jawfish

The Spawning Ground of the New Know-Nothings
john posted in politics & culture on October 8th, 2008

Beware the apprenticeship of your politicians: its lessons will follow them to Washington.

Politicians who grew up in the sterile suburbs are bringing their slash-and-burn practice to Washington. It’s no wonder they treat the public weal as if it were an ATM with their name on it.

It’s been obvious for quite a while that the Gingrich and Reagan revolutions brought with them a host of Republicans who weren’t just small-government free-market libertarians like the old school, but who doubt that government does anything worth managing. These are not the tuxedoed club members of the Yale aristocracy, these are exterminators, beauty queens, and Jaycees. They are quoting Limbaugh not Adam Smith, and wearing JC Penney, not Brooks Brothers.

see this article in Harper’s by Tom Frank for a reference…

Their attitude can be seen in numerous examples of hackery and inefficiency in the Bush administration, from overtly political appointments at Justice to hack-placement at FEMA, to re-writing science at EPA. The Katrina relief disaster was directly related to the assumption that everything FEMA did was just window-dressing. So too with the management of the economy, where banking regulation was seen during the Reagan administration and again during the Bush administration as a feeble and ridiculous governmental gesture which shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with the mighty hand of the market. Of course the mighty hand of huge contributions, to both parties, also had a lot to do with the non-existent oversight.

..Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist, owner of “…I’ll drown government in the bathtub,” is the titular leader of this gang. Grover’s gang seems to look at the gigantic federal budget, and the enormous federal workforce and see only opportunities for looting, and expendable clutter. Never mind that whole industries like defense and aerospace depend on federal spending, and whole states like Alaska and Wyoming would collapse without federal subsidies. Few sitting governors or mayors or county supervisors are included in this mass useless-government delusion. Real governmental executives, as opposed to legislators, spend their time making sure trash gets picked up, sewers run, and policemen get paid. Yet another hurricane has hit the Gulf Coast, and I am guessing there are no anti-government-spending politicians in Galveston right now.

Like creationists, who think they can brush off the science behind biology but still live in the luxury created by science, these modern barbarians think that ships will dock, planes will fly them home, and trucks will deliver bananas for their morning Froot-Loops, without government planning and funding. It’s a risible world-view, but then why is it so common and where does it come from?

Flooding after Hurricane Ike	Unusable formaldehyde-laden Fema Trailers - AP

So whence cometh the notion that government is not only wasteful, it can be wasted? I’ve an idea I’d like to try out on you.

Assertions:
In recent years the vast majority of US residential growth has happened in new suburbs and ex-urbs.

Guess which picture is in which state:	Is it Texas, Kansas, California, or New York?

These ex-urban bedroom communities are built by large developers of residential tracts and shopping malls. Streets, stop signals, sidewalks, storm drains and the like are built by the developers as part of their project. Local political campaigns are almost entirely funded by developers, and builders, and sometimes retailers like Walmart that want to build and get tax deals. Often fire and police services are provided by the county, schools by a non-contiguous school district, and others services are minimal and frequently funded by federal drug or terror grants.

The overwhelming political culture of these no-there-there places is developer dollars buying the local pols.

Pattern:
So a young wannabe politician in one of these interchangeable non-communities sees very little buck-stoppage, a lot of public and private money changing hands and some slapdash wealth generated. There is hardly any adult supervision as the suburb grows into an incorporated city, the years tick over and tawdry strip malls decay as newer ones are built, and everybody puts off the day when streets and infrastructure have to be rebuilt.

No wonder they think government is useless. These non-cities contribute nothing but consumption to the economy, they are built on un-planned growth, with no plan to fund police and schools and parks for the future, and they will wither and dry up when commuting costs get too high. Getting elected in these suburbs is a matter of taking the right money, and not rocking the boat. There is no incentive to call for beautification, or planning, or conservation for the future - that sounds like taxes to the voters who moved there to get away from all that. There are no universities there, no orchestras, no headquarters, no museums, often no agriculture. Local jobs are largely minimum wage retail for immigrants and teenagers. Medical care and new construction may well be the biggest businesses.

So is it really surprising that politicians who cut their milk teeth on the school boards and city councils of big-box mall America, think infrastructure, economic management, diplomacy, and even compassion are vestigial gestures?

I’d like to see somebody test this theory. I can name three pols who fit: Sarah Palin, Elton Galleghy of Ventura CA, Dana Rohrbacher of Orange County CA.

I wonder how many other scorched-earth Republicans come from the empty suburbs?

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