What Kind of Country, or "This American Life Presents..."

With the downturn of the global economy in 2007-2008, Americans were quickly faced with fiscal austerity decisions in their local and state governments. With less money on their books, cities like Trenton, NJ and Colorado Springs and, yes, even old homesteads like San Francisco and San Jose were forced to acknowledge  new realities that they could no longer afford the same kinds of services and benefits that were once routine. While cities, counties and states - and eventually even the federal government - grappled with technical tweaks to revenue streams and budgets cuts, residents began to confront expectations about what their governments could and should be doing. By the time we were fighting about healthcare reform in the US, it was apparent that these issues were digging at something deeper - questions like what is government, and what is the public community that we live in? Who belongs in it? What do we want from it? What does it want from us? We all began arguing about political philosophy (though not always well).

In a recent episode "What Kind of Country", Public Radio International's "This American Life" explored what these question mean to us through three stories from the across the US of how reforms have, and sometimes haven't, taken residents where they hoped.

District Government, or "Whaaaaaat?"

Every year the municipal government of the District of Columbia develops a draft budget and annual financial plan with the data that it receives from its agencies and departments, like all other local governments. Officials hold public hearings for review and input, finagle public opinion and internal politics, and eventually agree on a final working budget. The local council would then approve the budget plan, but when it comes to the District, the US Constitution says that the federal legislature gets a fair chance to ruin everything first.

Sunset over P Street

Thanks to mazzbazzle for this image (r/washingtondc)

By The Books, or "Welcome to the District (Part 2)"

Let's start this introduction with a basic profile before we get into the gritty stuff.

Hey look the Census made a profile graphic for just the occasion!

The District of Columbia is home to approximately 618,000 residents as of July 2011. Of that number, 50.7% are Black or African American, 38.5% are White. 9.1% are Hispanic or Latino (among all races) and 3.5% are Asian. The total population of the District grew by about 2.7% between the 2010 Census and the July 2011 survey. The federal District itself is only 68 square miles, including about 7 square miles of waterways.

One of the most interesting demographic features of Washington is the age distribution of its residents. Nationally, 24% of American residents are below the age of 18 years; but in the District of Columbia this rate drops to 16%. That means there aren't a lot of kids or teenagers around. Nonetheless the median age of Washington is 34 years, the lowest of any US state.

"So... DC is full of mid-thirty year olds," you might suppose. Cool, a young city! In reality though, the city is even "younger" than that. Who likes population pyramids?!

Welcome to the District, or "First time in a long time"

I've had some trouble conceptualizing how this blog could be useful now that I’ve moved from the ranks of San Francisco public employees to a mere graduate student in America's most politically obsessed and emotionally avoidant city. However, I recently realized that all of the oddity and nonsensical happenings of this town that made it difficult to write about coherently are perfect fodder. Many things about this place are counter intuitive, and neither you nor I probably understand what's happening out here these days, so let's see what we figure out together.

Graduate finals, or "Undergrads"

UPDATE 12/13/2011: I have searched for several days now for a new place to settle in and convert to a dystopian Man Cave. My criteria are simple: a comfortable seat, a large space to lay out my dozens of papers and books (so that I can look at them all simultaneously, if need be), some mellow and indistinguishable background white noise, a large drawing space for erasable markers, and a stark absence of undergraduate students. I do not include this final criterion out of any sense of blind prejudice or hypocritical elitism (though I guess that last part is debatable...), but rather out of an earnest effort to avoid conflict during those manic periods of finals at around 7-9pm, 11:30-12pm, 2-4am and 1 hour after dawn  - when the beauty has worn off and you realize that it is indeed very, very early and you didn't get to sleep and your marginal productivity is slipping again.

P.S. The study rooms are not for drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and Malibu while playing a harmonica. Why are you even awake?! Go home!

Subjective Well-Being, or "Measuring Happiness and Opportunity as a Benchmark for Policy"

“When we think about policy then I think we need to make some normative choices about what versions of happiness societies care about… I certainly think that the US, which has the pursuit of happiness in the declaration, and has traditionally emphasized opportunities over outcomes, would opt for an Aristotelian definition [of life-fulfillment]. If we went as far as to say that happiness is a benchmark for policy and we have an Aristotelian definition allowing citizens to lead fulfilling lives, then promising happiness in that sense as a policy objective requires providing all citizens with the agency to pursue it.”

In recent years, a number of countries have begun to incorporate measures of subjective well-being – or “happiness” – into their benchmarks for development and national progress. Even in the United States, policymakers and academics are beginning to consider the merits of measuring happiness and its role in public discourse. This is great part because of the work of Carol Graham and her colleagues.

Adventures on the Circulator

Each city handles fare evaders differently. Today I took the Circulator's Yellow Line over toward Georgetown to hear a panel of experts talk about the woes of human migration, and I experienced a brief moment of MUNI-ness. Three stops out from Union Station a group of individuals step onto the bus and move to the back of the car, while one woman wearing a heavy wool jacket clearly fails to pay her fare.

"Excuse me mam," the bus driver eventually says.

Silence.

 "Excuse me mam."

She wears a look of confusion, searching about for a source of the voice.

"Excuse me, MAM!"

She looks about once more and finally finds the furious gaze of the bus driver. He raises his eyebrows in the universal human gesture of "what the hell do you think you're doing?". She stares at him for a moment, and he supplements his massage with an open hand, palm up and flat, that slowly but deliberately directs her attention to the fare box, never breaking his gaze. "Yes?" She asks.

"Aren't you going to pay your fare?" The woman cocked her head to her left in the universal, cross-species sign of curiosity and did not say a word. "Aren't you going to pay the fare?!" he repeated.

"No.... we don't pay the fare."

Mental Image from Ebenezer's, or "A burgeoning relationship with the neighborhood cafe"

Below is an excerpt from a conversation I had with Chelsea about how this week is going:

" I'm here getting distracting and losing my will to work on school things now, but BEFORE this I was at that coffee shop with the good chais... [Ebenezers]
I made a breakthru on my paper proposal and got all excited as i was sitting next to the window bay across from the bar.... after like 2 hours
I stood up, poured my refilled coffee into my travel mug so it would stay warm, danced a bit to myself with my big green headphones on, bents down to get a new pen, found an even better pen than I expected and stood up excitedly, like hooray!
and backhanded the shit out of my topless coffee mug
which then exploded its contents not only all over my phone and computer, and my chair
but also the window
the wall
the floor
some more of the floor
the OTHER wall
another chair
and all over the shoes of the only other person still in the cafe with me...