Defending the Public Good

A few weeks ago Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA who is retiring from the House this year, gave a memorable interview to New York magazine in which he criticized President Obama for aggressively pushing health care reform.  Frank says he warned Obama the Democratic Party would pay “a terrible price.”

Apparently Frank was not alone in counseling Obama to take health care off the front burner. “At various points, Vice President Joe Biden, senior advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advised the President to focus entirely on the economy and leave comprehensive health care for another day,” Jonathan Alter, senior editor of Newsweek reports. “‘I begged him not to do this’, Emanuel told me when I was researching my book about Obama’s first year in office.”

After the law passed Alter asked Obama why he overruled his team.  The President responded,  “‘I remember telling Nancy Pelosi that moving forward on this could end up being so costly for me politically that it would affect my chances’ in 2012.”  But he and Pelosi agreed that if they didn’t move at the outset of the his Presidency “it was not going to get done.”

In 2009 Obama put country above party.  Bringing health security to over 30 million Americans, strengthening the social compact and laying the foundation for a major restructuring of our health system were sufficient rewards for him to accept the political risks.

Almost exactly 45 years before Obama’s decision we witnessed another profile in political courage. Former Texas Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, after becoming President on the death of JFK, aggressively and decisively ended the south’s filibuster against a Civil Rights Act, ensuring its passage in July 1964.  In 1965 he secured enactment of the Voting Rights Act.

As is the case with the health care law, the Constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act was tested.  Southern states argued the federal government had no right to force the private sector to treat blacks and whites the same.  The Supreme Court ruled it did.

One hundred years after the Civil War, millions of southern blacks effectively gained the right to vote.  LBJ also put country above party, at least the country that strives to honor the foundational moral values of the Declaration of Independence.

LBJ, like Barack Obama, understood the risks involved in extending democracy to those excluded because of the color of their skin.  “When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day,” former LBJ Press Secretary Bill Moyers recalls in his book Moyers on America. “I asked him what was troubling him. ‘I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come,’ he said.”

LBJ was right. Nixon quickly embraced what came to be known as the Southern Strategy. He appealed to southern whites who were as angry then as Tea Party members are now about the federal government’s telling them what to do.

On August 3, 1980 the Southern strategy became explicit when Ronald Reagan delivered his first post-convention speech at the Neshoba County Fair outside Philadelphia, Mississippi after being officially chosen as the Republican nominee for President.  Reagan declared, “I believe in states’ rights.” Given the location his message was unmistakable. For in June 1964 Philadelphia was the site of the murders of voting rights activists James Chaney, a 21-year-old black man from Mississippi, Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old white student from New York City; and Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old white organizer and former social worker also from New York.  The national outrage over their deaths helped LBJ gain passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

For giving blacks the right to vote the Democratic Party did indeed pay a terrible price.  In 1964, according to the Economist,  the former Confederate states had a total of 128 Senators and Representatives; ll5 were white Democrats.  Today white southern Democrats account for just 24 of the South’s Congressional delegation.  In 1963, Congressional delegations from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Caroline consisted entirely of white Democrats. Today they have none.

Without LBJ’s courageous actions, Barack Obama would never have had a chance to become President.  But like LBJ, Obama’s actions have also led his Party to pay a high price.  In 2010 Democrats lost control of the House.  Republicans swept to power in two dozen states.  And this November they may well win a trifecta by gaining control of all three branches of government:  Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court.

We can argue about whether ObamaCare (a term the Republicans coined that Obama has proudly embraced) is flawed or a step in the right direction.  I’m of the half a loaf school.  But why has it generated such hostility?  One can point to the individual mandate but those who cannot pay will be heavily subsidized.  In his interview, Frank comes up with another theory based on his many years having to gauge the psychology of his constituents.  “I think he (Obama) underestimated…the sensitivity of people to what they see as an effort to make them share the health care with poor people.”

LBJ didn’t underestimate the sensitivity of white people to share the ballot box with black people. Almost half a century later that sensitivity remains.  In 2011, after Republicans swept to victory in state legislatures and governorships they immediately moved to restrict ballot access by enacting burdensome voter registration laws.

They were emboldened by the 2008 decision of the US Supreme Court upholding Indiana’s voter photo ID law.  The state could not identify a single case of voter fraud that would be prevented by requiring a photo ID but the Court ruled that the burden of proof was not on Indiana to prove there was a problem.  The burden of proof was on those who claimed changes in voter laws would impose a “significant burden”.

The Supreme Court decision applies to states not under the Voting Rights Act.  But that Act required jurisdictions with a history of suppressing minority voting to pre-clear any proposed voting regulations with the US Department of Justice.  And that law (Section 5) imposes the burden of proof on the state to prove the change would not abridge the right to vote by minorities.  The DOJ has rejected both Texas and South Carolina’s voter registration changes after concluding that Hispanic voters in Texas, for example, are at least 50 percent more likely and possibly more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic voters to lack a driver’s license or a personal state-issued photo ID, the two kinds of photo ID Texas allows.

With a Republican in the White House it is likely the Voting Rights Act will no longer be enforced.  It is even more likely the health care reform will be overturned.  If that should come to pass would it mean that LBJ and Barack Obama made a political mistake?  Should we have waited even longer to give blacks the right to vote or to move toward universal health care?

 

 

 

 

After winning the Illinois primary, Mitt Romney delivered a victory speech in which he deplored America’s lost “can do spirit”.  Unsurprisingly, he blamed it on government.  If elected he promised, “We’re going to get government out of the way”.   Then he offered a few examples of what he meant.  “We once built the interstate highway system and the Hoover Dam. Now we can’t even build a pipeline.”

Romney liked the line, and the thunderous applause it generated so much that a few weeks later at a Tea Party gathering in Pennsylvania he used it again.

Rachel Maddow and many others have pointed out the fundamental flaw in Romney’s argument.  The government built both the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system.   Republican administrations championed both projects. They were testaments to the can-do spirit of government, grand collective undertakings that benefited generations to come.

How grand?  The Hoover Dam cost the equivalent of $24 billion in today’s dollars, notes Steve Benen.  Congress appropriated $25 billion to build the first 40,000 miles of the interstate highway system, equivalent to $830 billion in today’s dollars.

