Maine Policy Review Summer/Fall 2014 by University of Maine

Summer/Fall 2014 · Vol. 23, No. 2 · $15

Maine Policy Review

Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

Maine Policy Review

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

PUBLISHER MARGARET CHASE SMITH POLICY CENTER Laura Lindenfeld, Director

EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR Ann Acheson Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

MANAGING EDITOR Barbara Harrity Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

PRODUCTION Beth Goodnight Goodnight Design

DEVELOPMENT Eva McLaughlin Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

COVER ILLUSTRATION Robert Shetterly

PRINTING Penmor Lithographics

Maine Policy Review (ISSN 1064-2587) publishes independent, peer-reviewed analyses of public policy issues relevant to Maine. The journal is published two times per year by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. The material published within does not necessarily reflect the views of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. The majority of articles appearing in Maine Policy Review are written by Maine citizens, many of whom are readers of the journal. The journal encourages the submission of manuscripts concerning relevant public policy issues of the day or in response to articles already published in the journal. Prospective authors are urged to contact the journal at the address below for a copy of the guidelines for submission or see the journal’s Website, http://digitalcommons.library .umaine.edu/mpr/. For permission to quote and/or otherwise reproduce articles, please contact the journal at the address below. The editorial staff of Maine Policy Review welcome your views about issues presented in this journal. Please address your letter to the editor to:

Maine Policy Review

5784 York Complex, Bldg. #4 University of Maine Orono, ME 04469-5784

207-581-1567 • fax: 207-581-1266 http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu mpr@maine.edu

The University of Maine does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, including transgender status and gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran’s status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The following person has been designated to handle inquires regarding nondiscrimination policies: Director, Office of Equal Opportunity, 101 North Stevens Hall, 207-581-1226.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Thanks to… Major Sponsor

Margaret Chase Smith Foundation Donors

Linda Silka and Larry Smith

Contributors

H. Allen and Sally Fernald John and Carol Gregory Merton G. Henry Roger Katz

William Knowles Samuel A. Ladd III and Nancy E. Ladd Peter Mills

Evan Richert Mark R. Shibles And anonymous Contributors

David Hart H. Paul McGuire Ethan Miller

Elizabeth Ward Saxl and Michael Saxl David Vail

Basil Wentworth And anonymous Friends

Friends

Volume Twenty-three of Maine Policy Review is funded, in part, by the supporters listed above. Tax-deductible contributions to the journal can be directed to the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at: 5784 York Complex, Bldg. 4, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5784. Donations by credit card may be made through our secure website at digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr and clicking on “Donate.” Information regarding corporate, foundation or individual support is available by contacting the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TO OUR READERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY Maine as a Bulwark of Democracy by Peter Mills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE Margaret Chase Library 2014 Student Essay Contest: Changes In The United States Over The Last 50 Years First Place Essay

by Mia Fisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Second Place Essay

by Jonah Abraham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

THANKS TO OUR REVIEWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FORUMS A Smiling Face Is Half The Meal: The Role of Cooperation in Sustaining Maine’s Local Food Industry

POLITICS THEN AND NOW The articles in this section are from a lecture series, “Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation,” presented by the Muskie School and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine in the fall of 2013, and from the William S. Cohen lecture held at the University of Maine.

Introduction by Richard Barringer and Kenneth Palmer . . . . . . . . . .

Worldviews in Conflict by Tom Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ten Comparisons, Then and Now by Angus King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Importance of Listening by George Mitchell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It’s Not the System, It’s the Voters by Barney Frank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Productive Partisanship by Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Governing for the People by Kenneth Curtis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Looking Forward by Amy Fried, Ken Fredette and Cynthia Dill . . . . . . . . .

Ethan Tremblay and Timothy Waring examine the role of cooperation in Maine’s local food industry across a range of organizations.

by Ethan Tremblay and Timothy Waring . . . . . . . . . . . .

12 18 27

Impacts of Pay-As-You-Throw and Other Residential Solid Waste Policy Options: Southern Maine 2007-2013 Travis Blackmer and George Criner analyze four residential municipal solid waste policy options used in Maine and evaluate the associated impacts on municipal residential recycling levels.

by Travis Blackmer and George Criner . . . . . . . . . . . .

Commentary:

Creative Pathways Through High School: A Response to John Dorrer, “Do We Have the Workforce Skills for Maine’s Innovation Economy?”

by Sylvia Most . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39 40

Enough is Enough by Bill Cohen and Alan Simpson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Readers,

her” outdoors weather, both the “weat e th t ou ab k tal to e lov in general. Many of us in Maine on, and public policy ati uc ed y, m no eco cs, our politi e parts of the state; and the “weather” of gest snowfall ever in som lar st, lie ear e th n see s d executive branches This November ha lance in legislative an ba rty pa in s ift sh to topics, often with Election Day results led been opining on both ve ha its nd Pu e. ain re. M ver, is what we offer he both nationally and in and perspective, howe h pt De . a ive er, ect ev rsp ow pe H ic. little depth or ecial issue on one top licy Review is not a sp w.” no d This issue of Maine Po an is “then h many of the articles theme that runs throug Included about then and now. ly cit pli ex are ue iss e part of th 13 lecture series, The articles in the first s edited from a fall 20 pt cer ex t or sh d an es rsity of here are feature articl tion,” held at the Unive Na e th d an e ain M in w, rsity of Maine “Politics Then and No ture held at the Unive lec n he Co S. am illi the W public office holders. Southern Maine, and eakers were prominent sp e in th of ost M . 13 n, comparing politics in November 20 of political polarizatio ue iss e th ess eth dr nn ad Ke to and Speakers were asked ers Richard Barringer uation. Series organiz sit nt rre cu articles by Tom e re th tu th fea wi the past , followed by ies ser e th m fro es em of th , one of er speakers. Peter Mills Palmer give an overview oth e th m fro s pt cer ex . and short e Margaret Chase Essay Allen and Angus King ghtful reflections in th ou th his s ide ov pr , the original speakers the past provide perspectives on o als t bu ,” ow “n on ue focus describe the imporOther articles in the iss blay and Tim Waring em Tr n ha Et as. are ic tion and current in their respective top try, looking at the evolu us ind d foo e’s ain M in tor of Maine’s tance of cooperation orting this growing sec pp su in nt rta po im what at are e age-old problem of status of institutions th orge Criner analyze th Ge d an e er th m on ack Bl ive is l perspect economy. Trav licymakers with a usefu po ide ov pr tary d en an m m ste in her co to do with solid wa disposal. Sylvia Most, ste wa for ns tio op ck t en the right tra in impacts of several rec whether Maine is on s ask r, rre Do n Joh e by yers might on a recent MPR articl er students and emplo eth wh d an ” all for “college increased vocational its current emphasis on r model of providing lie ear an g tin isi rev inning essays from be better served by th the top two prize-w wi ses clo ue iss e Th . ies 14; students were education opportunit nt essay contest for 20 de stu l oo sch h hig t ith 1964, the year Margare the Margaret Chase Sm the United Sates since in s n. ge an tio ch ina e m th no on ial esident asked to reflect for the Republican pr acy did can r he ced un Chase Smith anno

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014



Best,

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

î&#x20AC;

My Creed . . .

is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought.

Margaret Chase Smith

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

The Margaret Chase Smith Essay

Maine as a Bulwark of Democracy by Peter Mills

s a former English major, I am embarrassed to admit how seldom I take time any more to read creative literature. Instead, I find myself entirely absorbed by contemporary public affairs, the economy, and government policy. This is strange indeed because nearly all the news in these overlapping spheres is made so hopelessly glum by the dreadful state of U.S. politics. When Mark Shields and David Brooks were challenged by PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff to identify anything “uplifting” about the thenupcoming 2014 elections, neither could respond except to suggest that the governors’ races were not so bad as those for Congress. Although other periods in history have surely been worse, what makes this era so frustrating is to think how close we could be to unprecedented success. We have so much going for us: • Women have come into their own in most professions. • We have proven it possible to elect and re-elect not only a black president but thousands of other capable people of color at all levels of government. • Allowing same sex couples to marry is no longer a shock—indeed it is hardly even controversial as it was just a decade ago. Is it because we have moved so far, so fast, on these so-called social issues that the forces of reaction have jammed our polity into reverse on everything else?

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

Citizens are begging politicians for progress on immigration and tax reform, improved performance in K–12 education, infrastructure repairs, a coherent energy policy, upward economic mobility, a reduction in the insane cost of medical treatment, and broader access to health care and higher education. So many opportunities lie just a compromise away. Most citizens understand—and approve—what is required for the necessary bargains. They ask why Congress can’t • Simplify federal taxes, eliminate loopholes to raise revenue, lower rates, and cut entitlements to balance the budget, pay down our national debt, and bring solvency to Social Security and Medicare. • Combine energy independence with the promotion of sustainable technologies supported by longrange inducements for investors to fuel innovation, lower energy costs, and combat climate change for ourselves and the world. • Provide health care for all, facilitated by cuts in cost to make medical treatment affordable without excessive reliance on budget-busting public subsidies. These possibilities for enlightened greatness may not be simple to achieve, but the pathways are clear, blocked mainly by political dysfunction. While diagnoses for our political ills are legion, author Jason Grumet in his recent book City of Rivals adroitly

summarizes our most common complaints in three alliterative categories: “media, money and [gerry]mandering.” Grumet points out that these phenomena are at least as old as the American republic. MEDIA

ellow journalism was rampant long before the Revolution. Some of the vicious allegations against our founding fathers are enough to make one’s hair stand on end. In later decades, Lincoln was similarly demonized. Even later still, William Randolph Hearst ginned up the Spanish American War to sell more newspapers. Maine’s famous congressman Thomas Bracket Reed rejected Hearst’s hype, opposed the war, and lost an opportunity to run for president. During much of the twentieth century, as radio and TV journalism came into its own, Edward R. Murrow, David Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite announced the news in a consensus fashion for all Americans. With the advent of the Internet and multichannel cable outlets, however, people now select much of their news and commentary from sources with a preconceived bias, ranging from that of Rush Limbaugh to that of Rachel Maddow. Self-selection for biased news hearkens back to the earliest periods of printed broadsheets and has been a factor throughout history. However, the modern digital environment broadcasts sources of greater range than anything previously imagined. While it creates unprecedented opportunities to open people’s minds to diverse perspectives, it

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

also allows consumers to confine themselves within the narrowest of world views. This trend is not about to be reversed by any directive that could pass First Amendment muster. MONEY

raft in politics could hardly have been worse than in 1833 when U.S. Senator Daniel Webster wrote to the Bank of the United States to complain that “my retainer has not been renewed, or refreshed, as usual.” Money was more famously corrupting in the administration of President Grant and during a century of venal practices by New York’s Tammany Hall. Although the direct purchase of political favors is no longer in vogue, twenty-first century America has become a plutocracy every bit as extreme as that of the Gilded Age with its policy dominance by corporate trusts. Worse yet, money has taken over today’s politics. Efforts since Watergate to constrain money in elections have largely been obliterated by Supreme Court rulings not likely to be overturned any time soon. Fortunately, the Court has endorsed the remedy of forced disclosure. Citizens may constitutionally insist on laws requiring greater transparency of political speech, whether it be the product of independent expenditures or messages from a candidate. Transparency is particularly important to reduce the impact of negative campaigning. Camouflage makes slander a more tempting weapon to deploy. Worst of all, negative ads suppress turnout, create disgust with the democratic process, and discourage citizens from running. As a candidate, one of my major fears was to be blamed for a foul attack on my opponent independently paid for by someone trying to help me.

While the lack of constitutional power to reduce money in politics is frustrating, we may take solace from examples where excessive spending has been ineffective. In 2014, Maine Republicans took control of the state Senate and came close to winning the House despite being outspent two to one by negative ads in a number of races. In the national election, Republicans achieved a similar result, but in this case Republicans outspent Democrats by substantial margins. Perhaps the composite lesson is this: In a wave election, money may accelerate the wave, but it can’t stop it. As David Brooks wrote in the New York Times on October 19, 2014, while it is essential for any candidate to be sufficiently supported to get the message out, beyond a certain point the public becomes inured. As more ads are bought, “big swings in spending produce only small changes in the vote totals.”

As Grumet observes, it is simply not possible “to craft an honestly marginal district amid a sea of northeastern progressives or southern conservatives.” MAINE

GERRYMANDERING

he evils of packing electoral districts have long been with us. The term gerrymandering goes back to 1812. Although the sin of allowing elected officials to choose their own voters is not new, Grumet reminds us that gerrymandering cannot explain the present dysfunction of the U.S. Senate where each member is elected from an entire state. Nor does it account for the phenomenon of self-sorting as explained by Bill Bishop in his book The Big Sort. Just as more Americans are choosing their own media outlets, they are also gathering to live with like-minded neighbors in places where common beliefs are shared. My three daughters who live in the South often meet people whose first inquiry is, “And what church do y’all attend?”

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

aine today has much for which to be grateful. Each of the 151 members of our over-sized House of Representatives represents only 8,600 people. Almost everyone in Maine has met his or her legislator—and many people have been one. It takes only 25 signatures to become a candidate for the House, 100 for the Senate. While the House is perhaps too big and inefficient, it has the virtue of being close to Maine people. Every member of the legislature may introduce any number of bills. Every bill is assigned to a committee and gets a hearing. Any committee member may bring a bill to the floor for debate. Any legislator on the floor may offer amendments and may speak or filibuster for so long as he or she can stand on two feet. These traditional privileges are seldom challenged because they are so seldom abused. The Maine Legislature has joint policy committees cochaired by a member from each chamber. Only two other states, Massachusetts and Connecticut, organize their bicameral legislatures in this way. When committees are jointly managed, House and Senate members may cosponsor each other’s bills, and the two houses coordinate well even when led by different parties. Many bills pass through both houses in the same form, making committees of conference unnecessary. In Maine, the paid staff who provide expert help on finance and policy are nonpartisan. Their services are freely shared among all legislators and with the public. A quirk in our Maine Constitution makes it difficult to adopt a basic biennial

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

budget without obtaining a two-thirds vote in each chamber. Thus, the minority party is a significant player in crafting the final product. The tradition of requiring a super-majority vote has been violated only five times in recent history. It is customary for the 13-member Appropriations Committee to agree unanimously on each major budget. Once it comes to the floor, the budget is stoutly defended not only by the committee but by leaders of both parties who work to defeat any amendment that threatens the committee’s tender consensus. Maine’s Constitution requires the legislature to adopt by two-thirds vote a new apportionment for legislative districts every 10 years. If the parties are unable to agree, the Maine Supreme Court resolves the differences. Gerrymandering is thereby limited. Except for probate judges, Maine has no elected judges. In many other states, judges must campaign and raise money from some of the same attorneys or special interests who appear before them. In Maine, most judges are appointed by the governor, subject to confirmation by a legislative committee whose decision may be overridden by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The process is reinforced by a long-standing tradition for the governor to rely on a bipartisan committee of trusted attorneys to screen each applicant’s qualifications. THE CHALLENGE ELSEWHERE

olitical structures in other states are not nearly so successful. In many legislative bodies, the floor agenda is dictated by the partisan head of either chamber. Most bills die without a vote and often with no committee consideration.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

In the U.S. Congress, multiple committees from each body may struggle for jurisdiction over a common policy and produce inconsistent bills, if any bills at all. When a bill reaches the floor, amendments may be denied by rule. U.S. senators may exert filibuster power without having to speak. It is uncommon for any bill of substance to pass without a committee of conference. Because most members of Congress commute weekly from their districts and floor work is limited to a few days each week, sessions are often suspended or not attended by members who need to raise funds and entertain lobbyists. While we should not give up on efforts to improve national politics, we need to recognize that success may only be incremental and unsatisfying. It will certainly depend on the caliber of people we send to Washington. That is why discussions on the following pages of Maine Policy Review are so important, why Maine has a lesson to teach, and why more states need to send leaders to Washington like Margaret Chase Smith, Bill Cohen, Joe Brennan, Ken Curtis, George Mitchell, Olympia Snowe, Ed Muskie, Tom Allen, Susan Collins, and Angus King. Although their levels of partisanship have certainly varied, each has shared a deep respect for democratic governance, a tolerance for human differences, and an instinct for finding common ground. My dad, who served several terms in the Maine Legislature, was sometimes challenged for being a maverick within his party. He would vehemently deny the charge with words to this effect: “A maverick is a dumb western horse that doesn’t know what he is doing. I know exactly where I stand. When members of my party are wrong, I am obliged to disagree with them.”

TEACH OUR CHILDREN WELL

eople of all political persuasions must acknowledge that children are the true victims of America’s political paralysis. America’s young children are attending some of the least effective schools in the free world. College students are incurring unthinkable debts to qualify for jobs that will not support their future loan payments. Meanwhile, most of us over 65 enjoy universal Medicare and a monthly stipend from Social Security. Now that we’ve got ours, we have pulled the ladder up so that no one else may ascend. Elections are dominated by growing numbers of elderly voters with ever longer life spans. Their elected politicians evade present-day problems by running up debts for the young—obligations that include not only the national debt, but also the unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Social Security, and public pensions, over a trillion dollars in student loans, and the cost of poorly maintained highways and deteriorating infrastructure throughout the built environment. Our present political impasse imposes a cruel burden on the generations to come. While it is important for young people to be well trained for productive careers, it is just as important that they benefit from a liberal education (from the Latin liber meaning free), an education of the sort promoted in ancient Greece and revived by the Enlightenment to develop open-minded, skeptical, and reflective citizens trained to think freely for themselves. Without a strong, liberal education, people cease to question. They become mentally lazy, enslaved by dogma, and too quickly frustrated by difficult challenges. They drift toward wrong, simplistic, and often dangerous answers. It is through effective education that future voters learn to seek truth, to

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

find balanced news, to see through slander, to discount for hyper-spending on political ads, to reject puffery from candidates, and to make rational choices on Election Day. When candidates reject the findings of science, educated citizens should jeer them off the podium. We must be intolerant of ignorance and stupidity. Our biggest epidemic is not Ebola or the winter flu; it is an epidemic of ignorance too often promoted by politicians for their own, selfish purposes. We must train the young to become dynamic and perceptive leaders willing to shock their fellow citizens out of complacency, to inspire them to think objectively, to examine evidence, to grapple with complexity, and, perhaps above all, to honor the work of others with varying views. -

Peter Mills has practiced law in Portland and Skowhegan. In 2010 he completed 16 years of service in the Maine Legislature, having served in both the house and senate. He has served as executive director of the Maine Turnpike Authority since 2011.Â

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW

Politics Then and Now

The articles in the following section are from a lecture series, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation,â&#x20AC;? presented by the Muskie School and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine in the fall of 2013, and from the William S. Cohen lecture held at the University of Maine in November 2013. Most of the speakers are prominent public office holders who were asked to address the issue of political polarization and dysfunction, comparing how politics was played in the past with the current situation, and discussing what Maine can offer based on experiences here. Series organizers Richard Barringer and Kenneth Palmer provide an overview of the lectures and summarize some of the common themes in their introductory article. Tom Allen analyzes the significance of conflicting worldviews in explaining the modern political climate in the United States. Angus King describes a number of factors contributing to the dysfunctional state of politics now, with one of the most fundamental being conflict over the size and scope of government. The remaining lectures are presented here as one page-excerpts: George Mitchell, Barney Frank, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Kenneth Curtis; a panel of Amy Fried, Ken Fredette, and Cynthia Dill; and a joint presentation by William Cohen and Alan Simpson.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Introduction

Politics Then and Now Introduction by Richard Barringer and Kenneth Palmer

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

t is now commonplace that American national politics has become polarized and dysfunctional of late. The inability of Congress to accommodate partisan differences has led to its failure to enact a federal budget in the past four years,1 a partial federal government shutdown for the first time in 17 years, and the absence of progress on immigration reform, infrastructure repair, climate change, and other important national challenges. The partisan gridlock has led the American public to give Congress some of its lowest approval ratings in history. One recent poll found 85 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Congress, while only 9 percent approve. Another indicated that fully 54 percent of Americans favor removing all members of Congress. The face of the gridlock is the lack of civility, comity, and cooperation between two political parties with divergent worldviews as they vie for political power and policy dominance in a changing world, within a constitutional system designed for coalition building and principled compromise. In a parliamentary system such as Great Britain’s, where the prime minister and cabinet ministers all hold seats as lawmakers in the parliament, a single election may determine the policy direction of the government. In the United States, where the president, the House of the Representatives, and the Senate serve different terms of office, three election cycles may be required to set direction. Occasions where each party controls but a part of the government are frequent. This framework was established in the U.S. Constitution itself. It was much praised by the writers of the Federalist Papers, particularly James Madison, as a way to curb arbitrary authority and to discourage dominance of the government by any one group or faction. Power was purposely distributed among three branches— the legislative, executive, and judicial—to slow the governing process and the accretion of power and to allow for careful deliberation. Of necessity, compromise

and bargaining must take place between the political parties in this system, as well as among the three separate branches of government, for national policy to be set and for national institutions to do their work. How ideological battles and party polarization came to replace the accustomed consensus arrangements of compromise and coalition building is a topic that draws much scholarly attention today. While the cited causes for dysfunction are many and complex, a single fact illustrates its centrality in today’s Congress. In surveys of voting behavior among members of the Senate, the most liberal member of the Republican caucus was still recorded in roll calls as more conservative than the most conservative-voting member of the Democratic caucus (Aldrich 2013). In brief, a long-existing area of ideological overlap between the two parties at the center of the political spectrum has disappeared. In 2013 a series of lectures entitled “Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation” was presented by the Muskie School of Public Service and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine. Our lecture series was held at a dark time—midSeptember through early November 2013—when the federal government was partially shut down for the first time in 17 years for lack of a federal budget, which was then extended to January 2014. Congress threatened to default on the nation’s debt and at the deadline extended the limit to February 2014. The initial technically flawed implementation of the new Affordable Care Act, “ObamaCare,” only renewed Congressional debate about the legitimacy of the law and deepened the partisan divide. On November 7, 2013, the same day as our closing panel presentation, the 2013 Cohen Lecture was delivered at the University of Maine, featuring Secretary of State William S. Cohen and Senator Alan K. Simpson, on “The State of Our Nation: Hardball vs Civility.” Because of its cogent and timely content, we included it in our volume, with permission, as a special supplement to the lecture series, under the title, “Enough Is Enough!” (Barringer and Palmer 2014).

