tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/progressive-era-13016/articlesProgressive Era – The Conversation2021-09-10T12:27:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676222021-09-10T12:27:48Z2021-09-10T12:27:48ZCalifornia recall: There’s a method to what looks like madness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420306/original/file-20210909-23-1056rga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C7%2C5154%2C3389&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">California Gov. Gavin Newsom (standing) talks with volunteers who are phone-banking against the recall on Aug. 13, 2021, in San Francisco. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/california-gov-gavin-newsom-talks-with-volunteers-who-are-news-photo/1333995829?adppopup=true"> Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/upcoming-elections/2021-ca-gov-recall">The California governor recall election</a> has been yet another opportunity <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/california-recall-election-gavin-newsom.html">to portray California as a strange place</a> with very odd practices. </p>
<p>And the recall truly has bizarre quirks that could, for example, <a href="https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/upcoming-elections/2021-ca-gov-recall/newsom-recall-faqs?ltclid=4cc29b6b-6cc2-4250-98f2-055dc9ef7a1cif%20it">produce a replacement governor with much less voter support</a> than the incumbent governor – Gavin Newsom – facing recall. With <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Gavin_Newsom_recall,_Governor_of_California_(2019-2021)">46 recall challengers vying for Newsom’s job</a> and only a plurality required to win, it’s possible a winning candidate could become governor with far less than 50% of the vote. </p>
<p>But California’s direct democracy, which is <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/09/03/editorial-california-needs-to-change-recall-law">being savaged by writers from within California – “Elections are supposed to represent the will, not the whim, of voters” says a Mercury News editorial</a> – as well as from the usual suspects who are outside the state, reflects an important, even if flawed, vehicle to update America’s durable but staid democratic institutions. </p>
<h2>Founders not keen on direct democracy</h2>
<p>By the standards of the American republic founded in 1789, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/usa/all-about-america/todays-democracy-isnt-exactly-what-wealthy-us-founding-fathers-envisioned">direct democracy is, much like California itself, a new kid on the block</a>. </p>
<p>The founding doctrine of American government was a stable representative republic in which elected leaders would <a href="https://nccs.net/blogs/our-ageless-constitution/separation-of-powers">check and balance each other</a> by their service in governing bodies that were formally separate, but with shared authority. In other words, the officeholders would hold their fellow officeholders accountable. This same plan forms the basis of all 50 state governments today.</p>
<p>The Founding Fathers hated any type of direct democracy and made their feelings known about it. “Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy,” <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0098-0004">wrote Alexander Hamilton</a>. “Their turbulent and uncontrouling disposition requires checks.” </p>
<p>The Progressives of the late 1800s and early 1900s, however, thought that direct democracy was the essential solution to a problem the Constitution did not address: What if elected leaders were neither willing nor able to hold one another accountable? </p>
<p>In more contemporary terms, direct democracy also addresses cases in which the popular will is frustrated by the arcane, slow and even obstructive legislative process. Checks and balances can mean no progress at all.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420322/original/file-20210909-16-pq8he0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Gov.-election Arnold Schwarzenegger and Governor Gray Davis standing behind Davis' desk at the state Capitol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420322/original/file-20210909-16-pq8he0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420322/original/file-20210909-16-pq8he0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420322/original/file-20210909-16-pq8he0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420322/original/file-20210909-16-pq8he0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420322/original/file-20210909-16-pq8he0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420322/original/file-20210909-16-pq8he0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420322/original/file-20210909-16-pq8he0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger (left) meets with Gov. Gray Davis, who lost to him in a recall election, on Oct. 23, 2003, at the State Capitol in Sacramento, California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/governor-elect-arnold-schwarzenegger-meets-with-governor-news-photo/2634336?adppopup=true">Rich Pedroncelli-Pool/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Protecting the peoples’ needs</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/The-Progressive-era">The Progressive movement</a> enjoyed great popularity in the western and southwestern states that were not part of the original 13 states. It built on a deep suspicion that representative government could not protect the needs of the people because it could not resist the power of special interests.</p>
<p><a href="https://journals.openedition.org/siecles/1109?lang=en">In California, where the Progressives put down deep roots</a>, reformers loathed the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110810105158910">Southern Pacific Railroad, which managed to corrupt elected leaders</a> all over the State Capitol. No matter how many elections could be won by well-intended candidates for state assembly or state senate, the railroad would still dominate. </p>
<p>To the Progressives, the solution was to vest some legislative power directly in the hands of the voters, where presumably the Railroad could not reach through its control of elections and lobbying. As a result of a <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/History_of_Initiative_and_Referendum_in_California">voter-approved constitutional amendment passed in 1911</a>, California voters gave themselves the power to make a law – initiative – or to remove a law – referendum. Those were the original pillars of direct democracy envisioned by the Progressives. </p>
<p><a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Forms_of_direct_democracy_in_the_American_states">Many other states</a>, not just those in the original Progressive stomping grounds, adopted direct democracy. The initiative proved to be the workhorse of direct democracy, used far more often than either the referendum or the recall. Voter initiatives have even managed to get <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Utah_Proposition_3,_Medicaid_Expansion_Initiative_(2018)">Medicaid expansion onto the legislative agenda in a state like Utah</a>, whose elected officials refused to expand the program. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420325/original/file-20210909-21-9u8hwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Six photos of candidates in a magazine story about " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420325/original/file-20210909-21-9u8hwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420325/original/file-20210909-21-9u8hwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420325/original/file-20210909-21-9u8hwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420325/original/file-20210909-21-9u8hwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420325/original/file-20210909-21-9u8hwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420325/original/file-20210909-21-9u8hwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420325/original/file-20210909-21-9u8hwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">With almost four dozen candidates in the race to replace Newsom, the recall has been easy to poke fun at.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/colorful-recall-election-candidates/">Screenshot, LA Magazine</a></span>
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<h2>Big stick</h2>
<p>The recall, which vested devastating power in the hands of the voters, joined the Progressive agenda rather late. Its adoption was pioneered by a leading Los Angeles philanthropist, doctor, socialist and Progressive named <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1937/10/31/archives/dr-john-r-haynes-surgeon-dies-at-84-civic-leader-in-los-angeles-and.html">John Randolph Haynes</a>. His advocacy led voters in <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jul-13-me-history13-story.html">Los Angeles to create the first recall provision in the nation</a> in its 1903 city charter. Haynes tirelessly pushed state Progressives to <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=303">include the recall in the landmark 1911 constitutional amendment</a> – and they did. </p>
<p>The California recall applies to <a href="https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/recalls/recall-procedures-guide.pdf">all statewide elected officials, members of the state legislature and judges of the appellate and supreme courts</a>. There’s a low bar to get a recall of statewide elected officials on the ballot: signatures from 12% of the number of those who voted in the previous election for the same office. The provision features simultaneous recall and replacement elections: If the voters choose to remove the incumbent, the candidate who receives a plurality of the votes becomes governor.</p>
<p>The recall is a powerful device to hold over the heads of state elected officials. Recall elections usually happen outside of the usual election cycle, when voters are not expected to be called upon to participate. It has more in common with “snap elections” in parliamentary democracies than the more predictable American election cycle. </p>
