1. Not Seeing the Fruits of Their Labor
Benefits of a Growing Economy Not Being Felt By All Granite Staters
by New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, nhfpi.org, December 1, 2015
The Concord Monitor recently highlighted an analysis by Headlight Data exploring wage trends across the fifty states over the last decade. That analysis, in turn, found that wage growth in New Hampshire was among the least equal in the nation between 2005 and 2014. As troubling as that finding may be, an examination of Census Bureau data since 1979 suggests that such disparate growth is simply the continuation of a much longer term trend.
Using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics[i], Headlight’s analysis shows that the 25th percentile wage in New Hampshire was $25,937 in 2005, but that, by 2014, it had dropped to $24,230, a decline of 6.2 percent after adjusting for inflation.[ii] Over the same period, the 75th percentile wage in New Hampshire rose, from $54,746 in 2005 to $56,800 in 2014, a 3.8 percent inflation-adjusted increase.
In other words, New Hampshire’s low-wage earners and high-wage earners – under Headlight’s classification – saw a 10 percentage point differential in the growth of their wages over the last decade. As the table at right indicates, by Headlight’s calculations, only two states – Maryland and Rhode Island – saw a larger gap in wage growth between low-wage and high-wage workers during that time frame. In just one state – North Dakota – did low-wage workers see their wages rise more rapidly than high-wage workers between 2005 and 2014.
While Headlight’s analysis may offer some insight into the health of states’ economies, it does suffer at least one shortcoming. For example, under Headlight’s calculations, Idaho and Michigan are scored as states with very little wage inequality. Yet, the reason these two states rank so well is that wages at the bottom have simply fallen more rapidly than those closer to the top, which should not be seen as a positive outcome. Indeed, the bottom quarter of wage earners in Michigan experienced an 11.4 percent decline in their real wages, the poorest performance among all states.
Even with these limitations, the data for New Hampshire offer reason for concern. The 6.2 percent decline for the 25th percentile wage was the ninth worst among the states, whereas the 3.8 percent rise for the 75th percentile wage ranked in the middle of the pack.
Furthermore, this trend of uneven wage growth has persisted for some time, as the graph below illustrates. The data presented are based on the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of US Census Bureau data and show New Hampshire hourly wage rates, adjusted for inflation, by various percentiles (20th, 50th or 
median, and 80th) between 1979 and 2014. It demonstrates that much of the gains the New Hampshire economy has generated has flowed to the top of the wage distribution. For instance, since 1990, the 80th percentile hourly wage in New Hampshire has risen by $3.64 — or 13 percent — from $27.76 to $31.40. Meanwhile, the median wage has only increased by $0.61, a gain of just 3.5 percent. The 20th percentile wage shrunk 5 percent – from $11.76 to $11.17 – over this period.
median, and 80th) between 1979 and 2014. It demonstrates that much of the gains the New Hampshire economy has generated has flowed to the top of the wage distribution. For instance, since 1990, the 80th percentile hourly wage in New Hampshire has risen by $3.64 — or 13 percent — from $27.76 to $31.40. Meanwhile, the median wage has only increased by $0.61, a gain of just 3.5 percent. The 20th percentile wage shrunk 5 percent – from $11.76 to $11.17 – over this period.
As New Hampshire’s economy continues to expand, the central task before policymakers will be to begin to reverse these trends and to ensure that working families share more evenly in the prosperity they help to create.
2. Spending Proposals for Substance Abuse
Drug abuse panel mulls millions for enforcement, monitoring
by Rik Stevens, vnews.com, December 1, 2015
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire would raid some dedicated funds to spend more than $3.5 million beefing up law enforcement and upgrading the state's prescription drug monitoring program as part of an effort to combat the growing heroin abuse problem.
At a hearing Monday, the finance division of the legislative Substance Abuse Task Force heard proposals to spend $2.25 million to add police officers to the streets. The panel also considered whether to spend another $1.2 million to buy 27 new police cruisers.
On another front, the state may spend $100,000 to make its prescription drug monitoring program mandatory. The money would be spent to upgrade the computer system to handle an anticipated increase in queries.
Heroin and opiate overdoses have killed more than 300 people in New Hampshire this year.
3. More Business Tax Cuts?
TAX EXEMPTION FOR NEW BUSINESSES?
by LFDA Highlights, lfda.org, December 1, 2015
Several legislators are sponsoring 2016 bills that would exempt new businesses from the business profits tax and the business enterprise tax.
