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, November 24, 2017

DYSFUNCTIONAL DEPENDENCY

Some time ago, in a posting entitled “The Façade of the Will,” this writer quoted Lawrence Lessig:
There is a feeling today among too many Americans that we might not make it.  Not that the end is near, or that doom is around the corner, but that a distinctly American feeling of inevitability, of greatness – culturally, economically, politically – is gone.  That we have become Britain.  Or Rome.  Or Greece.  A generation ago Ronald Reagan rallied the nation to deny a similar charge:  Jimmy Carter’s worry that our nation had fallen into a state of “malaise.”  I was one of those so rallied.  And I still believe that Reagan was right.  But the feeling I am talking about today is different:  not that we, as a people, have lost anything of our potential, but that we, as a republic, have.[1]
This concern seems very relevant as the nation engages in the most recent debate over taxes.
          One side of the debate over the pending legislation promises lower taxes and the other side states that with the GOP plan taxes are going to go skyward for million of Americans.  This posting will not settle this seemingly contrary arguments, but it will point out a concern associated with the argument:  US politics and US politicians are up for sale and whatever the “donors” want will become the message they will “sell.”
Lessig points out that this is not the first time this charge has been made.  During the last years of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, the commonly referred to “Robber Barons” – the heads of industrial America – were buying off government officials left and right.  Through this corruption they were able to secure legislation (and some would say judicial decisions) to line their pockets with higher profits from their business interests. 
But at the same time, this malfeasance spurred the reform efforts of the Progressive movement.  In turn, along with, in later years, the New Deal, many of the unethical, immoral, and illegal practices were in large measure brought under control.  Perhaps today, a similar movement is called for; at least that is what many commentators, regular citizens, and reform politicians are demanding.
          Is there evidence that this alleged degradation is currently describing the behaviors of business leaders and their politician friends?  Lessig provides evidence that while behaviors from these business people and their business policies might not be so blatant as those of the earlier time, they still are present and still causing many detrimental results. 
 This posting wants to point out one example to illustrate the general point – an example provided by Lessig.  The medical drug companies of the US have used their financial clout – the funding of political campaigns – to influence the drug laws of the nation. 
That influence, it is alleged, is not to bolster the overall health of American citizens.  If it were, perhaps the US would rank higher on indices reflecting the overall health as compared to other countries.  Instead, as the charge goes, it is to bolster the bottom lines of the drug companies. 
They are in the business of selling drugs and a more liberalized policy concerning the production and selling of those drugs – mainly through the abandonment or easing of regulations – can accomplish higher profits.  So, for example, regulations that existed against drug companies advertising directly to the US public have been abandoned. 
Only New Zealand and the US allow such advertising.  Now, one doesn’t go to the doctor to find out what medications he/she should take, but goes pre-“informed” what those drugs should be.  Further, drug companies provide income producing opportunities for doctors – speaking gigs, for example – and then keeps track whether a doctor prescribes those companies’ drugs and to what degree. 
This is subtler than a quid pro quo arrangement (what was common in the Robber Baron days), it is more of a dependency relationship that is set up.  Lessig calls this type of practice setting up a “dependence corruption.”  He claims it is not limited between business people or between business people and professionals, but extends between business people and government officials (more on this in subsequent postings). 
And to that point:
… [W]hen we think of an institution in which key individuals have become distracted by an improper, or conflicting, dependency … [I]t is this pattern that explains precisely that weakens our government.  It is the pattern that explains that corruption without assuming evil or criminal souls at the helm.  It will help us, in other words, [to] understand a pathology that all of us acknowledge (at the level of the institution) without assuming a pathology that few could fairly believe (at the level of the individual).[2]
          Such patterns undermine the people of this nation to seek civic humanism or social capital.  It not only corrupts those so engaged, but it can corrupt the foundations of a republic.
          A more concrete example of what this posting is attempting to point out is illustrated with the institution of scientific research.  One question that is found to be of current importance is whether certain chemical substances, used in the production of goods, is harmful. 
This example somewhat parallels the research that was done to find out whether cigarettes were harmful.  The example here is whether the plastic substance, Bisphenol A (BPA), used in the manufacturing of certain products for babies – like pacifiers – is safe.  Lessig reports on the results of over 160 studies.
First, the studies can be divided between those funded by independent agencies and those funded by the involved industry.  Among those that were independent, they found, in 152 studies, BPA to be harmful (86%), 11 independent studies found it not to be harmful (14%).  In the 13 studies funded by the industry, no studies found it to be harmful (0%) and all of them found it to be not harmful (100%). 
Whether one side of this divide is right or wrong, this writer has no idea – although he does have the logically derived hunch as to the safety of the product.  But his point is not whether BPA is harmful or not, his point has to do with how one views this sense of dependency between the individual scientists and his/her funding source. 
It was pointed out that the focus of the independent studies was the potential hazard the product might introduce or not introduce in the use of the eventual products (like pacifiers); that of the industry studies, on the other hand, was the risk exposure the product posed the producers.  The effect is to undermine the trust one puts on scientific studies. 
One logically reads such results and walks away with the question:  if any of the independent researchers were funded by the industry, would they find opposite results?  Are these scientists corruptly dependent on who pays the bills?  No, there are no satchels of money being handed over, the relationship is subtler.  It takes on a more respectful veneer.
But, upon reflection, the institution of science loses some of the trust the society once collectively placed on it.  When that happens, one can readily see how much more difficult it is to maintain “a social environment of trust and cooperation” generally among the population, when a venerated institution is besmirched.  As stated earlier in this blog, an environment of trust is a central attribute of social capital.
This blog will revisit this concern in the future.



[1] Lawrence Lessig, (2011).  Republic Lost:  How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It (New York, NY:  Twelve, 2011), 1.

[2] Ibid., 17.

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