Threading the needle on public unions

In a recent piece for PhillyMag, and more recently here, I've suggested that public unions bear more scrutiny than their liberal allies have generally given them. But I've also said—much, much less prominently, admittedly—that the problems afflicting municipalities these days can't be blamed solely on those unions. In my Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk this week, I flesh out the rest of it a bit with a look at the bankruptcy of Stockton, California.

Public unions aren't perfect. Too often, they act as constituencies to whom favors are owed rather than partners in building the cities they serve. Democrats are often loath to acknowledge such flaws, for a couple of reasons: a) Unions are a critical source of campaign funding; and b) You never really see Republicans biting the corporate hand that feeds them. Why alienate allies and disarm unilaterally? 

Public unions didn't solely create the problems faced by Stockton, or any other city facing financial trouble. They are, however, being asked to bear the brunt of the solution. 

Before the Great Recession started in 2008, many cities -- flush from a growing economy and a housing bubble that inflated their property-tax collections -- didn't bother preparing for the proverbial "rainy day," instead embarking on vanity construction projects and (like many Americans) digging themselves into a pile of debt. Stockton built a sports arena, for example, and paid singer Neil Diamond $1 million to open the city's new concert hall. 

Good times never seemed so good. That kind of hubris, however, really isn't the fault of municipal unions. 

Cities like Stockton also failed to do one other thing: save enough money to pay for the retirement promises they'd made their workers, hoping that economic growth and tax collections would somehow save the day. Mayors and city councils acted foolishly for decades, avoiding preparations for the retirements they knew would come. 

It may be that America's cities can only be saved with an act of pension sacrifice by municipal workers. Note this, however: When Mitt Romney's Bain Capital enjoys big profits but deserts workers in bad times, the firm is castigated. When local governments do the same thing, it's the workers who get blamed. 

Public unions deserve scrutiny, yes. But they shouldn't be scapegoated. Stockton dug its own hole.

Ben's take: "It's wrong to ask taxpayers to sacrifice a larger portion of their incomes and accept fewer services to pay for benefits that the vast majority of people will never have." You'll have to hit the link to read the whole thing.

Netflix Queue: 'Submarine'

Great movie: It's kind of like "Rushmore," only if Max Fischer were Welsh, had a complete set of parents, and was much less able to overwhelm people with the force of his personality. Oliver Tate also has a way of being alienating, but it's more in the mode of the usual dumb antics of a teen boy than in Fischer's attempts at being precocious. Charming movie.

Walter Russell Mead and the lost Christianity of America's elites

I actually found Walter Russell Mead's post--about how American elites have lost their way by losing Christianity--to be somewhat compelling, if not entirely convincing. This was the passage I found challenging and a bit moving.

Serious Christians have to struggle continually against the temptation to view “merit” uncritically. To begin with, any gifts that you have are just that — gifts. Your ability to score 800 on the math section of the SAT is something for which you can personally take no credit whatever. It’s like a pretty face or perfect pitch: it’s very nice to have, but it’s God’s sovereign choice, not your sublime inner nature, that is responsible for this. And of course, he doesn’t give his gifts without a purpose. 

And guess what: the reason God made you smart wasn’t to make you rich and to make you special and to allow you to swank around in the White House or at Davos. He made you smart so that you could serve — and the people he wants you to serve are exactly all those people you feel so arrogantly superior to. At the end of the day, they aren’t going to be judged on how much they deferred to you, respected you, and handed over to you all those rewards you felt you deserved. God isn’t particularly interested in what the Paul Krugmans of this world think though he wants us all to do our best to get things right; he’s interested in how much Paul Krugman and the rest of us loved and sought to serve one another. 

You are going to be judged on how much you did for the “ordinary folks.” Were those Downs’ syndrome kids any better off because of the way you used your mathematical and reasoning gifts? Were the poor better fed and better housed because of the use you made of the talents God trusted to your care? Did you use your power and the freedom that came with it to help others live freer and more dignified lives, or did you parade your superiority around like a pompous and egotistical ass, oppressing and alienating the world when you should have been enlightening it?

Folks, what he's talking about here is humility.