<p>Compared to the widely used initiative, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Recall_(political)">state recalls are very rare</a>. Since 1911, only 11 California state officials have faced recall campaigns that gathered enough signatures to make the ballot. <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Recall_campaigns_in_California">Of those, only six were actually removed from office</a>: Sen. <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Marshall_Black_recall,_California_(1913)">Marshall Black</a>, a Republican-Progressive, was removed in 1913 on charges of embezzlement. A year later, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Edwin_Grant_recall,_California_(1914)">Democrat Edwin E. Grant was removed for sponsorship of Red Light Abatement legislation</a>, which was wildly unpopular in his San Francisco district. Republican assembly members <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-05-17-mn-2826-story.html">Paul Horcher</a> and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-07-19-mn-25636-story.html">Doris Allen</a> were recalled in an effort spearheaded by their own party in 1994 and 1995, respectively, for crossing party lines in the vote for speaker. </p>
<p>The most famous recall campaign came in 2003, when Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, beleaguered by a power grid crisis, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Gray_Davis_recall,_Governor_of_California_(2003)">was driven from office and replaced by actor and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger</a>, who received more votes than Davis received for staying in office. </p>
<p>While the success rate of state recalls is small, there seems to be an acceleration in effective efforts, driven by Republicans facing a deep electoral hole in regular elections. <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Recall_campaigns_in_California">The last three recalls to make the ballot</a> have been aimed at Democrats: Davis in 2003, a successful recall of Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman, and the current campaign. </p>
<p>The California state recall may be on its way to becoming the low-visibility political tool of the minority party looking for vulnerable incumbents. Of all four governors in the nation who ever faced recall elections, <a href="https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/recalls/recall-history-california-1913-present">two were California Democrats during the heyday of their party’s ascendancy in state politics</a>.</p>
<p>While the public may love direct democracy, it has <a href="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/92-S.-Cal.-L.-Rev.-557-CALIFORNIA-CONSTITUTIONAL-LAW-DIRECT-DEMOCRACY.pdf">more critics than defenders</a> among students of politics. But it remains one of the few long-term structural reforms that has the potential to fix some of the problems of the American governmental system.</p>
<p>Voters may be able to improve direct democracy, keeping in mind its original purpose: to activate and mobilize a well-informed citizenry to correct the flaws of a democratic system of surprising longevity, but with a deep resistance to change.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raphael J. Sonenshein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s easy to make fun of California politics. But a longtime scholar of those politics says the attempt to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom is part of a long-running attempt to hold government accountable.Raphael J. Sonenshein, Executive Director, Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, California State University, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1197992019-09-17T12:49:50Z2019-09-17T12:49:50ZExpanding direct democracy won’t make Americans feel better about politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291863/original/file-20190910-190007-1bovpnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nurses in November 2016 expressed support for a ballot proposition to limit what California state agencies pay for prescription drugs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Drug-Prices-Ballot-Initiative/f5a1f66a30c04a908e8f814542b85cc1/247/0">AP/Nick Ut, file</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Americans watch the Brexit-related <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-backstop-nireland-explaine/explainer-focus-back-on-northern-ireland-only-backstop-as-johnsons-options-narrow-idUKKCN1VV17C">political turmoil in the United Kingdom</a>, it is important to remember that the chaos there began in a form of direct democracy. When U.K. voters set in motion their exit from the European Union, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887">they did so by voting directly on the so-called “Brexit” initiative</a>.</p>
<p>Normally, such major policy would have been initiated, deliberated and voted on by their elected officials in Parliament.</p>
<p>The Brexit mess is an example of the disruptive potential of direct democracy, a practice that Americans <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/163433/americans-favor-national-referenda-key-issues.aspx">have long believed</a> leads to a healthier democratic society. </p>
<p>Recent polls show Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with their system of representative democracy. <a href="https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2018/10/31/18042060/poll-dissatisfaction-american-democracy-young">Many</a> see sharp and unhealthy partisan divisions and lack confidence that the system will produce the results they desire. </p>
<p>Against this backdrop, some advocate for greater use of direct democracy. This includes <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/States_with_initiative_or_referendum">ballot initiatives, such as those practiced in 24 states</a>, including California, Massachusetts and Michigan. </p>
<p><a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_initiative">Ballot initiatives</a> bypass the normal legislative process. They can be written by anyone and receive a public vote without input from lawmakers, provided enough petition signatures are obtained to get the initiative on the ballot. </p>
<p>Well-known initiatives have dealt with issues like <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Same-Sex_Marriage_Question,_Question_1_(2012)">same-sex marriage</a>, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_24,_Repeal_of_Corporate_Tax_Breaks_(2010)">tax reform</a> and <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Marijuana_Legalization,_Ballot_Measure_2_(2014)">marijuana legalization</a>. Advocates say <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRHJn3rQP0">greater use of such measures</a> could help address citizen disengagement from – and cynicism about – politics.
Based on 15 years of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-014-9273-5">our</a> <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1532673X08330635">own</a> <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-008-9081-x">research</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9993024">we believe that the commonly held view of the initiative process – that it’s good for democracy – is wrong</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291864/original/file-20190910-190050-1a7qakx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291864/original/file-20190910-190050-1a7qakx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291864/original/file-20190910-190050-1a7qakx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291864/original/file-20190910-190050-1a7qakx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291864/original/file-20190910-190050-1a7qakx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291864/original/file-20190910-190050-1a7qakx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291864/original/file-20190910-190050-1a7qakx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Direct democracy, say the authors, produces greater political conflict and polarization, such as this demonstration in London on Sept. 4 of Brexit supporters and detractors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Britain-Brexit/f65578fc29c840b880b629c1eee245cc/11/0">AP/Alastair Grant</a></span>
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<h2>Progressives’ unfulfilled hope</h2>
<p>Claims promoting the positive benefits of direct democracy on voter turnout and engagement have appeared periodically since the wave of <a href="http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/progress/">Progressive Era reforms during the early 20th century</a>. Those reforms led to the establishment of the <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/History_of_initiative_and_referendum_in_the_U.S.">state ballot initiative process</a>.</p>
<p>Americans practice a form of <a href="https://www.historyonthenet.com/what-is-a-representative-democracy">representative democracy</a> by choosing among candidates for office. <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/siecles/1109?lang=en">Advocates for direct democracy</a> maintain that by voting directly on policy proposals, people become more knowledgeable about government, confident of their own abilities and positive about the capabilities of others. </p>
<p>As political theorist <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242333/strong-democracy">Ben Barber asserted</a>, the “initiative and referendum can increase popular participation in and responsibility for government, provide a permanent instrument of civic education, and give popular talk the reality and discipline that it needs to be effective.” </p>
<p>Beginning about two decades ago, some <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/democracy-institutions-and-attitudes-about-citizen-influence-on-government/F6DFDF0A30CE0D9E7A38EA0465D31FBB">political scientists</a> <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/11463/educated_by_initiative">claimed to find support</a> for the idea that greater use of direct democracy tools, especially the state ballot initiative, helps people get more interested in and engaged with politics and spurs more trust in government. </p>
<p>Direct democracy has been popular with both political parties, and liberals as well as conservatives. </p>
<p>Modern-day progressives often claim the ballot initiative can fix problems like gerrymandering, campaign finance abuses or growing income inequality. The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center <a href="https://ballot.org/why-were-here/">states that</a> “[W]e envision a future in which progressives have harnessed the power of ballot measures as proactive tools for success – to increase civic engagement, enact forward-looking policies, and strengthen progressive infrastructure in key states.”</p>
<p>Yet not so long ago, <a href="https://ballot.org/why-were-here/">conventional wisdom held</a> that ballot initiatives and referendums were the <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3615566.html">tools of conservatives</a>, at least in the last 40 years. </p>
