let’s not even talk about the Cultural Trail segments that kept parts of Mass Avenue and Virginia Avenue closed for months on end while little or no work got done). Accountability for garbage collection is a management issue. But the major culprit is lack of money. So we have too few police, too few lifeguards, too few managers generally.

It’s bad enough that we’ve starved local government; it’s worse that we’ve actually built that starvation diet into our state constitution. Indiana taxpayers have spoken, and what they’ve said is that they don’t care enough about the quality of public services to pay for those services.

Unfortunately, we get what we pay for.

One of the unintended consequences of a city with inadequate public services and a deteriorating quality of life is that the people who can, leave.  And they take their tax dollars with them, triggering a cycle of further decline.

We aren’t there yet, but the signs are ominous.

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The Long Game

I rarely watch daytime or weekend television, but I caught a really thought-provoking discussion earlier this morning. “Up with Chris Hayes” had a panel discussing–what else?–the recent conventions. This discussion was a bit different, however; it began with Hayes’ observation about a shift in the tone of Americans’ interminable “culture war.”

Hayes noted something that had struck me as well: whereas in previous election cycles, the Republicans had been the “aggressors” on culture war issues and the Democrats had largely been defensive, this year the roles were reversed. Whatever their message to the rabid base, in public Republicans ran away from the rhetoric of folks like Scott Akin, pooh-poohed the notion that they were anti-contraception (personhood amendment? what personhood amendment?), barely mentioned same-sex marriage, and tried to obscure their position on immigration by highlighting their most prominent Latino, Marco Rubio.

The Democrats, on the other hand, mounted a pretty full-throated defense of reproductive rights, trumpeted their platform’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, and even featured a young speaker who personally benefitted from the President’s “Dream Act Lite” Executive Order.

The turnaround, when you think about it, was pretty extraordinary.

It would be nice to think that Democrats’ willingness to champion these issues was evidence that the party has grown a spine, but let’s get real. I can guarantee that each of these decisions was based upon extensive polling and focus group results–just as the GOP’s decision to soft-pedal and obscure their own views undoubtedly was. These decisions reflected profound changes in public opinion, as Stan Greenberg, the Democratic pollster on the panel, confirmed. The Democrats have pretty much won the culture wars. (When my generation dies off, the victory will be complete.)

This discussion elicited a really interesting observation from one of the panelists, who described the Democratic strategy as long-term, and the GOPs as short-term. The Republicans are arguing that their candidate is more competent to manage the economy. Even if they are able to win this election with that argument, their next candidate may be viewed as competent or not–it’s an argument that will have to be made “from scratch.” The Democrats are arguing that they are the party better able to manage America–the party that will better reflect the economic and social needs and beliefs of women, immigrants, GLBT folks and the middle class. If they maintain that image, it is an identity will serve the party into the future.

They are playing the demographic long game.

Republicans know the demographics are against them–at least, against what the once Grand Old Party has become.

If this is, as many pundits insist, a “base” election, the election of 2012 will come down to turnout, and the Democratic base is already much larger than the Republican base. Hence the almost frantic efforts to disenfranchise poor and minority voters and constrict voting hours. Hence the gazillions of dollars being poured into the Presidential and Congressional campaigns. Those tactics might work this time, although I’m increasingly inclined to think they won’t, but   the culture is moving fast and in a direction that makes future victories unlikely in the absence of a move back toward the political center.

Of course, a Romney reprise of the George W. Bush Administration can do a lot of damage in the short term.

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Different Worldviews

The party’s conventions are over, and if there is one thing they showed us, it’s that Democrats and Republicans live in very different realities (as the President noted in his speech, Democrats understand that climate change is not a hoax) and have starkly different approaches to the age-old question: how should we live together?

From the composition of the crowds to the policies offered by the speakers, Americans saw two very different messages. It wasn’t simply that–as the President memorably noted–the GOP’s prescription for everything and anything that ails us is “Take two tax cuts and call me in the morning.” It was the difference between a longing for the past–for an America that only existed, if it existed at all, for a small group of middle-class white guys–and a determination to build a fairer, more inclusive, more stable future.

That difference in focus goes a long way toward explaining why the GOP has so much more party discipline than the Democrats do. When you are focused on defeating the other guys because you believe that will magically reinstate a time when women knew their place, gays were hiding in the closet where they belonged, immigrants picked the crops and then went home (or at least stayed out of sight), and black people did not occupy statehouses and most definitely did not live in the White House, the goal is clear and cohesion around that goal relatively easy.

When you are trying to cope with real problems, trying to come to agreement about the future you are trying to build, rather than focusing solely on the man and party you are trying to defeat, the conversation is different. There are many more areas of disagreement–where, precisely, do we want to go? What are the policies most likely to get us there?

Despite the Tea Party’s insistence that Obama is a socialist, what was striking about the rhetoric coming from the Democratic convention was its full-throated endorsement of market economics, of the meritocratic vision that used to be a Republican vision before the party was captured by its anti-rationalist extreme. That affirmation of an economics that rewards hard work and innovation differed from the  exaltation of wealth we saw at the Republican convention, however, because it was situated in a larger concept of citizenship and mutual obligation.

