Government gets less competent as you go down the chain, because the most qualified people want to work higher up. Municipal government is the absolute worst, except in big municipalities like New York City, etc.
Yet, there's a libertarian argument for keeping decisions and programs at the most local level possible, since it's most accountable to individual voters. An annoying opposition of facts.
In a place like Hillsborough or Palo Alto, there may be some hope of a retired or free-time competent executive being a local resident and doing a good job for non-economic reasons. Ghetto parts of SoCal, though, have little risk of that happening.
Maybe some hope, but as far as I can tell municipal government in Silicon Valley is still the domain of the most provincial and short-sighted people in the area.
Occasionally you get lucky and get someone like Bloomberg heading up your municipal government, but even with prestigious gigs like that (the mayor of New York is arguably a more important person than most Governors) quality people are still few and far between.
I wonder if transparency into operations might help solve some of this. Being able to see that a local principal or superintendent is doing great things might attract more prestige within the community, or nationally, vs. "oh, he's another superintendent of schools in a small town". So maybe data tools could help.
The opposition of the fact that local government is vastly more corrupt and incompetent than the federal government vs the theory that they are more accountable to voters is not an opposition of facts.
You get good government when there is enough of a media market to pay for people to spend all day, every day, tracking government. The USFG has that.
Richmond, Hercules, Pinole, El Cerrito, San Pablo and El Sobrante don't.
The Poway School District has a very good reputation and mostly covers upper middle class exurbs with a lot of residents working tech jobs, with Qualcomm, HP, Intuit, Broadcom, Sony, and more having offices in or near the district.
San Diego (especially in the suburbs) has much more of an anti-tax climate than most of California, so I'd guess this is more an attempt by a politician or school board faction to increase services without increasing taxes, George W. Bush-style, with the bill coming due later.
You don’t need to live in the “ghetto parts” to be seduced by a long-term loan that has easy terms up front.
The subprime mortgage crisis was built on respectable hard-working middle-class families that were persuaded to take on debt like this for their own homes.
Really? I was under the impression it was largely those with little or no income. Have you got a breakdown to link to? Not saying you're wrong, genuinely curious.
It doesn’t have exact numbers, but the tl;dr is that people from every income bracket were taking out subprime mortgages, including middle- and upper-class people who could qualify for prime mortgages but wanted to borrow even more.
Bond issues like this are usually subject to popular vote. Not sure whether there was loophole in the procedure, or public approved such bond terms, but Californian cities do have to get majority of residents to agree to new bond issues.
People often defer to professional administrators. If a school administration asks for something, I think the default is to give it to them, after all, it's "for the kids". And if they only bring one option to the table, even if it's not the best option, it might still be better than doing nothing. So you're still down to needing competent administration, even if the public has some oversight role.
Yeah, you're right. I think the public votes on the intent to issue bonds, and once the intent is approved, the administrators duke it out. I would not attribute everything to incompetence or corruption though - a lot of California municipalities have negative ratings, and school board bonds are least attractive compared to general obligation and other muni papers, so that rate might be in line with market.
IMHO, expecting voters to understand the consequences of these highly-deferred bonds is too much. We elect representatives for a reason, and most people aren't going to put in the research necessary to fully understand a "small" (it's only 2.5 million, of course) local bond issue at the bottom of a 10 page ballot.
> Government gets less competent as you go down the chain, because the most qualified people want to work higher up
Interesting hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the US Congress members should be among the most intelligent, skillful and talented people in the country. Does the known evidence match the hypothesis?
I was talking about administrators and the rest of the bureaucracy. The political side is different, with a different set of factors in play.
That being said, yes, US Congressmen are much more intelligent than state and municipal legislators as a whole. Congresspeople aren't dumb (in the sense of g factor). When you hear a Congressperson say "stupid" things, he's usually being disingenuous, or is falling pray to the common human tendency to ignore facts in favor of ideology.
Todd Akin, for example, has an engineering degree from a reasonably well-known school and served in the Army Corps of Engineers. He's not stupid, he just believes crazy things. I've met lots of engineers that believe crazy things. Indeed, I've met more engineers that believe crazy things than non-engineers. I think it takes above average IQ, as a general rule, to believe something that goes against conventional thinking. But believing crazy things makes for great political appeal.
There are lots and lots of smart people in local government, and plenty of dumb ones due to the lower bar to getting elected in a weak year.
What makes you think Congress is substantially different? Plenty of safe congressional districts out there, and from what I saw, the primary talent required for higher office was a willingness to dial for dollars for hours on end. If someone says things like the earth is 7,000 years old (significant number of congressmen), why should I assume that guy is smart and being disengenuous rather than taking him at his word?
My wife used to be a lobbyist, so she has experience with both federal officials and state officials.
Yes, there are safe districts, but the competition for the average federal district is just higher than the competition for the average state district. Not e.g. Cook County or LA County versus some random federal district in Montana, but some random federal district in Montana versus some random state district in Montana.
As for people saying the earth is 7,000 years old... there are a lot of smart people who believe that. Even rational people do not apply rationality to all aspects of their life, nor is every person well-versed in one subject well-versed in all subjects. Heck, Bill Frist had some wacko ideas about the ways you could get AIDs, but he had an AB from Princeton and MD from Harvard Medical School. He was a faculty member at Vanderbilt Medical and chief resident in cardiothoraic surgery at Mass. General. He is an objectively smart guy and he thought you could transmit AIDs from tears and sweat.
That's very interesting about a doctor making that comment about tears and sweat so I looked it up. Here's the infamous conversation:
> Stephanopoulos: You’re a doctor. Do you think tears and sweat can transmit HIV”
> Frist: I don’t know…I can tell you..
> Stephanopoulos: You don’t know?
> Frist: I can tell you things like, like..condoms..
> Stephanopoulos: … You believe that tears and sweat might be able to transmit aids?
This is different than the impression from claims that he was saying it could happen. He said he didn't know about those in particular.
Does the HIV virus ever leach out in tears and sweat? Probably, but not in quantities great enough to be of concern. Is there a minute remote chance one could get it from this under some perfect storm of chance? Probably not, but it's conceivable.
It's like the saliva issue. HIV is present in the saliva at extremely small levels thought to be no risk. Six people caught it from dentist David J. Acer, something that was thought, and claimed, to be impossible.
As a doctor Frist likely was familiar with cases such as that of Dr. Acer. His statement, the actual statement he made which is "I don't know", is not unreasonable.
Come on. The federal debt is >$40,000 per person, and that's not including unfunded liabilities. At the worst, a municipal level government can have an orderly bankruptcy that causes no systematic damage. When the treasury market finally crashes, the entire world is going to look like an exploding hemorrhoid.
The difference is that the treasury market never has to crash because the feds can print money. A municipal government, on the other hand, has to live under the law of "what goes up must come down".
That is true for people in meritous systems, but in general:
1. The level of incompetence designed into the system rises at the federal level faster than the level of average individual incompetence. For example, large municipal debt can be reduced by municipal employees and councilors who could never get a job in Washington. In Washington, there are thousands of brilliant people who can do nothing about debt and poor choices.
2. Many of the most competent believe crazy things and rise to the federal level to inflict them on the government and us. The most brilliant, careful financial manager in the world can become secretary of treasury, and all of their work can be undone with an enormous war, creation of homeland security, etc.
