Some may say, “Who cares? The All-Star Game doesn’t even matter.” On the surface, the statement has some merit—the MLB All-Star Game merely determines which league will claim home field advantage in the World Series in October and is largely hoopla and fanfare. Delve a bit deeper, however, and it becomes clear the All-Star Game is critical at the individual player level. Simply being named to the All-Star roster is a defining characteristic of a player and a sticking point in future contract negotiations.

To put it plainly, All-Star nominations translate to higher player salaries in the long run by demarcating expertise—be it in salary arbitration hearings or free agent contract negotiations (or even marginal salary bonuses of hundreds of thousands of dollars for some). Just ask agent Scott Boras how convenient it is to tack that little tidbit onto his clients’ résumés when seeking another gargantuan contract. By extension, therefore, All-Star Game nominations have at least an indirect impact on the labor market structure of MLB and it is worthwhile to look at alternatives to make player selections more democratic in a modern sense.

Though MLB grants 25 votes per individual in an attempt to offset the innate inequities between large-market and small-market fan bases, the inequities persist. No matter how one reads it, large-market teams tend to boast more players on a league’s starting roster because of their larger fan base and wider name recognition. Just take a look at the 2011 starting lineup for the American League—Boston and New York position players alone took six of the nine spots. Sure, Boston and New York could simply have comparatively better players at given positions, but given the subpar years of Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter before the All-Star break last year, fans seem to have been ill-informed when casting their ballots.

How can MLB rectify this starting position player ballot dilemma? A two-pronged approach would help. First, list the position players on the ballot in order of sortable stats ranging from batting average to slugging percentage; the current ballot structure requires fans to actively seek out stats and assumes that all have adequate knowledge.

Secondly, and more importantly, the structure of voting should be changed so that fans are incentivized to vote for players that aren’t on their favorite team’s roster. The current structure makes a mockery of the equality of impact that is supposed to define our modern democracy by allowing some particularly avid fans to hijack the system and dilute the votes of casual fans. Instead, the voting system should use a two-step process that occurs over two weeks in late June, with each position category divided in half by lottery to create localized, intra-position voting competition. The winners of each local race the first week face their positional counterpart in a final vote to determine the starting slot, with the second-place winner starting as backup (eliminating the need for player selections).

For example, let’s take first basemen in the American League this year and run their names through a lottery. The random number generator pits the following against each other in Pool One: Adrian Gonzalez, Albert Pujols, Adam Lind, Carlos Pena, Justin Smoak, Eric Hosmer, and Daric Barton. The remaining first basemen in the AL face off against each other in Pool Two. The individuals with a plurality of votes in each pool move on to face each other in the second week. While the first week may be more based on team allegiance, the second round invites fans of all teams to cast ballots to construct the best team to put out on the field against the opposing league. Thus, the voting process eliminates many biases intrinsic to the current arrangement and does not drag on forever.

What about the pitchers? Players have as much a right as any other to vote on the pitchers worthy of a nod since they are the ones facing them daily, but giving them sole control is a bit unfair to many fans whose favorite players take the mound every five days. Here is a more reasonable alternative: have players nominate the top 50 pitchers (starters and relievers) in each league, then have fans vote for the top 10 starting pitchers and top five relief pitchers of that group using the current system during the last week of voting. That should get fans disappointed in their previously futile vote to run back to the online ballot box for a shot at redemption. For parity’s sake, the managers can fill out the remaining roster spots due to injury or non-participation or vacancy if necessary and choose the starting pitcher who will begin the game.

Under this arrangement, the All-Star Game’s impact on the labor market structure remains the same, but the players who can call themselves “All-Stars” (and earn the bigger payday) will have had to earn it through a more democratic system.

Baseball is America’s pastime, so it should try to act like it a bit more.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Vermont is still by-and-large a mountainous idyll, an unimpeachably beautiful place that in many ways serves as a positive stereotype of itself.  From the time one leaves the city limits of Burlington and heads eastward, there are practically no big-box stores; there are no billboards; the highway ambles between compact, centuries-old villages, boxed into vales by shaggy hillsides.  This cultural and topographical preservation is not an organic development.  It relies on a cavalcade of comprehensive regulations, including the state’s revolutionary Act 250, which affords regional planning boards the ability to reject projects larger than one acre for any “adverse effects” they may have on local “aesthetics, scenic beauty, historical sites, or natural areas.”  Also included in these initiatives are an outright, statewide ban on billboards and hundreds of byzantine, yet effective local zoning ordinances that have single-handedly limited the number of Wal-Marts in the state to four.  If such regulations seem grounded in government intrusion into the minutiae of construction, it’s because they are; these comprehensive measures are made possible by the semi-collectivist nature of Vermont politics and the civic fabric of its citizenry, represented by an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature and a self-described “socialist” senator in Bernie Sanders.  As a liberal, I have no philosophical quarrel with this form of politics, and I imagine that even conservatives with a strong predisposition against the process would admire the sprawl-less, civically harmonious, and aesthetically beautiful end.  Nevertheless, I realize that the libertarian argument is deontological, focused on the intrusive means of government, rather than the aesthetics of the result.

