Beyond Fixing the U.S. Government's Debt

After a number of failed attempts over decades to solve a problem, it is natural that the problem itself would barely get mentioned, let alone any cure. I submit that the U.S. federal debt is a case in point. President Reagan made it an issue in 1980, and Congress has tried to mandate for itself automatic spending cuts and tax increases, but to no avail. The desire for instant gratification outstripped self-discipline. This could perhaps be said of the society generally. 
In anticipation of the “fiscal cliff” steep U.S. tax increases and budget cuts that were set to go into effect January 2013 for a decade, Moody’s Investor Service served notice to Americans and their federal government that the sequestration of $1 trillion over the ten years and the immediate end of the Bush Tax Cuts would mean a downgrade in the credit rating of the U.S. Government. The New York Times reported that the rating agency, like S&P before, “emphasized political dysfunction more than soaring government debt. The agency said that Washington must come to agreement to head off billions of dollars in simultaneous tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to begin in January—and to put the government on a sustainable fiscal trajectory. Only then would the United States keep its AAA rating.”[1] Moody’s pointed to the need for “specific policies that produce a stabilization and then [a] downward trend in the ratio of federal debt to G.D.P. over the medium term.”[2] 

Moody's Investor Services     (Reuters)

Significant reductions in spending over ten years, plus an immediate end of the tax-rate reductions that George W. Bush had signed into law, would presumably have produced a downward trend in the ratio of federal debt to G.D.P. over the medium as well as long term unless a recessionary impact would be such as to counter the effect from the sequestration and tax increases. Pressure would have built to exempt spending on unemployment compensation and other sustenance programs, while the tax revenue would have fallen short. In other words, the sequestration, had it been allowed, would not have been a sure thing in reducing the federal debt. 
As of June, 2019, the debt stood at over $22 trillion. The will in a democratic system to take corrective action can be so deficient that a serious problem can get much worse. Whereas the rating agencies were ready to downgrade the U.S. Government's credit rating when the debt stood at $16.7 trillion, no such warning went up six years later when the debt was substantially more and no hint of any sequestration was in the air. 
Ronald Reagan had made balancing the federal budget a salient part of his 1980 platform, though once in office he pushed for tax cuts and increases in defense spending that undercut prospects for a balanced budget. The experiment in whether cutting taxes could actually boost tax revenue due to more economic activity failed. In 2013, sequestration failed even to launch. It is no wonder that as the debt passed the $20 trillion mark, the political discourse had given up on a cure. That such a debt might be too big to be paid off, that the U.S. Government was de facto already out of reach, was never mentioned even in conversation. 