And while I don't begrudge Mead for seeing it Christian terms, I disagree that it's necessarily experienced as the result of a religious outlook. It should be the result of a thinking, contemplative outlook, one that atheists, agnostics (like myself), and religious people of all stripes can share in.

 One doesn't have to be Christian to realize that one's life is shaped by factors beyond our control. Where we're born--what country, what region of a country,the particular wealth and education of our parents, even the genes they pass on to us--none of these things are in our individual control, but all can make a significant difference in our lifetime prospects. When all those factors align favorably, they're the foundation upon which hard work can be used to create a stunning success, or offer a safety net that allows the taking of risks. Sometimes, they're even enough to guarantee a comfortable life without any hard work or risk-taking.

From a non-religious viewpoint, then, all of that stuff is a crapshoot. For those of us who have attained any measure of success, that knowledge can and should be humbling, something that causes one to look around at one's fellow humans and resolve to do better--and yes, maybe even to serve them.

Mead is correct, I think, in that our society currently train people to believe that what what they've attained, they've attained almost solely through their own efforts. He lays this at the feet of non-religious "progressive meritocrats," but that's (at the very least) an incomplete answer. The enduring faddishness of Ayn Rand-style "I Am The Master of My Destiny, And All You Puny Pukes Merely Hold Me Down" thinking hasn't restricted itself to Objectivists and their God-denying ilk; it's spread more broadly into the half of the country that thinks of itself conservative, to a great many self-professed Christians who seem, these days, to think that to give a man a fish and to teach a man to fish are both contemptible acts.

So what we need is a revival of humility, I think; if religiosity is a necessary component for some people to achieve that, good for them, but I don't see that as necessary overall. And we need to find a way to help people think about "public service" in such a way that the term doesn't drip with irony when heard by the great mass of Americans. The basis for all of this is recognizing the fragility of our good fortune, seeing it (at least partly) as a blessing instead of a boast. Even if they might squirm at the term "blessing," there's no reason atheists and agnostics shouldn't help lead that project.

Netflix Queue: 'Let The Bullets Fly'

What a bizarre movie: I'm still scraping my thoughts together about this, but: It's a cross between a gangster film and a Shakespeare mistaken-identity farce, featuring about 13 or so twists and double crosses along the way. It kept doing things that I completely did not expect it to do: For example, Chow Yun-Fat played the villain with queeny ostentation. So I'm going to have to watch it again.

Why I'm still grumpy about National Review and the false 'Obama in Paris' story

My piece for The Philly Post, documenting how and why a good number of Republicans believe that Barack Obama is spending today--July 4--raising campaign cash, had a good run this week: Mentions at New York Magazine, Slate, and last night on the Rachel Maddow show. Both NY Mag and the Maddow show featured a tweet from Andrew McCarthy acknowledging he'd made a mistake.

But that's not quite good enough for me.

Maybe it's the old newspaper guy in me, but I think you should acknowledge and correct and error in the venue that you made it. And in this digital era, you should acknowledge and correct and error by noting it on the very post you made it.

As of the morning of July 4, Andrew McCarthy's original, incorrect post remains uncorrected.

So it's fine he tweeted his correction--it means he's not totally disengaged from the truth. But leaving the original post uncorrected means that it'll sit there, evidence for any activist who Googles it a year from now to make the case that President Obama really hates his country. I can only hope that the Googler notices all the related pieces saying "No, this isn't true." But McCarthy and NRO really should be saying that, too, in the venue where they committed the error. That they don't says something to me, at the very least, about NRO's editorial standards.

The New York Times normalizes John Yoo

Perhaps this is my bugaboo, but I cannot stand the way the New York Times mentions torture advocate John Yoo this morning. My problem? They don't mention the torture advocacy. And it seems relevant.

Why? Because the mention comes in a story about how conservatives are angry with Chief Justice John Roberts' vote on the Affordable Care Act.

By Saturday, John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer, was suggesting in The Wall Street Journal that there had been a catastrophic vetting failure in 2005 when the administration was considering Chief Justice Roberts’s nomination. 

“If a Republican is elected president,” said Professor Yoo, who teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley, “he will have to be more careful than the last.”

