(On a flight from Miami to Boston) I have a budding friendship with the airport taxi dispatcher in Watertown, MA. A TSA guy at Logan has recognized me: “You’re the one with the DC driver’s license.” This fall, I’ve gone as far as Birmingham and Miami and back, each in a day. I know how to pick a seat on the Washington shuttle to maximize the chance of a view down the National Mall without obstruction from the wing.
I may be traveling a bit too much.
I’ve been critical of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) for its internal financial scandals and for its hard-edged, rather scripted mobilizing strategy which I have often observed to conflict with the kind of diverse, asset-based, skill-building, relational organizing that I admire more.
Still, the current criticisms of ACORN are ridiculously overblown. Because I am a federal grantee, my inbox contains a stern message not to let any of our federal money go to ACORN. That’s because of an act of Congress that specifically names the organization and denies it all funds. I think such legislation is an unconstitutional bill of attainder, because Congress has penalized an individual organization without a trial. It passed the House by 232-178 and the Senate by 67-25.
Meanwhile, you can find daily accusations that ACORN steals elections. For instance, Doug Hoffman, the conservative Republican candidate in New York’s 23 congressional district, claims that ACORN has been “scheming behind closed doors, twisting arms and stealing elections from the voters,” thus allowing Democrat Bill Owens to claim more votes. If you Google the words “acorn steal obama election,” you get 2,510,000 hits.
As far as I can tell, these accusations all stem from the fact that ACORN has submitted false names on voter registration lists–for instance, Mickey Mouse and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys. That’s because ACORN pays canvassers, and some of those canvassers try to cheat by filling their sheets with made-up names. ACORN is then required to submit the whole sheet (including the transparently fake names), because if an organization could cross off names, it could disenfranchise real voters. ACORN has flagged the obvious fake entries for special attention by elections officials. In any case, the only victim here is ACORN; Mickey Mouse is not going to vote.
Overall, ACORN does not represent my favorite style of organizing. But it is being relentlessly attacked for different reasons–because it represents poor people, and because it has network ties to Barack Obama and many other national Democrats.
Our system for voter registration is unconscionably complicated and difficult, and that’s just an example of bureaucratic systems that make life hard for all Americans and especially for poor people who have rights to specific services. A lot of ACORN’s work involves signing them up for their legal rights, including their right to vote. We shouldn’t be picking on them for that reason.
[PS: “A new Public Policy Pollling survey finds that 52% of Republican voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately.”]
On a frenzied work day, these are sites I should not be visiting–but they are great ideas.
Impact-Inc. is a game (modeled on Mafia Wars) that lets you simulate running a nonprofit organization. This is where to click and play if you have a Facebook account.
Redistricting the Nation opposes gerrymandered electoral districts–one of our most serious political problems–and their site offers an opportunity to draw your own (imaginary) districts.
Our Courts (started by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor) provides Do I Have A Right? (a game in which you are a constitutional lawyer), and Supreme Decision (in which you are clerk to a Supreme Court justice).
Ina very valuable piece for National Affairs, William Schambra argues that Barack Obama is the epitome of a policy-oriented progressive; in fact, he is the first “genuine, life-long true believer” in that philosophy ever to occupy the Oval Office. The Progressive “policy approach” presumes that social science can tell us how to fix social problems. Problems are interconnected, hence they require comprehensive reforms rather than programs in separate silos. Standing in the way of the appropriate reforms are local prejudices and interests and “politics”–meaning horse-trading among popular leaders with interests and biases. The perfect manifestation of the Progressive policy approach is the appointment of a policy “czar,” an expert, to resolve a broad and interconnected problem. The opposite is a compromise among ill-tutored Congressmen, or a loud objection from some morally outraged cultural group.
