Gravitas: A Voice for Civics : 7/26/15

A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...

While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Friday, July 31, 2015

DOUBLING DOWN

In a previous posting, I gave out some advice; it was: don’t give any donations to a charitable or non-profit organization unless that organization has opened up its books. My main concern in that posting was the history of secrecy surrounding the workings of the Vatican Bank and all the questionable dealings that secrecy enabled on the part of Roman Catholic Church officials. Apparently, US non-profits do, by law, have to open up their financial statements. More specifically, they have to submit Form 990 to the IRS and these forms are not confidential. On that form, they have to divulge quite a bit of information. They have to give their tax related finances, salaries of their key officials, and the names of key employees. But, according to an article about the Koch brothers, The New York Times reports that non-profits do not have to report who their contributors are.[1] These sources of information are far from being completely open and forthcoming. This has become an issue with donors to the Clinton Initiative, for example, and questions about potential influence such donors might have on Hillary Clinton, a current presidential candidate, have been discussed. Of course, this type of issue becomes important in a democracy: how much is the voice of the people compromised when a relatively few can, by various means, buy public policy? One such means can very well be donations to non-profit organizations. Other nefarious aims can include the use of non-profit donations to instigate or hide illegal activities such as laundering money. Again, such activities harm the quality of a democracy and the spirit of a federalist ethos.

So again, let me advise: if you have the time – it wouldn’t take many of you – only give to non-profit organizations and charities that are completely transparent in their dealings and records. There’s enough public secrecy plaguing our public discourse and interaction. Here is one area in which we can affect how business is being done. And encouraging a disposition to be so proactive can begin by informing civics students of the problem and even assigning investigative projects that might look into local non-profits that operate in the communities where they reside.

[1] Confessore, N. (2015). Koch brothers brave spotlight to alter image. The New York Times, July 31, pp. 1A & 17A.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

SOMETHING SMELLS IN THE TRUNK

There are certain things we hear repeatedly told about certain states in the union. For instance, we hear of nasty New Jerseyans exemplified by their governor or that Illinois governors eventually land up in prison or stubborn Missourians need to be shown something before believing it or – and this has even gotten a special recurring segment on a TV show – the dumb things that happen in Florida putting the duh in “Floriduh.”[1] But how about the following type of state story?

Suppose we hear in the news what has become a typical story from the state of Ohio: in a northern town of that state, two men lured the mayor to a meeting for the purpose of shooting him because they wanted to keep secret years of plundering the town’s treasury with the mayor’s assistance. After the mayor was shot, he was crammed into the trunk of his car. Upon capture and adjudication of the two killers, they were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, but were able to draw a partial paycheck from a job they were not really needed to perform since they were employed in a bloated workplace. This story, let me continue, is situated amid a backdrop of repeated incidents of scams that Ohioans have perpetrated for decades, often involving state officials.

For example, the state is notorious for regular occurrences of tax fraud and common corruptions which have drained state revenues – which, by the way – state officials had been able to keep hidden from bond markets until the financial crisis hit in 2009. At that point, the facts hit the fan and now cheap loan dollars are hard for the state officials to find – as in non-existent – resulting in state coffers facing $430 billion in debts. As a consequence, the state is facing enforced austerity measures: severe cuts in government subsidy programs, large layoffs in government sponsored businesses and government programs, and drastic cuts and reforms in the state’s overly generous pension program. In return for these measures, the Federal Reserve will extend the state a $146 billion bailout to meet its pending interest payment obligations and put the state on track to eventually work itself out of yearly deficits and overall debt in which it has placed itself. And suppose further that there is talk of pushing Ohio out of the union and having it face its own fate. Okay, okay; it’s not Ohio and the United States union, but Greece and the European Union. And it’s not the Federal Reserve, but what is called the troika: the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank.[2] If it were Ohio, the emission option would be off the table unless a constitutional amendment would be ratified to expunge such a renegade state as depicted above. But then again, if Greece belonged to a union as that formed by the US Constitution, I believe things would not have been allowed to get so out of hand.

And maybe something can be said about what could be a false expectation; I don’t know. That is, can we expect a federation to be erected and maintained across national entities, at least of the type hoped for by the establishment of a European union? What cultural prerequisites have to be in place in order to build a more unified economic zone as that contemplated by the Europeans embarking on their Euro Zone project? These are federalist questions that civics instruction should look at in order to appreciate how special our national union is and how it should not be taken for granted. Our history has demonstrated how fragile this bonded existence can be. What can we learn from Greece and its current travails?

Why Ohio? It is roughly comparable in population to Greece each having just over 11 million people. And by the way, before you think I somehow dislike Greece, I admire its life expectancy rate: over 80 years. They’re doing some things right.

[1] Remember, I’m from Florida.

[2] The facts of this story are derived from a book review: Hammer, J. (2015). Spartan Measures. The New York Times, Book Review section, July 5, p. 19. The book reviewed is The Full Catastrophe: Travels among the New Greek Ruins by James Angelos.