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Public roads to nowhere [Contributor]

July 30, 2012 by 2 Comments

  [Benjamin Lusty is a lawyer and an occasional contributor to Publius Online]

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Democrats love talking about roads when they are actually talking about something else.  Listen to Massachusetts senate candidate (and progressive heart-throb) Elizabeth Warren:  “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.  Nobody.  You built a factory out there—good for you!  But I want to be clear.  You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.”  Hear this echo from President Obama:  “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.…  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.”

The uninitiated may think that Democrats are actually talking about roads, which only they support, and without which we’re relegated to the anarchic Republican blood sport of “you’re on your own” economics.  Democrats, in their humble public spiritedness, plead for just a few more tax dollars, taken from just a few more rich people, to build just a few more miles of road so we can all share in the wealth they mysteriously generate.  Conservatives, they insinuate, cosset capitalist barbarians who loot our collective infrastructure.

This is obfuscation.  Democrats aren’t talking about roads.  They’re talking about entitlements and the taxes to fund them.  President Obama’s reelection wouldn’t herald a new age of aqueducts, Great Walls, and Hoover Dams.  It will aggrandize the welfare state.  Democrats retain power by distributing cash to special interests within their electoral coalition.  Seniors get social security and Medicare, college students get subsidized loans and Pell grants, and civil servants enjoy “Ferrari” health plans and gilded pensions.  In exchange, they vote Democrat.  It is simple entitlement politics.  Democrats’ political survival depends upon funding it all without asking sacrifices of their supporters.  Although road building grabs some votes, entitlements grab more.

Math, however, gets in the way.  Protracted recession and escalation of federal spending threaten both the treasury and Democrats’ electoral prospects.  This in turn necessitates a prolonged campaign to raise taxes to sustain current benefit spending.  But rather than honestly call for higher taxes, Democrats dress their politico-fiscal paradigm in the camouflage of “public investments” while simultaneously accusing conservatives of anti-social thuggery.  Raising taxes to pay for somebody else’s health care is a hard sale, particularly when higher taxes hurt the families that pay.  It is far easier to eulogize roads and hope that most people believe that’s the actual subject of the ploy.

Consequently, Democrats deliberately misuse the concept of public goods as a campaign strategy.  Public goods are simply those things that everybody can enjoy equally.  One person’s use of a road or a park does not necessarily limit access to the benefit it generates.  Similarly, everybody enjoys national defense, fire protection, and policing.  Government funding of public goods makes economic sense because private markets generally do not provide sufficient incentive for investment.

The same is not true, however, of entitlements which are only privately enjoyed.  One person’s Medicaid benefits cannot be consumed by another, even though the costs are shared by all taxpayers.  Further, entitlements do not lead to the creation of new goods.  Entitlement spending simply funds private consumption of things which the private market already creates.

Although the interstate freeway system may not exist without the Department of Transportation, Pennsylvania Hospital (the nation’s oldest) existed long before Medicaid selectively distributed health care benefits.  Unlike public goods, entitlements do not contribute to social wealth; instead they shift consumption from one group to another.

Democrats’ political survival, however, depends on their ability to convince voters that private consumption of public funds is actually a positive good to the rest of society that justifies elevated taxation.  This is only rhetorically possible if Democrats convince others that their spending program is simply nothing more than making everybody chip in their “fair share.”  The rhetoric used, however, is inherently deceptive and fails to convey honest information about the fundamentally differing economic qualities of public goods and entitlements.

Ironically, Democrats’ confusion of public goods and entitlements jeopardizes the ongoing vitality of public goods far more than any perfidy which they attribute to Republicans.  Entitlement funding dwarfs all other expenses and engrosses an escalating share of public revenue.  Absent comprehensive reform, entitlement politics will bankrupt the state, stalling every core public function upon which Americans rely.  Democrats are travelling a rhetorical public road to nowhere on the racecar of unreformed entitlements.

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Attacks on ALEC: Transparency or policy?

