ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE MAYOR

In my view, there has not been a great deal of press coverage concerning Washington Mayor, Brenda Davis during the past year.  This would, no doubt, be considered good news for the Mayor because the public is most interested in missteps and gaffes and not the day to day administration of city government.  On the other hand, Ms. Davis deserves hardy congratulations for her body of work and public encouragement for the difficult decisions yet to come during her tenure as Mayor.

          Recently I had the opportunity to attend a meeting with the Mayor, in my role as a representative for Wash Arts.  We were seeking help and advice as we worked to get back on our feet.  Mayor Davis struck me as living and breathing her position as Mayor.  She has grown from “a lady in the room” to a presence, sure of herself and her role in the community.  Her knowledge of municipal law and suggestions on how to improve the relationship between Wash Arts and the City were impressive.

          Of the four stages that a new public official must pass through: getting elected; learning the bureaucracy; performing her daily functions; and planning for the future, Mayor Davis has clearly accomplished the first three.  How she handles the fourth will determine whether she will be remembered as a good Mayor or a great one.

City-County cooperation on cost sharing (municipal services) and cost saving (procurement of supplies) must be pushed by the City.  Municipal contracts must be negotiated that are reasonable and respect the new realities of pensions and health insurance.  The unique features of the City of Washington in terms of location, history, and opportunity must be marketed.  Last of all Washington County is undergoing rapid and significant change.  The City must demand its fair share of the economic expansion and not be left behind.

All of us living in or near the City can help the Mayor achieve these goals.  We must understand the issues and offer our support. Mayor Davis is the right official for the job and will succeed if we have her back.

THE CHALLENGE OF INEQUALITY

 

The presenter at the Peters Town Hall Speaker Series, Ms. Zanny Minton Beddoes, gave an over the moon talk on Tuesday, December 3.  As an editor for the Economist, she took her audience around the world, in explaining the state and interconnectivity of the international economy.  Being British and working for a British publication, she could step back from the myopic view of the American press and place world economic events in context.  If a transcript of her talk is available I would urge anyone interested in world events to read it.

Ms. Minton Beddoes ended her lecture by explaining the social forces she believes will shape the future and gave us her acronym: “dead drunk under the influence”.  She uses this ominous phrase to help remember her four horseman of social change: debt, demographics, unemployment and inequality.

She believes that debt is not an immediate problem for the large western nations, including the United States, but remains the scourge of Southern Europe.  On demographics and aging populations, she reminded the audience that more elderly Asians are in diapers than are infants.  On unemployment, she believes the number of young unemployed in Southern Europe and the Mid East could easily lead to political instability.

It was Ms. Minton Beddoes comments on inequality that most interested me.  She believes this may be the greatest problem facing our country.  She presented statistical evidence that the United States has regressed back to the gilded age of the robber barons when it comes to income inequality.  She is concerned that America’s urban areas will be divide between the “haves” in walled off splendor and the “have nots” with substandard housing, education and social programs.

Ironically, the day after the above lecture was given President Obama made inequality a major focal point for the remainder of his term in office.  He gave a speech, agreeing with Ms. Minton Beddoes, that the rapidly growing deficit of opportunity is a bigger threat than the fiscal deficit.  The President stated: “The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed” and that Americans should be offended that a child born into poverty has such a hard time escaping it. 

Hopefully the Republican Party will not seize on this policy initiative to call the President a socialist (or worse). His words echo the recent views of Pope Francis and other world leaders and could form the basis for political resolve on both sides of the political aisle.  In this holiday season, how could anyone disagree that each child who goes to bed hungry or is denied a good education or the elderly homeless person who dies from exposure is a more important story than the stock market results?  But the daily news cycle shows the opposite to be the case. 

The President has placed inequality at the front of the news cycle.  Now is the time to press ahead and to propose positive policy initiatives.  People’s frustrations with the “do nothing Congress” could quickly be reversed by attacking head on the frustrations that many citizens encounter in not being able to make ends meet, no matter how hard they work.  He can begin by vetoing any reduction in food stamp allotment and working to replace reductions in important social programs cut by the automatic sequester last year.

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE POLICE DEBATE

I found the public meeting on Monday evening involving the future of the East Washington police force to be a fascinating display of town hall democracy in action, with a rousing debate on both sides of the issue.  The citizens who attended on this blustery night were overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the police force.  The mayor and several council members supported the citizenry.  Other council members believed that a study recommending the outsourcing of the police function to the City of Washington deserved consideration.

The discussion centered on the tradeoff between keeping a more visible police presence that is manned by part time, underpaid police officers with minimal supervision versus replacing it with a less visible police presence manned by a full time, better paid and better equipped police force. While I really do not have a dog in this fight, and see merits to both positions, I came away from the meeting with several thoughts I would like to share. 

First, I think it is important to remember that the part time, underpaid and less supervised model is arguably what led to the serious problems which necessitated the study in the first place. Changes are clearly in order to avoid similar occurrences.  These changes could certainly include keeping the police department in place.  One need look no further than Pittsburgh for an example of a large police department with inadequate accountability.  Size alone is not the issue.

 Unfortunately while there was discussion and individual testimonials, at the meeting, to support the premise that “more boots on the ground” on East Washington’s streets have lowered the crime rate compared to comparable communities that have outsourced this function, no data was presented to validate this view.  It would also be helpful to know how many Pennsylvania communities, similar to East Washington, maintain their own police departments.