1. Jonathan Weisman, “Moody’s Warns That U.S. May Face Debt Downgrade,” The New York Times, September 12, 2012.
2. Ibid.

Corporations and Political Debate: Taxation & Regulation

Under U.S. law, the corporation is a legal person, whose wealth can constitute political speech protected by the first Amendment. It is no matter that the corporation is an artifice constructed by the state for economic purposes: to concentrate wealth in order to produce goods or provide services. That such an entity would lobby and spend money (or “speak”) for political purposes may from this standpoint seem strange, or out of place. To be sure, political influence can indeed help the bottom economic line, but is a corporation a political actor if the purpose is economic? 
Large corporations arguably tend to have a strong arm in Congress,  but if that arm is so strong that it dictates the law, even literally, then entities that are part of society are de facto standing as government for the whole. For some parts of something to control the whole is problematic because those parts will naturally put their own particular interests above those of the whole (e.g., society, or the people). 
Even a dominant role in setting the terms of the debate in the public media during a political campaign can sway or tilt the whole to favor the part. If sustained long enough, pro-business values can become salient in a society's culture. That deregulation could have come out as a major winner in the 2010 election following the financial crisis in 2008 is mind-boggling, and yet the scores of new Republican representatives in the U.S. House had precisely deregulation as one of their main objectives. That unregulated financial derivatives based on risky mortgages had almost brought the economy down two years before was strangely forgotten. The debate was not on whether banks that are too big to fail should be broken up. Instead, the public got to talk about whether the existing regulation on businesses in general should be discarded in favor of economic growth. Such is the power of self-interested money in setting the terms of debate at the societal level.
Accordingly, debate on whether the corporate statutory tax rate of 35% should be lowered never bothered with the inconvenient truth that the weighted effective corporate tax rate (taxes as a share of profits) was 27.1% in the U.S. in 2012, hence below the 27.7% average rate of O.E.C.D. members. The weighted average marginal tax rate on corporations in the U.S. was only 20.2 percent.[1] A U.S. Treasury Department report concluded that 82 percent of the corporate tax was borne by capital, while 18 percent was borne by labor. Either American society was tilted in favor of the interests of capital or the electorate was duped into the false narrative that raising the corporate rate would hurt labor. 
General Electric, the sixth largest corporation in the U.S., had profits of $14.2 billion in 2010 and yet the mammoth company did not have to pay any corporate income tax. Even so, the political mantra that large American corporations pay too much income tax resonates in the political culture. Moreover, taxes are inherently bad, or even theft. It is as if American society has had a blind spot concerning the nature of and need for public goods like roads and airports. The competitive market, excellent in allocating goods and services, so eclipses the value of even esteemed public goods. 
In short, where the corporate advertising and lobbying dollars have already had such a significant influence in shaping the values people hold dear, the very society can tilt in favor of its business sector such that its advantages become invisible to large segments of the electorate. The corporate realm lives under democracy's radar, and thus conveniently beyond the reach of real accountability. 

1. Bruce Bartlett, “Some Big Corporations Don’t Pay Taxes,Either,” The New York Times, September 18, 2012.  

On the Political Power of Capitalism in American Society

In his confidential memorandum, “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” Lewis Powell, later to be a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote in 1971 that the “leftists” were launching a frontal assault on the “free enterprise system,” “capitalism,” or the “profit system.” Powell saw this as an attack on, rather than a defending of the “American political system of democracy under the rule of law.” That the corporate profit-interest might be a threat to “one person, one vote” apparently did not occur to the future Justice. Rather, what is good for GM he presumed must be good for American democracy. Moreover, both, he presumed, are consistent with, or perhaps even foundational for American values.

Powell goes on to write, “A visiting professor from England at Rockford College gave a series of lectures entitled ‘The Ideological War Against Western Society,’ in which he documents the extent to which members of the intellectual community are waging ideological warfare against the enterprise system and the values of western society.” Powell notes in his report that almost half of the students on twelve representative college campuses favored socialization of basic U.S. industries. He cites Stewart Alsop, who had written that “Yale, like every other major college, is graduating scores of bright young men who are practitioners of ‘the politics of despair.’ These young men despise the American political and economic system.” It is strange, therefore, that, forty years later, the American political and economic system would be so well-undisturbed—having been so un-molested by the minions of educated young voters who had gone on to become leaders in that system. Yale, after all, contains in its mission the intent to educate the future leaders of America (and perhaps the world as well). There must have been a giant collective change-of-mind among the myriads of socialists before the Reagan landslide of 1980.

Powell goes on to suggest that business managers (including executives) “have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the [business] system. . . . The traditional role of business executives has been to manage, to produce, to sell, to create jobs, to make profits, to improve the standard of living, to be community leaders, to serve on charitable and educational boards, and generally to be good citizens.” The practitioners here are the citizens; Powell is not pointing to what would come to be called “corporate citizenship,” a marketing slogan designed to get customers to feel better about buying more widgets. Nor is Powell pointing to the related notion of “corporate social responsibility,” which was invented by businessmen (rather than by “socialists” adding to corporate obligations) in the late 1950s.

