Monthly Archives: November 2009

Who Can We Trust?

The Indianapolis Star has been advocating rather forcefully for laws to tighten restrictions on the lobbyists who exercise increasing power at the Statehouse. The Star argues that such restrictions are necessary if we are to restore a modicum of trust in our legislative body.

 They’re right.

 My most recent book—“Distrust, American Style”—was an inquiry into the current American “trust deficit.” I learned a lot.

In recent decades, old-fashioned corruption and greed combined with regulatory dysfunction to undermine business ethics. Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton, the sub-prime housing market meltdown—these and so many others are the stuff of hourly news reports. Many business scandals were enabled by failures of federal regulatory agencies; others were traced back to K Street influence-peddlers.

But it goes well beyond Wall Street greed and government incompetence.

Religious organizations haven’t been covering themselves with glory, heavenly or otherwise. Revelations ranging from misappropriation of funds to protection of pedophiles to the “outing” of stridently anti-gay clergy have discouraged believers and increased skepticism of organized religion. In that other American religion, major league sports, the news has been no better. High profile investigations confirmed widespread use of steroids by baseball players. An NBA referee was found guilty of taking bribes to “shade” close calls, and others have been accused of betting on games at which they officiate.  Michael Vick’s federal  indictment and guilty plea on charges related to dog fighting was tabloid fodder for weeks.

Scandals have even involved charitable organizations; a few years ago, United Way of America had to fire an Executive Director accused of using contributions to finance a lavish lifestyle, and other charities have been accused of spending far more on overhead than on good works.

In short, the institutions of our common civic life have seemingly unraveled.

Perhaps—as my more cynical friends believe—things have always been this way. But in earlier times, we did not have 24/7 cable news, millions of blogs and assorted broadcast pundits constantly telling us about it. If Americans are less trusting than we used to be, it’s no wonder.

Unfortunately, when citizens don’t know who they can trust, everything becomes fodder for suspicion and urban legend. Eventually, government grinds to a halt, and even the most routine tasks fall victim to conspiracy theories and fear-mongering. We are perilously close to such a meltdown in American civic life.

Our system of government was deliberately structured around the notion of checks and balances. The founders recognized that not all public servants would be trustworthy; their response was to create structures and competing power centers that would force accountability and transparency—to create a system we could trust, even when some people in that system weren’t trustworthy.

Perhaps the Indiana legislature is filled with the innocent do-gooders that Pat Bauer and Brian Bosma touchingly describe. But many of us have our doubts. The modest reforms supported by the Indianapolis Star would be a welcome step toward removing those doubts and restoring a measure of  trust in our governing institutions.

My Traditional Family

Like so many Americans, my family has developed a number of holiday traditions. We always have Thanksgiving at my house, with children, grandchildren, step-children and “adoptees”—friends without their own families nearby. The day after, we put up the Kennedy Christmas Tree, ornamenting it with a few dreidles, a small replica of the Bill of Rights, and the usual assortment of baubles. We top our tree with a fancy yarmulke from one of the boys’ bar mitzvahs.

This Thanksgiving, as I looked around our steadily-lengthening table, I saw what I believe will increasingly be the truly “traditional” American family.

My sister and brother-in-law are Jewish, as are their two sons, both gay. My older nephew’s partner of eleven years is Philippine, although this year we celebrated his new status as an American citizen. My husband of thirty years is a non-practicing Christian (unless you count buying Christmas presents as religious). I’m a non-practicing Jew (at least, until I encounter an anti-Semite). We’re a blended family, and each of us brought a disabled child (now a disabled adult) into our marriage. Of our other three children, our daughter married an immigrant who has never applied for citizenship, although—being English—he’s almost never confronted anti-immigrant bias. They are Episcopalian. Our oldest granddaughter is gay, in college in Wales and in what appears to be a good relationship. Her brother, our oldest grandson, is twenty; he has been seriously involved with his African-American girlfriend since they were sophomores in high school.

Our middle son was home this Thanksgiving from New York, where he currently lives. (He thinks it’s really funny that when he goes to one of our local gay bars, so many people he meets know his mother). His younger brother was absent for the first time in memory—he and his wife and two small children were with my daughter-in-law’s family this year. My daughter-in-law was raised as a nondenominational Christian, but she and my non-practicing, non-religious son are raising the children Jewish. All the women at our Thanksgiving table have careers; the older among us, careers of long duration.

In addition to the family, we included once again this year an informally “adopted” family member (white, gay) whose mother is in a nursing home in southern Indiana. It occurs to me as I type this that—despite a friendship of nearly two decades—I have no idea what his religion is or was. (I do know his politics!)

So there we all were—gay, straight, black, white, Asian, Episcopalian, Jewish, agnostic. But we were—we are—a family, in every way that counts. We share political attitudes (no Bush defenders in this bunch, I’m happy to report). We laugh—a lot. We love each other, and I think I can honestly say that affection has never been based upon bloodlines or genetic relationships. (My youngest son knows perfectly well that if he ever split from his wife, I’d go with her.)

