IT IS TIME TO STAND UP FOR OUR WORKING POOR

         I know a woman in her 50s who works at a local McDonalds along with several other middle aged employees.  She has been employed there for 8 years and makes $8.75 an hour.  Several weeks ago she called me in tears asking for advice.  She never misses work and was faced with a crisis when her landlord decided to empty the building of his month to month tenants and sell the property.  She was afraid that if she left her rented “room” and went to work she would be locked out and forfeit her possessions.

         There is a cultural in Washington of the working poor that gets little attention from the rest of us.  They are employed as dishwashers at W&J, wait staff at the chain restaurants, stockers at Shop & Save and clerks at Good Will.  Out of sight, out of mind, they are washing our windows, cleaning our gutters, mowing our lawns, watching our young children in child care and changing bed pans at the hospital and nursing homes.

          Many have physical and/or mental impediments that limit their work capabilities, without qualifying them for SSI or SSD.  Others are single parents unable to afford higher education or trade school.  For almost all the working poor every dollar in income is accounted for before the next paycheck arrives.  With access to high interest credit cards and pay day lending services, many fall into debt.

         Those of us with liberal views often ask ourselves: why doesn’t this permanent underclass, which according to the Center for Poverty Research total an estimated 11 million Americans across the country, rise up and demand better wages?  Why aren’t they marching and protesting for more of the cradle to grave benefits that are prevalent in Europe?  Why don’t they insist that the wealthy pay more in taxes?

         Upon reflection and research, several answers spring to the surface.  First, unlike the days of labor organization in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, when farmers and factory workers fought for economic and social reform, today’s working poor are more isolated, politically apathetic, and have little thought for the future beyond the next paycheck.  Transportation and unexpected expenses take precedence over activisim.  Second, extended families to provide assistance and encouragement are nonexistent.  Third, despite the hardships and unlike their European counterparts, many are of the view that anyone can win the American lottery and step up to a life of wealth and leisure with a bit of luck and elbow grease.

         I am convinced that the working poor, who make up only 23% of all the people classified as poor in this country, are the true forgotten Americans. The inequality debate is really about them. They face economic and social hardships to remain employed and raise a family that are difficult for the rest of us to imagine.

          That is why I will continue to advocate for a living wage and increased benefits for this politically underserved population.  The working poor have a miniscule safety net and no time or resources to fight back on their own.

        

          

HOPE NOT DISGRACE

         With the sentencing of former Washington County judge Paul Pozonsky, many citizens will give a collective sigh of relief.  It is finally over. Of course there will be debate over the length and type of incarceration and whether the judge was impaired while on the bench, but now the courthouse can return to a semblance of normalcy.

         For me and many others in the recovery community the Pozonsky story is just beginning. Those of us who have suffered through the embarrassment, the loss of the work we loved, the loss of our family’s trust and support, divorce, the loss of income and yes even incarceration, know all too well what Mr. Pozonsky is going through.  We have experienced the horror of alcohol and drug addiction sending us to the bottom of the longest chute in life’s never ending game of chutes and ladders.  The next ladder often looked impossible to climb.

         For those of us in recovery, the use of alcohol and drugs often  began as a social attitude adjustment, moved on to a coping mechanism and ended in a train wreck as an uncontrollable urge to obtain and consume our drug of choice.  Our bodies physically mutated as the addiction progressed.  There is no changing a pickle back into a cucumber.  The only cure is to not use the very substance that our physical and subconscious minds cried out for as the answer to all our problems.

         Those of us who have been on the journey of recovery see Mr. Pozonsky as an example of hope, not of disgrace.  Twelve step programs will welcome him with open arms.  Not only has he earned his way into the recovery fellowships, his story will reinforce the message that addiction affects all professions and segments of society.  His struggle for sobriety will help many others in their struggle.  Eventually, Mr Pozonsky will come to know what many of us have witnessed.  Our greatest failures and consequences, were actually our greatest blessings because these crash and burn events lead us to a life of sobriety. 

         The recovery journey is not without setbacks and disappointments.  For those who endure, there is a life on the other side of the wreckage, a good life.  I hope that Mr. Pozonsky endures and finds it.

        

         

IT IS TIME FOR SOUTHPOINTE TO RETURN TO EARTH

         Southpointe did not have a good week following the Independence Day holiday weekend.  This celestial portion of Washington County normally goes about its business of making money and ignoring the rest of us.  However last Monday morning the Wall Street Journal featured a front page piece of investigative reporting that revealed apparent incestuous business practices between one of Southpointe’s principal founders, Rodney Piatt and one of its largest tenants, the pharmaceutical company, Mylan NV.