Absent from Powell’s description of the businessman is the role of corporations even in 1971 in lobbying Congress for favorable legislation and/or regulation that would translate into higher profits. Powell would be hard-pressed to account for the role of the banking lobby in getting the U.S. Senate to vote down Senator Durbin’s amendment that would have given bankruptcy judges the authority to modify mortgages in foreclosure. This is how the “free enterprise system” has fought back “attacks” from “socialists.” After the Citizens United decision of the U.S. Supreme Court (2010), corporate money in unlimited amounts could go toward political advertising—including for or against a candidate—anonymously through “social welfare” non-profits. This is how corporate America has gone after its “attackers.”

Generally speaking, corporate American knows very well how to shut down its opposition in the halls of Congress. Powell’s memo pushes beyond the need for “public relations” and “governmental affairs” to urge a “scale of financing available only through joint effort” and related “political power” through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Business must learn the lesson “that political power is necessary…it must be used aggressively and with determination.” The corporation—created by the government—must, one might say—become the government, necessarily from within—through the system—rather than via revolution.

This sally into the political arena includes funding a highly competent staff of lawyers at the U.S. Chamber to argue before the courts in line with corporate interests. In the 2011 term, the Chamber’s ensuing legal defense department batted 100% on U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Powell could well have added that business’s lobbying and campaign dollars could be directed to not only defeating threatening legislation and regulations, but also influencing the nomination and confirmation of justices to federal (and state) courts. The astonishingly high success rate was therefore no accident.

In short, the threat to American democracy and even to the American principle of market competition may come not from “socialists” in academia and the media, but rather from the supposition that political power oriented to the corporate good rather than the public good is itself a good. That is to say, Powell’s memo may have the story turned around. His antagonists may have been oriented to saving the American system, whereas his proponents would actually subvert it in line with their narrow self-interest.

Source:

Lewis Powell, “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” Memorandum, 1971. See pdf download at page-bottom of: http://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/2/

“USA!” at Ryder Cup 2012: Silent “EU!” Wins

The Ryder Cup of 2012, held in Illinois, can be read as payback for the European team at the expense of the Americans because the latter had come back from the same 10-6 deficit to win at the previous Cup.  The Associated Press reported that the European team’s “rally was even more remarkable, carried out before a raucous American crowd that began their chants of "USA!" some three hours before the first match got under way.” I can just imagine the looks on the Europeans’ faces amid the primal shouts some three hours before play. “Why are they doing that now? Should we get our few people in the crowd to start pumping their fists in the air while shouting “EU! EU! EU! EU!”? I can just hear a German on the team (if there was one) ask, “But what purpose would that serve?” A Brit would interrupt to make his observation known, that he cannot take part in such a cheer as it diverts from “hip hip!” and thus may interfere with being proud to be British, as Maggie used to say. A Belgian of Flemish and Walloon parentage (if such a thing exists) would try to split the difference in proposing that the small crowd of European groupies chant “hip hip EU!” The Brit would undoubtedly veto that one in a split second and the European team would be left with having to listen to the primal chants of the Americans. Of course, the warlike chant has no meaning in itself. Even a patriotic American would wonder why in the midst of a fireworks show on July 4^th young men (16-25ish) suddenly feel the need to aggressively shout “USA!

                                     Europe's Martin Kaymer celebrates Europe's win at the Ryder Cup.     Reuters

USA!” as if the exploding bombs (i.e., fireworks) were some signal known only to them that we were about to invade another country. I witnessed this at a Fourth-of-July fireworks at an upscale golf course in 2012. The chants seemed so out of place, coming out of nowhere, that I could not help but wonder what was behind the impulsive act.

Was there a sort of blind, patriotic “America the Powerful” brewing at a primal level among guys who are at the prime age for military service? Is there some instinct for war in young men that was not getting satisfied by the 11-year-old war in Afghanistan? Or was it simply a problem of not getting enough sex?  Maybe the pounding fists in the air and shouted grunts are some kind of instinctual way of attracting American females who are otherwise too obsessed with their careers.  I suppose it is preferable to pissing to mark one’s territory. Nietzsche would point to the instinct “will to power,” though it is difficult to see how much of that can come out of hitting a little white ball into a hole. It seems to me that American football would be the more fitting venue.

