I spent last weekend in Manhattan. When I wasn’t avoiding collisions with tourists or enjoying the richest and spiciest Halal lamb over rice I’ve ever had, I was at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. Gatherings of corporate philanthropy will always be tedious exhibitions of self-importance. But Bill Clinton moved me with an opening keynote highlighting the unexpected and extraordinary progress we’ve made over the last fifteen years fighting HIV, hunger, and extreme poverty.
Bill’s takeaway: “the trend lines are more important than the headlines.” In that spirit, let’s look at what American government did well in September while you were fawning over Pope Francis (or asking your roommate, “what’s a Pope?”)
Renewable energy mandates in California: This month Governor Brown signed a bill that will require 50% of California’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030, and for the energy efficiency of existing buildings to double in the same time frame. These are big increases over existing targets first enacted in 2006. With the world’s eighth-largest economy, California can prove that running a developed, consumption-driven society on renewable energy is possible.
Automatic voter registration in California: Low election turnout is one of the worst problems in America’s political system: it is the only reason Republicans can win national elections and leads to more extreme politics on both sides. Starting in 2016, California will nudge its residents to turn out by automatically registering people to vote when they get a driver’s license, unless the possible voter opts out or is not a citizen. This won’t require anyone to vote, but will remove one bureaucratic hurtle for doing so. California is on fire, leading the country in legislative action on big issues. Ah, to have a unified Democratic government!
Paid sick leave for federal contractors: Pivoting to the federal government: the President recently ordered federal contractors to give their employees seven days of paid sick leave per year. This means that 300,000 people working for the federal government can take days off when their kids have strep, when they couldn’t before. Obama continues to show that he can create positive changes in the lives of a lot of people, even with the political system at a standstill.
Cyber-Espionage Agreement with China: Last week the US and China signed an agreement that, in theory, will help reduce the disturbing frequency with which Chinese hackers steal secrets from American companies. The agreement sets up mechanisms for direct cooperation between US and Chinese law enforcement to investigate and arrest hackers when cyber attacks occur.
There are a lot of reasons that this agreement might be meaningless. 1) Since so many Chinese enterprises are state-owned, and since the Chinese government controls the Internet, it’s highly possible that the Chinese government is at least tacitly aware of these attacks when they occur, 2) in which case, if the US complains, China can just scapegoat any old criminal without doing anything to disrupt the hacker networks and still claim to be abiding by the agreement. 3) I can vouch from ten years’ experience of buying 99-cent DVDs in Shanghai’s back alleys that China has a terrible track record of enforcing international intellectual property laws.
But as opposed to, say, Syria, I think China actually cares about being seen as sticking to its commitments. And if they don’t live up to their end of the bargain, that will give the US leverage in future negotiations about this or anything else. For now, I’m going to call this a tentative step forward in the relationship between the two most important countries on Earth.
Obama Administration’s citizenship drive: The Obama Administration will soon offer citizenship test-prep services and hold naturalization workshops around the country to try to get as many of the country’s almost 9 million legal aliens as possible to become citizens. The administration claims they are doing this because it was Citizenship Day a couple of weeks ago. Republicans claim it’s nakedly political, designed to get Democratic-sympathizing Asians and Latino immigrants onto the voter rolls before the 2016 election — which would significantly impact the election’s outcome.
For once, the Republicans are right — and I don’t care. I see no problem with helping likely Democrats live up to their aspirations of civic expression, and the Republican strategy of denying as many people the vote as possible is hardly the moral high ground. This initiative has no policy implications, but I had to include it in “Stuff Government Does” because of how helpful it could be to progressive candidates.
“Happy Birthday” enters the public domain: Up until September 23rd, if any filmmaker wanted to show characters singing ”Happy Birthday," they had to pay a royalty to Warner/Chappell Music, because the record label owned the song lyrics. That’s right —“Happy Birthday,” the song so common that it was the only English language song to be found in a Tibetan karaoke bar I visited in 2006 — was considered “owned.” Good for US District Judge George H. King for correcting this absurdity.