Virginia Democrats: you’re not helping

            When the Democrats expanded their majority to 22 seats in the 40-member Senate in early January, progressives breathed a sigh of relief.  After eight years of moderate Democratic governors, a left-of-center state Senate would be the only bulwark against our new conservative executive and a broad GOP majority in the House of Delegates, right?

            Well…no.

            Yesterday, the chamber passed three bills—with five Democrats voting in the affirmative—that would forbid the government from requiring any Virginian to purchase health insurance.  Clearly, this was aimed at the individual mandate component of the federal healthcare reform bill, which is predicated on the theory that in order for insurance premiums to be kept low, everyone—young, old, healthy, ill—needs to buy into the system to smooth consumption of healthcare.

            Now, in the event that Congress does pass the bill with this mandate intact, it will actually invalidate Virginia’s law under a little-used, obscure provision of the Constitution known as the supremacy clause.  So, since the bill is a non-starter (it would be nullified if healthcare passes, it need not be invoked if healthcare fails), one can only assume that this was a symbolic gesture by the legislature.  Republicans want to reaffirm their Tea Party, states’ rights credentials; Democrats in swing districts fear they might get blamed for action at the federal level; and conservatives of both parties want to send a message to the six Virginia Democrats in Congress who voted for healthcare reform.

            As freshman Rep. Gerry Connolly said, these guys aren’t “mak[ing] it easier.”  No, they aren’t.  And to paraphrase Vice President Biden, I’m not so sure what a blessing 22 votes is.  If the General Assembly wants to increase access to healthcare for Virginians on their own terms, they should do so proactively through regulatory reforms, subsidies, and expansion of government safety-net programs.  Wasting time on this type of posturing—when done by either party at all levels of government—is just silly self-absorption.

Michelle Rhee: unpopular, but right

            D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is experiencing what might be called the “reverse Obama effect”—city residents dislike her personally but approve of her policies.  The number of parents who label violence in schools, a lack of quality teachers, and the unavailability of instructional materials as a major problem has decreased since Rhee was appointed by Mayor Adrian Fenty in 2007.  By President Obama’s standards, her preferences for turning around a troubled school system mirror his: she believes in expanding access to charter schools, implementing teacher pay-for-performance, and allowing principals more discretion to hire and fire instructors.

            But her lack of public relations skills has driven unfavorable opinion about her performance.  Like the mayor who appointed her, she is young and highly motivated, but her conduct has been sloppy and she prefers to step on the toes of others if it means reaching her goal.  Rhee has created a rhetorical enemy in order to claim that what she does is in the interest of the children, while the others are purely self-interested.  That enemy is ineffective teachers, stubborn union bosses, D.C. Council members who feel slighted at her independence, and the status quo in general.

            One of her initial proposals—which has since stalled in negotiations with the Washington Teachers Union—to raise teacher salaries across the board while attempting to increase the weight given to standardized test scores in instructor evaluations was demagogued as discriminatory based on race and age.  Since the other component of her plan was to eliminate tenure if teachers chose to pursue the highest pay increases, older, black teachers viewed this as an attempt to purge them from the school system.  More recent controversies involving Rhee include last fall’s “reduction in force” of 266 teachers—for which she was blamed, but which ultimately was forced upon her through a budget reduction by the Council.  Then, this month, she made slanderous comments to a magazine that the fired teachers had molested or hit children, when in reality fewer than ten of those met that description.

            My question to Rhee’s opponents is: Do hurt feelings and brusque rhetoric matter more than safe environments for learning and teachers who pass muster?  Rhee is of the philosophy that no matter what a child’s socioeconomic background—no matter what happens at home—when he or she enters a classroom, a great teacher will be able to motivate him or her to achieve in ways that repudiate the “soft bigotry of low expectations” engendered by society.  Rhee has introduced a vague notion of competition into the classroom; but rather than teachers or schools that compete against each other, she is asking teachers to compete against their own expectations for themselves and for their students.