<p><a href="https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_13,_Tax_Limitations_Initiative_(1978)">In 1978, California passed Proposition 13</a>, sparking tax-cutting measures across the country. <a href="https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=592919&p=4182201">Before the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal</a>, states with ballot initiatives and voter-approved constitutional amendments passed laws defining marriage as between a man in a woman in more than 30 statewide votes between 1998 and 2011. </p>
<h2>Conflict and polarization</h2>
<p>Drawing on a wide variety of data, we conclude in our book <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/9993024/initiatives_without_engagement">“Initiatives without Engagement”</a> that the initiative process mainly encourages greater conflict rather than produces political and social benefits. </p>
<p>Ballot initiatives can increase voter turnout, which seems like positive news. But they do so through <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00688.x">mobilization of occasional voters</a> and encourage voting commonly based on fear <a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9993024">without making people more generally knowledgeable or engaged</a>. </p>
<p>Initiatives can also be a tool for ideological extremists and opportunists. They use the process to circumvent the American legislative process, long noted for its incrementalism and premium on compromise. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9993024">Our research</a> finds that the relationship between party identification and polarized issue attitudes – where Democrats increasingly take the more liberal position and Republicans take the more conservative position – is about 25%-45% bigger in states that frequently use the initiative than in noninitiative states. </p>
<h2>Tyranny of the majority</h2>
<p>Our research also confirms that initiatives often inflame occasional majority group voters. They do this with measures targeting the rights of minority group members. </p>
<p>This has been the case with attempts to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00175.x">limit the rights of immigrants, curb affirmative action</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/72/3/399/1836972">define marriage as between a man and a woman</a>.</p>
<p>Examining all post-World War II ballot measures in California, we found numerous examples of votes that sought to curtail the rights of minority groups, including the LGBT community, racial/ethnic minorities and immigrants. Only <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_11,_Fair_Employment_Practices_Act_(1946)">one initiative was aimed at expanding them</a>. </p>
<p>The 1946 ballot initiative, Proposition 11, was called the “Fair Employment Practices Act” and <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/California_1946_ballot_propositions">would have barred employers from discriminating</a> on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin or ancestry. It received only 28% yes votes to 72% no. </p>
<p>This is exactly the “majority tyranny” that worried the American founders. <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp">James Madison famously argued</a> that pure democracies were incompatible with “personal security” and “property rights.” Given the opportunity, he believed, the masses might vote away the rights and wealth of the elite. His ultimate point, that majorities can be myopic, has proven prescient. </p>
<h2>Distrust in government</h2>
<p>In the wake of all this conflict <a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9993024">our research</a> shows that frequent use of ballot initiatives makes citizens trust government less, not more. This is because initiative campaigns often stress that government is broken. Voters then conclude that we would have fewer direct democracy campaigns if government was more competent. </p>
<p>Many people have a visceral attachment to the idea that “the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.” Presidential candidate and Democratic donor Tom Steyer and others <a href="https://calmatters.org/blogs/california-election-2020/2019/07/tom-steyer-presidential-bid-california-ideas-for-country-politics-direct-democracy/">advocate for expansion of direct democracy to the national level</a>. </p>
<p>By contrast, some scholars express concern that extending direct democracy to the national level would result in a lack of effective deliberation <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/vanlr56&div=17&g_sent=1&casa_token=sTW3qRG9S4cAAAAA:5guUerCiGxZQGghrOoJj4LXD7rBcAgqqC6hhojjZYxZMp1r9mNaev43qUj-URtiTSfQRNW309Q&collection=journals">if critical policy issues were decided by popular vote</a>. And because direct democracy addresses issues one at a time rather than in relation to one another, it can <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/hlr112&div=20&g_sent=1&casa_token=70_gQ1kcthIAAAAA:D0vBOia73vGdM5RKTkAYbi29IWa5234af2b7m9a6l8wYqZhrMIg4X2Sq95fALikT9rx9N4CoYw&collection=journals">hamper the ability to set priorities</a>. This is especially true of measures that affect state budgets. </p>
<p>Our research goes further, raising concerns about the consequences of extending direct democracy for citizens’ engagement with their government. We think the likely effects of taking something like the state initiative process to the national level would be to deepen distrust between citizens and government as it has in the states. That in turn would give parties and presidents another tool to strengthen polarization. </p>
<p>The consequences of a national referendum process in the U.S. could resemble what has transpired in the U.K. more than the anodyne promises of would-be reformers. </p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Citizens voting directly on policy seems like a good idea. But that led to the Brexit mess in the UK. In the US, two scholars say direct democracy deepens distrust of politics and government.Joshua J. Dyck, Associate Professor of Political Science; Director of the Center for Public Opinion, UMass LowellEdward L. Lascher Jr., Professor and Chair, Department of Public Policy and Administration, California State University, SacramentoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/906142018-02-01T11:38:40Z2018-02-01T11:38:40ZA century ago, progressives were the ones shouting ‘fake news’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204322/original/file-20180131-157491-1fxdzpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An 1894 cartoon by Frederick Burr Opper criticizes American newspapers' elasticity with the truth.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/The_fin_de_siècle_newspaper_proprietor_%28cropped%29.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump may well be remembered as the president who cried “fake news.” </p>
<p>It started after the inauguration, when he used it to discredit stories about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. He hasn’t let up since, labeling any criticism and negative coverage as “fake.” Just in time for awards season, he rolled out his “<a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jan/18/fact-checking-donald-trumps-fake-news-awards/">Fake News Awards</a>” and, in true Trumpian fashion, it appears <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/08/politics/trump-huckabee-fake/index.html">he is convinced that he invented the term</a>.</p>
<p>He didn’t. As a rhetorical strategy for eroding trust in the media, the term dates back to the end of the 19th century. </p>
<p>Then – as now – the term became shorthand for stories that would emerge from what we would now call the mainstream media. The only difference is that righteous muckrakers were usually the ones deploying the term. They had good reason: They sought to challenge the growing numbers of powerful newspapers that were concocting fake stories to either sell papers or advance the interests of their corporate benefactors. </p>
<h2>Fakers look to earn a quick buck</h2>
<p>After digging into the history of the term, I found that journalists used “fake” in the 19th century to warn American consumers about products proffered by patent medicine pushers, con artists and hucksters. </p>
<p>But I also found that just prior to the Spanish-American War in 1898, readers started getting warned about “fake news.” At the time, the newspapers of media magnate <a href="http://www.pbs.org/crucible/bio_hearst.html">William Randolph Hearst</a> started publishing made-up interviews and stories about invented battles. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203282/original/file-20180124-107956-3usqas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203282/original/file-20180124-107956-3usqas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203282/original/file-20180124-107956-3usqas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203282/original/file-20180124-107956-3usqas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203282/original/file-20180124-107956-3usqas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203282/original/file-20180124-107956-3usqas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203282/original/file-20180124-107956-3usqas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203282/original/file-20180124-107956-3usqas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cartoon by Fred Zumwalt depicts William Randolph Hearst inventing war stories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Fakes in American Journalism,' Buffalo Publishing Co., Buffalo, New York, 1914</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These sensational clips were often picked up – or copied – by news gathering agencies and sold wholesale to newspapers. They cascaded throughout the media system because, at each point, publishers realized they could make money by reprinting the stories. </p>
<p>As the lucrative practice spread, critics started sounding the alarm. When the Associated Press manufactured and distributed a story about insurgents capturing Havana, The New York Sun took a whack at the AP, running the headline “FAKE NEWS FACTORY.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203556/original/file-20180126-100919-10g0mrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203556/original/file-20180126-100919-10g0mrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=128&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203556/original/file-20180126-100919-10g0mrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203556/original/file-20180126-100919-10g0mrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=128&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203556/original/file-20180126-100919-10g0mrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203556/original/file-20180126-100919-10g0mrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203556/original/file-20180126-100919-10g0mrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A ‘Fake News Factory’ is called out in The Minneapolis Journal.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1897, an article in The Minneapolis Journal also warned of “a fake news factory” near Duluth selling stories with a Midwest flavor for national wire service distribution. The article argued that each time a “fake news publisher” recirculated fakes, it became harder to tell what was true. At a certain point, “People cannot tell whether what they read has any foundation,” it said. </p>
