Results tagged “government” from Uncivil Society
The above ad for Amtrak's sorta high-speed Acela line has been looping on local TV. One line in particular seemed a bit odd--besides wireless internet and electrical outlets, Amtrak enables passengers to get back such travel basics as "taking off your shoes only if you feel like it."
That's right--Amtrak, a corporation created, funded and owned by the federal government, is touting its exemption from TSA anti-terrorism procedures as the recovery of a fundamental right. Based on the railway bombings by terrorists in other countries, one could argue that trains are as much if not more at risk of a serious attack as commercial airlines. Nonetheless, while airline passengers have to remove their shoes when they go through security, Amtrak is literally selling the lack of such security features on our government-owned railroad as a feature, not a flaw.
Which raises an interesting question about the TSA airport screenings--if they are indeed required to prevent terrorism, why does the government's own transportation company portray them as an unnecessary burden?
Sit through one of my social enterprise classes & you'll hear me chat about co-ops, which in the U.S. seem to have been erased from the collective memory of folks who claim that blending social benefit and business is a revolutionary innovation. As I'm wont to say, folks outside the U.S. have made the connection--indeed, for some in Europe the term "social enterprise" is synonymous with co-ops--and this week The Guardian has a nifty article on the historical significance of the co-op/social enterprise link in light of the upcoming British elections:
Regardless of who wins on Thursday, it seems certain that Britain faces a revolutionary change in the way local services are run and delivered. The Conservative party has made mutualisation a central pillar of its election strategy, promising to "unleash a new culture of public-sector enterprise". Its manifesto, entitled An invitation to join the government of Britain, contains proposals for millions of public-sector workers to set up co-operatives and sell their services back to the state. Employee-owned co-operatives would be able to decide on management structures, innovate to cut costs and share out any financial surpluses among staff.
Labour is similarly enthusiastic about co-operatives. Its "mutual manifesto" puts the emphasis on people running many of their own services, from health and social care to council estates and Sure Start centres. The Liberal Democrats would go even further, introducing a new mutuals, co-operatives and social enterprises bill to bring the law up to date and give responsibility for mutuals to a specific minister.
But why the sudden enthusiasm for a mutual model – and will the plans work?
Cross-published on JustMeans:
Recently President Obama signed into law the Serve America Act, which, among other things, established a Social Innovation Fund. The aim: to identify innovative & effective nonprofit social ventures and to take them to scale. As set forth in the statute, the Fund will accomplish this by giving money to "eligible entities" (i.e., existing grantmaking institutions or government partnerships) that will then in turn make grants to suitable "community organizations," provided the subgrantee is able to secure the requisite matching funds from government, nonprofit or commercial sources.
The initiative has generated considerable excitement in the social enterprise community. Judging from the language, I can see why: the new law speaks of "national leveraging capital," "investments," "institutional capacity," "measurable outcomes" and a host of other things that pretty much spell "win" for anyone playing social enterprise buzzword bingo.
Yet for the life of me, I don't see how any of this is innovative.
At its core, the program follows a model that's all too familiar from comparative administrative law--a government program that gives money to subgrantees who in turn give money to other subgrantees, managed through the relentless documentation of how stated program goals were met. For example, Russia moved to precisely this model recently, channeling social funds through grantmaking intermediaries, and USAID has been doing it for years.
Yes, I know that on the surface this is different--SIF isn't just making grants to grantmaking subgrantees for nonprofit subgrantees under the rubric of statutorily mandated reporting standards, it's leveraging investment in social entrepreneurs and building capacity for measured outcomes. However, this is not a distinction I could repeat with a straight face. When it comes to interpreting a statute I'm a stone cold pragmatist, and it seems to me that when you cut through all the jargon the two structures are essentially the same.
I don't say this merely to be contrary--studying existing institutions can provide invaluable insight into how SIF could spin out. If you have experience, say, with USAID, you know the culture that tends to grow up around such programs. The reality tends not to match the rhetoric--lift the rock of civil society & social change and you'll find a swarming mass of professional intermediaries, stultifying standardization and the awarding of spoils to the usual suspects with marginal scraps for unorthodox unconnected outsiders.