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Introduction

The central idea behind the lecture series is that we’ve come a long way since President John F. Kennedy characterized public service as “a noble calling,” to today, when the nation’s political system is routinely described as “dysfunctional” and public servants as “selfish bureaucrats.” Systems theory has developed and been refined since World War II to help us to better understand and improve the behavior of complex systems—natural, human, and social. A well-established principle of the theory is that in any healthy system competition and cooperation coexist side by side, and sometimes cheek by jowl, to advance the system’s purposes and ends. Whether it is a forest ecosystem, the human body, a bureaucracy, an economy, or a constitutional system, the system’s elements compete for resources to meet their own needs, even as they act to contribute to the survival and persistence of the system itself.

[the lecture] series brought …distinguished speakers to campus to address the issue of political polarization and dysfunction in our politics. Somewhere along the way from the 1970s to today, the U.S. political system lost sight of this important principle, threatening its health and survival. Our series brought seven distinguished speakers to campus to address the issue of political polarization and dysfunction in our politics. A concluding panel of younger political leaders examined lessons learned from the seven presentations and offered comment on their prospects going forward. The speakers were prominent public office holders, either present or past, whose careers had in most cases spanned both Maine and national politics. We asked each of them to address three timely and important questions: • How was politics played in earlier times in Maine and the nation? And how has that changed today? • How did this come about? What are the implications for the state and the nation of our 14

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

continuing along this path? And what will it take to change course? • What does Maine have to offer the nation in this regard, based on our experience here? We asked all to include personal anecdotes and vignettes from their own experience to throw light on these questions and to reflect on the lessons their experience offers Maine and the nation today. Questions and answers followed each lecture and the panelists’ presentations. As cohosts for the series, we started with a couple of questions of our own, and members of the audience joined thereafter. The speakers’ responses elicited many heartfelt stories from personal experience. To set the tone for the series, the first lecture opened with the viewing of a brief excerpt from the splendid Public Broadcasting System’s American Experience biography of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963– 1968), entitled, “LBJ.” Fifty years ago, in the time of presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Americans had come to expect and rely on what was called a “consensus politics” in our national government, one built on principle, compromise, and deal making across party lines by lawmakers and chief executives alike who believed in this system and its abiding benefits to the people of the nation. The growth of ideological, uncompromising, takeno-prisoner politics over the past generation takes many in our generation by surprise. It has a number of root causes, and the difference is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in a brief video excerpt from the LBJ American Experience biography. It portrays LBJ in all the glory of his domestic legislative triumphs through the skillful application of bargaining, negotiation, persuasion, and cajolery that were his stock in trade, and the utter frustration and despair that attended his inability to reach agreement with Ho Chi Minh and end the war in Vietnam. “If only I just had him in a room, if only I could sit and talk to him,” LBJ laments, “I’m sure we could cut a deal!” It is a tale of irreconcilable differences, a zero-sum game driven by conflicting worldviews. The excerpt brings to mind the story of a medieval cardinal, attending the King of England during the course of a long, protracted war with the King of France. “If only you could sit with the King of France,” the cardinal urges, “I’m sure some agreement and accommodation might be reached, and all this suffering would

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Introduction

end.” “I’m afraid you fail to understand the matter, my dear Cardinal,” the King replied; “the King of France wants my kingdom, and I want his!” LESSONS LEARNED

o, what lessons may we take from the lecture series? Each of our speakers came to it from a distinguished career. They represent different places on the political spectrum: five Democrats, three Republicans, and one independent. (U.S. Senator Susan Collins, former U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe, and former U.S. Congressman and Maine Governor John McKernan, all Republicans, were invited to participate in the series, but were unable to attend.) Six had been candidates for governor of Maine, two had served as governor. Five had held seats in the U.S. Congress. Two others had served in the Maine Legislature. Five had held offices in both Maine and national government. While legislative service figured prominently in their resumes, seven of the nine speakers had also held executive posts. The closing panelists—an academic, a Republican, and a Democrat—each brought to the series years of devotion to and accomplishment in Maine public service. Despite their various persuasions and public offices held, all were in somewhat surprising agreement on a number of points:

The social distance between members of the two political parties in Congress and the White House has greatly increased since former times, especially in the past two decades. Lawmaking in Washington today relies less on personal relationships than in the past. In their place, ideology has become far more important and the fulcrum for policy making. Fewer and fewer issues may be discussed in anything but partisan terms. Where once negotiations took place over dinner and in after-hours conversations, representatives and senators now mostly regard themselves as visitors to Washington. Normally at home from Thursday evening through Monday, they are reachable in person only during the middle of the week, when votes are taken. Maine retains a political culture in which civility and personal relationships count importantly in elections and policy making.

In a small, rural state with a relatively large legislature, Maine legislators traditionally win office by doorto-door campaigning. Ideology is generally of lesser importance than inter-personal skills in both electioneering and the building of legislative coalitions. These habits carry over in the delegations Maine sends to the U.S. Congress and support the state’s reputation in Washington for moderation and independence, especially among its senators. At the same time, this tradition may be changing with the injection of significantly greater sums of ideologically driven, out-of-state money into recent state legislative races. Maine’s pragmatic and bipartisan tendencies of late have generally served the state well and especially well in the 1960s and early 1970s. Then, the Democratic Curtis administration was able to reorganize state government and undertake major reforms in tax policy, education, social welfare, human rights, and environmental protection. Each of these initiatives was enacted by a Republican legislature and has largely remained in effect through four decades, under administrations led by Democratic, Republican, and independent governors. After more than a century of Republican Party domination, Maine had developed an effective accommodation between the two major parties, one based on electoral competition and purposeful governmental cooperation to advance shared values and goals for the state. This accommodation had the overall effect of raising the Maine of the 1950s from among the lowest states nationally in virtually every standard measure of prosperity and promise, to approaching near the middle of the pack (if not much better) by the early 1990s. The accommodation was periodically interrupted, however, following several events of national and state distress—the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, the state government shutdown of the 1990s, and the Great Recession of 2007–2008. Each was followed by the election of an independent or Tea Party-backed candidate for governor, with substantially less than a majority vote and mandate to govern. The computer-driven techniques employed today in state gerrymandering of U.S. House districts often produce lopsided majorities for one party or the other and appear to contribute significantly to party polarization.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Introduction

While most presidential and Senate elections tend to be competitive, House primary elections routinely produce landslides for the dominant party, with the result that the party primary is often the only real election. This in turn encourages candidates with strong ideological agendas and financial support to compete, often at the expense of more moderate incumbents, and pushes the House to be more conservative than the nongerrymandered Senate. State commissions or judiciaries that are independent of state legislatures may be the only way to provide greater party balance in the configuring of congressional districts. Money matters, and there is far more of it in politics today than ever imagined heretofore. Two narrow (5–4) decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court—Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 and Citizens United in 2010—have declared that money is speech and corporations are persons and removed all limits on corporate and union contributions to elections, fundamentally altering the political landscape and pumping previously unimagined amounts into state and federal elections. A recent race for the Maine Senate, a position that pays some $18,000 for a two-year term, cost each of the party candidates more than $250,000, most of which came from unidentified, out-of-state donors. Previous races for the same seat would have been expected to cost each something on the order of $25,000. The only hopes for changing this are (1) amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a lengthy and intimidating process; and (2) change in the composition and disposition of the U.S. Supreme Court, appointments to which have only become more contentious since the nomination of Robert Bork a quarter-century ago (so much so that the word Bork has become a verb in Washington-speak). There appears not much prospect of a third or independent party arising as a result of the current dissatisfaction with the two national parties. It is more likely that divisions within the parties, especially the Republican Party, will appear and prompt a party split, or at least reveal the need for accommodation within the party. One possibility is the divergence of the more moderate Wall Street Republicans from Tea Party Republicans, especially over matters concerning the national debt. Another possible division lies between 16

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

the more moderate and pragmatic Republican governors and the Tea Party members of Congress. In the end, the electorate must and will set the nation’s course in this regard, for better or worse. Ultimate authority in the system resides with those who vote in elections, “the will of the people” as framed by the Constitution. There will be no abatement of dysfunction and gridlock unless and until the voters elect to office people who will deliver it. Money in politics today may be more influential in determining who runs for office than in how they vote once they get there. The question now becomes how to level the playing field for entrants who would seek a more civil dialogue and a more fact-based and less dogmatic approach to the nation’s abiding challenges. In fairness to the voters, we would address the question of how deeply (or not) party polarization has infected the American electorate itself. Recent literature on polarization and gridlock indicates that polarization has grown among party activists (who supply most of the money) and office holders, and less so among the voters themselves. Partisan activists and office holders have more contempt for and hostility toward one another today than in past decades. Voters show less change from the mostly centrist, politically disengaged habits identified in the University of Michigan voter survey studies of the 1950s. It may be useful, then, to separate the ideas of party realignment and polarization. Parties have realigned since the 1950s and 1960s, such that each is now more homogeneous, and neither remains, geographically, a truly national party. Republicans win in the South, Midwest, and rural-suburban areas, and have little support in New England. Democrats win in the coastal states (East and West), the upper Midwest, and the big cities, and have little support in the South. The result is a sorting process in which voters’ ideology and party affiliation have become more closely tied than in the past. This has intensified cohesion within the parties, and especially among party elites, in the stark choices they now offer the electorate. However, it does not necessarily mean that the voters insist that these be the only choices they will consider. Former Congressman Barney Frank notes, for example, that a number of Tea Party extremists were defeated by more moderate candidates in 2012.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Introduction

Camaraderie Then, Confrontation Now?

Finally, several of our speakers—George Mitchell, Barney Frank, Libby Mitchell, Peter Mills, Bill Cohen— made note of the human tendency ever to look back and see the past through rose-colored glasses and to imagine the best of it. At the same time, it is difficult for us not to remark upon the sense of fellowship, camaraderie, and shared purpose that pervades the tales of “Politics Then,” as opposed to the vitriol and contempt that too frequently characterize exchanges in the “Now.” The good feeling “Then” appears to have derived from a shared understanding that while the players might compete vigorously, especially around the questions of how best to serve the state’s and the nation’s purposes, there was until recently a widely shared understanding among elected officials on the nation’s purposes and goals—on what government is for and will do in our democratic society. There is a potentially historic struggle underway, one that may set the course of the nation for generations to come. Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) characterized it delicately (in the New York Times in March 2014) as “a fundamental debate about what is public good.” In our series, former Congressman Tom Allen describes it as a profound clash of basic worldviews, between the extremes of what he characterizes as a “me vs we” nation. Senator Angus King sees it in the rise of elected representatives whose avowed purpose is to shut down or cripple a national government built over three generations since the Great Depression. Our speakers noted, however, that the camaraderie now lost in the halls of Congress may still be found elsewhere in the nation. Several pointed to the political culture and processes in Maine, where elements of confrontation and cooperation coexist within state government, even as it is now divided between a very conservative Republican governor and more liberal Democratic majorities in the legislature. A historic time of decision may be upon us, then. Those who vote will decide the nation’s course and, accordingly, determine who will win and who will lose from the policies adopted along the path chosen. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This introduction and complete versions of all the lectures were published in Barringer, Richard, and Kenneth Palmer, eds. 2014. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME.

http://muskie.usm.maine.edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and -Now-large.pdf

ENDNOTE 1. On January 17, 2014, Congress passed and the president signed into law a budget to continue operation of the federal government through the end of federal fiscal year 2014, September 30, 2014.

REFERENCES Aldrich, John H. 2013. “Partisan Polarization and Satisfaction with Democracy.” Can We Talk: The Rise of Rude, Nasty, Stubborn Politics, edited by Daniel M. Shea and Morris P. Fiorina. Pearson Education, New York. 125–126. Barringer, Richard, and Kenneth Palmer, eds. 2014. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland. http://muskie. usm.maine.edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and-Now -large.pdf

Richard Barringer is professor emeritus in the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. Barringer has authored numerous books, reports, and laws in the area of land use, education, energy, tax policy, and economic development. The National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration honored him in 2008 with the Elmer B. Staats Public Service Career Award for “inspiring students to public service careers.”

Kenneth Palmer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Maine. He has published articles and book chapters on many aspects Maine’s politics and government. He is coauthor of Changing Members: The Maine Legislature in an Era of Term Limits (2005) and of Maine Politics and Government (2009). At UMaine, Palmer coordinated student intern programs in the U.S. Congress and in Augusta.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews in Conflict

Worldviews in Conflict by Tom Allen

he topic of this series is so timely. Once again we are a few days or a week away from another threat of shutdown of the federal government, and two weeks after that, another of the debt ceiling crises that seem to come up regularly now. It’s amazing to me how different the environment is today from what it was when I left Congress in 2008; on the other hand, it’s not very different in terms of what the members of Congress actually believe and say. Some are just more stubborn than others used to be. I’m not going to talk much about how politics was played in earlier times in Maine and the nation, however. You will notice how many “formers” there are on the speakers’ list for the series. We are all formers, except for Angus King who is a “current,” but the rest of us are all formers, and some have a lot longer history in politics than I do. SOME PARTIAL TRUTHS

want to concentrate on the topic of why we are where we are nationally and to some extent in Maine— although Maine is still different from what’s going on in the U.S. Congress—and I will note some of the differences as we go along. A reviewer of my new book (Allen 2013) said, “Tom Allen has a different take on political polarization.” I do. I wrote the book, in fact, because I was dissatisfied with the public commentary. With some exceptions, I didn’t think that people were getting the source of polarization right when they wrote about Congress, and I wanted to say my piece. When you have gone through a career as I have, and you get quoted for a sentence or two in the newspapers and on television, you want to tell a longer and more complete story to people. I wrote the book because there were a number of explanations for the polarization that I thought were only a bit of the truth. First, members of Congress don’t live in D.C. any longer; they don’t socialize on weekends the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neal did, and that’s the cause. Not really! Second, congressional redistricting now shapes uncompetitive districts and allows Democrats and

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

Republicans alike to have safe seats; therefore, they no longer have to appeal to the middle. There is some truth to this, and when you look at the number of congressional districts that are no longer competitive, they are the vast majority. Party primaries are structured so that the more extreme candidates in both parties tend to get nominated. Then, because so many are running in safe congressional districts, they get elected. There is a builtin bias, in that primary elections are now structured against people who are more centrist and able to reach out to the middle. Third, 24-7 cable news coverage. All-politics-allthe-time, with people on the TV shows who are overhere and over-there, with not many in the middle because they just don’t keep the ratings up. The media loves controversy to keep the ratings up. Fourth, it’s all about the money and the power. Republicans and Democrats alike are captured by big money. I’m going to make the case that it isn’t on either side. I’m not saying it isn’t partly about that, because these are human beings, after all. Fifth, the American people continually elect selfish jerks who go to Washington, forget who sent them there and why, and lose contact with the people back home. Not really true. There are good people on both sides of the aisle. And finally, it is argued that the House and Senate rules have been manipulated—in the Senate by the minority or the majority, and in the House particularly by the majority—and a lack of trust has grown grow out this sort of unrestrained combat over the rules. IDEAS MATTER

fter 12 years of listening carefully to my Democratic and Republican colleagues in Congress, I believe something else is going on. What is most fundamental is this: We debate issues, and ideas actually matter. They matter on the floor of the House, they matter in terms of what we say to the media, and they matter in the Democratic and the Republican caucuses. In those rooms, closed to the press, debates over policy always intertwine with politics. They are intense, and people

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews in Conflict

get angry and yell at each other. They wouldn’t do this if it were all just about power and money, and just staying there. Most members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, care deeply about the ideas and causes they took with them to Congress. I’m saying that these ideas matter; they really matter! And the big ideas—what I call worldviews—matter most. I picked topics for my book that did not include abortion, gay marriage, immigration, and all the other social issues where you can understand that people feel intensely and why bridging those gaps in belief is really difficult. I picked topics of the kind that used to be subject to negotiation and compromise and are no longer, in a time when every political issue is infected with partisan combat. I picked four topics: budget and taxes, Iraq, health care, and climate change. These four topics involve different subjects and factual evidence and need thoughtful approaches. Yet, they now appear to be part of a whole in Congress, as if something not apparent were tying them all together. Otherwise, the two parties would not have been so fiercely divided on such disparate matters. Interest group politics can explain some of the differences. Each party appeals to and is supported by different combinations of business, labor, and other organized interests. Today, however, interest group politics is often overwhelmed by worldview politics, a widening and hardening conflict between those who believe that the mission of government is to advance the common good, versus those who believe that government is an obstacle to that end. If this is true, all domestic issues merge into one—into an unproductive, irreconcilable, ideological conflict about the role of government itself. You, the citizen, do not get off scot-free, however. Ultimately, this conflict is less about the role of government than the enduring tension between individualism and community in American politics and culture. It is, therefore, as much about the electorate as it is about our representatives. That, in a nutshell, is what I’m saying. TWO WORLDVIEWS

ne worldview is grounded in the quintessential American value of self reliance. I call that worldview individualism. It’s what we teach our children: “You can be anything what you want to be if you work hard enough. You have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. You can’t be dependent on other people. You make your own life.” We believe this. It is good advice.

There’s another view, however; it is what I call community. It grows in part out of our religious traditions. We have come to relate to one another through connection to a higher being, however we may define this. It grows out of James Madison, who believed he was creating a tradition of civic republicanism in which we are all joined together in a common, democratic experience— one where everyone as a citizen is in some sense equal to everyone else. This binds us together. These are the two big ideas, I believe, in American politics and political culture. What interests me now is that Americans have become sorted, divided into two groups with respect to government, depending on whether we are primarily individualist or interested in community and working together. Importantly, these are the lenses through which we absorb information. We tend to take in information that supports what we believe and to shut out information that challenges what we believe. This is true across the board.

…Americans have become sorted, divided into two groups with respect to government, depending on whether we are primarily individualist or interested in community and working together.

There are other kinds of lenses as well. One is simple: some people see the world in black and white, and some see the world in shades of gray; we’re just wired differently. George W. Bush, by his own admission, didn’t do nuance; he saw the world in black and white. Barack Obama, I believe, sees the world in shades of gray. Isaiah Berlin wrote a little book in 1953, against the background of our great ideological struggle with fascism and communism, The Hedgehog and the Fox. I read it a long time ago and it made a deep impression on me. The title is taken from a fragment of a Greek poem that goes like this: The fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one big thing. Berlin was talking

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews In Conflict

about how people may be looked at as if falling into one of two groups. One group, characterized as “the fox,” enjoys and even revels in the diversity, the contradictions, and the confusions we human beings bring to this world; these people say that’s the way the world works. The other group, “the hedgehogs,” focuses not just on one thing necessarily, but tends to order the world according to a single, structured view. That’s why we have religions that are more structured, more literal, on the one hand, and more open and diverse, on the other. We have groups in our politics that are just the same. Take a look at today’s political situation in the United States. A lot of it is about individualism vs community and about how we are wired to approach public issues through that singular lens. I would summarize it this way: the public is more diverse today than members of Congress. Most Republicans in Congress tend to see government as (1) by its very nature infringing on individual liberty, (2) creating a culture of dependency among those it serves, and (3) screwing up just about everything it does. These views are deeply held, and when you connect them to American individualism and self-reliance, you can see that it’s pretty deeply rooted in the American experience. On the other hand, most Democrats in Congress look at the government and say, “Government is one way, with the right programs and the right approach, to create opportunity for people who weren’t born with it or, for whatever reason, don’t have it, so, it can be a positive force for good.” Democrats would say, “This is how we deal with pressing public issues: government is a major vehicle by which we tackle education, health care, environmental issues, and economic issues. We work at these through our government.” The conflict between these two worldviews sets and drives us apart. DANGEROUS CONVICTONS

’m now going to explain Dangerous Convictions, because I chose for my book a title that creates some confusion. The title comes from a quotation from Frederick Nietzsche who said, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” He was saying that once we believe something so strongly that we reject any evidence to the contrary, we are in big trouble, and this would be shorthand for what we are seeing in the U.S. Congress today. Let me say as a Democrat that Democrats have done a lot to make this situation worse. I’m not talking

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

about all the bad things that each party has done to the other. I’m concentrating here on a set of Republican ideas that I believe are not supported by evidence or by expertise, particularly in economics and science; because the hope for America is that we may have a more pragmatic Republican party that will work with Democrats across the aisle. It is a little unusual for me to try and make the case for a different kind of Republican Party that would be more competitive with the Democrats, but that is a large part of why I wrote the book. “Tax cuts pay for themselves.” We heard this all the time. It wasn’t true, it was never true. It is theoretically possible to be true in certain circumstances, but by and large, if you cut taxes, revenues go down. The idea that tax cuts will always stimulate the economy so much, the economy will grow so fast, and you will make up all those lost revenues and gain revenues for the federal government isn’t true, but that assertion was made over and over again. The Bush tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 were enormous and were rigged to be even bigger than they appeared on paper. By the time 10 years had passed, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office figured that they had drained the federal treasury of $2.9 trillion. Now, let’s just say that $2.9 trillion is a really big number. It is beyond comprehension. In July 2010, when we already knew that was the trend and it would wind up there, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stood before the press and said, “The Bush tax cuts stimulated the economy so much that they increased federal revenues, [and] I’m sure that is the position of all Republicans in the Senate.” This is one of those moments when you ask, “How can someone say that, and how can the media report it without saying, ‘You’re nuts!’?” But many of the major media outlets today see it as their role and duty to report what each side says and just let it go at that. Here’s the difficulty with this: if you are an American citizen, you have all this information washing over you, and it’s hard to cope with it all, sort it all out, and make meaning of it. Bruce Bartlett, who served Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, has written a book called The Benefit and the Burden (2012), a fabulous book. He points out that when Reagan got the big 1981 tax cut passed, he increased deficit spending dramatically, and his budget chief, the supply-sider David Stockman later said, “We were mistaken, I was mistaken.” Reagan raised taxes 11 times, and nobody knows that. Bush 41 did it once, and Bush 42 did it zero times.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews In Conflict

Bartlett said that he’s never heard a conservative say, “There is some level of taxation below which you should not go.” Former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, whom I wouldn’t hold up as a leader of the Republican Party, was asked this question during her 2012 campaign: What should the appropriate level of federal taxes be? She responded, “Zero,” confirming what Bruce Bartlett had said. What I’m trying to convey is the importance of ideas. I’m going to divide the room. Whatever your political views, you on the right side are absolutely committed to smaller government and lower taxes. That is your abiding belief; you have to develop policies to fit. On the left side, it’s “opportunity, responsibility, community.” That was Bill Clinton’s 1992 slogan and is what you believe in, whatever policy you may have to develop. For those of you on the right with the smaller government, lower taxes mission: What are you going to do about health care? You’ve got a system before ObamaCare, one that isn’t functioning, with 30 million people who do not have health insurance, and tons of small businesses who can’t afford to cover their employees. While you think on that, I offer the same assignment over here on my left to the people who are okay working with government, to work through opportunity, responsibility, community. It’s a whole lot harder for the small government, lower taxes group to come up with a policy that will cover a large number of people and still satisfy that core principle. Remember “repeal and replace ObamaCare?” Over and over again, it’s been a number of years now, they have talked about repealing and replacing ObamaCare, but there’s never been a Republican proposal put forward that would come close to covering the 30 million people, fully implemented. The reason is, it’s too hard—there is no proposal out there. Not many people know that ObamaCare came from the conservative Heritage Policy Foundation. Two of the central components of the Affordable Care Act were grounded in work done at the foundation in 1989 by Stuart Butler, a smart and able guy. The core elements of Butler’s idea were (1) instead of having a single-payer system, you would have regulated exchanges where private insurance companies would compete for beneficiaries; and (2) you wouldn’t have an employer mandate, you’d have an individual mandate. By the time Obama took office and was pushing his health care plan, Republicans had abandoned the Butler approach, and they haven’t adopted another

since. Butler’s plan was about as conservative as you can get and still be comprehensive. This is why ideas, why worldviews, matter tremendously in your ability to deal with difficult issues. I used to have a speech that my staff called my “pronoun speech.” I basically worked American politics into two pronouns, me and we; I still think it works. Health care politics in particular is about how much voters care about other people’s health care. Many times someone would ask me, “Why should I pay for people who can’t afford their own health care?” Part of the answer from the left is, “If you don’t, you will pay more; if we don’t share the burden of insurance, share the burden of bad things happening to anyone of us, we will not be as strong or healthy as a society.” Today, of course, we’re still fighting this battle. The arguments of those who wish to defund ObamaCare portray it is as a disaster for the American people, a disaster for business, the worst thing that ever happened. They say, as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) does, “We have to stop it before it gets implemented because once it is implemented people are really going to like it!”