Today I met two Europeans, one from Spain and the other from Poland. I suggested that perhaps they had not realized how much they have in common as Europeans until they came over to America. Relative to the Americans, the two women could see how much more they have in common. “Yes!” the two women added as if on cue. “You know that many Euro-skeptics over there think there is no such thing as being a European,” I stated matter-of-factly. The both nodded affirmatively. “But now you can see that there is—that you can be both Spanish and Polish and European.” Again, they nodded, perhaps more surprised to be hearing such a thing from an American than to be suddenly aware of their own federal nature—both Spanish/Polish and European. Things like this can sneak up on a person perceptually, even though it is happening to oneself.  One might not see it in oneself even though outsiders do.

So even though the Europeans in the crowd at the Ryder Cup did not add “EU!” to replace the chants of “USA!” as the Europeans turned their deficit into victory, pro-Europe slogans will come, though hopefully without the fist-pumping and aggressive shouting.  Sometimes it takes time for the perception to catch up with the changed situation on the ground.

Source:

Christopher Clarey, “Europe’s SurgeLeaves Americans in Shock,” The New York Times, September 30, 2012. 

Starbucks Capitulates to Overzealous Police Union in Spite of In-Store Intimidation

On July 4, 2019 in Tempe, Arizona (Tempe borders Phoenix, which is to the west), a Starbucks' employee requested that the six police employees in the small restaurant move from the bar area where customers picked up drinks, or else leave. Because the six did not come in together, customers were provided with the special treat of a prolonged police presence throughout the store before the cops huddled near the bar. Even as the police huddled, they did so with eyes strategically perched so as to maintain visuals on the customers. One cop in particular repeated glanced over his shoulder with a darting eye towards the customers as if they were threats. That customers might be uncomfortable even with the sheer number of police in the small store was obviously lost on the police there as well as Starbucks’ employees. Yet the company was strangely without any policy on the maximum number of police who could be in a store at one time and for how long (i.e., when no incident is occurring). This is strange given the high incident of police brutality, especially in Phoenix.  Just a week later, a protest took place against the brutality in Tempe. It is natural, especially in such a context, that at least some non-criminal customer would feel uncomfortable.  Meanwhile, the police felt entitled to disrespect the customers by showing such a huge presence in the small store. Ironically, the police felt instead that it was disrespectful for a Starbucks’ employee to ask them to step away from the bar or leave after a customer complained about feeling uncomfortable with such a significant non-incident police presence. This is thus a story about institutions not taking responsibility for their own respective roles in a problem.

The police circulated in the store for some time as they did not come in together, and then huddled near where customers pick up drinks. One of the police (front left) turned his head every few minutes to glare at the customers. Who would not feel uncomfortable? 

For its part, Starbucks sought to mischaracterize the customer as “anxious, nervous or uncomfortable” when the customer actually said he or she was uncomfortable. Starbucks’ spokesman Reggie Borges also claimed that the customer “continued to ask about the officers” as if obsessed.[1] Actually, the customer approached the Starbucks employee twice, and without the “anxiety” or obsession that Borges claims the employee wanted to relieve. That the customer spoke with the employee twice suggests that the employee had not been very motivated to act on behalf of customer experience. Also reflecting a disregard for customer experience, Starbucks’ allowance of any number of police in a store at a time was part of the underlying problem, not some heavily caffeinated, hyper-strung or "problematic" customer. Deliberately mischaracterizing the customer was just Starbucks' way of denying its own deficiency in not having a policy on a maximum police presence. According the the manager of another Starbucks' store, the company should have had such a policy rather than intimating that the customer was uniquely distraught. I submit that that virtually anybody would feel uncomfortable with so many police walking around in such a small space. The customer reportedly later asked the shift manager why Starbucks did not have a policy on a maximum number of police on break in a store at one time, to which the manager reportedly retorted, “I’m going to end this conversation.” 

