Redoing redistricting

 

By Bill Kraus


Legislative leaders have never been unimportant to the workings of this democracy. Nor have they had the kind of roller coaster ride like they’ve been on the last four decades.

Years of stability came to an end with the Watergate reforms of the early 1970s which ended the dominant role of the political parties, political bosses (remember them?) and precinct politics (if you haven’t read it, go to the library and pick up the slim volume Plunkett of Tammany Hall) in picking the legislators the leaders were to lead.

What those reforms were intended to do was correct the fundraising abuses by the Republican Party in Nixon’s 1972 campaign. When the law of unintended consequences intruded, those reforms drastically diminished the dominant role the parties and their bosses had in raising money which ended their equally important role in recruiting and slating candidates and in the management of campaigns for those they dubbed and funded.

Five myths we can do without

 

By Bill Kraus


The Lee Dreyfus dictum--never underestimate the peoples’ intelligence or overestimate their information--while true, doesn’t specifically warn against the Mythology Problem Delusion. I suppose it is an offshoot of the Information Problem. If one doesn’t know better, one is susceptible to myths, old wives tales, conspiracy theories, and worse.

Five myths come to mind.

Government can and should be run like a business.

Business works as well as it does in no small measure because it is organized on the totalitarian model. Like a dictatorship. Okay, a benign dictatorship. But nonetheless if the boss likes an idea, that idea is likely to prevail. Government is organized on the democratic model where all the participants have more or less equal power and can use that power to advance their own ideas, adopt the ideas of others, or block any and all ideas. The excellent new movie about and called Lincoln is a basic lesson in how democracy works if, as, and when it works. As a wise mother and political activist puts it, “Getting what you want in politics is accomplished by a combination of threats and bribes, not unlike the techniques employed in raising children.”

The other not insignificant difference between governing and managing is that government is conducted in public. As I told a company CEO onetime who was spouting the government-can-be-run-like-a-business nonsense, “Let me know if you plan to invite the press to your board of directors meetings, and we’ll talk.”

What kind of fools are we?

 

By Bill Kraus

One of Lee Dreyfus’s favorite aphorisms was to never underestimate the people’s intelligence or overestimate their information.

Important point. A strong, transparent, ubiquitous communication system makes a democracy work. It’s important products are an informed citizenry and an accountable aristocracy.

Neither appears to be thriving.

The governing class, even in this communication-rich country, has rarely communicated at what I consider a high level. The least effusive public corporation reports on its activities (thanks to the Securities and Exchange Commission rules), and these resports describe what companies do and how they raise and spend their money much more clearly and completely than governments do.