July 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

Is it transparency? Or is it policy? The American Legislative Exchange Council was under attack this week, mostly for not being transparent, from organizations led by the Alliance for a Better Utah. What is behind the attack?

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This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, for short, held its 39th Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the days leading up to the event, a number of local and not local organizations mobilized their membership to protest ALEC. While not directly familiar with ALEC, one local organization–called the Alliance for a Better Utah, or ABU–seemed to be taking the lead and making the most noise in protest. Read more here in my post “.

In an effort to keep some balance, as well as to understand ALEC and the hullabaloo around their visit to Salt Lake, I decided to take a look at them and what they represent. As always, the guiding principle is “follow the money.”

Needless to say, between ABU and ABU’s fellow travelers, there has been a lot of hubbub, and several news stories, around ALEC’s Annual Meeting.

And that’s just from two (ok, three, if you count KSL, which shares a newsroom with Deseret News) news organizations.

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Why ABU wants you to care about ALEC

In an editorial, the Salt Lake Tribune editorial board opined that ALEC is designed to serve the will of the wealthy at the expense of the “average”:

What is troubling is that the shop they talk [at the ALEC Annual Meeting] is all about amending state laws across the country so that they better serve the interests of private wealth and pay less heed to the requirements of average citizens.

Further,

ALEC is organized under federal tax law as a charitable organization. Which means that the many thousands of dollars given to it by corporations to wine, dine and provide child care for junketing lawmakers are treated as tax-free charitable donations, even though the real purpose is clearly to lobby elected officials, something that organizations so constituted are specifically prohibited from doing.

If Utah lawmakers truly believe in the wisdom of these ALEC-style measures, they should carry them themselves, without the help of an organization that deserves to be under serious scrutiny from the IRS.

It’s an argument that ABU founder Josh Kanter reiterates in his editorial in the Deseret News.

The word that’s missing is “transparency,” but the clear accusation is that ALEC hides the ball from ordinary citizens, using its tax-exempt status to lobby legislators out of sight from the public.  I dispute that the Salt Lake editorial board knows what the “requirements of average citizens” are, or even who an average citizen necessarily, but beyond that, I am sympathetic to their point: public policy should be formed in the light of day, not in back rooms between the elite and lawmakers.

What is the American Legislative Exchange Council?

According to ALEC’s website, the organization’s purpose is to “advance the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism at the state level through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public.”

Founded in 1973 by a coterie of conservative politicians and activists, including as participants in its early years Jack Kemp, Lou Barnett, John Buckley, and Jesse Helms, ALEC rose in prominence during the Reagan Administration and eventually established task forces on nearly every responsibility of state government.

It’s clearly a right leaning organization, and ALEC does not appear to hide the fact. It’s board of directors, which includes our own state senator Curt Bramble,  are all Republican state legislators. A board of academics listed on the ALEC website includes Dr. Arthur B. Laffer (as in “the Laffer curve“) and Stephen Moore (a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board). It’s a conservative group through and through.

Not surprisingly, the legislation they propose and draft (often “model legislation”) is, to say the least, conservative. It’s legislation focused on the free-market, to remove crony capitalism and excessive regulation alike. It’s legislation focused on limited government, pushing back on the expansion of governmental overreach into areas of life that is better left to individual initiative and effort.  It’s legislation focused on strengthening federalism, the uniquely American system of government that divides reserves powers not specifically allocated to the federal government to the states (states are not political subdivisions of the federal government).

So? So, when this legislation is proposed to lawmakers, critiques contend, citizens cannot form an opinion based on its source, primarily because they do not know from whence it comes. Lobbyists, on the other hand, are required to register, are limited from expenditures above a certain level without filing disclosures. Further, ALEC acts as a curtain to allow corporations to get access to legislators without passing through public channels.

Transparency? Or policy disagreement?

Is this what happens?  I suppose it is possible. I’m not sure how pernicious it is for an organization of Republican legislators to propose and help each other draft legislation that is in line with Republican principles.  ALEC’s annual meeting in Salt Lake was open to the public and it was reportedly attended by members of the press in addition to non-legislators.