If you have a worldview that is based on core principles that are not going to be changed by evidence, you really don’t need to listen to evidence…. Iraq is the most interesting nondomestic issue of our time in terms of these competing worldviews. To my mind, the single most stunning fact about the decision to go into Iraq is this: the U.S. National Security Council never had a single meeting to debate whether to invade Iraq. Not one, it was just done. If you have a worldview that is based on core principles that are not going to be changed by evidence, you really don’t need to listen to evidence, and that is what the story of Iraq is about. Just prior to “shock and awe,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the president that he was determined that after the military victory the Defense Department should control the reconstruction period,

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews In Conflict

not the State Department, which he believed would be there too long. Rumsfeld wanted to get in and get out. A month before the invasion he gave a speech and said, “The reason why is this: if you stay, you will create a dependency among the Iraqis.” Dependency. You hear that word over and over again. If self-reliance is the principal American virtue, dependency is the principal American vice. That’s why I think even the conflict in Iraq is driven by how much respect for evidence decision makers have and the information they need to make a data-based decision, as opposed to going in and doing something because they think they need to and can make it work. I suspect the reason they never had a meeting to debate going into Iraq is that the president didn’t want a big fight between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary Rumsfeld. Powell did meet with the president and said, “If you go into Iraq, it’s like crystal glass; it will shatter, and we will have to pick up the pieces.” And he proved to be right. The fourth substantive chapter of my book is on climate change. The defining environmental issue of the twenty-first century, it carries enormous consequences and potential costs if we don’t do something about it. Yet the parties are so fundamentally divided, they can’t even agree that there is a problem. Certain people who deny climate change have made it clear—particularly the Cato Institute—that admitting that climate change is real will give government more power over the economy. Meanwhile, Harvard’s Greg Mankiw the former head of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote a recent column for the New York Times (August 31, 2013) in which he said it was time to take a look at a carbon tax. Let me divide the room again. For those of you who want small government and lower taxes, you are confronted with climate change and carbon taxes are your solution. That’s what Republicans should be arguing for, except for one thing: they have campaigned for decades against any and all taxes, so you must call it a carbon fee. You can see again that we get boxed in by our big ideas and we shut off data, information, and possible solutions. This is what happens on the Republican side. They basically argue that the party system is broken; the parties are divided, and the Republicans have become essentially an outlier on the political spectrum, not accepting conventional mainstream science and economics, and as a result offer little to do about anything. 22

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

FIXING THE PROBLEM

o, where do we go from here? How do we fix it? The last chapter is always the hardest to write when you have to explain where you think we need to go. I think part of the problem is media coverage and political campaign messages that have been dumbed down even as our problems get more complex and it gets harder and harder for people to sort out the different messages. When I look ahead, I am an optimist. If I look back at the twentieth century, I would say it was a century of enormous ideological and devastating conflict, of all sorts of wars, mostly about different ideologies and worldviews. I believe the twenty-first century is going to be marked by global collaboration on a scale we’ve never seen before, driven in part by increasingly integrated economies. If Greece goes badly, it does damage to Europe, and if Europe has problems, the United States and Asia do too. That’s what has happened in the last couple of years, and it will continue. That’s why when the central bankers and the finance ministers in the developed world are trying to figure what to do about the worst recession and economic downturn since the Great Depression, they are talking to each other all the time. They may not agree, but they are talking to each other all the time. This broader communication and collaboration between nations and groups may be threatening to people who worry about our independence and selfreliance. It raises all these questions in spades. It’s driven by the vastly improved communications we use all the time, by the spread of education, and by what I call “compelling ideas” that simply catch on. At the end of the day, the questions are, Are we going to be okay with this developing world that is coming whether we want it or not? Are we trying to shape it so that collaboration will work while protecting individual rights, or are we going to be afraid of it? There’s a real difference there. Finally, I would say that both of the worldviews I have mentioned, individualism and community, are deeply rooted in American culture. They are us. When you realize this, it means (at least I hope it means) that you will gain a little extra tolerance for those who have diametrically opposed views from your own. I believe that if we are going to get this right, if we’re going to move beyond the kind of dysfunction and polarization that we have today, it will be because people better

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews In Conflict

understand these two worldviews as the source of the polarization. We will need a more honest conversation. I finish with this, from near the end of my book. People will always be divided between those who largely see the world in black and white and those who see it in shades of gray. But most of us value both self-reliance and working with others. However inarticulate we may be, we speak both our first language of individualism and our second language of community. These core aspects of the American psyche, the yin and the yang of what it means to be an American, have been split apart by worldview politics. We are unlikely to recover a productive balance without an honest conversation about them. I close with this thought. For all my alarm at the frozen state of today’s political discourse, I believe that by some not-yet-visible process, we Americans will find our way to a more pragmatic public leadership, one inspired by a clearer commitment to the public good. It may be a long road, but it is a road we will find over time. As long as we keep these two ideas in balance— self-reliance and community, working together as individuals—we will be a stronger and better country. Questions and Answers [Editor’s note: A few of the questions and responses that were tangential to the topic of “Politics Then and Now” have been omitted.]

In your book, you say you see no way out of our current political polarization without a sustained public dialogue about individualism and community in American life. There is much caring attention in Maine to the core values you cite. Some may remember Ellen Goodman, who used to write a syndicated column for The Boston Globe. Goodman has long spent her summers on a Casco Bay island where she owns a cottage. She once wrote that she goes there every summer “to watch my island neighbors struggle successfully with the ongoing tension between individualism and neighborliness.” Is there anything that Maine, itself, has to offer the nation in this regard?

ALLEN: Absolutely. There are a lot of things about Maine that are really special, and what I appreciate most is probably the sense of independence. Massachusetts wanted to get rid of us in 1820; we were way too independent even then. We have space, you know, and the kind of pressure that you feel in big cities is missing here.

We have space, we have time, and we can relax. One of the reasons that we do better politically is that we have something like 500 municipalities and 200 school districts, and everybody knows someone who has served in some sort of government capacity. We have a high voter turnout. People are used to working through our governments. There is a lot more tolerance here. I have never heard Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe say that tax cuts pay for themselves. They have never adopted the rhetoric of the right wing of the Republican Party.

I believe that…we Americans will find our way to a more pragmatic public leadership, one inspired by a clearer commitment to the public good. All this keeps American politics in Maine dialed down. The Maine tradition is you just don’t pick people for office who are way off on the left or way off on the right. The sense that we have to work together is a high priority for Maine people. If you look at Colin Woodard’s book, American Nations (2011), we clearly live in a different place. The Northeast, as he points out, was settled by people from different ethnic groups and religious traditions from those who settled other parts of the country. He makes the interesting point that despite the fact that Americans move from one part of the country to another, we tend to adopt the values of the place we’re going to. As a result, some of our regional and ethnic differences tend to persist. I certainly feel, and always felt in Congress, that the people from the South are really different. People between the Rockies and the Mississippi are substantially different from the people in the Northeast, along the East Coast, in Middle America, and in the Far West. There are different values, different outlooks, and different concerns. Some of it is religion. Someone can write a book about religious traditions across America, and I’ll bet these would track to a large extent with differences in political traditions as well. Accepting your view that our convictions are deeply rooted, how do you explain that our elected officials

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews In Conflict

were able to reach compromises in the past, while they are now unable to do so?

ALLEN: That’s a great question. When I worked for Ed Muskie from 1970 to 1971, I followed politics all the time, and people worked across the aisle much more effectively. When I was in college, the leading book on the presidency was by Richard Neustadt (1960), the gist of which was that the power of the president is ultimately the power to persuade. Well, not now. Now, the president has almost no power to persuade anyone on the other side of the aisle and limited power to persuade people in his own side. I think that the parties were different then and the public too. You had southern Democrats and northern Republicans then, and there was a lot less diversity within each party. The parties were divided by many topics; sometimes it was economic issues, sometimes it was regional issues, divided by industries or agriculture, or whatever. Today, the parties are divided largely by worldviews. And when you’re divided by fundamental worldviews, these cannot be compromised. That’s why I divided the room, to see if you can build a comprehensive health care policy on smaller government and lower taxes. That’s what is different today: we are divided differently and more deeply. There is a book, The Big Sort (Bishop 2008), that argues that Americans are gravitating toward places where people live who are like themselves in this regard. So, we’re more and more listening to and talking to people with whom we already agree and our views are not being balanced by people with significantly different opinions. That’s a big part of the problem. Can you give us an example of Democrats being boxed in by their own ideas?

ALLEN: Republicans primarily have a hard time getting away from ideological convictions; Democrats primarily have a hard time getting away from constituency demands. When I was in office and spent most of my time on health care, I would get bombarded with requests from Democrats to support a single-payer system, the Canadian system in particular. The system in Canada works well and provides better care for less money than the system we have. I never supported it. A lot of Democrats did because they were boxed in by the idea of it and by their constituencies. Democrats get attached to particular constituencies, whether that be government employees, teachers, or 24

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

seniors on Medicare, that we can never make any changes to Medicare or Social Security; we can’t even consider chained CPI,1 which would drop benefits for Social Security by a very, very small amount over a number of years. And once you get locked in like that, and you have a system such as Social Security that does need some adjustment, you have little room, if any, to compromise. Do you think that greater collaboration may yet be forced by serious crisis such as that caused by climate change?

ALLEN: Collaboration is being forced already. It may take a year, but after the 2012 election, suddenly immigration reform is on the table. It hasn’t passed the House, and may not, but it sure got a lot of attention in the Senate. There was a big push to pass immigration reform—including a pathway to citizenship—by Republicans who never supported it before. In the immortal words of Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina (with whom I have served and whom I actually like a lot), “What are you going to do?” he asked. “The Republican Party is in a demographic death spiral, and we better do something about it.” Now, that’s probably not the purest motives for doing immigration reform, but I’ll take it. When I mentioned Greg Mankiw’s article on the carbon tax, I mean there are a few people who see the writing on the wall. Over the next 10 years, and it may take that long, we’ll see a real struggle within the Republican Party, between what I call the conservatives and the libertarians. If the conservatives win, we will have over time a more pragmatic Republican Party, a somewhat more moderate, but at least a more pragmatic party. This is how it is going to turn out, at the end of the day—if the Republicans cannot compete in presidential elections, there will be more and more who will say that we’ve got to do something different. And they may compete in the House elections for a while; but in 2016, Florida, which was a swing state in 2012, will have some 900,000 more Hispanic voters. Some of these swing states may no longer be swing states in 2016 and 2020, unless there is a remaking of Republican Party to give itself broader, less ideological appeal. Tom Mann and Norman Ornstein argue in their book that, in the end, “the voter must take ultimate responsibility for healing a broken and very, very dysfunctional

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews In Conflict

political system.” This is surely true. At the same time congressional districts have been gerrymandered to strengthen partisan division in primary elections that are structured to favor extremists. What, if anything, can the average voter do to overcome these obstacles and regain a voice in the electoral process?

ALLEN: I certainly think that redistricting reinforces the problems we have in the House (although the problems in the Senate and the governorships suggest it’s not all about redistricting). First of all, don’t assume that any one voter can fix the problem, but every one of us has a voice and every one of us has a vote. This makes a difference if you can find ways to weigh in. There is almost always a political group pushing one cause or another, and being involved in these activities over time makes a great difference. After all, none of us expects to change the world. (Well, maybe some do; I think I never did, only to make a contribution.) And I think that’s how you do it, you find a group. With respect to congressional redistricting, I really believe in a system like we have in Maine, and the system in California; you need a commission with judicial review, to take it out of the hands of the legislature. Ultimately it has to be out of the hands of the legislature, because they will protect their own, on both sides of the aisle, and the public will suffer. For many decades from the 1930s to the 1970s, economic differences among voters were closely related to party affiliation. Upper income people tended to support Republican candidates, while lower income groups favored the Democrats. Despite growing income inequality in the United States in recent years, economic factors now seem to be less relevant to how people vote. Why do you think this is the case?

ALLEN: Education is more important than it used to be, and the voting pattern shifts depending in part on education. Another part is change in the nature of work itself. I was speaking recently to a man with a small publishing company. In 1960, he said, 80 percent of the jobs in America were unskilled, and now that number is just about 20 percent. In manufacturing and other areas, the demographic group that’s been hardest hit by change is white men. As women have entered the workforce in record numbers and established themselves, all those blue-collar jobs that men used to support a family have receded. Politically, there is some anger there. As you

know, the conservative vote today is increasingly older, white male, and southern and rural. Those tendencies are shaping where we are going. So, tell us: where do you get your optimism?

ALLEN: It’s genetic. People often say things are only getting worse and worse. My response is, No trend lasts forever; it just doesn’t. At the end of my book, you’ll see a passage from Reinhold Niebuhr that sums up how I feel: “We cannot complete in our lifetimes the things we would like to see happen. We must, therefore, rely on faith, hope, and love.” Somewhere down the road, the problems that worry us so much now will be resolved to a greater or less extent. And future generations will be dealing with different problems. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The full version of this lecture was published in Barringer, Richard, and Kenneth Palmer, eds. 2014. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME. http://muskie.usm.maine .edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and-Now-large.pdf

ENDNOTE 1. Editors’ Barringer and Palmer note: The Chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI) is a time-series measure of the price of consumer goods and services created by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as an alternative Consumer Price Index. It is based on the idea that in an inflationary environment, consumers will choose lessexpensive substitutes. This reduces the rate of cost of living increases through the reduction of the quality of goods consumed. The standard or “fixed weight” CPI also takes such substitutions into account, but does so through a periodic adjustment of the “basket of goods” that it represents, rather than through a continuous estimation of the declining quality of goods consumed. Application of the chained CPI to federal benefits has been controversially proposed to reduce the federal deficit

REFERENCES Allen, Tom. 2013. Dangerous Convictions: What’s Really Wrong with the U.S. Congress? Oxford University Press, New York. Bartlett, Bruce. 2012. The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform, Why We Need It and What It Will Take. Simon & Schuster, New York.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Worldviews In Conflict

Berlin, Isaiah. 1953. The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Ltd., London. Bishop, Bill. 2008. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of LikeMinded America Is Tearing Us Apart. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York. Mann, Thomas E., and Norman J. Ornstein. 2012. It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. Basic Books, New York. Neustadt, Richard. 1960. Presidential Power. Macmillan Publishing Company, New York. Woodard, Colin. 2011. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Penguin Group, New York

Tom Allen served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine’s first congressional district from 1996 to 2008. A member of the House Budget and Energy and Commerce committees, he sponsored measures to create a comprehensive national oceans policy and to limit soft money contributions in political campaigns. Currently president of the Association of American Publishers, he is the author of Dangerous Convictions: What’s Really Wrong with the U.S. Congress (2013).

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

Ten Comparisons, Then and Now by Angus King

was sworn in as a U.S. senator 40 years to the day after I went to work as a staff member in the U.S. Senate, on January 3, 1973. So, I have an interesting perspective on politics then and now from having worked for Senator Bill Hathaway of Maine in his 1972 campaign; then going to work for him in Washington; and now, unexpectedly, finding myself back there 40 years later. I would like to share with you some comparisons between politics then and now. MONEY

ill Hathaway’s campaign in 1972 was the most expensive campaign ever run in Maine to that point, and it cost $212,000. My campaign last year cost $3 million, and it was the cheapest winning campaign in the United States. In fact, a friend from Washington called during the campaign and asked, “What’s your budget?” I said, “Well, about three million dollars.” He replied, “What a quaint number!” Money has become a huge problem in American politics, huge because there is an insatiable demand for it. My campaign cost three million. There was probably another million and a half or two spent on my behalf by outsiders, and then there was six or seven million spent against me. Do you remember the ads with the little crown on my head? My granddaughter loved those ads. She said, “Look, there’s granddad with a crown on.” She thought it was really cute; she didn’t know they were spending millions of dollars to assassinate my character. I think we have a good measure of what all that spending was worth. When I ran for governor in 1998, I got 59 percent of the vote; this time I got 53 percent. They spent $6 million on negative ads. I figure they spent a million dollars a percentage point to take me from 59 to 53 percent. That’s a rough figure for what it was worth. I’m just glad they didn’t spend $50 million. Here’s the problem. I spent three million, and there was probably ten million spent in total. In Massachusetts, where Elizabeth Warren was running against Scott Brown, the expenditures were $42 million apiece. That’s $42 million on each campaign.

Massachusetts has a larger population than Maine’s, but it’s not that much larger. Today, to run for reelection in a competitive state, the average U.S. senator needs to raise between $8,000 and $10,000 a day, every day, 365 days a year, for six years. Think for a minute: $10,000 a day, every day, seven days a week. You very quickly run out of friends and family. Where does all that money come from? Unfortunately, it tends to come from people who are interested in what you are doing. I remember former Congressman Barney Frank saying a few years ago, with typical wit,“We have the only political system in the history of the world where perfect strangers are expected to give you large sums of money and not expect anything in return!” It is a scandal waiting to happen. It’s a real problem, not only in terms of the amounts involved and where you get it, but also in terms of how much time it takes. I see my colleagues who are up for reelection next year, who are spending hours and hours every day on the telephone, asking for money. On top of this, we have this terrible case, where people can give all this money anonymously. It’s one thing if you know where it’s coming from, but now there’s no way to know. The six or seven million that was spent against me? Nobody knows who gave that money. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was at the bottom of the “crown” ad, but we don’t know where they got the several million they spent. I believe it was Senator John McCain of Arizona who said that they had become kind of an identitylaundering organization, and I think that’s a real problem. In the Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court invited Congress to require disclosure. Congress hasn’t done it yet, but it’s something we should do. You cannot go to a Maine town meeting with a bag over your head. You have to say, here’s who I am, here’s what I believe, and here’s who I am contributing to. We in Maine, in New Mexico, in California, and everywhere, are being battered by these advertisements, without any idea of who’s behind them. There are no limits. It can be a single person with millions and millions of dollars. In 2012, one man backing Newt

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

Gingrich for president wrote a check for well more than ten million dollars—one person. That’s not good for our democracy. So that’s a big difference between politics then and now; $10,000 a day—just think of that. GERRYMANDERING THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

errymandering is a term that dates back to Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts in the early nineteenth century. It refers to the purposeful drawing of election districts to exclude certain voters and include others, so these become “safe” districts for the party in power. Half or more of the House districts today have been gerrymandered to the point where they are politically safe seats. This means that the primary election in that district is the election. If you win the Republican primary in a Republican-drawn district, you are going to be the congressperson. There’s no contest. The Democrat doesn’t have a prayer because the lines have been drawn in such a way that it’s going to be 60 or 70 percent Republican, and vice versa. And by the way, there are safe Democratic districts, too. This means that the person who runs in the primary is vulnerable only to somebody running on their flank. If you’re in a Republican district and running in a Republican primary, there’s always the threat of somebody running who’s going to be more conservative than you, and you’re pushed to the right. By the same token, for the Democrat, you’re being pushed to be more liberal. So, it is the extreme activists who control the primaries, and in many places, unfortunately, not many people vote in the primaries. Last summer [2013], when I was running in Maine, the Republicans nominated Charlie Summers with just 13 percent of the registered Republican vote. The Democrats nominated Cynthia Dill with just 9 percent of the registered Democratic vote. If you do the math, it’s like 1 or 2 percent of the people of Maine who nominated the two major party candidates. The activists in each party tend to control these primaries, particularly if there’s a small turnout. This is what produced this immensely polarized House of Representatives and the government shutdown. I have heard commentators say, “Well, the Republicans in the House are going to cave in soon, because the polls for the Republicans are down.” Remember hearing that? “They’re getting hammered,

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

their polling numbers are down.” Then I heard, “Well, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the business community are not going to contribute to the Republicans, and that will shape them up.” No! If you’re from one of those safe Republican districts in Georgia, or Ohio, or Wisconsin, or Tennessee, you don’t care about these national polls. All you care about is your district, and in that district, you were being cheered for closing down the government. That’s what they went there to do. I talked to one writer who said she had talked to some of the Tea Party Republicans, and the calls from their districts during the shutdown were ten-to-one in favor. Do you see what I mean? It’s why the House didn’t care about the polls. What happens nationally doesn’t really matter, if your base is that district. It can work both ways, but right now it’s working more on the Republican side that is so one-sided. It’s the reason that things have pulled so far apart. It’s why the House didn’t care about the polls. THE CENTER-LESS U.S. SENATE

n 1972, when I was working for Bill Hathaway, there was an ideological spectrum across the Senate as a body (extending both arms). Among the Democrats, you had Teddy Kennedy on the left and John Stennis, a Democrat from Mississippi and the long-time chair of the Armed Services Committee, on the right of the party. On the Republican side, you had Barry Goldwater on the right and Jacob Javits of New York, a Republican who was way more liberal than Stennis, on the left of the party. There were about 20 people in a broad, middle category, who were liberal-to-moderateleaning Republicans and conservative-to-liberal-leaning Democrats. There was considerable overlap, you see, at the center. Today it’s like this: there is, literally, no overlap. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John McCain of Arizona (sometimes) are over on the more moderate side of the Republican Party. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and I and several others are over on the right side of the Democratic caucus, but generally we don’t overlap. You see the problem? There is no center. There is, of course, our little group of 14, but it is harder and harder to find a center. I can remember in college, there were political scientists who wrote that “We need more ideologically pure parties; these ‘big tent’ parties just don’t make sense”

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

(American Political Science Association 1950).1 It turns out they did make sense, and we are now reaping the whirlwind of having these ideological parties. It makes it so hard to solve problems. That is a big change in the last 25 years.

problems now is the multiplicity of information sources that create these alternative realities and make it virtually impossible to find agreement. As we go into the upcoming budget negotiation, that is going to be one of our major hurdles.