As for the police in the store, a certain arrogance can be said to be in people who do not act out of respect for others—such as by showing such a huge police presence in the midst of customers trying to enjoy their drinks—while perceiving a request to move or leave given the disrespect as being inherently disrespectful. Clearly, the police taking their break in the store had no concern for the customers’ comfort, given the perception that the request to move or leave was itself out of line. Perhaps the public servants in Arizona held the view that the public should take whatever the police want to do, so even a request for the police to back off would be viewed as an affront. Just as it cannot be assumed that the customer was a shaking, hyper-caffeinated anxiety case, nor can it be assumed that the customer had a criminal background, as some people on social media suggested, for even innocent customers would understandably feel uncomfortable with six police walking around with guns visible in a small room.

I contend that the local police had no recognition of having too much of a presence in the store because intimidation as a deterrent by a very visible, ubiquitous presence in the public was at the time the standard tactic, especially in the city of Phoenix. The light rail company had the same view, for it was not unusual to see four or even five security guards (with police-like badges) on just a half of a car staring at passengers. 

On a Saturday on a train, I was standing with my bike, which is lawful, so imagine my surprise when I looked up and saw three security employees wearing sunglasses standing confrontationally near me and staring at me! I put on my sunglasses and stared back. Welcome to Phoenix.

Three security guards clustered in the back half of a car. Were so many guards and such clustering really necessary?

Once a passenger sitting near me asked a guard about the huge presence without an incident, to which the guard retorted, “There can be as many of us as we want; get it?!?” His aggressive tone alone raised a red flag for me in terms of the wisdom of allowing so many security employees in a small space—not to mention giving them any authority in the first place.

A stationary Phoenix policeman on a weekday keeping a close eye on a platform as a matter of routine rather than an incident. How might waiting passengers have felt? Should this have been factored in? 

The light rail company also played a role in the excessiveness shown by the local police. Twice I saw three or four passengers on a light-rail platform surrounded by about 15 police and rail-security guards for not having had a ticket. Motorists who get a ticket for speeding were not treated to such a police presence, so I suspect the reason for the over-reaction on the train has to do with the ridership.

As another example, at a light-rail platform about a half mile from the gay-pride festival during a Saturday afternoon in a local park in April, 2019, four police cars with lights continuously flashing were parked all afternoon in the street along the light-rail platform. As I passed on a train, I saw an empty platform. When I passed by again in the early evening, I saw the four jeeps whose lights were still flashing, but this time I saw four police employees with a dog going back and forth on the platform in spite of the fact that only twenty or so people were waiting for trains. 

About a half-mile from a gay-pride fest in a city park, four policemen with a drug-sniffing dog patrol a nearly empty rail platform. 

Yet when the train picked up baseball fans in downtown Phoenix, no such show of deterrence was shown. If you can visualize four police jeeps with lights flashing next to an empty rail platform, you have grasped the distinctive over-kill mentality of Arizona. My point is that given that mentality, both the police and Starbucks employees should have realized that virtually any customer would naturally feel uncomfortable with so many police in the store. That that case took place just over a month after a notorious case of police abuse of power makes it all the more perplexing to me why the customer would be treated as a special case.