I suspect, however, that the ire which ALEC raises in its critics is just as much related to the content as it is to the process. ALEC is clearly on the political right, and by organizing Republican legislators nationwide, is able to level and network influence to spread ideas for legislation successfully.   It’s difficult for progressive, Democratically inclined organizations like the Alliance of a Better Utah to attack those principles in a heavily Republican state like Utah. Alternately, if ABU and other politically left organizations can attack ALEC  on transparency grounds, it can raise questions in citizen minds and diminish ALEC’s ability to influence legislation.

Yes, transparency is important. But is it the real reason ABU, Common Cause, and the AFL-CIO are attacking ALEC? Or is it just because they don’t agree with ALEC’s policy proposals?

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Alliance for a Better Utah or Alliance for a Democratic Utah? Follow the money.

July 25, 2012 by 13 Comments

When an organization purports to have the public’s interests at the heart of their actions, it’s prudent to look into their motives. And when you want to know motives, look at where their money is coming from and to whom they are giving to.

In other words, head on over to OpenSecrets.org and start typing in names.

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Occupy Movement Email Starts a Look at a Local Organization

I’ve occasionally run into the Twitter account of the “Alliance for a Better Utah” online. Until this week, however, I’ve not paid much attention to them. This week, I started hearing murmurings from Alliance for a Better Utah that something wicked was coming to town. An email sent out from an organization called “ALEC Welcoming Committee” came under the subject line “We Start Today! Occupy ALEC slc! VICTORY!!!”

Not only did I not know what ALEC was, but the Occupy movement’s anti-capitalism/anti-free market predilections raises my hackles.

A little time on the internet led me to Alliance for a Better Utah. Their website is currently advertising an “ALEC Exposed Event” for June 26th that purports to “expose” what ALEC was doing “behind closed doors” to promote issues like school vouchers, privatization, and  public land initiatives.

Also, voter suppression.

Except for that last one, I’m not sure why any of those are particularly nefarious issues to promote. I can agree that these are issues that Republicans and Democrats can, and do, stand on both sides of, though none, except voter suppression, is particularly the role of a government watch dog.

American Legislative Exchange Council

American Legislative Exchange Council (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Apparently, the Alliance for a Better Utah disagrees. Their main argument appears to be that ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council…far less evil sounding when not an acronym) holds an annual conference with legislators. These meetings are closed to the public. (More on the American Legislative Exchange Council later…because it interests me, as well).

One question that came to mind as I was looking at this was what allies form the “Alliance for a Better Utah.” Usually, one thinks of an alliance as a group of organizations. Think NATO. Or the US and UK during the World Wars. None were one person, but nations allied in a cause.

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Who are the allies and donors of Alliance for a Better Utah?

It’s hard to say, and the closest Alliance for a Better Utah comes to saying is citing its board members and staff. Apparently I was not the first person to seek this information. When I asked over Twitter, Alliance for a Better Utah deferred, offering to meet in person but preferring not to answer. And then a number of other people started to pile on Alliance for a Better Utah for a lack of transparency.

Back on the Alliance for a Better Utah page advertising the “Expose ALEC” meeting on July 26th (today), several organizations are listed as participating:

The Delicate Arch, a natural arch near Moab, Utah

The Delicate Arch, a natural arch near Moab, Utah (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For what is supposed to be a “bi-partisan organization,” or at least a non-partisan government watch dog, the list seems more fit to watch Republicans and conservative issues than government in general. I’m willing to agree that each has sought non-partisan goals, but each has also taken positions that are left-leaning.

  • The AFL-CIO is one of the largest and most powerful unions in the country, spending a record $4.5 million on lobbying in 2010 and “has long supported Democratic candidates and frequently runs television ads against Republican opponents.”
  • Common Cause has often taken up the issues dealing with fundraising and donor disclosure, but its employees have given almost exclusively to Democratic campaigns, including Elizabeth Warren in New York and Barack Obama for President. For a non-partisan organization, that indicates a left leaning tilt.
  • ALEC Exposed appears, based on their rhetoric, to be an Occupy movement organization.
  • Like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, I like our canyon country in southern Utah. However, I disagree that with SUWA that the federal government is the appropriate manager of public lands. While less has been spent by SUWA lobbying in recent years, SUWA has long been an advocate of federal government locking up public lands from access and resources.