Few have commented on Romney’s second sentence. “Now we can’t even build a pipeline”.  Having cited two examples that contradicted his thesis that government lacks the can do spirit, he offered an example of how government is preventing the private sector from having the can do spirit that may be even more problematic.

Romney, as everyone in his audience and most of the country knew, was talking about the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama had delayed construction while a detailed environmental impact study is completed, generating universal Republican outrage.

If completed, the pipeline will transport crude oil extracted from Canadian tar sands through the United States and to Gulf Coast refineries where it will then be exported. Demonstrating that private sector can-do spirit Romney so exalts, TransCanada, the company that owns the pipeline, is continuing to acquire land to construct the pipeline despite Obama’s decision. “We don’t need a presidential permit in order for us to obtain the easements that we need for the right of way for this project,” says TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha.

Apparently, the foreign corporation also doesn’t think it needs permission of the landowners to move ahead.  When some farmers refused to sell their land, TransCanada began the process of seizing their private property.   Which has led many of Mitt Romney’s most ardent supporters to rebel.

A month before Romney’s speech this major story appeared in the Texas Tribune, “Keystone Pipeline Sparks Property Rights Backlash”.  The reporter conveyed the anger of Julia Trigg Crawford who manages a 600-acre farm in Lamar County that’s been in her family since 1948. “I’m just an angry steward of the land. A foreign-owned, for-profit, non-permitted pipeline has taken a Texan’s land. Doesn’t sound right, does it?”

Does it?  The Texas Constitution requires that eminent domain, that is, the right to seize private property, can only be exercised for “public use.”  In the past courts have routinely dismissed challenges to pipelines by landowners.

But last year the Texas Supreme Court ruled that a company that wanted to build a CO2 pipeline for its own use was a private carrier and couldn’t use eminent domain to get an easement on a Houston-area rice farm.  In his opinion for the majority, Justice Don Willett wrote that “even when the Legislature grants certain private entities ‘the right and power of eminent domain,’ the overarching constitutional rule controls: no taking of property for private use.”

“The ruling sent shockwaves through the oil and gas lobby, which is now urging the Supreme Court to rehear the case,” the Texas Tribune observes.

Ms. Crawford successfully obtained a rare restraining order from the courts that halted any further encroachment on her land until questions surrounding TransCanada’s right to condemn her property are resolved.

The case is going to court.   There will be a hearing in June and possibly a trial in July. I hope they are televised.  Texas’ two Republican Senators and its Republican Governor have come out against the Crawford Family

The Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system were built by the people for the people.  They were and are public assets, huge public undertakings that have generated huge public benefits. The Keystone XL pipeline is proposed by a private company for private gain. The private company insists it has the right to seize private land to enhance the value of its private asset.

Perhaps an enterprising reporter on the campaign trail could ask Mitt Romney if he would like to revisit his comments?

 

This article first appeared on On The Commons.  www.onthecommons.org

 

 

A few days ago 26 states argued before the Supreme Court that the health law’s dramatic extension of Medicaid coverage constitutes unconstitutional federal coercion.  ”Congress easily could have designed an act that encouraged rather than forced states to expand their Medicaid programs,” their brief submitted to the Court argues. “By making a conscious decision to deprive states of any choice in the matter, Congress has effectively forced this court’s hand.”

Since virtually all these states are headed by Republican Governors, we can consider this the Republican Party position.

What form does this coercion take?   According to the states, it is the unprecedented federal generosity that allows them to achieve the required expansion at virtually no cost. They believe the federal government is making them an offer they can’t refuse, which rises to the level of an unconstitutional invasion of state prerogatives.

A little background may be in order.  Medicare guarantees health care to those over 65.  It is funded from payroll taxes.  Enacted at the same time as Medicare, Medicaid is aimed at lower income households.  It is funded out of general revenues.  State participation is voluntary but if states offer minimum levels of coverage, the federal government will pay the majority of the costs.  Currently the average federal share is 57 percent but it can be much higher for specific states.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires participating states to extend Medicaid eligibility to all households with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (in 2012 about $15,000 for an individual and $30,000 for a family of four). In return for their doing this the federal government will pick up 100 percent of the costs of Medicaid for new entrants for the first three years.  Then states will pick up a tiny share of the cost, gradually growing to 10 percent by 2020, and remaining there.

I have a question for these 26 mostly Republican Governors.  Whom do you think you are representing?  It’s hard to believe it’s the citizens of your states.

Consider the impact of the law on Alabama, one of the signatories to the Supreme Court brief. Medicaid in Alabama is a $6 billion-a-year program. The federal government covers more than $4 billion of that.  Under the new law, the number of Alabamans covered by Medicaid, currently about 1 million of its 5 million residents, would rise by 500,000. That may increase Medicaid spending between 2014 and 2019 by $470 million but federal expenditures in Alabama would increase by $10.3 billion. For every additional dollar Alabama will spend on health care for new Medicaid enrollees out of its general budget, federal spending in the state on health care will increase by more than $20.

Alabama will receive a $1.5 billion a year injection of new money.  In economic impact this is equivalent to an automobile plant opening with 20,000 new jobs.  Half a million Alabamans will gain health insurance, reducing their and their families’ pain and anxiety.  What’s not to like?

Actually the deal is even better.  Because the new law will dramatically reduce the number of uninsured, states will save billions in uncompensated spending on hospitalization, mental health care and other medical services.  According to Urban Institute researchers John Holahan and Irene Headen states’ savings from no longer having to finance as much uncompensated care may fully offset the increase in state Medicaid costs required by the new law.

Indeed, one analysis of the financial impact on states nationwide finds that under a worst-case scenario, states will realize net budgetary savings between 2014 and 2019 of $40.6 billion.  In a best-case scenario these gains soar to $131.9 billion.

So when the Republican Governors of Alabama and 25 other states and by extension the Republican Party argue that the federal program is unconstitutional, I seriously doubt anyone can say they are doing so on the basis of any rational cost-benefit analysis.  So they must be standing on principle. But what exactly is the principle?  Is it that states do not want to provide health care for millions of their citizens?  Is it that that they do but they don’t want the federal government to pay for it?  Is it that they do but they don’t want to be forced to do so?

None of these principles seem the kind that a political party would want to embrace during an election year.  The first is simply mean spirited.  The second is laughable.  The third sounds a lot like a five year old having a temper tantrum, “You can’t make me!”