Writing about an atrocious police incident that occurred on May 27, 2019 in Phoenix, Arizona, Cedric Alexander, a former police employee, police chief, director of public safety, and deputy mayor in Rochester, New York writes that a Phoenix police employee approached a newly parked car and said, “I’m going to f---ing put a cap in your f---ing head!” Why such anger? Why such rage? The four-year-old in the car had stolen a doll from a discount store.[2] Was the enraged employee of the police department so intent to put a bullet in the girl’s head because of the nature of the crime, or else the presumed sordid little criminal? An image of a Nazi SS officer shooting a small Jewish girl may come to mind. Or did the Arizona variant determine that the mother should pay with her life because her young daughter walked out of a store with a doll and the mother had not noticed? Did the fact that a discount store had made the complaint trigger the police employee’s anger at the poor?  Admittedly, it is the poor in Phoenix who regularly ignore traffic lights and even cross-walks in crossing even very busy roads. The lack of respect for law is endemic and thus astounding there—to say nothing of the lack of consideration for other people. “The public” is a term rightly with a sordid reputation in the Phoenix valley in Arizona. So I can understand why the local police could become demoralized, even disgusted and angry, but this is not an excuse, especially as police are given the governmental power of lethal force. Human nature itself may not be up to the task, given such immense power on an interpersonal level. The Stanford Experiment in the late 1960’s, for example, demonstrated how quickly people (i.e., students) given authority over others could resort to violence even though it is expressly prohibited in the authority given. Did we not learn anything regarding human nature and police power from that experiment?

The judgment that shooting someone in the head could be appropriate rather than outrageous in the case of shoplifting by a young child (assuming the child had known what she had done!) is so warped that this itself can be taken as a red flag concerning the human mind, at least on the Phoenix police force, and having the authority to use lethal force. Cedric Alexander writes that the police employee’s conduct was “unthinkable.”[3] Perhaps the human brain or mind is altered in some fundamental sense—and not in a good way—when a dose of pure power is taken in.

The girl’s mother, along with a 1-year-old, was in the back of the car. When the police employee ordered the mother to put her hands up, she was holding the younger child and so she replied that she could not raise her hands in the air. The employee then ordered the mother’s fiancée, who was in the driver’s seat, out of the car. In spite of the fact that the man complied, the police employee pushed the guy against the car and kicked his legs apart. “When I tell you to do something, you f---king do it!” That the employee had been wrong about the driver (for he had done as commanded) brings up the troubling matter of the toxicity of power when it is mixed with cognitive issues or simply stupidity. At the time, Arizona had one of the worst systems of public (K-12) education, and faulty assumptions and incorrect conclusions were quite common even in entry-level office positions (even as managers were relying on them to deal with “the public”).

Of course, the police employee may have meant the mother, who was not able to put up her hands, but then his verdict that she was nonetheless culpable would of course be warped. The employee’s decision to take the anger out on the complying driver demonstrates bad judgment (perhaps from excessive anger), aggression, and cognitive lapses. Even when the mother shouted that her door would not open, the “understanding” employee shouted, “You’re going to f---king get shot!”[4] The assumption that putting the fear of death in the woman would somehow fix the door is interesting from the standpoints of the employee’s cognitive ability and state of mind.
Even if the employee assumed from a generally negative bias or actual experience with the poor in Phoenix (who seemed too quick to lie and even become aggressive) that the mother must be lying, the disproportionate judgment that shooting the woman would fit the lie (i.e., that the lie justified death) suggests that the employee’s mind could not handle having the power of lethal force. This would presumably be a basic matter in a police department’s hiring process as well as for police supervisors.

If the police employee was enraged because his order was not being instantly followed, both his notion of human nature in others (i.e., fallible rather than robotic) and his own psychology could be flagged. To be able to get other people to do against their will what you want is a basic definition of human power. Accordingly, the employee’s power-urge was too much for him to handle the power to kill other people. Once the mother was out of the car, the employee tried “to grab the one-year-old child” out of the mother’s arms.[5] The employee clearly had an urge for instant power, and he evinced no basic compassion. Perhaps, as in a Nazi SS officer plying Jewish kids off their parents before boarding them all on separate train cars or even trains, the human mind high on pure power chocks off any sentiment of compassion.