The potential for this in SIF is quite real--the requirement of matching funds alone will skew the grants to nonprofits that are already established, particularly groups that have substantial support from governments and major funders. Moreover, the statutory requirements for measured effectiveness, evidence-based decision-making and so forth may sound good, but in practice this provides an institutional mandate for centralized regulation and extensive paperwork.
I know the people who promoted SIF had a much more enthralling vision, but that train has left the station--the new law puts us on the cross-country Amtrak. In the immortal words of T.S. Eliot, "this is the way the world ends/not with a bang, but Corporation Monitoring Planning Assessments."
Over the weekend I posted my thoughts on the Wall St. Journal's lengthy article on Donald Duck in Germany. What struck me most: the stylistic contrast in relation to cultural identity:
The article ascribes the character’s popularity to the strip’s longtime translator, Erika Fuchs, an art history Ph.D. who rewrote Carl Barks’ dialogue to include references to German literature, myth and politics. . . .
Post-war Germany was in the process of restoring its identity after Nazi ideology raised serious questions as to the legitimacy of the country’s cultural heritage. A funny book provided a means for Fuchs to highlight the value of German traditions free from worrisome evocations of the Nazi’s use of German culture to establish ethnic supremacy.
Barks wrote in a radically different context. America’s literary heritage was not morally suspect; to have used Donald Duck to legitimize Melville or Dickinson would have seemed pretentious, if not bizarre. Barks’ visual and verbal rhetoric is instead far more pragmatic–Donald and his retinue are on a perpetual quest to succeed in a world full of baffling new tools and old ways.
As it happens, I'm in the middle of one of my periodic re-readings of Barks, so this stuff is fresh on my mind. Note particularly this observation
America’s literary heritage was not morally suspect; to have used Donald Duck to legitimize Melville or Dickinson would have seemed pretentious, if not bizarre. Barks’ visual and verbal rhetoric is instead far more pragmatic . . .
and compare it to the following scene from Barks' Snow Fun, a story in which Donald and his nephews raise money to buy one of the era's emblems of middle-class success, manufactured skis:
One of my pictures in the Barks post illustrates another dimension of Barks' examination of cultural identity. It's from Donald Duck and the Mummy's Ring, a brilliant (and funny) exploration of the question of whether the West should repatriate cultural objects to their country of origin. The kicker for me in the story is that it's more complex than a reductionistic tale of good natives and bad Americans--the Egyptians themselves are a blend of traditional believers and secular Westernizers, epitomized by a strategic nationalist educated at "Yarvard" in the States.
This may seem a bit goofy, but that's exactly why it works. As I concluded in my previous post,
What both the German and American versions of Barks’ work illustrate is the strategic value of junk media in remaking society. That so many people continue to view comics as little more than trash is not necessarily a bad thing–it frees the medium for creative expression outside the normative constraints of so-called high art, thereby retaining comics’ power as a cultural trojan horse.
A reflection by Jonathan Bland.
Via Robot6, this is brilliant stuff--an essential archive for anyone with an interest in the history of charity & public service.
Via InfoAesthetics, which provides an explanation of this interactive graph.
Obama has become a profitable marketing phenomenon. Because he's a government official, merchants don't have to worry about his publicity rights or paying him royalties. In keeping with the public nature of his image, some comic shops have decided to donate proceeds from this week's Obama/Spider-Man tie-in to charity.
From Mad magazine #44, back in 1959.
I'm in the midst of preparing the final exam + review for my nonprofit law class, but I couldn't help but get caught up in the Blagojevich criminal complaint. Nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations are central to the indictment, which alleges, based largely on taped conversations, that the Illinois governor sought to enrich himself and punish his critics through deals involving a campaign fund, state finance authority, a hospital expansion program, a union, a charity and a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization.
Really, I could have used the complaint as a springboard for half my course.
As someone who practiced law in Chicago, I find several aspects of the complaint sadly familiar--let's just say Gov. Blagojevich is not the first Illinois public official to cultivate a quid-pro-quo culture for getting permission for nonprofit projects. (See the complaint pages 21-23 and 36 for some killer stuff on this score.)