<h2>‘You’re the faker! No, you’re the faker!’</h2>
<p>The effect of misinformation also drew the ire of <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/laborpress/Kelling.shtml">the radical press</a>, a growing number of periodicals that railed against the economic status quo. To these outlets, fake news was the pernicious effect of the profit motive on American journalism.</p>
<p>The radical press soon began using “fake news” as an epithet against established news outlets. The Milwaukee Social Democratic Herald, for example, decried syndicated fake news stories as “deliberate attempts to discredit the administration” of Milwaukee’s democratically elected Socialist mayor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Seidel">Emil Seidel</a>. </p>
<p>Populist William Jennings Bryan cried fake news when misleading stories went out over the AP wire claiming that Bryan was supporting Teddy Roosevelt for a third term. In The Commoner, the journal Bryan owned and edited, he wrote that “There seems to be an epidemic of fake news from the city of Lincoln, and it all comes from Mr. Bryan’s ‘friends’ – names not given.”</p>
<p>But just as crying fake news emerged as a technique to sow public doubt about the veracity of mainstream newspapers, establishment politicians used the ready-made defense to deflect the muckraking of the radical press. Long before Trump, plutocratic politicians were dismissing bad press by crying “fake news.” </p>
<p>After The Evening Plain Dealer published an unflattering interview with Ohio Senator and GOP kingmaker Mark Hanna in 1897, he claimed it had been “faked.”</p>
<p>The Evening Plain Dealer defended “the absolute truth of every word of the interview, the utmost care is exercised in ascertaining facts, and no fake interviews or fake news are tolerated.” Just because someone called news “fake,” the editors warned, did not make it so:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It is a common practice among public men to deny the accuracy of interviews which have proved to be boomerangs. They seem to think it an easy and justifiable method of getting out of an embarrassing situation, and are utterly regardless of the injury they may do reputable newspaper men.” </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203281/original/file-20180124-107959-6lvt6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203281/original/file-20180124-107959-6lvt6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203281/original/file-20180124-107959-6lvt6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203281/original/file-20180124-107959-6lvt6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203281/original/file-20180124-107959-6lvt6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203281/original/file-20180124-107959-6lvt6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203281/original/file-20180124-107959-6lvt6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203281/original/file-20180124-107959-6lvt6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The masthead of Cleveland’s Evening Plain Dealer in 1897.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hearst’s shameless New York Journal tried to muddy the waters more, championing the cause of unveiling fake stories to deflect criticism of its <em>own</em> made-up stories. Running a fake news <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mppJAQAAIAAJ&lpg=PA955&ots=7Qghw9F2kZ&dq=bunco%20steerer%20scheme&pg=PA955#v=onepage&q=bunco%20steerer%20scheme&f=false">bunco-steerer scheme</a> to entrap rival Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1898, it printed a fake dispatch about an artillery officer named Reflipe W. Thenuz – a rearranged version of “We pilfer the news.” The bait worked. For weeks, the Journal drove circulation by denouncing dozens of newspapers – not just The World – who fell for the con and had copied or reprinted the Journal’s fake news.</p>
<h2>The power of corporate media</h2>
<p>No matter how often radical periodicals denounced fake news published by their competitors, they found it difficult to suppress false information spread by powerful newswire companies like Hearst’s International News Service, the United Press Associations and the Associated Press. </p>
<p>These outlets fed articles to local papers, which reprinted them, fake or otherwise. Because people trusted their local newspapers, the veracity of the articles went unchallenged. It’s similar to what happens today on social media: People tend <a href="https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/trust-social-media/">to reflexively believe</a> what their friends post and share. </p>
<p>According to muckraker <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924026364251">Upton Sinclair</a>, syndicated “news” banked on this and knowingly spread fake news on behalf of the powerful interests that bought ads in their periodicals. Fake news was not only a sin of commission, but also one of omission: For-profit wire services would refuse to cover social issues, from labor protests to tainted meat, in ways that would depict their powerful patrons in a negative light.</p>
<p>Fake news was also used to manufacture public opinion. </p>
<p>“A certain state of public mind is often necessary,” journalist Max Sherover wrote in his 1914 book “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vKBZAAAAMAAJ&dq=Fakes%20in%20American%20journalism&pg=PP2#v=onepage&q=Fakes%20in%20American%20journalism&f=false">Fakes in America Journalism</a>,” for “the economic masters of this country to flimflam the people.” </p>
<p>Sherover explained how, if the Beef Trust wanted to raise their prices, their “publicity bureaus” would write up fake stories. They would then use their leverage to: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“… broadcast these stories throughout the land. The people that read the news get accustomed to the idea of the scarcity of beef. And when a few days later they are informed by the butcher that the price of beef has gone up they take it as a matter of course.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, groups critical of big business, especially socialists, were often targets of fake news. Whenever sensational crimes were committed, for-profit media would tie those crimes to socialists, adding phrases like “shot by socialist” before anything was known about the perpetrators.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203285/original/file-20180124-107953-1ea45xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203285/original/file-20180124-107953-1ea45xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203285/original/file-20180124-107953-1ea45xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203285/original/file-20180124-107953-1ea45xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203285/original/file-20180124-107953-1ea45xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203285/original/file-20180124-107953-1ea45xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203285/original/file-20180124-107953-1ea45xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203285/original/file-20180124-107953-1ea45xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-socialist headlines tended to dominate coverage of crimes, even before details were known.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Poisoning the well of truth</h2>
<p>By the end of Gilded Age, the work of muckraking journalists who had exposed the sordid abuses of workers helped fuel recurring labor strikes. Yet just as frequently, news of these strikes were skillfully spun or suppressed in the mainstream media.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204115/original/file-20180130-38213-k9cy8o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204115/original/file-20180130-38213-k9cy8o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204115/original/file-20180130-38213-k9cy8o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204115/original/file-20180130-38213-k9cy8o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204115/original/file-20180130-38213-k9cy8o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1210&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204115/original/file-20180130-38213-k9cy8o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204115/original/file-20180130-38213-k9cy8o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204115/original/file-20180130-38213-k9cy8o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An AP story, later unveiled as fake news, as it appeared in the New Castle News on July 27, 1912.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1912, coal miners in Colorado and West Virginia went on strike. Living in tent-colonies with their families, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/forgotten-matewan-massacre-was-epicenter-20th-century-mine-wars-180963026/">they were beaten and shot at by strike breakers and lawmen</a>. For months, the AP was silent. The stories they eventually ran were anti-labor, including one fake claiming that miners had ambushed company guards, which justified sending in the troops to suppress them.</p>
<p>Sinclair would later prove that such stories had been fabricated by Baldwin-Felts strikebreakers or Rockefeller agents on the AP payroll. But by then, the damage had been done. Public opinion was formed – or, at the very least, muddied. Once again, the plutocracy got the fake news it paid for. </p>
<p><a href="http://dlib.nyu.edu/themasses/books/masses028/6">According to Max Eastman</a>, the editor of the socialist magazine The Masses, the strike proved how dangerous the AP was, not only because it determined what was printed in a majority of the nation’s newspapers, but also because it feigned objectivity so fervently. </p>
