This post seeks to address what I consider to be the inevitable consequences of the development of racially driven animosities between the African-American community in Ferguson, Missouri and municipal authorities within the St. Louis suburb, originating with the shooting death of Michael Brown, an African-American teenager, by a police officer, Darren Wilson, on August 9, 2014. In the past week, the governor of Missouri has mobilized National Guard forces to deal with potential violence arising in the aftermath of an expected grand jury decision on the possible indictment of Officer Wilson on charges related to the shooting of Mr. Brown. Emphatically, I would consider a violent reaction in Ferguson to the legal process in this case to be entirely inevitable (and completely tragic), hence the title of this post. Such a reaction will reflect not merely the relative disempowerment of a majority African-American community in Ferguson in regard to the organization and operations of the municipality's police force but also a broader sensibility of racial disempowerment in regard to the criminal justice process, as it impacts African-Americans, across the U.S. The array of issues involved here is far too broad for me to adequately address in a single post. However, I want to advance a short set of propositions here that I hope will convey both my limited understanding of the stakes involved in the battle of Ferguson, my disappointment with the direction that this struggle between a community and its police force has taken since August, and my hopes that something truly revolutionary will emerge from what is currently taking place. Succinctly, it is my position that the underlying issues in the conflict over Michael Brown's death at the hands of a police officer can only be adequately resolved through a radical transformation in the organizational and procedural theories governing law enforcement processes in the U.S., in particular, on the professionalization of police departments.
1. The grand jury deliberations on the actions of Officer Wilson need to adhere rigorously to legal standards for the state of Missouri on the criminal culpability of police officers in relation to the use of deadly force while on duty, accounting for the potential threat posed to Officer Wilson's life at the hands of Mr. Brown. As such, it is critical that the potential for violent reaction within the African-American community of Ferguson not enter into these deliberations, in order to prejudicially bias the findings of the grand jury against a decision that Officer Wilson was not criminally liable for the death of Mr. Brown.
The point here is that Officer Wilson needs to be accorded the full Constitutional privilege, as a U.S. citizen, of an impartial hearing to determine whether his actions were both proper in relation to police procedures on the use of deadly force and, assuming they were not, whether his actions satisfy conditions for the issuance of an indictment for manslaughter, murder, or some other criminal offense for pursuit by prosecutors in St. Louis County. At stake here are the procedural due process privileges enjoyed by Officer Wilson, against which the eventual reactions that might occur in Ferguson have absolutely no bearing. This conclusion subsumes two separate arguments. First, legal inquiries into possible criminal violations of the law must rigorously adhere, on the one hand, to the outlines of the law and its definitive conditions for identifying the commission of a crime and, on the other hand, the detailed evidence regarding the particular act under consideration for the issuance of a criminal indictment. In these circumstances, ex ante considerations on the potential outcomes of a criminal indictment or the failure to issue a criminal indictment are emphatically not pertinent. Second, the issues inciting civil disturbances in Ferguson since August are strictly irreducible to the actions committed by Officer Wilson on August 9. Whatever actually happened to Michael Brown at the hands of Officer Wilson, it seems clear that a problem exists in the relationship between African-American communities across the U.S. and the American law enforcement community that will not be resolved by a criminal indictment against Officer Wilson. The death of Michael Brown, an African-American teenager in a majority African-American community at the hands of a White police officer in a majority White police department, is symptomatic of a much larger problem demanding a radical solution that cannot emerge from the deliberations of a grand jury. Acknowledging these arguments does not suggest, one way or the other, that Officer Wilson meticulously followed proper police procedures in the use of deadly force in defense of his life. Rather, it suggests that nothing will be solved, one way or the other, if the deliberations on the fate of Officer Wilson are not perfectly fair and unbiased by considerations on the maintenance of the peace in Ferguson.
2. Accounting for not only the outcome of grand jury deliberations but also the potential outcome of the full criminal justice process (trial, determination of guilt, sentencing) for Officer Wilson and the likelihood that, at any stage, the hopes of the African-American community in Ferguson for justice/retribution will be derailed, it is inevitable that, at some point, a violent reaction will again occur in Ferguson and, possible, in other African-American communities elsewhere in the U.S.
How many generations of Americans have to witness at least one major outburst of extreme urban racial violence before we recognize that, in all its complexity, we have not resolved the problem of racialism, as a foundational attribute in American culture? As a nation, we have a long history of race riots, not limited to the extreme incidents of urban violence occurring in the late 1960s (e.g. the Newark riots of 1967) or the Los Angeles riots of 1992 after the Rodney King beatings by Los Angeles police. Both the Newark riots of 1967 and the 1992 Los Angeles riots arose in response to actions by police. It might, thus, be easy to generalize the source of urban violence as a response to the repressive actions of the state against African-Americans. In my opinion, such a generalization would be inadequate in representing the broader significance of racialism, as a culturally-propagated reduction of social differentiations to intra-species genotypic diversities, to the entire course of U.S. history. In certain respects, we need to approach the progress of American racialism with a degree of Hegelian sophistication in comprehending the extent to which our sensibilities toward race have transformed themselves into a conviction that we, as a nation, should divorce ourselves from racialism, developing a consciousness that recognizes itself in opposition/negation of race. In this manner, identifications with a racially blind society obscure identifications with unambiguous racial groupings as the same racial groupings unconsciously determine diverse economic and political policy decisions within government and everyday life. (That is, we have convinced ourselves not to see our noses as plainly as our faces in recognizing that racial differentiations determine political and economic outcomes on a wide scale within the U.S. even as we try to convince ourselves that race does not matter because we've passed a few pieces of legislation to deal with it.)
There will be new riots in Ferguson, and the rest of the country will continue to ask why, if only because, like a continuously suppressed/forgotten nightmare, we continue to fail to recognize the unbearable consequences of our racially defined national origins. Fundamentally, these new riots will continue to seek to address an undiscovered realization that African-Americans in the U.S. are being subjected to an endless reiteration of second-class citizenship, intertwined, since the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, in a perception that the success of Blacks depends on governmental assistance/affirmative action/quotas. Thus, African-Americans have gone from a state of active discrimination to a state of perpetual dependency on the state against discrimination, accompanied by a conviction among White Americans that such protections constitute excessive and unnecessary protective measures operating to their detriment (i.e. "reverse discrimination"!). I succinctly question the possibilities for emergence from this fatal loop of characterizations as long as we continue to regard racial differentiations as a subject for necessary state remediation. That is to say, the fact that the state must remediate racially based discriminatory actions creates a sensibility that the state will remediate racial discrimination, generating new manifestations of racial discrimination that the state must remediate.
In the context of criminal justice practices, this interprets itself as a continuous reiteration of discriminatory policies that must be remediated by judicial precedence, only to be recreated under the particular specifications of new adjudical policy, to be once again challenged by defenders of judicial equality, accounting for race. Thus, criminal "profiling" by police based on the racial characteristics of individuals, as a maligned standard practice in law enforcment, has raised legal and Constitutional issues in relation to individual protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by police under the Fourth and (through selective incorporation) Fourteenth Amendments. And yet, to the extent that the particular circumstances involved in certain actions by police have supported the use of racial characteristics as a tool in mitigating criminal activities, particularly in regard to gang activity in association with the drug trade, the Federal judiciary has carved holes into individual protections in order to preserve the ability of local police departments to stop and detain particular individuals without warrant or evidence of criminal activity based on characterizations with emphatic racial components (see Jody Feder, "Racial Profiling: Legal and Constitutional Issues," Congressional Research Service, 16 April 2012, at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL31130.pdf).
Concluding, the larger problem here is that police practices, emerging from a national cultural context that is immersed in racialism, contain explicit racial components that can only be meaningfully challenged through a foundational reexamination of racialism in American culture. The validity of racial profiling as a tool in law enforcement, thus, can only be adequately evaluated when we have acknowledged that the racially-reductive common-sense of American culture is an insurmountable frame of reference. When African-American residents of Ferguson plead for an indictment of Officer Wilson as a prerequisite in the state's recognition of Michael Brown's humanity and the expectation that Michael Brown should have been afforded basic liberties and privileges as an American citizen against the arbitrary actions of law enforcment officials, they are invariably issuing arguments in a cultural millieux in which their racial positionalities, that of Michael Brown, and that of Officer Wilson assume an exaggerated importance. Implictly, to the extent that justice for the African-American community of Ferguson (and elsewhere) would only be served by Officer Wilson's indictment and criminal prosecution, what we are confronting here is a differentiation between "Black justice" and "White justice" (i.e. the exoneration of a (White) police office who properly exercised the use of deadly force when his life was endangered in the course of exercising his legally prescribed duties). The fact that these two conceptions are distinct, separable, and incommensurably at odds in a zero-sum manner reflects the manner in which American racialism overdetermines the terms of the confrontation and the necessity that racialist conceptions are obscured by an ideological commitment to racial neutrality. In this sense, the recurrance of urban violence in Ferguson reflects the deeper frustration of the community and of African-Americans in general that racialism is not being actively confronted in American culture.
Monday, November 24, 2014
Friday, November 14, 2014
More on the November Elections in the Massachusetts Commonwealth
My previous post on this subject constituted, in part, a prediction of the electoral results on November 4, but it was getting late when I wrote it, so I never got very far (although my predictions proved true). Writing now on certain of the other results, now that we have a complete portrait of what passed (as far as ballot referenda) and what didn't, I can make some much more definitive statements:
1. The passage of ballot question 1, invalidating automatic increases of the gasoline tax in the Commonwealth against the rate of inflation, measured (I presume) by the Consumer Price Index, will be detrimental to public investments in transportation infrastructure. As a long term matter in the relationship between private capital investment and maintenance of transportation infrastructure conforming to the needs of industry in the Commonwealth, the passage of question 1 will no doubt negatively impact economic growth in Massachusetts in ways that will not be offset by any savings to consumers and businesses from maintaining the potential for lower gasoline taxes. It is important to note just what ballot referendum question 1 actually means now that it is law. It does not change the current gas tax in the Commonwealth (approximately 42 cents per gallon of gasoline). Nor does it mandate that the General Court of the Commonwealth (i.e. our bicameral state legislature) shall not pass new increases in the gasoline tax. Rather, it invalidates a process, previously passed by the legislature, intended to increase the absolute value of the tax per gallon of gasoline automatically as a function of changes in price inflation, measured, I believe, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index. With this in mind, the Commonwealth has a significant backlog of transportation infrastructure projects requiring the attention of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (DOT). Each of these projects will strain the resources available to the Mass. DOT, from the gas tax and from distributions out of the General Fund of the Commonwealth not otherwise earmarked for transportation expenditures. Apparently the Patrick administration entered in 2009 facing over 600 bridges with significant structure deficiencies requiring the attention of state transportation officials. Over its time in office, the administration successfully remediated approximately 150 of these structurally deficient bridges, including the Pearl Harbor Veterans Memorial Bridge over the mouth of the Connecticut River Oxbow separating Northampton from Easthampton that I ride over at least four times a week by bus. At present, at least one bridge over the Connecticut down river in Holyoke (connecting the Holyoke Flats to the Chicopee neighborhood of Willamansett along route 116) remains closed by catastrophic structural deficiencies and an apparent paucity of state funds necessary to effect a repair/reconstruction of the bridge. In this manner, over 450 structurally deficient bridges remain in Massachusetts, a bluer than blue Democratic state frequently (and erroneously) labeled "Taxachusetts." This situation should be unacceptable, except to individuals who do not live in either of the low income neighborhoods that frequently utilized the bridge in Holyoke and, as such, who would prefer to pay less in taxes every time they go to the pump to fill up on what remains, on a global scale, relatively inexpensive gasoline. Acknowledging that expressed legislative increases in the gasoline tax by the General Court remains an option to restore necessary funds that might have been generated through automatic gas tax increases, several problems arise from an incremental legislative approach. Most notably, the Democratic majority legislature is now confronting an incoming Republican gubernatorial administration, committed to restraining the legislature in its efforts to raise new revenues for the Commonwealth through taxation. It is likely that any effort to incrementally increase the gasoline tax to pay for road repairs would have to overcome a veto from Governor Baker by means of a two-thirds majority in both houses. Even before we arrive at this point, however, it is certain that legislative initiatives to raise the gasoline tax would be met by challenges by consumer and business lobby groups, seeking to maintain an atmosphere conducive to robust contemporary consumer spending, even at the expense of passing on massive bills for transportation repairs to future administrations. It goes without saying, I think the passage of question 1, a referendum question that I felt certain would pass, represents another episode in the irresponsibility of a short-sighted electorate in directing the government of the Commonwealth on fiscal policy - if we want roads and if roads are important to future economic development when the absence of good roads becomes a hindrance to investment in the manufacture and transhipment of goods, then, as citizens, we have to develop mechanisms to pay for their construction, repair, and general maintenance! In this respect, we, citizens of the Commonwealth, collectively dropped the ball in approving this referendum question rather than permitting a thoroughly sensible policy on the regulation of gasoline taxes in the Commonwealth to stand.
