Blogging is light because of work obligations, but here is a good article by matt Tully entitled Conflicts of interest rampant at Indiana Statehouse.
I’ll just comment that it’s a tough balance between avoiding conflicts and the appearance of impropriety on one hand and putting legislators in a position to legislate in areas where they have expertise. Having a banker oversee the banking industry makes people understandably uneasy. But, for example, I can see if I were in the General Assembly where I’d have a lot to say and contribute to regulating the judiciary and the legal profession; and I think I’d do a decent job. (And I can see where I’d need a lot of education on banking before I’d be much good at regulating the banking industry.)
There’s an inherent, unavoidable conflict of interest in having a part-time legislature. Legislators are required to have other jobs, and those jobs will inevitably have business before the legislature. Transparency is the only answer, and even that can only go so far.
It’s hard to take Tully serious on conflicts of interest when he has NEVER reported on conflicts of interest in Indianapolis city government. We had the President of the Council, a lobbyist for ACS, cast the tie-breaking vote for ACS to receive a 50 year parking meter contract. Meanwhile the Mayor’s attorney was also a lobbyist for ACS. That’s only one of countless conflicts of interest Tully never writes on, never mentions. The local conflicts of interest and revolving door are much, much worse than they are at the state level.
Paul,
You could be right that the local conflicts of interest are worse than those in the statehouse, but the conflicts of interest in the statehouse affect folks in all corners of the states.
At least in a full-time legislature, the industries and the stakeholders launder their bribes through campaign contributions. In Indiana the industries feed straight on the government teat.
In a perfect world legislative bodies would be made up of experts in their field, and things would be ok because of everyone’s commitment to fair and open government. I realize this sounds bizarre and naive; the only example of this admittedly Polyanna model that comes to mind is from Iceland’s government, which told the bankers to stuff it a few years ago, much to the benefit of Iceland’s people. Contrast with Cyprus.
Every branch and layer of government in the US is corrupt beyond repair. In the 1950’s when the federal government’s range of authority was smaller, and the US was still growing its industries, the graft and corruption was less of a hit to the economy. Now the federal government knows no bounds, neither in its scope nor in its budget, thanks to deficits. The US economy is a disaster – the percent of the US workforce engaged in ‘real work’ is said to have peaked about 1965; the true unemployment figure is 15% (shadowstats.com). Everything government does is an opportunity for graft, which is one reason I yearn for limited government.
If the federal government only engaged in its enumerated powers, and if it did those things well, the cost of government would be cut in half, while the truly needy would be better served. This can’t be allowed to happen because under this scenario, nobody gets rich.
The federal goverment is infinitely less corrupt today than in the 19th century before the civil services reforms. The Civil War was a dream opportunity for unscrupulous war suppliers.
The economy is in recovery. The uber welathy have never done better, except perhaps during those halcyon days of the Robber Barons.
I agree that those with a deep knowledge of a field are helpful in making legislation, however they should not be the overwhelming voice listened to in writing laws. I work in a field that is heavily regulated – drinking water. When the EPA write new regulations for us, there is a time frame after the draft regulations are published when public comment is sought – people in the field comment, environment groups comment, scientists comment, … the general public comments and the EPA reads and responds to the comments in the final draft of the regulation. Additionally in the writing of the draft the EPA has a committee that is made up of diverse interest groups advising and researching to enable them to write meaningful regulations. Of all the regulations we in the water industry must follow there is only one that I think is misguided (LT2ESWTR), and this is not because the regulation is not needed but that the sampling and testing methods are flawed in favor of my industry. The process of getting opinions and data equally from all sides of the issue leads to better regulations. I think the legislative process would benefit by following the EPA’s example of seeking input from all concerned.
Gene’s message is more emotional than factual. According to the group Transparency International, this country ranks in the top third of developed nations, along with the U.K. and France. Glenn Beck memories notwithstanding, check out the facts of the past and they are pretty grim. An entertaining book is “Scoundrels in Law” by Cait Murphy. He talks about the “rakes who made the gilded age” pointing out facts that will lead to an attitude adjustment. Also, the rant “every branch and layer of government in the US is corrupt beyond repair” needs some facts.
Just musing here, but one factor is that winners write the history books; and there is a certain amount of idolatry of the wealthy in this country that probably has to do with the lack of a formal nobility making it easier to believe that wealth is tightly associated with merit. When the grafters get rich off their corruption, there is a tendency to admire them. Modern day complaints of corruption and graft and government dysfunction seem, often as not, to be focused on poor people who are supposedly draining the government coffers. Wealthy owners of companies with sweet, sweet defense contracts aren’t widely seen as objects of scorn.
Good points, Dog. The Horatio Algier myth was the secular religion of the 19th century. It placated the native masses while huge fortunes were built while genocide was committed on the true native Americans. Common law, Social Darwinism and Calvinist theology run riot.
The mass immigrations from Eastern Europe, WWI, the Depression, put the mythos on hold. The sacrifices of World War II, and the massive economic expansion replaced, for a time, a myth with an mandate. Work hard, play by the rules, and a peice of the American dream would be yours.
We often talk about the 1980s when the post WWII compact broke down. Lots of reasons were posited. Reagan’s policies, nascent antitax sentiment, the post 60’s turbulence ending, whatever “ism” one wishes to trot out.
But I think the post war boom ended with the post war generation leaving the workforce. There was a confluence of three factors in the post-war reconstruction. The market that was the devastated world, massive productivity gains and broad educational gains, and a shortage of American workers.
I wished I had learned more wage and labor economics in college. But macro and monetarism were then in vogue. Many economists that study wages believe that wage gains are only made in times of labor shortages, artificial or real. Artificial thorough labor unionism, or real through a dearth of workers. Otherwise, average wages bop around closer to subsistence.