<p>This “Truth Trust,” railed Eastman, held “the substance of current history in cold storage,” making it impossible for even the “free and intelligent to take the side of justice.” In the pages of The Masses, cartoonist Art Young depicted how the AP poisoned the well of truth with a potent mixture of “lies,” “suppressed facts” and “slander.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203283/original/file-20180124-107956-1mbz8bt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203283/original/file-20180124-107956-1mbz8bt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203283/original/file-20180124-107956-1mbz8bt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203283/original/file-20180124-107956-1mbz8bt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203283/original/file-20180124-107956-1mbz8bt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203283/original/file-20180124-107956-1mbz8bt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203283/original/file-20180124-107956-1mbz8bt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203283/original/file-20180124-107956-1mbz8bt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Art Young cartoon critical of the AP appeared in the July 1913 issue of The Masses.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To deflect these charges, the AP flexed its monopoly power. They could shut off service to newspapers that ran anti-AP news, so the views of Eastman and his sympathizers were silenced. AP lawyers actually pushed for and secured Eastman’s indictment for criminal libel – a feat, <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924026364251">according to Sinclair</a>, designed to smear reformers to the AP’s 30 million readers. When muckrakers reported on the scope of the AP’s fake news operation during the strikes in Colorado and West Virginia, the AP simply cried fake news and flooded the wires with sanctimonious defenses of their journalistic professionalism. </p>
<p>“If there is a clean thing in the US,” read one story distributed to millions of American readers, “it is the Associated Press.” </p>
<h2>The Great War tips the scales</h2>
<p>As World War I tore through the European continent, fake news flooded America’s media ecosystem. Newspapers ran sensationalist fakes targeting anti-war critics and fanning anti-German sentiment. Some of it was even furnished by German newswire services, reprinted unthinkingly for its sensational circulation value. </p>
<p>Just when an evidence-based debate about American war involvement was most needed, fake news poisoned the well.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203303/original/file-20180124-107946-19b5sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203303/original/file-20180124-107946-19b5sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203303/original/file-20180124-107946-19b5sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203303/original/file-20180124-107946-19b5sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203303/original/file-20180124-107946-19b5sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203303/original/file-20180124-107946-19b5sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203303/original/file-20180124-107946-19b5sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hearst Fake News Denounced, Tuscon Daily Citizen, December 13, 1918.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the U.S. entered the war, newspapers and journals that cried fake news about pro-war propaganda <a href="https://arizona.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/black-white-and-red-all-over-a-cultural-history-of-the-radical-pr">were censored by the state</a> and pilloried by media syndicates that profited from war coverage; the decimated radical press lost ground. </p>
<p>Upton Sinclair saw the radical press’ collapse as a war casualty, one that foretold a crisis for democracy. </p>
<p>“The greatest peril in America today,” <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/2027/iau.31858045077892?urlappend=%3Bseq=111">he wrote his own journal in 1918</a>, “is a knavish press … pouring out the floods of falsehoods, like poisoned gas which blinds us and makes it impossible for us to see straight or to think straight.”</p>
<p>Without dissenting journalists pointing out fake news, he warned, “there is no way to get the truth to the people.” Short-lived cooperative news services struggled to compete with for-profit wire services. They had little chance in a media system that incentivized fake news.</p>
<p>Use of the term “fake news” <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fake+news&year_start=1850&year_end=2016&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfake%20news%3B%2Cc0">has ebbed and flowed</a> over the past. But it’s production has amplified over the past few years, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/672275/fake-news-traffic-source/">as social media became the dominant means for news distribution</a>. Once again fake news producers chased profit. Where there once there were fake news factories in Duluth, now <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/">we find them in Macedonia</a>. </p>
<p>Trump may not have invented the term, but he’s deploying an all-too familiar tactic. Like the muckrakers, he cries fake news to erode confidence in the mainstream media; like Progressive Era politicians, he cries fake news when he gets bad press. </p>
<p>But these groups are different, because both fundamentally believed a vibrant press was crucial for America.</p>
<p>In his self-serving excess, Trump is more like Hearst, the don of news fakers, who knew that creating or condemning fake news drove news cycles and profits – damn the consequences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Jordan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The practice of calling attention to false stories – with actual fakers then levying the charge on their accusers – dates back to battles between progressive reformers and corporate media outlets.Matthew Jordan, Associate Professor of Media Studies, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/678332016-11-24T20:13:32Z2016-11-24T20:13:32Z100 years of the ‘gender gap’ in American politics<p>Men and women did not vote the same way in 2016.</p>
<p>In fact, the Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton contest yielded the largest <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/09/men-handed-trump-the-election/">gender gap</a> – the difference between women’s and men’s voting behavior – in U.S. history. Clinton won women by 12 points and lost men by the same amount – a 24-point gap. The gap is growing. Twenty points separated the sexes in 2012.</p>
<p>Women’s support was expected to help Clinton shatter “<a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/before-hillary-clinton-these-women-tried-breaking-the-highest-glass-ceiling/">the highest glass ceiling</a>” to become the nation’s first female president.</p>
<p>Seeing themselves as heirs to the suffrage movement, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/elections/shock-women-clinton-supporters.html?_r=0">Clinton supporters</a> even made pilgrimages to Susan B. Anthony’s grave to place their “I Voted” stickers on the suffrage leader’s tombstone. </p>
<p>But despite garnering the most <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/09/hillary_clinton_appears_to_have_won_the_popular_vote_does_it_matter.html">popular votes</a>, Clinton lost in the Electoral College. </p>
<p>The fact that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/politics/white-women-helped-elect-donald-trump.html">53 percent of white women</a> cast their ballots for Trump threatens to obscure the importance of gender to U.S. politics. </p>
<p>What’s needed is a broader – and longer – lens.</p>
<p>So let’s start at the beginning. How did the gender gap become so important to American politics?</p>
<h2>Women’s clubs and woman suffrage</h2>
<p>My <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/article/520368">current research</a> convinced me that the gender gap has its roots in women’s political activity in the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Discontent-Progressive-Movement-1870-1920/dp/0195183657/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=WJDW17XQ888S8X44RMV8">Progressive era</a>, which began around 1880 and ran until about 1920.</p>
<p>During these decades of massive immigration, rapid industrialization and tremendous poverty, many Americans hoped to use the political process to address social problems in the nation’s growing cities.</p>
<p>Women didn’t yet have the right to vote, but they joined the Progressive movement by organizing clubs devoted to civic reform. The <a href="https://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/progressiveera/introclubwomen.html">women’s club movement</a> provided millions of American women with an alternative route into the political process.</p>
<p>One animating issue for club women was revitalizing the campaign for <a href="http://backstoryradio.org/shows/youve-come-a-long-way/">female suffrage</a>. Launched in 1848, the movement for women’s voting rights had achieved only a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Vote-Was-Won-1868-1914/dp/0814757227/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1478530252&sr=8-2&keywords=woman+suffrage+west">handful of victories, all in the West</a>, since the Civil War.</p>
<p>Women sought the vote for many reasons, but in turn-of-the-century America, many suffragists <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=4704">argued</a> that women were ideal voters because they weren’t corrupted by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Room-Time-Women-Entered-Politics/dp/0847698041">party politics</a>. Instead, they argued, women were more interested in sound policies.</p>
<h2>Women’s political culture</h2>
<p>As political outsiders, women brought a new perspective to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/creating-a-female-dominion-in-american-reform-1890-1935-9780195089240?q=muncy%20female%20dominion&lang=en&cc=us">Progressive politics</a>. While not all women shared the same beliefs, many female activists participated in a distinctive “<a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300072853/florence-kelley-and-nations-work">women’s political culture</a>.”</p>
<p>Using their traditional domestic role to justify their unconventional political activity, many suffrage supporters argued that as <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1856119?seq=1">“social housekeepers,”</a> women would use the vote to “clean up” both “dirty” politics and equally dirty city streets. </p>
<p>In addition, many “<a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100736760">social justice feminists</a>” saw themselves as advocates for the nation’s disadvantaged and dispossessed, including women, children, workers, immigrants and African-Americans. </p>
