I Don’t Get It

There’s a pretty robust public debate–in which I’ve engaged–about the refusal of congressional Republicans to even consider raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. That debate has centered around the practicality and morality of their position: practically, government needs the revenue that would be raised by what would historically be considered a very minimal raise in the rate; morally, it seems truly wrong to demand yet more sacrifice from the beleaguered middle class while giving the rich a pass.

That debate is worth having, but what I don’t get is the politics of the position.

I understand that the people who fund GOP campaigns–the Kochs, the Scaifs, etc.–look favorably upon the Republican position. And I understand that money matters (far more than it should or than it used to, thanks to Citizens United). But I can’t believe that a political party can win a national election on a platform that advocates hollowing out the public purposes of government–“starving the beast” is the way Grover Norquist puts it–in order to protect the pocket-change of the powerful.

Leave aside whether the GOP position makes any economic or moral sense. I can’t imagine it making political sense. You can rename plutocrats “job creators” all you want, but it is pretty clear that they aren’t creating any jobs (at least not here in the US), and without that rather thin defensive reed to lean on, it is hard to envision any but the most ideologically rigid buying that snake-oil.

What am I missing?

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There’s No “We” in Mitch Land…

When Steve Goldsmith was Mayor–talking incessantly about government’s “customers” while shifting costs from the operating to the capital budget in order to “reduce” taxes (i.e., push the costs to the next administration)–I used to grouse that his vision of the ideal government would be one that eliminated all municipal services so that the City-County Building could be rented out to give taxpayers a rebate of 50 cents each.

I’ve often considered Mitch Daniels to be a Goldsmith clone. They share a touching belief that privatization cures cancer–a belief that appears unshakable no matter how many times they’ve been bitten by poorly-thought-out contracts. (They also share a patronizing attitude that lets you know they think they know more than anyone else–and most definitely more than those annoying yahoos elected to legislative bodies.) I’m not the only person who has noticed the resemblance: the joke that made the rounds when Mitch was first elected was that he was Steve Goldsmith with a personality.

Now Mitch has confirmed my snarky “rent out the City-County Building” description of their shared governing philosophy.

According to the Governor, Indiana has suddenly “discovered” 320 million dollars that we somehow didn’t know we had. Assuming the accuracy of his description–i.e., assuming the administration really didn’t know the money was there–most of us would first question the competence of the administration employees involved. After all, how do you “lose” 320 million dollars? Then–in a sane universe–we might begin a discussion to see which of the recent, draconian cuts to public services we might mitigate. Our bridges are crumbling, our parks are untended, our schools struggling, early childhood education still largely unfunded. Foster parents have just taken a big hit, and the administration has continued its unremitting war on Medicaid recipients. Granted, 320 million won’t restore all that–or even come close–but it would help.

But that’s not the way officials think in “Mitch land.”

Mitch doesn’t want to apply that money to improve the state’s infrastructure, or to ameliorate the suffering caused by cuts to social services during an economic downturn. He wants to trigger an automatic “rebate”–to return it to individual taxpayers. Rather than applying the windfall to improve public services or the public goods we all share, he wants to give each taxpayer a refund. Elementary math suggests that refund might be enough to buy a couple of coffees at Starbucks–it certainly won’t be enough to repair that tire you ruptured on one of our neglected roads, or to pay the tutor you hired to supplement your child’s inadequate math instruction.

In Mitch land, government can do no good and the private sector can do no wrong. Applying “found” money (forgive the quotes and my skepticism) to education or infrastructure is “waste”–but sprinkling it among hundreds of thousands of taxpayers is “good government.”

Maybe Mitch can rent out the statehouse, and send each of us enough to buy an hour or two of privatized parking.

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Who Deserves?

I caught a bit of one of those interminable talking-head debates on television the other day, in which one pontificator was explaining that in America, we work for what we get, and it is thus unAmerican to begrudge wealth to those who have earned it.

I agree. When someone works hard, innovates and creates that better mousetrap, we all benefit. That person has earned what he or she has. I also agree that this emphasis on meritocracy–the belief (however unwarranted) that anyone can compete and succeed if they just work hard enough–is a quintessentially American belief.

What the talking head didn’t seem to understand was that he was in the wrong conversation.

The people criticizing the status quo today are clearly not angry with capitalism, nor hostile to those who have done well by actually producing something. They are angry–justifiably, in my view–with a government that seems to have two sets of rules, one for those rich enough to hire lobbyists and another for the rest of us. They are angry with a system that confers obscene rewards on people who produce nothing, people who simply play financial games and buy influence.