The states’ complaint about federal coercion in the form of unprecedented generosity received relatively little media attention.  That’s unfortunate.  As the state and federal election campaigns swing into high gear it would be illuminating to hear these 26 Governors and the Republican Party justify to their constituents their vigorous opposition to expanding health care to million of their residents and significantly boosting their economies at virtually no cost to state budgets.

 

For its first 200 years the American Republic slowly, sometimes infuriatingly slowly and at horrific human cost (e.g. the Civil War) expanded the franchise.

In 1870 the 15^th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote.  In 1920, the 19^th Amendment extended the franchise to women. In 1924 Congress granted Native Americans citizenship and thus the right to vote.  In 1961 the 23^rd Amendment gave the residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote for President.  In 1971 the 26^th Amendment gave l8 year olds the vote.  In 1986 Congress gave military personnel and other US citizens living abroad the right to use a federal write-in absentee ballot for voting for federal offices.

The right to vote, however, did not ensure that one could vote.  Beginning at the end of the 19^th century, states began passing legislation directed at restricting minority voting with often dramatic effect, especially in the South where turnout fell from 64.2 percent in 1888 to 29.0 percent in 1904.

For 100 years after the Civil War the Supreme Court ruled that even where state voting rules were discriminatory, the federal government had no right to intervene.  Then in 1965 Congress finally gave blacks and other minorities the effective vote by passing the Voting Rights Act, eliminating most voting qualifications beyond citizenship for state and federal elections, including literacy tests and poll taxes.  In 1966 the Supreme Court affirmed that law.

Since 1970 federal and state voting reforms have all moved in one direction: facilitating access. In 1993 the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) offered citizens the opportunity to register or re-register to vote at many public facilities, including Motor Vehicle offices and post offices.

Between 1973 and 2009 nine states enacted Election Day registration laws. States made provisions for early voting and eased the rules on absentee voting.  Some allowed voting by mail. Between 1997 and 2010 twenty-three states either restored voting rights or eased the restoration process of voting rights for those convicted of felonies.

Virtually all these laws were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by Republican and Democrat Governors alike.

The Tide Turns

And then came November 2010.  An unprecedented politically tsunami swept the country.  Conservative Republicans won a remarkable 675 seats in state legislatures, gaining control of both houses in 27 states and control of both houses and the governor office in 23.

Once in control Republicans once again exposed a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives.  Liberals focus on process. Republicans focus on outcomes.

The Republicans first priority after gaining power was to ensure continued power by reducing the turnout of demographic groups like students, blacks, Hispanics that traditionally vote Democrat.

The groundwork had been laid by a 2008 Supreme Court decision.  In 2006 Indiana became the first state to require a government issued photo ID for voting.  The Supreme Court upheld that law.  Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the main opinion opined that the requirement  “is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.”

Amply justified?  An Amicus Brief filed by the Brennan Center for Justice found no justification at all.  After exhaustively examining the briefs to the Supreme Court, Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center for Justice concluded, “not one of the sources cited shows proof of a vote that Indiana’s law could prevent. That is, not one of the citations offered by Indiana or its allies refers to a proven example of a single vote cast at the polls in someone else’s name that could be stopped by a poll site photo ID rule.” The Center described the fraud targeted by Indiana’s law “more rare than death by lightning.”

But the lack of a shred of documented evidence of voter fraud was irrelevant to the Court.  The Court decided that Indiana did not have to demonstrate that a photo ID was needed to prevent fraud.  The burden of proof was on petitioners to prove not only that a photo ID would be burdensome, but that it would be extremely burdensome.

With the Court ruling in 2008 conservative Republicans attacked.  In 2011 at least thirty-four states introduced bills to require photo ID to vote.  Seven enacted them into law.

In 2011 at least twelve states introduced bills to require proof of citizenship to register or vote.  Three states enacted these into law. Five states restricted early voting. Two states reversed executive actions that had made it easier for citizens with past felony convictions to restore their voting rights.

The 2011 Florida law is perhaps the purest distillation of the Republican effort to making voting more difficult.  Indeed, during Florida’s legislative debate, State Senator Michael Bennett, the Chamber’s President Pro-Tempore insisted that voting “is a hard-fought privilege. This is something people died for. Why should we make it easier?”

In 2008 Obama won Florida by just 2.5 percent.  Two factors accounted for his victory.  First, Florida opened the polls two weeks early.  Even so, long lines across the state prompted the governor to issue an emergency order extending the hours for early voting. That enabled waves of new voters, often minorities and students to vote.  Early voting also included voting the Sunday before election day. Obama’s “souls to the polls” drives successfully brought tens of thousands of blacks and Latinos to vote after church. According to the Palm Beach Post “[m]ore than half of the black voters in the [November 2008] election voted before Election Day and many of them went on [the] final Sunday.”

The second factor was the success of voter registration drives. In 2008, more than a million new voters were added to Florida’s rolls, 233,000 of them from voter registration drives. Hispanic and African-American voters are approximately twice as likely to register through a voter registration drive as white voters.

The 2011 law reduced early voting from two weeks to one week. Voting on the Sunday before Election Day was eliminated. Florida eliminated the longstanding right of voters who moved before an election to update their new address at the polls on Election Day.  The law now requires a photo ID.  As many as 25% of African-American voters do not possess a current and valid form of government issued photo ID, compared to 11% of voters of all races.

The 2011 required those who register new voters to turn in completed forms within 48 hours or risk fines.  The New York Times recently reported this has led the League of Women Voters to abandon its efforts this year. A national organization that encourages young people to vote, Rock the Vote, recently began to register high school students around the nation.  But not in Florida, because of fears that teachers could face fines.

Prior to 2007, nearly one million Floridians who were convicted of a felony were permanently disenfranchised in the state; almost a quarter of them were African-American. In 2007, Republican Governor Charlie Crist simplified and streamlined the process for individuals with non-violent convictions to regain their voting rights, affecting some 150,000 Floridians.  In 2011 Governor Rick Scott returned Florida to its pre 2007 policy.  Some 87,000 persons who were in the “backlog” of cases waiting for restoration will not have their voting rights restored.

That the Republicans objective in changing the voting rules is to consolidate power is incontestable.  Consider Texas’s new voter ID law.  It doesn’t allow voters to use student ID’s but does permit them to use concealed weapon licenses. A few weeks ago the US Department of Justice rejected the new law as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.  Texas is appealing.