            Maybe the anger comes from the fact that Rhee is asking a lot of her teachers.  She wants instructors to focus on raising test scores, even though many of them are forced to be social workers, grief counselors, and disciplinarians to kids whose after-school job may involve selling drugs or who may not even have a home to return to once the school day ends.  If that is the case, the anger is misplaced: a parent’s number one job is to provide for his child and to ensure that he or she has at least as bright a future as the parent did.  And the D.C. Council must promote the welfare of all city residents, not simply the affluent ones.

            At the end of the day, though, the person who can best sell Rhee to the city is not Fenty, nor Rhee herself, but President Obama.  With his visible involvement in his daughters’ education, his background as a community organizer, and his belief in both strong teachers and strong parents, he ought to advocate the adoption of his policy preferences first and foremost in his new city of residence and give hope to reformers like Rhee nationwide.

Metro needs help from everyone to survive

         It’s awfully hard to continue to do the right thing when it becomes too expensive, too inconvenient, and too unenjoyable.  Ever since the fatal wreck in June of last year, Metro’s deficiencies have become more intensely scrutinized: breakdowns, overcrowding, misinformation, and lax safety standards have stigmatized the rail and bus system that transports over half of D.C.-area federal employees to work and which has become the battleground of local jurisdictions.

            On Thursday, the Metro board voted to increase fares by ten cents for all trips, among other measures, to close a $40 million gap that will last until June.  After that, the hole grows to $189 million, meaning more fare increases and service cuts are on the way.  Now, importantly, the current increases are not intended to increase the quality of service to riders; they will only prevent further service degradation.  (Metro blames the decrease in revenue on a ridership decline, which seems somewhat incongruous to me given the recession-proof federal ridership base.)

            The point is this: Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia must give Metro more money to close its deficit without cutting service or raising fares.  The best way to do this is to raise the gas tax.   It’s only fair: all the people who drive to work by themselves would face interminable traffic if everyone who rode on Metro suddenly took to their cars.  Drivers have an incentive in keeping Metro riders on the trains and buses.  The more cars there are on the road, the more maintenance will need to be performed, meaning more money will have to be shoveled into the road budget at the expense of public transit.  That will lead to further mass transit service cuts and fare increases, and the cycle of disuse will continue.

            It’s not as if only the immediate jurisdictions surrounding D.C. have a stake in Metro’s wellbeing, either.  Richmond and Annapolis need the wealthy, highly-educated, highly-employed Southern Maryland and Northern Virginia suburbanites to fuel the state economies.  If southwestern Virginians want to grab a disproportionate amount of the commonwealth’s tax dollars for their school system, Northern Virginians ought to be first in line for transit and road monies.  (Ideally, transportation and education would not be in competition for funding, since each is a vital priority; but Fairfax County could more easily raise taxes or adjust spending to make up for an education shortfall than if VDOT unilaterally stops funding projects.)

         Ultimately, the largest burden should fall on the car users who have chosen to live far away from transit and from their places of work—as well as on the suburban counties who zoned the acres of “dumb growth”—and they should be asked to pony up this time.  We can’t subtract lanes on the interstate like Metro can remove train cars and buses from service.  So if Metro continues to ask its patrons to sacrifice for the region, wealthier riders will simply hop in their cars, exacerbating the nation’s second-worst traffic situation.  Then, low-income riders will still be stuck with higher fares, crowded transit, and less frequent trains and buses.  And none of this will help address Metro’s need for capital funds to repair crumbling infrastructure and upgrade safety to prevent another catastrophic collision.

            Reorganizing the way we do public transit in the D.C. area is necessary: we should reward, not penalize those who ride public transit.  We should discourage, not enable the use of single-occupant vehicles in rush hour.  And, yes, we should demand the utmost in accountability and sound management from everyone involved in the governance of Metro.

State of our union: angry

            State of the Union speeches are more spectacle than substance.  Although Woodrow Wilson almost a century ago revived the practice—abandoned by Thomas Jefferson—of going into Congress to personally deliver his remarks, the speech is barely news enough to pass through one 24-hour cycle.  Ever since Lyndon Johnson moved the speech from the middle of the day to the evening, it has a theatrical atmosphere, with partisan passive aggression, anecdotes of apple-pie-and-baseball American success stories, assertions that we will continue to promote democracy abroad, and yes, the occasional unscripted scandal (the “You Lie” moment).