2. I remain indifferent on the failure to pass ballot question 2, instituting a 5 cent deposit on plastic bottled water and juice containers, notwithstanding the fact that I voted in favor of passage. The proponents of the question, in my view, made a compelling argument that large proportions of these classes of plastic containers continue to make it into the non-recycled waste stream even with the availability of curbside recycling in most Massachusetts communities. On the other hand, as someone employed in retail trade, the complications that an expansion of the range of products carrying a deposit requirement might have produced seem to suggest that it would be better to devise solutions to the problem of plastic bottle disposal into the waste stream through the management of recycling processes by municipalities. Emphatically, I truly did not care one way or the other as to whether this question had passed or not. I voted in favor simply because arguments made by supporters of the question that a majority of plastic containers for bottled water continues to find its way into the waste stream, terminating at landfills, seemed compelling to me. I am not a strong environmentalist - environmental maintenance is not my main issue in walking into a voting booth. However, I can understand the motivations behind supporters of the proposal and the passion with which they advocate for changes in the law that might succeed in making even small changes to the management of wastes and recyclable materials. The other side on this question, represented most strongly by major retailers who did not want to see the impact of increasing the cost of bottled water and juices on their sales of these products, made a compelling and well financed case to voters that the passage of the question would increase the costs to consumers for purchasing bottled water and juice and that it might conceivably open the door to inclusion of other recyclable containers under the bottle bill. In the end, as with question 1, cost considerations to consumers won the day. The other piece in this debate over the expansion of the Massachusetts bottle bill involved the availability of curbside recycling in most municipalities in the state. It is, likewise, the case that municipalities derive a small quantity of revenues from the sale of recyclable materials to processers, who thereafter convert used plastic bottles into synthetic fleece and other products. Fundamentally, the debate over question 2 could have resolved itself into a choice in public policy between two distinct models of recycling of a discrete range of plastic containers. If curbside recycling is failing to recover a significant percentage of the plastic water and juice containers in the Commonwealth, then maybe there are things that can be done to increase the utilization of curbside recycling to shift more plastic out of the waste stream. Moreover, maybe more can be done at progressive stages in waste processing to ensure that recyclables get extracted - private waste processers like Waste Management seem to be enhancing their own profits by extracting wastes that can be renewed in other supply chains. As such, I am not highly concerned with the failure to pass question 2. Environmentalists in the Commonwealth are right to pursue this existing problem of inadequacies in recycling of plastic containers, but we need a more innovative and, perhaps, a profit/revenue generating approach to realize a solution.
3. In the intermediate term, the failure to pass question 3, banning casino gaming in the Commonwealth, will be an unmitigated disaster for Massachusetts. Casino gaming will, above all, promote a redistribution of gambling dollars away from the Massachusetts state lottery, an important source of local funding for municipalities, and toward corporations located outside of the Commonwealth - a redistribution that will absolutely not be counterbalanced by mandatory payments from casino operators to the state government and municipalities, at least in the intermediate term. In the long term, however, such a redistribution may not matter, once casino operators in Massachusetts succumb to the inadequate scale of the New England market for gambling - I find it difficult to believe that a majority of the Massachusetts gaming facilities heretofore licensed by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission will survive a decade in operation within the New England market. The casino question in Massachusetts is far too complicated for me to encapsulate the terms of the debate that raged until November 4, when a majority of the electorate that cast votes chose to maintain an expanded gaming law, passed by the General Court in 2010, that provided for the licensing of three resort casinos (one for metropolitan Boston, one for Western Massachusetts, one for Southeastern Massachusetts) and one slot parlor. Question 3, if it had been passed, would have invalidated the extended gaming law, after a range of potential casino operators had paid fees of $400,000 apiece to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission for initial consideration of their proposals and after three casino licenses had been granted by the Gaming Commission (to MGM Resorts International for development of a resort casino in the south end neighborhood of Springfield, to Penn National Gaming Inc. for a slot parlor (no table games) in Plainville, and to Wynn Resorts for development of a resort casino on a brownfield industrial site in Everett in the Boston suburbs). It is worth noting that the supporters of question 3 undertook a significant struggle just to get the referendum included on the ballot in which Massachusetts Attorney General and unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley had ruled that the question could not even appear on the ballot because its provisions would constitute an illegal uncompensated seizure of the property of potential casino operators if it had passed. I will save comments on this challenge and the legal process that supporters had to go through in order to get question 3 on the ballot for a subsequent elaboration on this post. It suffices to say that supporters, in the run up to the election, expended $650,000 in support of the invalidation of the Expanded Gaming Act, while potential casino operators and their supporters expended over $14 million to explain, in television commercials that bombarded voters across the Commonwealth, how the passage of question 3 would cost Massachusetts communities thousands of jobs anticipated in the construction process and in the subsequent staffing of casinos, stiffling the hopes of the communities hosting a potential casino operator. Thus, a majority (59 percent) of Massachusetts voters were sold on the idea that casino gaming was the best possible scheme to achieve rapid and sustained job growth in a handful of communities ravaged by unemployment and, in Everett's case, ecological devastation (Wynn has pledged to spend millions of dollars to rehabilitate the industrially polluted land on which it has been permitted to construct its casino resort(!?)).
The consequences of question 3's failure are worth significant consideration. Being the sort of economist who wants to mount an inquiry on multiple timeframes to ponder the particular ways in which a given economic policy or development is going to impact a macroeconomic system over time, it seems likely that all of the communities that have been granted casino licenses will enjoy strong near term (1-3 years) job growth by virtue of employment growth in the construction trades. Likewise, the government of the Commonwealth, the specific communities within which casinos are to be located, and certain surrounding communities that have negotiated future compensatory payments from casino operators or have been granted compensatory payments through arbitration will enjoy a stream of payments from future casino operators as agreed upon under the terms of the Expanded Gaming Law and the particular terms of licenses granted by the Gaming Commission. Finally, until the casinos and slot parlors actually go on line, Massachusetts is not going to witness any effect on revenues generated by the state lottery, the distributions from which go overwhelmingly to municipalities as local funding. In the near term, I, therefore, accept that this is going to be an economic boon for the Commonwealth.
The part that concerns me regards what I am going to label the intermediate term (4-10 years). Once the casinos come on line, the state lottery will, indisputably, begin to take a hit that it has not sustained from the Connecticut tribal casinos that have operated since the early 1990s for the simple reason that these casinos have not been here. Proximity to potential patrons, especially low income ones, that have heretofore been less likely to spend money on a sustained frequency in Connecticut casinos will immediately place a strain on lottery revenues in casino communities, because casino gaming and lottery gambling are certainly substitute goods when the casino is in your immediate vicinity. There is no way that lottery revenues as a whole, throughout the Commonwealth, are not going to be diminished, and this diminution is going to impact every community in the Commonwealth by virtue of the particular distributional formulas for local funding from the lottery. As a result, the presence of casinos will place a strain on municipal budgets throughout the Commonwealth, not specifically for the reasons cited by casino opponents (e.g. increases in criminal activity and public expenditures to deal with compulsive gambling) but simply because municipalities are not going to see the same level of locally earmarked lottery funding. The reductions in local funding that this will entail will certainly be felt in educational assistance to offset deficiencies in property tax revenues in municipalities like Springfield, which, not incidentally, will enjoy the prospect of revenues to be paid by MGM contingent to host community agreement (see "Concise Summary of Host Community Agreement," at: http://www3.springfield-ma.gov/planning/fileadmin/Planning_files/CONCISE_SUMMARY_OF_HCA_FOR_VOTERS_EMP__5_16_13_FINAL2.pdf)
with the city.
On the other hand, revenues paid by casino operators, like every other form of governmental revenue extracted from the revenues of private enterprise, is contingent on the profitability of the enterprises. If the casino that MGM plans to construct in Springfield is not profitable, then how is it possible that Springfield and surrounding communities with whom MGM has reached agreement on payments for mitigation of the negative impacts from casino development will see the millions of dollars promised by MGM? The host community agreement approved by voters in Springfield in 2013, for example, includes calculations for variable projected annual payments to the city from estimated "gross gaming revenues (GGR)" by the MGM resort casino of $479,500,000(?!). If a figure like this does not raise at least an eyebrow, then it should! The only thing Springfield can absolutely be certain of is that MGM is going to bleed low income populations in the North End, South End, Mason Square, Pine Point, McKnight, and Forest Park neighborhoods white and then go looking for easy pickings from low income populations in West Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke on the promise of easy money for the taking from populations that have no business whatsoever throwing whatever incomes they have away to billionaires from Las Vegas! Beyond its first year in operation, I find it distinctly unlikely that a Springfield casino will draw heavily from Vermont and/or New Hampshire. Nor do I think it is likely that it will draw heavily for very long from either northern Connecticut or Worcester County. The patrons of a Springfield casino will come overwhelmingly from the Massachusetts I-91 corridor (Hamden, Hampshire, Franklin Counties) and secondarily from Berkshire County. In the event that New York begins licensing casino operators for the Catskills or Taconic Parkway areas, the patronage of Berkshire County gamblers may, further, become contested. Such a population is not adequate to make Springfield a vibrant, exciting casino resort destination. In fact, I think it is still open to question whether MGM ever actually opens up a casino in Springfield, provided the tepid economic recovery currently happening in the U.S. sputters to a halt with some major international financial slowdown or shock in the next two years, something that I think is quite possible.
Whatever actually happens in Springfield and in the rest of Massachusetts over the next three to five years, I think that it is certain that opening up two to three resort casinos (a third casino resort, possibly to be operated by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe if it can maintain a federal claim to tribal status and the right to operate a gaming facility in southeastern Massachusetts may also be licensed as well by the Gaming Commission, but I am not entirely clear on the status of the Commonwealth's negotiations with the tribe) plus a large slot parlor in Massachusetts is going to place extreme stress on the base of demand for gaming facilities in New England. As it stands, I find it improbable that the Narragansett Twin River Casino in Rhode Island (which is, if memory serves, just a slot parlor plus non-gaming attractions and shopping) will survive more than two years of competition with the Penn National slot parlor located strategically on the I-95/I-495 corridor between Boston and Providence, to say nothing of the Wynn casino in Everett. Succinctly, either the Penn National slot parlor or the Narragansett slot parlor will disappear very rapidly, because the presence of both guarantees that neither will be profitable, whether either facility survives the operation of the Wynn casino in metropolitan Boston. In the past week, moreover, the Mohegan tribal commission (i.e. the Mohegan Sun Casino) has apparently begun discussions with both the state of Connecticut and the Mashantucket Pequot tribal commission (i.e. the Foxwoods Casino) to solicit approval and cooperation, respectively, in construction of a new gaming facility for northern Connecticut, targeting the same I-91 corridor that MGM is counting on for patrons. In short, southern New England is succumbing to a feeding frenzy(!) among casino operators, all seeking to gobble up as much market share as they can from a regional market that is admittedly growing but that will forever remain finite and smaller than any of the casino operators might hope.