The list makes Alliance for a Better Utah look less non-partisan and more left leaning. But this is all just speculation without knowing who Alliance for a Better Utah relies upon for funding. The organization is only about a year and a half old, and as such has not been required to file with the IRS its 990 form disclosing donors. Clearly it does not agree with the American Legislative Exchange Council, but less clear is why.

What is wrong with vouchers, privatization, or public land use such that it requires a “government watch dog” to oppose them? These aren’t the issues that a watch dog covers–they’re issues that an advocacy group opposes. Government watch dogs should be focused on transparency, accounting, government spending, and so on, not issues that fall under one partisan umbrella or another.

As I indicated earlier, I’ve asked Alliance for a Better Utah to send me a list of their larger donors (I figure smaller donors don’t really define an organization or get a say in what an organization does or supports). We’ll see if a response is sent. In the mean time, it’s hard to take Alliance for a Better Utah at its word–that it is a government watch-dog and not just another advocacy group.

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Josh Kanter, founder and largest donor of Alliance for a Better Utah with President Barack Obama from @jkanter3 on Twitter.

UPDATE: Alliance for a Better Utah just tweeted, in response to a question, that they did not have any donors above $2,000. Another tweet, in response to a comment by Ben Horsley, indicated that their largest donor is Josh Kanter, who is also Alliance for a Better Utah’s founder. Not sure how non-partisan Josh Kanter is…his Twitter picture has him shaking hands with Barack Obama and Open Secrets lists him as a donor to Jim Matheson, the Democratic Committee of Utah, Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Barack Obama, as well as an Obama Inaugural Donor.

Clearly, we need more information on Alliance for a Better Utah and why they oppose the American Legislative Exchange Council (and more on that, too). A first look at them, though, is anything but clear.

 

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The Game Has Changed [Contributor]

July 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Lori Koerner is a hardworking mom who loves God, family, country, pizza and college football.

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Politics. Just the word itself can stir some powerful emotions and opinions. Anything from an eye roll to an ear full of spirited and even nasty comments can accompany this great word. Believe me, I know. Having worked for U.S. Senator Bob Bennett for over three years, I heard my fair share of criticisms and even down right hateful discourse from my fellow Americans.

Having been on the receiving end of many political rants, I completely understand why others would rather avoid this topic all together. So for many years, I operated in a more passive political manner when it came to my friends and associates. My strategy was to leave the ball in their court and be that team player, dressed and ready to jump into the game if needed, but mostly on the sidelines until my number was called. However, I feel like the rules of this political game are quickly changing. The past five plus years have been a huge learning experience and wake up call for any American who is paying attention.

Our near economic collapse, fragile economy, astronomical national debt (created by both parties I must admit), out of control spending, entitlement programs, and big government who think they have all the answers, is beyond concerning. The rules of this political game are changing for me because I believe it’s going to take more than one man to get this country turned around. Politics and government are not just for those who decide they want to engage. Our nation is at a tipping point. We aren’t in 1996 anymore where if we watch a presidential debate and cast our ballot, we can feel like we’ve done our civic duty for the year.

For those of us who consider ourselves politically informed, it’s time to reach out and help others do the same. And for those who have chosen to disengage, I hope you’re starting to feel the urgency that choosing ignorance may come at a heavy price — not only for you, but for your children. The rules have changed because if we want to see this great Country get back on track, it’s going to take more than just voting. It’s going to take active citizen engagement, by volunteering in this election cycle and beyond. Worrying, complaining, finger-pointing, or completely disengaging will not create a brighter future for our children.

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on Februar...

