Public Policy Archive

Which Reform First?

Posted November 16, 2005 By Dave Thomer

Via Blinq, one of the blogs at the Inquirer, I just discovered Young Philly Politics, a group blog that seems to be mostly devoted to local issues. There’s a lot of really good discussion there, including a post by Ben Waxman called Why Blogs Matter that turned into a conversation about the priorities reformers should have, as well as the conflict and compatibility between issues of good-government reform (currently huge in Philly) and issues of economic justice (currently not quite so huge, but always simmering in the background).

Hmm. I wonder what the cutoff for “Young” is . . .

        

An Excellent Election Day Question

Posted November 8, 2005 By Dave Thomer

Why Tuesday?

Pattie and I have allowed the city to use our garage as the polling place for our division since last November. It helps make sure our neighbors have a convenient place to vote, so I’m happy to do it – I figure it’s part of our contribution to Get Out the Vote efforts.

Of course, I wasn’t so crazy about it this morning when I had to get up at 6:30 to finish clearing out the garage, let the voting guys in, and get Alex ready for school so Pattie could go to work and I could go teach. The logistical problems involved in having a single day of voting right smack dab in the middle of the work week really hit home today. So there I was, asking Why Tuesday? I’m a little embarrassed to say I thought it was a Constitutional issue setting the date for federal elections, but as it turns out I learned from the site above that it’s because of an 1845 act of Congress. Tuesday was apparently a good day for rural folks who had to travel to vote. Which may have been all well and good 150 years ago, but doesn’t work so well today. This is one of those situations where re-evaluating what we do to see if it makes sense would come in handy.

There are occasional rumblings about making Election Day a national holiday, which would certainly be a good start. Of course, at this point, I want the day after the election to be a holiday . . .

        

A New Branch of Government?

Posted November 5, 2005 By Dave Thomer

I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the area of democratic theory lately, which will provide fodder for a slew of more academic posts shortly. The area I’m focusing on is called deliberative democratic theory, which is basically concerned with getting citizens involved in the political process by getting them to justify their favored policies to one another. So Amazon has been spitting a bunch of titles at me lately, and this one caught my eye: Deliberative Democracy in America: A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government by Ethan J. Lieb. Here’s the description:

Leib concentrates on designing an institutional scheme for embedding deliberation in the practice of American democratic government. At the heart of his scheme is a process for the adjudication of issues of public policy by assemblies of randomly selected citizens convened to debate and vote on the issues, resulting in the enactment of laws subject both to judicial review and to possible veto by the executive and legislative branches. The “popular” branch would fulfill a purpose similar to the ballot initiative and referendum but avoid the shortcomings associated with those forms of direct democracy. Leib takes special pains to show how this new branch would be integrated with the already existing governmental and political institutions of our society, including administrative agencies and political parties, and would thus complement rather than supplant them.

I haven’t read the book yet, so I’m not sure how it would work. I’ve expressed my doubts about government by proposition before, so I’m open to new ideas that execute the core idea more effectively. I’m definitely going to have to try to get a hold of this book.

        

We Need the Power

Posted July 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

Energy policy has become a nexus through which so many seemingly disparate issues connect. Energy affects the economy because of fuel prices and production costs. It affects national security because of our dependence on oil from foreign countries, including some that use their oil profits to fund terrorists and other destabilizing forces. It affects the environment and public health because energy consumption creates pollutants that contribute to global warming, smog, and the presence of irritants and toxins in the atmosphere. (And when you get down to it, every one of those other issues carries an added economic cost with it.) It’s not surprising, then, that energy policy has become a significant issue in the current presidential election. It seems like a good idea, then, to look at the two major candidate’s plans as a starting point for a discussion of where we should go in the future.