In such an environment, is it even possible that all of the Massachusetts casino operators will remain in operation long enough to see a positive rate of return on their investments? Pursuing the contours of my larger argument in this short set of comments, my answer is no. MGM, most certainly, is not going to survive a decade in Springfield - its potential market area is too small and not wealthy enough to enable MGM to capitalize on an overly exuberant initial investment. Both Penn National and Twin River will succumb to the combined force of competition with Wynn and the southeastern Connecticut tribal casino complex (the only reason up until now that Twin River has not been competed out of business by Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun is its relatively proximity to both the Providence and Boston markets - when Wynn goes in, Twin River goes down!). The Connecticut tribal casinos will certainly lose market share, but their relative proximity to Hartford and New Haven, to say nothing of the New York metropolitan region, will help them preserve a diminished first mover advantage into the New England market. If they construct a facility in northern Connecticut, however, they will create pointless competition for their existing facilities that will never generate a meaningful rate of return, even after MGM finally throws in the towel on Springfield. In this environment, I cannot see what would be gained for the Mashpee Wampanoags if they were to get approval from the Commonwealth to build a casino resort facility in Taunton. Such a market area would draw a tiny clientele that would never generate meaningful returns for the tribe in relation to the necessary investment to create a facility that would command at least some attention from gamblers in Boston and Providence. In the end, the only prospective casino project that would appear to be of any value and genuinely profitable is that of the Wynn corporation in Everett.
With all these considerations in mind, in the long run (10+ years), maybe lottery revenues in certain parts of the Commonwealth, like Springfield, will begin to recover somewhat from the mess that supporters of casino gaming and casino operators will have placed them in. In any case, I am confident that another empty big glass building will decorate the Springfield skyline where once stood the hope and dream of 3,000 jobs for local residents and $26 million in annual revenues flowing into the coffers of the city and its neighbors. The coming casino debacle in Massachusetts will leave communities like Springfield once more with the interminable quandry of how to achieve durable economic development. Perhaps, after the casino is gone, they will come up with the answer!
4. Of all the ballot questions, the passage of question 4, mandating paid sick leave of up to forty hours per year for paid employees of businesses with more than eleven full-time-equivalent employees in the Commonwealth, was most heartening to me. While other conceivable mechanisms exist to make the imposition of a sick leave requirement on small businesses less onerous, the basic introduction of a paid sick leave privileges for workers represents a step forward in the maintenance of public health standards, especially in medical, food service, and retail food industries. I work at a business that sells food products, particular meats. Until the passage of question 4, I have never had paid sick leave at my job. While the details on the enforcement of question 4 remain somewhat open, in my understanding, I am hopeful that, for those two or three days out of the year when I am feeling like death warmed over, I may have the opportunity to call in sick with the expectation that I will still be paid for the day. The passage of this ballot initiative struck me, more than for any of the other questions, as a matter of common sense (not that, given my pedegree as a post-structuralist/post-modernist Marxian theorist, I should believe in common sense) - if only for reasons of public health, it is a bad thing to place workers in industries like retail food trades, food services, and medical services (especially personal care assistants and other low skilled medical aids that often lack such benefits) in a position where they must work even if they are sick and possibly contagious from an infection like influenza. Having said this, there are obvious problems with a mandate of paid sick leave for workers in many small businesses. Any intervention by government into the workings of labor markets to create costly new benefits for employees places stress on the revenues of small businesses, particularly in industries with relatively small margins of profitability. To articulate the argument from a Marxian perspective, the law will create new mandatory distributive claims on the mass of surplus values appropriated by small capitalist entrepreneurs, not compensated by the labor of sick employees. In view of this circumstance, it is certain that at least some small and medium scale employers will seek diverse legal avenues to divest themselves of the need to provide paid sick leave. Chief among such approaches is the reclassification of employees as independent contractors, ineligible for mandatory benefits otherwise available to employees. On the other hand, in cases where employers have done their best to follow the letter of the law in providing paid sick leave, there will certainly be cases of abuse by employees, taking days off after nights of heavy drinking or other irresponsible jestures, committed in the knowledge that paid sick leave is a mandatory benefit. When I first started discussing question 4 with my coworkers at the store (to say nothing about my employers), their reaction was to reiterate the argument that too many people would abuse paid sick leave at the expense of employers trying to do their best to survive an endless stream of onerous and costly labor market mandates by the Commonwealth.
These arguments deserve serious appraisal. In general, it is worth considering how a benefit like paid sick leave can be confered on employees in the Commonwealth without placing the cost entirely on the backs of employers, thus making Massachusetts a still less "business friendly" environment. I do not personally have a complete answer for this question, but it would seem worthwhile to consider methods to compensate businesses of a certain scale of operation (i.e. based on annual revenues) for provision of paid sick leave through the tax code. Until such a remedial measure is implemented, the margin of support for question 4 (61 percent in favor of paid sick leave) suggests that the public health benefits of enabling employees to claim sick days as a privilege of employment in the Commonwealth seems to strike a chord for fairness with the electorate, however imperfect any effort by the state to intervene in labor market institutions actual is.
5. The struggle by supporters of ballot question 3 to satisfy the requirements for consideration by voters highlights the fact that Massachusetts needs a more open process for certification of ballot referenda in order to facilitate a wider range of legislative and constitutional initiatives by direct approval by the electorate as a sovereign democratic polity. In this sense, I adamantly oppose the perspective that the presence of ballot referenda, per se, to augment or directly oppose legislative or constitutional enactments of the state legislature represents a failure of the democratic process in the Commonwealth. The issue at stake here is the definition of democracy and its relationship to governmental institutions and, in particular, the exercise of the legislative capacity of representative government. Emphatically, in my view, democracy is simply not a form of government per se, in the sense of an organizational framework and a formalized set of relationships between private individuals/citizens and governmental entities. Democracy is a philosophy of collective self-governance, bound up with a continuous active sense of belonging between individual citizens in the collectivity within which they are sovereign. To whatever extent it may be favorable for democratic citizens to establish a government, as a dependent intermediary continuously subject to the will of the sovereign, such an institution is grafted onto the existence of a democratic sovereign. That is to say, governments are established to accomplish administrative and legislative functions that might be onerous for the democratic sovereign to accomplish insofar as the sovereign is the collectivity (i.e. all of the citizens, committed to the recognition that their collective will to self-government, in the absence of any institution of the state, is the highest law), and it may be difficult to convene the sovereign every time we need to ask what the schedule will be for garbage collection or whether peanuts should be excluded from school lunches in deference to the existence of peanut allergies among school children. The fact that delegating everyday tasks and even more complex matters with long term consequences for citizens is convenient never transforms the institution of formal government into a delegation of sovereignty by which citizens become subjects of a sovereign government. That is to say, just because we elect legislators to enact legislation is our best interest, that does not mean that a legislature ever enjoys a status of sovereign - it exists at the pleasure of the collective body of citizens who retain the right, as sovereign, to amend or abolish the actions undertaken by government or even to abolish the government per se. The sovereign continuously stands over government.
Having taken a detour into classic Rousseauean civic republican thought, if the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is to maintain its existence as a democracy, constituted not by the institution of its government but by the continuously renewed collectivity of its citizens as a sovereign body underlying the government and conferring legitimacy on its actions, then, beyond the basic requisite of representative government through electoral processes, democracy demands that citizens retain a collective mechanism to act as the sovereign over government in relation to particular areas of policy. The citizens of the Commonwealth need particular formal mechanisms through which we, as a collective body, can issue commands to the government on particular policies and expect to be obeyed. Succinctly, this is my rationale for arguing the legitimacy of the referendum process and, further, for arguing that the process needs to be amended in order to make it easier for groups of citizens in the Commonwealth to place referenda on the ballot and to, effectively, govern over the government on particular designated areas of policy. If we could not do so, then Massachusetts would cease to be a democracy and the government of the Commonwealth would cease to command its particular rationale for existence through its connection to the collective body of citizens as sovereign. To argue, thus, that the referendum process is, in some way, a mere remedial instrument, on the books only to correct gross failures on the part of the General Court to legislate in the interests of citizens on a particular area of policy, amounts to an impoverishment in the conception of the democratic process in Massachusetts (for an example of this perspective, see: "Editorial: A "no" vote is best on Question 4," Springfield Republican (30 Oct. 2014), at: http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/10/editorial_a_no_vote_is_the_bes.html).
There are legitimate critiques that can and should be made in regard to the referendum process in the Commonwealth, as well as the representative electoral process. It might be true that the drafting of referendum questions fails to adequately respect the complexity of various policy questions. It is certainly difficult to approach particular complex issues with truncated proposals, of a circumscribed length to fit on an electoral ballot. Likewise, the referendum process is certainly subject to all of the abuses evident in the interjection of monied interests into politics. It is worth asking what social benefit accrued to the expenditure of $14 million by the casino gaming industry to defeat question 3. On the other hand, the same criticism can be made about electoral politics in general - candidates for governmental offices expend steadily increasing masses of monetary resources to get elected. The only remedies for such abuses exist in truncating the free speech privileges of individuals and corporate entities with regard to the democratic process, something that the U.S. Surpreme Court (for good or for ill) currently appears committed to preventing. As such, I prefer to live with massive expenditures of money for and against referenda than to dispense with the referendum process altogether or subject it to even the current constraints on the use of ballot referenda as a means of enacting legislation.
Concluding, the struggle by the group Repeal the Casino Deal to place question 3 on the ballot is evocative of the problems that I have with the limited role exercised by ballot referenda in Massachusetts. Specifically, having collected a threshold quantity of signatures to place a referendum on the repeal of the Expanded Gaming Act of 2010 on the 2014 ballot, Repeal the Casino Deal was forced to file a judicial appeal with the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth against the decision by Attorney General Martha Coakley that the passage of repeal to the Expanded Gaming Act would amount to an illegal taking of the property of prospective casino operators without compensation. It succeeded in its efforts to have this decision overruled, but the fact that ballot referenda must stand up to the constitutional scrutiny of the Attorney General's office or that of the General Court implies that the very means afforded under the Massachusetts Constitution for citizens, as a collective sovereign, to legislate over their government, must submit to the sovereign authority of the Constitution itself. Either the citizens of Massachusetts are sovereign or our Constitution is - it cannot be both. If for no other reason, the referendum process in Massachusetts needs to be revised in order to remove such Constitutional blockages to expressions of the sovereign will of the voters.
1. The passage of ballot question 1, invalidating automatic increases of the gasoline tax in the Commonwealth against the rate of inflation, measured (I presume) by the Consumer Price Index, will be detrimental to public investments in transportation infrastructure. As a long term matter in the relationship between private capital investment and maintenance of transportation infrastructure conforming to the needs of industry in the Commonwealth, the passage of question 1 will no doubt negatively impact economic growth in Massachusetts in ways that will not be offset by any savings to consumers and businesses from maintaining the potential for lower gasoline taxes. It is important to note just what ballot referendum question 1 actually means now that it is law. It does not change the current gas tax in the Commonwealth (approximately 42 cents per gallon of gasoline). Nor does it mandate that the General Court of the Commonwealth (i.e. our bicameral state legislature) shall not pass new increases in the gasoline tax. Rather, it invalidates a process, previously passed by the legislature, intended to increase the absolute value of the tax per gallon of gasoline automatically as a function of changes in price inflation, measured, I believe, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index. With this in mind, the Commonwealth has a significant backlog of transportation infrastructure projects requiring the attention of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (DOT). Each of these projects will strain the resources available to the Mass. DOT, from the gas tax and from distributions out of the General Fund of the Commonwealth not otherwise earmarked for transportation expenditures. Apparently the Patrick administration entered in 2009 facing over 600 bridges with significant structure deficiencies requiring the attention of state transportation officials. Over its time in office, the administration successfully remediated approximately 150 of these structurally deficient bridges, including the Pearl Harbor Veterans Memorial Bridge over the mouth of the Connecticut River Oxbow separating Northampton from Easthampton that I ride over at least four times a week by bus. At present, at least one bridge over the Connecticut down river in Holyoke (connecting the Holyoke Flats to the Chicopee neighborhood of Willamansett along route 116) remains closed by catastrophic structural deficiencies and an apparent paucity of state funds necessary to effect a repair/reconstruction of the bridge. In this manner, over 450 structurally deficient bridges remain in Massachusetts, a bluer than blue Democratic state frequently (and erroneously) labeled "Taxachusetts." This situation should be unacceptable, except to individuals who do not live in either of the low income neighborhoods that frequently utilized the bridge in Holyoke and, as such, who would prefer to pay less in taxes every time they go to the pump to fill up on what remains, on a global scale, relatively inexpensive gasoline. Acknowledging that expressed legislative increases in the gasoline tax by the General Court remains an option to restore necessary funds that might have been generated through automatic gas tax increases, several problems arise from an incremental legislative approach. Most notably, the Democratic majority legislature is now confronting an incoming Republican gubernatorial administration, committed to restraining the legislature in its efforts to raise new revenues for the Commonwealth through taxation. It is likely that any effort to incrementally increase the gasoline tax to pay for road repairs would have to overcome a veto from Governor Baker by means of a two-thirds majority in both houses. Even before we arrive at this point, however, it is certain that legislative initiatives to raise the gasoline tax would be met by challenges by consumer and business lobby groups, seeking to maintain an atmosphere conducive to robust contemporary consumer spending, even at the expense of passing on massive bills for transportation repairs to future administrations. It goes without saying, I think the passage of question 1, a referendum question that I felt certain would pass, represents another episode in the irresponsibility of a short-sighted electorate in directing the government of the Commonwealth on fiscal policy - if we want roads and if roads are important to future economic development when the absence of good roads becomes a hindrance to investment in the manufacture and transhipment of goods, then, as citizens, we have to develop mechanisms to pay for their construction, repair, and general maintenance! In this respect, we, citizens of the Commonwealth, collectively dropped the ball in approving this referendum question rather than permitting a thoroughly sensible policy on the regulation of gasoline taxes in the Commonwealth to stand.