Across the border in New Hampshire, this libertarian reasoning has definitively triumphed.  Upon crossing the Connecticut River while traveling eastward on Interstate 89, those with an eye for municipal planning might as well be crossing the River Styx.  This isn’t to say that I hate New Hampshire; it is, in many places, one of the most beautiful states in the nation.  But whereas the journey in Vermont is completely devoid of bland corporatism, the traveler entering New Hampshire is immediately confronted with pallid seas of asphalt and big-box obelisks, a Kmart, a Ninety-Nine Restaurant, a TJ Maxx, a Kohl’s, a Verizon outlet, an Olympia Sports, a CVS, and a Payless Shoe Source all lining the highway within its first mile.  A local conservative poet, Robert Frost, wrote in one of his anthologies, “Mountain Interval,” of a boy who is killed by a buzz-saw while he overlooks the Connecticut, a buzz-saw that churns out identical, monotonous slices of stove-length wood in a process symbolic of modernity.  Ninety-two years after the poem was written, it is clear that it was not only the boy who was killed by the apathetic strokes of the modern machine, but the community surrounding him as well.  In the violent expansion of sprawl, local identity has been gobbled up into strip malls, parking lots, and retail chains, making once compact yankee villages indistinguishable from the highways of Dixie or the suburbs of LA.  Far too much of the journey’s remainder is scarred by this demeaning form of development, a frustration expressed by author and New Urbanist, James Howard Kunstler, in his 1996 book, The Geography of Nowhere:

Most of this [new development] is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading – the jive-plastic Potemkin village shopping plazas with their vast parking lagoons, the Lego-block hotel complexes, the “gourmet mansardic” junk food joints, the Orwellian office parks featuring buildings sheathed in the same reflective glass worn by chain-gang guards, the particle-board garden apartments rising up in every meadow and cornfield…the whole, destructive, wasteful, toxic, agoraphobia-inducing spectacle that politicians proudly call “growth.”

Kunstler is generalizing a bit in the last part of his quote.  Many non-Republican politicians (and even, admittedly, some Republicans) can distinguish between responsible and irresponsible development.  But in the rural north of New Hampshire, where distrust of government is a societal dogma, the difference between responsible and irresponsible growth has become an irrelevant, peripheral point of argument.  Regulation has become poison, and the idea that government action could preserve local identity, heretical.

Upon reaching the borderlands of Maine and New Hampshire the traveler is offered a respite against the soulless sprawl that springs from this anti-government virulence.  Partially out of local design, mostly out of neglect and isolation, the most rugged uplands of the White Mountains are free of Arby’s and Applebee’s, and a lack of business investment softens the SmartGrowth debate.  However, once the traveler arrives in my home in a tourist-laden corner of bumpy western Maine, just to the east of the Appalachian spine, local communities are once again confronted by the continuous prospect of architectural conformity.  What’s more, the zoning debate here is made particularly contentious by the composition of the local population: a broad base of Ron Paul libertarians (multiple inland counties of Maine, from Piscataquis to Aroostook,  did vote for Ron Paul), sprinkled with a healthy number of Vermont-style, cosmopolitan transplants.

In 1997, current Harvard Business Review writer Joshua Macht wrote an article about this debate, focusing on the regional village of Bethel, Maine, titled “Entrepreneurs Collide: Will Zoning Take Town Downhill?”  Within its pages, one paranoid businessman, Rick Whitney, explicitly analogized local zoning proposals with Stalinist Russia, quipping “ ‘There were plenty of comprehensive plans and 10-year plans in the USSR.  But did citizens have their freedom?”  Another local entrepreneur effectively sums up the libertarian argument, adding  “ ‘There are people in this town that wouldn’t mind regulating everything.  But they take away some of the Maine heritage I know.’”

Fifteen years after Macht’s profile, the regulations have hardly strengthened, and Rick Whitney has by-and-large thwarted the Marxist-Leninist conspiracy afoot amongst a third of the county’s population (including myself, apparently).  What’s more, the same Rick Whitney has managed to build several hideous lumber warehouses on the outskirts of town, part of the wave of concentric sprawl that has emanated outward from Bethel over the last two decades.  In my own neighboring village of eight-hundred and two residents, a recent comprehensive planning proposal was voted down easily, but not before it exploded into an armed encounter between a belligerent anti-Zonist and one of the plan’s drafters.  Thus, it seems that my town of Greenwood will, for the foreseeable future, be as susceptible as ever to the prospect of corporate obelisks gobbling up our hamlets and degrading our community, naturally and architecturally.

In recent years, the political climate for those of us fighting against this “geography of nowhere,” as James Howard Kustler put it, has only deteriorated.  On the state level, Maine’s Tea Party-backed governor Paul LePage, former executive of the big-box retailer Marden’s Surplus and Salvage, has effectively destroyed the Informed Growth Act, our state’s watered down version of Vermont’s Act 250, which had previously mandated several town meetings before a community accepted a gross retailer’s construction permit.  The Bangor Daily News deemed that LePage opposed the act because he worried that the statutes contained a “bias against big-box stores.”  But LePage seems not to understand the spirit of the law.  Of course there is an ingrained bias.  Does the governor think, after all, that we’re interested in holding twelve town meetings every time a bohemian pottery shop moves to town?

