2019 Review in Books

After a few years off, here is another year in review via books I've read.

This year I read a lot about the 1970s and the cultural changes that took us from the radicalism of the 60s to the conservatism of the 80s.  Bruce Schulman in his succinctly titled book, The Seventies, suggests the decade's changes were as momentous as those of the 1930's, but without nearly the same recognition.

In Schulman's view, the combination of turning inward away from radicalism and toward counterculturalism on the left, intersected with the growth of the Sun Belt.  Older cities in the north spiraled as whites and jobs left.  Political power shifted to the Sun Belt with their suburban development patterns and mindset.

As Lisa McGirr describes in Suburban Warriors, those sun belt cultural values were distinct.  Focusing on Orange County, CA, McGirr describes the basic attributes:
- Sun Belt cities in the early years at least were substantially impacted by federal spending on military manufacturing, R&D, and direct spending on bases.
- Sun Belt cities were dependent on that spending, but it wasn't an overt subsidy.  Residents tended to think of themselves as pioneers, pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.  The traditional fear and distrust of wall street bankers was projected onto Washington DC.
- At the same time, there was an implicit understanding that the local economy depended on America's posture in the cold war.  That encouraged extreme anti-communism, it fit their cultural values and the arms race was good for their business.
- The sun belt grew through in-migration, and new residents living in suburban development had limited organic social interactions, there was no public square or central downtown.  That left people hungry for opportunities where they could interact and build common ground with each other.  Churches, especially evangelical churches, were happy to oblige.  And as people learned with the 1964 Goldwater campaign, so too could a political party.

In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice writes about the impact that largely Sun Belt conservatives had on the Republican Party.  They actively contested northern liberals for control of the party, not hesitating to "primary" them or withhold support in general elections.  Conservatives preferred Democrats to liberal Republicans, the notion of a "big tent" was anathema to them.  Liberal Republicans understood what was happening and fought back as best they could, but lost.  A major factor was the lack of funding for a liberal Republican movement, there was no equivalent to the Koch Brothers.  Nelson Rockefeller could have played that role, but he chose instead to spend his money on his own campaigns for president.  By the time Reagan took office liberals had been reduced to a negligible presence in the Republican Party.  Reagan could talk about a "big tent" then because party control was conservative and no longer contested.
                     
Finally, with Haynes Johnson's In the Absence of Power I read about Jimmy Carter.  Here was a guy who nominally could have offered an alternative for the Sun Belt, an infusion of liberalism.  The trouble was, he was a really bad leader.

He made decisions in isolation, he would listen to people but nobody knew if they were getting through to him or not.  When he made decisions on his own, he was left with sole ownership of them.  Nobody else was invested in making his plans work out.  He just assumed everyone understood what was right like he did, and that everyone would then do the right thing because that's what he would have done.  Carter should have been a judge, not a president.

The story of how we got where we are is big and tangled, but I think it worth learning.

2016 Wrap up in Books

The best book I read in 2016 was American Amnesia by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson.  It's a spirited defense of the mixed economy America knew in the middle of the 20th century, when the country was at the peak of its military and economic power.  And it's a diagnosis of the subsequent decline, as America began systematically reducing public investment in everything from education to infrastructure.

The economic challenges that face affluent democracies are well known: the increase in global competition, the shift from manufacturing to services, the ascent of high-rolling finance as both a powerful shaper of corporate strategies and a dominant sector of the economy in its own right.  But the social institution of the mixed economy could have been updated to respond to these changes.  The balance between effective public authority and dynamic private markets could have been recalibrated rather than rejected.  Instead, the political coalition in favor of such a constructive balance shattered under the pressure of an increasingly conservative Republican Party and an increasingly insular, parochial, and extreme business leadership.  The moderate perspective that government and the market needed to complement each other gave way.  It was replaced by a destructive insistence that these two centers of power were locked in mortal combat- destructive because so many of those in power rejected adaptation in favor of upending, destructive because this insistence so often magnified rather than mitigated the economic challenges faced, and destructive because so few Americans now trust their democracy to do what democracies do to ensure broad prosperity.