The President said it clearly.  “We also believe in something called citizenship – a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations.”

In November, we’ll see which worldview American voters endorse.

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Welfare Dependent

Since the Romney campaign is making welfare recipients a central focus of their advertising barrage, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at the identity of those who are–pardon the vulgarity–“sucking at the public tit.”

Common Dreams has published a list of entitlements, and who gets what. According to their analysis, social welfare programs cost taxpayers some 59 billion dollars a year. Corporate welfare, on the other hand, costs us much more.

What do they count as corporate welfare? Well, fossil fuel industries get more than $70 billion dollars annually in subsidies–most of which goes to the oil and gas sector. Another $58 billion a year is lost to the Treasury by reason of tax “deferrals” for off-shore profits. Taxing capital gains at 15% rather than at the rates imposed on wage and salary income costs another $59 billion, while hedge fund managers are able to avoid some $2.1 billion in taxes each year due to something called “carried interest.” (I have absolutely no idea what that is, but then, I’ve never been a hedge fund manager, never represented one when I was a practicing lawyer, and never even played one on TV.)

And those are just a few of the garden-variety, built-into-the-system subsidies. The bank bailout cost us $700 billion. And while most of that was apparently paid back–and we really did have to avert a global meltdown–the terms of those “loans” could have been less favorable to the banksters and more protective of the rest of us.

When I read these numbers, I was dubious about their accuracy. Everyone seems to be playing fast and loose with the facts these days, and Common Dreams is a liberal-leaning organization. So I did some research, and  found verification in an unlikely place–Forbes Magazine. Here’s a quote from a Forbes article on the deficit:

Among the most outrageous expenditures is corporate welfare. Desperate businesses now overrun Washington, begging for alms. Believing that profits should be theirs while losses should be everyone else’s, corporations have convinced policymakers to underwrite virtually every industry: agriculture, education, energy, housing, manufacturing, medicine, transportation, and much more.

My Cato Institute colleague Tad DeHaven has published a new study, “Corporate Welfare in the Federal Budget,” on business subsidies, which he figures to cost about $100 billion a year. Slashing corporate welfare obviously won’t balance the budget—which is why middle class and defense welfare also have to go on the chopping block. However, cutting business subsidies would be a good start to balancing the budget. Moreover, going after corporate welfare is essential to create a budget package that the public will see as fair.

Not every subsidy is bad policy, of course. There are sound reasons for encouraging some new enterprises, or saving endangered ones. (I’d argue that rescuing the American automobile industry averted catastrophic economic losses.) But those reasons need to be publicly vetted, debated and justified. Right now, we have ample reason to believe that most corporate welfare is the result of cozy dealings between  campaign donors, lobbyists and legislators. There’s a reason it’s called “crony capitalism.”

Before we nod approvingly at the self-righteous candidates who are beating up on those “shiftless” poor folks, maybe we should take a closer look at the other end of the income spectrum. Maybe we should look at the well-fed and prosperous folks who are so un-self-aware that they don’t even recognize that they are just as dependent on welfare as the people they like to diminish and scorn.

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Paywall Decisions

Last year, after 50+ years as a subscriber, I stopped taking the Indianapolis Star. My reasons were the same as those of the large numbers of other people who have decided to forgo the morning ritual–there is very little “there” there anymore.

The Star and other daily newspapers are in a death spiral, partially due to circumstances beyond their control, and partly due to really poor decisions about how to cope with those circumstances. By now, we can all recite the litany of change: the Internet brought other news sources to our fingertips, mostly for free; Craig’s List cost newspapers a billion dollars a year in classified advertising revenue.  The existing business model simply disappeared.

Meanwhile, big chains like Gannett had gobbled up the dailies, paying inflated prices with borrowed money. Between the competitive changes and the massive debt, bottom lines suffered. So the new owners did what businesspeople do in such situations–they cut employees. Newsrooms have been decimated over the past decade. And the result was–duh!–less news. And with less news came less reason to buy the paper in the first place.

I stopped subscribing when I realized I could read the paper in less than five minutes. I do scan the (very poorly designed and proofed) website from time to time, in case there is actually local news reported. I don’t miss the diet tips, the pictures of someone’s kitchen, or the celebrity “news” and similar items reprinted verbatim from national sources. Such material is widely available. What I keep hoping I’ll find is actual reporting about Indianapolis and Indiana–especially informed reporting about state and local government. There hasn’t been much of that, unfortunately–and we are seeing what happens when a community loses its “watchdog.”

The Star is now instituting a paywall. The question is whether there is enough content left to merit a 12./month charge. At my house, we willingly pay for the New York Times, because the content justifies the charge. We’ve decided to see if the electronic version of the sad remnants of what used to be a real newspaper is worth even twelve bucks a month.

Stay tuned….

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