          A large real estate transaction and other activities were not disclosed to shareholders.  Mr. Piatt wears many hats in and around Southpointe I and II including primary developer, owner of the Southpointe Golf Course and Vice Chairman, Independent Director at Mylan.  While the land deal at Southpointe II for the new Mylan headquarters may not have provided a financial windfall for Mr. Piatt, it certainly did not pass the smell test for good corporate governance.

         The story had legs and made its way onto the front page of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and Pittsburgh Tribune on Tuesday and onto the front page of the Observer Reporter last Wednesday. Just as this story was dying down, the OR came back on Sunday with a five column front page story on the economic impact of Southpointe. 

         While it cannot be denied that both phases of Southpointe have sparked economic development, not everyone is happy.  There is a sense that older communities in Washington County are crumbling, while Southpointe receives all the perks.  Moreover, Southpointe appears to benefit Corporations and high society, leaving the rest of us to admire from afar.

         For those who have seen the movie Elysium, Southpointe reminds me of this out of reach paradise.  The movie depicts a large “garden of Eden” space station that orbits above the planet.  Elysium is the home of the wealthy and the well connected. The 99% left behind on mother earth are forced into crime and poverty with little chance for advancement and no cure for disease.  The space taxis do not run from earth to Elysium.

         The differences in the wealth and privilege of Southpointe and the economic challenges in the rest of the County are certainly striking.  I would like to offer a solution to ease the guilt of the real estate developers, 300 business entities, 9,000 employees and numerous residents who live there.

          Earmark a parcel of land at Southpointe for a Washington County Cultural Center.  Build a home for the Washington Symphony Orchestra, the community choirs and the County plays and musical productions.  Leave room for a satellite City Mission facility or drug and alcohol rehab.  With such projects, Southpointe would return to earth and feel like a sharing partner with the County, not an over the moon Elysium.

POLITICAL ORDER AND POLITICAL DECAY

          The Observer Reporter opinion page has recently plunged into the national debate over whether President Obama is the victim or the aggressor when it comes to obstructionism.  Among Tea Party cries for the need to: “take back our country”, is a similar hotly contested topic:  whether the President has abused his constitutional powers on the one hand or has been hamstrung by Congress on the other.

          Now we have added more fuel for the fire, following the Supreme Court decisions upholding the Affordable Care Act and striking down State objections to gay marriage. Our highest court is under attack for ignoring its constitutional role.  Conservatives are lamenting that the court has tossed aside its duties as umpire and picked up a bat to hit home runs for leftist causes.

         All of my instincts want me to jump into this ideological free-for-all and send out my own salvo of rhetoric.  Instead, I will take a deep breath, stand back, keep my emotions in check and take a more leveled approach.  I will  start from the premise that a shallow debate that fist pounds the constitution and screams for justice every time a decision goes against a particular ideology or interest group, is not helpful. After all, democracy based on pluralism is not a zero sum game.  Politics by definition is the art of compromise.  The Constitution is similar to the world’s holy books in that its words and the founders’ intent can be interpreted to fit any number of positions.

         Secondly, my approach will assume that indeed something is rotten in the state of Denmark and that American democracy requires the attention of those with “eyes wide open”, conservatives and liberals alike.  My analysis will not be original.  Francis Fukuyama, the Stanford Professor and leading political scientist on political order and political decay has already done the heavy lifting.  His recent two book opus on this subject will be a lode star on the subject for decades to come.  Of special interest for this discussion is his essay adapted from book two: America in Decay, The Sources of Political Dysfunction (foreignaffairs.com August 18, 2014.)

          While Mr. Fukuyama is a conservative by nature, I find little to argue with, when he summarizes the chronic institutional problems facing American democracy, including the following:

·      Political decay can afflict any type of political system, authoritarian or democratic.

·      A combination of intellectual rigidity and the power of entrenched political actors is now preventing our political institutions from being reformed.

·      Economic winners seek to convert their wealth into unequal political influence.

·      While interest groups have lost their ability to corrupt legislators through bribery, they continue to exercise influence way out of proportion to their place in society.

·       Congress has fallen to such low levels of popularity because tea party republicans and liberal democrats alike believe interest groups are exercising undue political influence.

·      American democracy does not permit the elected executive branch to hash out conflicts in regulatory or social policy, the norm in parliamentary style western governments.