To be sure, this hatred of SmartGrowth by the Tea Party tranche of the Republican Party is not a purely local phenomenon.  Focusing on the anti-sprawl Agenda 21 passed by the United Nations in 1992, the Republican Party has denounced compact-growth policies as a form of “destructive and insidious” internationalism, and Tea Partiers have occupied countless zoning meetings throughout the country in an attempt to thwart the supposed multilateral conspiracy.  In any case, this brand of Republicanism is not a force for the ironic destruction of local autonomy just in my mountainous slice of Maine, nor in just the states of northern New England for that matter, but in all crannies of the nation where civic-minded citizens are attempting to wrest a sense of cultural uniqueness from the slings of architectural conformity.  Such realizations give me a headache, and I’ll have to go down to the new, obeliskoid RiteAid in order to medicate myself as the local apothecary has been driven out of business.  Perhaps my neighbor down the slope, the one with the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag on her lawn, will ascend the hillside to ask if she can borrow my axe-helve.  I won’t be here, but that is no matter.  She can simply travel down to the newly constructed Wal-Mart and purchase a new blade, sold by a man she has never met, manufactured in a country she can’t pronounce, destined to cut the boundary lines of a subdivision populated by flatlanders with whom she’ll never interact.  Hopefully, she’ll experience a cathartic moment beforehand, but if not, I my fear that only by surrounding herself with defeated geography and hollow interaction, will this Tea Partier realize which parts of “the Maine heritage,” as she put it in Macht’s article, are most worth defending.

But, this former political juggernaut is slowly fading into the background. Nearly three years later, the Tea Party website that promoted the 2009 protest no longer exists, and the remaining Republican presidential contenders are not significantly associated with the Tea Party. Simultaneously, the co-founder of the prominent Tea Party Patriots has resigned due to internal turmoil while the movement struggles to unite divergent factions to promote a consistent message.

While the Tea Party will likely remain politically relevant for the near future, its previous influence over the national agenda is over. The movement that originally claimed political independence has largely been co-opted by the Republican Party.

A Party in Transition

Naturally, some are loath to admit the Tea Party’s decreasing political relevance. Lucas Scanlon, a Texas transplant who founded and leads Harvard University Tea Party chapter, told the HPR that, “people are frustrated because nothing has gotten done [and] there’s no value in a political party,” creating an environment ripe for the Tea Party to flourish.

But outside observers see a different story. Van Jones, author and founder of Rebuild the Dream, an organization dedicated to progressive goals, characterized the Tea Party for the HPR as, “a dying gasp of a particular kind of racialized, divisive, small-minded politics from the right.”

John Halpin, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, also disagrees with Scanlon’s analysis, telling the HPR that, “there’s no infrastructure currently in place that suggests the Tea Party will be around in the long-term.” Regardless though, the Tea Party’s prior impact on political discourse in this country is indisputable.

One of a Kind or More of the Same?

The modern Tea Party’s roots stretch back to a televised rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli less than a month into the Obama presidency. The Tea Party Patriots, the most prominent Tea Party grassroots organization, confirmed in November 2010 that Santelli’s rant, “started [the] entire movement.”

Nevertheless, Tea Party enthusiasts stress that, despite popular perception, the movement is actually quite distinct from the Republican Party. Scanlon, who questions why Democrats have not adopted any Tea Party principles, said that both major parties were caught off-guard. “I think the Republicans and Democrats have been scared by the response to the Tea Party.” Scanlon also stressed that many individuals, himself included, became politically involved for the first time through the Tea Party.

Though Jones believes the Tea Party’s message was, “a repackaging of ideas that have been around for a very long time,” nobody could not deny that this, “particular uprising pulled in new leaders and new voices.” Halpin offered a similar analysis, saying that the movement primarily was, “just a clever rebranding of right wing activism,” spurred by Obamacare.

Strategy (or Lack Thereof?)

The Tea Party’s initial success in gaining press coverage and plugs by prominent conservative legislators led Obama’s supporters to inquire whether he could turn around the Democratic Party. Feminist Camille Paglia asked this very question in Salon magazine as early as September 2009. Though the Tea Party likely cost Republicans key senate races in Delaware and Nevada last election cycle, overall the midterm elections swept Tea Partiers onto Capitol Hill, leading most pundits to characterize the election as a triumph for the movement.

Scanlon however says this emphasis on the Tea Party’s electoral strategy misses the movement’s larger goals, claiming, “I see more focus on messaging [than electoral strategy].” Indeed, nearly every congressional Republicans signed the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” created by Americans for Tax Reform leader Grover Norquist. This document, which reflects Tea Party principles, states that legislators will not support net tax increases. Similar pledges with socially conservative goals also experienced immense popularity among Republican candidates.

The pressure the Tea Party has exerted on Republicans to adopt their views is largely undisputed by liberals and their allies. Halpin said the influence of Tea Party members in the House has put Speaker John Boehner, “on a leash,” and Jones noted the Tea Party can, “push the buttons of the Republican Party.

However, this messaging does not necessarily translate into electoral success, as Halpin notes, “They were not very successful at all at the senatorial level and they won’t be successful at the presidential level because they’re a marginal ideology.”

Indeed, the Tea Party’s message generated discourse, though not always for positive reasons. Jones discussed how the rigid ideology of the Tea Party prevent members from celebrating landmark pieces of legislation, including the New Deal safety net and environmental protections. He argues that those “are seen by the Tea Party as betrayals of the republic rather than our greatest achievements.”