Rep. Jim McConnell is the primary sponsor of HB 1254, which would create a fifteen year tax exemption for manufacturing businesses that start up or relocate to Coos, Grafton, Carroll, Sullivan, or Cheshire county.
HB 1258, sponsored by Rep. Benjamin Baroody and Rep. Linda DiSilvestro, would provide a three year tax exemption for new businesses with at least four employees. The businesses would need to show a hiring preference for New Hampshire residents and partner with local colleges to offer internships.
Rep. Eric Estevez is the primary sponsor of a similar bill, but the text of that bill is not yet public.
The Department of Revenue Administration states there is no way to estimate how many new businesses would start in New Hampshire in response to these tax exemptions, but the Department states the bills would certainly lower state revenue.
Supporters of business tax cuts generally argue that tax cuts and exemptions will increase state revenue by increasing economic activity in the Granite State overall.
4. Free-Stater Attempt to Amend the State Constitution
Rindge state rep wants to amend NH constitution
by Melanie Pienda, sentinelsource.com, November 30, 2015
A state representative from Rindge wants to amend the N.H. constitution to allow local governments to enact laws the state and federal governments could not override.
Proponents of the N.H. Community Rights Amendment, proposed by Rep. Susan Emerson, R-Rindge, argue the amendment would not create new law. Instead, they say, it would protect residents and the environment at the local level.
“The amendment is needed because when it comes to protecting the inalienable rights of citizens in our local communities, neither they nor their local governments should be told they cannot enact local laws to do just that,” Emerson said in a news release from the N.H. Community Rights Network.
Emerson, at a Maryland hospital for a broken hip, was unavailable for further comment.
Her proposed amendment comes at the urging of the community rights network, which describes itself as a group of Granite Staters who advocate for expanding residents’ rights to “realize sustainability on a community scale and then expand that protection outward to the state level.”
Michelle Sanborn, coordinator for the network, said the amendment pushes against a notion that’s becoming commonplace — that corporations’ rights supersede the rights of average citizens.
While saying no one project was the impetus for the amendment, Sanborn cited several as examples: the proposed Northern Pass transmission line, plans for the Northeast Energy Direct pipeline, and the Spruce Ridge industrial wind project, which have tried to get footing in the state.
She also noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, which gave corporations the ability to spend unlimited money on candidates for elected office, treating their free-speech rights as the same as human beings’ rights.
Sanborn said the amendment would put power back in the hands of the people, but not absolute power. The amendment, she said, attempts to guard against potential abuses by limiting the kinds of laws local governments can enact.
To do that, the proposed amendment includes language prohibiting towns and cities from making laws that would restrict the fundamental rights of “natural persons, their local communities, or nature.”
“Natural persons” refers “specifically to human beings, not corporations, or any other business entity claiming to be people,” Sanborn said.
It further prohibits laws that would weaken protections for “natural persons, their local communities, or nature” that are already provided by state, federal or international law.
The route to an amendment
There are two ways the N.H. constitution can be amended.
The Legislature can refer an amendment to a ballot vote by N.H. residents, if it is approved by a 60 percent vote in the House and in the Senate. It can also be amended by calling a constitutional convention.
Via ballot, a proposed amendment must get a two-thirds majority among N.H. voters to become part of the state’s constitution.
The question of whether to have a constitutional convention can be put on the ballot through a simple majority vote in both houses of the N.H. Legislature. It also goes on the ballot automatically every 10 years, and must get majority support from voters to pass.
If it does pass, delegates to the constitutional convention can propose amendments by a 60 percent vote, but it takes a two-thirds super-majority of N.H. voters to adopt them.
“It’s not uncommon to propose (amendments),” said Andrew E. Smith, associate professor of practice in political science and director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. “It’s very uncommon that they make it through the House and Senate because it requires a three-fifths vote of both houses. Once they get to ratification stage it requires a two-thirds vote of the electorate. So there are very, very steep hurdles.”
In 2012, an amendment to ban an income tax garnered 57 percent of the vote, but failed because it wasn’t a two-thirds majority, Smith said.
But in 2006, two amendments passed — one that curbed the use of eminent domain and another that changed the way House districts are drawn.
Smith predicted Emerson’s amendment will have a tough time getting passed, primarily because he doesn’t think it will be able to make the three-fifths vote in the Legislature.
Moreover, it’s unenforceable, Smith said, beginning with the idea that local law could trump international law.