Because of their convincing victories in 2010 Republicans might argue their actions are simply manifesting the people’s will.  But it is difficult to imagine people voted in 2010 to make it more difficult for them to vote in the future. Some empirical evidence supports that view. In 2011 a Republican legislature and Governor in Maine eliminated that state’s 38-year old Election Day registration. Last November Maine’s citizens went to the ballot box and re-instated the previous law with a convincing 59 percent majority.

Unfortunately this November few if any states will let voters directly decide whether they want to reverse a 150-year-old trajectory and make voting more burdensome. The voters must express their will more indirectly, by electing legislators who believe voting should be more rather than less accessible.  The new rules make this much more difficult.  But that would only make a victory for democracy that much sweeter.

 

 

 

 

Recent events make clear the need for a new language to describe the raging debate about sex and birth.  Consider the problematic word that dominates our conversation:  pro-life.

Most pro-life organizations more accurately should be labeled pro sperm.  For they insist the sperm has the inalienable, indeed the God-given right to pursue the egg without human enabled interference.  Joseph M. Scheidler, the National Director of the Pro-Life Action League memorably declared, “I think contraception is disgusting-people using each other for pleasure.” Judith Brown, President of The American Life Lobby asserts its opposition “to all forms of birth control with the exception of natural family planning.”

The Catholic Church is fervently pro-sperm.  Decades before the Church mobilized against abortion it mobilized against contraception.  As late as 1960, many states outlawed sales of contraceptives.  The Catholic Church was the driving force behind these laws.  In the 1940s, Connecticut legislators introduced bills allowing physicians to prescribe contraceptives only for married couples if a pregnancy would be life threatening.  The Catholic Church swung into action.   One historian describes the process;  “priests became heavily involved…Their efforts were not confined to anti-birth control sermons on Sundays.  They engaged in voter registration drives, they encouraged parishioners to support anti-birth control candidates for the legislature, and they actively campaigned to defeat any changes in the birth control laws”.  The bills failed.

Prior to 1930, all Christian denominations held that contraception was contrary to God’s will.  Then one by one, beginning with the Church of England they began to accept birth control.

Many expected the Catholic Church to follow suit.  In the mid 1960’s Pope Paul VI appointed a commission on birth control to advise him on the issue.  An overwhelming majority of its members favored lifting the ban. In his 1968 Encyclical, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) the Pope summarized the argument of the majority.

world population is going to grow faster than available resources, with the consequences that many families and developing countries would be faced with greater hardships… not only working and housing conditions but the greater demands made both in the economic and educational field pose a living situation in which it is frequently difficult these days to provide properly for a large family…(we need to take into account) a new understanding of the dignity of woman and her place in society, or the value of conjugal love in marriage and the relationship of conjugal acts to this love…

…if one were to apply here the so-called principle of totality, could it not be accepted that the intention to have a less prolific but more rationally planned family might transform an action which renders natural processes infertile into a licit and provident control of birth?  Could it not be admitted, in other words, that procreative finality applies to the totality of married life rather than to each single act?  A further question is whether, because people are more conscious today of their responsibilities, the time has not come when the transmission of life should be regulated by their intelligence and will rather than through the specific rhythms of their bodies…

Pope Paul VI decided that the rights of the sperm transcended any and all of these arguments.  The use of contraception, he concluded results in “an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design.”

But the biological facts make God’s design less than clear.  Consider that when artificial birth control or abortion is not used, more often than not God chooses death, not life.  A third to a half or of fertilized eggs do not implant.  Some doctors believe this figure could be as high as 80 percent. A third of those that do implant end up in spontaneous miscarriages.  Does the pro-life movement believe this makes God a mass murderer?

In 1965 the Supreme Court overturned state laws that prohibited married couples from buying contraceptives.  In 1972 it extended this ruling to cover unmarried individuals.  A few months later, in Roe v. Wade, it determined that states could not prohibit women from intervening in the reproductive process after the egg is fertilized.

Every year pro-life organizations gather to condemn Roe v. Wade but it my be instructive to point out that the typology used by the Court was very close to that which guided the Catholic Church and many other major religions for thousands of years.

The early Christians adopted Aristotle’s framework that embryos pass through three distinct stages and only become fully human in the last stage.  Saint Augustine, one of the most influential Catholic theologians, proposed that abortion in the first trimester should not be regarded “as homicide, for there cannot be a living soul in a body that lacks sensation due to its not yet being formed.”

At the beginning of the 13th century Pope Innocent II declared that “quickening”(the time when the woman first feels the fetus move within her) was the moment at which abortion became homicide.  In 1591, Pope Gregory XIV proclaimed that quickening occurred after 116 days, that is, into the second trimester.   That guidance remained Church policy until 1869 when Pope Pius IX eliminated the distinction between the animated and non-animated fetus and required excommunication for abortions at any stage of pregnancy.

In Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court took a page from Aristotle and permitted increasingly severe restrictions by the state depending on the age of the fetus.  In the first 12 weeks the Court prohibited states from imposing any restrictions on a woman’s right to an abortion.  In the second trimester, states may regulate abortion procedures to protect the health of the woman.  In the third trimester (after 27 weeks), when fetuses may be viable outside of the womb, states may restrict abortions.

Nearly 90 percent of all abortions occur in the first trimester. Six in ten are undertaken in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy.  About 9 percent occur in the second trimester, but many of these are a result of a delay caused by a lack of financial resources or state enacted stalling laws.  About 0.01 percent of abortions are performed after the 20^th week.

For many Republicans, it is often said, life begins at conception and ends at birth, although I might amend this perspective given the recent evidence that for many life begins before conception.  Consider that all but one of 47 Republican Senators voted in favor of a bill allowing any employer to deny coverage of birth control in the company’s insurance policies.  In any event, it is clear that pro-life Republicans seem remarkably unconcerned with the health of newborns. A comprehensive review of abortion and child welfare policies in all 50 states found that states with the most restrictive abortion laws spend the least on education, on facilitating adoption and on nurturing poor children. There are also fewer mandates requiring insurance providers to cover minimum hospital stays after childbirth.

A recent case in point.  The Texas legislature has slashed its family planning budget from $111 million to $38 million, cuts that would eliminate services for nearly 284,000 women.