<p>As a result, women made unique contributions to <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/25144284?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">urban reform</a>. For instance, in Chicago, male politicians established “red light” districts. By contrast, women activists <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/article/520368">defended the rights of accused prostitutes</a>.</p>
<h2>The Woman’s City Club of Chicago</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2163477?seq=1">Woman’s City Club of Chicago</a>, while not the first or the only such organization in America, was especially important in terms of the history of women’s political activism.</p>
<p>The club was founded in 1910 to combat the city’s legendary <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Grafters-Goo-Goos-Corruption-Chicago/dp/0809325713">political corruption</a>. According to club member <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/95gdg9ty9780252070440.html">Louise de Koven Bowen</a>, the organization began when a businessman told the club’s first president: “I wish you women would form some kind of a club to fight our civic evils; we men have tried it and failed, perhaps you women can do something.”</p>
<p>By waging a successful campaign giving Illinois women the right to vote in <a href="http://www.lib.niu.edu/2004/ih110604half.html">both national and local elections</a> and encouraging women to use their votes to <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7394.html">promote reform</a>, the club made women a force to reckon with in electoral politics well before the adoption of the federal woman suffrage amendment in 1920.</p>
<h2>‘Good government’ and the gender gap</h2>
<p>In 1913, Illinois became the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/womens-suffrage-in-chicag_n_1370959.html">first state east of the Mississippi River</a> to grant voting rights to female citizens. </p>
<p>Prior to the citywide elections of 1914, Chicago women’s <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-per-flash-women-voter-0623-new-20130623-story.html">first significant voting opportunity</a>, the Woman’s City Club sponsored a massive voter registration and citizen education campaign. In addition, six women, including four club members, ran for local office.</p>
<p>Women voters went to the polls in high numbers, disproving skeptics’ claims that women would not exercise the right to vote. Moreover, female voters consistently voted for “<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044106250632;view=1up;seq=475">good government,”</a> creating one of the nation’s first “gender gaps.” </p>
<p>When the votes were counted, however, women were disappointed by the results. None of the female candidates garnered enough votes to gain office, leaving male politicians to continue business as usual. Undaunted by this setback, women activists launched a new campaign to reform Chicago politics.</p>
<h2>The Women’s Municipal Platform</h2>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>In 1916, the Woman’s City Club sponsored a mass meeting in downtown Chicago to protest the “spoils system” in city government and to promote progressive social policies. Women activists adopted a “<a href="http://findingaids.library.uic.edu/sc/MSWCC_66.xml">Women’s Municipal Platform</a>” dedicated “to the promotion of the welfare of all the citizens and to the securing of equality of opportunity to all the children of all of the people.” Club leaders demanded reforms related to public schools, health and safety, city parks and playgrounds, and the criminal justice system. </p>
<p>Chicago’s female activists displayed a keen awareness of their distinctiveness as politically active women. According to the preamble to the platform, “women citizens” were ideal voters because they prioritized the common good over party politics. </p>
<p>Club women also understood their importance as pioneering female voters. The club president observed: “The attention of suffragists and anti-suffragists throughout the United States is now directed to the women of Illinois in order to determine how fully they are using their newly acquired franchise and with what results.”</p>
<p>In fall of 1916, Chicago women turned out in impressive numbers to vote for political change. </p>
<p>As Progressive Party politician Charles Merriam put it in the
<a href="https://archive.org/details/womanscityclubbu6719171919woma">Woman’s City Club Bulletin</a>, “What finer tribute could be paid to the intelligence of woman’s vote!” </p>
<h2>The ‘women’s vote’ today</h2>
<p>A hundred years later, Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election of 2016 indicates that despite important <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/09/501437309/women-record-several-firsts-with-wins-in-u-s-senate-elsewhere">gains in the U.S. Senate</a>, women in some ways remain <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/hillary-clinton-didnt-shatter-the-glass-ceiling.html">political outsiders</a> – but outsiders who continue to play a special role in the nation’s politics. </p>
<p>Like Chicago club women a century before, American women activists are responding to defeat by planning a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/11/12/us/12reuters-usa-women-march.html">mass protest</a>. As journalist <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/09/what-does-president-trump-mean-for-feminists/">Jill Filipovic</a> remarks, “We fix this with more feminism, not less.”</p>
<p>The gender gap may not have gained Clinton the presidency, but it is just as salient today as it was a century ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anya Jabour receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>Clinton won women by 12 points and lost men by 12 – creating a 24-point ‘gender gap.’ While that’s the largest gender gap in history, the record shows that female voters were always different.Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History, University of MontanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/556842016-03-03T00:42:26Z2016-03-03T00:42:26ZWill Republican tax plans make America great again?<p>As the old saying goes, there are only two things certain in life: <a href="http://freakonomics.com/2011/02/17/quotes-uncovered-death-and-taxes/">death and taxes</a>. While being taxed is a certainty, the rate and types of income being taxed is not. </p>
<p>Each of the five remaining GOP hopefuls – <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/tax-reform">Donald Trump</a>, <a href="https://www.tedcruz.org/tax_plan/">Ted Cruz</a>, <a href="https://marcorubio.com/issues-2/rubio-tax-plan/">Marco Rubio</a>, <a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/john-kasich-assets/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Kasich-Plan-Fact-Sheet-Cutting-Taxes-1.pdf">John Kasich</a> and <a href="https://www.bencarson.com/issues/tax-reform">Ben Carson</a> (who appeared on the verge of dropping out as this article was written) – has released tax proposals on his official website. Examining these plans provides a rough idea of what will happen to the tax system if a GOP candidate wins the November presidential election.</p>
<p>And with Tax Day approaching, a top question in most voters’ minds is, “How much will I have to pay the federal government?” </p>
<p>Since few voters or politicians are currently discussing the taxes to support programs like Social Security, Medicare (payroll taxes), fix the nation’s highways (gasoline taxes) or curb public health problems (“sin” taxes on cigarettes and alcohol), my analysis will adhere to the candidates’ laser-like focus on income and business taxes.</p>
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<h2>Number of individual brackets</h2>
<p>Currently, the federal government has <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/2016-tax-brackets">seven tax brackets</a> for individuals. All five of the GOP candidates want to reduce the number of tax brackets. </p>
<p>Brackets are designed to make the tax system progressive so that richer people pay a higher percent of their income in taxes than poorer people. Reducing the number of brackets simplifies the tax system but also reduces progressivity, leading to a system where the rich and poor people pay similar percentages.</p>
<p>The debate over whether it is fair for the rich and poor to pay similar percentages has a very long history. This question was brought up by the earliest economists like <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html">Adam Smith</a> and John Stuart Mill. </p>
<p>Mill, in his book <em><a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP.html">Principles of Political Economy</a>,</em> wrote that the rich should pay more taxes than the poor by arguing, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The subjects of every state ought to contribute to the support of the government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While most people today agree that the rich should pay more (in absolute terms) than the poor, there are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/millionaires-taxes-survey_n_5272647.html">numerous arguments</a> as to whether they should or should not pay proportionally more.</p>
<p>Today’s GOP candidates approach Mill’s proposal very differently. </p>
<p>Trump supports the most progressivity by proposing the current system be scaled back from seven brackets to four. Rubio and Kasich both support three brackets. Cruz and Carson are on the other end entirely, with both supporting a single bracket flat tax, which has no progressivity.</p>
<h2>Top individual rate</h2>
<p>Another element of progressivity is what’s the top rate.</p>
<p>At the moment, the federal government has individual tax rates ranging from <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf">10 percent to 39.6 percent</a>, with each bracket applied to different levels of income. For example, today the top rate doesn’t kick in until income levels reach over US$410,000 for singles and over $460,000 for married couples filing jointly. </p>
<p>All five GOP candidates want to lower the top rate. A high tax rate means the wealthy provide billions to the government in revenue, at least temporarily. </p>
<p>However, an effective tax system should affect economic decisions as little as possible. High rates often provide a <a href="http://www.laffercenter.com/the-laffer-center-2/the-laffer-curve/">disincentive</a> to work and invest. This means that high rates potentially can kill the golden goose of high government revenue. If high rates cause people to work less, than there will be less income for the government to tax.</p>
<p>While all five candidates want the top rate figure to fall, their proposals vary widely.</p>