2. I remain indifferent on the failure to pass ballot question 2, instituting a 5 cent deposit on plastic bottled water and juice containers, notwithstanding the fact that I voted in favor of passage. The proponents of the question, in my view, made a compelling argument that large proportions of these classes of plastic containers continue to make it into the non-recycled waste stream even with the availability of curbside recycling in most Massachusetts communities. On the other hand, as someone employed in retail trade, the complications that an expansion of the range of products carrying a deposit requirement might have produced seem to suggest that it would be better to devise solutions to the problem of plastic bottle disposal into the waste stream through the management of recycling processes by municipalities. Emphatically, I truly did not care one way or the other as to whether this question had passed or not. I voted in favor simply because arguments made by supporters of the question that a majority of plastic containers for bottled water continues to find its way into the waste stream, terminating at landfills, seemed compelling to me. I am not a strong environmentalist - environmental maintenance is not my main issue in walking into a voting booth. However, I can understand the motivations behind supporters of the proposal and the passion with which they advocate for changes in the law that might succeed in making even small changes to the management of wastes and recyclable materials. The other side on this question, represented most strongly by major retailers who did not want to see the impact of increasing the cost of bottled water and juices on their sales of these products, made a compelling and well financed case to voters that the passage of the question would increase the costs to consumers for purchasing bottled water and juice and that it might conceivably open the door to inclusion of other recyclable containers under the bottle bill. In the end, as with question 1, cost considerations to consumers won the day. The other piece in this debate over the expansion of the Massachusetts bottle bill involved the availability of curbside recycling in most municipalities in the state. It is, likewise, the case that municipalities derive a small quantity of revenues from the sale of recyclable materials to processers, who thereafter convert used plastic bottles into synthetic fleece and other products. Fundamentally, the debate over question 2 could have resolved itself into a choice in public policy between two distinct models of recycling of a discrete range of plastic containers. If curbside recycling is failing to recover a significant percentage of the plastic water and juice containers in the Commonwealth, then maybe there are things that can be done to increase the utilization of curbside recycling to shift more plastic out of the waste stream. Moreover, maybe more can be done at progressive stages in waste processing to ensure that recyclables get extracted - private waste processers like Waste Management seem to be enhancing their own profits by extracting wastes that can be renewed in other supply chains. As such, I am not highly concerned with the failure to pass question 2. Environmentalists in the Commonwealth are right to pursue this existing problem of inadequacies in recycling of plastic containers, but we need a more innovative and, perhaps, a profit/revenue generating approach to realize a solution.
3. In the intermediate term, the failure to pass question 3, banning casino gaming in the Commonwealth, will be an unmitigated disaster for Massachusetts. Casino gaming will, above all, promote a redistribution of gambling dollars away from the Massachusetts state lottery, an important source of local funding for municipalities, and toward corporations located outside of the Commonwealth - a redistribution that will absolutely not be counterbalanced by mandatory payments from casino operators to the state government and municipalities, at least in the intermediate term. In the long term, however, such a redistribution may not matter, once casino operators in Massachusetts succumb to the inadequate scale of the New England market for gambling - I find it difficult to believe that a majority of the Massachusetts gaming facilities heretofore licensed by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission will survive a decade in operation within the New England market. The casino question in Massachusetts is far too complicated for me to encapsulate the terms of the debate that raged until November 4, when a majority of the electorate that cast votes chose to maintain an expanded gaming law, passed by the General Court in 2010, that provided for the licensing of three resort casinos (one for metropolitan Boston, one for Western Massachusetts, one for Southeastern Massachusetts) and one slot parlor. Question 3, if it had been passed, would have invalidated the extended gaming law, after a range of potential casino operators had paid fees of $400,000 apiece to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission for initial consideration of their proposals and after three casino licenses had been granted by the Gaming Commission (to MGM Resorts International for development of a resort casino in the south end neighborhood of Springfield, to Penn National Gaming Inc. for a slot parlor (no table games) in Plainville, and to Wynn Resorts for development of a resort casino on a brownfield industrial site in Everett in the Boston suburbs). It is worth noting that the supporters of question 3 undertook a significant struggle just to get the referendum included on the ballot in which Massachusetts Attorney General and unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley had ruled that the question could not even appear on the ballot because its provisions would constitute an illegal uncompensated seizure of the property of potential casino operators if it had passed. I will save comments on this challenge and the legal process that supporters had to go through in order to get question 3 on the ballot for a subsequent elaboration on this post. It suffices to say that supporters, in the run up to the election, expended $650,000 in support of the invalidation of the Expanded Gaming Act, while potential casino operators and their supporters expended over $14 million to explain, in television commercials that bombarded voters across the Commonwealth, how the passage of question 3 would cost Massachusetts communities thousands of jobs anticipated in the construction process and in the subsequent staffing of casinos, stiffling the hopes of the communities hosting a potential casino operator. Thus, a majority (59 percent) of Massachusetts voters were sold on the idea that casino gaming was the best possible scheme to achieve rapid and sustained job growth in a handful of communities ravaged by unemployment and, in Everett's case, ecological devastation (Wynn has pledged to spend millions of dollars to rehabilitate the industrially polluted land on which it has been permitted to construct its casino resort(!?)).
The consequences of question 3's failure are worth significant consideration. Being the sort of economist who wants to mount an inquiry on multiple timeframes to ponder the particular ways in which a given economic policy or development is going to impact a macroeconomic system over time, it seems likely that all of the communities that have been granted casino licenses will enjoy strong near term (1-3 years) job growth by virtue of employment growth in the construction trades. Likewise, the government of the Commonwealth, the specific communities within which casinos are to be located, and certain surrounding communities that have negotiated future compensatory payments from casino operators or have been granted compensatory payments through arbitration will enjoy a stream of payments from future casino operators as agreed upon under the terms of the Expanded Gaming Law and the particular terms of licenses granted by the Gaming Commission. Finally, until the casinos and slot parlors actually go on line, Massachusetts is not going to witness any effect on revenues generated by the state lottery, the distributions from which go overwhelmingly to municipalities as local funding. In the near term, I, therefore, accept that this is going to be an economic boon for the Commonwealth.
The part that concerns me regards what I am going to label the intermediate term (4-10 years). Once the casinos come on line, the state lottery will, indisputably, begin to take a hit that it has not sustained from the Connecticut tribal casinos that have operated since the early 1990s for the simple reason that these casinos have not been here. Proximity to potential patrons, especially low income ones, that have heretofore been less likely to spend money on a sustained frequency in Connecticut casinos will immediately place a strain on lottery revenues in casino communities, because casino gaming and lottery gambling are certainly substitute goods when the casino is in your immediate vicinity. There is no way that lottery revenues as a whole, throughout the Commonwealth, are not going to be diminished, and this diminution is going to impact every community in the Commonwealth by virtue of the particular distributional formulas for local funding from the lottery. As a result, the presence of casinos will place a strain on municipal budgets throughout the Commonwealth, not specifically for the reasons cited by casino opponents (e.g. increases in criminal activity and public expenditures to deal with compulsive gambling) but simply because municipalities are not going to see the same level of locally earmarked lottery funding. The reductions in local funding that this will entail will certainly be felt in educational assistance to offset deficiencies in property tax revenues in municipalities like Springfield, which, not incidentally, will enjoy the prospect of revenues to be paid by MGM contingent to host community agreement (see "Concise Summary of Host Community Agreement," at: http://www3.springfield-ma.gov/planning/fileadmin/Planning_files/CONCISE_SUMMARY_OF_HCA_FOR_VOTERS_EMP__5_16_13_FINAL2.pdf)
with the city.
On the other hand, revenues paid by casino operators, like every other form of governmental revenue extracted from the revenues of private enterprise, is contingent on the profitability of the enterprises. If the casino that MGM plans to construct in Springfield is not profitable, then how is it possible that Springfield and surrounding communities with whom MGM has reached agreement on payments for mitigation of the negative impacts from casino development will see the millions of dollars promised by MGM? The host community agreement approved by voters in Springfield in 2013, for example, includes calculations for variable projected annual payments to the city from estimated "gross gaming revenues (GGR)" by the MGM resort casino of $479,500,000(?!). If a figure like this does not raise at least an eyebrow, then it should! The only thing Springfield can absolutely be certain of is that MGM is going to bleed low income populations in the North End, South End, Mason Square, Pine Point, McKnight, and Forest Park neighborhoods white and then go looking for easy pickings from low income populations in West Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke on the promise of easy money for the taking from populations that have no business whatsoever throwing whatever incomes they have away to billionaires from Las Vegas! Beyond its first year in operation, I find it distinctly unlikely that a Springfield casino will draw heavily from Vermont and/or New Hampshire. Nor do I think it is likely that it will draw heavily for very long from either northern Connecticut or Worcester County. The patrons of a Springfield casino will come overwhelmingly from the Massachusetts I-91 corridor (Hamden, Hampshire, Franklin Counties) and secondarily from Berkshire County. In the event that New York begins licensing casino operators for the Catskills or Taconic Parkway areas, the patronage of Berkshire County gamblers may, further, become contested. Such a population is not adequate to make Springfield a vibrant, exciting casino resort destination. In fact, I think it is still open to question whether MGM ever actually opens up a casino in Springfield, provided the tepid economic recovery currently happening in the U.S. sputters to a halt with some major international financial slowdown or shock in the next two years, something that I think is quite possible.
Whatever actually happens in Springfield and in the rest of Massachusetts over the next three to five years, I think that it is certain that opening up two to three resort casinos (a third casino resort, possibly to be operated by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe if it can maintain a federal claim to tribal status and the right to operate a gaming facility in southeastern Massachusetts may also be licensed as well by the Gaming Commission, but I am not entirely clear on the status of the Commonwealth's negotiations with the tribe) plus a large slot parlor in Massachusetts is going to place extreme stress on the base of demand for gaming facilities in New England. As it stands, I find it improbable that the Narragansett Twin River Casino in Rhode Island (which is, if memory serves, just a slot parlor plus non-gaming attractions and shopping) will survive more than two years of competition with the Penn National slot parlor located strategically on the I-95/I-495 corridor between Boston and Providence, to say nothing of the Wynn casino in Everett. Succinctly, either the Penn National slot parlor or the Narragansett slot parlor will disappear very rapidly, because the presence of both guarantees that neither will be profitable, whether either facility survives the operation of the Wynn casino in metropolitan Boston. In the past week, moreover, the Mohegan tribal commission (i.e. the Mohegan Sun Casino) has apparently begun discussions with both the state of Connecticut and the Mashantucket Pequot tribal commission (i.e. the Foxwoods Casino) to solicit approval and cooperation, respectively, in construction of a new gaming facility for northern Connecticut, targeting the same I-91 corridor that MGM is counting on for patrons. In short, southern New England is succumbing to a feeding frenzy(!) among casino operators, all seeking to gobble up as much market share as they can from a regional market that is admittedly growing but that will forever remain finite and smaller than any of the casino operators might hope.