BALKANIZATION OF THE NEWS BUSINESS

hen I was growing up, we all got our information from essentially one person, Walter Cronkite, or at most, from a relatively few national sources. Today there is a news source to fit your biases. If you’re a liberal, you watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC; if you’re a conservative, you watch Fox News; and if you can’t make up your mind, you watch CNN. The point is, it’s human nature to seek out sources of information that agree with our biases. We tend to read and listen to those sources and commentators who already agree with us. The problem is we end up living in alternativereality universes, where we don’t share the facts. I found when I was governor that if you can get people into a room and have a common understanding of the facts, it’s often easy to find a solution; it becomes self-evident. It’s when different people have different versions of reality that it’s almost impossible to find a solution. Here are two examples from my experience in Augusta. One was forest clear-cutting. Remember the big clear-cutting controversy? Jonathan Carter of Lexington Township had his version of what was going on in the woods, and the paper companies had an entirely different version about the facts—about how many trees were growing, how fast they would grow back, and all that. So, it was virtually impossible to find a middle ground for a policy solution. On the other hand, we decided with the New England governors and the eastern Canadian premiers to do something about transported mercury pollution. Instead of starting with a prescription about what to do about it, we assigned our environmental commissioners to spend a year quietly studying the problem. Where is the pollution coming from? What is it doing? How bad is it? We established a really good scientific basis and ended up with a piece of legislation that passed the Maine legislature almost unanimously—because of the facts. We agreed on the facts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late and great senator from New York, once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” One of the

One of the problems now is the multiplicity of information sources that create these alternative realities and make it virtually impossible to find agreement.

SOCIAL MEDIA

ne of the most important things in my campaign last year was Facebook. At the end of the campaign we had something like 45,000 people following our Facebook page. For a politician, Facebook is like going door-to-door without having to walk between the houses. It’s an amazing way to connect with people, to have a certain kind of direct communication with them. I see people all the time who say, “I love your Facebook page, thanks for keeping us up with what’s going on.” It’s the kind of connection we all crave. Of course, Twitter and texts and those kinds of things are the same: they have changed politics and are making a huge difference. There are specialists in Washington now who do nothing but tell you how to maintain your Facebook page, how to get more viewers, how to get a higher ranking in Google, and all that. By the way, I don’t know about you all, but I feel pretty cool to have been alive at the invention of a new verb, “to google.” Social media in 1972, when I was working for Bill Hathaway, was calling your mother-in-law and asking, “How’s it going here?” That was about it. EVERYONE GOES HOME

obody lives in Washington anymore. When I worked for Bill Hathaway, almost all the senators lived in Washington. Bill Hathaway lived in McLean,

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

Virginia; his kids went to school there. His wife was there, his family was there, and they hung out. Members of Congress played golf, they had dinner together, and there was a lot of socializing among them. Now that’s almost all gone because everybody goes home. Even my friend Michael Bennett of Colorado goes home every weekend; his wife and kids live in Denver. Washington clears out, and the work schedule now accommodates this. The work schedule of Congress is generally from Monday afternoon to Thursday evening, which means you can go home Thursday night; stay Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; and come back Monday morning. A lot of the time at home is spent campaigning and fundraising; it’s not just kicking back and relaxing. The point is, the center of gravity of these folks is away from and not in Washington. This has diminished the kind of personal relationships that are necessary to make a complex organization like Congress function. One of my friends in Augusta once said, “You can’t hate someone if you know the names of their kids.” There is a lot of truth to this. Right now, we don’t much know the names of each other’s kids. I’m doing my best to crack this. Mary and I have a little place that’s within walking distance of the Capitol. I don’t even have a car, I walk. There’s a rib house two blocks from my house, and in the last few weeks I’ve had seven, eight, or nine senators in for ribs. I don’t have to cook, we just pick up the ribs and go home. We’ve got to try and crack this business of not knowing one another, and all of these people have fascinating stories. The highlight of my week is often Wednesday morning, the Senate Prayer Breakfast. The reason I like it is it’s nice to have a little time for a spiritual something, but it’s also the only truly bipartisan event of the week, where Republicans and Democrats are together. We have breakfast together. The Senate Chaplain, retired Admiral Barry Black, gives a prayer, we sing a hymn, we say a prayer, and then one of the senators tells a story. It involves their faith, but it also reveals who they are. One of the things that has struck me is how many of these people come from unexceptional circumstances; in fact, almost all do. A remarkable number of them come from single-parent homes, a disproportionate percentage it would seem. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina grew up above a bar and pool room owned and run by his parents, both of whom died when he was 19 or 20 years old. He raised his 13-year-old sister and

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

adopted her so she could get benefits and put her through college. Tim Scott of South Carolina had a father who was an alcoholic and died when Tim was 16. Joe Donnelly of Indiana lost his mother when he was 10. His father raised four children. Someone has asked me, “What are your biggest surprises?” One of my biggest is that these are, mostly, just regular people. (I mean, Jay Rockefeller? Okay, but he’s a wonderful guy.) These are interesting people. Many of them are wealthy, but virtually all of them, with the exception of Jay and a few others, achieved their wealth on their own, later in life. They weren’t born into it. It’s not some kind of aristocracy, and that’s kind of reassuring, but the problem is, people don’t live in Washington. THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT LUDDITES

emember the Luddites? They were the people in nineteenth century England who hated the machines that were taking their jobs and set about to break them. There is a bunch of people in Congress today who hate government. Now, it’s an odd thing to run for government if you hate it, but there are a lot of them. That is the other reason the recent government shutdown was so hard to deal with—because there were many people for whom it represented success. They came to Washington promising their constituents they would shut down the government. They don’t want to govern, and that makes it hard. It’s easy to negotiate with someone if you share the goal of governing effectively, of taking care of the people’s needs. If you are going to buy a car and I’m going to sell my car, you may want the car and I want to sell it; in the question of setting a price, we share a common goal. But if one side has no interest in governing, and really wants the whole thing to fail, that makes it difficult to govern. It makes it difficult because of the way our Constitution is designed. Our Constitution has two operating principles that are in constant tension with one another. The one is governing. After a Senate hearing two or three weeks ago, I ran into one of my college history professors, whom I hadn’t seen in 47 years. I asked him, “Larry, is there any precedent for this totally chaotic situation that we’re in now?” He replied, “Of course. It was during the time of the Articles of Confederation,” the period after the Revolution and before the Constitution.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

It was so chaotic, disorganized, and ineffective that the framers came together to write the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation didn’t create a functioning government; it created the occasion for the Constitution, to govern ourselves. Then, the framers also said, “Yes, but we’re afraid of government, we don’t want it to abuse us. We’re afraid of concentrated power, so we’re going to create all these checks and balances, and make it complex and hard to get things done.” These two forces, you see, are always in tension, but if you take the governing part away, it’s really easy to screw up our system. In fact, it’s ridiculously easy to bring it to a grinding halt if you don’t share the common goal of getting to a conclusion that’s beneficial to the American people. This is a new development in my experience. I’ve dealt with plenty of conservatives in the Maine legislature and throughout my life, but to say we don’t want government to work, we want it to fail, we want to destroy the government, is a new experience for me. I’m sure there’s always been this undercurrent in the nation, but to have it be a significant political force in the country is something that we didn’t face in the 1970s. If I may, let me say one thing more that is related and really bothers me. It’s about public service in America today. There’s a mood in the country today that denigrates public service. I mentioned Carl Levin of Michigan. He and I went to Turkey and Jordan in July [2013] to learn about the Syrian situation. We met with all kinds of people, the Syrian opposition and the Turkish politicians. We also met with these incredible young Americans in the State Department, in the intelligence community, and in the military who are idealistic, hard-working, and doing great good in dangerous situations. They haven’t had a raise in three years; they have been furloughed once and they had just been furloughed again. These people are doing so much for our society. Then, there’s an attitude out there that’s so negative—you know, “those bureaucrats!”—and it really bothers me. When I got back and Mary asked, “What did you think of the Middle East?” I said, “The thing that struck me most is the quality of these young people we have working for us over there under the most difficult circumstances, and we’re not treating them properly for the incredible contributions they make.” I wish I had a crisper answer, but I really think that may be at the heart of it.

ABUSE OF THE RULES

yndon Johnson of Texas was Senate Majority Leader from 1954 to 1960. In six and a half years, he dealt with cloture motions on six filibusters. In the last six and a half years, Majority Leader Harry Reid has dealt with cloture motions on 400 filibusters. That’s not right. That is just not the way the system was designed to work. Of course, the way the senate filibuster rule works is, you have to have 60 votes to break it. To give you an idea of how this has changed, I was on the floor one day and listened to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who’s a very smart guy, with an amazing family history. His father was born in Cuba and went into the mountains at the age of 14 to fight with Castro’s army. He was captured by the dictator Batista, was tortured and put in jail; he escaped from Cuba, went to Texas, and raised a family. Anyway, Ted Cruz said something— without any sense of irony—and I remember sitting there being shocked by it: “This amendment should be subject to the normal 60-vote requirement.” It’s not a normal 60-vote requirement. It wasn’t normal for more than 200 years; it’s been normal for just the past five or six years.

There’s a mood in the country today that denigrates public service.

When I came in January, there were 46 senators who had been in the Senate for six years or less. Does this surprise you? You think of the U.S. Senate as a place where people go and stay forever, but there are almost half, with six years or less. One of the problems with the filibuster is that these people all think this is the way it’s supposed to be. Not doing anything is the norm because that’s been the way it is. I went in as a firebrand, saying “Let’s change that filibuster rule.” I was ready to vote for it with Majority Leader Reid back in January. I’m probably still there, but I’m less enthusiastic than I was before. We could spend a month writing a filibuster rule, but if people want to abuse the system, they’re still going to do so.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

For example, there’s a rule in the Senate that every bill has to be read aloud. Typically, what happens is the bill gets called up, the clerk reads the first two or three lines, and some member says, “I ask for unanimous consent that we waive the reading of the bill.” The presiding officer rules, “Without objection, so ordered.” But if one senator objected, all we would do is read bills. It would take hours or days to read a several hundred page bill, and there are all kinds of other things that could gum up the works. The point I’m making is that it’s more about attitude than it is about the rules. It’s more about institutional respect than it is about the rules. We may end up changing the rules, but I’m not sure that’s going to be the answer. Some of the old, stalwart Democrats are very against changing the rules. Carl Levin of Michigan and Barbara Boxer of California, who were there when the Democrats were in the minority, have said, “Oh, no! We don’t really want to do this. What if you have a Republican president, Senate, and House, and they decide to privatize Social Security? We would like to be in a position to slow that train down.” So they were very passionate. Carl Levin, who is a wonderful guy and unfortunately retiring, was very passionate. He said, “Be careful, because you change the rules and then they can be changed on you. You may regret it.”

There is a deeper discussion going on…. It’s about the size and scope of the federal government. What really worries me is the attempt by a portion of the House to gain results that they can’t gain through elections by using the government as a hostage. I’ve been criticized for using that word, but I don’t know what else to say when somebody takes something, and insists, “I won’t give it back until you give me what I want.” I was very much against using the shutdown and the debt ceiling to change the Affordable Care Act. The way to change the Affordable Care Act is to elect Republicans to the Senate and elect a Republican president, not use the system to make laws in a way that’s not in the Constitution. 32

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

It’s an extra-constitutional way of changing the laws that I find very, very troubling. It’s why the president and Harry Reid were so resistant to what was going on. If this had been successful, it would have become the norm, just like the 60-vote majority. It would have been, “We’ll just do this every six months or so, and we’ll get what we want.” Particularly when you’re talking about a group for whom a shutdown is a success. It’s a dangerous situation, and it is not the way our system is supposed to work. If you go to a little book, How a Bill Becomes a Law (available at http://kids.clerkhouse.gov) nowhere does it say, “If all else fails, take the government hostage and then you can get your law.” It’s not there. You’re supposed to win elections. In effect, what we just went through was an attempt to nullify the 2012 election, and I think that’s anti-democratic. That’s why I am so concerned about it. THE REAL ISSUE

he current [2013] budget fight is not really about the budget, the debt, and the deficits. There is a deeper discussion going on, and it’s really about how big the federal government should be, what should it do, how much it should take in taxes, and how much should it spend; this is an age-old discussion. It’s about the size and scope of the federal government. That is really what is at stake here. I’ve gone back and looked at our history and found that we’ve had this argument nine different times since 1787. The most famous, of course, was the Civil War. We fought over the question of the proper role of the federal government and the role of the states. It’s a legitimate concern; if we’ve had it eight or nine times, it’s clearly a live question that should be discussed. That is what is going on in the budget debate. And the real debt and deficit issue is health care costs. That’s what is driving the debt; that is what’s driving the deficits. If you look out into the future, it is the whole deal. What we call “domestic discretionary spending,” not Social Security and Medicare, but all the other things we think of—Pell Grants, National Parks, the EPA, the FDA, farm programs, and all those kind of things—is down as a percentage of the gross domestic product. It is now about 3 percent, the lowest it has been in 40 or 50 years. Defense spending goes up and down when we have wars; it’s now around 5 percent and relatively flat.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

When you look at the federal budget, the items that are doing damage are Medicare, Medicaid, and medical costs for federal employees and retired veterans. This is where the cost is and where the deficits are out into the future. My view is that we need to talk about this problem more generally and not just in the context of the government. We need to talk about how to lower health care costs across all of society, for everybody. Right now we have the highest per capita health care costs in the world, and we’re seventeenth in the world in terms of results. It’s inexcusable. We spend now 17 or 18 percent of GNP on health care; in Maine it is 20 percent. This means that one in every five dollars spent in Maine is spent on health care, and our results aren’t competitive with the rest of the world. This is a whole different way to talk about health care, but it means changing the way we pay for it and what the incentives are. TWO TO TANGO

he only way anything gets done in Washington is with both parties. It is simple arithmetic, and you would be amazed how few people get this. The Republicans in the House think they run the place. The Democrats in the Senate think they run the place. The president thinks he runs the place. But, if you have a Democratic president, a Republican House, and a Democratic Senate—with rules such that the Republican minority has enormous power—you can just do the math. In order to do anything, it’s got to be bipartisan, or as I’m training them to say, nonpartisan. Occasionally they say tripartisan when they see me in the room. This means that we are stymied if one party tries to assert the answer to all the questions. It just can’t happen. What I am trying to do is to work with Susan Collins’ working group as I did with last summer’s working group on student loans. I had a very heated meeting with the Democratic Caucus on the student loan issue because they wanted to hold out, to have their plan and nothing else. I got up in front of them and said, “Yes, but you don’t have the votes. If we’re going to do this, we need Republican votes.” We put together a coalition involving Republicans and Democrats, built out from the center, and ended up passing a bill in the Senate and in the House, and the president signed it. This would never have happened if both sides had held to their iron-clad positions.

By the way, it’s no coincidence that four of the six senators who did the student loan deal are former governors. I was talking with Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, about this and he said, “Well, I have found that if you ask a former governor who’s now a senator which job they like better, and they say senator, they will lie to you about other things, too!” As I hope you can tell, I’m a person who is curious, who likes public policy, and who likes to try and fix things. I’m having a great time in the Senate, and I want to thank all of you for giving me this unbelievable opportunity to work for you and for the people of the country. What we did on the shutdown is by no means a dramatic answer to everything. It may be just a sliver of hope that budget negotiations may work. It’s going to be hard to solve the budget, because the two sides are far apart, but I’m hoping that people now realize that nobody can get it all, that it has to involve compromise. Yes, compromise. This U.S. government was built on compromise. The U.S. Senate was created as a result of a compromise at the Constitutional Convention, and that’s the way we have to make it work. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS [Editor’s note: Many of the questions which related to specific constituent concerns or which were well off the topic of “Politics Then and Now” have been omitted here.]

Can anything be done about the gerrymandering? Neither party wants to change it. And it is very undemocratic, when one considers that a candidate gets elected to the House and has to become more and more conservative to stay elected. How can we eliminate gerrymandering?

KING: I had hoped we could pass a law, as it’s a really serious problem, number two on my list. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a state-by-state matter, and if you’ve got a state that’s solidly in the hands of one party or the other, they’re not likely to let go of this power. California has done it. When he was governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger got through a referendum that created a nonpartisan commission to do it on a scientific basis, and my impression is that it’s worked pretty well; however, I don’t think the Supreme Court will get involved.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

Thank you for speaking up as strongly as you have for the importance of health insurance in people’s lives. You were quoted in the New York Times as saying it’s immoral to encourage people not to sign up for health insurance. My question is about the issue of campaign finance reform: What can we as citizens do in terms of getting some movement on that?

KING: On health insurance, here’s my story. When I worked for Senator Hathaway I had health insurance and went for a routine checkup because it covered annual checkups. I hadn’t had a checkup in nine years. They found that I had a malignant melanoma. It’s a disease that you either get operated on right away and you’re okay, or you don’t and you’re gone. I’m here only because I had health insurance, so I feel personally passionate about this. I can’t figure out how it’s fair for me to be here while some other person, who didn’t have that health insurance and get the checkup, died. Nine thousand people a year die of melanoma. Between 25,000 and 45,000 people a year die in the UNITED STATES simply because they don’t have insurance. Often they put off treatment until it’s too late. On campaign finance reform, this will have to be a national movement. Call your cousins and uncles and aunts in other states. I think everyone in the Maine delegation is okay on this issue. The problem is, the parties are always asking, “Will it benefit me and help my party, or will it help the other party?” You never know when it’s going to work one way or the other. The one thing we can do, although it’s not going to be easy, is disclosure, so at least people know where all this money is coming from. Right now you can’t give more than $2,500 to a federal candidate. The Supreme Court is hearing a case right now and there’s an even chance that they will declare that limit unconstitutional, and say people can give whatever they want. [Editors Barringer and Palmer note: See McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission. On April 2, 2014, by a 5-4 vote the U.S. Supreme Court struck down aggregate limits on contributions to candidates, as Senator King had feared.] That is not what our country was designed to do. The idea that money equals speech, I’m just not sure about, but that’s what the Supreme Court has held. Keep active on the issue. I, too, am very concerned and disturbed by the corrupting influence of campaign finance. The system

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

we have today can be best characterized as a legalized mixture of bribery and extortion. What can we do? Is there a solution short of a constitutional amendment?

KING: I doubt it. I think it’s going to take a constitutional amendment because Citizens United is based on a reading of the First Amendment. I don’t believe it’s a correct reading, but that’s now the law. The Supreme Court decided it, and it’s going to take a constitutional amendment to change it. This is a tricky thing, a constitutional amendment; you’ve got to be very sure about how you write it. I don’t know how the current case is going to come out, but if they rule that there can be no limits whatever on contributions, it will be a very deleterious decision. Since the 1970s, we’ve had an enormous increase in economic inequality in this country. The average income of a white male has actually declined and practically all of the increase in gross domestic product per capita has gone to a very thin sliver at the top. With the Supreme Court’s decisions on money and politics, this thin sliver seems to have even more influence in what goes on, and in the long-run this clearly is not sustainable. We don’t want a violent revolution. How do we get out of this dilemma?

KING: This concerns me because the numbers verify exactly what you have said. I’m not a redistributionist, I don’t think that’s the answer, but I think the government shouldn’t aggravate the problem. The tax system and the way our programs are funded ought to be fair and equitable, and I believe in the progressive income tax. Yes, I worry about it. This is a little bit of an exaggeration, but we don’t want to become a country of gated communities. We don’t want to become a country where the wealthy are behind barbed wire and everybody else is outside. I worry about violence. A man from out-of-state, who was starting a new business in Maine, once visited me in Augusta and wanted to know where Maine’s gated communities were. I told him the only one I knew of was in Thomaston. I wish I had an answer to your question. The best answer is probably investment in education so that everybody has a chance. You know the old saying, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” In the future it’s going to be, “the educated get richer and the uneducated get poorer.” Education is the opportunity.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Ten Comparisons

When you were working with Senator Hathaway, Senator Muskie was the senior senator. From what you saw then, has working with senior leadership changed from what it was then?