“I’m not an international lawyer, but international law only applies in the U.S. if we were a signatory to a treaty that created it,” Smith said. “Then, national law — a treaty becomes U.S. law — supersedes state or local law.”
The reason for that is, according to the U.S. Constitution, federal law automatically supplants all local laws, said Frank S. Cohen, assistant professor of political science at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge. This is set up in both the Sixth Amendment — the Supremacy Clause — which establishes that the federal law is the supreme law of the land, and the 14th Amendment, which says no government below the federal government can preempt the rights established in the constitution.
“The amendment is ridiculously worded,” Cohen said. “It’s unenforceable.”
The Community Rights Network, however, argues that the right of local community self-government can be found in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and in the principles of the N.H. Constitution.
5. Will Ayotte Again Vote to Take Away Health Care?
Will Kelly Ayotte Yet Again Vote To Defund Planned Parenthood and Repeal Health Coverage For 40,000 Granite Staters By Supporting Mitch McConnell’s Plan?
by Mmiller, nhdp.org, December 1, 2015
Ayotte Already Known As One Of McConnell’s “Closest Allies”
In Midst of Substance Abuse Crisis, McConnell Plan Would Hurt Access To Treatment by Ending Medicaid Expansion
Concord, N.H. – Last night, Mitch McConnell presented his plan to Senate Republicans to end health coverage for 40,000 Granite Staters provided by Medicaid Expansion while also defunding Planned Parenthood. Now the only question is whether Kelly Ayotte, one of McConnell’s “closest allies,” will vote yet again with her corporate special interest backers and her party’s far-right leadership against New Hampshire families or continue her effort to rewrite her real Washington record to save her political career.
Since going to Washington, Ayotte has voted four times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would also repeal New Hampshire’s successful, bipartisan Medicaid expansion plan that now covers tens of thousands of hard-working Granite Staters. Medicaid expansion includes coverage for substance abuse, making the program one of the most important pieces of the battle against heroin. And Ayotte has not only voted three times to defund Planned Parenthood, but she has also voted to eliminate funding for thousands of family planning centers across the country.
“From voting repeatedly to repeal health coverage for tens of thousands of Granite Staters to voting over and over to defund Planned Parenthood, Kelly Ayotte has consistently sided with her corporate special interest backers like the Koch Brothers and her party’s far-right leadership against New Hampshire families,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley. “Whether Ayotte votes yet again to repeal health coverage and hurt access to women’s health care or continues trying to mislead voters and rewrite history, the truth about Ayotte’s real Washington record will be perfectly clear to New Hampshire voters next November.”
For more on Kelly Ayotte’s real Washington record, visit AyotteFactCheck.com.
AND NATIONALLY
6. So Much for The Union Leader's "Due Diligence"
You won't believe why N.H.'s top paper endorsed Christie
by Tom Moran, nj.com, November 30, 2015
If you haven't read the fulsome endorsement of Gov. Chris Christie from New Hampshire's most influential paper, take a minute. This could be important.
Know two things about this endorsement from the Manchester Union-Leader.
One is that it could put Christie on the map. This paper's endorsements result in an 11 point bump for the winner, on average. If history holds, that means Christie is now a contender in New Hampshire.
The second is this: The paper knows almost nothing about his record as governor.
That's harsh, I know. But I just got off the phone with the Union-Leader's editorial page editor, a very nice guy by the name of Grant Bosse.
The paper has been paying close attention to Christie's speeches in New Hampshire, and his visit to the editorial board. And that's a dangerous game when it comes to a slick character like our governor.
Take Bridgegate. The editorial made no mention of it. "It has nothing to do with the governor," Bosse says.
It's possible Christie didn't know about the lane closures or the cover-up. But this is a governor whose cabinet members don't go to the bathroom without his permission. At a minimum, these were his senior appointees.
How about pension reform? The board in Manchester did not know that Christie broke his core promise on that by skipping pension payments. "I don't know if we went into the weeds on pension reform," Bosse said.
The editorial said he "dealt admirably" with Sandy. That would come as a shock to the actual victims, 60 percent of whom say they are dissatisfied with the state's response.
On jobs, the paper saw no reason to check Christie's dismal record. "Politicians don't create jobs, so we didn't want to give that any credibility," Bosse said.
How about the nine credit downgrades on Christie's watch as governor?
"That largely stems from the fact that while he's been successful holding back tax increases, he hasn't been as successful in restraining spending. Credit agencies like taxes. They don't reward states for fiscal discipline."