So far we have anger, impaired judgment, cognitive issues, aggression, and a will to power. This is a toxic cocktail to be sure, and it has no place in a human brain on a police force. Extreme care in hiring is thus important, and we can deduce that the Phoenix police department had been lax in this regard too. Adding tinder to the fire was the cultural ideological “authoritarian” assumption generally in the Phoenix valley that intimidation is an effective deterrent. A major flaw in the ideological stance is that people with good motives also get intimidated, as when the police presence is ubiquitous. This can include police helicopters as well as police cars—the former flying low even on normal routine patrols and the latter circling or standing still (i.e., patrols that cease to be mobile). The key is the frequency or amount being excessive to not only human sensitivities to being nearly constantly watched or intimidated, but also having merit in actually stopping a crime. It is no surprise, therefore, that more police were sent to the scene of the doll-heist. I would bet the number of police cars was excessive given the actual threat. To be sure, the police employee probably exaggerated it in his own mind and thus to others. Maybe the police in the Tempe Starbucks store regarded the employee’s request as a threat, given that rarely had they probably gotten push back. Similarly, bullies tend to regard anyone standing up for the bullied as a threat, and even as disrespectful!

Cedric Alexander points out in his piece that government gives police employees their legal authority to use lethal force, but police “also need legitimacy,” which according to the 2014 report by the Police Executive Research Forum “lies within the perceptions of the public.”[6] The perception of employees abusing their privilege to use lethal force does nothing to help legitimacy.

 
So I am not surprised at all in reading Cedric Alexander’s report that the police chief, Jeri Williams, said in a public forum on May 27, 2019 that real change “doesn’t start with our police department. Real change starts with our community.”[7] With the excessive show of police generally (in order to intimidate so as to deter), it was difficult to view that city as a community at all. Alexander writes of the Phoenix police department that “as professionals under oath, they have the responsibility to start the ‘real change.’”[8] Such responsibility was all the more justified because police employees were part of the problem. The police chief said in the forum that the employee’s conduct (and attitude?) on the doll shop-lifting case “unacceptable.” Cedric Alexander writes critically of this antiseptic and bureaucratic word. “Terrifying, traumatizing” are more fitting, he writes; the lift-threatening behavior of those Phoenix [public servants!] cannot be written off as ‘unacceptable.’”[9] Yet this is exactly what a department not being held accountable and certainly not holding itself accountable does. Its deterrence method of saturating the city with non-incident police presence is therefore unfortunate. More than this, it can be reckoned as a passive-aggressive instance of callousness and impaired judgment.

The incident with the little girl is a case in which police believed they had considerable discretion on how they could treat (and regard!) the public. Less extreme, the police in the Tempe Starbucks store assumed that they could bring in as many police as they wanted even if the customers could rationally be expected to be uncomfortable. Criticizing Starbucks’ reaction as disrespectful is akin to the Phoenix chief’s refusal to take responsibility; it’s the other guy’s fault. The police association even brought up the irrelevant point that some of the police in the store were veterans, and so the military was disrespected![10]  Starbucks’ request was not disrespectful toward the police, given the thoughtlessness of the police in disregarding the fact that so many police would naturally cause discomfort. Such a showing goes beyond feeling safe, especially given the police employee who felt the need to keep an eye on the customers. If he did not feel safe in the store, he should have left rather than make at least one customer feel uncomfortable. The association representing the police was so busy feeling disrespected that no thought at all went into why customers could rightly feel uncomfortable with so many police in a small store.