In such an environment, is it even possible that all of the Massachusetts casino operators will remain in operation long enough to see a positive rate of return on their investments? Pursuing the contours of my larger argument in this short set of comments, my answer is no. MGM, most certainly, is not going to survive a decade in Springfield - its potential market area is too small and not wealthy enough to enable MGM to capitalize on an overly exuberant initial investment. Both Penn National and Twin River will succumb to the combined force of competition with Wynn and the southeastern Connecticut tribal casino complex (the only reason up until now that Twin River has not been competed out of business by Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun is its relatively proximity to both the Providence and Boston markets - when Wynn goes in, Twin River goes down!). The Connecticut tribal casinos will certainly lose market share, but their relative proximity to Hartford and New Haven, to say nothing of the New York metropolitan region, will help them preserve a diminished first mover advantage into the New England market. If they construct a facility in northern Connecticut, however, they will create pointless competition for their existing facilities that will never generate a meaningful rate of return, even after MGM finally throws in the towel on Springfield. In this environment, I cannot see what would be gained for the Mashpee Wampanoags if they were to get approval from the Commonwealth to build a casino resort facility in Taunton. Such a market area would draw a tiny clientele that would never generate meaningful returns for the tribe in relation to the necessary investment to create a facility that would command at least some attention from gamblers in Boston and Providence. In the end, the only prospective casino project that would appear to be of any value and genuinely profitable is that of the Wynn corporation in Everett.
With all these considerations in mind, in the long run (10+ years), maybe lottery revenues in certain parts of the Commonwealth, like Springfield, will begin to recover somewhat from the mess that supporters of casino gaming and casino operators will have placed them in. In any case, I am confident that another empty big glass building will decorate the Springfield skyline where once stood the hope and dream of 3,000 jobs for local residents and $26 million in annual revenues flowing into the coffers of the city and its neighbors. The coming casino debacle in Massachusetts will leave communities like Springfield once more with the interminable quandry of how to achieve durable economic development. Perhaps, after the casino is gone, they will come up with the answer!
4. Of all the ballot questions, the passage of question 4, mandating paid sick leave of up to forty hours per year for paid employees of businesses with more than eleven full-time-equivalent employees in the Commonwealth, was most heartening to me. While other conceivable mechanisms exist to make the imposition of a sick leave requirement on small businesses less onerous, the basic introduction of a paid sick leave privileges for workers represents a step forward in the maintenance of public health standards, especially in medical, food service, and retail food industries. I work at a business that sells food products, particular meats. Until the passage of question 4, I have never had paid sick leave at my job. While the details on the enforcement of question 4 remain somewhat open, in my understanding, I am hopeful that, for those two or three days out of the year when I am feeling like death warmed over, I may have the opportunity to call in sick with the expectation that I will still be paid for the day. The passage of this ballot initiative struck me, more than for any of the other questions, as a matter of common sense (not that, given my pedegree as a post-structuralist/post-modernist Marxian theorist, I should believe in common sense) - if only for reasons of public health, it is a bad thing to place workers in industries like retail food trades, food services, and medical services (especially personal care assistants and other low skilled medical aids that often lack such benefits) in a position where they must work even if they are sick and possibly contagious from an infection like influenza. Having said this, there are obvious problems with a mandate of paid sick leave for workers in many small businesses. Any intervention by government into the workings of labor markets to create costly new benefits for employees places stress on the revenues of small businesses, particularly in industries with relatively small margins of profitability. To articulate the argument from a Marxian perspective, the law will create new mandatory distributive claims on the mass of surplus values appropriated by small capitalist entrepreneurs, not compensated by the labor of sick employees. In view of this circumstance, it is certain that at least some small and medium scale employers will seek diverse legal avenues to divest themselves of the need to provide paid sick leave. Chief among such approaches is the reclassification of employees as independent contractors, ineligible for mandatory benefits otherwise available to employees. On the other hand, in cases where employers have done their best to follow the letter of the law in providing paid sick leave, there will certainly be cases of abuse by employees, taking days off after nights of heavy drinking or other irresponsible jestures, committed in the knowledge that paid sick leave is a mandatory benefit. When I first started discussing question 4 with my coworkers at the store (to say nothing about my employers), their reaction was to reiterate the argument that too many people would abuse paid sick leave at the expense of employers trying to do their best to survive an endless stream of onerous and costly labor market mandates by the Commonwealth.
These arguments deserve serious appraisal. In general, it is worth considering how a benefit like paid sick leave can be confered on employees in the Commonwealth without placing the cost entirely on the backs of employers, thus making Massachusetts a still less "business friendly" environment. I do not personally have a complete answer for this question, but it would seem worthwhile to consider methods to compensate businesses of a certain scale of operation (i.e. based on annual revenues) for provision of paid sick leave through the tax code. Until such a remedial measure is implemented, the margin of support for question 4 (61 percent in favor of paid sick leave) suggests that the public health benefits of enabling employees to claim sick days as a privilege of employment in the Commonwealth seems to strike a chord for fairness with the electorate, however imperfect any effort by the state to intervene in labor market institutions actual is.
5. The struggle by supporters of ballot question 3 to satisfy the requirements for consideration by voters highlights the fact that Massachusetts needs a more open process for certification of ballot referenda in order to facilitate a wider range of legislative and constitutional initiatives by direct approval by the electorate as a sovereign democratic polity. In this sense, I adamantly oppose the perspective that the presence of ballot referenda, per se, to augment or directly oppose legislative or constitutional enactments of the state legislature represents a failure of the democratic process in the Commonwealth. The issue at stake here is the definition of democracy and its relationship to governmental institutions and, in particular, the exercise of the legislative capacity of representative government. Emphatically, in my view, democracy is simply not a form of government per se, in the sense of an organizational framework and a formalized set of relationships between private individuals/citizens and governmental entities. Democracy is a philosophy of collective self-governance, bound up with a continuous active sense of belonging between individual citizens in the collectivity within which they are sovereign. To whatever extent it may be favorable for democratic citizens to establish a government, as a dependent intermediary continuously subject to the will of the sovereign, such an institution is grafted onto the existence of a democratic sovereign. That is to say, governments are established to accomplish administrative and legislative functions that might be onerous for the democratic sovereign to accomplish insofar as the sovereign is the collectivity (i.e. all of the citizens, committed to the recognition that their collective will to self-government, in the absence of any institution of the state, is the highest law), and it may be difficult to convene the sovereign every time we need to ask what the schedule will be for garbage collection or whether peanuts should be excluded from school lunches in deference to the existence of peanut allergies among school children. The fact that delegating everyday tasks and even more complex matters with long term consequences for citizens is convenient never transforms the institution of formal government into a delegation of sovereignty by which citizens become subjects of a sovereign government. That is to say, just because we elect legislators to enact legislation is our best interest, that does not mean that a legislature ever enjoys a status of sovereign - it exists at the pleasure of the collective body of citizens who retain the right, as sovereign, to amend or abolish the actions undertaken by government or even to abolish the government per se. The sovereign continuously stands over government.
Having taken a detour into classic Rousseauean civic republican thought, if the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is to maintain its existence as a democracy, constituted not by the institution of its government but by the continuously renewed collectivity of its citizens as a sovereign body underlying the government and conferring legitimacy on its actions, then, beyond the basic requisite of representative government through electoral processes, democracy demands that citizens retain a collective mechanism to act as the sovereign over government in relation to particular areas of policy. The citizens of the Commonwealth need particular formal mechanisms through which we, as a collective body, can issue commands to the government on particular policies and expect to be obeyed. Succinctly, this is my rationale for arguing the legitimacy of the referendum process and, further, for arguing that the process needs to be amended in order to make it easier for groups of citizens in the Commonwealth to place referenda on the ballot and to, effectively, govern over the government on particular designated areas of policy. If we could not do so, then Massachusetts would cease to be a democracy and the government of the Commonwealth would cease to command its particular rationale for existence through its connection to the collective body of citizens as sovereign. To argue, thus, that the referendum process is, in some way, a mere remedial instrument, on the books only to correct gross failures on the part of the General Court to legislate in the interests of citizens on a particular area of policy, amounts to an impoverishment in the conception of the democratic process in Massachusetts (for an example of this perspective, see: "Editorial: A "no" vote is best on Question 4," Springfield Republican (30 Oct. 2014), at: http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/10/editorial_a_no_vote_is_the_bes.html).
There are legitimate critiques that can and should be made in regard to the referendum process in the Commonwealth, as well as the representative electoral process. It might be true that the drafting of referendum questions fails to adequately respect the complexity of various policy questions. It is certainly difficult to approach particular complex issues with truncated proposals, of a circumscribed length to fit on an electoral ballot. Likewise, the referendum process is certainly subject to all of the abuses evident in the interjection of monied interests into politics. It is worth asking what social benefit accrued to the expenditure of $14 million by the casino gaming industry to defeat question 3. On the other hand, the same criticism can be made about electoral politics in general - candidates for governmental offices expend steadily increasing masses of monetary resources to get elected. The only remedies for such abuses exist in truncating the free speech privileges of individuals and corporate entities with regard to the democratic process, something that the U.S. Surpreme Court (for good or for ill) currently appears committed to preventing. As such, I prefer to live with massive expenditures of money for and against referenda than to dispense with the referendum process altogether or subject it to even the current constraints on the use of ballot referenda as a means of enacting legislation.
Concluding, the struggle by the group Repeal the Casino Deal to place question 3 on the ballot is evocative of the problems that I have with the limited role exercised by ballot referenda in Massachusetts. Specifically, having collected a threshold quantity of signatures to place a referendum on the repeal of the Expanded Gaming Act of 2010 on the 2014 ballot, Repeal the Casino Deal was forced to file a judicial appeal with the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth against the decision by Attorney General Martha Coakley that the passage of repeal to the Expanded Gaming Act would amount to an illegal taking of the property of prospective casino operators without compensation. It succeeded in its efforts to have this decision overruled, but the fact that ballot referenda must stand up to the constitutional scrutiny of the Attorney General's office or that of the General Court implies that the very means afforded under the Massachusetts Constitution for citizens, as a collective sovereign, to legislate over their government, must submit to the sovereign authority of the Constitution itself. Either the citizens of Massachusetts are sovereign or our Constitution is - it cannot be both. If for no other reason, the referendum process in Massachusetts needs to be revised in order to remove such Constitutional blockages to expressions of the sovereign will of the voters.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Problems with Obama's New Take on Syrian Strategy Against the Islamic State
CNN is now reporting that, apparently, the Obama administration is reconsidering its strategy to deal with the Islamic State in Syria (see Elise Labott, "Sources: Obama seeks new strategy review to deal with ISIS, al-Assad," on CNN (12 Nov. 2014), at: http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/12/politics/obama-syria-strategy-review/). The larger point emphasized in this account is that the administration has settled on the principle that, in order to provide a long term solution to the Salafist Sunni insurgency in Syria, the Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Assad will have to be replaced with a multi-ethnic state, more amenable to the Sunni majority of Syria as a hedge against the appeal of Salafism. Such a change in the direction taken by the Obama administration is suggestive of a strong influence by the Erdogan government in Turkey, as well as that of the Sunni Gulf monarchies. In particular, Erdogan's government seems to have emphatically made the point that its primary interest for intervening in Syria is to enable the development of a strong Sunni opposition, grounded in the moderate Salafist Muslim Brotherhood. Moreover, by prioritizing an emphatically Sunni Arab opposition to Assad (and IS), in place a decentralized effort to support local anti-IS forces, particularly among Syrian Kurds, such a strategy focus would be less apt to play into increased Kurdish nationalism on both sides of the Syrian-Turkish frontier. Clearly, for the Erdogan government, the IS problem is, at most, a secondary matter to be dealt with alongside the greater necessity of regime change in Damascus. Likewise, for all other regional players in the allied coalition against IS, the need to remove Assad and dismantle the Syrian Ba'athist regime conforms to a larger agenda to isolate Iranian influence in the Arab world.