Genuine capitalism requires the rule of law and a level playing field, where the same rules apply to everyone. When some people–or corporations–are able to buy a pass, buy a separate set of rules for themselves, that is no longer capitalism. It’s cronyism, and it violates deeply embedded precepts of American culture.

I’ve always been puzzled by the double standard so many seem to live by: you’ll hear people talk disparagingly about “welfare bums” who “work the system” and don’t deserve our help. And I know there are people who fit that description–although research suggests they make up only 2% or so of welfare recipients. Until quite recently, however, I did not hear similar opinions offered about people with unearned wealth–those who inherited it, or especially those who broke the rules in order to get it. I heard few complaints about corporate lobbyists who “work the system” to get special benefits others don’t enjoy. If we truly believe that merit should be rewarded, and cheating punished, we aren’t doing a very good job of selecting the winners and losers.

What we are seeing right now is a shameful effort to defend unearned privilege, by claiming that the rich are all “job creators,” or that objections to the status quo are “class warfare.” It’s telling that those who genuinely earned their wealth–think Bill Gates or Warren Buffett–are among the most vocal critics.

If we are going to dispense welfare, who truly deserves extra help from the taxpayers? The single mom struggling to raise her children in an economy she did not produce–an economy hollowed out by wars of choice, tax breaks for the powerful and permissive regulations that enabled dishonesty all the way from Enron to the banksters–or the people who run corporations like Halliburton and banks like Citicorp and Bank of America? I’m prepared to concede that we couldn’t allow the financial system to melt down–the consequences would have been horrific for everyone–but now that we have stabilized it, we need to address the inequities of an economic system that demands far more from the working poor than it does from the well-connected rich.

We Americans need to rethink who we are, where our taxes should come from and where they ought to go, and who “deserves” what.

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Listen to your Father…

The other day, I had breakfast in one of those modestly-priced hotels/motels where breakfasts are included. A man in his mid-thirties was going through the buffet with his young son, who looked to be seven or eight. I didn’t catch the first part of their exchange, but I heard the son say to his father,  presumably about yet another traveler who was filling a plate “But that’s not the way we do it. That’s wrong.”

The father used that exchange as a teachable moment. “Different people do things differently. That doesn’t make one person wrong and the other one right. They’re just different.”

I wanted to kiss that guy.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all parents taught their children that simple principle? Wouldn’t the world we live in be more pleasant, more comfortable, if people would just learn that “different” doesn’t necessarily mean “wrong”? How much richer would our lives be if we enjoyed people where we found them, if rather than trying to make everyone do things the way we do, we chilled out and accepted the wonderful variety of life?

We could use a lot more fathers willing to use a mundane experience to underscore an important life lesson.

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A Tale of Newspapers Past

It has become a commonplace for those of us who live in Indianapolis to complain about the lack of substance in the Star. I was recently rude enough–and it was rude and I shouldn’t have said it–to complain to Matt Tully about the lack of coverage of city hall. His defense was that the paper had covered the Litebox and Duke Energy scandals. True–but what about the multiple issues that haven’t been covered (or uncovered). After all, when a major daily paper has exactly four investigative reporters, there’s a limit to what they can do.

As I often (too often??) remind people, when I was in city hall, there were three full-time reporters and a couple of stringers covering city government. The Hudnut Administration would never have gotten the “pass” that Ballard (and Peterson) have. When I edited a book about the Goldsmith Administration, contributors got most of their information from contemporaneous newspaper accounts.

I thought about this again this morning, because our daughter Kelly told me she’d been going through some memorabilia–old newspapers she’d kept as reminders of important events–and was shocked by the difference between those old issues and the current, pale imitation that Gannett puts out. Not only was the paper physically larger, it was packed with information about city and county government, news of the state and nation.

Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

As Kelly pointed out, it isn’t so bad with respect to national news, because we can access the New York Times and many other sources of national news online. But there is no local substitute for credible, fact-checked reporting. We have some thoughtful local bloggers who bring issues to our attention, but they aren’t reporters, and don’t pretend to be. So there’s a lot going on in our city that we don’t know about; there are details about the things we do know that would change our opinion of them (cases in point: the Broad Ripple garage evident boondoggle, the parking meter giveaway). Mentioning something is not the same as reporting on it. Reprinting or rephrasing a press release isn’t reporting.

I’m glad the Star reported on the Litebox fiasco and Duke Energy’s ethical lapses. But patting the paper on the back for two good stories is like giving your teenager a pass for five F’s because he got one A.

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