Both George W. Bush and John Kerry provide outlines of their plans on their websites. Both outlines are extremely vague on a number of points, such as Bush’s claim that he “remains actively engaged with our friends in OPEC, as well as non-OPEC producers from around the worldâ€? in order to reduce gas prices or Kerry’s non-specific promise to “improve fuel efficiency of cars to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.â€? How are you going to engage them? What’s the payoff of the engagement? How much are you going to increase efficiency? How will you motivate manufacturers to make those improvements? Even in those vague statements, however, there are clearly differences in priorities, and there are some concrete proposals to consider as well. Read the remainder of this entry »

        

About Those Huddled Masses

Posted May 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

At the beginning of 2004, President Bush proposed a set of reforms to U.S. immigration policy that would have, among other things, allowed a number of workers currently inside the country illegally to attain a guest worker status for up to ten years. The proposal never really took off, as it was antithetical to the hard-line position on immigration taken by much of the President’s Republican base and other issues quickly caught the public’s attention. It’s a shame that we never had a really serious discussion of immigration policy, because it seems fairly certain that the current system isn’t working too well. The question is, how do we fix it?

The answer can not help but be complex, because immigration regulations implicate, or are implicated by, a host of other policies, from free trade to the minimum wage to tax policy and beyond. To say we’re going to talk about immigration is really to choose a particular vantage point from which to discuss this whole network of policies. Like any vantage point, it will emphasize some elements over others, but them’s the breaks.

Before getting into the details of policy, it might help to focus on the different philosophical approaches one takes to immigration. Is it something to be promoted, tolerated, or even discouraged? What expectations do we have for those that come to the country? What expectations should they have of us? Generally speaking, I tend to adopt something of a “more the merrierâ€? approach in principle. Given the nation’s history, and the image that we like to promote to the world, I think it’s important that we continue to welcome new people – and the new perspectives and talents they bring with them – to the country. And I’m generally uncomfortable with the notion that Americans – most of whom are here as a result of immigration – would decide to lock the door behind them and say, “We got here, you’re out of luck.â€? At the same time, I think it’s reasonable that we have some expectation that immigrants will assimilate and become a part of the civic life of the country, even if that requires giving up some cherished traditions or practices. Read the remainder of this entry »

        

The Law on Terror

Posted April 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

One of the themes you often hear from the Bush Administration and its supporters regarding their homeland security policies is a criticism of those who would emphasize the role of law enforcement in fighting terrorism. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a March speech:

Senator [John] Kerry has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all. … In his view, opposing terrorism is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation. That approach has been tried before and proved entirely inadequate to protect the American people from the terrorists who are quite certain they’re at war with us.

The implication is that these law enforcement proponents are not as serious about terrorism as the current administration, who recognize the need for decisive military action against those that would harm American citizens. As someone who agreed with the post-September 11 military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan but opposed the invasion of Iraq, I am unsurprisingly ambivalent about our current aggressive approach. I am unambivalent in thinking that Cheney and others are far too dismissive of the role of a law enforcement approach to counterterrorism. Read the remainder of this entry »

        

Love Conquers: San Francisco and Marriage

Posted February 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

Just when I thought that this election year was guaranteed to make me bitter and cynical beyond belief, I have a new hero: San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. Newsom recently concluded that California’s laws prohibiting marriages between two people of the same sex violate the state constitution’s protections of equal rights for all citizens. Furthermore, he decided to do something about it, and ordered city officials to start granting marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Now, apart from the fact that I completely agree with Newsom’s stance on same sex marriages, I find his actions inspiring because he saw a situation where he felt the state wasn’t living up to its best ideals and to its obligations, and – let me repeat this for emphasis – he decided to actually do something about it. He took a stand and pressed the issue, forcing Californians and Americans to confront the matter head on. (A recent Salon article suggests that’s par for the course with Newsom.) He did it despite members of his own cabinet – including some of his gay advisors – telling him that Californians weren’t ready for this, that it would cause too much political damage. I am well aware that the rules of the game mean that you have to be cautious with the accumulation and spending of political capital in order to get anything good done, but it feels good, even once in a while, to hear an elected official say “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

