How bad governance botched needed bail reform in New York

The shambolic implementation of needed bail reform in New York is a great example of the state government's dysfunction and how its abysmal processes lead to embarrassments like the governor admitting a law needs revamping only a few days after it takes effect.

Far from being a new development with the Democrats taking control of the state senate, this has been the depressing status quo for decades.

Some of the good things are being misrepresented by political hacks or flat out misunderstood by well intentioned folks, no doubt. Some of the reforms were needed. Some were bad ideas. Some were good ideas badly implemented. 

But why was this reform implemented so chaotically that the governor is conceding the need for changes only a week into the law's existence?

The process.

The reforms weren't passed via the normal legislative process that first world governments use to pass important legislation. Which is by holding hearings seeking feedback from all of the stakeholders, using that feedback to make tweaks to the initial bill and get rid of previously unforeseen consequences and then holding a public debate and vote on the stand alone bill.

Instead, the reforms were shoved into the unrelated budget with no separate debate while constituents were focused on the countless other things that might or might not end up into the budget.

No democracy. Whatever the legislative "leaders" and governor agreed on. The other 221 legislators are useless. This is nothing remotely close to the good governance that candidate Andrew Cuomo promised us in 2010.

The tactic of shoving policy into the budget, used on many issues, is designed to shield the other legislators from constituents opposing or questioning whatever is being passed. It's designed to protect rank and file legislators from having to do their job.

 

Process matters. And the state's processes have always been horrible. It takes good ideas in principle and ruins them in implementation. Even the good laws that come out of Albany seem to arrive despite the process not because of it.

Why climate activists have been failing and how they can succeed?

I'm a big believer in the premise that people who want to effect real change can't just tell people to say no. You have to offer them something to say yes to. In politics, something, no matter how awful, nearly always beats nothing: witness Trump vs Hillary. The nihilistic Republicans vs the corporate Democrats.

I've been thinking about this is relation to denial of the reality that climate change has been massively accelerated by human activity.

 I think that most climate change denialism is not really based in actual belief that there is no human component. Most don't reject the science because they actually disbelieve it. They do so because accepting the science would imply action... action that might well be, in the short term, nothing less than self-harm. Climate change activists given little thought to addressing this narrative.

Such denialism is largely based on the belief that getting rid of - or at least shrinking the fossil fuel industry -  will cause major economic damage, given the absence of other jobs to take their place. This is not, in fact, an irrational fear. 

I feel that one of the areas that climate change activists have failed is in developing alternative economic opportunities for people who work in fossil fuel industries or who live in regions whose economies are dominated by said industry. Or rather, in pushing politicians to do the above. This is indispensable to softening opposition to needed environmental actions. Instead, climate change activists have largely opted for the tactic of shame and that's clearly not enough.

People aren't going to voluntarily abandon their way of life and their often already meager wages for the vague promise that maybe some unknown alternative economic sector might be realized at some indeterminate point in the future. 

They see how the deindustrialized northeast and midwest have largely been left to rot.  And it's wholly irrational to expect them to do so. And wholly counterproductive to shame them for not doing so.

Climate change activists need to recognize that those affected by their desired shrinking of the fossil fuel economy are real people with real bills to pay and that if they want those people to go along with serious action to repair the climate crisis, activists have to ensure they have some other way to feed their families.