KING: Senator Collins is my senior, and I’ve got to tell you, she is terrific. I always liked her and respected her. I knew she was tenacious. I now serve on the Intelligence Committee with her, and I’ve seen her mind work. She’s really smart, well-balanced, and she has guts. It took guts for her to put this nonpartisan group together, to try and work out this budget matter. She took flak from her leadership, from other people, and she did it. I always liked her, but my esteem for her has only grown from working with her. She’s really an able senator and we’re fortunate to have her. I’m a farmer, and as a farmer, there’s not a whole lot of power or money in my profession. I would love to hear from you about the role of integrity and accountability in Washington, and how you maintain the values that I hear you talk about.

ENDNOTE 1. Editors’ Barringer and Palmer note: The controversial majority report of this committee, including the noted authors of two textbooks on political parties, Austin Ranney and Elmer Schattshneider (later president of the American Political Science Association [APSA]), supported the two-party system while asserting that the parties should be reorganized to represent clear differences on fundamental issues, as conservative or liberal. In the wake of the Populist movements early in the century and the deep partisan conflicts of the 1930s, the majority report argued that democracy would better be served through competition on these issues between parties rather than within their internal structure and processes. In the decades following, the parties weakened in virtually all aspects, leading to the present-day system with polarized parties similar to those advocated in the 1950 majority report. The advent of more ideologically coherent parties has made scholars more sensitive to their potentially unhealthy effects in a separated governance system. A program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the report was held at the 2000 APSA meeting in Washington, DC (Green and Harrison 2000).

REFERENCES

KING: It is a question of values. Why does one do what I’m doing? You do it because you think you can make a bit of a difference in peoples’ lives. I thought long and hard about whether to run for public office again. I was pretty happily retired, teaching, building windmills, and having some fun. It changed my life utterly to do this, but ultimately, here’s how I decided to do it. I can tell you the exact moment. Mary and I decided that, after our daughter went off to college, we would go RV’ing again, and travel the country. Then I began to think about running for the Senate and what a drastic change that would make in my life. How do I make this decision? It finally came to me, how will I feel 10 years from now, looking back, and answering this question: “You might have made a difference for the country—and you decided to go RV’ing?” Once I put the question that way, the answer was obvious. And here I am. -

American Political Science Association. 1950. “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Report of the Committee on Political Parties.” American Political Science Review 44(3) Supplement. Green, John C., and Paul S. Herrnson, eds. 2000. Party Politics: A Century of Change and Continuity. APSA Responsible Parties Project, 1950–2000. American Political Science Association.

Angus King was elected to the U.S. Senate from Maine in 2012. He served as governor of Maine from 1995 to 2003. In the Senate, King is a member of the Armed Services, Budget, and Rules committees and is also on the Select Committee on Intelligence.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The full version of this lecture was published in Barringer, Richard, and Kenneth Palmer, eds. 2014. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME. http://muskie.usm.maine .edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and-Now-large.pdf

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: The Importance of Listening

The Importance of Listening by George Mitchell

n the day I was elected Senate Majority Leader, among the first persons I called [to visit] was Bob Dole of Kansas, then the Republican Leader of the Senate. I said to him that these are very tough jobs; that he had been in the Senate for many years, and I was relatively new, just a few years in the Senate. And that I did not think either of us could succeed, nor could the Senate, if there were no trust between us. I said, “I’ve come here to tell you how I intend to behave toward you and to ask if you would reciprocate, and act the same way toward me.” Then I described the most simple, basic principles of fairness and common courtesy. I told him that I would never surprise him, that’s important in the Senate; that I’ll always give him the opportunity to think about his response to any action I was going to take as Majority Leader. I told him I would never try to embarrass him; that I would never criticize him personally when we disagreed, to the extent that I could humanely do so; and that I would keep the debate on the merits of the issue, and not make it personal. Bob Dole was delighted. He shook my hand and to this moment, never has one harsh word passed between him and me—never in public or in private. We interpret events in a manner consistent with our prior beliefs. If we are to break out of the situation we’re in, there have to be individual and collective efforts to try better to listen, to understand the point of view of those whom we oppose. People ask me often, How did it happen in Northern Ireland, with hundreds of years of conflict and many prior efforts to bring about a solution? There are all kinds of reasons—far too many to go into today—but I’m certain that one of the reasons I was able to gain the confidence of the parties to the negotiations is that I listened. I especially listened to the people whose views I didn’t agree with. We all have to make an effort to open up our ears and our minds to those with whom we disagree, and we all have to have the humility to accept the reality that we are not always right—no individual, no institution, no political party. As a country, we don’t always succeed in matching our actions to our aspirations, and sometimes we fail— sometimes out of genuine necessity, sometimes out of

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

error, sometimes out of mistaken judgment. But the fact is, in the United States, we recognize it, and we try. In the end, what really matters is that we can’t stray too far from our aspirations. We can’t be for democracy here and not for it elsewhere. We can’t define democracy as the election of a government that agrees with everything we do. If they have the right of self-governance, they are going to produce results that we disagree with at times. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The full version of this lecture was published in Barringer, Richard, and Kenneth Palmer, eds. 2014. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME. http://muskie.usm.maine .edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and-Now-large.pdf

George Mitchell was a U. S. senator from Maine from 1980 to 1995, and served as Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. He led the re-authorization of the Clean Air Act of 1990, and the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. He also guided passage of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: It’s Not the System

It’s Not the System, It’s the Voters by Barney Frank

he premise of this lecture series, “Politics Then and Now,” is that there has been a deterioration in the nation’s politics. I subscribe to that, with a couple of qualifications. Where I disagree is the often explicit assumption that there are deep, systemic failures that have produced this state of affairs. In fact, this breakdown, this deterioration, this inability to get things done is only about two-and-a-half years old. Bipartisanship was alive and well in September 2008. There was great collaboration between the Democratic Congress and the Republican president, culminating in passage of the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Fund) legislation—money lent to the banks—which I am convinced will go down in history as the most wildly unpopular and highly successful program the federal government ever had. We did that with George W. Bush. When President Barak Obama won in November 2008 and we had a Democratic House and Senate, we had one of the most productive legislative years since 1965, the first full year of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. It’s as simple as this: the system broke down as a result of right-wing Republicans taking over the House of Representatives in 2010, and that’s the end of it. What I’m saying is that the cause of the breakdown— and it is very severe—is electoral. When you start looking for the causes of the problem, begin with the voters, and the voters include the non-voters—the people on the Republican side, in particular, who sit out the primaries, so that the most rabid and extreme people can dominate the primaries. We have two systems. We have a private sector where inequality is important. If you don’t have inequality, if people who have better ideas, don’t make more money, if people who are better able to figure out what the consumers want, don’t make money, the system doesn’t work. So, inquality is important to the health of the capitalist system. Meanwhile, equality is the core principle of the public system. The problem with an approach that allows unlimited spending in campaigns is that it allows the inequality principle of the private sector to overcome and suppress the equality principal of the public sector—when they ought to be held and kept both vital. There should be

inequality in the private sector, with some limits at the extremes, and one-person, one-vote in the public sector. What the Supreme Court has done [in the Citizens United case] is to allow the unequal wealth of the private sector to moot the equality of the public sector. Money does not influence people as much as you might think. I don’t believe it changes how people vote. What it does is have too much influence on who the people are who get to vote. That is, people don’t get elected and then change their position because of the money; it influences the kind of people who run and get elected. It determines who the politicians are who win. It doesn’t so much affect you once you’re there. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The full version of this lecture was published in Barringer, Richard, and Kenneth Palmer, eds. 2014. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME. http://muskie.usm.maine .edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and-Now-large.pdf

Barney Frank served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1980 to 2012, representing Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District. He chaired the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011. He is coauthor of the Dodd-Frank Act (2010), which mandated the greatest reforms in the financial services industry since the Great Depression. He also helped enact the Credit Card Holders’ Bill of Rights in 2008.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Productive Partisanship

Productive Partisanship by Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell

want to talk about some real differences today between Maine and Washington, which seems like a foreign government. Maine is like Washington in some ways, but in others, it’s not. There are real differences. I’ve had a personal relationship with each person who has spoken in this lecture series, and this is part of why Maine is different. Peter Mills and I come from different sides of the aisle, and we can talk easily about bipartisanship. There’s nobody I respected more in the Maine Senate than Peter. I worked together with him many times and argued with him when we disagreed, but we never disagreed personally, ever. When Maine had its own shutdown (in 1991), I had just come back to the legislature. I had been there for 10 years, left, and came back. I became chair of the Banking and Insurance Committee, right in middle of what was going on, that so roiled the political temperature in Maine. The Maine’s Workers’ Compensation market was totally broken; everybody was in what was called the “residual” market. If you had an unsafe workplace, or the safest in the world, you paid the same rates. Well, everybody knows that’s not right—whether you’re a Democrat or Republican—but it was also tied to the perception for some, the reality for others, that the benefits for injured workers were too high and there needed to be workers’ compensation reform. When negotiations between the Republicans and the Democrats totally bogged down over the budget and workers’ compensation reform, we went into shutdown mode. It changed me, and it changed my later actions as Speaker. Tents arose in Capitol Park, horns blared all night long, the committees of jurisdiction met around the clock with the chief executive, Governor John McKernan. [A shutdown] is toxic to both parties. It is toxic to the institution. It is really something that no one would ever want to do again. My own Banking and Insurance Committee worked through all of this and created the basis for reform, what’s known as a self-insurance model, called MMC. Basically, if you don’t hurt people, you don’t pay much, and if you hurt people, you pay more. MMC is one of the success stories of that horrible shutdown, but it took a terrible toll on everybody.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

I want to describe the respect for the [legislature] I got from Senator Bennett Katz, who was a successful businessman from downtown Augusta. I watched how he ran committees, how he demanded respect for the public. I think it starts there; demand that the committee members treat the public with respect. If they don’t, the Senate President and House Speaker appoint members to the committees, and they can take them off. That authority has to be exercised when needed. You really can’t have our leaders calling one another “spoiled brats” and such. You can’t have leaders calling each other unworthy to serve in public office. This is not civil discourse. I believe in principled partisanship, and I’m going to close with this. To paraphrase E. J. Dionne, “You know, I might disagree with the Republicans on just how many benefits an injured worker should have, but I still like my Republican friends. They may be right, and I need to talk to them about it.” That’s principled partisanship. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The full version of this lecture was published in Barringer, Richard, and Kenneth Palmer, eds. 2014. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME. http://muskie.usm.maine .edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and-Now-large.pdf

Elizabeth Mitchell served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1974 to 1984, from 1990 to 1998, and in the Maine Senate from 2004 to 2010. Elected House Speaker for the 1997–99 term and president of the Senate from 2009 to 2011, she was the first woman in the United States to preside over both branches of a state legislature.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Governing for the People

Governing for the People by Kenneth Curtis

have been asked why I entered politics. Well, I think anybody who lived in Maine in those years would have been discouraged and would have asked himself, “Isn’t there something better out there for me?” I grew up in a small rural town and went to a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher for eight grades. The kids that you talked to were reconciled to the fact they were just going to finish out their days in that town. They didn’t have any dreams, they didn’t have any hopes, and it seemed a bad way for young people to go. My education wasn’t the best in the world, but I did get a ticket on the train, which is so essential for any young person today. So, I decided to pursue politics as a career, as a way, perhaps, to try to effect change. One of the major pieces of legislation we were able to get through was the reorganization of state government. When I became governor, we had 213 agencies and commissions that really didn’t report to anybody, and most of all, the commissioners were not appointed by the governor. When you get elected, you inherited all those that were already there, and that seemed to me a hard way to administer anything. How did we pass [our] legislation? There is a lot to be said about that, with a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature. It really boiled down to counting votes. A third of the Republican legislators would never do anything to help you, would never vote for any legislation you proposed, but that left all the rest. And all the rest really cared about Maine and the kind of things that we were espousing in those days. These were legitimate needs—needs of the state—and many Republicans recognized this. So, by spending a lot of time with them, letting them become involved in the whole process, many of them came around, and we could ultimately count on their votes. One story I always like to tell is of the late Senator Harrison Richardson of Portland, who was at first one of my biggest Republican opponents. In the end, Harry drafted the income tax bill that became law. He came up with a version that was in fact better than the one we had. You knew that when a Republican leader came forward with a draft bill, you had better take it because he was going to vote for it, that’s for sure. That’s pretty

much the way it went. The needs were there, it was timely, and I don’t know that it was anything more special than offering Maine people what they wanted and needed, on a bipartisan basis. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The full version of this lecture was published in Barringer, Richard, and Kenneth Palmer, eds. 2014. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME. http://muskie.usm.maine .edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and-Now-large.pdf

Kenneth M. Curtis served as governor of Maine from 1967 to 1975. He began his political career as an aide to Congressman James Oliver in the 1950s. During the Curtis administration, Maine enacted several major pieces of legislation, including a state income tax, environmental laws, and the establishment of the University of Maine system. After leaving the governorship, Curtis served as U.S. Ambassador to Canada from 1979 to 1981.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Looking Forward

Looking Forward Amy Fried Maine has plenty of issues, of course: healthcare costs, an aging population, slow economic growth, all kinds of things, but we still have a lot going for us. Unlike what unfolded in Washington, Maine avoided a government shutdown this past spring. Most debates in Maine politics continue to be conducted with civility and mutual respect. Nationally, as we see more name calling, polarization, and a degree of nastiness, there remains much civility and respect here. [Another] Maine advantage is that the moderate center has been preserved here. We have U.S. Senator Susan Collins, who will be coming up for reelection and has no primary challenger at present. In this time in U.S. history, that’s pretty remarkable. In a lot of other states, a center-right Republican like Collins would have been “primaried” from the right, and there would have been a lot money placed behind her challenger. Maine has shown a continuing commitment to citizen participation by restoring same-day voter registration in 2011. We still tend to be in the top five (states) nationally for voter turnout in every election and often in the top three. Ken Fredette In my first session, the 125th Legislature, I served on the Appropriations Committee, where I had the opportunity to work with Representative John Martin of Eagle Lake, a legend in Maine politics and government. I learned a lot from him in two years. We developed a very good working relationship, and that’s really what the legislature is about, developing those relationships. I think that’s what may be lacking at the federal level today. People are so worried about raising money or getting back home to campaign that they never to know who their colleagues are. I believe that’s something that’s going to change over time. Money and the influence of independent expenditures are fundamentally changing the game here in Maine and nationally. You have these different organizations now...that get hundreds of millions of dollars in them, and they can decide whether or not they want to spend it against you. That’s a very tough thing to fight against. It’s to change the way we go forward. I do believe the system can adapt, however; inevitably, there

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

will be reforms, and we will continue to be a great society, nonetheless. Cynthia Dill America’s biggest challenge is that we are becoming a plutocracy, one that controls the government. And the government is prisoner to this plutocracy. We’re caught up in a cycle of wealth’s having undue influence on our politics, and our politics then being the slave to those who are wealthy. Right now, the people who govern need exorbitant amounts of money to win elections. There are some positive signs on the horizon. First, there’s the question of whether we want to have publicly financed campaigns. There have been bills kicking around in Congress for a while. In Maine we have publicly financed elections, and there are problems with it because there are leadership PACs and there’s still private money. But publicly financed campaigns give people opportunities to run for office. We could have a constitutional amendment of some sort, a legislative reform. We could have primaries that are not partisan. There are various things that we can do to get at what is ailing us as Americans; we need to take action. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The full version of this panel was published in Richard Barringer and Kenneth Palmer, eds. Politics Then and Now, in Maine and the Nation: Conversations with the Sages. Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland. (2014) http://muskie.usm.maine .edu/Publications/Politics-Then-and-Now-large.pdf

Amy Fried is a professor of political science at the University of Maine. She is author of Pathways to Polling (2011), an analysis of the evolution of public opinion research in the United States. She has also contributed many articles to political science journals, including the American Political Science Review. Fried writes a regular column on Maine public affairs for the Bangor Daily News.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Looking Forward

Kenneth Fredette is an attorney in Newport, Maine. In his second term in the Maine House of Representatives (2013â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2014), he served as Republican minority leader. He has served on the Joint Standing Committees on Appropriations and Financial Affairs and on Elections. Fredette is a member of the Maine Air National Guard, and he has served as a judge advocate general for 13 years.

Cynthia Dill is a civil rights attorney associated with the Portland law firm of Troubh Heisler. She was a member of the Maine House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011. In April 2011 she won a special election to fill a vacant seat in the Maine Senate. In her legislative career, Dill served on the Joint Standing Committee on Judiciary.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

POLITICS THEN AND NOW: Enough Is Enough

Enough Is Enough Senator Bill Cohen I’m sort of the accidental Secretary of Defense. I didn’t know Bill Clinton personally. I had shaken his hand a couple of times at various functions. When he got reelected and I had already announced my retirement, we had two meetings. When he decided he was going to offer me the position, I said that there are two things we have to agree on. Number one, you have to understand that if you offer me this job and I agree to accept, I’ll be on your team, and you will never have to worry after a Cabinet meeting whether I’m in a back room calling my buddies up on the Hill, saying, “Look what these guys are talking about.” You’ll never have to worry about that. You will have trust in me and you’ll have to trust me. And [second] I want something from you. If you offer it and I take this position, I want you to agree never to engage me in a political meeting. You let me run the department and I will serve you as well as I can, but never engage me in any of your political discussions. He said, “You’ve got it,” and he kept his word. There came a moment when we launched the mission called Desert Fox, a four-day bombing campaign in 1998 against Saddam Hussein. The Republicans thought we were playing politics with the military and insisted that I come up and address a joint session of Congress that night. They accused me and the president of launch(ing) this attack in order to avoid an impeachment resolution that was forthcoming. I took three hours and spoke to all of my colleagues in a closed session and persuaded them that this had nothing to do with what was going on politically. This had to do with the security of the country. They finally accepted it, and I put it on the line, saying, “After 24 years on Capitol Hill, if you think that I would risk my reputation to do this, then you’ve misjudged me.”

(Senator Simpson was asked for examples of lawmakers being able to work successfully.) The first one that hit me was just a few weeks after we came to the Senate, when they appointed the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. Howard Baker (R-TN) put me on it. Father Ted Hesburgh of Notre Dame was the chairman, and serving on that commission were Democrats and Republicans MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

William Cohen served in the U.S. Senate from 1978 to 1996 and as U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1997 to 2001. Cohen has established the William S. Cohen Center for International Policy & Commerce at the University of Maine. In 2002, he received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Smithsonian Institution.

Alan Simpson was a U.S. senator

Senator Alan Simpson

alike. We did our work and came out with two bills, one on illegal immigration and one on legal immigration. The legal immigration bill never worked because we tried to put in a more secure identifier system, which the right and the left then labeled a “national ID card.” Then, the Iraq Study Group. Ten of us: Sandra Day O’Connor (R-AZ), Leon Panetta (D-CA), you know the cast. We worked with them all, and we had to agree on every single word. We worked for a couple of years and gave 57 recommendations to the Bush-Cheney administration. Eventually, 57 of them were adopted— the surge, all the rest of the stuff. And then people say, “Why don’t you work together?” Well, we did! People say they want bipartisanship, but they really don’t. They would rather fight. -

from Wyoming from 1979 to 1997, where he held the position of Assistant Majority Leader for 10 years. He then served as director of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University from 1997 to 2000 and in 2010 cochaired the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

SUSTAINING MAINE’S LOCAL FOOD INDUSTRY

A Smiling Face Is Half The Meal: The Role of Cooperation in Sustaining Maine’s Local Food Industry by Ethan Tremblay and Timothy Waring Maine is among the states leading a national resurgence in local food production. This article examines the role of cooperation in Maine’s local food industry across a range of organizations. Cooperation plays different yet crucial roles in these organizations and is a big part of the success of the local food industry as whole. Policymakers need to be mindful of the importance of social proximity and cooperative behavior to the vitality of the local food industry.