Gov. Chris Christie won the endorsement from the New Hampshire Union Leader, the state's biggest newspaper and an influential voice in presidential politics for the early-voting state
Of course, Christie has line-item veto, so he can cut any money from the budget he wants. Turns out it's not as easy as they make it sound on the campaign trail.
And ratings agencies, for the record, don't care if government is big or small. Their ratings reflect the risk that bondholders won't get paid back. New Jersey has the second lowest rating in the country, and it's dropped six times on Christie's watch.
You get the idea. I hate to second-guess a fellow editorial board. But this one is national news, and the paper's publisher has been giving interviews all over the country. So they are in the game now, not just in the audience.
And this editorial confirms my worse fears about this presidential race. It's all about performance, not substance. What else could explain the fact that nearly two-thirds of Republican voters say their first choice is Donald Trump, Ben Carson, or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz?
Christie is not even paying attention to New Jersey these days, despite the bad shape we're in. Legislators and business leaders can't get their calls returned.
He's focusing on his performance. And the frightening fact is that in American politics today, that's a sensible choice.
7. The Blame Game
How Delusional Nostalgia Is Killing the White Working Class
by Kali Holloway, alternet.org, November 23, 2015
It is always a good idea to be wary of those who wistfully long for the “good old days,” who yearn for “simpler times,” who traffic in whitewashed nostalgia. In America, that describes a sizeable portion of our population.
A new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute finds there are a few things you can count on about those who believe America’s best days are behind us. They are overwhelmingly white, and if you dig a bit deeper and examine the socioeconomics, often working class. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they stubbornly believe white people are subject to the same levels of racism as black and other people of color. They think the U.S. was a better place in the 1950s, when Jim Crow was law, immigrants were overwhelmingly European, women knew their place, and gay people were essentially invisible.
In tandem with the findings of another recent study revealing middle-age, working-class white Americans are the only group in the country whose health and mortality rates are worsening, the survey offers more than just a look at the ideas and attitudes that characterize a slice of the population. It provides a possible diagnosis for what ails, and may very well be killing, an entire demographic.
There have been previous indications—scientific, sociological, and anecdotal—of some of PRRI’s findings. A 2011 Tufts University survey showed white Americans believe they actually experience more racism than African Americans, and a Pew survey from the same year found non-college-educated, working-class whites are the least hopeful group in the country about the future. The rightwing rallying cry to “Make America Great Again” (a recycled political slogan that is now the property of Donald Trump) is proof that a decent portion of white voters think America was at its best when fewer citizens had civil and political rights, at some arbitrary point in this country’s rich history of morally indefensible state-sanctioned injustice, violence and oppression. One cannot avoid noticing that the current culture wars, full of incoming attacks from the right on nearly every civil and human rights gain of the last 60 years, are being fought with renewed vigor by those who want to turn back the hands of time.
The 2015 American Values Survey reaffirms the myopic outlook of an astounding portion of the country. Researchers, who polled nearly 2,700 adults from every state and Washington, D.C., found that 43 percent of Americans overall believe racial bigotry against whites has become a problem on par with discrimination against black people and other people of color. Fifty-three percent of Americans think the country’s “way of life has mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s,” a tally it seems safe to regard as a referendum on progressive change since that decade. In general, it’s clear that Americans believe some objectively offensive, fantastical and easily disproved ideas. But the study goes beyond big-picture numbers to illuminate how they shake out along race, class and education lines.
On “reverse racism,” half of white Americans overall agree “discrimination against whites is as big a problem today as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” But the socioeconomic divide on this opinion is fairly vast. Among working-class whites, a solid majority, 60 percent, believe the tables have turned and anti-white discrimination equals that faced by other historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups. But just 36 percent of college-educated white Americans cosigned this idea. Blacks and Hispanics overwhelmingly reject the notion, by 75 and 71 percent, respectively.
Similar divides exist in regard to America’s previous greatness. Just under half of college-educated whites believe American culture has gotten worse since the 1950s—though at 49 percent, that’s still a fairly large slice of the white, degree-holding pie. That percentage climbs to a majority, 62 percent, when white blue-collar Americans are polled. Here again, most blacks and Hispanics disagree: 60 percent of African Americans and 54 percent of Hispanics say things are better now than they were in the 1950s, the last period before, it cannot be stated enough, civil and equal rights movements altered the cultural landscape.