Mitt Romney speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 11, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This urgency has built in me over the past year, and I will admit, I mostly ignored it. Until about two months ago, I finally took some action. I launched a website and community discussion group focused on helping citizens get informed and involved in getting Mitt Romney elected. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and make a difference. We can no longer be okay with allowing “others” to do the work of electing strong leaders. If we care about the future of our children, we have to get involved. And yes, that means more than just voting.

Join with us in making a difference in this election visit www.womenunitingforromney.com. We welcome both men and women of all levels of political involvement and education. The stakes are high, and this election is going to be extremely close. Join us as we work together to create a stronger America, this election and beyond.

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The Obamacare saga encourages political dishonesty [Contributor]

July 19, 2012 by 3 Comments

[Benjamin Lusty is a lawyer and an occasional contributor to Publius Online]

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Political dissemblance over the nature of taxes and regulatory architecture looms as an inevitably dark truth of post-Obamacare government.  Through the tortuous legislative course of Obamacare’s genesis, Democrats continually denied that the individual mandate was a tax, the heaviest word in America’s political lexicon.  Instead, the mandate was a “penalty,” or a “shared responsibility payment.”  (A chillingly Orwellian turn-of-phrase).  The Democrats knew that truth in taxation would slay Obamacare and scuttle their century-long obsession with state-directed flu shots and hip replacements.  So they prevaricated.  What do congressmen call a law that amends the Internal Revenue Code, is enforced by the Internal Revenue Service, and forces families to pay up to 2.5% of their incomes into the federal treasury?  Anything but a tax.

Unless you’re in court—there, any word will do.

Federal judges are not elected, and the politicians who voted for the law did not appear to defend themselves.  That task fell to elite lawyers who parsed language with forensic care, while insulated from the heat of constituents’ calls, donors’ demands, and lobbyists’ lists.  Those lawyers were high partisans engaged in definitive legal warfare.  Of necessity, they adopted the tactics of expediency:  prevail at all cost and regardless of any incongruity between the facts of the legal case and those of the political case.  When the stakes are command of an entire industry, and control over 16% of the economy, a favorable outcome justifies all political carnage.

Partisan achievement of controversial policy goals, however, is not the purpose of representative government.  Instead, representative government seeks consensus and accommodation of divergent political aspirations.  It only works when legislative process affords principled dissenters all reasonable opportunities to prevail on the merits.  This is impossible, however, when the agents of government cannot even agree to the meaning of the words they use to engage that process.  When a law is a “tax” for constitutional purposes, but a “penalty” for political purposes, the terms of the debate shift underfoot, confounding the discipline that elective politics is supposed to instill.

Some may counter that this is mere wrestling over words, and that the mechanisms of the law are unchanged by the language used to describe it.  But this begs the question over whether it is desirable for officials to tell constituents one thing and judges another.  Is it really acceptable for politicians to soothe the masses while winking to the legal elites who patrol the boundaries of the political system?  Besides, in its essence, government is simply words.  The miracle of self government by words, however, cannot continue if the words themselves are subject to abuse.

In result, Justice Roberts’ opinion sanctioned deception.  President Obama told the public that Obamacare was not a tax, but he told the court that it was.  The outcome of the affair is that “by-any-means” legislation is entrenched in our government, our constitution, and our political reality.  Now, neither political party has any real incentive to discuss tax policy honestly.

By any measure, Obamacare is the most expansive legislation in at least two generations.  It fundamentally alters the relationship between the federal government, the states, and the people.  It significantly amends the tax code, creates a new class of liabilities, and pours every man, woman, and child into a new, mandated, order of economic transaction.  It should not have passed the scrutiny of all three branches of the federal government through variable solipsism.  It should have been subject to the most exacting standards of honesty, procedural fairness, criticism, and consistency.  It was not.  It is the wreckage of political expediency, and the leading edge of continual obfuscation and cynicism.  Repeal may spare us bad policy, but not bad politics.

 

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Bain v. Bane: Will the real villain please stand up? [KSL.com]

July 18, 2012 by 2 Comments

I published the following piece on KSL.com this morning. You can read it here.

