I live in a country of 312 million, and I don't feel like my voice matters. But I feel like it could matter, and this is how: if power shifted from the federal government to local government.
Right now I could get involved in local politics, but I'd be arguing about water lines and zoning laws—stuff that doesn't matter much to me. So I write and debate about national politics instead because the hot national issues
—healthcare, education, inequality—affect me personally. My finances are affected in a big way by the national healthcare debate, the quality of my son's education will be decided by laws like No Child Left Behind, and that honking Wells Fargo bank by my house—that's there largely because of decisions made at the federal level.
So why would I spend time dealing with local politics, when the issues that hit me at my core are national in scope? National politics matter more.
And yet I'm continually at odds with my inner cynic, who goes on chattering about how blogging about national politics is no more useful than playing video games or watching football.
Touché, cynic.
But I want politics to matter because I believe Aristotle when he wrote, "man is by nature a political animal," and because without a healthy society I have nothing. Seriously, take away society and that's hell.
So I want community, and that's why I want power to shift from the federal government to local government. It's not like I do nothing locally now (I go to the farmer's market! caucuses! Heck, I even keep my library books long so I can support the library with fees!), but picture this:
What if local elections could spell a major difference in healthcare? What if local elections could disband the requirements of No Child Left Behind? What if local politicians could implement a steep tax on banks that were too big to fail, or give a tax break to community banks?
Oh, that's idealistic, hyperbolic, and wonky. I don't mean to pretend that life would be cake if there were more at stake in local debates, but I believe that government would be healthier if more of it happened at a local level.
Here's why people—myself included—are angry at federal government and big business: 1% of the population really does have the power. Big government and big business are in cahootz. Really, they are. And concentrated power makes for unhealthy societies.
Giving more power to local governments can safeguard against concentrated power. You might say, though, that cronyism and money corrupts local politics as well as national politics, and you'd be right. Plus, the dearth of local journalists makes it harder for communities to know when local politicians sour over. But what better way to bring back local journalism than to provide local journalists with stories that matter more? If a local election affected the core of my life I'd frequent my local news website—or maybe even subscribe (is that what they call it?) to the local paper.
This is why, as laughable as it can sometimes seem to others, I endorse Ron Paul. No one speaks about the tenth amendment as much as he does, and—more importantly—no one means it like he does. He wants an America with a limited federal government, limited in ways that allow states to act how they will. In my mind, that's the very best hope for community.
Further reading:
Really.
6 comments:
I agree with the overall sentiment here, but I think you're selling a lot of things sort, especially local government. There were a lot of local policies that were at play when they built that wells fargo building, after all.
More broadly, local governments can do a ton with development, which impacts property values, which impacts quality of schools, general prosperity in a region, etc. In provo, for example, I'd say the situation today is a night and day difference from when I arrived, and that's largely due to local government. And I'd argue that the changes have at least as big an impact on my life as national things.
Education is a good example, I think. If national policies were the most important thing, it seems like we'd see a more level playing field across the whole country. But instead, local communities have managed to create amazing school districts (where I grew up, for example), as well as terrible districts (Provo, for example).
Ultimately, the difference between Provo and, say, Boulder CO, is almost entirely the result of local and state governments. And the difference is HUGE.
I also think you're selling local news short (though I'm biased, of course.) You concede you don't really read it, but seem to think that it isn't surviving or doing what it should (exposing corruption, for example). I would argue that local journalism does that very thing all the time.
Great points, Jim, and well expressed. I need to work through these ideas more fully, especially on education and especially since the most daunting and ugliest building in Provo is owned by a state-wide bank (Zions).
I agree that local journalism takes on local corruption, and that it performs a useful service. My point is that if there were more at stake in local government then people might worry that corruption would skyrocket because local journalism is going away (I'm thinking of my hometown's newspaper, The Springville Herald, which folded). I meant that if more were at stake then we'd see a greater demand for local journalists.
I wonder if part of what makes my perspective of local government skewed is that I don't keep up on local news and therefore don't see the impact local government has on my life and therefore don't keep up on local news. It's a downward spiral that I should work on fixing.
Jon, we've got a paper again: http://springvilleindependentnews.com/. We get our copy every Thursday just like the old days.
I've been thinking about all of the pressures that push and pull us to bond together into larger and larger entities: neighborhood, town, county, multi-county (in our case tri-county Mountainlands), state, region, nation.
A few, for good or bad:
--Economies of scale
--Standardization, particularly to avoid reinventing the wheel
--Population growth
--Economic development
--More efficient and (hopefully) equitable sharing of natural resources, especially water.
--Inter-area issues presented by things like commerce, air pollution, transportation, etc.
--Appealing to higher and higher bodies for justice/protection of rights/and just plain protection
--High levels of mobility (and the sense that America should "feel like" America regardless of what state or town we live in).
--Achieving at least minimal social stability through resource redistribution at community, state and federal level, driven by a desire to avoid devolving utterly into communities with only haves and communities with only have-nots. Even at a global level with foreign aid.
Also, I think it's interesting that where I grew up in Mass. we have smaller school districts (usually a town, and once in a while a tiny town will piggyback on a neighbor), participatory town government (town hall meetings with citizens voting on issues rather than a city council), etc. On the flip side, Mass. may care a lot more what its neighboring states are doing because they all share a much smaller space than Utah, including coastline. A person who works in Boston may well live in New Hampshire, for example, and have vested interests in both states.
"It's a downward spiral that I should work on fixing."
I think that is an interesting point, because realistically nobody tends to actually do this (I know I dont). I think people need real incentives to change, and there obviously aren't many incentives now because so few people pay attention to local communities.
It makes me wonder if there is some institutional or codified way to raise the stakes on local issues.
I'll comment on two subjects that you argue justify your focus on federal government.
Wells Fargo: Jim/Blog correctly points out that allowing the building itself is a local decision -- one that as a city planning major I think you should take an interest in. But I assume you're really referring to Wells Fargo as a bank that operates nationally. But that really wasn't a federal decision -- or at least not an exclusively federal one. When I was your age, banks couldn’t operate across state lines. We had “national” banks, but that just meant the bank was chartered by the federal instead of a state government. The choice to allow interstate branching was a state choice, not a federal one. It started with South Dakota and Delaware allowing out-of-state bank holding companies to come in and open single-purpose ‘credit card banks.” To allow their banks to compete, other states opened their borders, and now we have banks – like Wells Fargo – that operate pretty much everywhere. My point: states chose how protectionist to be; someone focusing solely on federal bank regulation might well have missed the change until it was perhaps irreversible.
“No Child Left Behind” (NCLB): The federal government does not tell local school districts what to do. That was true before NCLB was passed (by Republicans), and it is true today. What the federal government can do is say, “School district, if you want our money, you have to play by our rules.” But it is the school district’s choice whether to take the money.
Are you really concerned about your son’s education and banking? Then you can’t simply focus solely on federal-level regulation. And you, as an individual can have a much greater impact in the school district or state level.
(This coming, of course, from your uncle whose letter to the editor in the local paper this week was about sidewalks. Yes, I really do care about sidewalks and water lines and zoning and ….)
Very interesting about the progressive build up of banks, Jim. I was only thinking about very recent history (derivatives and the bailout), but I should learn more about how conglomerate banks began.
Regarding NCLB, I'd like to see the federal government out of the equation: have the money just go straight from the citizen to the state, rather than from the citizen to the federal government then (maybe, if the school says yes) to the state.
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