Election Eve Blues - an opinion

Tuesday is the midterm election.  It has been a fixation of mine for months (actually, two years).  We will finally get a reading on whether the dramatic lurch taken by the nation's leadership in 2016 is an accident or what "we" really wanted.  I hope "we" show up; turnout for the 2014 midterms was only about 35% of all eligible voters (citizens 18 and above), the lowest ever.  That might be about to change.  It could even be as high as the 60% who voted in 2016.  That would be unprecedented, but it would still mean that two out of five eligible voters don't vote.

Somehow, a situation that seems a lot like an emergency to many of us still doesn't engage a large minority.  Of course there are those who are ill or in some other way distracted or removed from the voter pool.  But there are also those like the nineteen-year old contacted by a fellow volunteer at a get-out-the-vote event I attended yesterday.  I could hear her pleading with him: "But you HAVE to vote!".  I was amazed by her willingness to take the time to try reaching this disengaged young man.  She ended the call with an agreement that they would talk again soon.  Maybe a thoughtful citizen is in the making, and one more voter has been recruited.

High turnout probably means that the Democrats will retake the House of Representatives.  fivethirtyeight.com puts the likelihood at six in seven.  A Democrat-controlled house would certainly constitute a check on the worst impulses of congress, though it would do nothing to arrest the continuing stream of hard-right judicial appointments.  For that, the senate would have to change hands, an eventuality Fivethirtyeight pegs at one in six.  Still, with record high turnout....

Suppose both houses of congress turn over.  I imagine I will exult on Tuesday evening, only to be overtaken by post-election tristesse the morning after.  What a huge hole we have to dig ourselves out of.  The rips in the political fabric will surely not be quickly healed, yet a Democratic victory is unlikely to help, and there is little time for it anyway, because the material fabric of society needs mending, too.  The nation's infrastructure is dilapidated and in desperate need of attention, to the tune of nearly $5 trillion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers -- more than the entire annual U.S. budget.  Water and sewer mains, bridges, roads, railroads, airports all have been treated as a cash cow, leading to what John Michael Greer has termed "catabolic collapse"

The task of addressing the nation's deferred maintenance problems plays out against a backdrop of imbalanced budgets at the local, state, and national levels.  We currently have no appetite for taxation, even at a time when costs for things we do have an appetite for is soaring.  No party, nationally or in Connecticut, has exhibited fiscal discipline, and the chickens must eventually come home to roost.  The Federal government is buying time through its ability to conjure money.  Here in Connecticut, decades of failure to plan for a wave of state employee retirements have guaranteed us an increasing flow of red ink for many years into the future.

Talk about a rock and a hard place: if we increase taxes sufficiently to cover our obligations, current needs, and future aspirations, we risk driving many of those whose contributions we need to other states with lower tax rates.  If we fail to cover these obligations, needs, and wants, we risk creating a place where no one wants to live.  I don't see any of our politicians addressing this dilemma head-on, which is understandable since there is no win-win solution.  But an appreciation of the predicament must be the foundation on which any compromises and shared sacrifices would have to be based.

A look at the two statewide ballot questions tells of the misplaced priorities that stem from the incomplete narrative we, our media, and our politicians tell one another.  Ballot Question 1 asks us to create a "Transportation Lock Box" to protect monies nominally allocated for transportation (gas taxes, road tolls, etc.) from being "swept" into the general fund to cover other expenses.  Looked at one way, the "lock box" addresses one of the many deferred maintenance issues I just mentioned.

But this amendment to the state constitution only prioritizes transportation funds.  As the budget situation grows more dire, protection for transportation will put pressure on other budget items that arguably deserve as much or more protection from being "swept".  It will have consequences far beyond the transportation sector it privileges.

Permit me to zoom out for a moment.  It gets worse.  The growing global human footprint crisis continues to go barely addressed. It is true that the Paris Agreement has committed of the world's governments to dealing with the increasing disruption of the climate caused by greenhouse gas emissions.  But nations are not on track to keep those commitments, and the U.S. has even stated its desire to withdraw from the agreement.  But this is only one aspect of the crisis.  Have you ever heard of the Aichi Protocal?  I thought not.  Eight years ago, the world's governments agreed to arrest biodiversity loss through habitat conservation.  The U.S. did not participate.  The U.S. media do not cover the footprint crisis, but others do: "Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN".

In the U.S., conversations (if you can call them that) about abortion have overshadowed and framed the conversation about fertility control.  In particular, the U.S. has backed away from supporting the provision of fertility control to the rest of the world.  But the footprint crisis is ultimately a population crisis.  We can have X humans living comfortably amidst functioning ecosystems and a stable climate, or Y humans living in squalor, or a combination of the two.  But both limits are now visible only in the rear-view mirror, as we now have a human population that is propped up by steadily wearing away the environmental systems that make our lives possible in the first place.  The annual cost of the unmet global demand for contraception?  About $3.6 billion.  Annual U.S. military spending?  About $870 billion.  When will a major U.S. political party speak the truth to us?  How about a major U.S. media outlet?

Let's return to those ballot questions.  Question 1 attempts to prevent the use of funds earmarked for transportation to cover another budget line.  But what about the $175 million that was taken from energy efficiency programs?  The majority of this funding was paid by electric and gas utility ratepayers as a surcharge on our bills and advertised as earmarked for energy efficiency.  The Connecticut Energy Efficiency Board estimated that the result is an increase of 1.6 millions of oil burned annually and a net loss to individuals in fuel expenses significantly exceeding the savings to the state budget.  Energy retrofit contractors have been letting employees go.

The second ballot question proposes an amendment to require the state to hold hearings if it disposes of public land, as is customary in a conveyance bill at the end of each legislative session.  "Land swaps" and other sometimes questionable deals have made the news in recent years, and with all the budget pressure, it is no surprise.  How ironic that, when land protection must urgently be expanded to protect habitat and the climate, that we should be having this discussion.  But I have not seen this connection made.  It seems too remote from our immediate exigencies.  But unless we deal with the seemingly remote now, at some point, just dealing with the immediate will become all that is possible.  Then the possibility of planning for the future will disappear, and we will have to just let it wash over us.

Under the conditions we are creating for ourselves, the people of a state or a nation cannot thrive.  Divorce rates, the increased incidence of obesity and diabetes, mental health and substance abuse crises, and the surge in gun violence are all evidence of a stressed populace.  We are on track for making these things dramatically worse for ourselves.  The outcome of Tuesday's election will only determine the rate.

So whatever happens on Tuesday, and whether I am sorrowful or merely wistful on Wednesday, I mean to increase my efforts to understand for myself how we can best focus on the important challenges we face and bear in mind their interconnectedness.  If I learn anything I think useful, I will share it here.  I hope you will do the same.