Back to the Future

The impending Supreme Court decision regarding the constitutionality of Obama’s signature health care legislation has kept the Tea Party movement animated. One journalist described Tea Party protesters, “flood[ing] the steps” of the Supreme Court during oral arguments, protesting in a fashion reminiscent of summer 2009. Scanlon adds that, regardless of its decision, the Supreme Court’s verdict can only help the Tea Party. Should the legislation be overturned, the Tea Party will “see [the ruling] as a huge victory and it will bolster its ranks.”

Others are not quite as optimistic. Halpin argued that though as a, “grassroots group of people… [the movement] should be lauded,” their long-term prospects are dim. “I think they’ll have to do a lot more to define an agenda, a set of candidates, if they want to exist in the long-term.” Many have also highlighted the lack of a viable Tea Party candidate in the presidential race as a harbinger of their waning influence.

Such rhetoric does not bother Scanlon though, who sees the Tea Party’s message beyond a black and white electoral strategy. “I think there’s a question right now in what our country is going to become … as long as that question remains, I think the movement will continue.”

While Scalon remains optimistic, the Tea Party’s future is uncertain, and as voters have seen over the past year, the Republican Party will continue to subsume Tea Party rhetoric and candidates. The movement that once prided itself on its political independence is increasingly nothing more than a small, yet vocal, interest group within a larger entity.

Eric Hendey: Ignore the Election-Year Rhetoric 

An anonymous columnist from The Economist recently took on the voice of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a humorous blog post. In the piece, the Supreme Leader analyzes the hawkish statements of American leaders, discerning whether or not the risk of war is serious. In particular, he worries about Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s purported intent to send more warships to Iran’s shores. Having already experienced two Bushes and one Clinton, however, Khamenei has become familiar with American speechifying:

I’m not convinced. Our intelligence people point out that this Romney is just a businessman from an unloved minority sect. Our own bazaaris tend not to like war. He is probably just pandering to the Zionists, as they all do.

We should certainly take a leaf from the Supreme Leader’s book when analyzing our politicians’ proclamations on Iran. For better or for worse, every public statement made until November will be colored by the upcoming election.

The USS Carl Vinson in the Strait of Hormuz.

Foreign policy with Israel has never been more politicized than it is today. Over the past decade, Republicans have hoped to turn support for Israel into a wedge issue, one that could sway traditionally Democratic Jewish voters. This has led to an arms race with the Democrats over who can seem more pro-Israel.

Just take a look at what has been said this election cycle. In an interview with a Jewish cable TV station, Newt Gingrich called the Palestinians “an invented people” who want to destroy Israel. Politicians on both sides, not just the evangelical Right, have been guilty of making sweeping statements about Israel.

The pro-Israel lobby is powerful. Its capacity to steer campaign contributions to supportive candidates has certainly had an impact on the national discourse. This is part of the reason why President Obama, in a recent address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, stressed that he would not hesitate to attack Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

The seeming eagerness of American politicians for war could be a cause for concern. However, the result will likely not be an attack by the U.S. military. Despite the saber-rattling, negotiations over the nuclear program have resumed, and we are likely to see the continuation of the current containment system.

Yet it is almost impossible to sell a moderate program of sanctions and negotiations as part of a presidential campaign; we can expect to hear many more threats of warships or worse. This situation begs a bigger question: what effect does the democratic political process have on global peace? On the one hand, elections encourage aggressive rhetoric. On the other hand, drawn-out wars have often undermined support for elected officials. So what we can really expect from situations like this is a lot of talk and little action—another compelling reason to ignore the rhetoric.

Tom Lemberg: Consider the Cyber Option

Economic sanctions and military force are getting a lot of attention these days as ways of halting the purported Iranian drive for a nuclear weapon. Yet there is an under-considered alternative—the cyber option. Relatively low costs and risks make cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear weapons program an attractive option.

To begin, let’s recall Stuxnet, the computer worm that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program in 2010, setting it back two years. Cybersecurity firms from multiple countries have concluded that the worm could not have been developed without government support, naming the United States and Israel as its likely creators. Researchers at Symantec, an American cybersecurity firm, recently discovered a new Stuxnet virus, indicating that future cyberattacks are a real possibility.

Cyberattacks have unique advantages. For one, they are an order of magnitude cheaper than the alternatives; trade sanctions can trigger an increase in oil prices, and military force is inherently expensive in terms of both dollars and lives. Secondly, cyberattacks are effective—when they work, they work.

There are certainly drawbacks. Although the attacks occur under the radar, they are not necessarily discrete, and another cyberattack could incite some kind of Iranian retaliation. Reliability is another concern. After all, Stuxnet was the first worm of its kind, and there is no guarantee that another virus will be able to upend the Iranian weapons program soon enough.

Yet assessing ways of undermining the Iranian nuclear program is a comparative exercise, and the alternatives don’t look promising. Though sanctions have reduced Iranian oil exports to Asia, sanctions are unlikely to damage Iran’s economy enough to make its authoritarian leadership reconsider the program. A military strike on Iran would likely unite the Iranian population under an anti-West banner, and it might not even cripple the Iranian weapons program for long.

With Iran’s nuclear program still at least two years away from nuclear launch capability, it seems the cyber option deserves a fair shot, or at least more attention.

Photo Credit: United States Navy

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) is trying to pass a bill that would provide an additional $23 billion to states.