·      The Federal Court system, rather than a check and balance within government has evolved into a system that expands the regulatory and social landscape

·       In the United States, these regulatory and social battles are fought through formal litigation, with enormous costs, inefficiencies and confusion.

·      The U.S. constitution protects individual liberties through a complex system of checks and balances that were deliberately designed by the founders to constrain the power of the state. 

·      Unfortunately, because of redundancy between Federal branches of government and between State and Federal agencies, there is lack of accountability and different parts of government are easily able to block one another.

·      American democracy is stuck in a “vetocracy” where collective action is almost impossible and nothing gets done.

·      The decay of American politics will continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize it into action.

          While the above does not totally capture the Fukuyama thesis, it captures the essence.  There will be those who disagree with some of his conclusions.  The debate he inspires is impossible to ignore.

           The problems facing our American constitutional republic are deep and complicated. Chastising individual actors, including the President, for their actions or failure to act will not address the issues and in fact will reinforce the problem.  The partisan cry to “take back our country”, when the other party is in the White House, must be replaced with a bi-partisan resolve to repair our democratic political system for the generations to come.

           As clearly chronicled by Mr. Fukuyama in his two books, many robust societies have not survived political dysfunction.  He has thrown down the gauntlet and it is up to the clear minded and the wise, with no axe to grind, to find a solution.

THE LEGACY OF CHARLEST

         

         Of all the tragic events that have occurred in my lifetime, I can think of none that is more surreal or that has carried the symbolism or power to change the status quo as has the recent mass killings in Charleston, South Carolina.  The juxtaposition of a young man, boiling with racial hatred sitting with peaceful churchgoers, at a mid week bible study in one the oldest African American Churches in our country is a powerful vision of much that is good and terrible in America.  But the killings did not take place in just any community; Charleston is a small town with the nation’s greatest example of institutional oppression, the old slave market, a few blocks away from the church. A few more blocks brings one to the location of the cannon battery that demolished the Federal Fort Sumter, started the Civil War and tore the country apart, all to preserve slavery.

         While the smiles and good nature of the parishioners almost swayed the killer from his act of indiscriminate carnage, in the end, no kindness could stay his “assassin’s veto”, an attempt to reverse our progress in civil rights and racial equality. This modern day Charles Manson, both who sought to ignite a race war through the murder of innocents, has accomplished just the opposite. No riots, no righteous anger, no lame justifications.  Instead, forgiveness, soul searching and a ground swell of bi-partisan, color blind support.

          Today, African Americans are more empowered than ever to demand unconditional acceptance after yet another unimaginable sacrifice. Following this horror, Caucasian Americans are more likely to give minorities the no strings attached, equal seat at the table that will finally start a new chapter in our history.  The slow march continues: gender equality, sexual equality and now a step closer to racial equality.

         No American should believe that removing the rebel flags and statutory of segregation and suppression from public grounds will be the end of it.  The election of Barack Obama was transformative from the pinnacle of government.  Our youngest Americans and future leaders have grown up knowing only a black President.  The killings in Charleston will be transformative through the nation’s town councils, churches, classrooms and family discussions. The JFK assassination changed our parents, the Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and Kent State killings changed my generation and Charleston will have a similar impact on this youngest generation as they shape their own version of the American dream.

WHY DO WE TRUST THE TECHNICIANS TO DO THE RIGHT THING?

         Some time ago, the then President Judge of Washington County scheduled a seminar to introduce the new digital electronic system, designed to replace stenographers in the courtroom, to the lawyers.  To explain the bells and whistles of the installation she invited a technician from Beaver County, where the same system was in use, to discuss the Beaver County experience.  It was discovered during the presentation that technicians sitting in the control room to monitor the system could overhear conversations in the courtrooms even when the system was not recording, an operational detail not known by the lawyers or even the judges.  When the Beaver technician was asked about this, his incredulous response was: “well when it comes to protecting privileged information we are not permitted to hear, obviously you have to trust us to do the right thing.”

         I keep thinking of this response from a technician, operating under little legal or administrative oversight, as our country continues its post 9/11 journey into the new age of high tech surveillance.  When it comes to  reviewing constitutionally protected personal data, who do we trust to do the right thing?  What are the actual parameters of the surveillance that would differentiate between legal civil disobedience and illegal terrorism?  What is the screening process and when are the hits on innocent citizens deleted? Are the nuts and bolts of American national security policy kept secret from us for protection, or to keep illegal conduct from coming to light? If neither the so called war on terror nor the Patriot Act affects most of us, should we even care, as long as security concerns are limited to information and do not take away our right to bear arms.

