The Ivins’ Test

by Craig Ruff
April 16, 2010

Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and Lucille Ball created hysterically funny chaos out of solving problems. Politicians occasionally transcend the comedic genre.

I derive a test of political slapstick from the late Molly Ivins, the acidic, left-wing observer of Austin’s shenanigans. It’s the Ivins’ Test.

In the 1990s, Texas legislators awoke to a headline heralding that Texas was the first state in modern times in which gun fatalities exceeded traffic fatalities.

Red-faced state legislators mulled it over for a day or so. In a collective “aha” moment, they found the solution: raise speed limits.

It worked like a charm. Pathways to progress are seemingly endless. Traffic fatalities rose. Gun fatalities stayed constant. Embarrassing problem solved.

Three years ago, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Paterson engineered an initiative to repeal Michigan’s Single Business Tax. State legislators, in “aha” moments, blessed the curse. Later that year, they cursed the blessing, enacting a new business tax that left every employer befuddled and pissed off.

The Patterson repeal of the Single Business Tax met the Ivins’ Test. Like Buster, Stan, Oliver, and Lucy, Brooks came, saw, conquered, and rued.

I especially revel in high jinks from brilliant minds in other locales.

Pittsburgh’s brilliant mayor, Luke Ravenstahl, young and full of statewide ambition to do good, proposed closing the city’s budget gap by imposing upon students in its 10 colleges and universities (the only things going for Steel City) a 1-percent tax on their tuition.

We turn to Arnold, who governs California, for a corollary. He announces that he will lead a petition to amend the constitution of the “something for nothing” state to assure that the state never pays more for corrections than it does for higher education. In Michigan, we’ve done that for a decade, presuming that it’s a great investment. We might try here for a constitutional amendment that requires future policy makers to never invest less money for college students than peers in correctional bodies.

Governor Paterson’s prescription for that which ails Albany is term limits. As The New York Times’ dependably insipid editorial writers coach, “that’s a particularly seductive idea since most legislators only leave office if they retire, die, or go to jail.” The faint praise is noteworthy from the New York press.

Close to home, Governor Granholm professes now to be Michigan’s champion for entrepreneurs. She has dissed them in public policies for a decade, preferring groundbreakings for firms getting her Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s largesse behind “old economy” employers of a few hundred workers.

It is time to call out the comedians in politics.

Clowns make us laugh. Clowns in politics make us shudder.

Craig Ruff is, among many things, a senior policy fellow and former president of Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants.