SCOTUS Senate Confirmation hearings

Since I taught federal government classes at community colleges off for 15 years following a 32 yr career in the federal government, I have studied these issues a little more than the average bear. But I confess to being confused and puzzled. How do we get a Supreme Courts containing liberals like Sotomayor and Kagan along with conservatives of the Thomas and Scalia ilk and still have the gall to pretend the established process is not political? You say, “Nobody pretends that. Everyone knows it's political and how it works.” Everyone? Really? Well somebody needs to whisper that to Mr. Kavanaugh. He is sitting in the witness chair of the Judiciary Committee declaring with a straight face that he will follow the lead of EVERY current sitting justice and render decisions devoid of a shred of political influence. He will take his extensive judicial and governmental experience and background, consider the provisions of the constitution and written law along with the peculiar facts and circumstances of a case before him and he will vote for a decision that is obviously correct and apolitical. His only litmus test other than the constitution will be whether his vote is consistent with the answers he gave the Senate Judiciary in confirmation hearing years before.

The big question or issue that seemingly is never challenged is the notion that there can appropriately be a “liberal” versus a “conservative” solution to a given constitutional issue. Are important laws that poorly written that vastly different interpretations of those laws can be drawn by different jurists? If not, then where have we gone wrong in the way we select judges? Why don't “liberal” justices and “conservatives” reach the same conclusions in comparing the facts of a case with written law and the constitution? Had I understood that conundrum, my years teaching federal government topics might have produced a clearer concept of the place of the Judiciary in a fair American republic.

John McCain

More later after I ruminate on it, but it's striking the differences and similarities of the national observance of the passing of John McCain with the first televised observance of a national leader, John F Kennedy's funeral and observances 55 years ago.

Differences are perhaps more stark. JFK's death was unexpected, even startling. McCain's was long awaited following announcement of its probable inevitability one year earlier. McCain left a retiring hero who had accomplished about all he could be expected to accomplish. JFK was taken early in his Camelot-like first term of his presidency while it was still very unclear how successful he might be and while he was not perceived as particularly bipartisan. McCain was a politician who could straddle the partisan divide like none of his contemporaries.

But there are also similarities. The world wondered how things might have been different if JFK had not been taken when he was. Similarly, many ponder what might have transpired had McCain lasted another year. The nation sat and watched the unfolding events of the funeral and burial and return to “regular order” in the political world in the winter of 1963. Late August of 2018 all network channels and basic cable news stations simultaneously carry the memorial services and funeral for McCain and fill in the time gaps with prognostications of a return to “regular order” in the political world this Fall.

More after Sunday when it's all over.

SA2020_Part 1

  SA2020

I have done only limited research in recent years into contemporary cases of “urban renewal”. I don't use that label to harken back to efforts of the second half of the 20^th century to combat urban decay or blight. I don't limit the concept to efforts for physical replacement of slums and low income/high crime areas into yuppie new neighborhoods. I am, instead, using the term “urban renewal” in a much broader, macro sense. Limited though they may be, there have been 21^st century business and municipal public leaders who have sought to make cities better, to right wrongs, and to fashion what their great-grandparents would have considered more utopian communities. To do this within the constraints of existing power structures and the overall social norms and to maintain the vast freedoms for all societal participants is incredibly difficult. Many cities, as encouraged and enabled by their parent state governments, seek merely to make small incremental improvements. If a given city can see a 5% reduction in their crime rate for a given year with some confidence the improvement won't reverse itself the following year, they are ecstatic. Or perhaps the one percenters convince the local voters to agree to some special tax break or funding to get a new stadium built for the local pro sports team. And when this succeeds and is followed by some success by that team it brings pride to the area and they rejoice that things are indeed improving.

But few cities look at the complete, overall urban experience and develop broader plans to marshal resources designed to make a city better and provide a better life for all or most inhabitants of the city.

Such an effort was what I found fascinating in what San Antonio, TX launched in 2010. They labeled their effort “SA2020”. Their effort was designed to allow for a full two plus years of planning and seven or eight years of action they hoped would produce a better, more livable, more desirable city than what San Antone had become by 2009. The planners broke down the total effort into eleven separate but overlapping spheres of concern and wrote ten year plans for each sphere, establishing quantifiable goals where feasible. Theses spheres ranged from Civic Engagement (voting and the functioning of government) to the local economy (encouraging business growth and reducing unemployment) to having a healthier fine arts structure (fiscally viable) and to reducing the discomforts of a poor transportation networks throughout the metropolitan area.      I moved from San Antonio to Oklahoma in early 2013. This was toward the end of the initial planning stages and after the first year or so of implementation had begun. I have not been close enough to follow the daily struggles of implementing throughout the five years since we left. I sense that there have, in fact, been improvements and some goal attainment that likely would not have been as marked had this coordinated effort not been undertaken. I also believe from available data and news reports that by 2020 not all of the spheres will be able to declare victory or mission accomplished. I offer that opinion not to denigrate the effort but to emphasize the enormity of the original vision. Had San Antonio been able to deliver in all eleven areas anywhere close to the original goals, they would have indeed produced a modern day miracle in democratic America. My hope in shining a light on their efforts is that they take encouragement from their improvements, learn from the difficult challenges they couldn't solve, and double down on their resolve to continue building a livable large city in flyover country that could offer model solutions to other cities in our fair country.