But Yoo isn't just a "former Bush administration lawyer" who "teaches law" at Berkeley. He's the lawyer who campaigned for an exceptionally expansive reading of the president's commander-in-chief duties under the Constitution—opening the legal gate to torture, yes, but also eavesdropping on Americans, suspending the First Amendment and crushing the testicles of innocent children.

So he's not just another conservative angry about expanded government powers. He's a conservative who provided the paperwork for the scariest expansions of federal power in the last decade—and that deserves a footnote of some sort every damn time he's quoted protesting government overreach. What's more likely to threaten your liberty: A president who can detain, torture, and silence you? Or one who, with the cooperation of Congress, tries to expand access to health care?

Yoo deserves to be a pariah, frankly. But since he's not, New York Times, is it too much to ask that you note the dissonance when quoting him? He's not just another Obama Administration critic.

'Liberals Against Labor Unions'

That’s the title of a very short essay I have in the July issue of Philadelphia Magazine. (It’s not online, that I can find, but it’s on newsstands now.) It’s a piece I fear will cost me a few friends in this town--and possibly beyond--and so I hesitated to write it. I don’t like making my friends mad!

But: I wrote it. And I stand by it. Now I’d like to elaborate.

The central point of the essay is that the city’s public labor unions--in virtually every sector of public governance--contribute to the sclerotic can’t-do-much-but-do-it-expensively-and-slowly-but-intrusively nature of Philadelphia governance. Let’s face it: Governance in this city sucks. They’re not the only culprits, but mostly public unions appear to act as constituencies that are owed favors and pandering instead of partners in making the city better.

It hurts to write that, because I believe it’s not a coincidence that the decline of unionization in America has coincided with stagnating middle class wages. And I don’t think you forfeit your right to seek a better life just because you go into public service.

But...

Here’s a good place to go back and examine one’s underlying principles. Conservatives are for small, limited government. They tend to believe--or at least, say--that liberals are for big government, possibly for its own sake. I’ve never felt that way, personally. But I do want government to do stuff--to provide infrastructure, education, policing, and a safety net for those who are unemployed, sick, or old, a regulatory framework to protect us from unnecessary harm--so that we as citizens are freed to make the most of our gifts and resources. Bigger government is a byproduct of that, but it’s not the goal.

The thing is: I think conservatives are right to some extent that a bigger government is one that’s more likely to reach into your life in ways that are burdensome instead of helpful. So liberals (like me) who advocate for doing all these things should be at the forefront of making sure they’re done well, so that the burden is more than offset by the benefits. And when they’re not done well, we have to examine where the fault lies.

In Philadelphia, there are many reasons that governance is so sclerotic. The Republican Party gave up being competitive a long time ago, letting Democrats get fat and happy in their mediocrity. Huge chunks of the civil service are patronage machines aimed at delivering jobs to allies instead of services to citizens. Our recent mayors have either been (let’s be honest here) shady or (in the case of the current occupant) surprisingly ineffective at working the levers of power. L&I could get its own paragraph here.

But Philadelphia’s public unions also, from what I can see, carry a measure of responsibility. So we have to deal with the fact that their pensions currently outstrip our ability to pay for them; we have to deal with the apparent disregard they have for the citizens they serve; we have to deal with how they often seem to stand in the way of reforming government for fear of losing jobs.

(One thing: My piece was written and in the editor’s hands long before the school district’s blue-collar workers offered $20 million in givebacks to save jobs. Knowing that would’ve tempered how I wrote the original piece, admittedly. But I think the long-term trends are nonetheless clear.)

I am not Scott Walker. I am not a Republican. I don’t want to end public unions. (Neither does Walker, exactly; remember, that police unions were exempted from his Wisconsin crackdown, which means the moves there have been about consolidating Republican power rather than defending some small-government principle.) I want them to do better.

Living in Philadelphia has made me both more and less sympathetic to my libertarian-leaning friends. I’m not sure this (or any big city) can survive without a strong central government. But I also see how such a government, when it’s ossified and not-at-all nimble, makes the city a worse place to live. Right now, Philadelphia’s government makes this city a worse place to live for many of us who simply want to live and earn a living here. The public unions are part of the reason why. If those of us who are their natural allies acknowledge this, we can help them be part of fixing the problem.