Between Hell and High Water

“America First”—A Possible Area for Collaboration?

By Mike Koetting December 6, 2022

One of the interesting themes in MAGApublican thought is “America First”. Commentators have identified this as a major belief for those inclined to vote Republican. It is hard, however, to know exactly what this means in the current context. Traditionally, the sentiment has been primarily a foreign policy instinct to keep America away from wars that don’t affect them directly and from treaties that have the risk of getting them involved in such wars.

While the contemporary use includes the traditional sense, it also seems much broader. For sure, it is a thinly veiled protest against diversity. And it is obviously an objection to the outsourcing of jobs. But it is equally obviously a primal scream of anger at “the elite” who have more of a global outlook–which has coincided with their economic outlook improving exponentially better than that of the working class. Never mind that the actual cause-and-effect model is murky.

If “America First” is used in the narrow, historical sense, one can imagine the policy implications. But in the vaguer, more amorphous use, it is not at all clear what an “American First” agenda would look like.

A Nation Divided by Its Divisions

By Mike Koetting November 20, 2022

Democracy had a pretty good election. Not an unbridled victory, but particularly when compared with our worse fears, pretty good.

The connection between real problems and real solutions, however, took its usual pummeling. In fact, I think it was little worse than historically, despite several unalloyed bright spots.

Let’s consider three important issues where governance reality took a beating.

The Most Essential Missing Ingredient in Addressing Climate Issues

By Mike Koetting October 25, 2022

Much of the discourse on environmental issues is at the level of kindergarteners arguing over toys. In reality, these are the most complex problems ever faced by human beings because, as we have painfully learned, everything is connected to everything. And the issues need be addressed at a scale never before contemplated in human history. They are not simply a series of tricky technical problems. The problems are political, psychological, even religious. And every technical problem must be addressed with some consideration of how the alternative solution interacts with all the technical problems around it—literally to the ends of the earth.

Republicans as Working Class Party?

By Mike Koetting October 11, 2022

I generally consider what David Brooks has to say interesting. We share enough basic values that I can imagine a discussion with him, but we disagree enough around the edges that I frequently find his perspective usefully different. But one of the dangers of being interesting is that you occasionally uncork something that is completely off base, even if it has a good size grain of truth to it.

Such was the case when, on the PBS Newshour a couple weeks ago, he started talking about the Republican Party being in transition to a working class party. Seriously?

Worker Shortage or Common Sense Shortage? Or Both?

By Mike Koetting September 28, 2022

Everyone seems to accept that the US is facing a labor shortage. But labor shortage is one of those concepts that seems straightforward until you start to look into it. Turns out the whole thing is—and I’ll bet you’re not surprised—really complicated.

For example, take the issue of trucker drivers. According to the American Trucking Association, America has a shortage of 80,000 drivers with the number that could reach 160,000k by 2030. That is probably a reasonable estimate of the number of truckers who could be hired if suddenly there were people to hire.

My Journey With Steve Chapman Along the Arc of American Journalism

By Mike Koetting September 13, 2022

I moved to Illinois in the mid-70s. I lived in Springfield and worked for, first, the Legislative Budget Office, and then the Executive Budget Office. I always read the Springfield paper—virtually a company newsletter at the time–but also kept loose track of both the Chicago dailies, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times, which both had substantive Statehouse Bureaus, as did UPI and others. Later, I moved to Chicago, then to Boston for a couple of years. When I returned to Chicago in 1985, I became a religious reader of the Tribune. Every morning with my breakfast.

While I was a gone, the Tribune introduced a new columnist, Steve Chapman. I didn’t like him much. Too conservative Republican for my tastes. Still, I periodically read him.

Declining Public School Enrollment

By Mike Koetting August 30, 2022

Schools are now underway for the year, so this is a timely spot for a post on education. While there are many possible topics, I have been specifically thinking about something a little wonkish: declining public school enrollment.

The Decline

A recent New York Times article proclaimed “Plunging Enrollment a ‘Seismic Hit’ to Public Schools”. It went on to state that “America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020.” This did not surprise me. The country’s fertility rate has declined by almost 18% since 1990. In the last 10 years, this decline included Latin and Black populations. Combined with declining immigration rates, dropping enrollments would be expected. But the drop has been uneven. Nationwide, a large portion of the recent sharp decline in public school enrollment is in pre-kindergarten and, to a lesser extent, kindergarten. Some of this is due to declining fertility, but it has been clearly aggravated by specific responses to the Covid pandemic. Aside from this, it seems that the aggregate slide in enrollment is minimal.

When Do We Get Serious About Environmental Issues?

By Mike Koetting August 14, 2022

When I began this blog five years ago, I chose the title “Between Hell and High Water” as a metaphor for the complexity of trying to develop politics that reflected the difficulty of executing policies toward progressive results.

I didn’t plan to make it a literal description of the American climate situation.

Judicial Review and Democracy

By Mike Koetting August 1, 2022

Given the abject rottenness of recent Supreme Court decisions—and visions of more to come–it is reasonable to raise the question of whether the entire model of judicial review is a bad idea.

It is clear there is something peculiar (to use a modest word) to give so much power to a small group of people who are not only un-elected, but in fact may have been appointed by a party that has lost multiple elections since they were appointed or which has repeatedly lost the popular vote or both.

Most other countries have some judicial review, but in virtually none is it as extensive or important as in America. The role of judicial review in America does not—directly—spring from a power granted by the Constitution. Indeed, the power of judicial review specifically stems from a Supreme Court decision, Madison v. Marbury, decided in 1803. Thus, it might correctly be observed that the power of judicial review is something the Supreme Court granted to itself. It would fail a test of strict originalism. The decision in point concerned a purely political issue, that was ultimately side-stepped, but the opinion had far-reaching consequences since it established the principle that the Supreme Court could invalidate an act of Congress.

Notes from the Big Apple

By Mike Koetting July 19, 2022

Last weekend my wife and I took our 10 year old grandson to New York City. It was a great trip, but it left me without time or motivation to write my usual blog. So I thought I would share some thought snippets from the trip.

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Manhattan is kind of a Disneyland in the real world. (In fact, Manhattan is only half the size of Disney World, though quite a bit larger than the original Disneyland.) It isn’t the artificial world of the Disney enterprises. On the contrary. It is as absolutely real world as you can get. But there were fun things to do from morning till night. And many of them were the originals—the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the Empire State Building—that have been borrowed countless times for every commercial purpose imaginable to the human mind. I was compelled to teach the grandkid what “iconic” meant.