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It’s hard to tell who the “bad guy” is these days. Is it Bane? Or is it Bain?

The two couldn’t be more different. The first, Bane, is a fictional terrorist, a thuggish, venom-breathing villain who will fight Batman in “The Dark Knight Rises” in theaters everywhere starting this weekend.

The second is a venture capitalist firm that builds companies and helps them grow. Bain Capitalis an “asset management and financial services” firm co-founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and through which he made his fortune. It pioneered a new way of improving companies to make them stronger and more valuable.

But that’s not the story the Obama campaign is telling voters at a cost of over a $100 million in television advertising. Bain, the subject of the attacks, invests in and helps build companies we all know and use, companies such as Burlington Coat Factory, The Sports Authority, Staples, Toys “R” Us, Burger King and Domino’s Pizza.

The contrast between the real Bain and the comic book Bane couldn’t be more different. But to listen to President Barack Obama’s campaign, you would think that the two are the same, both villains bent on “pillaging society.”

As Paul Bedard reports in The Washington Examiner, Obama’s campaign clearly knows how to spin a homophone.

“It has been observed that movies can reflect the national mood,” said Democratic advisor and former Clinton aide Christopher Lehane in Bedard’s story. “Whether it is spelled ‘Bain’ and being put out by the Obama campaign or ‘Bane’ and being out by Hollywood, the narratives are similar: a highly intelligent villain with offshore interests and a past both are seeking to cover up who had a powerful father and is set on pillaging society,” he added.

It seems to reflect Obama’s view of the role of the private sector in employing Americans. While his campaign spins out the attacks, the president himself is crisscrossing battleground states to talk about why people need government to succeed and almost seems to campaign against the businesses that keep people working.

“If you’ve got a business,” he said to supporters on Friday, “you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Lest it seem out of context, here’s the full quote:

“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, ‘Well, it must be because I was just so smart.’ There are a lot of smart people out there. ‘It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.’ Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

“The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”

Like all good straw man arguments, there’s a kernel of truth to it. No one wants to get rid of the fire department or the city to stop fixing roads. But that’s not really the point, is it? The point is, Obama believes the government should solve our problems, and his government has failed to kick-start the economy, which is why we are talking about Bain, a private company, and not about Obama’s record in office. Talking about the record would reveal some inconvenient truths about the failures of government to put America back to work.

On the other hand, Bain is one “somebody along the line” that Obama might have recalled during his speech has helped businesses. Not only does Bain provide finance and advice to companies to help them grow, but under Romney also pioneered a now nearly ubiquitous business model that uses consultants to make companies more efficient.

“Whatever you think of his politics, you have to give him credit,” says Steven Kaplan, a professor of finance and entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago as quoted in New York Magazine. “He came up with a model that was very successful and very innovative and that now everybody uses.”

Even Bill Clinton called what Bain did “good work” and questioned the wisdom of Obama’s attacks.

Coupled with Ronald Reagan’s philosophy on government on the rise in the 1980′s (“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” said Reagan in his first inaugural speech in 1981, just three years before Bain was founded in 1984), Bain became a private sector force to help businesses succeed and the economy to grow. Bain would find good companies, such as the then-fledgling Staples, help them turn a good idea into growth, and profit by providing advice and money needed to expand. Not every venture was a success, but Bain succeeded often enough that other firms started taking notice. Today, Bain is the model. It is one of the reasons that many companies are in business and thriving today.

And now, after 25 years of success in the real economy — not the artificial economy of subsidies and tax breaks — that business, and its co-founder Romney, is compared to a comic book villain whose name sounds like Bain.

So why attack Bain? Why turn a successful, American company into a comic book villain?

In addition to the chicanery of taking voters’ eyes off the ball, it boils down to a simple contrast between the candidates: Obama believes government is the answer, and Mitt Romney wants government to get out of the way and let the American people get back to work.