Just a few thoughts:
1. The Obama administration's strategy against IS in Syria was never well conceived in relation to the present capabilities of the moderate Syrian anti-Assad opposition - tacking on an additional prioritization to overthrow Assad will merely complicate a mission that the administration has never approached seriously with regard to the deployment and utilization of U.S. forces and local surrogates. Acknowledging, first, that the Obama administration annunciated a Syrian anti-IS ground strategy, utilizing surrogate Syrian forces that, largely, exist only on paper, the added mission to remove Assad now commits a reconfigured Free Syrian Army (that still only exists within the strategic imagination of White House military advisors) to two front offensive warfare. If the Free Syrian Army could hardly be said to exist in a tangible form in the struggle against IS and other radical Salafist forces in northeastern Syria (e.g. al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra), then is it any more realistic to expect that they should be counted on the remove Assad from power in Damascus, even with U.S. air support? If we are adding the goal of regime change in Syria, then we will have to put U.S. ground forces in to wage offensive war against the Syrian government and armed forces even before we are fully able to contemplate the necessary offensive role of U.S. ground forces against IS.
2. Any introduction of U.S. ground forces into Syria to achieve regime change would have to involve a long term (thirty to forty years or more) commitment by the U.S. to militarily occupy the country, constitute a moderate and inclusive government on the principle of democracy and equitable participation of all ethnic and sectarian groupings, and pacify any regional outbreaks of sectarian violence and secessionist efforts by Kurds, Alawites, or any other ethnic groups. At the present time, the only U.S. support for such an effort might exist within certain corners of uniformed military professionals in anti-insurgent strategy and with certain, predominantly Republican, members of armed services Congressional committees sufficiently myopic to believe that the U.S. population as a whole might be willing to commit to completing the job of nation building that failed in Iraq and is about to fail again in Afghanistan. It should be evident enough, after not only Iraq and Afghanistan but also the lingering failure of U.S. nation building in Vietnam, that, as a polity, we do not have the patience to enable military professionals to take decades, expending American lives and American tax money, to thoroughly reconstitute societies with no experience in multi-ethnic, secular democracy into nation states with citizens committed to unity and a better, peaceful future together under democratic practices. If we are not willing to go down this road, then we need to craft strategies to deal with IS that stand a better chance of success on much more limited terms.
3. If Erdogan and the leaders of the Sunni Gulf monarchies are so committed, in principle, that success in Syria will not be achieved until Assad has been removed from power, then they should develop their own ground force strategy and commit their own ground forces to take on the Assad regime, simultaneously taking on IS, in order to ensure that Syria definitively pursues a course in which moderate Sunni opposition movements are capable of seizing power, restoring order, and constituting a state conforming to the broader foreign policy objectives of Turkey and the Gulf states, particularly with regard to Iran. Obama's apparent policy change on Syria allows our allies to get away with demanding regime change without carrying their weight in order to ensure that Assad is driven from power. I think that this point should stand for itself without much elaboration. I realize that Erdogan's Justice and Development Party/Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) has a substantial stake in the future of Syria, in view of Turkey's long shared border, the profusion of refugees in border areas escaping the civil war in northern Syria, fears that political destabilization among Syrian Kurdish populations will enflame Kurdish nationalism on the Turkish side of the border, and, emphatically, AKP's recent efforts to court moderate Sunni Salafist movements, particular the Muslim Brotherhoods, in an effort to steer Turkey toward a more conservative, if not precisely Islamist, social politics. Moreover, the Gulf monarchies have their own reasons to fear Iranian influence in the Arab Shi'a arc extending through Syria into Lebanon. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain obviously will support regime change in Syria in the realization that any successor to Assad and the Alawite dominated Ba'athist regime will undoubtedly be more friendly with the Sunni dominated Gulf states and hostile toward Tehran. This said, if Turkey and the Gulf states want to prioritize the removal of Assad, then they need to commit their militaries to the task of defeating the Syrian military and establishing a successor regime. It will not do to leave these tasks, either exclusively or to a predominant extent, in the hands of the U.S. Our principal goal in Syria as in Iraq at the present time is and must remain to degrade or destroy the military capabilities of IS.
4. The development of the Syrian civil war and broader Sunni uprising, together with the subsequent rise of IS and its conquest of parts of Syria and Iraq, has demonstrated, in my view, the irrelevance of the boundaries established by the Sykes-Picot Treaty after World War I and subsequent treaties establishing the boundaries of post-Ottoman states. Before we begin to discuss the future of either Syria or Iraq as if they were nation states with citizens sharing and embracing a common fate, we need to reconsider the principle of ethnic and sectarian pacification through homogenization as the most durable means of restoring the peace to the region. Again, the point here has to be that the amalgamation of diverse ethnic and sectarian groupings under the domination of "national" governments in Damascus and Baghdad, as if these consolidations command a degree of legitimacy transcending their short histories of rule since the post-World War I disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, has not produced a durable sense of integrative nationalism, a shared heritage in the political process (which has been overwhelmingly undemocratic in both Iraq and Syria for most of their histories), and a collective respect that the differences of individual ethnic and sectarian constiuencies to each nation contribute to the strength and unity of each. Insofar as these states have only nurtured a sense of collective distrust among constituent ethnic and sectarian groupings, it would be best for both countries to experience a reallignment and a redrawing of borders to promote relative ethnic and sectarian homogenization, whereby existing patterns of political domination exercised across ethnic and sectarian lines can be undermined. Emphatically, such a reconsideration may need to move beyond the limited framework of Iraq and Syria, insofar as particular ethnic groupings have a wider dispersion across the region to account for. I am, of course, thinking about the Kurdish problem for Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. How can we address the needs of Kurdish populations without acknowledging that the faultiness of Sykes-Picot borders raises concerns for groups inhabiting both sides of increasingly irrelevant political boundaries? At some point, Iraq and Syria will have to be redrawn to take account for Kurdish national aspirations, but such a reevaluation must, likewise, be performed in relation to eastern Turkey, the inevitability of which must incite a fair quantitiy of anxiety within Turkey's AKP.
5. In order to arrive at a post-Sykes-Picot Iraq and Syria, we need to develop institutional mechanisms for conflict resolution and management of the claims of all stakeholders in the region. Such efforts must attempt to balance the demands of regional actors (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, etc.), the U.S., EU, Russia, and China and achieve a compromise of the interests of all stakeholders in redrawing Iraq and Syria. Again, it is my contention that we are only going to realize a durable peace in Southwest Asia if we create new, deeply invested institutional mechnaisms for conflict resolution, through which all of the world's major powers and stakeholders in the region can defend their interests and negotiate compromise solutions that will undermine the possibilities for both civil war and international conflicts by outside powers.
Just a few thoughts:
1. The Obama administration's strategy against IS in Syria was never well conceived in relation to the present capabilities of the moderate Syrian anti-Assad opposition - tacking on an additional prioritization to overthrow Assad will merely complicate a mission that the administration has never approached seriously with regard to the deployment and utilization of U.S. forces and local surrogates. Acknowledging, first, that the Obama administration annunciated a Syrian anti-IS ground strategy, utilizing surrogate Syrian forces that, largely, exist only on paper, the added mission to remove Assad now commits a reconfigured Free Syrian Army (that still only exists within the strategic imagination of White House military advisors) to two front offensive warfare. If the Free Syrian Army could hardly be said to exist in a tangible form in the struggle against IS and other radical Salafist forces in northeastern Syria (e.g. al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra), then is it any more realistic to expect that they should be counted on the remove Assad from power in Damascus, even with U.S. air support? If we are adding the goal of regime change in Syria, then we will have to put U.S. ground forces in to wage offensive war against the Syrian government and armed forces even before we are fully able to contemplate the necessary offensive role of U.S. ground forces against IS.
2. Any introduction of U.S. ground forces into Syria to achieve regime change would have to involve a long term (thirty to forty years or more) commitment by the U.S. to militarily occupy the country, constitute a moderate and inclusive government on the principle of democracy and equitable participation of all ethnic and sectarian groupings, and pacify any regional outbreaks of sectarian violence and secessionist efforts by Kurds, Alawites, or any other ethnic groups. At the present time, the only U.S. support for such an effort might exist within certain corners of uniformed military professionals in anti-insurgent strategy and with certain, predominantly Republican, members of armed services Congressional committees sufficiently myopic to believe that the U.S. population as a whole might be willing to commit to completing the job of nation building that failed in Iraq and is about to fail again in Afghanistan. It should be evident enough, after not only Iraq and Afghanistan but also the lingering failure of U.S. nation building in Vietnam, that, as a polity, we do not have the patience to enable military professionals to take decades, expending American lives and American tax money, to thoroughly reconstitute societies with no experience in multi-ethnic, secular democracy into nation states with citizens committed to unity and a better, peaceful future together under democratic practices. If we are not willing to go down this road, then we need to craft strategies to deal with IS that stand a better chance of success on much more limited terms.
3. If Erdogan and the leaders of the Sunni Gulf monarchies are so committed, in principle, that success in Syria will not be achieved until Assad has been removed from power, then they should develop their own ground force strategy and commit their own ground forces to take on the Assad regime, simultaneously taking on IS, in order to ensure that Syria definitively pursues a course in which moderate Sunni opposition movements are capable of seizing power, restoring order, and constituting a state conforming to the broader foreign policy objectives of Turkey and the Gulf states, particularly with regard to Iran. Obama's apparent policy change on Syria allows our allies to get away with demanding regime change without carrying their weight in order to ensure that Assad is driven from power. I think that this point should stand for itself without much elaboration. I realize that Erdogan's Justice and Development Party/Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) has a substantial stake in the future of Syria, in view of Turkey's long shared border, the profusion of refugees in border areas escaping the civil war in northern Syria, fears that political destabilization among Syrian Kurdish populations will enflame Kurdish nationalism on the Turkish side of the border, and, emphatically, AKP's recent efforts to court moderate Sunni Salafist movements, particular the Muslim Brotherhoods, in an effort to steer Turkey toward a more conservative, if not precisely Islamist, social politics. Moreover, the Gulf monarchies have their own reasons to fear Iranian influence in the Arab Shi'a arc extending through Syria into Lebanon. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain obviously will support regime change in Syria in the realization that any successor to Assad and the Alawite dominated Ba'athist regime will undoubtedly be more friendly with the Sunni dominated Gulf states and hostile toward Tehran. This said, if Turkey and the Gulf states want to prioritize the removal of Assad, then they need to commit their militaries to the task of defeating the Syrian military and establishing a successor regime. It will not do to leave these tasks, either exclusively or to a predominant extent, in the hands of the U.S. Our principal goal in Syria as in Iraq at the present time is and must remain to degrade or destroy the military capabilities of IS.
4. The development of the Syrian civil war and broader Sunni uprising, together with the subsequent rise of IS and its conquest of parts of Syria and Iraq, has demonstrated, in my view, the irrelevance of the boundaries established by the Sykes-Picot Treaty after World War I and subsequent treaties establishing the boundaries of post-Ottoman states. Before we begin to discuss the future of either Syria or Iraq as if they were nation states with citizens sharing and embracing a common fate, we need to reconsider the principle of ethnic and sectarian pacification through homogenization as the most durable means of restoring the peace to the region. Again, the point here has to be that the amalgamation of diverse ethnic and sectarian groupings under the domination of "national" governments in Damascus and Baghdad, as if these consolidations command a degree of legitimacy transcending their short histories of rule since the post-World War I disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, has not produced a durable sense of integrative nationalism, a shared heritage in the political process (which has been overwhelmingly undemocratic in both Iraq and Syria for most of their histories), and a collective respect that the differences of individual ethnic and sectarian constiuencies to each nation contribute to the strength and unity of each. Insofar as these states have only nurtured a sense of collective distrust among constituent ethnic and sectarian groupings, it would be best for both countries to experience a reallignment and a redrawing of borders to promote relative ethnic and sectarian homogenization, whereby existing patterns of political domination exercised across ethnic and sectarian lines can be undermined. Emphatically, such a reconsideration may need to move beyond the limited framework of Iraq and Syria, insofar as particular ethnic groupings have a wider dispersion across the region to account for. I am, of course, thinking about the Kurdish problem for Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. How can we address the needs of Kurdish populations without acknowledging that the faultiness of Sykes-Picot borders raises concerns for groups inhabiting both sides of increasingly irrelevant political boundaries? At some point, Iraq and Syria will have to be redrawn to take account for Kurdish national aspirations, but such a reevaluation must, likewise, be performed in relation to eastern Turkey, the inevitability of which must incite a fair quantitiy of anxiety within Turkey's AKP.