Also interesting from the perspective of charity history is Blagojevich's attempt to trade his Senate appointment replacing Obama for a well-paid position as head of what Blagojevich calls a "private foundation," but in context meant a nongovernmental charity. (see pp. 57ff). Historians of philanthropy will no doubt recall that the alleged use of charities as lucrative way-stations for politicians between posts was a factor in the enactment of the extensive tax reforms in 1969 that gave us much of the present law regarding so-called private foundations and public charities.
"I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."
So said Adam Smith, and John Montgomery agrees.
One of the constants of human experience is that when something bad happens in the economy, we tend to ascribe the cause to irrationality--most notably, greed and crime.
As if on cue . . .
It's not just a financial blank check:
Section 2:
The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation . . .
Section 8:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Today's user illusion brought to you by Dealbreaker.
So the stock market rises on news of a government bailout and new limits on securities transactions.
With the stock market (for the moment) stabilizing, does that mean the market rhetoric of social enterprise is stable as well?
No.
The situation is far more complex.
In a nutshell, the rebounding confidence in the economy is a response to the infusion of external unearned support.
That's not so much faith in the market as the entire system. Were there renewed faith in the market--and its metaphors--the surge would have recurred without the rescue plan and the news of government intervention would shake investor confidence.
Let's put it in the market language of social entrepreneurs.
Social enterprise C is humming along selling cookies made by prisoners. People wise up that the cookies suck and that they're only buying 'em because of the charity. C's ex-customers start stocking up on Pepperidge Farm instead.
Sales plummet, and it looks like C will go bankrupt.
But hooray, at the last minute a foundation gives C a million dollar grant and C goes on selling its cookies.
That's not a validation of the self-sustaining triple bottom line. It's traditional charity.
UPDATE: Paul Kedrosky pretty much sums up the market situation:
I should be happy, I suppose, but I'm mostly depressed and dismayed. While something is necessary, it's tragic that it has had to come to this, and the political and economic fallout will be gigantic and long-lasting.
And Robert Reich:
Another major step toward socialized capitalism.
WSJ: The Federal Reserve is considering an $85 billion rescue for embattled American International Group that could leave the government in control of the firm . . .
And so it goes: A Republic administration that declared itself to be the heir to Reagan might end with the government effectively nationalizing the financial industry.
Your tax dollars at work--it's published by the Library of Congress.
Below: the centerfold, which I guess would by NSFW were you to touch it. More at Banterist.
Does no one see the absurdity of Congress insisting on greater efficiency in public benefit expenditures?
Hearings such as the one linked above aren't just about making charities more effective. The bigger story: strengthening the state by undermining trust in a chief rival.
A long time ago in a blog post far far away, a commenter inquired about the difference between a trust and private foundation. In class I explained that a trust is property held for the benefit of a third party--in the case of a charitable trust, the "indefinite class" (as opposed to specific individuals) benefited by the trust's charitable purpose.
The term private foundation, however, has a somewhat more slippery legal definition. It arose as a way to describe--and condemn--charitable organizations funded by a small number of individuals, who presumably veered more toward their own interests as opposed those of the general public.
Quick aside: I'll be talking about that a bit more on this site, but suffice it to say that while the term "private foundation" still retains the connotation of private interests vs. public good, defining what constitutes a private foundation turned out to be a task too tough for the legislators determined to regulate 'em--which is why the tax code classifies all charities as private foundations unless they meet one of the rather complicated tests for public charity status. But that is a tale for another day . . .
Occasionally a news story bubbles up to remind us why U.S. law came to distinguish between private foundations and public charities. Here is one such story.
In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a college has come under fire for certain transactions in which state funds ended up going to a related private charity. Frankly, the sort of things described in the article could--and probably do--occur in any number of charities without anyone being too upset, but here ya go--the state Department of Examiners of Public Accounts is laying the smacketh down on good ol' Shelton State Community College because "contractual agreements are being utilized to divert public funds to foundations."
Now you might be saying, hey, what's the big deal--aren't private foundations charities too?
And you'd have a point. But there's something else going on here that says a lot about the values embedded in law and how they shift and evolve. Is this small Southern skirmish a sign of a swing back toward the government as the hub of social benefit?