Unfortunately for the Obama campaign, his vision has left 12.7 million Americans unemployed for three years now, with another 8.2 million employed part-time involuntarily. But with unemployment lingering and wage growth over the last 10 years lower than any decade since the Great Depression, the economy is the last thing the President wants to talk about right now. His vision just isn’t working, and Americans are looking for a vision that will put them back on the path of growth. Romney — the first successful businessman with a shot at the White House in 40 years — represents that vision.

That’s why Obama is trying to label Bain as a villain. If he can get voters to believe that Bain is evil before the election ramps up in the fall, then Obama will have succeeded in neutralizing a great Romney asset.

Meanwhile, the economy continues to struggle along. If Obama means what he says about the need for collective action to put out a fire, maybe we need to take him at his word. If he can’t put out the fire that is our struggling, then perhaps it is time for new leadership in the White House.

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Book Review: “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 – 2010″ by Charles Murray

July 11, 2012 by 1 Comment

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have friends who remind me, regularly, that wealth is becoming more and more concentrated among the wealthy. Further, the “not rich” are making less than they used to, relative to the wealthy. In other words, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

There is a divide growing in America, argues Charles Murray in his book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 – 2010″ but it isn’t necessarily over money. In fact, the divide may be greater because it is cultural, not just economic.

Displaying a dizzying array of statistics, studies, and research, Murray shows an America that is watching the rise of what seems, to me, to be a new ruling class, a group of elites that are well educated (“overeducated elitist snobs”), well-connected, and with a set of values and interests different from much of modern America. The self-segregation is not malicious, but, largely a result of people being attracted to others like them. As a result, their children grow up with a different set of values, more educated, and in turn marry people like them, further segregating themselves.

It works both ways, though, and Murray sets up as a comparison a hypothetical city on the upper (“Belmont”) and on the lower (“Fishtown“) ends of the spectrum to compare them. In his analysis, people in Belmont are better educated, less likely to get divorced (if at all), more involved in their community, work longer hours, are more honest, and are more religious. On the other hand, vital statistics in these areas for Fishmont show a gradual falling off over the last fifty years.

Why is this problematic? One reason is that it has resulted in a culture for the upper class that is completely out of touch with most of America. They watch different movies, take part in different social activities, drink different beers, and read different books. Their interests are not the same, and yet they are a select group that sets policy and opinion, controls wealth and power, for America.

Another problem is that the degradation of values in lower class America over the last fifty years is leading to a collapse of “American civic life,” something exceptional about America. At this juncture in the book, Murray, a confessed libertarian, recaps the roots and history of American civic culture and its uniqueness in the world. Neighborliness, vibrant civic engagement in solving local problems, voluntary associations, and so on. All hallmarks of America up to as recently as the 1960s, the members of lower and upper classes shared through these civic association a culture together that connected them and their values.

Further, although the elite retain some values, they have failed to lead. The elite class is as “dysfunctional in its way as the new lower class is in its way. Personally and as families, its members are successful. But they have abdictated their responsibility to set and promulgate standards.” Instead, its most successful members take advantage of the perks of position without regards to the “unseemliness” of that behavior, showing something of a new “gilded age.”

Prognosis? “If the case I have just made for a hollow elite is completely correct, all is lost,” says Murray on page 294. The lower class is only barely able to care for itself by 2020, while the upper classes enter yet another generation separate from main stream America and further out of touch with the “real world.” Insightfully, then, Murray says that “new laws and regulations steadily accrete, and America’s governing regime is soon indistinguishable from that of an advanced European welfare state. The American project is dead.”

Is all lost? Murray says that for things to turn around, America must see four predictions borne out: America must watch what happens in Europe (and if the turmoil of the last few months is any indication, this prediction is bearing out), science must undermine the moral underpinnings of the welfare state, it will become increasingly obvious that there is a simple, affordable way to replace the entire apparatus of the welfare state, and Americans’ allegiance to the American project must be far greater that Murray’s argument has acknowledged.

Could these be born out? Time will tell. In the meantime, it’s a powerful argument for a retrospection of the great problems of our times and our country.

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