5. In order to arrive at a post-Sykes-Picot Iraq and Syria, we need to develop institutional mechanisms for conflict resolution and management of the claims of all stakeholders in the region. Such efforts must attempt to balance the demands of regional actors (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, etc.), the U.S., EU, Russia, and China and achieve a compromise of the interests of all stakeholders in redrawing Iraq and Syria. Again, it is my contention that we are only going to realize a durable peace in Southwest Asia if we create new, deeply invested institutional mechnaisms for conflict resolution, through which all of the world's major powers and stakeholders in the region can defend their interests and negotiate compromise solutions that will undermine the possibilities for both civil war and international conflicts by outside powers.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
On the 2014 Elections in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Just a few brief points on what stood out as important to me when I walked into the voting booth this morning and as I am pondering what I expect will be the results of the election tonight:
1. Republican Charlie Baker is going to be the next governor of the Commonwealth. His victory should not, however, be viewed as a "stunning" turn of events in the "bluest of blue states" or as an improbable resurgence of the Northeastern Yankee Republican from the brink of extinction. Rather, it is simply a reflection of the fact that the Massachusetts Democratic Party selected a nominee in Attorney General Martha Coakley who neither advanced a compelling vision of where Massachusetts should be going nor presented herself as entirely competent to hold the office of governor.
Briefly, we have to keep in mind that a race for the governor's seat in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a Massachusetts race, not a referendum on the status of the Democratic Party nationally, not a referendum on the Obama administration or the Congressional delegation from the Democratic Party - it is just a contest between Massachusetts Democrats, Massachusetts Republicans, and the odd Massachusetts independent candidates to decide who has the most compelling vision of where Massachusetts should go for the next four years. In a state where, during much of the gubernatorial administration of former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Republican delegation to the Massachusetts state senate could fit comfortably in a minivan and where only eleven percent of the electorate is actually registered as Republican, this definitively does not represent a resurgence of the Yankee New England wing of the national Republican Party. That party remains decisively in transition to become the party of rural America, increasingly irrelevant outside of the South, the rural Rocky Mountain states, and certain states in the Plains. There is no indication that the Republican Party will make any significant inroads in the General Court of the Commonwealth (i.e. our bicameral legislature), so the Baker administration is going to content itself to getting along as nicely as possible with Democratic legislative leaders on Beacon Hill while acting as a fiscally conservative manager for the government of the Commonwealth. In point of fact, I think this is, to a great extent, the appeal of Republican gubernatorial candidates in the Commonwealth. As Democratic as the Commonwealth is, most citizens want fiscally conservative leadership in the governor's office to counterbalance the appeal for any aggressive and costly initiatives by Democractic legislators. To these ends, Baker has presented to the electorate of the Commonwealth a vision of leadership promising efficient management of state resources and little or no new taxation, and such a vision is very compelling to most voters in Massachusetts, as it is in most other states.
On the contrary, it may be a harder sell at this point in the history of the Commonwealth for Democratics to succeed as gubernatorial candidates. For the two terms that he served, Deval Patrick seemed to advance a particular direction for the Commonwealth that appealed strongly to Massachusetts progressives both in and out of the Democratic Party and competent and professional persona that won over the larger electorate. If he had run again for the office, I think Patrick would have defeated Baker a second time. Martha Coakley simply does not convey the same persona of competent leadership. Like many individuals who attempt to break into political life in an executive capacity, she seems both quite intelligence but decidely incapable of demonstrating her knowledge in a way that will command the confidence of the electorate from which she is attempting to solicit support. Insofar as the office of governor appeals to a somewhat different skill set than the office of Attorney General, it might be the case that Coakley's record as AG spoke volumes about her capacity to act on the Commonwealth's behalf in a juridical setting. This simply is not the same thing as being an efficient executive and articulator of clear agenda in cooperation with the legislature. Sadly, Baker's record as both a public administrator in the Weld administration and as a private health insurance executive served these ends more effectively than Coakley's AG experience.
On the whole, however, I think Baker's impending victory will matter little in determining the policy direction of the government of the Commonwealth. Again, the incoming administration will be dealing with an overwhelming legislative Democratic majority that will be intent on its own priorities, and the new administration will hash out a broader policy agenda based on its ability to amicably reach a compromise of wills. Baker is certainly not a Tea Party Republican and this is not Washington. If Congressional Republican leaders and the Obama administration have taken the inability to compromise to unprecedented level (only to be topped in the next session of Congress), the government of the Commonwealth lacks the luxury to engage in perpetual immaturity!
2. Side note on the Governor's Race: Why I voted for Evan Falchuk
A couple of minutes ago (around 7:00/19:00), I checked the gubernatorial election results posted on CNN to find that only Republican Charlie Baker and Democrat Martha Coakley had their names listed (no results were indicated because the polls have yet to close in Massachusetts). This is unfortunate, because we actually had five candidates for Governor of the Commonwealth: Baker, Coakley, Independent Jeff McCormick, Independent Reverend Scott Lively, and United-Independent Party (a self-designation) candidate Evan Falchuk. In my understanding, both Falchuk and McCormick are independently wealthy businessmen, contributing portions of their own wealth into the campaign, in large part, to advocate for their particular causes in relation to the broader agendas advocated by the major party candidates. Lively, for his part, is a conservative, anti-gay, anti-welfare, minister advocating a return to Judeo-Christian values in the Commonwealth against the materialistic, atheistic, Marxist values currently embodied by the state government. Needless to say, I tend to discount the larger message advanced by Reverend Lively, although, as a sincere and adamant Marxist defender of democratic sovereignty and the broadest possible marketplace of ideas in the political process, I am entirely glad that he threw his hat into the ring and made his voice heard on what he steadfastly believes! That said, McCormick's campaign highlighted the excessive regulation and taxation of small businesses in the Commonwealth, emphasizing both the need to target state investments in education and high tech in order to create a my robust entrepreneurial environment in the Commonwealth. Falchuk set a similar tone but focused on particular wasteful spending by the Massachusetts legislature on big ticket projects in the Boston area while neglecting, in relative terms, investments in transportation and communications infrastructure and maintenance of the state's public higher educational system. Further, at least in my area, Falchuk made a significant effort to reach voters via television, internet sites, and other traditional electoral methods, measures that were, no doubt, costly to his campaign.
I waivered between MCormick and Falchuk for much of the period up to the election. Both campaigns seemed to convey positive messages on where Massachusetts should be going. I especially liked McCormick's focus on small business entrepreneurship, a theme that I find lacking in the political posturing of the major parties in the Commonwealth. In the end, however, I cast my vote for Falchuk. I did so for several reasons. Most critically, I adhere to the general principle that I should always vote for candidates that most closely represent the vision that I would want an office holder to have rather than voting for a particular party or against the threat that some other party's candidate will win. In conformity with my previous reflections, I know perfectly well that Charlie Baker is going to win this election, probably by a significant number of percentage points, however I vote. Moreover, in view of the composition of the state legislature and the general political disposition of the electorate in the Commonwealth, it isn't really going to matter all that much if Massachusetts elects a Republican into the corner office. I am not going to determine my choice for governor based on the fear that, if I don't vote for a Democratic candidate (and one patently inadequate to the task in front of her), that all hell is going to break loose in Massachusetts. [As a side note to a side note, I voted in the Democratic Party primary election (independents in Massachusetts can select to vote in one or the other major party primary) for Donald Berwick, a physician and former Obama administration aid who was advocating the institution of a single payer health care system for the Commonwealth, a position that I knew perfectly well was not going to win the primary for him!] If the Massachusetts Democratic Party (or, for that matter, the national Democratic Party) wants my vote for governor, then they should select candidates whose vision for the Commonwealth appeals to my understanding of what policies need to be enacted to carry Massachusetts forward to a brighter, more prosperous, and more progressive future. In my opinion, Martha Coakley failed to convince me that she had a clear and compelling agenda for where the Commonwealth needed to go. Conversely, as if I needed to note it as a consideration, I am generally predisposed not to cast any ballot for a candidate of the Massachusetts Republican Party under most circumstances, and there was no way that I was ever going to support a former CEO from the health insurance sector.
Beyond considerations related to my dissatisfaction with the major party candidates themselves, one particular characteristic of Massachusetts electoral law prompted me to pay particular attention to the independent candidates in general and to Falchuk in particular. If Falchuk receives 3 percent of the total vote cast, then his party organization will, as I understand it, gain status as an official party in the Commonwealth. Such a designation is particularly useful for organizing purposes, insofar as it enables the party organization to solicit the membership of individual voters at every municipal clerk's office in the Commonwealth. As such, if Falchuk gets 3 percent of the vote, I can choose to register as a member of the United Independent Party of Massachusetts. Unlike McCormick's campaign, the Falchuk campaign seemed to hold a legitimate chance to reach official party status. Thus, I cast my vote in this direction.
As a matter of long term political organization in Massachusetts, the electorate, in my opinion, needs more choices than what is currently offered by the two major national parties. In view of the present political schlerosis of the federal government, it is more important than ever that Massachusetts develops a politics relatively independent of the federal level and focused on the particular needs of citizens within the Commonwealth, irrespective of the broader policy agendas of the major parties for the state level. Emphatically, we need more political parties that have an independent Massachusetts base to contest the national level parties in state elections because the latter are too tightly intertwined with federal level politics and the federal government has demonstrated itself to be, at the present moment, largely broken! I do not know the degree to which Falchuk holds similar views on the direction of politics in the Commonwealth and its relationship to the federal system, but I remain hopeful that the more choices we have in Massachusetts, the more we will set ourselves apart from Washington in ways that might insulate the Commonwealth from the toxic direction of politics that has currently arise on the federal level.
1. Republican Charlie Baker is going to be the next governor of the Commonwealth. His victory should not, however, be viewed as a "stunning" turn of events in the "bluest of blue states" or as an improbable resurgence of the Northeastern Yankee Republican from the brink of extinction. Rather, it is simply a reflection of the fact that the Massachusetts Democratic Party selected a nominee in Attorney General Martha Coakley who neither advanced a compelling vision of where Massachusetts should be going nor presented herself as entirely competent to hold the office of governor.
Briefly, we have to keep in mind that a race for the governor's seat in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a Massachusetts race, not a referendum on the status of the Democratic Party nationally, not a referendum on the Obama administration or the Congressional delegation from the Democratic Party - it is just a contest between Massachusetts Democrats, Massachusetts Republicans, and the odd Massachusetts independent candidates to decide who has the most compelling vision of where Massachusetts should go for the next four years. In a state where, during much of the gubernatorial administration of former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Republican delegation to the Massachusetts state senate could fit comfortably in a minivan and where only eleven percent of the electorate is actually registered as Republican, this definitively does not represent a resurgence of the Yankee New England wing of the national Republican Party. That party remains decisively in transition to become the party of rural America, increasingly irrelevant outside of the South, the rural Rocky Mountain states, and certain states in the Plains. There is no indication that the Republican Party will make any significant inroads in the General Court of the Commonwealth (i.e. our bicameral legislature), so the Baker administration is going to content itself to getting along as nicely as possible with Democratic legislative leaders on Beacon Hill while acting as a fiscally conservative manager for the government of the Commonwealth. In point of fact, I think this is, to a great extent, the appeal of Republican gubernatorial candidates in the Commonwealth. As Democratic as the Commonwealth is, most citizens want fiscally conservative leadership in the governor's office to counterbalance the appeal for any aggressive and costly initiatives by Democractic legislators. To these ends, Baker has presented to the electorate of the Commonwealth a vision of leadership promising efficient management of state resources and little or no new taxation, and such a vision is very compelling to most voters in Massachusetts, as it is in most other states.