The second best book I read was a biography of Tip O'Neill.  It fills in some blanks- why was the Democratic Party so broken in 1980, why did they roll over for Reagan in the House, and how despite this did Reagan accomplish so little of his "revolution?"

In a word, Democrats were old fashioned.  They were old men representing old urban neighborhoods and old political machines that had run out of gas.  They represented an old fashioned horse-trading way of doing politics in a post watergate era that saw horse-trading as corruption.  And they represented New Deal social supports that worked so well that the middle class they'd created took them for granted.  When Republicans took the Senate and the White House in 1980, Democrats weren't just defeated.  They were in total collapse, the expectation was that in 1982 Republicans would sweep the House too.

O'Neill started with this and not only kept Democrats in control of the House, but successfully rallied the country around Social Security and Medicare.  He preserved the core of the New Deal and kept it at the center of Democratic self identity.  Neither of those things was inevitable.

What these books have in common is a story about how the pursuit of purity turns things to shit.

In American Amnesia, it's the story of the financialization of Corporate America in the 70's and 80's.  While executives nominally worked on behalf of shareholders, they enjoyed wide discretion in setting priorities.  There was "room" for executives to care about their local communities, or about employees.  That changed when maximizing the benefit of shareholders became the be-all end-all.  After that, the only thing that mattered was share price, the only thing management needed to care about was share price.  Community welfare, employee welfare, gone.

In Congress the New Deal owed its existence to machine politicians who thrived on horse-trading.  Their ethos was, "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."  The whole concept of social insurance could be reduced to that.  But after Watergate, trading favors was seen as corruption.  An odd abstraction was idolized, a monk-like politician who had no connections or interests, who only decided anything after monk-like meditation in a cave somewhere.  Jimmy Carter was the embodiment of this, and he sucked at every level- even the voters who thought they wanted someone like him couldn't wait to get rid of him.  Instead of grappling with the nitty gritty of competing interests, voters turned to the fantasy land Reagan offered where there were no conflicts and everyone agreed on everything.

I see the same thing today in people who couldn't tolerate the moral grays of Clinton or Obamacare, instead accepting sewer filth of Trump.

A funny joke

There's a funny joke you can play with the fortunes you get out of fortune cookies.  Just add, "... in bed" to the end.  "You will have good luck tonight" becomes, "You will have good luck tonight in bed" and so on.  The suffix changes the nature of the statement, typically to something amusing and occasionally to something outrageous.

You can play a similar game with passages talking about the America's constitution, democracy, and political economy.  Just add, "... with President Trump" to the end.

Here's an example from Acemoglu and Robinson's "Why Nations Fail:"

Secure property rights, the law, public services, and the freedom to contract and exchange all rely on the state, the institution with the coercive capacity to impose order, prevent theft and fraud, and enforce contracts between private parties.  To function well, society also needs other public services: roads and a transport network so that goods can be transported, a public infrastructure so that economic activity can flourish, and some type of basic regulation to prevent fraud and malfeasance.  Though many of these public services can be provided by markets and private citizens, the degree of coordination necessary to do so on a large scale often eludes all but a central authority.  The state is thus inexorably intertwined with economic institutions.

 It's a deep and complex thought on what society needs, and how government and private interests can provide it.  Now read it again but add "... with President Trump" to the end.  The statement becomes a sick parody of itself, a mockery of economics and politics.

I wonder how academics will keep a straight face while they work under Trump.

What Opponents of Measure 97 Accomplished

Public services in general and schools in particular were looking down the barrel of a gun because of PERS costs.  Measure 97 was a way to shield them.  It would have given time for the legislature to find a legally enforceable reform package, at the expense of someone other than our children.

But Measure 97 failed.  That didn't solve PERS either, the vote against M97 changed nothing about pension obligations or the politics around it.  We're no more likely to reform PERS than we were before the election, or if M97 had passed.

All opponents of Measure 97 did was put our kids are on the firing line. 

Nice going, dicks.

Why I no longer read editorials in the Oregonian

The 2016 election wasn't just a political choice, it was a moral one. 