These findings go hand-in-hand with feelings about America’s future. Most college-educated white Americans, 53 percent, say the country’s best days still lie ahead. A majority of African Americans, 60 percent, and Hispanics, 56 percent, anticipate good things down the metaphorical road. But white working-class Americans are far less optimistic: 56 percent think the country’s glory days are in its past, and just 42 percent say they are yet to come. Race, predictably, has a role to play:
While a majority of white Americans (55 percent) believe white men are facing a decline of cultural influence in American society, fewer than half of black (46 percent) and Hispanic Americans (42 percent) agree...Concerns about cultural changes since the 1950s are significantly related to perceptions of the declining influence of white men. Nearly six in ten (58 percent) Americans who believe that the American culture has changed for the worse since the 1950s also agree that white men are losing influence.
Beyond these highlighted figures, which are just a fraction of those that appear in the paper, PRRI’s study is impressively comprehensive. The short story, though, is that this trend carries out across multiple issues. Working-class whites are more likely than African Americans, Hispanics or college-educated whites to say they feel “bothered” when they encounter non-English speaking immigrants; that “Islam is incompatible with American values and way of life”; that “our country has made enough changes to give blacks equal rights with whites”; and that the Confederate flag is “more a symbol of Southern pride than racism.” There are, certainly, complexities amid these numbers; college-educated whites lean far less left than the right would have you believe, and there are a few, though not many, areas where there is greater consensus. But more generally, a picture emerges of a white working-class that is disaffected and pessimistic, which sees itself as increasingly disempowered, and is afraid it is slowly being rendered culturally irrelevant.
The grimness of that outlook, which might be interpreted as a sort of collective existentialism, seems likely related to recent reports that middle-aged, working-class white Americans are getting sick and dying at an unprecedented rate, mostly by their own hands, in ways both fast and slow. A much-covered Princeton study released the same week as the PRRI survey finds that poor health plagues this population, with an increase in reports of “neck pain, facial pain, chronic joint pain, and sciatica.”
But the biggest story is researchers’ discovery that between 1999 and 2014, the mortality rate for white Americans age 45 to 54 without a college degree soared by 22 percent. (Some statisticians find fault with the exact numbers, but agree researchers’ central thesis holds up.) This represents an abrupt turn of the tide not just for America’s white working-class, whose death rate has been on the decline for decades, but runs counter to trends for every other related group. Mortality rates for African Americans and Hispanics continue to fall, as do those of white working-class Americans’ peers in wealthy nations around the world. Even among American whites, the phenomenon is limited to blue-collar communities. White Americans with at least some college education saw their death rates flatline, while the mortality of those with at least a bachelor’s degree actually declined.
The usual culprits—heart disease and cancer, among others—are not to blame here. Researchers find this rise in deaths is instead largely attributable to substance abuse and other forms of self-harm. As the Guardian notes, Princeton researchers found that “deaths from drug overdoses and alcohol poisoning rose fourfold, suicides by 81 percent, and deaths from liver disease and cirrhosis by 50 percent. For this least-educated group, deaths from all causes rose more than a fifth.” In offering some context for the impact of the mortality increase, study authors write that the losses compare to the death rate at the “height of the AIDS epidemic, which took the lives of 650,000 Americans [between 1981 to mid-2015].”
The obvious and immediate questions these findings raise center on causality. The husband and wife research team behind the study, Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, and Anne Case, both Princeton economics professors, cite prescription drug access as key. The study pinpoints the “increased availability of opioid prescriptions” in the 1990s, followed by the tightening of restrictions, which resulted in a number of addicts turning to heroin. Others, writing in the numerous articles and think pieces published after the study, point to decades of manufacturing job losses to technological advances and foreign outsourcing. Case and Deaton also refer to “widening income inequality,” the ever-expanding gulf between America’s haves and have-nots.
But that last point neglects to recognize that African American and Hispanic members of the working class are no less affected by income inequality, not to mention the financial difficulties resulting from the Great Recession. In fact, unemployment among black and Hispanic blue-collar workers is much higher than for their white peers. And while the loss of manufacturing jobs has had far-reaching repercussions for all of America’s blue-collar workers, whites still have a steady foothold on the jobs that remain. In a 2011 article in the Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein notes that even as their representation in the general population wanes, “whites without a four-year college degree remain the largest demographic bloc in the workforce.” As for the deadly impact of increased drug abuse, certainly, heroin as a proxy for prescription painkillers has led to an explosion in the drug’s use among white Americans, with one study finding more than 75 percent of recent heroin addicts were “introduced to opioids through prescription drugs.” The same study found that 90 percent of new heroin users over the last decade are white, the result of which has been a glut of suddenly “compassionate conservatives” touting more rehabilitative, less punitive, solutions.
