Monthly Archives: September 2015

Kim Davis, Mike Pence and Those Pesky Things Called Job Descriptions…

There really isn’t much more to be said about Kim Davis, the County Clerk who claims her religious beliefs should protect her against demands that she do her job. Let’s face it: when even a Fox News panel concludes that her lawyer is an idiot and her argument without legal merit,  her Christian martyr days are probably limited.

As multiple observers have pointed out, if Davis can refuse to do her job because of her religious beliefs, Quaker clerks can refuse to issue gun permits, Amish clerks can deny driver’s licenses…the list goes on. Davis’ defenders seem unable to distinguish between her right to personal religious liberty and a right to use government to deny such liberty to others.

But Davis isn’t the only religious zealot who doesn’t seem to grasp that pesky “job description” concept. Indiana Governor Mike Pence just announced his opposition to the Iran agreement.

Like Davis, Pence is entitled to his views. The problem is that–also like Davis– he doesn’t seem to understand what he’s being paid (with our tax dollars) to do.

Not only does the Governor’s job not include foreign policy, it does include multiple responsibilities which the Pence Administration has consistently ignored: maintenance and repair of the state’s infrastructure, protection of the environment and public health, and day-to-day administration of the state’s bureaucracy (which has experienced unprecedented managerial turnover), to name just a few.

It also includes attention to Indiana’s worsening economy–14.6 percent of Hoosiers now live in food insecure households, up from 14.1 percent in 2013.

Instead of attending to these admittedly prosaic elements of his job description, Pence has spent his time bullying the Superintendent of Public Instruction, establishing a “News Bureau,” hectoring Planned Parenthood, and defending RFRA.

Here’s the “take away” for both of these exemplars of zealotry: if you can’t–or won’t– do your job, you need to quit.

http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2015/09/08/pence-says-iran-nuclear-deal/71885290/

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Corrupting the Courts

Can we talk about checks and balances? The rule of law?

On July 16th, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned that state’s limits on money in politics, and handed Scott Walker a significant political victory as he began his (thus far pathetic) campaign for the White House.

If the case had been argued and decided on legal principles, it would be unremarkable, no matter how unfortunate “good government” advocates might consider the consequences. But it wasn’t. Walker’s victory was political, not legal. As Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Policy, explained in the wake of the decision,

“The dark money groups that bankrolled the Walker team’s recall victories got the decision they wanted from the justices they swept into office with their spending.”

Defenders of judicial elections point out that it is impossible to remove politics from other methods of judicial selection, and that is certainly true. But those processes–like the one we follow in Indiana, where a panel of lawyers “vets” candidates and sends three names to the Governor–do not involve the obscene amounts of money and the blatantly political motivations that characterized the Wisconsin high court election.

The Wisconsin Club For Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturer’s and Commerce, the organizations that brought the lawsuit, spent $3,685,000 supporting Justice David Prosser in his 2011 race (five times as much as the Prosser campaign itself). The election was decided by just 7,000 votes. Anyone who doubts that expenditures at that level were meant to “buy” judicial outcomes is living in a fantasy world.

In Wisconsin, what that money bought was an elimination of checks and balances, ensuring that the judicial branch would roll over and play dead when faced with corrupt activity by the executive.

“It comes as no surprise that a court elected with $10 million in support from the same dark money groups under investigation would overturn years of precedent and open the door to unlimited secret funds in Wisconsin elections, fully coordinated with candidates,” said Brendan Fischer, General Counsel of the Center for Media and Democracy.

The groups challenging the probe, Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG) and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), allegedly coordinated with Walker and were parties to the case, and also among the top spenders on Wisconsin Supreme Court elections.Justices Michael Gableman and David Prosser were both elected to the court by narrow margins and with huge expenditures by WMC and WiCFG, yet declined a motion from Special Prosecutor Schmitz to recuse themselves from the case. In court filings, Walker’s lawyer also argued against the recusal motion.

In Wisconsin, partisans used judicial elections to buy the result they wanted. In Kansas, where the courts recently invalidated an administrative change desired by the state legislature, the legislature has threatened to defund the judicial branch. 

And of course, we have candidates for the highest office in the land supporting the right of a county clerk to ignore the highest court in the land.

Rule of law, anyone?

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The “Good Enough” Voter

It’s a political truism that Labor Day is when voters wake up and start paying attention to candidates and campaigns. But for the sizable portion of the citizenry that doesn’t vote, Labor Day–yesterday– just marks the beginning of fall.

In the run-up to this year’s municipal elections, I’ve participated in a number of conversations about these people who don’t vote–those who just skip local elections, turning out only in Presidential years and those who don’t participate at all.

As part of our upcoming “Electing the Future” project, NUVO and WFYI have focused on those non-voters. The whole committee of sponsors has searched for examples, in order to ask the obvious question: why?

The results have been interesting. Many of the people we found who admitted to never voting were unwilling to “come out” and be identified; they were obviously embarrassed, a response that suggests they know they are evading a civic responsibility. What was interesting is that they had the same excuse as those who were willing to participate in the effort we’ve dubbed “Make Me Care.” They explained that they “didn’t know enough” to feel confident about their votes.

Of course, it’s pretty obvious that many, many people who know very little nevertheless make it to the polls. (Just look at the open-ended responses to exit polls..) But using the excuse of civic ignorance raises a pretty important question, namely, what degree of information is necessary to make one a “good enough” voter?