“It’s all in the role of the dice. And it’s really tough for the states to control; states with volatile sources of income witnessed a revenue shock”, Kim Rueben of the Urban Institute told the HPR, regarding the recent recession’s impact. “It’s really been a question of who has done the least harm,” she added.

Indeed, the Great Recession hit state pocketbooks hard. State deficits reached $191 billion in 2010, compared with just $80 billion at the height of the last recession during the early 2000s.  Compounding this crisis, states will receive 2.7 percent less funding from the federal government this current fiscal year than last with the budget deal passed last August.

While revenues have slowly increased over the past year with the recovery, states continue to seek innovative ways to balance their budgets without compromising critical programs such as K-12 education and health care. Yet, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that 37 states are providing less funding per student this year, with 17 slashing K-12 education budgets by more than 10 percent. 31 states have cut public health care programs, and all but six have cut state workforces.

Though austerity is reigning across the country, state legislators and think tanks are finding creative alternatives to raising taxes and cutting expenditures. While such solutions certainly are not panaceas, they represent real attempts at preserving existing public programs at low costs.

Money Does Not Always Equal Quality

Consider education, which has recently been targeted for significant cuts. Arizona is ranked second to last in state per-pupil spending, but schools like Mesquite Elementary School have received “excellent” ratings over the past eight years based on standardized test scores, the highest under Arizona’s evaluation system. Their secret is budget creativity and personalized, individual attention for each student.

According to Edutopia, a non-profit organization that promotes innovation in education, Mesquite faced a 75 percent capital budget cut in 2010. Teachers and administrators experimented with unorthodox methods of maximizing resources: for instance, paper use has been replaced with digital means of communication, and teacher collaboration websites containing lesson plans and activities have eliminated the need for textbooks since 2007. Furthermore, teachers have fine tuned education to each student’s needs, providing struggling students with additional aid and successful students with more challenging material. The result has been marked improvement in test scores, proving that cash-strapped school districts can still provide a quality education.

A Quarter Here, a Dollar There

The shrinking tax base has challenged state legislators, but one income source with positive externalities that states have been experimenting with is tolling. According to the National Council of State Legislators, “most states have enacted toll authorizing legislation, and tolling is a growing source of revenue in more than 30 states”.

Of these, ten states have also introduced “high occupancy toll” (HOT) lanes, which allow drivers that do not meet carpool lane requirements to pay for access. Beyond the revenue component, tolls have other good effects, reducing congestion, fuel consumption, and traveling time. While tolls alone will not eliminate budget gaps, they exemplify the type of thinking policymakers should pursue.

Enter the Federal Government

Considering these pressing challenges, what can Washington do? Congress can pass one measure that would provide approximately $23 billion in additional revenue to states. The law, entitled “The Marketplace Fairness Act”, would not cost the federal government a dime. Instead it allows states to enforce sales tax laws currently being circumvented. A 1967 Supreme Court ruling asserted that states could not tax firms lacking a physical presence within their borders, even if the firm’s customers resided in the state. The decision was grounded on the premise that such taxes would infringe upon the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, which limits interstate commerce regulatory powers to the federal government.

Introduced last November by conservative Senators Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the bill received bipartisan support in the Senate. Though this legislation would have major ramifications for online commerce, for the sake of fiscal responsibility, this law merits widespread support.

Do the States Really Have the Power?

There are external factors unique to specific states that affect prospects for sustainable budgets. As Dr. Therese McGuire of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University told the HPR, “Nebraska and Massachusetts, for example, have diversified economies, which have lessened the effects of the Great Recession on their budgets.” In contrast, she pointed out that severe fiscal conditions in Nevada and California can be linked to their less diversified economies and exposure to the housing bubble. Beyond that, other economists argue that large natural resource reserves in states like oil-rich North Dakota explain why some states maintained balanced budgets.

Regardless, deliberate governmental action can address budgetary challenges, but it requires political compromise. McGuire remarked that, “the political process makes budget decisions difficult.” She continued, “Those states that have manageable deficit situations have politicians willing to work across the aisle and make tough choices”.

To illustrate this point, consider Illinois and Indiana, two geographically and economically similar states with very different budget situations. Indiana has experienced mild deficits with a government inclined to compromise, while Illinois faces immense shortfalls and maintains a fractured political system. Indeed, states that have done well recently are often those that mitigated partisan agendas. Compromise, while difficult for politicians to swallow, is a requisite for fiscal responsibility.

What’s the Secret?

Unfortunately, no single solution exists for maintaining a balanced budget. Nevertheless, seemingly trivial efforts like those from Mesquite Elementary School can accomplish much in the aggregate. When further spending cuts and revenue increases are impossible, states must resort to these unconventional methods, and when pursued with bipartisan cooperation, they can sizably reduce deficits.  Rather than debating whether to raise taxes or cut spending, state legislators facing billion dollar shortfalls should think outside the box and consider trying something new.

Every year in California, out of a barrage of propositions, only a few enter the general consciousness. Some of these deal with hot button issues, including the legalization of marijuana in Prop 19 and the denial of gay marriage through Prop 8. Others dominate the dinnertime airwaves, through unrelenting special-interests funded commercials that denounce a range of proposals, from cigarette tax increases to air-quality standard reduction.

Proposition 14, by comparison, did not attract nearly the same amount of attention. This proposition, which was approved by voters, creates a “top-two” primary system for all state offices and congressional races. As such, it replaces separate party primaries with an “open” primary that all candidates are allowed to enter and all voters are allowed to vote in, with the caveat that candidates only express their party “preference.” From this primary, the top two vote getters would go on to the general election in November.