In doing so, Newsom has accelerated the debate on marriage rights, perhaps even more than Massachusetts’ Supreme Court did with its recent decision that a ban on same sex marriages violates that state’s Constitution; it will be several more weeks before Massachusetts starts issuing licenses. I hold nothing against the Massachusetts Court there – I think an elected executive has much firmer ground to stand on in taking such actions than a judiciary. Both decisions are examples of political courage in a cause that I believe future generations will recognize as just, and they have already inspired other officials to follow suit. Read the remainder of this entry »

        

All Natural Is Not Always All Good

Posted January 1, 2004 By Pattie Gillett

Though some might not agree, it cannot be a coincidence that less than a year after the death of Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler, the Food and Drug Administration finally succeeded in doing what it had been trying to do for ten years – getting the herbal supplement ephedra off the market. Bechler’s death from heatstroke in 2003 was linked to his use of the diet pills containing ephedra. Though doctors had known for years that the active ingredient in ephedra supplements could cause dangerous increases in both heart rate and blood pressure, putting users at increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and related ailments, Bechler’s death gave the media a high profile casualty to link with the drug.

Some might say that it is too cynical to presume that without a martyr, the FDA ‘s case against ephedra might never have made it this far, but history tells a different story. In fact, due to the double standard in how supplements and drugs are regulated, it might actually be surprising that the ban has happened at all. Read the remainder of this entry »

        

Measure for Measure

Posted October 1, 2003 By Dave Thomer

California’s recall circus – this round of it at least – is coming to a close. I have no idea how the next few days will play out, but that matters less to me than what the overall process has revealed – namely, the entire process is severely screwed up. Not just the recall, but the method of citizen involvement in government that it exemplifies.

This may seem like a surprising position for me to take. This site has at its heart John Dewey’s ideal of a participatory democracy, a society where everyday citizens have a much greater degree of control over their government than selecting representatives at pre-selected intervals. And as far back as I can remember, measures like the recall and the public initiative/referendum system have been hailed as major achievements by progressive reformers that helped citizens take back some of that control. At first glance, it seems like I should at least support the principle, even if I’m dissatisfied at how it’s playing out in a particular instance. Instead, I think these measures exacerbate the problem, and illustrate exactly how difficult it is going to be to really implement Dewey’s vision for a real democracy. Their solution to a world where voters have to make decisions with insufficient discourse and deliberation is to make voters make more decisions with insufficient discourse and deliberation, and that’s not helping anyone.

Let’s look at the California recall in particular, since that’s what’s in the news right now. To force a recall, one needs to get one percent of the number of people that voted in the last election to sign a petition in favor. Now, it may be that once upon a time a petition drive required a grass roots effort to go forth among the population and try to persuade others of the rightness of the cause in question. Today, petitions are a joke, and not just in California. One of the little sideshows of the Philadelphia mayoral election this year was the failed attempt of a third party candidate to get on the ballot; this candidate apparently got some amount of help from established petition gatherers, whose methods include hiring folks from homeless shelters to try and get people to sign. (They also included getting a whole bunch of people to sign who weren’t eligible to do so, as well as folks who decided to use joke names when they signed.)

Even if petitions weren’t useless, look at that threshold. One percent of the voters? (A little over a million Californians attached valid signatures to the recall petitions.) If we had that standard for, say, presidential elections, I think it’s safe to say we’d be entering our 12th straight year of recalls. Is that really the kind of government we want? One where elected officials would have to fear that any momentarily-unpopular decision could be used to force them into a recall election? Where they would have to be constantly fundraising to prepare themselves for such an eventuality? For Deweyan democracy to work, people need to carefully examine their options, not make decisions on the spur of the moment But the latter is what a recall scenario encourages. I’m all for an impeachment procedure where a corrupt official can be thrown out of office early – I disagreed with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but I never had a problem with the procedure being used. Now, I have no real opinion on the recall of Gray Davis, but I know that the procedure stinks. If the official hasn’t broken the law, then he or she deserves the benefit of a full term to do the job he or she was elected to do.