On the contrary, it may be a harder sell at this point in the history of the Commonwealth for Democratics to succeed as gubernatorial candidates. For the two terms that he served, Deval Patrick seemed to advance a particular direction for the Commonwealth that appealed strongly to Massachusetts progressives both in and out of the Democratic Party and competent and professional persona that won over the larger electorate. If he had run again for the office, I think Patrick would have defeated Baker a second time. Martha Coakley simply does not convey the same persona of competent leadership. Like many individuals who attempt to break into political life in an executive capacity, she seems both quite intelligence but decidely incapable of demonstrating her knowledge in a way that will command the confidence of the electorate from which she is attempting to solicit support. Insofar as the office of governor appeals to a somewhat different skill set than the office of Attorney General, it might be the case that Coakley's record as AG spoke volumes about her capacity to act on the Commonwealth's behalf in a juridical setting. This simply is not the same thing as being an efficient executive and articulator of clear agenda in cooperation with the legislature. Sadly, Baker's record as both a public administrator in the Weld administration and as a private health insurance executive served these ends more effectively than Coakley's AG experience.
On the whole, however, I think Baker's impending victory will matter little in determining the policy direction of the government of the Commonwealth. Again, the incoming administration will be dealing with an overwhelming legislative Democratic majority that will be intent on its own priorities, and the new administration will hash out a broader policy agenda based on its ability to amicably reach a compromise of wills. Baker is certainly not a Tea Party Republican and this is not Washington. If Congressional Republican leaders and the Obama administration have taken the inability to compromise to unprecedented level (only to be topped in the next session of Congress), the government of the Commonwealth lacks the luxury to engage in perpetual immaturity!
2. Side note on the Governor's Race: Why I voted for Evan Falchuk
A couple of minutes ago (around 7:00/19:00), I checked the gubernatorial election results posted on CNN to find that only Republican Charlie Baker and Democrat Martha Coakley had their names listed (no results were indicated because the polls have yet to close in Massachusetts). This is unfortunate, because we actually had five candidates for Governor of the Commonwealth: Baker, Coakley, Independent Jeff McCormick, Independent Reverend Scott Lively, and United-Independent Party (a self-designation) candidate Evan Falchuk. In my understanding, both Falchuk and McCormick are independently wealthy businessmen, contributing portions of their own wealth into the campaign, in large part, to advocate for their particular causes in relation to the broader agendas advocated by the major party candidates. Lively, for his part, is a conservative, anti-gay, anti-welfare, minister advocating a return to Judeo-Christian values in the Commonwealth against the materialistic, atheistic, Marxist values currently embodied by the state government. Needless to say, I tend to discount the larger message advanced by Reverend Lively, although, as a sincere and adamant Marxist defender of democratic sovereignty and the broadest possible marketplace of ideas in the political process, I am entirely glad that he threw his hat into the ring and made his voice heard on what he steadfastly believes! That said, McCormick's campaign highlighted the excessive regulation and taxation of small businesses in the Commonwealth, emphasizing both the need to target state investments in education and high tech in order to create a my robust entrepreneurial environment in the Commonwealth. Falchuk set a similar tone but focused on particular wasteful spending by the Massachusetts legislature on big ticket projects in the Boston area while neglecting, in relative terms, investments in transportation and communications infrastructure and maintenance of the state's public higher educational system. Further, at least in my area, Falchuk made a significant effort to reach voters via television, internet sites, and other traditional electoral methods, measures that were, no doubt, costly to his campaign.
I waivered between MCormick and Falchuk for much of the period up to the election. Both campaigns seemed to convey positive messages on where Massachusetts should be going. I especially liked McCormick's focus on small business entrepreneurship, a theme that I find lacking in the political posturing of the major parties in the Commonwealth. In the end, however, I cast my vote for Falchuk. I did so for several reasons. Most critically, I adhere to the general principle that I should always vote for candidates that most closely represent the vision that I would want an office holder to have rather than voting for a particular party or against the threat that some other party's candidate will win. In conformity with my previous reflections, I know perfectly well that Charlie Baker is going to win this election, probably by a significant number of percentage points, however I vote. Moreover, in view of the composition of the state legislature and the general political disposition of the electorate in the Commonwealth, it isn't really going to matter all that much if Massachusetts elects a Republican into the corner office. I am not going to determine my choice for governor based on the fear that, if I don't vote for a Democratic candidate (and one patently inadequate to the task in front of her), that all hell is going to break loose in Massachusetts. [As a side note to a side note, I voted in the Democratic Party primary election (independents in Massachusetts can select to vote in one or the other major party primary) for Donald Berwick, a physician and former Obama administration aid who was advocating the institution of a single payer health care system for the Commonwealth, a position that I knew perfectly well was not going to win the primary for him!] If the Massachusetts Democratic Party (or, for that matter, the national Democratic Party) wants my vote for governor, then they should select candidates whose vision for the Commonwealth appeals to my understanding of what policies need to be enacted to carry Massachusetts forward to a brighter, more prosperous, and more progressive future. In my opinion, Martha Coakley failed to convince me that she had a clear and compelling agenda for where the Commonwealth needed to go. Conversely, as if I needed to note it as a consideration, I am generally predisposed not to cast any ballot for a candidate of the Massachusetts Republican Party under most circumstances, and there was no way that I was ever going to support a former CEO from the health insurance sector.
Beyond considerations related to my dissatisfaction with the major party candidates themselves, one particular characteristic of Massachusetts electoral law prompted me to pay particular attention to the independent candidates in general and to Falchuk in particular. If Falchuk receives 3 percent of the total vote cast, then his party organization will, as I understand it, gain status as an official party in the Commonwealth. Such a designation is particularly useful for organizing purposes, insofar as it enables the party organization to solicit the membership of individual voters at every municipal clerk's office in the Commonwealth. As such, if Falchuk gets 3 percent of the vote, I can choose to register as a member of the United Independent Party of Massachusetts. Unlike McCormick's campaign, the Falchuk campaign seemed to hold a legitimate chance to reach official party status. Thus, I cast my vote in this direction.
As a matter of long term political organization in Massachusetts, the electorate, in my opinion, needs more choices than what is currently offered by the two major national parties. In view of the present political schlerosis of the federal government, it is more important than ever that Massachusetts develops a politics relatively independent of the federal level and focused on the particular needs of citizens within the Commonwealth, irrespective of the broader policy agendas of the major parties for the state level. Emphatically, we need more political parties that have an independent Massachusetts base to contest the national level parties in state elections because the latter are too tightly intertwined with federal level politics and the federal government has demonstrated itself to be, at the present moment, largely broken! I do not know the degree to which Falchuk holds similar views on the direction of politics in the Commonwealth and its relationship to the federal system, but I remain hopeful that the more choices we have in Massachusetts, the more we will set ourselves apart from Washington in ways that might insulate the Commonwealth from the toxic direction of politics that has currently arise on the federal level.
New Impending Agonies in the Aftermath of the 2014 Midterms
Very quickly, this post seeks to offer a brief response on how it seems the midterm elections will go across the U.S., partly in relation to a post I had written previously in the aftermath of the last federal government shutdown (http://boycottcorporatemedia.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-agony-of-federal-budgetary_4.html). In regard to that circumstance, my prognostications do not seem to have entirely borne themselves out. The federal government continues to fail to get anything meaningful accomplished concerning fiscal policy management. On the other hand, thanks, in part, to some irrational exhuberance on the part of global financial markets in the face of a sluggish American recovery (not to mention a borderline deflationary economy in the EU and slowing Chinese growth)and, in part, to a decline in global crude oil prices driven by aggressive American exploration for shale oil and gas, the employment picture in the U.S. seems to be tangibly improving! Absent some concerted efforts by the federal government to get its fiscal house in order and undertake the sorts of investments, particularly in transportation and communications infrastructure, to bolster short term aggregate demand and improve long term American economic performance in the next Congressional session, I cannot see how this situation will continue, however - the world is heading for another economic downturn, possibly to be punctuated by a crash in equity prices. The temporary, speculation-driven recovery of housing prices will falter, promoting the resumption of a long term downward correction in the American housing sector, supported by impending efforts by two Republican houses of Congress and a strangely compliant Democratic administration to dismantle the government sponsored structural, secondary market supports for wider home ownership (why does it seem to me that the only policy area Obama and Congressional Republicans appear to enjoy a consensus on is the need to dismantle the residual instruments supporting federal housing policy?!). Finally, the impending economic decline will reinvigorate Republican efforts to radically restructure federal entitlement programs (Social Security and Medicare), in an effort to open up new sites for speculative investments by Wall Street high rollers, eager to play around with the retirement savings of tens of millions of Americans! With respect to this last prediction, I, at least, hold out hope that the Republican Senate will lack a veto-proof majority to enact any major fiscal policy creativity in relation to federal entitlements - the Democrats will have lots of ammunition to play around with in 2016, when Hillary marches back into the White House and insurgent Democrats rescue one if not both houses of Congress on the platform that it is worthwhile to save Social Security from Republican innovation.
It suffices to say, I find it improbable at best that the midterms will not usher in a Republican Senate, under the bellicose leadership of gentleman tobacco plantation owner Mitch McConnell (no, Democrat Alison Lundegan Grimes is not going to unseat the Senate Minority leader in Kentucky). In regard to the other major contests, I remain rather satisfied that the Republican Party will end up with enough of an advantage at the end of the day even if Democrats Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Jean Shaheen of New Hampshire win their contests, something that seems probable at the moment.
Assuming the Republican Party remains incapable of marshaling a veto-proof majority in the Senate, nothing of any consequence in fiscal policy will happen until after the 2016 elections (unless, as suggested, the Obama administration and Republican congressional leadership, for some peculiar reason, decide that it would be a great idea to scrap Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an idea with which Obama, for some bizarre reason, appears enamoured), which will almost certainly bring another Democratic into the White House and win back at least one house of Congress for all of one session (there is no way that any Democratic gains in 2016 are going to survive the 2018 midterms). There will be no great plans for entitlement reform enacted. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not be stricken from federal law. There will, almost certainly, be new and unprecedented theatrics in the quest to arrive at a federal budget and in the extension of the debt ceiling, at which point Republican Congressional leaders will bow to the administration at the risk of driving the country in default. In short, nothing new will happen of any relevance to the lives of everyday Americans. Further, even when the Democrats strut triumphantly back into control in Washington two years from now, I have every expectation that they will be utterly incapable of generating an actual domestic policy agenda with aggressive, countercyclical fiscal management on the table. Emphatically, we are living in an age in which the U.S. federal government finds it impossible to get out of its own way when it comes to achieving anything meaningful that might benefit the economic well being of the majority of Americans. I think the larger point that will present itself once the new Republican Congress finally does come into power is that the direction of domestic policy initiative in the American political system is shifting away from Washington in the near term and toward the state capitals, and this is not an unwelcome outcome!
It suffices to say, I find it improbable at best that the midterms will not usher in a Republican Senate, under the bellicose leadership of gentleman tobacco plantation owner Mitch McConnell (no, Democrat Alison Lundegan Grimes is not going to unseat the Senate Minority leader in Kentucky). In regard to the other major contests, I remain rather satisfied that the Republican Party will end up with enough of an advantage at the end of the day even if Democrats Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Jean Shaheen of New Hampshire win their contests, something that seems probable at the moment.
Assuming the Republican Party remains incapable of marshaling a veto-proof majority in the Senate, nothing of any consequence in fiscal policy will happen until after the 2016 elections (unless, as suggested, the Obama administration and Republican congressional leadership, for some peculiar reason, decide that it would be a great idea to scrap Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an idea with which Obama, for some bizarre reason, appears enamoured), which will almost certainly bring another Democratic into the White House and win back at least one house of Congress for all of one session (there is no way that any Democratic gains in 2016 are going to survive the 2018 midterms). There will be no great plans for entitlement reform enacted. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not be stricken from federal law. There will, almost certainly, be new and unprecedented theatrics in the quest to arrive at a federal budget and in the extension of the debt ceiling, at which point Republican Congressional leaders will bow to the administration at the risk of driving the country in default. In short, nothing new will happen of any relevance to the lives of everyday Americans. Further, even when the Democrats strut triumphantly back into control in Washington two years from now, I have every expectation that they will be utterly incapable of generating an actual domestic policy agenda with aggressive, countercyclical fiscal management on the table. Emphatically, we are living in an age in which the U.S. federal government finds it impossible to get out of its own way when it comes to achieving anything meaningful that might benefit the economic well being of the majority of Americans. I think the larger point that will present itself once the new Republican Congress finally does come into power is that the direction of domestic policy initiative in the American political system is shifting away from Washington in the near term and toward the state capitals, and this is not an unwelcome outcome!
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