It should be noted, and perhaps stressed, that on pretty much every front, outcomes for white Americans, regardless of class, are far better than for African Americans and Hispanics. As Janell Ross writes in a recent Washington Post article, “[t]hat’s true of housing and neighborhood quality and homeownership. That's true of overall health, health insurance coverage rates, quality of health care received, life expectancy and infant mortality. That's true when it comes to median household earnings, wealth (assets minus debt), retirement savings and even who has a bank account.”
A 2014 Pew Research Center data analysis finds the wealth gap between white families, compared to black and Hispanic families, is the widest it has been in decades. And while the death rate among working-class whites is rising, leading numerous outlets to declare the Princeton findings the sign of an “epidemic,” mortality rates among African Americans are even higher, as they long have been. As Ross puts it, “White Americans are, as a group, born healthier and live longer and get better health care, jobs, education and housing in the years in between.”
So what, exactly, is demoralizing America’s white working-class? Deaton, of the Princeton study, ventures that this is a story of failed expectations. "An anthropologist friend here says that [white, middle-age Americans] have lost the narrative of their lives,” he says, speaking to Vox, “meaning something like a loss of hope, a loss of expectations of progress.”
Despite the fact that they are doing better than African Americans and Hispanics by nearly every measurable standard, blue-collar whites see their prospects more dimly. The Atlantic’s Brownstein points to a survey from the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project which asked participants whether they expected their financial situation to be better in a decade than it is now. Fifty-five percent of college-educated whites and two thirds of African Americans and Hispanics said yes, but only 44 percent of working-class white respondents did. When asked if they expected their children to do better than they had, working-class whites were least likely to respond affirmatively, with only one third saying yes. Just over 30 percent said they don’t predict their children will even reach, much less surpass, their own level of success. Conversely, 63 percent of blacks and 54 percent of Hispanics were hopeful their kids would achieve greater heights than they have. Presumably, strides made in recent generations by blacks and Hispanics fuel these visions of expanded future opportunity and offer reason to believe in the potential for continued future success. Ironically, those are precisely the reasons working-class white Americans see their own futures more bleakly.
"The distinction is, these blue-collar whites see opportunities for people like them shrinking,” Democratic pollster Mark Pellman says, speaking to Brownstein, “whereas the African Americans [and Hispanics] feel there are a set of long-term opportunities that are opening to them that were previously closed on the basis of race or ethnicity."
And here, at last, is what lies at the heart of white-working class pessimism. We know that white Americans overall believe African American and Hispanic gains are their losses. A 2011 study from Harvard found that “white Americans see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing.” The study authors wrote that “[w]hites linked lower levels of anti-black bias with higher levels of anti-white bias...Perhaps most important, the change over time in perceived anti-white and anti-black bias from the 1950s to the 2000s was negatively correlated for white respondents...suggesting that whites also linked the decrease in anti-black bias over the last half century to an increase in anti-white bias over the same time period.”
That is, they perceived racism, and the limitations it sets on African Americans in every sphere of American life, as beneficial to whites. Equality, by white Americans’ curious logic, doesn’t serve us all: The more equal some of us become, the less equal others of us get. For blue-collar white Americans, who are more vulnerable than their more affluent and better educated peers, this fear is particularly pronounced. The terror of slipping down a rung on an already precarious ladder is transformed into a sort of paranoia.
Deaton and Case write that white working-class disillusionment is driven by slow “growth in real median earnings” and the dismay of finding “they will not be better off than their parents.” But what lurks beneath this deserves even greater historical context, because this is far bigger than a single-generation status change. If you believe, consciously or not, that not just your parents, but every generation of white people before you not only benefited from the systematic disenfranchisement of black folks and other people of color, and that the (painstakingly slow) dismantling of that system will necessarily hinder your own chances for success, you are not likely to support that kind of social change. If you believe you were promised a level of success that, at the very least, is beyond those who are “less American,” or somehow inherently “less than,” you will be angry when you feel that those people, however few they number, are passing you by. If you could derive no pride from class but only from race, believing a place at the bottom of the dominant culture hierarchy is still at the top of any other in this country, when the order of things changes you may place your blame and shame on those who do not deserve it. If you believe these things are your birthright—one passed down over time and deserved by virtue of the longevity of its existence—you’re likely to be resentful about what you perceive as the sudden end of everything you believe you’re entitled to.
