Category Archives: B

Political Bullying Is Wrong. There, I said it.

March 11, 2014 Curtis 5 Comments

Bullying’s long history in American politics doesn’t make it right. I just re-read the About page and remembered that this blog’s focus is on standing up to political bullying of progressive Americans. Because some posts refer to conservatives or radicals, I’m going to make clearer that Framology’s opponents are not conservatives or even radicals by revising these terms to bullies, political bullying, etc. in past posts. It will take a little while, and if I miss some, I’d appreciate it if you would point them out.

As stated in the About page, America has always had a range of political opinion, and that’s as it should be. I wouldn’t want Americans to all believe alike.

But bullying fellow Americans to advance political agendas is wrong. And the only way to end political bullying and create a more civil politics is to stand up to it without bullying in return. Framology’s role is to help progressive Americans find the words to confidently do this.

What is political bullying? Here’s the beginning of a list:

Name calling
Using deception intentionally to advance one’s goals
Using law, police or military power, intimidation, or other means to take away the basic human rights of others
Attributing evil motives to others without evidence
Slander
Perverting political or judicial processes to serve the narrow interests of a party, religion, socio-economic group, or other faction instead of the country we all love

What do you think of this list? What’s missing? Do you think some should be removed?

B, Business

Why Pro-Business Policies Aren’t

March 6, 2014 Curtis 1 Comment

Everybody knows what pro-business policies are: low taxes, low minimum wage, less regulation, reduced ability to sue corporations, “right-to-work” laws (a topic for another post), etc. We “know” this because that’s what business lobbies usually want.

But these policies should be known as pro-management, not pro-business. That’s because they give management more power and money while depriving workers and the community.

To thrive, business needs not only management but workers, suppliers, customers, and a prosperous community. Real pro-business policies support all of these.

But businesses also need workers:

Educated workers who can do their jobs with a minimum of training
Healthy workers who can come to work each day and do their best
Loyal workers who feel valued by their employers
Prosperous workers who can not only pay their bills but patronize their own and other businesses.

Businesses also need customers. In Economics 101, I learned that demand means the desire for a product or service plus the ability to pay for it. That means the community must prosper, not just management. People can’t patronize businesses without money. (And yes, this is related to the triple bottom line.)

And when we don’t trust a business or industry, we don’t want to support it. Wise government regulation of business helps create that trust.

So real pro-business policies would sound like this:

Strong support for public education to create an educated workforce
Strong public health efforts and ready, affordable access to health care, including preventive health care and mental health care
Support for workers’ work-family balance with family leave, child care, and so on
Support for living wages so the workers, community, and its businesses can thrive
Support for government regulations that give people confidence in business.

Do you think pro-management is a good reframe of pro-business? What might be better?

B, Budget

What Government Budget-Cutting Can Cost Us

February 25, 2014 Curtis 1 Comment

It happens all the time. An elected official says, “That social services office has a budget of $1 million, but we have other offices. Let’s ease our budget woes by closing that office and saving $1 million.”

Not so fast!

That claim makes the following unspoken assumptions:

That the office’s work is of no value and
That there’s no downside to closing the office.

Both assumptions are almost certainly false. Let’s imagine why.

What’s the moral case for keeping it open? What values and principles are at stake?
Photo Credit: FraserElliot via Compfight cc

Suppose it’s a Health and Human Services office in a county-seat town that manages many public social services. After it’s closed, people in the area have to travel farther to an office in a larger town.

Now those that were working to overcome poverty, unemployment, homelessness, family problems, mental health issues, addictions, domestic violence, and so on face more hassle. Some won’t go to the new office or won’t go as often as before because they don’t have transportation, can’t afford the higher fuel costs, or don’t have time due to work and family pressures. That means they don’t get the help they need, and they and their communities suffer.

When budget-cutters say we can’t afford it, I think they mean they aren’t convinced that it’s important. So the remedy is to make not only a fiscal case in support of the office/program/service but also a moral case.

The moral case would be grounded in what George Lakoff calls (in Thinking Points, Chapter 4, pp. 53-54) progressive morality:

Empathy. If you needed what that office offered, how would you want to be treated?
Responsibility to act upon empathy, not just to feel it.
Protection of vulnerable citizens from harm.
Expansion of freedom by increasing, not reducing, access to needed services
Fulfillment (as in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”)
Opportunity. Reduced access to services means opportunity is lost.
Fairness and equality. With the office closed, would social services be available on a fair basis?
Human dignity. Every American has a right to live in dignity.

At their best, social services support the common good by expressing all these values.

So when the budget-cutters brag about how much they’ll save us by cutting, Framologists could respond like this (if true in the specific case):

“Mr. Budget Cutter says he’ll save us money. But his plan would cost us access to help in distress, loss of the freedom and dignity that come from solving our problems with a little help from the community, reduced opportunity to enjoy ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ and more unequal access to public services. That seems like a pretty high price. And then there are the likely financial costs of his plan….”

Pretty powerful, huh? Is it laying it on too thick? How do you argue for protecting what you value from the budget ax?

B, T

Riding the Bus: Back to Childhood or Forward to Transit?