INTRODUCTION

aine is one of the leaders in a growing nationwide trend of local food consumption. Interest in regional and in-state produce appears to be spreading at a remarkable rate, and it’s not just the number of farm stands that is increasing. Planners and policymakers are devising regional strategic plans, grocery stores are placing token local fare in prime shopping real estate, candidates for office are emphasizing their commitment to the local food sector, and one of Maine’s largest newspapers has launched a feature section dedicated to local production. A recent consumer survey conducted by the Maine Food Strategy indicates that nearly 80 percent of Mainers prefer buying food produced in Maine than food produced elsewhere (Maine Food Strategy 2014). A majority of respondents (64 percent) explained their choice as an effort to support local farmers, fishermen, and businesses, implying both a strong personal connection to food providers and a willingness to go out of their way to express such a preference. This re-localization of the food economy in Maine, and across the nation, is often described as a social and political movement that developed in response to centralized, industrial food production. This movement toward a more localized food system has three primary dimensions: a “green” dimension, concerned with the environmental costs of a geographically widespread food system; a food-security dimension, concerned with the self-sufficiency and resilience of local communities and food networks; and an activist dimension, concerned with the democratic impacts of corporate consolidation within the globalized food system (Guptill and Wilkins

2002). The same set of concerns, and the social momentum they generate, may also be fueling the local food economy. THE EMERGENCE OF LOCAL

or some time, the organic movement has been seen as the standard-bearer for the expression of these values in food production. The organic movement also has significant roots in Maine. The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), founded in 1971, is both the largest and oldest organic farming organization in the country and has been a model for similar organizations nationwide. In part due to the group’s programs and advocacy, the number of certified organic farms in Maine has increased from 21 in 1987 to 635 in 2008 (Maine Department of Agriculture 2008; Beck et al. 2011). Some scholars argue that the local food trend emerged as an evolution of the organic movement, which suffered when new federal standards allowed companies to label food as organic in a manner that did not meet the ethical expectations of consumers accustomed to small-scale organic agriculture (Adams and Adams 2011; Adams and Salois 2010). Today, organic food is subject to stringent regulation overseen by the USDA in compliance with the Organic Food Production Act of 1990. According to Adams and Salois (2010: 333), “‘Organic’ was federally defined as an input-driven technical process rather than a concept based in sustainability; food could still be labeled organic if it was made by General Mills corporation, produced in China using forced labor, and sold only

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

SUSTAINING MAINE’S LOCAL FOOD INDUSTRY

through Wal-Mart.” Thus, for many consumers, organic food no longer represents all the values they seek in food. In the late 1990s, consumer preferences began a marked shift from organic to local. Unlike organic, local food has no commonly accepted or codified definition.1 Adams and Salois found consumers to be divided on the topic of what exactly “local” means, with most indicating geographic concepts such as state, county, municipal, or regional borders, or an arbitrary radius of 100 miles. Others choose temporal criteria, such as no more than a day’s drive (Adams and Salois 2010). The Maine Food Strategy found 61 percent of Mainers consider food produced in Maine to be local, with the next closest group (19 percent) defining it by county (Maine Food Strategy 2014). Other surveys such as Hunt (2007) and Brown and Miller (2008), however, have detected a social component in the public’s conception of local food. These suggest that consumers are less concerned with precise geographical criteria and more with an array of preferences related to the local economy, food quality, and personal interactions over food exchange for which conventional and industrial organic sources have been found lacking. For example, some consumers identify local farm ownership as a key component they value. Consumers appear to be increasingly drawn to local food while consistently rejecting a consensus about its geographic definition. What is clear is that the emergence of local food organizations in Maine and New England indicates that demand for local food is strong. It may be that the rise of local and its coincidence with the waning strength of organic is due largely to semantics—individuals have found that the rigid, inputdriven institutional interpretation of organic leaves much to be desired, while local remains a suitably nebulous indicator of a socially acceptable food source. We suggest that consumers participate in local food organizations because they are less interested in geographic locality than they are in social proximity. A preference for social proximity may signal the presence of social capital in the form of small social networks, personal relationships, and patterns of cooperation common within and among local food organizations. We explore some of these traits that unite local food organizations and consider their implications for the development of the local food movement and the growth of the local food industry.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

COOPERATION IN LOCAL FOOD

he social fabric of the local food industry is expressed through a number of traits. In many local food settings, consumers and producers engage in more personal interactions, which often lead to lasting personal relationships. Individuals also build relationships with their peers, as farmers get to know their fellow farmers and consumers meet and build rapport over mutual food preferences. Consumers also clearly recognize and appreciate the impact of their economic activity on the individuals with whom they have fostered social relationships, a phenomenon that has been well documented (Brown and Miller 2008; Hunt 2007; Maine Food Strategy 2014). This contrasts with the traditional grocery store food-buying experience, which is both highly efficient and highly depersonalized. We argue that (a) people seek and enjoy this social proximity in their food exchanges, (b) personal social interactions in the exchange of local food is helping to drive growth in the local food industry, and (c) these social factors influence the economic success through increased cooperation. In everyday usage, cooperation refers to obliging to help someone. Scientists have studied patterns of human cooperation for decades and have accumulated a large body of knowledge on the factors that make cooperation more or less likely to emerge (Nowak 2006) and the social, psychological and economic conditions that make cooperation more persistent. The canonical scientific definition of cooperation is an action that benefits someone else, but comes at a strict cost to oneself (Rapoport 1965). By this definition, actions that benefit others at no personal cost to oneself are not cooperative. Similarly, an action that greatly benefits someone else but benefits oneself only less so, is not cooperation, strictly speaking. In this way, cooperation can only happen when individuals are embedded in a social dilemma that pits the interests of one against the other. Economists and biologists use a simple strategy game called the prisoner’s dilemma to model cooperation (Figure 1). In the prisoner’s dilemma, the best outcome for Player A is the worst outcome for Player B. This is true for all social dilemmas, which are common in daily life. The payoffs to individuals in the prisoner’s dilemma can be contrasted with those of a coordination game (Figure 2), in which both players improve their personal

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

SUSTAINING MAINE’S LOCAL FOOD INDUSTRY FIGURE 1: Prisoner’s Dilemma

Player B

Player A

Cooperate

Defect

Cooperate

2, 2

0, 3

Defect

3, 0

1, 1

In a prisoner’s dilemma each combination of choices from the two players results in a set of payoff for those players, given as (A, B). The scenario in which both players cooperate is costly to each, but maximizes the total payoff, while the best individual payoff can only be obtained by taking advantage of the other player’s cooperation by defecting. Payoffs illustrate comparative outcomes and are not drawn from any empirical case.

FIGURE 2: Coordination

Player B Coordinate Player A

Solo

Coordinate

2, 2

0, 1

Solo

1, 0

1, 1

A coordination game payoff matrix with outcomes (A, B). Both players maximize their payoff by coordinating. Payoffs illustrate comparative outcomes only.

benefits by taking a coordinated action. In the coordination game, the best outcome for both players is to coordinate. Both cooperation and coordination are fundamental parts of human society. Because of their differences, however, coordination problems are easier to solve than social dilemmas because in social dilemmas, the best outcome for the group can only be achieved with some amount of individual sacrifice, or cooperation. When first encountered, social dilemmas are difficult to solve. In many cases, individuals might cooperate at first to accomplish a group goal, but because doing so comes at a cost, cooperation is only temporary. Over time people will often either learn to avoid the dilemma or find ways to change the circumstances so that the same goals can be achieved without individual sacrifice. That is, people often learn to “change the game” from a social dilemma to a coordination problem to the advantage of themselves and others. As a result, young organizations often rely heavily on cooperation, while well-established institutions are typically those that have been effective at coordinating the actions of individuals and avoiding the need for costly individual cooperation

(Cordes et al. 2008). In this way, cooperation is critical in the emergence of new organizations, industries, and social and political movements. Research showing how cooperation links social factors with economic interactions (e.g. Henrich et al. 2004; Strassmann et al. 2011) therefore carries some unique value for policy discussions and may be of use in understanding and supporting Maine’s local food industry. It is important to differentiate cooperative behavior, in the strict sense denoted above, from “cooperative” organizations. Producer and consumer cooperatives have played a significant role in supporting the development of agriculture at both small and large scales. For instance, groups of farmers may band together to share transportation or processing costs in a producer cooperative. Consumer cooperatives are organizations that aim to benefit from lower food prices by buying in bulk. In both cases, however, the interests of members are in basic alignment, which means that individuals may be coordinating to achieve a common objective more than they are cooperating for group benefit at individual cost. Nonetheless, both cooperation and coordination will fluctuate over time, often with profound consequences for organizational success (Cordes et al. 2008). We suggest that cooperation is important in the businesses and organizations in Maine’s emerging local food sector. To demonstrate this, we examine a handful of different business and political organizations that play a role in local food. We focus on food-buying clubs, community-supported-agriculture arrangements, farmers’ markets, and food sovereignty ordinances. Buying Clubs Food-buying clubs are groups of consumers who band together to purchase wholesale quantities of food from distributors. They allow individuals to get access to bulk foods at a lower price and to buy specialty food items that cannot be purchased elsewhere. This creates a dilemma, however, when club members have divergent food preferences. As a result, members must cooperate to buy in bulk by filling orders for bulk items they may not need or prefer. This costly order splitting, along with the significant organizational challenges of collating orders, handling split payments, and coordinating food distribution, represents the costly individual effort required to make buying clubs successful. As that effort and its benefits are rarely shared evenly, these tasks may be cooperative in nature. For food buying clubs, the central task—buying in bulk—is often directly cooperative in

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

SUSTAINING MAINE’S LOCAL FOOD INDUSTRY

nature. However, people always find ways to reduce the costs of participation. Most buying clubs divide the tasks between members who take on different roles such as a treasurer, a coordinator, a delivery host, splitters. These roles, routines, and other organizational innovations such as software systems for order planning and compilation, help lower the costs of participation, shifting the balance toward less cooperation and more coordination. Modern buying clubs have their roots in the end of the nineteenth century, when the emergence of fast, reliable shipping and higher levels of disposable income allowed mail-order companies to replace traveling peddlers as the main source of household goods (Stanger 2008). The sorts of food-buying clubs we observe today first began to emerge in the mid-1970s, with the new availability of natural food distributors. It is difficult to determine the total number of active buying clubs in the state, in part due to their informal structure and lack of inter-group associations. Crown O’Maine Organic Cooperative, a distributor of Maine organic food, sells to 55 buying clubs, and the presence of numerous other distributors such as United Natural Foods, Inc., indicates that the total number of clubs must be greater.

The element of cooperation most crucial for the survival of CSAs…is the willingness of members to purchase output before it is produced. Some of the pioneering buying clubs in Maine grew to such a volume that they became “food coops” and established storefronts such as those in Belfast, Blue Hill, and Damariscotta. Centralized warehousing and further organizational routines and innovations such as spreadsheets, software, and websites especially designed for buying clubs (e.g., buyingclubsoftware.com, foodclub .org, and wholeshare.com) reduce the costs of participation for food coop members and shift the balance toward increased coordination and reduced individual costs. If these innovations are effective and efficient at reducing costs, they might trigger an institutional renaissance in shared wholesale buying and transform the 46

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

social dilemma of repeated bulk ordering into a mere coordination problem that does not require as much cooperative action to overcome. Community-Supported Agriculture Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is a business model in which a farm operation sells shares in its produce before the season begins. Customers, or shareholders, pay in advance for a portion of the output to be received at harvest. The agricultural mix produced ranges from traditional vegetables and fruits to flowers, meats, dairy, eggs, maple syrup, honey, and virtually any other locally available agricultural good. Because of the complexities that make small-scale agriculture unpredictable, such as planting times, weather, and other external factors, the specific makeup of a share can vary significantly. The element of cooperation most crucial for the survival of CSAs, however, is the willingness of members to purchase output before it is produced. This pre-purchase leaves consumers vulnerable to a loss caused by inherent fluctuations in agricultural output. Even if the farm yields less than expected, the consumers have pledged and paid their payment to the farmer. In such a case, the difference between the cost of membership and the market value of actual goods received can be considered an explicit monetary cost of cooperation. In essence, the consumers have paid not just for fruits and vegetables, but also for the continued viability of the farmer and a chance at a better yield the next season. This is cooperation in the strict behavioral sense. The first CSAs in the United States were pioneered in 1986 on a pair of farms in New Hampshire and Massachusetts (McFadden 1990). Over the following three decades, CSA operations have expanded across the country, with the 2012 USDA Census of Agriculture recording 12,617 nationally. In Maine, the number of CSAs has exploded from 159 in 2007 to 406 in 2012, an increase of 155 percent. Over the same period, CSA grew nationally by a rate of only 0.5 percent (USDA NASS 2009, 2014). While the defining characteristic of a CSA is the ability of the farmer to mitigate risk by receiving a fixed—and presumably sustainable—payment from subscribers in lieu of selling produce in a market setting, the rest of the organizational features seem to vary significantly across cases. For instance, traditional, selfemployed farmers seeking a stable market for their produce facilitate most CSAs. Some, however, are governed by community groups who own land, often in

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

SUSTAINING MAINE’S LOCAL FOOD INDUSTRY TABLE 1: Cooperation in Local Food Organizations

Initial Cooperation

Cooperation Required for Maintenance?

Number in Maine

Number in U.S.

Farmers’ market

Farmers cooperate to co-locate farm stands

Minimal

115

8,144

Community-supported agriculture

Consumers cooperate to buffer local farmers’ production volatility

Yes

406

12,617

Local Food Organization

Food sovereignty ordinance

Citizens cooperate to pass ordinance

None

Food-buying club

Consumers cooperate to buy in bulk

Yes

At least 55

Estimated in the low thousands

a Various communities across the United States, from California to Massachusetts, have discussed the concept of food sovereignty, but none have reached the critical mass exhibited by Maine’s 11 towns that have adopted identical ordinances and begun to see them clash with state regulators.

Sources: USDA, NASS 2014, the Bangor Daily News, Crown O’Maine Organic Cooperative.

a trust, and hire a farmer to cultivate it and distribute produce to community members (McFadden 2004). In some cases, a core group of members play a larger role in the promotion or governance of the group or assist with farm production directly (Lass and Lizio 2005). In both cases consumers bear an additional financial and temporal cost—paying more and accepting an inflexible delivery schedule—to benefit their producer. Research has also discovered that some farmers, in efforts to avoid the possibility of providing a belowaverage share, occasionally purchase additional produce from the market to supplement their shareholders’ installment (Galt 2013). Such a reciprocal act of altruism seems to undermine the principle of the CSA, i.e., providing financial stability for the farmer regardless of output. This reciprocity highlights an important fact about social dynamics that are distinct from traditional market dynamics. Cooperative acts are often repaid with future cooperation, generating a reciprocal relationship or network that helps maintain both social and economic structures. If the growing local food industry depends on patterns of reciprocal cooperation as we suggest, then policy should be crafted not just to support the economic success of local food businesses, but to enable the cooperation between producers and consumers that make those businesses viable in the first place. Farmers’ Markets Farmers’ markets are likely the most commonly acknowledged and well-known examples of local food

organizations. The USDA defines a farmers’ market as “a multi-stall market at which farmer-producers sell agricultural products directly to the general public at a central or fixed location.” The offerings of individual markets vary, but generally vendors can be found selling both fresh fruits and vegetables in season as well as value-added products such as baked goods, dried meats, and other minimally processed foodstuffs. Farmers participate in farmers’ markets because they benefit by avoiding wholesale prices and middlemen. Consumers frequent farmers’ markets to purchase foods they like and to absorb the social atmosphere. While it appears that farmers’ markets—unlike buying clubs and CSAs—do not require high levels of cooperation to persist, they nonetheless constitute a rich social environment that entails many relationships, expectations, and obligations. In New England, farmers at farmers’ markets will assist one another, offering advice and help. Farmers will also sell seedlings and give gardening and husbandry advice to consumers that serve to undercut their business. Most importantly, returning consumers, embedded in developing relationships with farmers, often feel compelled to continue to purchase from them. In this way, farmers’ markets may be successful in part because of the social obligations and cooperative relationships they generate. One study concluded that the most significant motivations for both consumers and farmers who frequent markets in Maine are the various social relationships that are fostered there (Hunt 2007).

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

SUSTAINING MAINE’S LOCAL FOOD INDUSTRY

Again, benefitting others who are socially proximate emerges as a focus for consumers, and therefore an economic driver. Food Sovereignty Ordinances The local food and community self-governance ordinance is a municipal ordinance that renounces statelevel oversight of food produced and sold within the municipality and shifts the burden of quality monitoring to the personal relationships between individual producers and consumers.2 The ordinance functions to waive health, environment, and other food production regulations at the municipal scale. This perceived removal of regulatory structures allows for greater flexibility for citizens to produce and sell food within their municipality. According to an article by Judy Harrison in the Bangor Daily News (May 13, 2014), food sovereignty activists contend that food safety standards are excessively expensive and onerous and do not take into account the structural advantages of small farming. Eleven Maine towns, generally clustered in the midcoast region, have currently adopted identical ordinances, although the state has warned that these ordinances are preempted by state law.

…as an emerging industry, local food in Maine faces a set of challenges for which finding solutions may prove difficult with the traditional lens of industrial growth via economies of scale. The ordinance can be seen as an act of noncooperation because it reduces costs to local farmers by waiving regulations. However, the ordinance also increases potential costs to consumers or the public in the lack of certainty about food quality or environmental practices. Despite the noncooperative aspect of the ordinance itself, such local rules only come into existence when an organized political movement achieves their passage. That such political movements often rely heavily on the cooperative contributions of many individual citizens underscores the social value of local food. 48

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

The emergence of the food sovereignty ordinance also signals the importance of the political dimension of local food. Simply put, some Maine citizens are so invested in local food that for them, it is a political matter. While the economic impact of the food sovereignty ordinance is likely foremost in the minds of most consumers and policymakers, any new industry necessarily encounters the political forces as it expands. It is natural to expect, then, that the local food industry, which relies in part on cooperation to sell its goods, may also turn to similar social dynamics and political movements when seeking to increase its viability through policy. DISCUSSION

e highlighted four types of local food organizations that fully represent neither the wide range of local food activity in Maine nor the great variety of cooperative patterns within policy groups, business, and charities. They do, however, provide a starting point for a more detailed consideration of cooperation within the local food industry. Although the patterns of cooperation differ in each type of local food organization, cooperation and various forms of social cohesion appear to be a prevalent and strong force behind the success of the industry. These organizational designs and apparent reliance on cooperation may have implications for long-run sustainability, however, as individuals and groups naturally seek to lower costs and maximize gains. What may be a viable cooperative cost for a short time may become too great a burden in the long run. However, the expansion and diversification of the industry, the entrance of new and different consumers, and technological innovations all hold the potential to alter or eliminate the cooperative requirements as they are currently observed. Maine’s local food industry should be an attractive target for policymakers as it keeps profits within the state. However, as an emerging industry, local food in Maine faces a set of challenges for which finding solutions may prove difficult with the traditional lens of industrial growth via economies of scale. For instance, regional planners are currently confronting the question of the ability of Maine’s agriculture sector to increase its scale should demand continue to rise. Traditional approaches would point toward a set of solutions, from increasing the size of existing farms, streamlining on-farm operations, reducing the farm agro-ecological diversity, lowering costs of bringing food to market, and increasing productivity across the industry. However, if

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

SUSTAINING MAINE’S LOCAL FOOD INDUSTRY

farms and food systems grow beyond the scale that enables the social proximity that consumers value, their products may stop being considered local food and lose value. Consumers do not just value the short distance local food travels: they value supporting small local farms. Therefore, planners and policymakers should consider innovative solutions to allow the proliferation of small local farms and attractive small-scale venues for consumers to buy from them. Designing regulatory regimes that protect public health while fostering a robust business climate for small-scale producers is another tricky problem facing state and local administrators. One solution to this problem is to support a statewide network of food processing hubs. These hubs, such as the Vermont Food Venture Center, are designed as food business incubators and provide technical and business training and access to industrial equipment and health-standards compliant facilities. As policymakers approach these issues, they will do well to remember the importance of social proximity and cooperative behavior to the vitality of the local food industry. If the growing local food industry depends in part on patterns of reciprocal cooperation as we suggest, then policy should be crafted not just to support the economic success of local food businesses, but to enable the cooperation between producers and consumers that make those businesses viable in the first place. Understanding the evolution of any industry is difficult, and local food is no exception. Further research ought to analyze the social and economic factors contributing to and obstructing the emergence of new organizations, and seek to chart the development of cooperation in the industry as a whole. Often, the economic myth of purely competitive market forces dominates the policy discussion, ignoring the very real and crucial role of cooperative behavior among individuals–behavior that, in the case of the fledgling local food industry, is fundamentally important. ENDNOTES 1. The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 defined local as “within 400 miles, or within state.” This definition, however, is not widely acknowledged or used by consumers or producers. In addition, many large retail outlets offer their own definitions of local, which range from state boundaries to under a day’s travel from production to point of sale (Burnett, Kuethe, and Price 2011). It is unclear whether consumers place significant value on these definitions.

2. Town of Sedgwick Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance 2011 sec. 5(2). http:// www.sedgwickmaine.org/images/stories/local-food -ordinance.pdf.

REFERENCES Adams, Damian C., and Alison E. Adams. 2011. “De-Placing Local at the Farmers’ Market: Consumer Conceptions of Local Foods.” Journal of Rural Social Sciences 26(2): 74–100. Adams, Damian C., and Matthew J. Salois. 2010. “Local versus Organic: A Turn in Consumer Preferences and Willingness-to-Pay.” Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 25(04): 331–341. Beck, D. Robin, Nikkilee Carleton, Hedda Steinhoff, Daniel Wallace, and Mark Lapping. 2011. “Maine’s Food System: An Overview and Assessment.” Maine Policy Review 20(1): 18–34. Brown, Cheryl, and Stacy Miller. 2008. “The Impacts of Local Markets: A Review of Research on Farmers’ Markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 90(5): 1296–1302. Burnett, Perry, Todd Kuethe, and Curtis Price. 2011. “Consumer Preference for Locally Grown Produce: An Analysis of Willingness-to-Pay and Geographic Scale.” Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download /53969/PDF Cordes, Christian, Peter J. Richerson, Ricard McElreath, and Ponus Strimling. 2008. “A Naturalistic Approach to the Theory of the Firm: The role of Cooperation and Cultural Evolution.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 68(1): 125–139. Galt, Ryan E. 2013. “The Moral Economy Is a DoubleEdged Sword: Explaining Farmers’ Earnings and Self-Exploitation in Community-Supported Agriculture.” Economic Geography 89(4): 341–365. doi:10.1111/ecge.12015. Guptill, Amy, and Jennifer L. Wilkins. 2002. “Buying into the Food System: Trends in Food Retailing in the US and Implications for Local Foods.” Agriculture and Human Values 19(1): 39–51. doi:10.1023/A:1015024827047. Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, and Richard McElreath. 2004. Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hunt, Alan R. 2007. “Consumer Interactions and Influences on Farmers’ Market Vendors.” Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22(1): 54–66. doi:10.1017/S1742170507001597.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

SUSTAINING MAINE’S LOCAL FOOD INDUSTRY

Ethan Tremblay is completing his bachelor’s degree in economics and journalism at the University of Maine. He will graduate with Honors in May 2015 and intends to pursue a master’s degree in economics, focusing on the impacts of culture and behavior

Lass, Daniel A., and Warren Lizio. 2005. CSA 2001: An Evolving Platform for Ecological and Economical Agricultural Marketing and Production. Department of Resource Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. http://preview.tinyurl.com/lfddbop Maine Department of Agriculture. 2008. The Agricultural Creative Economy: Needs, Opportunities, and Market Analysis. Maine Department of Agriculture, Augusta. http://www.maine.gov/dacf/ard /business_and_market_development/market _development/agcreativeeconomyv5%5B1%5D.pdf Maine Food Strategy. 2014. Maine Food Strategy Consumer Food Survey. Maine Food Strategy. http:// mainefoodstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05 /maine-food-strategys-consumer-survey-report.pdf McFadden, Steven. 1990. The History of Community Supported Agriculture, Part 1—Community Farms in the 21st Century: Poised for Another Wave of Growth? Rodale Institute, Kuztown, PA. http://www.newfarm.org /features/0104/csa-history/part1.shtml McFadden, Steven. 2004. The History of Community Supported Agriculture, Part 2—CSA’s World of Possibilities. Rodale Institute, Kuztown, PA. http:// www.newfarm.org/features/0204/csa2/part2.shtml Nowak, Martin A. 2006. “Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation.” Science 314(5805): 1560–1563.

on policy making.