But the biggest salient that came about in the late 1970s and early 1980s were the masses of the baby boom generation. The WWII generation had milked wages fairly heavily, pulled out huge benefit concessions, and near-term marginal wages could be pushed down with the mass of baby boomers entering the work force. And then add the competition with workers abroad, and a period of wage stagnation and unemployment is sure to develop.
I think that today, the secular religion is bling and fast bucks, thanks in no small part to the lack of long term economic security. My solution. Force the old Confederacy to leave the Union. Keep the Mississippi River and the gulf ports to export the oil and let the North return to its place as the true economic, political and manufacturing leader, as was destined by god, John Calvin, and U.S Grant.
Reminds me of the story of two guys planning a civilization. The wiser of the two said, “You write the laws, and I’ll write the songs”. The evidence-free myths seem to override the hard data, and people don’t want to change their beliefs that the wealthy are the makers, the honest, deserving and hard-working, while the others are the takers, the poor, dishonest and lazy, even when confronted with facts to the contrary. Like they say, ideas have consequences, and those ideas don’t work out for a fair and equal society.
Your ideas are well taken, Stuart.
Many have marched to war with songs and flags. Few advance to support the UCC or the Model Penal Code. Joseph Campbell believed, among many things, that myths were aspirational more than historical.
“The rise and fall of civilisations in the long, broad course of history can be seen largely to be a function of the integrity and cogency of their supporting canons of myth; for not authority but aspiration is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilisation. A mythological canon is an organisation of symbols, ineffable in import, by which the energies of aspiration are evoked and gathered toward a focus…
I got an early glimpe of this with the movie “Logans Run” and he ritual of Carousel where the false hope or renewal kept some control over the future youthdystopia.
Give the man on the street a squishy myth over a hard fact any day.
The “aspirational” idea makes a whole lot of sense. The best of myths we would like to be true, on our best and least cynical day, but in the face of the hard cold facts, they are not. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be willing to hold them in tension–our aspirations vs. what is–but life seems to be about managing the tension, the ambiguities. When one holds on to good and positive myths, and when he faces the facts with courage, and does what can be done to change things relative to those aspirations, I think that person lives in hope and gives hope. Anyone who works in a profession deals with that problem on a daily basis, and I think that the struggle matters. The big problem enters when there is no struggle: when the guy believes the destructive evidence-free myth is true, or he thinks that reality is the way things should be. George Bernard Shaw wrote, “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”
Last week, a Chicago reporter received a Scripps-Howard award for a story about inmates being overcharged for phone bills because they had no power to resist. In gathering the data, the people “in the know” told him that was the way things are and to leave it alone. He persisted, and the State eventually dropped the fees 75% to something more honest. He saw the facts and asked why they should not be changed. That’s the kind of courage and integrity the society needs.
It took real conviction for the reporter to persist in the face of insitutional inertia. It took passionate intentsity, that which W.B. Yeats wrote in “The Second Coming” that the “Best” lack, while the “Worst” are full of that passionate intensity.
I have studied on that line since 1983. I am still studying on that line. I fear that I will be studying on that line even after that rough beast is born.
Passionate intensity. Great thought.
Five said old chumps that cannot read and understand the Indiana Consitution. They can all “eat a big one.”
In a 5-0 opinion just issued, the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled:
WE HOLD THAT THE INDIANA SCHOOL VOUCHER PROGRAM, THE
CHOICE SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM, IS WITHIN THE LEGISLATURE’S
POWER UNDER ARTICLE 8, SECTION 1, AND THAT THE ENACTED
PROGRAM DOES NOT VIOLATE EITHER SECTION 4 OR SECTION 6
OF ARTICLE 1 OF THE INDIANA CONSTITUTION. WE AFFIRM
THE GRANT OF SUMMARY JUDGMENT TO THE DEFENDANTS.
————— DICKSON, C.J.
RUCKER, DAVID, MASSA, RUSH, JJ., CONCUR.
22 PAGES
Carlito, you were dead-on in your prediction a couple of weeks ago. They only confirmed, again, that mean-spirited money laundering is an acceptable way of doing the business of the state. It was just an expansion of the principle. Now they can go about dismantling the public schools and blaming the schools when they don’t (and can’t) rescue the society from the consequences of its own behavior. Well, public education was never held up and respected very much to begin with, so why should we expect any change in that direction? Now, what will happen when none of the other schools can save our kids, either? You know that it’s the kids who will lose, unless their parents have money.
Reminds me of what happens in dysfunctional organizations, including families. They point to one guy and say that he’s to blame. They get rid of that guy and point to the next person until only a couple are left, blaming each other. Nobody seriously takes responsibility for the health of the unit. In a state where the legislature has never fully funded or taken full responsibility for the education of children (note the huge number of unfunded mandates), the idea is to spend less whatever happens, and find someone they think will fix it for less. When that fails to happen, they will blame someone else and refuse to stand up and take full responsibility. Do it on the cheap and screw the poor and powerless.
Good points, Stuart. Hoosiers, conditioned to getting little from state government, expect even less.
I also see an attack on the teachers unions, one of the strongest members of the Democrat base. I am extremely cynical and expect that little is done for the “public good” in Indianapolis. This a method of weakening the Republican’s opposition.
There is an interesting dynamic here in Fort Wayne. Studies of the public schools and the parochial schools demonstrate, consistently, that the parochial school students have higher rates of drug use, alcohol use, and teen sex. Why would a rationale government draw money from its Treasury, in violation of its own consititusion, to subsidize religous institutions that cannot stop behaviors that undermine society and are considered to be more rampant in the “failing” public schools.
I am hearing Frank Zappa’s “Catholic Girls” in my head as I conclude this post.