All four current Republican presidential candidates would eliminate Title X created in 1970 with Republican support from President Nixon and the elder George Bush, then a congressman. Title X does not pay for abortions. Only some of it covers birth control.

It appears that today’s Republican Party will pull out all the stops to protect the rights of the sperm but all but turn its back on the rights and needs of babies.  This is what the term pro-life has come to mean in 2012.  And why we need to change the language we use when we talk about the issues surrounding reproduction.
Visual by www.PDImages.com

On February 8, 1921 twenty thousand people, braving temperatures so low that musical instruments froze, marched in a funeral procession in the town of Dimitrov, a suburb of Moscow. They came to pay their respects to a man, Petr Kropotkin, and his philosophy, anarchism.

Some 90 years later few know of Kropotkin. And the word anarchism has been so stripped of substance that it has come to be equated with chaos and nihilism.  This is regrettable, for both the man and the philosophy that he did so much to develop have much to teach us in 2012.

I am astonished Hollywood has yet to discover Kropotkin. For his life is the stuff of great movies.  Born to privilege he spent his life fighting poverty and injustice.  A lifelong revolutionary, he was also a world-renowned geographer and zoologist.  Indeed, the intersection of politics and science characterized much of his life.

His struggles against tyranny resulted in years in Russian and French jails.  The first time he was imprisoned in Russia an outcry by many of the world’s best-known scholars led to his release.  The second time he engineered a spectacular escape and fled the country.  At the end of his life, back in his native Russia, he enthusiastically supported the overthrow of the Tsar but equally strongly condemned Lenin’s increasingly authoritarian and violent methods.

In the 1920s Roger N. Baldwin summed up Kropotkin this way.

Kropotkin is referred to by scores of people who knew him in all walks of life as “the noblest man” they ever knew. Oscar Wilde called him one of the two really happy men he had ever met…In the anarchist movement he was held in the deepest affection by thousands–”notre Pierre” the French workers called him. Never assuming position of leadership, he nevertheless led by the moral force of his personality and the breadth of his intellect. He combined in extraordinary measure high qualities of character with a fine mind and passionate social feeling. His life made a deep impression on a great range of classes–the whole scientific world, the Russian revolutionary movement, the radical movements of all schools, and in the literary world which cared little or nothing for science or revolution.

For our purposes Kropotkin’s most enduring legacy is his work on anarchism, a philosophy of which he was possibly the leading exponent.  He came to the view that society was heading in the wrong direction and identifyied the right direction using the same scientific method that had led him to shock the geography profession by proving that the existing maps of Asia had the mountains running in the wrong direction.

The precipitating event that led Kropotkin to embrace anarchism was the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859. While Darwin’s thesis that we are descended from the apes was highly controversial, his thesis that natural selection involved a “survival of the fittest” through a violent struggle between and among species was enthusiastically adopted by the 1% of the day to justify every social inequity as an inevitable byproduct of the struggle for existence.  Andrew Carnegie insisted that the “law” of competition is “best for the race because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.” “We accept and welcome great inequality (and) the concentration of business…in the hands of a few.” The planet’s richest man, John D. Rockefeller, bluntly asserted, “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest…the working out of a law of nature.”

In response to a widely distributed essay by Thomas Huxley in The Nineteenth Century, “The Struggle for Existence in Human Society,” Kropotkin wrote a series of articles for the same magazine that were later published as the book Mutual Aid.

He found the view of the social Darwinists contradicted by his own empirical research. After five years examining wildlife in Siberia, Kropotkin wrote, “I failed to find – although I was eagerly looking for it – that bitter struggle for the means of existence…which was considered by most Darwinists…as the dominant characteristic – and the main factory of evolution.”

Kropotkin honored Darwin’s insights about natural selection but believed the governing principle of natural selection was cooperation, not competition. The fittest were those who cooperated.

“The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. … The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay.”

He spent the rest of his life promoting that concept and the theory of social structure known as anarchism. To Americans anarchism is synonymous with a lack of order. But to Kropotkin anarchist societies don’t lack order but the order emerges from rules designed by those who feel their impact, rules that encourage humanly scaled production systems and maximize individual freedom and social cohesion.

In his article on Anarchy in the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica Kropotkin defines anarchism as a society “without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption…”

Mutual Aid was published in 1902. With chapters on animal societies, tribes, medieval cities and modern societies, it makes the scientific case for cooperation. Readers in 2012 may find the chapter on medieval cities the most compelling.

In the 12^th to 14th centuries, hundreds of cities emerged around newly formed marketplaces. These marketplaces were so important that laws embraced by kings, bishops and towns protected their providers and customers. As the markets grew, the cities gained autonomy, and organized themselves into political, economic and social structures that to Kropotkin made them an instructive working model of anarchism.

The medieval city was not a centralized state. It was a confederation, divided into four quarters or five to seven sections radiating from a center. In some respects it was structured as a double federation.  One consisted of all householders united into small territorial units: the street, the parish the section. The other was of individuals united by oath into guilds according to their professions.

The guilds established the economic rules. But the guild itself consisted of many interests. “The fact is, that the medieval guild…was a union of all men connected with a given trade: jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of manufactured goods, and artisans – masters, ‘compaynes,’ and apprentices.” It was sovereign in its own sphere, but could not develop rules that interfered with the workings of other guilds.

Four hundred years before Adam Smith, medieval cities had developed rules that allowed the pursuit of self-interest to support the public interest. Unlike Adam Smith’s proposal, their tool was a very visible hand indeed.

This mini world of cooperation resulted in remarkable achievements.  From cities of 20,000-90,000 people emerged technological as well as artistic developments that still astonish us.

Life in these cities was not nearly as primitive as the Dark Ages to which our history books assign them. Laborers in these medieval cities earned a living wage. Many cities had an 8-hour workday.

Florence in 1336 had 90,000 inhabitants. Some 8-10,000 boys and girls (yes girls) attended primary schools and there were 600 students in four universities. The city boasted 30 hospitals with over 1000 beds.

Indeed, Kropotkin writes, “the more we learn about the medieval city, the more we are convinced that at no time has labor enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect as when city life stood at its highest.”

Mutual Aid is rarely read today. No one remembers Petr Kropotkin.  But his message and his empirical evidence, that cooperation, not competition, is the driving force behind natural selection, that decentralization is superior to centralization in both governance and economies and that mutual aid and social cohesion should be encouraged over massive social inequity and the exaltation of the individual over society is as relevant to the central debates of our time as it was to the debates of his time.