<p>Rubio wants to lower the top rate the least by proposing a ceiling of 35 percent. Cruz with his flat tax proposes cutting the top rate the most by taxing everyone just 10 percent, no matter what they earn. Trump (top rate 25 percent), Kasich (28 percent) and Carson (14.9 percent) all feel the optimal number for high income earners is a figure somewhere between Rubio’s and Cruz’s values.</p>
<h2>Top business rate</h2>
<p>Corporate tax reform has been a big issue in recent years and one that increasingly has received some degree of bipartisan support. Both Republicans and Democrats have argued the top <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-world-2015">business tax rate</a> of 39 percent is too high. </p>
<p>Business taxes can be controversial because some people <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/21/axes-do-companies-pay-their-fair-share-of-taxes-depends-how-you-ask.html">view them as unfair</a>. For example, if you are self-employed, the money earned doing that job is taxed just once at the individual rate. However, if you incorporate the business and do the same work, the money is taxed twice, once at the corporate level and a second time when the business gives the profits to the individual.</p>
<p>Another problem is that many large corporations have some leeway in which countries they book profits. While some transactions are clearly local, it is difficult to determine where some transactions actually occur. For example, if a person living in the U.S. buys a song from an Irish band over the Internet from a computer server located in Canada, which country has the right to tax the transaction?</p>
<p>These jurisdictional issues mean companies try to book profits in a country with the lowest tax rate. Currently, many corporations favor Ireland because in 1987 the country slashed the maximum corporate tax rate to <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-world-2015">12.5 percent</a>. This dramatic drop resulted in many multinational businesses moving their European operations to this low-tax haven.</p>
<p>All five candidates want the top business tax rate to fall, but in a variety of ways. Rubio and Kasich both want to lower the top rate the least by proposing a new top rate of 25 percent. </p>
<p>The other three, however, prefer to slash it much more, seeing the optimal top rate closer to 15 percent. Specifically, Carson targets 14.9 percent, Trump 15 percent and Cruz 16 percent.</p>
<p>Still, no candidate proposes a maximum rate that would undercut Ireland. </p>
<h2>The only thing dead certain</h2>
<p>No matter who wins the GOP nomination this summer, it is relatively simple to predict the type of tax legislation that will be pushed by a Republican president in 2017: fewer brackets and lower maximum tax rates.</p>
<p>The reduction in brackets would most likely lead to a less progressive tax system, but it’s less certain how each plan would affect tax revenue and U.S. <a href="http://businessmacroeconomics.com/">gross domestic product</a> (GDP). </p>
<p>All five claim that their proposals would dramatically boost economic growth. For example, Cruz believes his proposal would boost GDP by 13.9 percent over the next decade – or an average of about 1.4 percent a year – while Carson assures us GDP will be 16 percent higher if his flat tax plan is enacted. Many of the candidates claim this greater growth will offset any reduction in revenue because of the lower rates.</p>
<p>Will these predictions of accelerated economic growth prove accurate and result in overflowing tax coffers? Or will these reductions in rates lead to a fiscal crisis?</p>
<p>There are too many unknowns to accurately predict the result. This leaves us with the cold comfort that death is now the only thing with true certainty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
There’s nothing as certain as death, taxes and a Republican with a plan to cut them. But how do the candidates’ proposals stack up?Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/397692015-04-16T10:06:15Z2015-04-16T10:06:15ZStates should take control of our outmoded public land system<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78081/original/image-20150415-19648-1mzyzb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Federal public land tends to return less revenue than state-run land because of bureaucracy and inefficient management.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public land via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Late last month the Senate <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/26/3639683/senate-sell-off-public-lands/">passed</a> a non-binding budget resolution that encourages the selling or transfer of federal lands to state and local governments. With a Republican Congress, the <a href="http://faculty.publicpolicy.umd.edu/sites/default/files/nelson/files/aa_--_policy_review_public_lands_offprint_copy.pdf">longstanding question</a> over federal management of public lands is resurfacing once again with renewed urgency.</p>
<p>The federal government owns large parts of the forests, deserts and other rural areas of the American West – in total <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf">around half</a> of all the land in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states. Roughly 30% of federal lands are made up of wilderness and <a href="http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/faqs.htm">national parks</a>, while the rest are used for timber harvesting, grazing, energy leasing and recreation.</p>
<p>This pervasive federal presence is a product of policies championed at the turn of the 20th century. </p>
<p>Throughout the nineteenth century, however, the government aggressively <a href="http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1987/1/cj6n3-11.pdf">disposed</a> of its land holdings to private landowners and state governments, seeking to advance economic development and the pursuit of “manifest destiny.” It was in the period from 1890 to 1920 that American Progressives successfully <a href="http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/progress/conserve/">argued</a> that these lands would be more expertly managed in federal hands.</p>
<p>After more than 100 years of experience, we now know otherwise, that these lands would be better under state or private management. It’s a lesson I learned well during almost two decades at the Department of the Interior working as a policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary. </p>
<p>Instead of much greater efficiency, the research conducted by myself and others has shown that federal management turned out to be wasteful – typical of many government-owned enterprises around the world over the course of the 20th century – as well as detrimental to the land itself. </p>
<h2>High costs, poor return</h2>
<p>Federal “multiple-use” lands (excluding national parks and other special use lands) averaged US$7.2 billion in costs per year from 2009 to 2013, according to a <a href="http://www.perc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/150303_PERC_DividedLands.pdf">recent report</a> from the Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC), a non-profit think tank that seeks market solutions to environmental problems. At the same time they brought in just $5.3 billion in revenues (mostly royalties from oil, gas and coal leases in a few energy rich states).</p>
<p>Over the same period, similar state-owned lands <a href="http://www.perc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/150303_PERC_DividedLands.pdf">returned</a> $14.5 for every dollar spent on management while achieving comparable or better land results in areas such as the use of forest and rangeland resources.</p>
<p>Because public land costs are such a tiny part of the immense federal budget, the issue seldom receives close scrutiny, relieving pressure on the government to manage its lands more efficiently. And since all taxpayers bear the costs, states themselves have little incentive to put pressure on federal managers to raise revenues or reduce expenses. </p>
<h2>Layers of red tape</h2>
<p>Even if they wanted to, it would be difficult for federal land managers to bring their expert skills to bear. Over the years, layer upon layer of requirements for environmental impact statements, land use plans and other regulatory and procedural steps have created a suffocating burden of red tape. </p>
<p>In 2002 in <a href="http://www.fs.fed.us/projects/documents/Process-Predicament.pdf">The Process Predicament</a>, the US <a href="http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/2000/4/sedjo.pdf">Forest Service</a> begged for relief, declaring that “"unfortunately, the Forest Service operates within a statutory, regulatory and administrative framework that has kept the agency from effectively addressing rapid declines in forest health.” </p>
<p>Poorly managed western forests, for example, had become overstocked with <a href="http://www.fs.fed.us/publications/policy-analysis/fire-and-fuels-position-paper.pdf">large volumes</a> of “excess fuels.” From the 1980s onwards, these dead trees and limbs increasingly erupted into large, environmentally damaging conflagrations, requiring billions of dollars to be spent annually on forest fire suppression. </p>
<p>Beyond the executive branch, federal courts have also gotten more involved in public land use, drastically increasing their role since the 1970s and now often dictating even local management details. For example, federal judges <a href="http://missoulian.com/news/local/federal-judge-explains-decision-to-block-seeley-swan-timber-sale/article_40ea781c-cbcd-11e1-9624-0019bb2963f4.html">have blocked</a> many specific timber sales in the West, for example, to protect biodiversity. </p>
<h2>The wasted energy opportunity</h2>
<p>The United States has been experiencing an energy revolution in recent years owing to new methods of extracting oil and gas from shale. Because of the cumbersome federal land bureaucracy, the lack of incentives and other constraints, however, this revolution has largely bypassed the public lands. </p>
<p>Thomas Merrill, a professor at Columbia law school, <a href="http://law.case.edu/journals/LawReview/Documents/63CaseWResLRev4.2.Keynote.Merrill.pdf">noted</a> in the Case Western Reserve Law Review in 2013 that in “looking at a map of the United States where fracking activity is underway, and comparing it to a map showing areas of land and associated mineral rights that are controlled by the federal government,” one finds that “there is very little overlap” – and not due to any lack of oil and gas shale resources in the West. </p>