The ideal voter, of course, would know a great deal about the candidates, the offices for which they are running, and the issues that are relevant to those offices, but very few of us meet that standard. One shortcut–used by a large number of voters–is party affiliation; if you know which political party stands for positions with which you generally agree, voting for members of that party is usually a safe way to express your general policy preferences.

In this internet era, a quick visit to the websites of the candidates will show what issues those candidates believe are important, and their approach to those issues and to the offices they seek.

Ultimately, of course, we all have to look at the candidates and judge whether they seem intent on improving the city (or state or nation), or whether they seem to be waging campaigns that are all about them. What does your gut tell you? Is this someone who wants to do something, or someone who wants to be someone?

Making that determination, and voting for the candidate who seems more interested in and capable of doing the job than in being important, probably makes you a “good enough” voter. And goodness knows, we need a lot more of those!

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Public Assets, Private Profits, Politics

And the beat goes on.

Over the past several years, Indiana government has entered into a variety of deals in which public assets have generated or guaranteed private profits. The toll road lease probably received the most attention. Daniels’ ill-fated privatization of the welfare application process–and the ensuing lawsuits– was high profile for a time, but his Administration’s thirty-year agreement with Leucadia National Corporation to purchase the output from its Rockport coal gasification plant (coincidentally managed by a long-time political ally) received significantly less coverage.

Locally, of course, we’ve seen a number of dubious transactions, notably the 50-year parking meter contract.

More recently, a politically-connected developer has been given long-term control of the Indiana Dunes. 

The parkland surrounding Indiana’s towering dunes was intended to keep industry away from a geological marvel molded over thousands of years at the southern tip of Lake Michigan.

Yet five years after a politically connected developer suggested officials should hire a company to rehabilitate a dilapidated beachfront pavilion at the popular tourist destination, a small construction project has ballooned into a decades-long privatization deal with the state. It includes two beachfront restaurants, a rooftop bar, a glass-walled banquet hall promising “the best view in Indiana” — and there is potential for more development to come.

What’s more, the company ultimately picked to do the job was co-founded by Chuck Williams, the developer who pitched the initial idea. Williams, a regional chairman of the state Republican Party, worked behind the scenes for over a year with the administrations of two GOP governors, shaping and expanding the plans.

There are times when so-called “public-private partnerships” make sense. There are times they don’t. The problem is, these deals increasingly occur without the public vetting required to make that determination.

In the case of the Indiana Dunes, critics characterize the deal as a “usurping” of public land in the name of private development, and charge that the state Department of Natural Resources did not hold public meetings or seek out more competitive bids. Worse still,

Preliminary figures submitted to the DNR by Williams suggest the project will yield a handsome profit. In its first year, the development is expected to turn a $141,000 profit — a figure projected to climb to nearly $500,000 in a decade.

In return, the DNR will get 2 percent of the company’s annual revenues and $18,000 a year in rent for property that state parks Director Dan Bortner describes as having a “million dollar smile.”

The merits or flaws of this particular contract aside, Hoosier citizens need to demand a halt to the steady sell-off of public goods at both the state and local level until a full public debate can be held to consider the rules–and the ethical guidelines– that should govern privatization agreements.

In far too many cases, the risks are socialized and profits privatized–with We the People guaranteeing the revenues of politically-connected cronies.

And we wonder why citizens are cynical….

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The Times They are A-Changing…Maybe

I spend a lot of time–way too much, actually–scanning the news and following current policy debates. Part of that is my job; when you teach in a school of public affairs you are expected to keep abreast of those affairs. Part of it is morbid curiosity.

Anyone who is surveying the current American landscape  can certainly find plenty of reasons to be depressed, and I share many of those reasons on this blog. But here and there it is also possible to detect more positive signs, indications of a counter-narrative to the anti-intellectualism, nativism and fundamentalism that makes sound policy so difficult. (I  realize that many of our more shrill ideologues don’t consider these omens good news…)

If, as many historians suggest, there is a political pendulum that moves America from Left to Right and back again, we may be seeing the leading edge of a swing back from the far, far Right where it has been for several years, back toward the rational center. 

Recently, the Upworthy site posted eleven reasons to be optimistic about America’s future. The list began by noting that, a mere eleven years ago, only one state (Massachusetts) had marriage equality; now all of them do.

For all of the hysteria over the Affordable Care Act–aka “Obamacare”–the number of uninsured Americans has declined over 30%. The teen pregnancy rate is the lowest it has been in 25 years. The smoking rate has been cut in half.  Life expectancy is up.

Unemployment is down, and efforts to raise the minimum wage are beginning to gain traction. The use of renewable energy, especially solar energy, has grown significantly, and a majority of Americans take climate change seriously and want government to address it.

Like previous “Great Awakenings,” the most recent wave of extreme religiosity has abated considerably; the latest survey results from Pew find nearly 25% of Americans unaffiliated. Bernie Sanders draws enormous crowds of voters concerned with growing inequality. Activists have mounted an energetic effort to pass a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. New movements like Black Lives Matter are bringing needed attention to the persistence and consequences of American racism.

Even in the Middle East, there are signs that should encourage us. Reuters reports that thousands of ordinary Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad to protest government corruption and to demand a secular state and an end to Sunni or Shia control of government.

There’s much more.

Genuine social change doesn’t come peacefully, of course. We may be in for a rough time, not unlike the turbulent 60s. But surely, a measure of social unrest is preferable to continued acquiescence with inequality, plutocracy and fundamentalism.

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