January 24, 2014 Curtis Leave a comment

Transit bus — This bus is part of the public transit system.
Photo Credit: Seluryar via Compfight cc

Although America’s largest cities tend to have robust transit systems that include rail in addition to buses, the transit systems of smaller cities often use only buses. Therefore, residents of these cities often refer to the transit system as “the bus,” as in, “I’m not taking the bus! No way!”

School bus — Is it partly because we rode buses like this as children that some don’t want to ride them as adults?
Photo Credit: redjar via Compfight cc

Although this negative attitude comes partly from limitations that their city’s transit system may have, I think it’s also connotations of the phrase “the bus.” As I child, I took the bus to school. I got so tired of riding the bus that it was a relief to be able to walk to high school.

Many of my classmates, though, rode the bus until graduation. That made not having to ride the bus seem like a step toward adulthood. Riding “the bus” as a adult to get around town, then, may feel like a developmental step backward. We may unconsciously think that riding the bus is for kids.

Speaking of transit systems, including bus-only systems, as transit avoids this connotation. Transit is a characteristic of a big, grown-up city, and good transit systems are used by people of all ages and walks of life with pride.

Transit consultant Jarrett Walker, author of the Human Transit blog, offers many posts that discuss transit and language.

Framologists should dignify their city’s transit system by calling it transit rather than the bus. But do you think it makes a difference?

B, G

Framing Big Government: Who Governs and to What End?

January 15, 2014 Curtis 1 Comment

Extreme conservatives label many government efforts they don’t like as big government. This frames the issue as the size of government–with smaller seeming more desirable, of course.

Big Brother is watching you. — According to the Principle of Conservation of Government, corporations could be the tyrant to be feared.

To me, the phrase brings to mind the all-knowing, all-powerful Big Brother from George Orwell’s novel 1984.

Instead of defending “big government,” progressives should reframe the debate as about who governs and to what end, not size. According to George Lakoff,

There is a Principle of Conservation of Government: If conservatives succeed in cutting government by the people for the public good, our lives will still be governed, but now by corporations. We will have government by corporations for corporate profit…. It will be a cruel government, a government of foreclosures, outsourcing, union busting, outrageous payments for every little thing, and pension eliminations.

So when extreme conservatives say they want smaller government, progressives could reply that their opponents are advocating government by corporations. Instead, we want the people to govern the nation, including corporations. A bumper-sticker version could read, “Smaller government = corporate government.”

Many of the laws government regulations that extreme conservatives want to abolish are intended to protect us from abuse by corporations. Examples include the Clear Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, Dodd-Frank, the Volcker Rule, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the minimum wage, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and on and on. If they succeed, the corporations would make the rules for their own benefit, not ours.

That’s unacceptable, and We the People should say so.

Framing Babies

December 2, 2013 Curtis 1 Comment

What dark times these are when the plain Anglo-Saxon word baby has to be reclaimed from politics! But as George Lakoff points out in The Little Blue Book, baby is one of several important English words that have to be reclaimed from the anti-women’s rights crowd.

While no one disputes that “life begins at conception,” what needs to be disputed is the radical claim that this means that personhood, citizenship and childhood begin at conception. This is false and dangerous.

Although we sometimes speak affectionately of an unborn child as “baby” and sometimes even name it while in the womb, it becomes a baby at birth when the umbilical cord is cut. That’s why we call birth “having a baby.” We do not call conceiving a child “having a baby” because we don’t have it until it’s born. That is when personhood, childhood, and citizenship begin. That has always been my understanding of the word baby.

Why does this matter? Because it is the false claim that the unborn are already babies that is the basis for the emotionally powerful but logically untrue slogans “Abortion is murder” and “It’s not a choice; it’s a child.” The claim that the unborn are already babies also is the basis for efforts to pass laws defining citizenship as beginning in the womb. These efforts threaten the rights of women to make important choices about their lives that belong to them and not to state or church.

Drew Westen, author of the excellent The Political Brain, points out in that book that logically refuting such an argument isn’t enough.

Imagine the following: I’m running for office and debating my opponent. My opponent thunders, and I reply, I lose, hands down. This is because my opponent’s slogan carries moral, emotional power that arouses even people that don’t agree with it. My reply is a factual quibble that stirs no one’s soul.

For this point to have moral force that moves people’s hearts, it would have to be made in a story that frames the issue in terms of progressive values. Drew Westen accurately describes the fetus as a potential person that becomes more like a baby as pregnancy progresses and notes that this evolution is why Americans are more supportive of restrictions on late-term abortions than on earlier ones. He proposes the following as a principled stand on abortion:

Abortion is a difficult and often painful decision for a woman to make. It’s a decision only she can make, based on the dictates of her own conscience and faith, not on the dictates of someone else’s. But except under exceptional circumstances, such as rape, incest, or danger to her health, she should make that decision as early as she can, so she is not aborting a fetus that is increasingly becoming more like a person. (The Political Brain, p. 184).

This avoids the word baby and emphasizes the woman’s conscience, faith, and responsibility to decide early. What do you think? Is it important to be careful about the using the word baby, or am I overreacting? What do you think of Westen’s statement above?

Finding America's progressive voice