By this warped and fear-driven logic, every black success necessarily means a white failure; every Hispanic employee costs a white career. Diversity, a milquetoast word that generally means the least effort at inclusiveness to achieve a presentable level of tokenism, can only seem threatening in this context. “Multiculturalism” is transformed into a sinister plan for white cultural erasure. Immigration, the changing face of the country, the looming specter of America as a “minority-majority” country in 2042, all of these, seen through the lens of racism and xenophobia, are interpreted as threats to white power and agency. And don’t even get me started on the election of a black president.
The dashed hopes of white Americans in general, and working-class white Americans in particular, were built on a crumbling foundation of white privilege and supremacy. Despite the fact that it remains a pretty solidly built structure with reinforcements throughout, here is evidence of real fear of its collapse. Politicians know this, they’ve capitalized on it forever, and today’s political aspirants make the architects of the Southern Strategy look like ardent communists. The PRRI study found that Tea Party identification has dropped by nearly half since 2010, falling from 11 percent to 6 percent. But who needs the Tea Party when extremism has gone so mainstream? Racist and xenophobic dog whistles from the right in the 2008 election seem almost polite judged by the yardstick of today’s conservative rhetoric. The Tea Party has nothing on Donald Trump.
Lyndon Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." The desperate fear of losing ground to the "other,” and politicians’ successful exploitation of that fear has created a white working-class that increasingly works against itself and eats its own. It votes to send its children to war and against its own pocketbook. It shouts that it wants to “Take back our country,” and leaves no question as to who it thinks has stolen it. (The irony here is positively rich!)
In a piece titled “Why Does the (White) Lower Middle Class Vote Republican?” Leon Friedman of Hofstra Law School notes that Republicans oppose efforts to raise the minimum wage, fight against healthcare for all and continuously push economic policies that have been proven to “suck up benefits for the rich.” “Based purely on self-interest,” Friedman writes, “such lower wage earners should vote for the party that would help them the most economically.” While acknowledging that there are social issues (guns, abortion, gay marriage) that nudge white working-class voters rightward, Friedman also takes apart the politics of division:
Rather than accurately explain the true economic issues facing the middle class, [Republicans] invent bogus tax plans that have no basis in reality—shrinking the tax code to three pages and reducing taxes to everyone (mostly those on top) which will somehow trim down the national debt and bring untold benefits to everyone. When these benefits do not emerge, Republican leaders barrage the lower middle class with attacks on the bad people (immigrants, Muslims) who do not look or talk like them and threaten their lives and jobs. They play on the lower middle class' impulse to believe themselves better than some other group which becomes the basis for their own self-esteem. The Republicans insist that the presence of Latino immigrants and Muslims are the reasons for the lower class' dissatisfaction with their life. Such arguments divert the middle class from insisting on higher wages and better programs that will adversely affect the rich supporters of the Party.
The anger the white working-class feels about income inequality and the selling of blue-collar jobs to the lowest bidder is unquestionably justified. But like so much else, that anger turns inward, manifesting either as votes for those who mimic their anger yet work against their needs, or in the use and abuse of pain-dulling substances. I’d like to say that these recent revelations will prompt some re-examination of how useless this blame game is and who really benefits, but it won’t. In fact, conservative publications have already used the Princeton findings to further demonize “liberalism.” But the truth is in the numbers, some of which represent lost lives. And the numbers are only growing bigger by the day.
8. Voters Know Government Programs Can Work
Reminding Voters What Works
by Nancy LeTourneau, washingtonmonthly.com, November 24, 2015
There has been a lot of pontificating about why Americans these days are so angry and distrustful of government. The latest to wade into those waters was Alec MacGillis with his much-discussed article titled: Who Turned My Blue State Red?
It is important to make the distinction between being distrustful of politics and being distrustful of government programs. All of us are angry at the former, sometimes for different reasons. But it is the Republicans who decided that their best play against a Democratic president was to completely abandon their responsibility to govern. I would simply remind you that when touting the idea of a “permanent Republican majority” back in 2003, Grover Norquist was asked what that meant for when a Democrat won the White House. His response was, “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.” We’ve seen that plan in action now for 7 years. And yes, it is infuriating.