On the anniversary of Kropotkin’s death it would be salutary for the world to rediscover his remarkable writings, all of which are freely available online, and revisit his philosophy.

 

 

 

 

 

A few weeks ago John C. Nienstedt, Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis wrote a widely publicized letter to a priest threatening to strip him of his “ministerial assignments” if he spoke out against a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

In addition to banning dissent the Archbishop directed parishes to form committees to work for passage of the amendment and for clergy to recite a special “marriage prayer” during mass that endorses marriage between a man and woman.  He created teams consisting of a priest and a married couple who will educate high school students about the hellish implications of gay marriage.

I use the word hellish advisedly.  Indeed, in a letter to the clergy Nienstedt declares, “we are faced with one of the greatest challenges of our times…The stakes could not be higher.”

The stakes could not be higher?  Where does this frenzied opposition come from?  Nienstedt argues that he is simply following God’s instructions,  found “in the first chapter of Genesis” and in “the 19^th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel”.

Let’s call these Exhibits A and B for the prosecution.

Exhibit A from Genesis.

The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. …The LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribsand then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. Genesis 2:18, 21-25.

To review. Adam was lonely so God made Eve.  Then the only two people on the planet had sex, which apparently automatically made them man and wife.   And that’s why the Church opposes gay marriage.

I think Nienstedt’s case might actually have been stronger if he had referred to another part of Genesis in which God tells Eve that because she ate the apple her husband “will rule over you.”(3:16) Clearly if two women or two men were to marry it would be very difficult to decide who would rule over whom?

Exhibit B from Matthew.

And the Pharisees came to him tempting him (Jesus) and saying: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? But he answering, said to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man in the beginning, made them male and female? And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh.Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.…And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and he who shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery. (Matthew 19:3-6,9)

Any reader would quickly realize this passage is about heterosexual divorce not homosexual marriage.  Indeed, the passage is often cited to justify the Catholic Church’s refusal to allow divorced Catholics to have a Church wedding.  Unless they gain a Declaration of Invalidity. (Don’t ask.)

When it comes to God’s position on gay marriage the evidence verges on the nonexistent.  But when it comes to God’s position on injustice the evidence is both abundant and clear.  Again and again and again Jesus rails against selfishness and greed and intolerance.

Matthew relates a story that makes Jesus’ judgment on those who would hoard wealth while others go hungry abundantly clear.

Then I, the King, shall say to those at my right, ‘Come, blessed of my Father, into the Kingdom prepared for you from the founding of the world.  For I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me water; I was a stranger and you invited me into your homes; naked and you clothed me; sick and in prison, and you visited me.’

Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Sir, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you anything to drink? Or a stranger, and help you? Or naked, and clothe you? When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’ “And I, the King, will tell them, ‘When you did it to these my brothers you were doing it to me!’

Then I will turn to those on my left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons. For I was hungry and you wouldn’t feed me; thirsty, and you wouldn’t give me anything to drink; a stranger, and you refused me hospitality; naked, and you wouldn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’ “And I will answer, ‘When you refused to help the least of these my brothers, you were refusing help to me.’ “And they shall go away into eternal punishment; but the righteous into everlasting life.” (Matthew 25: 34-46)

Only a few paragraphs after the ones the Archbishop directs us to that he asserts condemn gay marriage, Matthew writes about how Jesus viewed the 1%. “Then Jesus said to his disciples: Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.”(Matthew 19:21-24)

I think I can safely say that Jesus was the first to Occupy Wall Street when he expelled the moneychangers from the Temple with a whip, accusing them of being robbers and thieves and victimizing the poor.  Indeed, Jesus was so enraged at the perfidy of these bankers that he used violence, the only account in the Gospels of his doing so. (John 2:13-16)

The Church does speak occasionally on issues Jesus most cared about—the plight of the poor and the needy and the weak and the immigrant.  Last year during the budget dispute Archbishop Nienstedt wrote to Mark Dayton asking him to “not rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to those living in poverty.”  But he did not initiate committees to influence policies.  He did not ask for prayers at mass, nor classes on inequality.  He did not send teams into high schools to educate students about the dangers of inequality and the growing needs of the poor.

In the past two years, the Catholic Church has spent considerable resources opposing contraception and gay marriage but has expended little to extend unemployment insurance or raise the minimum wage or stop foreclosures or raise the income tax on the wealthy or curb the excesses of Wall Street.

At a time when the richest 400 American families have more wealth than 120 million Americans combined, when the average salary of a CEO of the nation’s largest companies is 343 times greater than that of the average worker in that corporation, when millions of Americans are losing their homes because of often fraudulent foreclosures, when domestic violence is soaring, does the Catholic Church really think Jesus would be spending his time trying to stop two people from making a life long commitment to one another?

 

 

Recent comments by Mitt Romney, the probable Republican nominee for President all but guarantee the inequality issue will remain front and center this election year.

When asked whether people who question the current distribution of wealth and power are motivated by “jealousy or fairness” Romney insisted,  “I think it’s about envy.  I think it’s about class warfare.”  And in this election year he advised that if we do discuss inequality we do so “in quiet rooms” not in public debates.

A public debate, of course, is inevitable.  And welcome.  To help that debate along I’ll address the five major statements that comprise the Republican argument on inequality.

1.  Income is Not All That Unequal

Actually it is. Since 1980 the top 1 percent has increased its share of the national income by an astounding $1.1 trillion.  Today 300,000 very rich Americans enjoy almost as much income as 150 million.

Since 1980, the income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has increased a meager $303 or 1 percent.  The top 1 percent’s income has more than doubled, increasing by about $500,000.  And the really, really rich, the top 10th of 1 percent, made out, dare I say, like bandits, quadrupling their income to $22 million.

Meanwhile a full-time worker’s wage was 11 percent lower in 2004 than in 1973, adjusting for inflation even though their productivity increased by 78 percent.  Productivity gains swelled corporate profits, which reached an all time high in 2010.  And that in turn fueled an unprecedented inequality within the workplace itself.  In 2010, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, the average CEO in large companies earned 325 times more than the average worker.

