Monthly Archives: December 2008

impeach Blago

(en route to Georgia for the holidays) The effort to impeach Gov. Blagojevich seems to have stalled, on the ground that the legislature cannot find him guilty of corruption without a lengthy trial–complete with an elaborate defense–that might undermine the federal prosecution.

I’d make this simpler. I’d move to impeach and remove Gov. Blagojevich without presuming or showing that he’s guilty of the charges in the indictment. I’d impeach him because he’s been indicted and he cannot perform the state’s business in that condition. A governor could be falsely indicted–he could be completely innocent. However, if the indictment concerns a felony that relates to his position, he should probably resign to concentrate on fighting the charges and to save the state from being led by a criminal defendant. That might not be the best decision in every conceivable situation–for instance, a prosecutor might bring transparently baseless felony charges just to force a resignation. But it seems within the competence of the legislature to decide that this particular indictment is plausible and that Blagejovich cannot serve. That sounds like grounds for impeachment to me, and it should take just a couple of hours to do the deed.

Two obvious objections arise. (1) The impeachment could deprive an innocent man of his rights. I reply: No one has a right to be governor. That is a privilege. One should only hold the office if doing so is good for the people of the state. Even if Blagojevich is innocent, it is not good for Illinois for him to serve. (2) A politically motivated legislature could remove a governor simply because they didn’t like him. I reply: that would be wrong, and the people should punish such a legislature at the next election. But it’s not the situation here. The legislature deeply disliked Blagojevich months ago, but they didn’t think about impeaching him. They should impeach him now because any person indicted for felonies that directly relate to his public duties cannot credibly perform those duties. It’s time to get this over with.

(By the way, Kenneth Starr never indicted Bill Clinton.)

what if you hold a deliberation and corporations show up?

I come out of the movement for deliberative democracy. My first job was with the Kettering Foundation, which launched the National Issues Forums; and I have also worked with AmericaSPEAKS, Study Circles, and other organizations that promote public deliberations. Deliberative forums vary in size, duration, organization, and methods of recruitment, but all try to draw representative (or at least diverse) groups of citizens. Since people attend to decide what should be done, not to represent interests or advance causes, their statements are presumably sincere. In contrast, participants in negotiations may have ulterior motives. Deliberations usually seem better than “politics as usual”–more civil and constructive, driven by better motivations.

But is this because they are “deliberations”? Or is it because they are low-stakes affairs, with no direct consequences for policy? As the stakes rise, what happens to deliberations and deliberators?

According to Robert Pear in the New York Times, volunteers from the Obama Campaign are organizing 4,200 small meetings (“house parties”) to discuss health care. I wouldn’t call these events “deliberations,” because one side in the debate has set the agenda. But they are somewhat deliberative in structure and intent–and they are open to anyone who wants to come. Whether or not we call them deliberations, they are participatory free spaces for open dialogue, and they have the potential to strengthen neighborly connections. So they are Good Things.

In response, the insurance companies are “encouraging [their] employees and satisfied customers to attend” the Obama house parties. Insurance companies have First Amendment rights to petition and assembly. If someone organizes an open discussion, corporations are entitled to send their members. An obvious counter is to make sure that even more people come who have pro-reform beliefs. At that point, a “house party” starts looking like a conventional democratic assembly, caucus, or election, in which the point is to turn out the greatest numbers. That is not, of course, a bad system: we tend to call it “democracy.” But we already have a structure for it, composed of numerous electoral districts, levels of governance, and rules for open meetings, oversight, judicial review, etc., etc.

My point is not a skeptical or cynical one. I think pure deliberations are valuable, and so are the quasi-deliberative “house parties” that the Obama volunteers are organizing. I also think town meetings and legislative assemblies are good. I simply expect different norms to arise when there are different kinds of stakes. We should not romanticize entirely voluntary events that have wonderful atmospheres but don’t affect policy.

on cutting and growing

    Cuttings

    Sticks-in-a-drowse over sugary loam,
    Their intricate stem-fur dries;
    But still the delicate slips keep coaxing up water;
    The small cells bulge;

    One nub of growth
    Nudges a sand-crumb loose,
    Pokes through a musty sheath
    Its pale tendrilous horn.

    Theodore Roethke, “The Lost Son and Other Poems” (1948)

An aphorism is a “cutting,” because the Greek verb aphorizdo is to “cut.” So a book of aphorisms is a selection of short pieces cut and pasted together. Wittgenstein was in the habit of writing short passages, cutting them out with scissors, and throwing them in a box. The results were published as a book entitled “Cuttings” (Zettel) which might be considered an unpretentious word for “aphorisms.” That form had attained high esteem but also some pomposity with Schlegel, Kleist, Karl Kraus, Walter Benjamin, and other German authors.

Blog posts are also “cuttings” in this sense. I think many people who write or read blogs would be embarrassed to call them “aphorisms,” but they hope that the juxtaposition of short snippets of text will be generative, like sticks in wet soil. Good blogs are contributions to something more ambitious and more coherent. Our quick and scattered thoughts have the potential to come together in linear form. Which brings up another meaning of a “cutting”–a piece of a plant that could begin to grow. Theodore Roethke explores that meaning in remarkable pendant poems from 1948.