Timothy Waring is an assistant professor of socialecological systems modeling at the University of Maine. He studies the emergence and persistence of cooperation in environmental dilemmas, to which he applies insights from research on the evolution of culture and cooperation. He studies cooperation in the local food industry in Maine and leads a national network of scholars using evolutionary approaches to study sustainability dynamics.

Rapoport, Anatol. 1965. Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Stanger, Howard R. 2008. “The Larkin Clubs of Ten: Consumer Buying Clubs and Mail-Order Commerce, 1890–1940.” Enterprise & Society 9(1): 125–164. Strassmann, Joan E., David C. Queller, John C. Avise, and Francisco J. Ayala. 2011. “In the Light of Evolution V: Cooperation and Conflict.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(Supplement 2): 10787–10791. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA NASS). 2009. 2007 Census of Agriculture Maine State and County Data. USDA, NASS, Washington, DC. http://www.agcensus.usda.gov /Publications/2007/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_2 _US_State_Level/st99_2_044_044.pdf U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA NASS). 2014. 2012 Census of Agriculture Maine State and County Data. USDA, NASS, Washington, DC. http://www.agcensus.usda.gov /Publications/2012/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_2 _US_State_Level/st99_2_043_043.pdf

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

IMPACTS OF SOLID WASTE POLICY OPTIONS

Impacts of Pay-As-You-Throw and Other Residential Solid Waste Policy Options: Southern Maine 2007–2013 by Travis Blackmer and George Criner Managing municipal solid waste in Maine is a challenging and costly endeavor. Not only is waste management a large budget item, but designing new, or changing existing, solid waste management programs is often controversial, divisive, and time consuming. This article presents an analysis of four residential municipal solid waste policy options used in Maine and evaluates the associated impacts on municipal residential recycling levels, information that may prove useful as state and local policymakers consider the impacts of various waste management options.

INTRODUCTION

n recent decades, managing municipal solid waste in Maine has been a challenging and costly endeavor. Not only is waste management a large budget item during a period of tightening municipal and state budgets, but designing new, or changing existing, solid waste management programs is often controversial, divisive, and time consuming. State and local policymakers need accurate and timely information regarding the impacts of waste management options. The purpose of this study is to analyze four residential municipal solid waste policy options used in Maine and to evaluate the associated impacts on municipal residential recycling levels. Throughout history a recurring pattern has been the cycle of growing waste volume and complexity, followed by the discovery that current disposal methods are inadequate. For example, in the 1800s both river and ocean dumping were common, but these practices were eliminated as waste volumes and problems grew. More recently, in an effort to protect groundwater, local garbage dumps have been closed and replaced with sanitary landfills. These facilities include modern engineering features such as clay and composite liners, leak detection, and landfill gas collection. While modern landfills have helped protect groundwater, national concern over the growth in waste generation has continued. From 1970 to 1980, the total annual

generation of municipal solid waste in the United States increased 25 percent (from 121.1 million tons in 1970 to 151.6 million tons in 1980), while per person waste generation increased 13 percent (from 3.25 pounds per day to 3.66 pounds per day).1 In response to this “garbage crisis,” most states have become active in municipal solid waste management issues, establishing new policies and regulations. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that, “Since the late 1980s, many states have demonstrated initiative by instituting a number of innovative source reduction policies, such as mandating reduction goals and planning requirements, legislation disposal bans, and implementing extensive education and outreach campaigns” (U.S. EPA 1998). In 1989 Maine created the Maine Waste Management Agency and charged it with creating a solid waste management plan, assisting municipalities and businesses in waste reduction and recycling efforts, and developing criteria for the selection of new landfills. Maine established a waste diversion goal of 50 percent, developed various assistance programs including an infrastructure grant program and educational efforts, and adopted a waste management hierarchy. Maine’s waste management hierarchy was reaffirmed in 2014 with “An Act to Implement the Solid Waste Hierarchy,” which states that the Maine Department of Environmental Production shall “adopt rules incorporating the State’s solid waste management

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

IMPACTS OF SOLID WASTE POLICY OPTIONS TABLE 1: Composition Maine’s Residential Waste Stream

Subcategory % of all waste

Category

Category % of all waste

Organics

43.28

Organics (food)

27.86

Organics (non-food)

15.42

Paper

25.57

All other paper

10.68

Compostable paper

7.93

Magazines/Catalogs

2.88

Newspaper

2.43

High Quality Office

1.64

Plastic

13.44

Plastic film

4.78

All other plastic

3.77

#1-#2 plastic

2.70

#3-#7 plastic

1.38

Grocery/Merchandise bags

0.82

Other Waste

5.77

Construction and Demolition Debris (C&D)

3.35

Metal

3.26

Glass

2.71

Household Hazardous Waste (HHZ)

1.72

Electronics

0.92

Total

100.00

Source: Criner and Blackmer (2012)

hierarchy as a review criterion for licensing approved under this subsection” (38 MRSA §1310-N, sub-§1). The hierarchy prioritizes municipal solid waste management options. The highest priority is to reduce the amount of waste generated. The second priority is to reuse items when possible. The third priority is to recycle materials, and the fourth is to compost organic wastes. The fifth priority is to incinerate waste for energy production (waste-to-energy). The lowest priority is landfilling. WHAT IS IN MAINE’S TRASH CANS?

T 52

o make informed decisions about which waste management programs to adopt, municipalities

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

need accurate information regarding their residential waste. This includes information about the composition of the waste stream. The most recent thorough analysis of Maine’s residential waste stream was published by Criner and Blackmer (2012). This report describes the composition of residential “baggable” waste collected from 17 Maine municipalities in the summer and fall of 2011. The waste is identified as baggable because only residential waste that would fit in a typical 30-gallon plastic trash bag was collected for analysis. All larger “bulky” waste items such as couches, televisions, tires, and other large items were excluded from the analysis. Table 1 lists the nine major categories of Maine’s residential waste steam, from largest to smallest by weight, as identified in this study. For the three largest categories, organics, paper, and plastic, subcategories are also listed. It is important to note that this composition data represents only the contents of household trash, and does not include items diverted to the recycling bin or composted. Most of the categories within Table 1 are selfexplanatory. A more detailed discussion of the waste composition, as well as a comparison with previous trash sorts, can be found in the 2012 Criner and Blackmer report. One finding that may be surprising is that organics and paper comprise nearly 70% of the waste stream. This finding is relevant when considering waste management options for treatment and disposal, as many of the materials in these categories are suitable for composting. While some municipalities had little recyclable material in their waste stream, others had considerably more. Figure 1 provides an example of this variation among the municipalities. It presents the percentage of newspaper found in the residential waste stream for 15 of the 17 Maine municipalities studied. The municipalities with the highest and lowest percentage of newspaper in their waste stream were discarded to focus on the middle 15. For comparison purposes, these municipalities are divided into high, middle, and low groups and averages for these three groups are shown. The average percentage of newspaper in the waste stream for the high group is three times that of the low group, showing that there is a wide range of effectiveness in removing this item from the waste stream.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

IMPACTS OF SOLID WASTE POLICY OPTIONS FIGURE 1: Newspaper in the Residential Waste Stream

OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM OPTIONS

5.0%

4.5% 1.2%

4.0%

% Total Waste Sampled

vidence suggests that there are municipal policies that can influence residential recycling. However current policy impacts are not known. The objective of the research reported here is to analyze four residential solid waste programs commonly implemented in Maine and to estimate their impacts on the municipal recycling rate. The waste and recycling data for this analysis was provided by ecomaine, a nonprofit waste management company located in southern Maine. The four waste management programs we examine in this paper are

(15 municipalities, low to high with group averages).

3.5%

2.1%

3.5% 3.0% 2.5% 2.0% 1.5% 1.0% 0.5% 0.0%

Municipalities

Source: Criner and Blackmer (2012)

1. Curbside trash collection: The public collection of residential trash, normally at the curb of each resident. 2. Curbside recyclables collection: The public collection of residential recyclable materials, normally at the curb of each resident. Traditionally, curbside recyclables collection has required households to presort their recyclable materials prior to collection. 3. Single-stream recycling: The collection of recyclable materials where the materials are not presorted by the household prior to collection, sometimes also referred to as “single-sort,” and “co-mingled.” 4. Pay-as-you-throw (PAYT): The requirement that residents pay a fee for the waste they throw away. The fee can be based on volume or weight, and in Maine this is normally accomplished with a fee per trash bag, sometime called “pay-by-thebag.” Households buy official municipal trash bags, or stickers to attach to their trash bags, through local vendors.

These four waste management programs can be implemented individually, although their use is often combined. In Maine, curbside trash is normally collected weekly. Municipalities either acquire a compactor garbage truck or contract with a third party for trash collection. Curbside recyclables collection is managed similarly to curbside trash collection, although it often occurs less frequently (biweekly or monthly). Many smaller municipalities have chosen not to adopt curbside collection, and require residents to transport their own trash and recyclables to a transfer station or to contract with a third party. Single-stream recycling is relatively new in the recycling world. Its approach takes advantage of two features: economy of size and ease of participation. Economy of size refers to the general rule that average costs decline when the volume of materials handled increases. This phenomenon holds for the collection and preparation of recyclable material for sale. The facilities that process recycled materials are called “materials recovery facilities” (MRFs). The efficiency of MRFs is due to a large extent to the use of machines and other economizing features such as a better flow of materials and storage capacity. For MRFs to obtain the large

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

IMPACTS OF SOLID WASTE POLICY OPTIONS FIGURE 2: Waste Tonnages for Sanford, Maine 2010â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2013 700

Pay-as-you-throw in place from July to Nov 2010 600

Pay-as-you-throw begins again in Sept 2013

Monthly Tonnage

500

400

300

200

100

Jan 2010

Jul 2010

Jan 2011

Jul 2011

Jan 2012

Jul 2012

Jan 2013

Jul 2013

Month

Source: Authorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; graph, data from Kolling-Perin (2013)

quantities of recyclable materials necessary for economizing they must draw from large and/or densely populated areas. The second feature that makes single-stream recycling effective is its ease of participation. The ability to place all recyclable material into one large container makes it easier for households to recycle, and participation increases with more convenient programs (U.S. GAO 2006; Wagner 2013). Additionally, single-stream recycling creates savings in collection and hauling. Since no sorting of the material is required while loading recyclables onto the truck during collection, it is a faster process saving both labor and truck time. Another advantage of single-stream recycling is that often the range of materials being collected can be expanded. Single-stream recyclable material is usually trucked to a MRF for automated sorting. The MRFs are 54

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

generally located in centralized areas and are designed to have adequate area for materials storage. The larger storage capacity allows for storing sufficient materials until full truckloads of materials are attained. Despite the advantages of single-stream recycling, there are detractors who criticize the system. A primary concern is the displacement of the activity from the local area. Critics note that valuable materials are leaving the local economy (including cardboard and aluminum), and also note the loss of local jobs required for materials handling and processing. Of the four municipal programs discussed in this report, pay-as-you-throw is by far the most controversial, both in terms of its impact and its acceptance by the public. Due to this controversy, we will include the following section to give this topic the discussion it deserves.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

IMPACTS OF SOLID WASTE POLICY OPTIONS

Pay-as-You-Throw: Discussion and Estimated Impacts

There is general agreement that pay-as-you-throw programs (PAYT) reduce the quantity of waste that households discard. However, there is considerable difference of opinion on the overall costs and benefits of PAYT. Some critics believe that residential solid waste programs should be provided as a municipal service and paid for with taxes. These individuals frequently note that if PAYT is adopted, local property taxes should decline. Advocates promote PAYT as an effective means of reducing waste disposal. They point out that PAYT systems reward households that reduce their waste and shift some of the waste management costs from the municipal general fund to those who generate the waste. However, others point out that the PAYT fee system can cost lower-income families a greater portion of their household income, resulting in what economists refer to as a regressive tax. In two papers, Fullerton and Kinnaman evaluated the impact of unit pricing (the broader economic term for user fees, which include PAYT). In a 1996 report, they found that unit-pricing resulted in a 14 percent reduction in waste and a 16 percent increase in recycling amongst Virginia households (Fullerton and Kinnamon 1996). However, the authors reported that the estimated cost savings did not cover the administrative cost of the program. The presence of illegal waste dumping was also noted, which would reduce the estimated recycling effectiveness. In a later paper, these authors focused on the demand for waste and recycling programs and the relation between regional tipping fees and municipal trash unit price (e.g., price per bag) (Kinnaman and Fullerton 2000). In this paper they also bring up the issue of self-selection: municipalities that are well suited for a unit-pricing program are more likely to select this option. Thus the average results for PAYT and other unit-pricing systems may not be applicable to all types of municipalities.2 In examining actual municipal weight data, it is not uncommon for municipalities to observe an approximate 50 percent reduction in their waste tonnage after implementing PAYT (U.S. EPA 2010). Based on these results, many municipalities strongly support PAYT as a method of reducing trash and increasing recycling. The EPA also supports PAYT and provides many web resources about this waste management option for citizens, municipal governments, state officials, civic groups, and businesses. These resources include research,

presentation and public outreach materials, worksheets, factsheets, bulletins, and suggested implementation outlines. The case of Sanford, Maine, is a good example of PAYT resulting in dramatic changes in waste disposal volume (Kolling-Perin 2013). Sanford first adopted PAYT in July of 2010. In spite of the large drop in waste generation over a five-month period, citizens repealed a PAYT ordinance in November. Three years later PAYT was reinstituted, resulting in dramatic waste reduction. Figure 2 shows both periods where PAYT was instituted and where dramatic drops in waste tonnages are evident. When Sanford adopted PAYT in 2010 waste tonnages fell from a high of near 600 tons per month to under 300 tons per month. With the second adoption of PAYT similar large reductions are evident. One difficulty in evaluating the effectiveness of PAYT is uncertainty about where the trash that is diverted from the residential waste stream is going. When a PAYT program is first implemented, results show that for every ton of material diverted to the recycling bin, about two tons of waste is either not generated or goes elsewhere. From a municipal standpoint, the waste seems to disappear. The good news is that disappearing trash aligns with the Maine waste hierarchy since the first priority is to reduce the amount of waste generated. Consumers are expected to generate less waste with PAYT programs because of the monetary incentive to do so. This can be accomplished through various methods including selecting items with less packaging, reusing items, and home composting.

Advocates promote PAYT as an effective means of reducing waste disposal. Unfortunately, another method some households use to reduce their waste disposal costs is through illegal dumping or other inappropriate waste disposal methods. These practices include dumping trash in public places or commercial dumpsters, backyard trash burning, bringing waste to other municipalities, and disposing of household garbage at work. According to a Bangor Daily News report (May 12, 2013), one municipality

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

IMPACTS OF SOLID WASTE POLICY OPTIONS TABLE 2: Factor Impact on Residential Recycling Percentage

Factors

Statistical Significance?

Estimated Impact on Recycling

PAYT

Yes

Positive

Curbside Recycling

Yes

Positive

Curbside Trash

Yes

Negative

Population

Yes

Positive

Median Family Income

Yes

Positive

Economic Sentiment

Yes

Negative

Trend

Yes

Positive

Curbside Recycling Trend

Yes

Positive

Curbside Trash Trend

Yes

Negative

PAYT Trend

Single Stream Unemployment Southern Maine

Marginal

Positive

(Presque Isle) experienced a significant increase in illegal dumping as a result of PAYT, while another (Portland) did not. An analysis published in 1995 found anecdotal evidence that illegal or inappropriate waste disposal (termed “waste shifting”) was associated with the adoption of PAYT, but concluded that waste shifting was not in fact a widespread problem (Seguino, Criner, and Saurez 1995). Analysis of Four Residential Waste Policies

In this section we discuss the estimated impact of four residential solid waste policies on the percentage of household waste recycled. The results are summarized here, and further technical details about the model and the specific data summarized are available from the authors upon request. The four policies we consider are curbside trash collection, curbside recyclables collection, single-stream recycling, and pay-as-you-throw (PAYT). We define percent recycling as the tonnage of recyclable material collected, divided by the sum of both the tonnage of recyclable materials collected plus the tonnage of waste materials collected. The waste and recycling data for the analysis was primarily obtained from ecomaine, a nonprofit company offering a range of waste management services in southern Maine including trash and recyclables collection, materials recovery, waste-to-energy, and 56

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

landfilling services. The ecomaine data contain the quantities of both materials discarded as trash and materials collected for recycling for 33 municipalities. The data period is 2007 through 2013. Due to the nature of solid waste and recycling programs, monthly tonnages of recycling or waste were not available for some towns for certain time periods. In addition to the ecomaine data, demographic and economic information was collected about the municipalities and added to the dataset. These supplemental variables included municipal population and municipal income, unemployment rate over time (using greater Portland rate as the dataset proxy), and an economic sentiment variable (the publically traded S&P 500 fund index). The unemployment and economic sentiment variables are included as different indicators of the strength of the economy. When the economy is improving consumers tend to purchase more goods, which would increase materials needing disposal. These variables are included in an attempt to capture this effect. Table 2 presents the overall finding of the first statistical model. The first column lists the factors thought to influence percent recycling. The second column indicates whether the variable was found to be significant or not (at the 90 percent level or above), and the third column indicates the estimated impact the factor has on recycling (positive or negative). As expected, we see that PAYT and curbside recycling have a positive impact on percent recycling. Singlestream recycling also has a positive estimated impact, but with marginal statistical significance. We suspect that the marginal significance finding is due to the lack of single-stream program variation within our dataset.3 Here is an example to help illustrate these results. If a municipality that was not using any of these waste management programs initiated PAYT, single-stream recycling, and curbside recycling, the estimated increase in percent recycling would be over 22 percentage points. PAYT and curbside recycling are estimated to increase percent recycling by 12 and 9.5 percentage points, respectively. The impact of curbside trash collection was found to have a significant and negative impact on percent recycling by 5 percentage points. This finding agrees with the theoretical expectations, since curbside trash collection makes throwing materials away easier than other disposal methods including recycling. When waste disposal is more convenient, households have less incentive to recycle.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

IMPACTS OF SOLID WASTE POLICY OPTIONS TABLE 3: Fixed Effect Recycling Percentage

The results indicated that as a municipalityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population and income increase, the municipal rate of recycling increases. The economic sentiment variable was found to have a negative influence on recycling, and the unemployment rate was not found to influence the recycling rate. Trends are frequently observed in data, and we investigated whether some of our phenomena were trending. We found a positive trend for the recycling percentage overall, and a positive trend in the impact of curbside recycling. That is, over time the presence of curbside recycling was estimated to result in a municipality recycling more and more. A negative trend was found for curbside trash collection, implying that, over time, the presence of curbside trash collection tends to reduce the percentage of residential recycling. No trend was found for PAYT. A second statistical model was used to explore the impact of the four policy variables.4 Table 3 shows the estimated impact of the variables PAYT, single-stream recycling, and curbside recycling. Curbside trash collection is omitted due to the technical reason that it has no variation across any of the sampled population (all municipalities either had curbside trash collection or did not, during the entire time period). The estimated impacts for PAYT and curbside recycling were similar but slightly smaller than those of the first model at 9.5 and 8.5 percentage points, respectively, while single-stream recycling had a larger impact at nearly 4 percentage points. The model estimates that a municipality implementing all three of these programs would increase their percent recycling by nearly 22 percentage points. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

olid waste management is an expensive, dynamic, and sometimes contentious issue for many municipalities. There is no best system for all municipalities, but information exists to help municipalities in their decisions. This paper has investigated four residential solid waste programs and the effects of various municipal demographic and economic characteristics on residential and recycling percentages. Two models are developed as part of this analysis and the results have overall good statistical significance. The models support the notion that PAYT, curbside recycling, and single-stream recycling increase a municipalityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s percent recycling. Curbside trash collection was estimated to negatively affect percent recycling.

(Dependent Variable is Percent Recycling) Statistical Significance?

Estimated Impact on Recycling

PAYT

Yes

Positive

Single Stream

Yes

Positive

Curbside Recycling

Yes

Positive

Factors

While the models and municipal data show significant impacts from the solid waste management options, it is important to note the limitations of this information in making large inferences for all Maine municipalities. The options of PAYT, single-stream recycling, and curbside recycling have been available for less time than curbside trash collection. In rural areas curbside recycling and trash collection may not be economically feasible due to a low population density. Creating a PAYT program that forces individuals to pay for each bag of waste is an option that many Maine municipalities have found creates a minimal inconvenience, although the experience reportedly varies. Some municipalities have found temporary or long-term illegal dumping. Anecdotal information suggests that in some cases PAYT is not a good match for municipalities with temporary residents, such as vacation spots or college towns. For example, it might be a challenge to educate short-term renters and out-of-state summer residents as to where and how to acquire special PAYT bags for disposal. Additionally, PAYT may be difficult to implement in highly urban areas where trash is often collected in dumpsters. Municipalities should also be aware that there are residential solid waste management policy options beyond the four examined in this study. For example, some municipalities have a mandatory recycling ordinance. These may or may not be effective, as they take fortitude in enforcement. Another program a municipality might explore is mandatory composting as roughly 40 percent of the residential waste stream is compostable. A municipality might opt to collect compostable waste in a split compactor truck and alternate its collection with single-stream recyclables on a weekly basis. The questions surrounding the future of municipal solid waste in Maine are complex and the best solution is subjective to the opinions, experiences, and beliefs of the individuals attempting to analyze the situation.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

IMPACTS OF SOLID WASTE POLICY OPTIONS

Municipalities looking to alter their program offerings can employ these estimates to evaluate the impacts of an intended change on their combined waste and recycling stream. -

U.S. Department of Environmental Protection (U.S. EPA). 1998. Municipal Solid Waste Source Reduction: A Snapshot of State Initiatives. U.S. EPA, EPA530-R-98-017. http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/pubs /snapshot.pdf

ENDNOTES

U.S. Government Accountability Office. 2006. Recycling: Additional Efforts Could Increase Municipal Recycling. GAO Report to Congressional Requesters. GAO-07-37, Washington, DC. http://www.gao.gov/new.items /d0737.pdf

1. U.S. Department of Environmental Protection. 2014. Municipal Solid Waste Generation, 1960–2012. http:// www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/ 2. A study by Allers and Hoeban (2010) on 458 Dutch municipalities found that self-selection was not present and the impacts of PAYT were much larger. 3. For most of our dataset, single-stream programs were present, with few cases of “no single-stream.” Without a good number of data observations with and without single-stream, finding statistical precision can be difficult. 4. The model employed is a fixed-effect model, which allows each municipality and time period to have its own unique effect that incorporates the unobservable characteristics with the observable ones.