Despite its goal to decrease the influence of parties in California and bring about less partisanship, given its complexity and lack of significant financial backers, it was overshadowed on even its own ballot by Proposition 16, which saw roughly ten times more total spending than Proposition 14. However, despite an appeal that only seems to attract electoral system junkies, Prop 14 has far greater ramifications than the majority of proposals that pass through California ballot boxes. While Prop 14 was sold as the answer to partisan politics, there currently exists only one certain truth—the long-standing dynamics of California politics have been quietly shattered.

The Politics of Risk Aversion

Much of the drive for Proposition 14 was borne out of more than a decade of electoral stagnancy in California, the product of heavily gerrymandered districts and an admitted desire to maintain the status quo. The extent of California’s intractability is simply unparalleled. While California holds one of every eight House seats in the country, it also has the dubious mark of holding 17 of the 50 least competitive seats. As a result of districts drawn to protect incumbents in 2000, since 2002 there has only been a single instance of a seat changing parties. Even in 2010, a “wave election” that witnessed 60 seats change hands nationally, not a single seat switched parties in California.

It is fitting that two major attacks on this system were made in 2010, an election when voters across the country were characterized as “fed up” with traditional systems and organizations. While Prop 14 created a new primary system, Proposition 20, approved later that year, created a new citizen-led redistricting commission.

The California 26th

California’s 26^th congressional district, covering the eastern edge of Los Angeles County and the majority of Ventura County, is both a microcosm of the last decade of Californian politics as well as a potential battleground for the “new look” of California after the changes made in 2010. Held by Republican Congressman Elton Gallegly since 2002, when the current incarnation was drawn, the district was viewed as an artificially “safe” district, his smallest margin of victory over 13 points. However, due to redistricting, his new district contains only two-thirds of his old district, no longer includes his residence, and has swung from a heavily Republican area to a more contested area. Facing these impediments to re-election, Gallegly has chosen to retire, leaving behind a competitive seat and a number of interested candidates, including State Senator Tony Strickland on the Republican side and State Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, businessman David Cruz Thayne, and Harbor Commissioner Jess Herrera on the Democratic side.

Yet what is making this race unique is the presence of a competitive No Party Preference candidate in Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks. Despite winning a number of elections as a Republican, Parks has been at odds with the Republican leadership, which unsuccessfully financed a Republican challenger to Parks in a City Council election. A self-identified moderate, Parks has made a career promoting the protection of open space against development and sees the 2010 election as a game changer. In an interview with the HPR, she stated directly, “I would not be running if not for Proposition 14.”

While Proposition 14 fuels the Parks campaign by providing non-aligned candidates with increased access to the general election, it is not the only factor in play. In contrast to past elections, when parties would have primaries to find one representative, the new open primary allows the Democratic vote to be split in the 26^th congressional district between a number of candidates, all of whom currently possess limited name recognition in the district, potentially turning the general election into one between Strickland and Parks despite the Democratic recruitment advantage.

The centrality of centrism and Prop 14 to this race, one Parks notes is “the one being watched as the bellwether as to whether prop 14 will actually allow independents and moderates to get elected,” is furthered by Parks’ platform, which she describes as “very specific to getting Republicans and Democrats working together.” While this approach taps into historic low approval ratings of Congress and party politics, many are skeptical. Speaking with the HPR, former Congressman George Nethercutt mused: “I just think that it’s a tactic, a campaign tactic, to say I don’t like either one of the parties, just to get elected,” elaborating that moderates “can’t just say I’m against Democrats, I’m against Republicans.”

This is a viewpoint expressed by a number of competing campaigns in the district, with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Amber Moon labeling her a “political opportunist,” the Strickland campaign calling her “the Democrat’s problem,” and the Brownley campaign noting her Republican past. While Parks affirms her identity as a “social moderate and fiscal conservative,” pointing to an “Issues” page on her campaign website that describes her positions, these views are often drowned out by a focus on attacking partisan politics. Her refusal to declare whether she would support Boehner or Pelosi as speaker only cements this narrative, becoming a Rorschach test between those who view it as bipartisanship and those who view it as pandering, reflective of the No Party Preference label as a whole.

The heightened interest in this race is made clear by fundraising numbers. The $988,000 raised for the 2010 election has already been far overtaken by the $1.3 million raised in the current cycle, more than 7 months out from the general election. In fact, the Strickland campaign has raised $781,804 itself, the third highest amount among current non-incumbents in House races, behind only self-financed Joseph Carvin and Joe Kennedy.

Golden Opportunity

Proposition 14 turns a game of majority into a game of plurality, with consequences that could potentially supersede the objective of increased centrism.

The opportunity is there without a doubt. The number of Californians registered as Independent has risen to 21 percent, an unprecedented level. Party allegiance is falling. Independents point to Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, a candidate for mayor in San Diego, whose poll numbers doubled from 13 percent to 26 percent in a week when he switched from the GOP to No Party Preference, a number that objectors chalk up to increased publicity.

However, there are threats. Elections could become hijacked by personalities. Third party candidacies could lose their voice. Yet Prop 14 proponents’ biggest fear is that it won’t have an effect. Nethercutt, whose home state of Washington approved a similar measure in 2004, predicted that it would simply select “the strongest Republican candidate and the strongest Democratic candidate.”