I intend to summarize the successes and ongoing challenges for SA2020 as of the summer of 2018. This will probably take four more Blog posts beyond this one.

Voter Turnout

EXCESSIVE ELECTIONS

It is easy to cite voting results that prove Americans take the right to vote too much for granted. We are the oldest democratic form of government in the world and a model for many others across the globe. Yet in the past century we have, as voting eligible peoples, not performed our civic duty very admirably. Closely contested presidential elections have struggled to tally 62% of the potentially available, non-incarcerated adult citizens. And presidential elections garner the best we can do. Congressional midterm elections, statewide gubernatorial elections and local city/county contests struggle to attain a sizable fraction of the presidential vote totals. Many places, however, have initial party primary elections with subsequent runoffs where the initial contest started with more than two candidates. Sometimes local school districts will even stage special elections for bond issues to decide on capital construction questions. Many such local elections have produced results on the basis of as little as 10% to 12% turnout. Who can claim with confidence that decisions made by such paltry representations of the body politic are indeed decisions made as a form of a democratic process?

Yet other than the occasional post-election editorial decrying low turnouts, little is ever done to reverse these trends or to boost turnout in subsequent elections. And, in fact, one major party seems intent on going the other direction, making it even more difficult for turnouts to rise. They push voter ID laws and restrictions on early voting while continuing to seek to produce and maintain legislative maps that gerrymander voter rolls in ways designed to maximize their numbers in spite of relative parity of voters at the macro level. Some in that party are more worried about the potential for undocumented immigrants voting in ways they abhor than they are ensuring that legal citizens vote in sufficient numbers to express a common will.

This being an essay, not a book, I will not offer data validating the generalizations I have made. Such data does exit and could be produced. Instead, my intent here is to suggest several simple changes available that could markedly improve voter turnout at little cost (if not produce a savings to the overall costs of elections).

We need far fewer elections. Send the voters to the polls less often. Presidential and midterm elections every two years in November are sufficient. They can be preceded by single open primaries scheduled at the whim and pleasure of various states, but without runoffs. Instead of separate party primaries, for all offices below that of President, have a totally open primary for a given office with the top two vote getters advancing to the general election in November. This could work for Congress and Senate as well as gubernatorial offices.

I would also take many currently elective offices out of the mix and convert them to appointive positions. This is most easily seen at the local levels. Why should voters elect county clerks, state superintendents of education or insurance, even attorneys general? Do local voters really have any idea who would make the best municipal or district judge? If we elect the mayor and the governor and the state legislators with appropriately representative turnout margins, why can't we trust those elected officials to appoint qualified people who will administer the various departments of government properly? And if they err they can be removed by the elected officials. And if the elected officials fail to act, they can be removed by election.

Presidential Rally Coverage

It is time, maybe past time for the “FAKE NEWS” to put up or shut up. As has been suggested by a responsible, respected Republican media operative, all the members of the MSM (mainstream media) excluding FOX should immediately begin boycotting Trump rallies or at a minimum agree to using a solitary pool reporter to cover these pep rallies. This would deprive 45 of the visible punching bag he relies on to receive his hurled invectives. It would reduce the free coverage Trump covets. Important news elsewhere could once again receive appropriate coverage.

Split California

It makes no difference to me if California is allowed to split and become three (or two) states. The only impact on the rest of us would be the makeup of the enlarged U S Senate. And it would surprise me if the Republicans actually gained from such a change.
 50 states is already too many. Makes for too much diversity in regional laws and expectations. Things like air pollution don't stop at a state's borders. And one elephant in the room is the "unit rule" that large, powerful states like CA, TX, and NY love for supposedly increasing their influence in presidential elections. If Electoral College votes more closely resembled popular votes nationwide, then it wouldn't matter much how people wanted to carve up the nation in terms of separate state governments. Abandoning the unit rule would allow more appropriate democracy.

Oklahoma Gubernatorial Primaries

My muses are conflicted. I am bemused, amused, and confused (a kissing cousin to muses). We lived in Oklahoma for five years, then took a five year break down in Texas. Now we’ve been back in Tulsa five more years. So we’re not “newbies”, but we don’t have the grasp of  state politics that natives do. What flummoxes me currently is gubernatorial politics. The three or four best known and highest spending Republicans seeking their party’s nomination this time around are all claiming that they are solid Conservatives who represent the answer to the current dilemmas the state faces. But it seems to me these dilemmas are the product of a decade of policies enacted by Republican super-majority legislatures and governor. Exactly how will these candidates regimes differ? And where will the one who promises to audit every state agency think he’s going to find the funds for such audits?  They haven’t even ponied up the resources to “fix” public education in the state.  I understand that some believe each state agency has on its organization charts a “Bureau of Waste, Fraud and Mismanagement” and that X-ing out that bureau will unleash hidden millions of dollars to fund all the other annoying purposes of government. Purposes such as teacher raises, road and bridge repair, maintaining healthcare in remote rural areas, and the like. But do these genius candidates really think the required intrepid auditors are going to work for free?

So, I guess I’ll watch the primary season lumber on. Maybe the teachers and civil servants will rise up again as they did earlier this Spring and bring educated debate to the game. Couldn’t hurt.