But the distrust and anger Americans feel about government programs is a bit more difficult to understand. The roots of it are complex. That is why, when reviewing Stanley Greenberg’s book for the print edition of the Washington Monthly, I noted that “it would be important to know whether white working-class voters think that no government programs work, or whether their concerns are limited to certain areas.”
A report just published by the Pew Research Center titled, Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government, helps us unpack a lot of that. Here is the headline graphic:
Notice that in all areas except space exploration, a majority of the American public supports the government playing a major role. And when asked about whether or not the government is doing a good job in each of those areas (rather than the more general question about overall trust in government), the ratings are relatively high. Of course there are some differences on how Democrats and Republicans rate government performance in these areas. Here’s what Pew found.
The optimist in me wants to make sure that we all notice how similarly Democrats and Republicans view the government’s performance in areas like responding to natural disasters (an amazing finding that demonstrates how far the Obama administration has come since Bush’s handling of Katrina), setting workplace standards, ensuring safe food and medicine, protecting the environment, maintaining infrastructure and ensuring access to quality education. The partisan divide starts to show up around keeping the country safe from terrorism, ensuring access to health care, strengthening the economy and managing the immigration system. It should surprise none of us that those four issues are the ones that are front and center in the 2016 campaign right now.
But given that the Democrats are the party committed to good government, perhaps it would be a good strategy for candidates to remind voters that they generally approve of the job the government is doing on things like responding to natural disasters, setting workplace standards and ensuring safe food and medicine. When Republicans talk about cutting budgets and getting rid of regulations, those are exactly the kinds of government functions that would be damaged.
One of my great frustrations with liberals is that they tend to not be very good at touting their successes. I am reminded of what Marilynne Robinson said recently during her conversation with President Obama.
Most of the things we do have no defenders because people tend to feel the worst thing you can say is the truest thing you can say.
Changing that doesn’t mean ignoring the challenges we face. It just means that every now and then it might be a good idea to remind voters of what’s working.
9. On Elections and the Economy
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Will the economy decide the election?
by George L. Perry, brookings.edu, November 24, 2015
How will today’s favorable economic outlook affect next year’s election? A couple of years ago, many economic forecasts saw a high risk of renewed recession in the U.S. economy. If Congress had forced savage fiscal restraint on the still-budding expansion, that could have happened; but it was otherwise a much too pessimistic assessment. Today most forecasts see an expansion strong enough to get the Fed leaning against the wind and boosting its policy interest rate. That seems a reasonable outlook. At this point, the main uncertainty is not about whether Congress will do fiscal damage but about an expanded terrorist threat. More on that below.
Most political pundits see a good economy as helping the incumbent president's party. But "It's the economy, stupid" is not a fool-proof predictor. In part this is because a healthy economy is often better for some people than others. If we let the data choose, a better predictor comes from the idea that a party that has been in power for a while begins to look stale and out of good ideas.
Incumbency is generally helpful in politics. In the post war period, sitting presidents running for reelection have won eight times and lost three times. But the outcomes of elections after a party has held the White House for two terms are strikingly different. After Harry Truman's two terms, the Republican Dwight Eisenhower won. After Eisenhower’s two terms, Jack Kennedy won. After the Kennedy-Johnson two terms, Richard Nixon won. After the Nixon-Ford pair of terms, Jimmy Carter won. After Ronald Reagan's two terms, George Bush kept the White House Republican for another four years. After Clinton's two terms, George Bush II won. And after his two terms, Barack Obama won. So after holding the White House for two terms, the incumbent party has lost six times and won once. This record cannot please Hillary Clinton.
But if the evidence supports the idea that voters want change after eight years, they presumably want change other things being equal. And other things were hardly equal across all those election years. The economy was between pretty bad and terrible when the incumbent’s party lost in 1960, 1980, 1992 and 2008, and it was very good in 1988, the one time the two-term incumbent party was given a third term. These data support the idea that the economy matters and suggest it may have been decisive in some elections. The current forecast of continued expansion without inflation cannot please the Republican candidates.
But will the economy decide this this election? This time may be special. ISIS could become the elephant in the room that is more important to voters than the usual desire for change or the satisfaction with the present economy. A parallel would be the 1968 election when the Vietnam War and the protest movement dominated the election. Russia and France have both been targeted and all countries appear more vulnerable than they did a few weeks ago. Dealing with ISIS was always going to matter. But Paris has stepped up the urgency and spreading atrocities, particularly any with U.S. targets, would make destroying ISIS the great challenge for any U.S. president. Then the election would go to the candidate that seems best able to meet it.
FINALLY another pair
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