Critics cite the limited effect that the Prop 14 scheme has had in promoting moderates in Louisiana and Washington, claiming that Proposition 14 has created an atmosphere favoring incumbents. However, this forecast has not subdued the number of No Party Preference campaigns in California, where Chad Condit, son of former Representative Gary Condit, and GOP Assemblyman Anthony Adams are also running No Party Preference bids for Congress, two of the 36 total NPP bids for state and national office in the state. It is the fate of their bids, along with the result in the California 26^th congressional district, that will determine the trajectory of this Proposition.

Linda Parks is optimistic about her chances. According to a recent internal poll, she is projected to be a solid second place finisher in the primary and a clear victor in the general election.  It is still very early in the game, but should Democratic divisions persist in the district, Prop 14 could very well have created an unprecedented path to office. Ultimately, though, it is not propositions or redistricting that decide California’s fate, but the ballot box. In fact, it is this vote, a precedent for future independent campaigns, that will determine the future of Proposition 14.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Native American tribes, though, living in much more immediate contact with their natural surroundings, have begun to notice environmental changes. And many of these changes have mattered.

Brown Ash: An early victim of climate change

In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report detailing the changes that have already been set in motion by climate change. In the Northeast, changes include ocean acidification and infiltration by invasive species.

Such changes have had a real impact on Native American life already. Sharri Venno, who acts as the environmental planner for the Houlton Band of the Maliseet Indians, said in an interview with the HPR that even before climate change “became a household word,” the Maliseet Indians were noticing a phenomenon called Brown Ash die-back. The Maliseet use Brown Ash, a plant sensitive to environmental changes, to make baskets, which they both use and sell. And due to climate change, Brown Ash is dying out. Venno explains, “I think the biggest frustration regarding communicating the impact of change to communities outside the tribe is that impacts to tribal culture are very broad and fundamental and can’t be summarized easily.”

The 30+ different kinds of change faced by tribes across the country make clear the urgency of the situation. Consider, though, that 50 percent of U.S. representatives elected in 2010 were global warming deniers. As Venno said, “The timeframe within which things are changing is very short.”

Photo Credit: Keith Kanoti

It would keep me up at night, if I did not have incredible trust in the individual possessing these codes.

Much ado has been made in recent weeks of the President’s decision to make the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden a campaign talking point in his bid for re-election. Senator McCain, the President’s opponent of a bygone day, went so far as to release a press statement yesterday saying, among other things:

Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad. This is the same President who once criticized Hillary Clinton for invoking bin Laden ‘to score political points.’ This is the same President who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn’t  ‘spike the ball’ after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected.

And make a political talking point has he ever. Along with Vice President Biden suggesting Thursday that the bumper sticker for the campaign ought to be “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” the President’s campaign has released an attack ad suggesting Romney may not have made the same decision had he been in the situation of the President. The video features none other than the President’s most valuable surrogate: former President Clinton.

However, I for one, and I am sure many fellow supporters of President Obama would agree, do not find any problem with him trumpeting the targeted killing for political gain. In fact, I think it might just be the most relevant conversation of the presidential campaign yet. That’s because the Oval Office requires a leader with more than just strong economic plans or a coherent foreign policy doctrine. Indeed, these elements ought to be prerequisites for the job, but the role of the president requires greater skills than legislative or diplomatic dexterity. The president, as our sitting president and his team have elucidated so carefully in campaign rhetoric, must be an exceptional individual who, when faced with enormous pressure and awesome responsibility, makes the tough decisions that he feels will make our nation a greater one.

There is no decision in recent memory that has tested the fortitude of a sitting president more than the one President Obama faced leading up to the May 2 raid of bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. Indeed, recent interviews with those officials involved reveal that President Obama faced a room of skepticism, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta the only advisor encouraging the raid. But rather than be shaken by this lack of confidence, the President put his political future, and chances of re-election, on the line and made the executive decision to authorize the raid.

The aftermath of that decision reveals that, in a time of unparalleled stress, the President made the right call. Had he been more worried about his political future or more susceptible to the phenomenon of groupthink, history may have told us an entirely different story. But time and time again – whether it’s sticking to his guns on healthcare, preventing a collapse of the American auto industry, or pursuing achievement of the Democratic values of fairness and equality – the President has demonstrated that he is a man who acts out of conviction, not political convenience.

The same cannot be said of Mitt Romney. Rather than acting out of conviction or basing his decisions on deeply ingrained values, Romney has repeatedly shown the only consideration he makes when confronted with a decision is what route ensures the greatest gain of political capital. As a Senate candidate in 1994, Romney tried to “out-Kennedy Kennedy,” taking liberal stances on a gamut of social issues. While governor of Massachusetts, Romney passed historic health care, from which he has since tried desperately to distance himself. And just this week, as he emerges as the only viable candidate left in the Republican primary, Romney has already begun to “soften his tone federal student loan aid and illegal immigrants.”

Whoever is elected president in November will face a host of serious domestic and global issues. From a Social Security program that needs immediate attention, to a North Korean regime whose nuclear tests compound the risk of technology getting into the wrong hands, the president’s fortitude will inevitably be tested again and again.