REFERENCES Allers, Maarten A., and Corin Hoeben. 2010. “Effects of UnitBased Garbage Pricing: A Differences-in-Differences Approach.” Environmental and Resource Economics 45:405–428. Criner, George K., and Travis L. Blackmer. 2012. “Municipal Solid Waste Maine.” Waste 360. http://waste360.com /research-and-statistics/msw-maine Fullerton, Don, and Thomas Kinnaman. 1996. “Household Responses to Pricing Garbage by the Bag.” The American Economic Review 86:971–984. Kinnaman, Thomas, and Don Fullerton. 2000. “Garbage and Recycling with Endogenous Local Policy.” Journal of Urban Economics 48:419–442. Kolling-Perin, Joshua. 2013. “New Pay-As-You-Throw Program in Sanford, Maine Cuts Solid Waste 41% in Three Months.” Wastezero. http://wastezero.com /about-us/press-releases/new-pay-as-you-throwprogram-in-sanford,-maine-cuts-solid-waste-41-in -three-months.aspx

Wagner, Travis P. 2013. “Examining the Concept of Convenient Collection: An Application to Extended Producer Responsibility and Product Stewardship Frameworks.” Waste Management 33:499–507.

Travis Blakmer has a master’s degree from the University of Maine’s School of Economics. He was a project leader for the 2011 Maine State Waste Composition Study, which sampled waste from 17 Maine communities over two seasons. He has continued his waste research investigating program impacts on solid waste as well as behavioral and psychological responses by households to solid waste policies and practices.

George Criner is a professor in the University of Maine’s School of Economics. In addition to teaching and public service, he conducts research in the areas of agricultural economics, waste management, economic development, Canadian/Quebec agricultural issues, and short-term forecasting.

Seguino, Stephanie, George Criner, and Margarita Suarez. 1995. “Solid Waste Management Options for Maine: The Economics of Pay-By-The-Bag Systems.” Maine Policy Review 4(2): 49–58. U.S. Department of Environmental Protection (U.S. EPA). 2010. Pay-As-You-Throw Summer 2010 Bulletin. U.S. EPA EPA530-N-09-001. http://www.epa.gov/epawaste /conserve/tools/payt/tools/bulletin/summer10.pdf

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

COMMENTARY: Creative Pathways Through High School

C O M M E N T A R Y

Creative Pathways Through High School: A Response to John Dorrer, “Do We Have the Workforce Skills for Maine’s Innovation Economy?” by Sylvia Most

n his article, “Do we have the Workforce Skills for Maine’s Innovation Economy?” published in the Winter/Spring 2014 issue of Maine Policy Review, John Dorrer suggests that the answer to that question is “no.” He reports that “there are insufficient numbers of college graduates in STEM disciplines to fill available jobs” (Dorrer 2014: 73). As a high school math teacher, this caught my eye. But perhaps more striking was his commentary that “employers, both nationally and here in Maine, call for higher levels of communication, critical thinking, and problemsolving skills from those they are seeking to hire” (Dorrer 2014: 73). Dorrer’s article highlights data from the Maine Department of Labor showing Maine occupational projections by educational requirements for the period 2010 to 2020. Of the 676,770 jobs anticipated to be available in Maine in 2020, fully 43 percent of them require only a high school diploma or equivalent, and 26 percent of these jobs require less. In total, nearly 70 percent of the jobs in Maine as of 2020 will not require education beyond high school, a figure that remains unchanged from 2010. This coupled with the need for more college graduates with science and technology degrees calls for a new approach to high school education that goes beyond content standards and ends, well, where our graduates are likely to end up—working for an employer who will

teach them what they need to know to do their job. Students need alternative pathways through high school to allow educators to aggressively prepare both those who are suited to advanced education and those who are not for their diverging roads once they leave high school. Statistics on the Maine job market clearly indicate that a four-year college education immediately following high school graduation may not be the most logical choice for students planning to stay in state. Furthermore, there is clear evidence that for many the investment is not worthwhile—there are alternative, potentially more successful routes to the middle class for lower income students. In a recent commentary published in the Maine Sunday Telegram (March 30, 2014), Michael Petrilli makes the case that despite the conventional wisdom that a college education is the best road to success, for some students it is entirely the wrong advice. In the report Pathways to Prosperity, the authors state, “One of the most fundamental obligations of any society is to prepare its adolescents and young adults to lead productive and prosperous lives as adults. This means preparing all young people with a solid enough foundation of literacy, numeracy, and thinking skills for responsible citizenship, career development, and lifelong learning” (Symonds, Schwartz, and Ferguson 2011).

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

The potential cost of encouraging all students toward a post-secondary college degree is low self-esteem for those who fail to be accepted into college, low selfesteem for those who fail to succeed in college, expensive tuition bills for unfinished education, and a lack of preparedness for the job market. Jobs such as electricians, plumbers, welders, and dental hygienists require a post-secondary certificate or apprenticeship program. More than 25 percent of people with such credentials that are short of an associate’s degree earn more than the average bachelor’s degree recipient (Symonds, Schwartz, and Ferguson 2011). We need to recognize that college isn’t the best choice for everyone. Instead, we need to create fulfilling and engaging educational pathways for those students who would benefit most from focused and valuable technical and vocational education programs in high school—not as a last stop for those who are failing, but as an aspirational achievement. The idea of differing high school curricula depending on future goals is not new. The historical perspective gives reason to be cautious—alternative pathways bring to mind the “tracks” that in the past were racially or socially constructed in ways that were detrimental to students and to society. As far back as 1918, the NEA “Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education” endorsed different

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

COMMENTARY: Creative Pathways Through High School

C O M M E N T A R Y

curricula for different students. In the 1930s schools tracked students using intelligence tests that are now known to be highly culturally biased. In the post– WWII 1940s, the GI bill sent many more people to college than had gone in the past, and shed light on the failure of high schools to adequately prepare students for advanced education. However, the 1960s social movements took schools in the direction of developing a more relevant curriculum at the expense of core academics. Today’s standards movement comes back around to focus in on core academics. Yet, from the standpoint of workforce preparedness, will this resolve the problem of students leaving high school without the communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills employers are looking for? Perhaps. The Common Core does emphasize process standards, those habits of mind and learning that contribute to critical thinking and problem-solving skills. In the description of these standards its users are reminded to “attend to the need to connect the mathematical practices to mathematical content in mathematics instruction” (www.corestandards .org/Math/Practice). Meaning, the content standards and the process standards must be intertwined. Yet, in the face of the hundreds of content standards, it is easy for schools and educators to lose focus on process, the area that could provide students and their future employers with the biggest payoff. By developing deliberately different curricula for students headed toward college and those who are not, schools can focus students on the content they really need, with emphasis on process—communication, critical thinking and problem solving. Students who are not going

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

directly on to college do not need to demonstrate proficiency in all the Common Core’s high school mathematics content. Instead, these students need technical and nontechnical career training and financial literacy skills that will serve them immediately upon graduation. Despite the reality that the majority of Maine’s youth will find jobs in such fields, only a small minority actually get exposure to vocational education in high school. Finding equitable methods to guide students toward a vocational or a collegeprep path through high school is clearly a tricky undertaking. We need to ensure that any sort of tracking of students into interest or job-related high school programs is not based on racial, ethnic or socioeconomic factors that inadvertently group students unfairly. With the focus on the job market of the future, it should be the goal of society to find an equitable way to focus individuals on finding their most suitable pathway to reach their strongest economic potential. Educators have a natural bias toward higher education—a factor that leads many to unintentionally place a higher value on college than today’s workplace statistics warrant. In an age where many students emerge from a four-year college program with staggering student loan debt only to find few job openings, is it responsible to promote college as the ultimate goal for everyone? Progressives have argued that we must educate the child in order to uncover their interests and curiosity. With longer life spans and an expectation of multiple careers, perhaps this approach needs to be adapted to teach the child how to uncover their interests and curiosity. A person may be ready to commit to an expensive education for

career preparation at 18, 25, 35 or older— in the meantime, they will work at some productive occupation for which they need to be prepared. To remove the stigma that vocational education currently enjoys in many Maine high schools, educators must begin by choosing to see vocational education as a valuable educational option. Students will be more successful in high school if they feel they are on track toward a successful future role in society. Given that the majority of those roles require no college degree, it makes no logical sense to direct everyone toward college without regard for their capabilities and interests. If John Dorrer’s assessment is correct, by attempting to get all students ready for college as the primary model of successful post-secondary activity, educators have failed to get them ready for today’s economy. To address this problem, as early as middle school, educators, parents, and students need useful ways to approach the discussion of what a student’s future interests are, what their capabilities are, and how energetically they wish to fill any developing gaps. All students should be exposed to vocational training at the middle school level to help them begin to develop a sense of the future. If a student’s capabilities, interests, or motivation do not mesh with the rigors of advanced education, then students should pursue internships, vocational training, and certificate programs as a viable and respectable alternative to attending college. To allow for changing interests and maturity of vision, schools can provide bridges between programs for students to change pathways. These may include summer or after-school programs to help students catch up on needed basic skills, either academic or vocational, missed by

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

COMMENTARY: Creative Pathways Through High School

C O M M E N T A R Y

being in the alternative program. As educators, we should focus on the process standards of the Common Core to encourage the problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking skills our employers and colleges need. Finally, we must encourage students to think about their future in stages—a decision not to attend college now does not preclude it in the future. It just may ensure that the investment pays off both for them and for society in the long run. REFERENCES Dorrer, John. 2014. “Do We Have the Workforce Skills for Maine’s Innovation Economy?” Maine Policy Review 23(1): 65–74. Willliam C. Symonds, Robert B. Schwartz, and Ronald Ferguson. 2011. Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century. Report issued by the Pathways to Prosperity Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Boston, MA.

Sylvia Most has been a lifelong learner. She chose a career as a math teacher following several years as an engineering manager, management consultant and small business owner. She has been active on many community boards and committees, served seven years on the Scarborough town council, and cochaired Scarborough’s Comprehensive Planning Committee.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Margaret Chase Smith Library 2014 Essay Contest First Place Essay

Changes in the United States over the Last 50 Years

Each year, the Margaret Chase Smith Library sponsors an essay contest for

by Mia Fisher

high school seniors. The

2014 essay prompt asked students to reflect on the changes the nation has undergone—politically, economically, technologically, and culturally—over the past 50 years since 1964, when Margaret Chase Smith announced her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. We are pleased to feature here the top two 2014 prize-winning essays.

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

nyone who turns on the Nightly News with Brian Williams or who reads the New York Times will come across issues of Social Security and other safety net programs, foreign policy, a bipartisan Congress, tax cuts, economic growth, and technological advances. If it weren’t for the legislation, economic changes, advances in technology, and cultural shifts in America since 1964, the stories seen in and on the news would be very different. The past 50 years have included significant political, economic, technological, and cultural changes in American history and have shaped the legal system, economy, and values of America today. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his first State of the Union address, after being sworn in November after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. During his speech, LBJ declared “The War on Poverty”—a war that is not nearly over but that has changed America greatly. He also coined the phrase, “The Great Society,” at Ohio University and University of Michigan during the same year, asserting the importance to work towards the end of poverty and racial injustice. LBJ’s presidency brought about significant changes to and additional safety net programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, which provides health insurance to those ages 65 or older and low-income individuals or families, under Title XVIII and XIX of the Social Security Amendments of 1965.

In 1965, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which provides health and nutrition services to low-income women and infants and children under five, and the Head Start program, which gives lowincome children and their families access to early childhood education, family and community support, and other health and nutrition services were also created. Many of these federally administered social programs started since 1964 have contributed immensely to America’s values and continue to fuel many of the current debates in America today. Since 1964, the rate of poverty has decreased from 25 percent to 15 percent. Additionally, the programs approved during LBJ’s presidency set a precedent for other welfare programs and reforms. For example, President Barack Obama and Congress passed legislation with the same hope of reducing poverty in America. Obama’s Affordable Care Act passed in 2010 aims to provide high-quality and affordable health insurance to all Americans regardless of income level. LBJ’s Great Society also included the end to racial injustice, particularly in the South. Originally proposed by President Kennedy in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” was passed after numerous attempts to block the bill through filibusters in the Senate. In addition, the Voting Rights Act of 1965

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

prohibited discrimination in voting. These pieces of landmark legislation were just two attempts to use the power of the federal government to promote equality. The change in American ideals and addition of federal legislation to promote equality moved people to speak out against racial segregation and inequality in the past 50 years. Although there is still work to be done in ensuring equality, many events would not be possible had it not been for this legislation and shift in Americans’ values. For example, Barack Obama would probably not be president, Kerry Washington would not star as Olivia Pope in Shonda Rhimes’ TV drama Scandal, and Jay-Z and Beyoncé would not be on the “World’s Most Powerful Couples List.” The past 50 years have also been a time when social issues and institutions were brought up for discussion on a more public level. A major cultural shift that took place in 1964 was the feminist movement after Betty Friedan released the book, Feminine Mystique. Since 1964, women have become more educated and empowered. Today, young girls are able to see women such as Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, General Motors’ Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hold positions of power. Women have fought and are fighting for increased freedoms and choices, which allows them to decide their role in society rather than have their role decided for them. More women are pursuing professional degrees and are joining in workforce. Women are the primary earners in four out of ten American households. More generally, all people—women and children especially—began to go against society’s traditional molds. The events in 1964 served as a turning point in American history and gave rise to many political, economic, technological,

and social changes. It transformed the ways in which we view our country and without the events in 1964, America would look very different. -

Mia Fisher, from Cumberland, Maine, was a member of the National Honor Society, secretary of Key Club, and captain of the varsity field hockey team at her high school. She was also actively involved with the international organization Seeds of Peace. This fall she started college at James Madison University, studying marketing and international relations.

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Margaret Chase Smith Library 2014 Essay Contest S e c o n d P l a c e E s s ay

Changes in the United States over the Last 50 Years

Each year, the Margaret Chase Smith Library sponsors an essay contest for

by Jonah Abraham

high school seniors. The

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Summer/Fall 2014

ver the last half-century, the United States has undergone a tremendous amount of change in the political, cultural, economic, and technological spheres. Politically, America has become increasingly divided, as the Republican and Democratic parties have changed drastically over the years. Culturally, the nation has become much more tolerant of different lifestyles, gay marriage being a particularly good example. Economically, the United States is rapidly losing its preeminence as the world’s most powerful economy, although it still retains a significant edge over other contenders such as India and China. Technologically, computers and the Internet have radically altered everyday life. Overall, the United States is almost unrecognizably different from the nation it was 50 years ago. Politically, America is far different from what it was during the days of Margaret Chase Smith and Barry Goldwater. In Goldwater’s day, conservatism was confined mainly to economic ideas, although of course Goldwater stood for traditional family values as well. Today, the phrase “family values” has become inextricably linked with the politics of the Christian Right, the same lobby that Goldwater himself campaigned so vigorously against in his later career. Due to the surge in conservatism evidenced by the rise of the Tea Party, conservatives have regained the House of Representatives, and may retake the Senate in the November 2014 elections. The Republican

Party is radically different from its 1960s counterpart—that party focused primarily on economic issues, condemning President Lyndon B. Johnson’s attempts at a Great Society. When it came to social issues, conservatives mainly stood for law and order, which appealed to many voters in that tumultuous era. Today’s Republican Party focuses a great deal more on social issues although economic issues play a vital role in their campaigns as well. Hot-button issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and immigration dominate the thinking of the modern GOP, as well as how to deal with rapidly shifting attitudes on some of these topics. In terms of economics, the single most important issue in the Republican Party is healthcare—specifically, their attempts to undermine and repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Democrats, too, have shifted away from their predecessors in the 1960s. In that era, the New Left and the hippie movement played a vital role in shaping Democratic policies. Johnson’s unpopular war in Vietnam split his own party, as young liberals, particularly on college campuses, rejected his decisions. A parallel might be drawn between Vietnam and the recent war in Iraq; though of course, the latter was initiated and waged by a Republican president. The Democrats under Johnson hoped to expand the welfare system and increase the extent of the safety net to aid America’s poorest. Today’s Democrats still embrace many of

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

the same values, but like the Republicans, they have gained an increased interest in social issues such as gay marriage. Of course, on most issues, the Democrats have tended to move to the left, while the GOP has moved to the right. As the two parties drift towards opposite ends of the political spectrum, deadlock on a scale unprecedented in the last 50 years has gripped Congress.1 Repeated failures to pass a budget have undermined the public’s faith in their elected officials. With congressional approval ratings hovering at record lows, it is clear that a new lack of confidence in government is an unfortunate change from previous times. Culturally, the United States is inconceivably different from the America of the 1960s, especially with the new attitude of tolerance that pervades the nation. This is especially true of the acceptance of homosexuals. As recently as the early 1970s, psychologists at the American Psychological Association classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Today, doctors and psychologists acknowledge that homosexuality is a normal trait. The public has also accepted homosexuals on a scale unthinkable in the 1960s. The majority of the American public now finds homosexuality to be morally acceptable, which was not true even a decade ago.2 In the 1960s, the gay rights movement was in its infancy. The Stonewall Riots would ultimately kick off the movement, but the fruits of its labor have only recently become apparent. The public acceptance of homosexuality is the clearest indicator that American culture has changed drastically since the sixties. Economically, America is not the powerhouse that it once was. A nation that once held a favorable balance of trade with almost all of its trading partners is now sinking under trillions of dollars in debt. Billions of dollars are spent every

year in defense, while billions more go to mandatory entitlement programs such as Social Security. The aforementioned political deadlock makes it almost impossible for the debt to be significantly reduced, in turn making America less credible as a trading partner. Standard & Poor’s muchpublicized reduction of America’s credit rating to AA is representative of America’s decline in economic power. According to an article by Christopher Matthews on the website Time Business (January 8, 2014), populous countries such as China and India are quickly gaining on the United States and are poised to surpass America’s economy in the relatively near future. Unless America does something drastic to regain its status as an innovative and productive nation, the economic decline from the 1960s will be irreversible. Technologically, computers and the Internet have utterly changed the face of daily life. In the 1960s, long-distance communication was limited to the telephone and mail, and record-keeping and financial transactions were done on paper. Today, mail is a thing of the past, and phones are used more often for texting than for actual conversation. Newer technologies such as email and Skype have supplanted older methods of communication. E-commerce has come to dominate finances, and social networking has changed the way people interact with one another. It is now almost impossible to lose touch with anybody, something that was certainly not true 50 years ago. The most popular forms of media, such as radio and television, have also been replaced by the Internet—many television viewers have switched to using Netflix, for instance. The technological changes in the last 50 years have been fascinating, and it is exciting to imagine what the future holds. Life has been altered significantly in the United States since the 1960s. The

View current & previous issues of MPR at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/

political landscape has been changed drastically; neither Barry Goldwater nor Lyndon B. Johnson would recognize his own party today. In addition, the move away from the center by both parties has caused a dreadful gridlock in Washington, a fact that has frustrated many citizens. Culturally, American culture has relaxed significantly, with the acceptance of homosexuality as the most prominent example of this. Economically, the United States has lost its absolute superiority over other nations and must struggle tenaciously to retain its economic edge. Technologically, computers and Internet access have vastly changed modern life. If Margaret Chase Smith could see the nation today, it is doubtful that she could recognize it as the same one in which she launched her candidacy for president. ENDNOTES 1. http://www.gallup.com/poll/165809 /congressional-approval-sinks-record -low.aspx 2. http://www.gallup.com/poll/154634 /acceptance-gay-lesbian-relations-new -normal.aspx

Jonah Abraham graduated from Portsmouth Christian Academy in Waterboro where he was valedictorian of his senior class. He maintained highest honors while at PCA and was a member of student government for three years This fall he started attending the College of William and Mary, pursuing a degree in political science.

Volume 23, Number 2

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

Thanks to Our Reviewersâ&#x20AC;Ś

We would like to extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to all those who took time to review articles submitted for consideration to Maine Policy Review. Their insights and recommendations assist us in our editorial decision-making, and provide valuable feedback to authors in revising their articles to be suitable for publication in the journal. The following individuals reviewed articles for Volume 23 (2014):

James Acheson Mike Belliveau Deborah Felder Todd Gabe Jim Guerra Renee Kelly Mark Lapping Jessica Leahy Charles Morris Andrea Perry John Piotti Linda Silka Sharon Tisher James S. (Jake) Ward IV

Suggested contribution levels: Major Sponsors........................$10,000 and above Patrons........................................ $5,000 – $9,999 Benefactors.................................. $1,000 – $4,999 Donors.............................................. $500 – $999 Contributors..................................... $100 – $499 Friends.................................................... $1 – $99 We list our contributors by contribution level in each issue of the journal. Please check one of the following : I would like my contribution to be anonymous. I. would like acknowledgement to be listed under the following name(s) or company name:

By check, please make it payable to: Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

Mail your contribution to:

Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center 5784 York Complex, Bldg #4 University of Maine Orono, ME 04469-5784 Attn: Eva McLaughlin

By credit card, donate securely through our Website at: mcspolicycenter.maine.edu/mpr/ and click on “Donate” Update your contact information: Name: Title: Organization: Mailing Address: Email:

Thank you for your support.

We Need You!

Reader support is a critical funding source for Maine Policy Review. To help us continue providing MPR to our readers, please send your tax-deductible contribution today by check or credit card.

5784 York Complex, Bldg. #4 Orono, ME 04469-5784

Maine Policy Review