2. Inequality doesn’t matter because in America ambition and hard work can make a pauper a millionaire.

This is folklore.  A worker’s initial position in the income distribution is highly predictive of how much he or she earns later in the career. And as the Brookings Institution reports “there is growing evidence of less intergenerational economic mobility in the United States than in many other rich industrialized countries.”

The bitter fact is that it is harder for a poor person in America to become rich than in virtually any other industrialized country.

3.  Income inequality is not a result of tax policy.

Nonsense.  A painstaking analysis by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Stefanie Stantcheva found “a strong correlation between the reductions in top tax rates and the increases in top 1% pre-tax income shares from 1975–79 to 2004–08”.   For example, the U.S. slashed the top income tax rate by 35 percent and witnessed a large ten percent increase in its top 1% pre-tax income share. “By contrast, France or Germany saw very little change in their top tax rates and their top 1% income shares during the same period.”

4. Taxing the rich will slow economic growth

An examination of 18 OECD countries found “little empirical support for the claim that reducing the progressivity of the tax code has spurred economic growth, business formation or job growth”.

Indeed, Piketty, Saez and Stantcheva’s rigorous analysis came to the opposite conclusion.  Our economy may be growing more slowly because we are taxing the rich too little, not too much.  Economists Peter Diamond and Saez estimated the optimal top tax rate, that is the tax rate that would maximize revenue without slowing economic growth, could be as high as 83 percent.

Redistributing income stimulates economies in part because when 1% make more they save whereas when the 99% make more they spend.  As a result, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s, a dollar in tax cuts on capital gains adds .38 cents of economic growth while a dollar in unemployment benefits gives the economy a boost of $1.63 and a dollar of food stamps adds $1.73.

5.  Taxing the rich would not raise much money

Of course it would.  If only the richest 400 families, whose average income in 2008 was an astounding $270 million actually paid the statutory rate of 39 percent (revived as of next January 1^st) an additional $500 billion would be raised over 10 years, putting a substantial dent in the projected deficit.

In 2010 hedge fund manager John Paulson made $5 billion.  That year, according to Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, Paulson paid no income taxes.  Am I envious Mr. Romney?  You bet I am.  But I’m also angry at the stark injustice of it all.  And terrified of the power such wealth can wield in a country that allows billionaires to spend unlimited sums influencing legislation and elections.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of Americans now believe the conflict between rich and poor is our greatest source of tension.  I agree.  It is a conflict that deserves to be aired fully and in public.

 

 

 

 

Let me suggest a sure fire way Barack Obama can win a second term. Stand in the doorway of a post office scheduled for closing and declare, “Not on my watch.” He will be standing with tens of millions of Americans who are rising up to defend our must trusted and ubiquitous public institution.

Last year 3600 communities were put on notice that they will likely lose their local post office.   “We will start to see post offices closing at the rate of a hundred a week,” predicts Steve Hutkins whose Save the Post Office is by far the single best source of information on all things post office.  “They’ve been closing at a rate of one hundred a year for the past 40 years.”  The Postmaster General promises to close half of the country’s 32,000 post offices over the next four years.

The high handedness with which the post office is undermining our communities infuriates growing numbers.  Speaking for many, one lady in Lodi, Texas writes, “It appears that the USPS has set these closing procedures on autopilot and there is really nothing anyone can do to stop them…They don’t actually ‘study’ a post office for closure; they target it for closure and then proceed to process it.  There is NO careful consideration made.”

A nationwide grassroots resistance is emerging that cuts across party lines, uniting rich and poor, rural and urban, black, white and Hispanic.  They are fighting to save a government institution that fundamentally contributes to their sense of community, of social cohesion of well-being. “The postal service tries to say there is no historical significance to (our) post office”, writes William Duncan, a resident of Grapevine, Arkansas.  “We beg to differ. 131 years in a community is historical no matter where you are located. It is the only office remaining in our community, due to school consolidations. But, without the post office, Grapevine no longer exists. It becomes a place, not a community.

After the Prairie City, South Dakota post office closed Daniel Beckman, a recently widowed farmer told the Wall Street Journal,   “That was the gathering place for people to come in the mornings, have a cup of coffee or a can of pop, and visit, but we don’t have that no more.  All that’s left in the town now is just a church; it’s totally depressing.”

The New York Times describes Neville, Ohio’s postmistress, soon to be unemployed as “anything but a faceless bureaucrat—she plays a community booster, historian and newscaster, telling people why that ambulance came to town a day earlier and warning people to lock their doors when an escaped convict was in the area.”

But a sense of place has no place in the decision making calculus the post office management is using.  By law management must assess the impact of a closure on the host community.  But in doing so the postal service puts no value on community itself.  Perhaps even more remarkable, it doesn’t even take into account the out of pocket costs to the community.

To management closing a post office results in all savings and no costs.   This public institution is using a cost-benefit methodology virtually identical to that used by Walmart or McDonalds.  Indeed Dean Granholm, vice president of delivery and post office operations makes the comparison explicit. “We’re not the only ones going through this trend. All sorts of retailers are trying to find ways to do this.”

What would happen if the postal service actually did take into account the real cost of closures to the community?  Consider the case of tiny Cambridge, Maine, population 520.  Its post office serves as a community hub and by abutting the town’s general store sustains its only other meeting place. The post office estimates a closure will save $91,000 a year. (Whether that figure is accurate we’ll never know because the post office rarely justifies its numbers.) The alternative post office is 5 miles distant. With $4 a gallon gas the 10 mile round trip will cost the community over $100,000 a year, excluding depreciation on the car, accidents from driving 10 miles on Maine’s wintry roads or the value of people’s time.

Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison undertook a more sophisticated analysis.  They chose to examine a rural post office that as a result of its tiny revenue and nearby alternatives would best justify closure by the economic model the post office uses.  After taking into account the additional transportation related expenses, they determined the post office would save $560,000 while the community would lose $1.3 million!

Adding insult to injury, the postal service is disrupting the lives of tens of millions of Americans to save, by its own estimate, an almost trivial sum.  Closing all 3600 on its list would save $200 million, .03 percent of a budget of $64 billion.

Communities can appeal a closing. But their chances of success are slim to none because a tie vote at the Postal Regulatory Commission affirms management. And voting tends to break down along party lines.  And Republicans support closure. And two of the four members of the Commission are Republicans.  A recent week saw 9 appeals and 8 decisions.  Seven were affirmed.  Six of these had 2-2 votes.