Of course, the recall isn’t the only peculiarity of California politics. The state’s proposition system has gotten a fair degree of press over the years. At first glance, a system where individuals can work to get specific policy initiatives put on the ballot seems like a good idea, a way to bypass the special interests that surround any legislative body. But once again, without the proper nurturing environment, the system breaks down. Potential propositions get thrown on the ballot with insufficient explanation or context, which opens the way for hideously expensive ad campaigns designed to sway the vote. Just what democracy needs – more political advertising. (Sorry, my cynicism’s shining through today.) Plus, many of those propositions are designed to block the government from doing something – capping property taxes, requiring a supermajority for tax hikes, that sort of thing. Creating iron clad rules like this only reduces the flexibility that a society needs to deal with a problem, as Schwarzenegger advisor Warren Buffett pointed out at the beginning of the campaign before Schwarzenegger threatened Buffett with a few rounds of pushups if he ever mentioned it again.

Participatory democracy requires more than giving people more things to vote on. If some of these propositions and measures had to be discussed in community civic organizations and town meetings, for example, that would be big step up, especially if those organizations had access to experts who could help lay out the fine points and future implications of a particular decision. If you have to put propositions on the ballot, don’t make the qualifying test a meaningless hunt for signatures. Officially charter local deliberative bodies. Require a majority of them to approve a measure before it can show up on the ballot. In an ideal world, I’d go a step further and require voters to participate in these local groups before they’d be eligible to vote on the measure, although that would raise a host of other issues that need to be dealt with before such hands-on democracy is really practical, not the least of which is the question of whether there are minimum standards and obligations for participation in the process. In the end, I suppose that’s my biggest problem with recalls and propositions – they’re a piecemeal solution to a problem that demands a far more holistic treatment, and they provide the illusion of a more thorough democracy while in reality they work against it.

        

Fighting the FCC’s New Media Ownership Rules

Posted May 1, 2003 By Earl Green

I don’t know what scares me more – Congress gridlocking important bills over important issues to the point that they’re utterly ineffectual as lawmakers, or Congress uniting across party lines to defeat something that isn’t as obvious as a condemnation of terrorism. And whether you realize it or not, the latter is about to happen. On June 2nd, the Federal Communications Commission passed a regulation change that would’ve drastically altered the media landscape of America. And now, mere weeks later, members of the Senate Commerce Committee are planning to exercise a rare power of veto to send the FCC back to the drawing board.

The contested regulation change passed by the FCC would relax media ownership rules. In plain, simple language, this would place more media outlets – radio, TV and print – under fewer corporate masters. Existing FCC regs put a cap on how much of an audience share any given company can “own” nationally. Currently, broadcast entities can own stations reaching no more than 35% of the nationwide TV, radio and newspaper audience. The cap has been challenged before, and the resulting procedures are long and drawn out. Viacom most recently drew the FCC’s attention with its acquisition of CBS, giving it a whopping 42% of the nationwide market when added to the existing audience share covered by Viacom’s UPN affiliate stations. Other entities, such as Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network, have had to divest themselves of owned-and-operated stations run by the network itself to comply with the 35% cap.

What has happened in the wake of the regulation change passed by the FCC – the full details of which are expected to be announced on Monday, June 30th – has been unusual and almost comical: both Democrats and Republicans in Congress practically leaping to the defense of the 35% rule, each party fearing that the other party’s ideals would come to be represented in a larger portion of the country than its own. Democrats voice a fear of more conservative and – being an easy recent issue to use as an example – “pro-war” stances taking over the media, while Republicans fear a media spread of liberalism.

So whether they realize it or not, both parties, fearing the other’s influence, are joining forces to send the FCC’s regulation change back where it came from. Read the remainder of this entry »