Schambra writes:
I endorse much of Schambra’s critique of policy-oriented Progressivism. He believes it is an unrealistic doctrine and also undesirable because the clash of interests that it tries to replace with “science” actually reflects cultural vitality. This seems right to me:
I agree with that but am not sure that I share Schambra’s reading of Barack Obama. Based on the president’s writing and speaking, I think Obama understands the intractability and merit of moral commitments and disagreements. He sees personal behavior and community norms as essential components of social issues–and is often criticized from the left for that. He takes an “asset-based” approach to communities and is an excellent listener. His move away from discrete programs can be seen as arrogant (that’s Schambra’s view), but it can also be interpreted as a critique of the technocratic idea that problems can be disaggregated; Obama’s is a more “holistic” approach. The modesty of the health care reform bill (for it is very modest) speaks to a recognition that you have to mend the ship of state while at sea. An arrogant–or more confident–Progressive would favor single-payer.
Finally, Obama has been criticized by the left for allowing Congress to horse-trade on essential issues like the stimulus package and health care, rather than presenting a detailed proposal from the administration. In that sense, it seems to me Obama has broken with technocratic Progressivism rather than epitomize it.
But in the end, I think the struggle over how to apply science to policy–and how to deal with moral resistance and disagreement–runs through the Democratic Party, the Obama Administration, and the president himself. Schambra has nicely identified one side of that argument, even as he underestimates the importance of the other side.
I haven’t seen polling on corruption, but I suspect that most Americans see some aspects of our society as “corrupted” in an important sense of that word. Institutions’ appropriate, original purposes have been twisted or adulterated until they serve harmful purposes. The great dividing question is, Where do you see the most corruption?
The libertarian/conservative story is that the federal government was created for very limited purposes (the enumerated powers of the Constitution) and has since been corrupted by elites to serve their own illegitimate ends at the expense of individual freedom. One can debate whether the functions of the modern federal government are appropriate and beneficial. Regardless, I disagree with the premise that the federal octopus keeps expanding. As a percentage of GDP, federal revenues have been steady at about 17-20% since the Depression. That means that if increased taxation is a sign of corruption, FDR corrupted us but there has been little change since. What has changed is the nature of federal regulation and activism. Forty years years ago, the national government was involved in welfare (AFDC) and school integration (busing), it drafted many young men to fight in an unpopular and deadly war, and it regulated the financial markets, which were basically public stock and bond exchanges. It has retreated in all those important–and potentially invasive–areas.
I do see other profound forms of corruption:
Financial markets are supposed to allocate resources to the most productive purposes, but the cost of the financial sector has grown from 1.5 percent of the economy in the 1800s to almost 8 percent in 2008–a sure sign (along with Wall Street bonuses and other blatant evidence) that this sector is seizing value for itself and not allocating it productively.
Corporate boards are supposed to oversee companies in the interests of shareholders; and in a competitive market, whatever serves customers best should benefit shareholders as well. But boards seem eager to protect the salaries and job security of senior managers, with whom they interlock.
Medical science is supposed to develop objective understand of diseases, which leads to treatments that will be employed in the maximum interest of patients and with full respect for patients’ dignity. (Health care uses 16% of GDP.) Instead, drug companies ghost-write journal articles advocating for their products and block independent studies designed to compare the efficacy of different treatments. Insurance companies decide how patients are treated.
The courts and criminal justice system are supposed to protect the peace and promote individual liberty and security, but they now absorb massive social resources to incarcerate 2.3 million Americans. Lawyers, companies that build and staff prisons, towns that house prisons, law-enforcement agencies, and organized crime syndicates are some of the institutions that benefit from this diversion of resources.
Legislatures are supposed to deliberate in public about the common good, but Genetech lobbyists were able to write floor statements for 42 Members of Congress (22 Republicans and 20 Democrats). Of course, that is just a window into the pervasive influence of well-funded lobbyists on lawmakers.
Universities (almost 3% of GNP) are supposed to enhance people’s knowledge and wisdom, but they seem as likely to sell research to industry, field professional sports teams using unpaid athletes, and select privileged young people and grant them diplomas after housing them in Club-Med-like arrangements.
I think corruption (writ large) is a major political issue. Perhaps John McCain understood that when he made corruption on Wall Street a signature theme (much to the dismay of Dick Armey). But McCain offered no serious policy response, because he always personalized the problem. Systemic corruption arises because of the rules, incentives, or norms of large institutions. Punishing a few malefactors is rarely more than a small part of the solution.