Why are Democrats keeping mum about the fact that Republicans are playing a key role in closing our post offices?

The postal service is also planning to close more than half its 487 processing centers.  These are not community gathering places but their closure will significantly burden their communities.  In Springfield, Oregon for example, the closure of the Gateway plant will lead to the loss of 68 jobs and the movement of another 70 or so to Portland, a severe blow to the local economy.  And the local area will experience significant indirect costs as well.  U.S. Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe concedes that “local mail would be a two-day product rather than a one-day for mail dropped in the blue mailbox.”  As a 30 year veteran mail clerk at the Gateway plant that serves southern Oregon explains a several day delay might well kill weekly newspapers.  Ironically in its first 200 years of operation the post office was required to deliver newspapers at a low rate to fulfill its public mission to promote an informed citizenry.

In mid December popular outrage resulted in the Senate forcing the post office to impose a moratorium on further closures.  The moratorium will be lifted May 15th.  In December Congress also delayed until August the next payment of $5.5 billion by the post office to prepay pension benefits.  If that is not extended the post office will go bankrupt that month.

All of which means that popular resistance will reemerge in the spring and move into high gear just as the election campaign heats up.

And that gives President Obama the opportunity to stand in the doorway and ask whether the post office deficit needs to be tackled by dismantling a universal infrastructure built over 225 years, robbing thousands of communities of their gathering places and eliminating hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs.

He could inform Americans that the post office was debt free in 2005 but in 2006 was forced to spend some $5 billion a year to prepay 75 years of retirement benefits over 10 years, a move I discuss in more detail here.

He could talk about how, rather than cutting back services,  the post office could expand them by, for example, reviving the postal savings bank it operated so effectively for 60 years that at its height had 4 million accounts.

He could take a page from the private sector playbook and bypass management to ask front line workers how to make the post office more efficient.   A few weeks ago John Meredith, a former letter carrier wrote to his Congressman offering one suggestion:

Letter carriers are forbidden by management to deliver mail in the easiest and fastest way.  For instance, the Post Office now has machines that allow mail to be already sorted in order of delivery when the carriers prepare the mail to go out on the route.  This does save time in the office, but when the carriers are out on the street, they have one bundle for the letters, another bundle for the magazine-size mail, another bundle of ads, and maybe even another bundle for a second set of ads.  They have to stand in front of every house to sort this mail all together.

How do you think a carrier on a walking route can do that, especially when so many of them are now working in the dark?  I believe the rural route carriers can sort the mail together in the morning so when they go out on the street they just have to use one motion at every delivery point.

And finally, the President could ask whether we might revisit the decision made in 1970 to end taxpayer support for the post office and transform it into an increasingly private enterprise that looks to strengthen its internal balance sheet by weakening the balance sheet of hundreds of millions of Americans it serves.

The widespread grassroots resistance to the still-building tsunami of post office closings gives the President the opportunity to lead a conversation about issues that cut across the political spectrum:  the meaning of the word “efficiency”, the relationship of the private and the public, the value of community.

Will he seize the historical moment and gain four more years in the oval office?

 

 

 

 

 Is the Super Bowl a socialist enterprise? Yes the  question is provocative but not, I believe, inappropriate. After all Indiana, the site of the next Super Bowl, is currently governed by those who insist government should play a minimal role. And socialist is the word they, and their Republican brethren around the country use in this election year to describe those who disagree.

By any measure the Super Bowl is socialist from head to toe.

Start with the venue. Governments paid for over 80 percent of the new $750 million Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the Super Bowl venue.  The Colts chipped in about 15 percent, an investment they probably recouped in inflated asset value the day the stadium opened.   Governments are also covering the estimated $20 million a year in operating deficits.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg.  The NFL itself is a government creation.

Back in 1961 Commissioner Pete Rozelle convinced Congress to grant anti-trust immunity to the NFL to allow it to negotiate with broadcast companies as a single entity. Its first contract with CBS proved so lucrative that each team had $332,000 in the bank at the beginning of the season, a sum that exceeded most team payrolls at the time. Flush with cash, team owners might have started a bidding war for players if a truly free market in labor prevailed.

But having eliminated a free market externally in the broadcast marketplace, this new government sanctioned monopoly proceeded to eliminate a free market internally in the labor marketplace. The NFL imposed a rule allowing any team losing a free agent to another team to receive something of equal value from that team.  Few teams were willing to risk signing a high profile free agent only to see their own rosters depleted.

Free agency came about only in 1993 after a jury ruled in favor of the players in a restraint of trade lawsuit brought by a group of NFL stars.   That verdict and the threat of a class action filed by Reggie White of the Philadelphia Eagles on behalf of all NFL players led the league to the bargaining table.  Still the owners refused to allow a completely free market by demanding and receiving a salary cap.

Back in 1961, to gain the support of all the owners, the NFL decided to distribute the revenue equally to all teams.  Nothing more socialist than that!  But this created a problem.  The Green Bay Packers were (and are) a non-profit team whose community ownership structure prevented it from blackmailing cities into giving it huge taxpayer subsidies by threatening to leave.  Equal revenue sharing could result in other communities opting for the Green Bay model.  The NFL quickly closed that door by amending its constitution.  Article V, Section 4, often called the “Green Bay Rule,” declares “charitable organizations and/or corporations not organized for profit and not now a member of the league may not hold membership in the National Football League.”

Some might justify the huge subsidies to football stadiums because of their purported equally huge positive local economic impact.  The evidence does not support that argument.  Numerous researchers have examined the question and in virtually every case found no statistically significant positive correlation between sport facility construction and economic development.  As for the Super Bowl itself, a study of six Super Bowls from 1979 to 1998 by economist Phil Porter found no increase in taxable sales in the host community compared to previous years without the game. Economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson found that hosting the Super Bowl was associated with an increase in employment in host cities of a paltry 537 jobs.

Not that any of this matters a whit to a true blue football fan.  I myself look forward to sitting back and enjoying a hard fought game.

But this is an election year. A year in which the role of government will be vigorously debated. The Super Bowl is a reflection of governments aggressively intervening, not on behalf of the poor or the consumer or the worker but on behalf of the 1/10^th of 1%.  Eighteen of the 32 NFL teams are owned by billionaires.   Perhaps during the interminable commercials we might pause a moment and reflect on the fact that we are watching a truly socialist spectacle.