That is why whoever is occupying the Oval Office come January 21, 2013, must be someone whose intentions the American people can trust. He must be someone whose decisions are based on what he regards best enables our nation to prosper, not his personal political legacy. By emphasizing his decision-making during the Abbottabad raid, President Obama is highlighting an issue that ought to be considered of the utmost importance by the American people, and that distinguishes him from his politically opportunistic opponent.

Does Zimmerman being part Hispanic change the dynamic or message conveyed by Trayvon Martin’s shooting? I think not. Racial profiling is racial profiling, no matter the race of the profiler. Zimmerman uttered racial slurs and went against the advice of 911 operators when he chose to follow Martin, and his Hispanic origins do not make this any less unacceptable. If Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense prove to be true, this country will still have engaged in important national dialogue about race in today’s America. Societal barriers facing young black men remain a current issue: ten percent of young black men are currently in prison, and more are currently under correctional control or supervision than were enslaved in 1850. In light of these statistics, racial profiling needs to be discussed and addressed to eliminate the perception of black men as dangerous or suspicious, ideas that only contribute to racial disparities and such stark prison statistics.

George Zimmerman’s status as a man of color does not matter for his guilt or innocence. Racial profiling and racist remarks are unacceptable no matter if a white man, a Hispanic woman, or anyone else is the instigator. The national discourse this unfortunate incident has created about race relations in America cannot be diminished or ignored because a racially charged incident involved two men of color and not a white man.

The Harrisburg Case

The city’s problems started with a massive, broken incinerator. The adminstration hoped to turn earn over a billion dollars in revenue by serving as a centralized burning location for all of Pennsylvania’s garbage. Elected officials assured voters that this project could morph a municipal expense – garbage disposal – into a profitable product – electricity. But problems ensued from the start. The incinerator broke down regularly, and was later closed by the US Environmental Protection Agency for breaches of regulation. Instead of simply accepting these losses, Mayor Stephen Reed decided to double down. In 2003, he ordered a retrofit of the entire facility. Poor management and a shocking lack of contractual oversight meant that the project continued to bleed cash.

The result was that by 2011, Harrisburg, a city of less than 50,000, had amassed a public debt in excess of $300 million, giving it the largest debt-per-capita ratio of any U.S. city. Voters tossed out Mayor Reed, and the new city government drafted a plan for municipal default. The state government of Pennsylvania, however, had a slightly different idea.

Enter David Unkovic, a mild-mannered, bowtie-wearing attorney. Unkovic, a municipal bond expert, had never wanted power. However, when he was appointed by Governor Tom Corbett to recommend and implement a plan for debt reduction in Harrisburg; he hoped to use his knowledge of public finance for the good of his home state’s capital.

Team of Rivals?

Unkovic presented a 200-page plan to the community, calling on Harrisburg to increase taxes, cut union benefits, and ask creditors to take a loss. Knowing that austerity could be unpopular, Unkovic stressed the need for cooperation. He announced from his first day in office that Harrisburg’s fiscal problem could only be solved if each of the groups of players cooperated fully and shared in the sacrifice.

Instead of unity, however, Unkovic’s plan was met with division and general aversion towards cuts. Everyone from city councilmen to bondholders denounced the plan; unions refused to accept the cuts demanded of them. Meanwhile, the Harrisburg mayor and controller, rather than cooperating to reduce the debt, spent much of their time and effort suing each other. One group of citizens, outraged that a technocrat had been appointed to run an American city, filed a lawsuit claiming that Unkovic’s appointment was unconstitutional.

Unkovic’s naive hope that the residents of Harrisburg could cooperate and share losses slowly gave way to cynicism. At a final press conference, he left his diplomatic attitude behind, calling for a comprehensive investigation of the incinerator project and laying blame on a lobbyist, a state senator, and the former mayor. Two days later, on March 30, Unkovic took a single piece of stationary and scrawled out this letter:

I have done my best to use my powers as receiver to bring fiscal stability to the city of Harrisburg. However, I find myself in an untenable position in the political and ethical crosswinds and am no longer in a position to effectuate a solution.

Unkovic’s resignation was completely unexpected. No one in the media has heard of his whereabouts for the past two weeks. Unkovic’s position remains vacant.

Unkovic was a first-class professional; his appointment should have brought an opportunity to reshape Harrisburg for the better. But the refusal of all important stakeholder groups to cooperate drove him to the brink of madness.

America’s Debt

In 2010, Meredith Whitney, a Wall Street analyst who famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis, turned her gaze to municipal finance. Citing the trillion-dollar gap between what the state and local governments owe retired workers and the money they have to pay them, Whitney said that the next few years could witness “fifty to a hundred” defaults of US cities. Harrisburg is a reminder of that fear, and the reality that our governments are as addicted to debt as we are.

David Unkovic’s plan failed because of key stakeholders’ rejection of compromise, even in the face of an uncontrolled debt spiral. This political paralysis is evident at all levels of government in the United States. The broader failure of the Congressional “supercommittee” to come to an agreement on deficit reduction is an alarmingly similar national parallel.

This publication has argued before that technocracy, and the promise of experts removed from political battles, has gained appeal in the face of complex global economic issues. Harrisburg’s story makes clear, however, that it will take much more than technical prowess for America to face the problem of growing national debt. It will require cooperation at all levels of American society, and deep commitment on the part of all stakeholder groups. That’s something that no single expert can ever give us.