Trump is a racist and a bigot.  His politics is to scapegoat: not to solve problems but to use them to incite hate against anyone he can mark as "Other."  Trump's political lineage flows through no American, foreign despots like Putin and Saddam Hussein are his heroes.  Trump is an affront to America's democracy and a threat to its citizens.

On that choice, the OEB had no opinion.  No opinion about a man who threatens fundamental freedoms like speech and press.  No opinion about whether women in the military should have to salute Donald Trump as their commander in chief.  No opinion on whether Trump's bigotry sbould be embraced or condemned.  No opinion on his religious tests or his threat to deport millions.  On the moral choice which is now the struggle of our times, the OEB was silent.

They are boot lickers.

I don't need to read their words to know what passes from their lips.

MCDONNELL v. UNITED STATES

This decision won't get as much attention as other rulings that came out today, but it's worth noting.  Especially for those following the story of former Oregon Governor Kitzhaber.
 

The supreme court without dissent vacated the conviction of the former governor of Virginia on corruption charges, because the construction of bribery used in the case was overly broad.
 

I think the heart of the ruling is here:

Section 201 prohibits quid pro quo corruption—the exchange of a thing of value for an 'official act.'  In the Government’s view, nearly anything a public official accepts—from a campaign contribution to lunch—counts as a quid; and nearly anything a public official does—from arranging a meeting to inviting a guest to an event—counts as a quo...

But conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents, contact other officials on their behalf, and include them in events all the time. The basic compact underlying representative government assumes that public officials will hear from their constituents and act appropriately on their concerns

That is, the conduct potentially subject to criminal sanction is the root of democracy. You like candidate X, you work for their re-election. There is a quid. They in turn pursue policies you like. There is a quo. Is that corruption?

Separate but related is the arbitrariness of a broad definition, and how that's incompatible with due process, emphasis mine:

...under  the  Government’s  interpretation,  the  term  “official  act”  is  not  defined  “with sufficient  definiteness  that  ordinary  people  can  understand  what  conduct  is  prohibited,”  or  “in  a  manner  that does  not  encourage  arbitrary  and  discriminatory  enforcement.” Skilling, 561 U. S., at 402–403 (internal quotation marks  omitted).   Under  the  “‘standardless  sweep’”  of  the  Government’s reading, Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U. S. 352, 358 (1983), public officials could be subject to prosecution, without  fair  notice,  for  the  most  prosaic  interactions.  “Invoking so shapeless a provision to condemn someone to prison”  for  up  to  15  years  raises  the  serious  concern  that the  provision  “does  not  comport  with  the Constitution’s guarantee  of  due  process."

I think what these concerns have in common is a fear of separating politics from the people.  If we want self government, we need to allow for political leaders like us.  It's unreasonable to expect politicians to sequester themselves like monks, interacting with the public only through formal public hearings or sessions.  And we probably wouldn't like it if they did.

Does having a school with high foundation contributions encourage residents to vote against tax increases?

In discussions about Portland Public School foundations I sometimes see this assertion.  Often it's part of a broader critique of foundations and their impact on equity.  The claim is that foundations don't just increase inequity, but actively harm students in other neighborhoods because parents in "semi-privatized" communities don't support public taxes.

For kicks, I got shape files and a vote abstract from Multnomah County and charted it.  Below is a heat chart for 2011's measure 26-122.  This is a property tax levy specific to Portland Public Schools, it passed with 58% of the vote.  The red indicates low support and green indicates high.  The labeling is based on decimals, 0.5 = 50% to 60%, 0.4 = 40% to 50%, etc.

I've marked with red dots the rough location of the top 4 elementary schools and K-8's based on fundraising.  What do I see?

I see 3 of the 4 schools are located in precincts where the levy passed, and are surrounded by precincts with similar support.  I also see a vivid geographic pattern: the inner city neighborhoods supported the levy more than outer neighborhoods.  This pattern dominates the story of which precincts supported the levy and which did not, I don't see any correlation with the location of a high-foundation school.

Below is the same chart for 2010's measure 66, a statewide tax increase.  Same thing:

I don't think the presence or absence of a high-foundation school has any effect on voter support of taxes.  Saving this for the next time I see that claim pop up.