         Surveillance technology is expanding at breakneck speed.   Constructing a real time representation of the world, no doubt the ultimate goal of the NSA and other security organizations, requires a large and growing amount of data (big data) and a system to give meaning to the data (algorithms).  Big data has involved the universal collection of phone and computer records for some time. As reported in a recent Foreign Affairs article, The Violence of Algorithms, Taylor Owen, 5/25/15, data collection is now also enhanced by:  “a network of 100 toaster sized satellites that will take daily high resolution images of everywhere on earth. The goal is to launch thousands- a persistent real time surveillance tool.” Regarding algorithms the author points out: “If they (algorithms) are biased, flawed, or based on incorrect data, then the human will be just as wrong as the machine.”

         So even the technician who means well may make bad choices and come down on the wrong side of our civil liberties if an algorithm exposes an innocent individual. Consider the farmer in Iowa who plugs the word “Isis” into Google (another algorithm) to learn more about the organization because his son is doing humanitarian work in the Mid East.  The same day, big data picks up an e-mail conversation with his son; “we need to eliminate all the weeds and buy a half ton of nitrates for next year’s crops.”  This pattern matches a well thought out terrorist algorithm and all of the farmer’s conversations, bank statements and travel plans are monitored and read by a young technician in Alexandria Virginia.  Should the farmer just “trust him” to do the right thing?

         How about the technician who is working for an executive who does not mean well?  It was not that long ago that Richard Nixon and J Edgar Hoover sought to gain as much information as possible about their perceived enemies through any means possible.  Would anyone feel comfortable with these new technologies in their hands?

          Some are not happy with this new reality.  It has been reported that in Germany, as troublesome as the East German Stasi and Soviet KGB were during the cold war, the German government felt more secure from spying in the past than during the recent surveillance intrusions from their allies, the Americans.

                  Our own citizens do not seem to have the same doubts or concerns as new and more invasive spy techniques are revealed. Why are we willing to give up protected information concerning our private lives to technicians in secret control rooms on the slim chance of avoiding an Islamist plot?

          I believe several factors are in play. First, many buy into the claim that we are at war and believe it is patriotic to cooperate since we have  “nothing to hide”.  Second, the pervasive use of social media has degraded privacy concerns and surveillance is often viewed as harmless national data sharing.  Third, everyone gets to keep their firearms, no matter how onerous the data collection.

         There is great irony in the fact that in dangerous times to the homeland, gun ownership is not restricted. We insist that we be permitted to keep unfettered, the one instrumentality that causes a thousand times more carnage than terrorism. Even knowing that a bad guy is more likely to use a gun against an innocent rather than blown him/her up, firearms get a pass.  It remains an open question whether more gun restriction and less surveillance would lower the number of attacks inspired by radical ideologies.

         In the United States, the right to bear arms is sacrosanct and this is not about to change until fiscal conservatives realize that curtailing guns will save millions in social welfare and make us safer. In the mean time, If big brother gets out of hand with this surveillance stuff, we can always shoot him.

SECOND POT OF COFFEE THOUGHTS

·      How did the comic books we hid from our parents warp into an 8 billion dollar (and counting) business at the movie theaters and toy stores?

·      It seems that the empty store fronts are growing in Washington and that the new businesses that do open are marginal.  Why not give a developer whatever incentives it takes to start a renovation project in the City.

·      With the recent social acceptance of expanded health care, gay rights and the apparent death knell of capital punishment, can meaningful gun control laws be far behind?

·      Why do I still prefer a hard cover book at twice the price to the same new read on my kindle?

·      Wash Arts is a remarkable community resource.  If you can teach a class in the creative arts, call the office.  When your program is set up, enthusiastic students will follow.

·      The millennial generation is finally approaching the age of home buying, marriage and child rearing.  Adjust your stock portfolio accordingly.

·      The enhanced schedule and funding for the Whiskey Rebellion Festival and the farmers market will continue to bring seasonal foot traffic to the City of Washington. This is not enough for capital intensive business owners to set up shop.  They need a year round commitment from the County to sell the City.

·      A Joe Sestak victory to replace Senator Pat Toomey in 2016 would not only be of great importance to those who want to elect a thoughtful liberal in Pennsylvania, it would also be a crucial win for the democrats to retake the Senate.

·       What do members of Congress, hedge fund operators and foreign dictators have in common?  All three are held in low esteem, do little for the common good and use their positions to accumulate undeserved wealth.