When I hear the folks on the Christian Right pontificating about the importance of the “traditional” family, I know they aren’t talking about my family. They are talking about the white, Anglo-Saxon (preferably blond), heterosexual, middle-class and middle-brow people pictured by Norman Rockwell on old Saturday Evening Post covers. That family was “normal” and predictable: One dad, who works. One mom, who stays home and bakes apple pies and takes care of the two tousled, freckled children (one male, one female) and the obligatory dog.

I may finally have found something that the Christian Right and I agree upon: the Norman Rockwell family is on its way out. The difference is, while they bemoan its demise, I look around my Thanksgiving table, and give thanks for the vibrant, interesting, self-aware, self-accepting and all-around wonderful human beings who’ve replaced those cardboard cut-outs.

Happy holidays!

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Begging to Differ

David Brooks is one of the few remaining conservative columnists whose commentary is always rational. I may agree or disagree with the substance of any given column, but Brooks is a remnant of the days when liberals and conservatives disagreed about aspects of a shared reality–unlike today, when they appear to inhabit different solar systems.

It is in that vein that I want to take issue with a column Brooks wrote earlier this week, in which he suggested that the health reform debate is really a debate over competing values, which he defined as additional security on the one hand versus social “vitality” on the other. He seemed to be echoing (albeit in a far more reasonable fashion) cultural arguments over the  “Europeanization” of America–the argument that our entreprenuerial energy will slowly give way to a wave of genteel European social welfarism, and in the process will somehow destroy our “special” American character.

I get the argument, but I think Brooks’ central assumption is faulty.

As any economist will tell you, the largest single drag on job creation and entreprenuerial activity in the US today is the cost of providing health care. We are currently the only advanced country where health insurance continues to be provided primarily through employers–an aspect of the current landscape that current healthcare reform proposals will not change, unfortunately.

The business sector currently spends an amount in excess of its net profits to provide  health insurance for employees. The difference between what it costs an employer to create a new position and the amount that employee actually receives is sometimes called the employment “wedge.” As health costs and insurance premiums escalate, the wedge grows larger, and inhibits hiring additional workers. In good economic times, that is troubling; in times like these, it can be catastrophic.

For the shrinking number of companies that can afford to offer health insurance, negotiating and administering medical benefits, and complying with the government regulations attendant to them, consumes untold hours of HR time. This is a drag on productivity—a generator of overhead costs that reduce profits and divert effort away from the core business operations. Single-payer would remove those costs and that burden, but even the inadequate proposals contained in the Senate bill would significantly ameliorate them.

Then there is competitiveness. If you don’t think that healthcare reform would be economically significant, let me share an example. In the case of our struggling auto industry, amounts paid for employee health add somewhere between 1800 and 2000 of the price of each new car. No wonder American automakers have found it difficult to remain competitive! (In the single payer systems with which we compete, not only are those product costs eliminated, but  doctors’ expenses are reduced as well: currently, medical offices spend considerable sums on personnel whose only job is dealing with insurers—confirming coverage, complying with insurer regulations, submitting claims on multiple different forms and collecting amounts due.) Doctors and employers alike could save millions of dollars each year just by standardizing insurance forms!

Smaller companies—the real engines of economic growth and job creation, the “entreprenuers” about whom Brooks is so worried—are increasingly unable to offer benefits, and that puts them at a competitive disadvantage when they try to hire good employees. If health coverage were de-coupled from employment, the United States would become a much more attractive location for new businesses, and incentives to outsource production to overseas workers would be reduced. (Not too long ago, Toyota was looking for a site for a new factory in North America. Several southern states were offering tax abatements, infrastructure improvements and other incentives worth millions. Toyota decided to go to Canada, which was not offering anything. When asked why, the company explained that in Canada, they didn’t need to provide healthcare.) We aren’t going to solve that problem any time soon, but almost everyone I know has a story about someone who wanted to start a business, but couldn’t due to an inability to get reasonably-priced health insurance, or any at all.

Contrary to Brooks’ assumption, rationalizing American healthcare, and removing the burden of providing insurance from employers, would unleash a new era of productivity and usher in an entreprenuerial renewal.

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Void for Vagueness

One of the most difficult constitutional principles to teach, for reasons I really don’t understand, is the rule that in order to be constituional, a law must be sufficiently precise to allow citizens to know what behaviors will be sanctioned. If a law does not meet that standard, we say it is “void for vagueness.” (This is the problem with so many “anti-pornography” efforts; one person’s porn is another person’s erotica, as Nadine Strossen once put it.)

A good example of the problem with overbroad and vague prohibitions is the patriot act provision being challenged in this case, which the Supreme Court will hear this term.