<p>None of this is news, admittedly. At public land conferences since the early 1990s, economists, political scientists, retired federal managers and other professionals have <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865605594/Something-dysfunctional-about-national-policy-toward-Western-land.html?pg=all">lamented</a> the “dysfunctional” public land system. Yet, little has changed over that period. This is partly a consequence of the increasing partisanship and other dysfunctions that have afflicted many other areas of federal policy making and administration.</p>
<p>It is also, however, a result of the deep ambivalence felt by many Westerners about reducing the federal presence. The large flows of “wasted” federal money also represent an important economic asset for the rural West. Perhaps the truest statement ever made with respect to their attitudes towards the public lands is that westerners want the federal government to “go away and give us more money.” </p>
<h2>Growing Western anger</h2>
<p>The federal government, however, has not gone away. With the level of Western <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2013/03/11/56103/state-efforts-to-reclaim-our-public-lands/">frustration</a> growing, and the federal government increasingly strapped for funds to send to the West, pressure for change has mounted in recent years. Western states are now <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/environment/ci_27896532/feds-states-spar-push-create-165m-acre-safe">threatened</a>, for example, with the designation of the sage grouse as an endangered species, an action that would put many millions of acres of Western rangeland under tight federal control. </p>
<p>In 2014, Utah conducted a <a href="http://publiclands.utah.gov/current-projects/transfer-of-public-lands-act/">comprehensive study</a> of the implications of transferring ordinary public lands and their federal management costs and revenues to the state. The study showed that if Utah had replicated federal management practices in 2013, the state would have incurred $117 million in net additional costs.</p>
<p>Projecting these results across the full West, the fiscal benefits to the federal government could exceed $1 billion per year for transferring ordinary public lands – predominantly used for timber harvesting, livestock grazing, and hiking, hunting, fishing and other state and local recreational use, along with highly profitable energy leasing – to state ownership. National parks, wilderness areas and the other most valuable nationally owned lands would remain in federal hands.</p>
<p>Western states need to decide: do they want the federal government to go away or do they want the federal money? </p>
<p>If the West were to decide to assume greater control of its lands, states would not only be able to improve the quality of management but also do it at much lower costs and earn much higher net revenues than the federal government. </p>
<p>This would be possible in part because they would be free of federal judicial micro-management and the many rules and regulatory entanglements that have made effective federal management of the public lands so difficult for more than 20 years. </p>
<p>It’s time the US turned the page on the era of federal ownership of public lands and resumed transferring land to the states in order to raise more revenue and improve its management. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the first name of a Columbia University professor cited in the story. It’s Thomas Merrill, not Charles.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39769/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Nelson is in the process of writing a policy paper for the Property and Environmental Research Center for a forthcoming edited book collection celebrating the centennial of the foundation of the National Park Service in 1916.</span></em></p>After 100 years of policies pushing federal land management, it’s time to admit they’ve been a costly failure.Robert H. Nelson, Professor of Public Policy, University of MarylandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/321912014-10-23T09:23:10Z2014-10-23T09:23:10ZArtists’ installations raise questions about abandoned buildings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62126/original/2psp3mc2-1413573585.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Immigrant faces from the early 1900s watch Ellis Island visitors pick their way through a crumbling hospital.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This fall, French street artist <a href="http://www.jr-art.net">JR</a> and American cinematographer <a href="http://bradfordyoung.com">Bradford Young</a> each installed a series of portraits in crumbling New York buildings. The two projects were not coordinated, but together they raise questions about the strange allure of dilapidated property. While the content of the installations is certainly worth sustained contemplation, it was the artists’ choice of sites that captured my attention.</p>
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<span class="caption">Who’s looking at whom?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>JR’s Unframed installation at Ellis Island is sparse, fashionably ecological, maybe even beautiful. He has pasted large-scale archival photographs of turn-of-the-century immigrants here and there throughout the island’s abandoned hospital. </p>
<p>The fading images, designed to disintegrate like the buildings themselves, infuse the landscape with a faint hint of human presence. At times the figures appear on windows, filtering the sunlight, framed by the lush, overgrown green and sparkling blue beyond. Sometimes they’re in stairwells or plastered on old filing cabinets.</p>
<p>Bradford Young’s Bynum Cutler <a href="http://creativetime.org/projects/black-radical-brooklyn/artists/bradford-young/">installation</a> in the old PS 83 school building in Brooklyn features giant, close-cropped video portraits of elders from the Bethel Tabernacle AME Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The church owns the building, and for a few years in the 1980s, the congregation used this space for worship. Like JR, Young arranged his portraits in an abandoned building, but this one is boarded up; inside it’s dark.</p>
<p>A cool white glow emanates from projection screens, falling softly on a row of church pews. Silhouetted visitors float into the space, encountering the portraits for a few moments, then float out again past the dusty altar, as if carried by the overpowering, ethereal soundscape furnished by composer Gingger Shankar.</p>
<p>Both installations trade on a fascination with structural decay — perhaps rooted in a natural curiosity about urban abandonment. But in some ways, the buildings are like the <a href="http://www.crateandbarrel.com/reclaimed-wood-top-stainless-steel-base-48x28-parsons-dining-table/s186930">reclaimed wood dining tables</a> and <a href="http://www.potterybarn.com/products/eat-sign/?cm_src=AutoRel">industrial-era typography</a> that appear in home furnishing catalogs. As objects, they become symbols of sophisticated consumer taste.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hardhats, everyone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact it’s hard not to see the two exhibits as a metaphor for the nation’s underfunded cities. A public hospital on Ellis Island and a public school in Brooklyn: both buildings were constructed with taxpayers’ money over a hundred years ago. They offer evidence of a profound economic investment in a robust and healthy industrial workforce.</p>
<p>Now within these ruins, visitors survey the material traces of values that are dilapidated and decaying too. In today’s global, <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/the-paradox-of-flexibility/">flexible economy</a>, the state is not as concerned with the development of a robust and healthy workforce. Rather, as individuals, we are expected to take responsibility for our own lives. </p>
<p>In fact, when entering these buildings, the mostly middle-and-upper-class tourists sign liability waivers, assuming personal responsibility for their own health and well-being. Then they embark on tours of the past — tours of a moment in which such responsibilities were not left to individuals, but rather shared by the public.</p>
<p>The installations transform the two buildings — constructed as real, material resources — into cultural resources. A robust public sector once generated economic capital for the nation. But now the school and hospital are access points for <a href="http://theory.routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/cultural-capital">cultural capital</a>.</p>
<p>Visitors experience these sites not to receive medical attention or an education, but rather to engage in an abstract exchange: one that is less material, more about intellect and taste. The installations confer a kind of status on visitors. </p>
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<span class="caption">Students don’t pass this way anymore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their dissonant elegance evokes emotion, but the sites remain mute witnesses to history. Instead of focusing our attention on communities deprived of basic resources, the buildings look as if they’re just trash, waiting for someone to come along and innocently recycle them into something more beautiful — and consumable. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yesterday’s medical workers, today’s cell phone pic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aimee VonBokel</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>JR says his work is about “<a href="http://www.jr-art.net/jr">raising questions</a>” and the two installations certainly do that. Why were these buildings abandoned? Who owns these once-public resources? As private developers buy and <a href="http://ny.curbed.com/places/ps90">repurpose civic structures for private use</a>, it’s worth considering the people who need public schools and hospitals (and don’t need luxury condos). How might a deeper understanding of urban abandonment help us address the challenges facing cities today: gentrification, racial segregation, underfunded schools?</p>
<p>These artists bring the melancholy of abandonment to the surface. What can we make of that melancholy and our fascination with it? How can we channel it? Or would we rather just take a picture?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aimee VonBokel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This fall, French street artist JR and American cinematographer Bradford Young each installed a series of portraits in crumbling New York buildings. The two projects were not coordinated, but together…Aimee VonBokel, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of Museum Studies, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.