So in apologizing to the Tempe police department for having had the good sense to follow up on a customer feeling uncomfortable, Starbucks ignored or dismissed an entire side of the story—one in which people in the Phoenix valley understandably felt uncomfortable when the local police go too far. “When those officers entered the store and a customer raised a concern over their presence, they should have been welcomed and treated with dignity and the utmost respect by our partners (employees). Instead, they were made to feel unwelcome and disrespected, which is completely unacceptable,” according to Rossann Williams, a vice president of Starbucks.[11] So much for customer experience! By Williams' strong-handed response, the customer’s legitimate concern about the excessive police presence should have been ignored and that presence in fact greeted! I submit that the Starbucks employee had rightly judged the customer’s concern to be valid, as the police presence was rather severe for a break, and that Williams would have been fine with customers awash in police presence. In effect, Starbucks backtracked in apologizing such that the police could feel free to disrespect customers by having too much of a presence in a given store. Starbucks would no longer stick up for its customers who feel uncomfortable with the over-kill of police who do not respect customers enough to limit the police presence. Instead, Starbucks would continue to greet as many police employees as want to inundate a given store. In effect, Starbucks would enable the “intimidation as deterrent” authoritarian tactic that is so ingrained in the Phoenix-area culture. It is, “a police state,” as several new arrivals have observed. In such a state, customers wanting a break from it while enjoying a drink at Starbucks could hardly be blamed, but sadly this did not stop Starbucks from tacitly doing so. Meanwhile, like the Phoenix police chief who had viewed the public as needing to take the initiative even after the police abuse of the four-year-old shoplifter, the Tempe police chief could only see his employees being disrespected. This tells me that neither department was used to being held accountable. The prerogative to being able to get away with disrespectful conduct easily views any push-back as disrespectful. It’s always the other guy. Starbucks, meanwhile, should have stood up for its customers because six cops in a small store are simple too many for customers to feel comfortable. The uniform and the lethal right to use force render police qualitatively different than customers, hence Starbucks’ refusal even after the fact to come up with a policy protecting the experience of customers is also telling.

Recommended: Bucking Starbucks' Star, available at Amazon. 

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1, Sandra Garcia, “Starbucks Apologizes After 6 Police Officers Say They Were Asked to Leave,” The New York Times, July 8, 2019.

2. Cedric L Alexander, “The Police Overreaction to Case of 4-year-old and Barbie Doll Isn’t Just ‘Unacceptable’—It’s Outrageous,” CNN.com (accessed June 20, 2019).

3. Ibid.                

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Amir Vera, “Starbucks Apologizes after Six Officers Say They Were Asked to Leave a Store in Arizona,” cnn.com July 6, 2019.

11. Amir Vera, “Starbucks Apologizes after Six Officers Say They Were Asked to Leave a Store in Arizona,” cnn.com July 6, 2019.

Presidential Authority and Bureaucracy: Regulatory Agencies

Circulating in Congress in the fall of 2012 was a bill that would have allowed "the White House to second-guess major rules and mandate that agencies carefully study the economic effects of new regulation. The change could, in effect, delay a number of rules for the financial industry. Those who support preserving the status quo where Wall Street regulates itself will find much to like in this legislation," said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen, a nonprofit government watchdog group.[1] President Obama had received $1 million from Goldman Sachs as a campaign contribution in 2008. Yet of how much value to Wall Street is a mere delay in regulation? Some, surely, but not enough to make this the decisive issue here. Rather, I submit that the president's control as chief executive of the regulatory agencies and the added bureaucracy are more salient in this case study. 

In terms of Wall Street’s interest, the proposed bill would have permitted the White House only to delay proposed regulations until further explanation is provided; the president would not be able to veto them. The issue from this case can thus be said to be whether the U.S. president as the chief executive in the U.S. Government must have control over even independent agencies such as the SEC. To be tasked with the enforcement of U.S. law and yet not to have the right even to be consulted by agencies as varied as the FCC, the FDIC, the SEC and the CFTC puts the chief executive in a bind—that of constitutional responsibility without the requisite authority. 
At a much less significant level, the added bureaucracy could have been a problem, given how much bureaucracy was in the agencies themselves: “at the minimum a 13-point test for rule-making. That includes finding ‘available alternatives to direct regulation,’ evaluating the ‘costs and the benefits,’ drafting ‘each rule to be simple and easy to understand’ and periodically reviewing existing rules to make agencies ‘more effective or less burdensome.’”[2]

1. Ben Protess, “Lawmakers Push to Increase WhiteHouse Oversight of Financial Regulators,” The New York Times, September 10, 2012. 
2. Ibid.