            Even though Obama’s address will be forgotten by this time next week, it really has a simple theme that every member of Congress should hear often from his or her constituents: I’m angry.  Are you angry, too?  The president wasn’t referring to the Town Hall, Tea Party, “death panel”-style anger that is all bluster and little substance.  He was angry at how America is surrendering international superiority on job creation and clean energy to China and India.  He was angry at how easily the Democrats have rolled over to entrenched special interests on key reform issues.  He was angry at the Supreme Court for allowing political candidates to become even more manipulable by businesses than they are now.  He was angry at how Big Banks have prospered on the dime of Little Americans.

            And above all, he was angry at “a Washington where every day is Election Day. We can’t wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side—a belief that if you lose, I win.”

            There is a reason why large financial institutions are doing just fine nowadays and why we don’t yet have healthcare reform or why the obligation to reduce our share of carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system hasn’t come to fruition: corporations have too much invested in the status quo to allow for a change in business as usual.  Change for corporations brings instability, and that threatens profits.  Members of Congress from both parties are saddled by the weight of the corporate status quo whenever they attempt to fulfill their constitutionally-mandated duty to promote the general welfare for all.

            But let’s not give lobbyists all the credit for dooming the president’s proposals to retool our energy sector in a competitive, sustainable way or expand the number of people who have access to quality medical care.  Congress also has a mind of its own in creating problems every now and again.  Case in point: the Senate’s recent vote against establishing a commission to present recommendations for tax increases and cuts to entitlement programs to control budget deficits.  (Congress would have only voted yes or no on these recommendations.)  This was unpalatable to 46 senators because it would remove much of their power to fund pet programs and would probably raise taxes, something anathema to any Republican worth his credentials.  Asking Congress to reduce their spending is much like asking executives on Wall Street to refrain from awarding themselves ostentatious bonuses.  Why would they want to when they think they are doing their jobs so well…and when everyone else is doing it?

            Americans had high expectations for the president last year, and his failure to steamroll through a progressive agenda has left his supporters disillusioned and his detractors energized.  Perhaps he naively thought that chiding Congress to live up to similarly lofty hopes would make him seem like the adult in the room.  But the president is far from a unitary executive, and the price he has paid for letting Congress give detail to his policy priorities (i.e. what a once-great legislative body used to do for many years, until recently) may continue.  We have met the enemy, and its one weakness must be open, honest discussion, not money and grandstanding.

Democrats return to their comfort zone: losing elections

            Tonight, the good people of Massachusetts elected an individual to fill the seat of longtime Senate Lion Edward Kennedy.  While the state is heavily progressive, the man they chose was a Republican who campaigned against most of President Obama’s signature proposals, most prominently healthcare reform.  The Democratic candidate, Attorney General Martha Coakley, ran her campaign as best she could, but in the end she just could not overcome the conservative momentum.  I commend her for trying her best, and I will not hold against her what, in the end, should be only a minor glitch in the policymaking process going forward.

            I’m kidding.  It was a pretty massive f*ck-up, actually.  And she should be ashamed.

            To be fair, she is not the only one who gave less than one hundred percent on the campaign trail and acted arrogantly about a seat that supposedly was “safe Democratic” and an “inheritance” to the party.  (Other people to blame: Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine.  Having lost the only three statewide campaigns since 2008 for his party, apparently being a mediocre governor just wasn’t an optimal use of his skill set.)  But when you are The Candidate, you have to take the credit and the blame for your campaign.

            Similarly, Republican state senator Scott Brown deserves credit for his vigorous shaking-hands-and-kissing-babies trailblazing across the state.  Everyone laments how partisan and polarized our society has become, yet when people actually disregard party labels and vote for the person they think is most deserving of the office, the pundits are in disbelief.

            While it was important for the Democrats to have a supermajority, we cannot forget that they still have a…let me double-check this…MAJORITY.  Only in the United States Senate can the Democrats have a 59-41 edge and still not be able to pass anything consequential.  It would be pitiful if the effort to give millions of Americans health insurance and prevent predation by insurance corporations were to go unrealized, but if it doesn’t happen in the next few months, it may never happen at all.