    Cuttings (later)

    This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
    Cut stems struggling to put down feet.
    What saint strained so much,
    Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?

    I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
    In my veins, in my bones I feel it, —
    The small waters seeping upward,
    The tight grains parting at last.
    When sprouts break out,
    Slippery as fish,
    I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

    Theodore Roethke, “The Lost Son and Other Poems” (1948)

In both poems, especially the latter, the verbs are hard to distinguish from the nouns. In “Cuttings (later)”, the words “urge,” “wrestle,” and “cut” are used as nouns. That first sentence has no verb at all. In line three, “strained” is a verb, but it first struck me as an adjective. Plants, of course, are objects; we think of action taking place in the animal kingdom, which is also the realm of suffering. But vegetable cuttings are acting when they begin to sprout–they need verbs. Roethke’s language represents the pain of moving into action, of nouns taking on verbs. The verse shifts from objective description (about the plants) to Roethke’s own response. The two poems are themselves cuttings, separated from each other in the original volume, removed from any lengthy narrative or argument, but straining to grow and to inspire growth.

the European city as site of citizenship

I met yesterday with a German visitor, a former mayor as well as an activist shaped by the sixties and by direct exposure to the Frankfurt School. We talked about European self-governing cities as sites of citizenship.

There is a very old tradition of autonomous or quasi-autonomous European cities, governed by guilds and associations (corporations; comuni; freie Städte). It was in the medieval Italian city-states that civic republicanism was reborn, in imitation of classical ideals of eloquent deliberation, military and civilian service, and mutual obligation. Autonomous European cities also built an impressive array of institutions: hospitals, churches, alms houses, schools, colleges, and green spaces. By the seventeenth century in the Atlantic countries, and by 1900 in Central Europe, all these cities had become subject to large nation-states, managed from their metropolitan capitals. But even in Britain, where power and population shifted early to London, the provincial cities continued to construct impressive nonprofit and public institutions that reflected and developed their local cultures and continued local traditions of governance. Lord Mayors in British cities still wear medieval or renaissance garb, for a reason.

The twentieth century, as Gordon Brown has noted , was an era of centralization. Social democrats, conservative nationalists, and even Thatcherite neoliberals all generally disparaged or ignored the traditions of civic autonomy. But those traditions could be revived–and may be reviving–as the European Union draws power away from the nation state. Brown, a Glaswegian, has explicitly evoked the civic traditions of his city in Victorian times, before his own party helped to centralize authority in London.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, “The Effects of Good Government on the Life of the City,” in the Palazzo Publico (seat of the comune), Siena

Shouldn’t we worry that citizenship defined by a town or city is exclusive? What about immigrants and other newcomers? That is a concern, but it’s worth noting that some of the old self-governing cities (from Venice to London) were highly cosmopolitan, and cosmopolitanism was basic to their identity. I recognize that London apprentices used to riot against Flemish and Huguenot migrants; and Venice coined the very word “Ghetto” as the place to lock its Jews. But there were also traditions of inclusion. I may be over-influenced by personal experience, but I happened to attend a primary school within the medieval limits of the City of London, where the Christian socialist headmaster taught his rather diverse student body to see themselves as citizens of the ancient corporation. A recent Lord Mayor of that same corporation had exactly my (Jewish) name, Peter Levine. As a child, I was proud of my American identity but could simultaneously consider myself a Londoner, because London has always been a melting pot.

But wasn’t civic government highly stratified and unequal, with local ruling classes lording it over local proletariats? Again, that’s a real concern; but I would offer two responses. First, cities should not be completely autonomous. They should be taxed, regulated, and funded by higher levels of government whose principles include fairness and equality. Second, although I favor equality, I also believe that the owners of capital need discretion and will always have a privileged position. So our goal should not be to remove inequality but to tie the interests of the wealthy to those of the community. The wealthy class in a proud and quasi-autonomous city is more embedded and accountable than the wealthy class in a large nation state or an international market.

Finally, as Steve Elkin argues, municipal politics is an excellent school of democratic citizenship. The scale is big enough, and the institutions are formal enough, that every kind of issue arises–from economic redistribution to morals to global warming. But the scale is modest enough that problems are concrete and citizens have opportunities for personal leadership and face-to-face interaction.

Overall, this is an argument for what the Europeans call subsidiarity (pushing authority down to the lowest practicable level) as way to address the “democracy deficit” and restore a sense of active citizenship.

casualties of Wall Street

I had written the following post last night, and today the same story is on the front page of the New York Times. …

CIRCLE once received a smallish grant from the JEHT Foundation (which stands for Justice, Equality, Human Dignity, and Tolerance). JEHT funded lots of other work in the areas of criminal justice and fair elections. Alas, its donors’ funds were managed by Bernard L. Madoff, the alleged Wall Street swindler. The funds are gone and JEHT has closed, apparently forever.

I serve on the board of several nonprofits and I work (in various ways) for several more. Almost everyone who holds a management position in one of these organizations is cutting programs or even laying people off. I have no solutions, forecasts, or advice, but I feel this blog should reflect the main reality of our field right now.