Second is the notion that East Washington would lose its identity if it no longer has a dedicated police department.  In my experience this is not a foregone conclusion.  I have lived in Blackridge, in eastern Allegheny County which takes great pride in not being Churchill, Penn Hills and certainly not Wilkinsburg (even though the area is made up of all three).  Blackridge maintains its identity through a thriving Civic Association which holds activities all year long to build a sense of community.

 Another example is Buena Vista, a community in Elizabeth Township, Allegheny County.  The residents here keep their separate identity and are not known as residents from Elizabeth and certainly not from McKeesport.  Neither of these communities, nor many others across the State, sacrifice their uniqueness in the absence of a dedicated police force.

With our without a police department, municipal services will continue to get more expensive over time.  If East Washington is compelled to hire full time police officers in order to address administrative shortfalls and problems from the past, then salary, pension and medical insurance costs will grow quickly and consume more of the budget.

I believe that in the near future, increased municipal cost sharing between all Pennsylvania counties and their urban centers and between cities and their smaller neighbors will be unavoidable.  For the present, East Washington should carefully consider the options in balancing cost, efficiency and safety.  Monday’s meeting was a transparent step in that direction.

 

 

 

WHY BUY INSURANCE YOU DON’T NEED?

How do you convince young people to buy medical insurance that they do not need?  Aside from a faulty roll out of the automated system, this appears to be the conundrum of health care reform.  Young adults are not enthusiastic to save universal health care which offers no immediate advantage, when the powers that be are doing nothing to save them. 

The truth is that baby boomers entering retirement have already left their children an economy that cannot provide meaningful employment and saddled them with national debt beyond comprehension.  Now young people are being asked to be the first in line to prop up the health care system for the benefit of older and poorer Americans.  It seems like a case of adding insult to injury.

I believe there is a realistic solution to this dilemma that will quickly convince our young healthy citizens to buy into and come to embrace this needed reform.  My view is that young people do not object to the goals of universal health care, they object to the perception of unequal sacrifice and cost sharing. We need to demonstrate that progressive social and economic advances work both ways.  We must develop new programs to relieve young Americans of their educational loans, make it easier to obtain a first mortgage and subsidize jobs programs with additional training for the new economy.  In the health care area, offer young adults subsidized memberships to health clubs and wellness centers as an immediate benefit for their participation in the Affordable Care Act.  

 Lastly, we must raise taxes on older Americans so that boomers are part of the solution.  In short, make our young adults relevant again as the economy springs back to life.  Make it clear that we are all in this experiment of democratic socialism together.

 Once it is established that the goal is to help prepare young Americans for their generation to take over and not simply to drain them of resources to support their elders, the cost of universal health care will not seem so oppressive.  Looking backward, a few years from now, every young person will know someone who got sick unexpectedly and was helped by the insurance.  Eventually the young will get older and realize that to perpetuate lower cost medical care they need their children to participate in the program.  Healthcare reform will be viewed in the same vein as other entitlement programs, like social security.

In this age of social media our young people understand the concept that the more people that participate in an activity, the better the outcome.  Think of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  This culture of social inclusion and expansion must be exploited in explaining universal healthcare to our young.  After all, it was Steve Jobs and other tech entrepreneurs who convinced so many young Americans to buy products and services that they really did not need and changed the world.  In a short time our youth could not live without their smart phones and social networking.

The same result is possible with health insurance. Young adults will come to appreciate regular medical checkups and targeted programs to keep them healthy.  All Americans will be better off at a lower cost as a result.

TOO CLEAN FOR OUR OWN HEALTH ?

 

At lunch with my Wife and a few of her friends, the topic turned to the need for vigilant hand washing and latex glove changing when dealing with the outside world.  Since they were all retired elementary school teachers who spent decades with snotty nosed and coughing young children, this was not such a surprise.  Still, I could not stop thinking of a recent photograph I had seen of a healthy and chubby toddler from Mongolia, sitting on the dirt floor of his parent’s Yurt. Raised on unpasteurized milk and eating flecks of dirt and an occasional bug off the floor, there is an excellent chance this happy child will have a strong immune system and live well past 100, like many others in his country.

          Are we becoming too clean for our own health?  As a nation that spends billions on personal hygiene products, are we doing more harm than good?  What steps should we be taking to boost the immune systems of our young children?

          A recent study from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests we do indeed have a problem.  The study found that among our children there is a 50% increase in food allergies and a 69% increase in skin allergies since the late 1990’s.  The most popular theory is the “hygiene hypothesis” which believes that exposure to germs and parasites in early childhood may prevent the body from developing certain allergies.

          If there is in fact a downside to America’s culture of disinfection and overuse of antibiotics, there is also a no brainer response.  Let kids be kids and permit common sense exposure to our “dirty environment.” A visit down to the farm stepping in manure and hugging goats would not hurt. Every surface in the home does not need to be as sterile as an operating room.  The occasional cold does not require massive medical intervention.  In short, moderation is much healthier than an all out assault on the germs that share our world.  And a lot more fun.

         

ELECTED OFFICIALS ARE USING GREED AND FEAR TO STAY IN OFFICE

 

The degree to which our elected officials will avoid change and use greed and fear to manipulate the electorate has never been so obvious or so egregious.  What is most unfortunate is that these tactics can only work when citizens do not take the time to understand the issues in play or when they permit their desire for short term gratification to overcome any long term gain.

 Elected officials know what the morally correct and/or better long term solutions are but they still continually chose to encourage the misinformation that will keep things as they always were.  There is simply no easier path to reelection than to support and encourage the greed and fear of the electorate.  Greed and Fear are much easier to promote than the politics of long term change for the better.  I will give three examples of this unsettling trend, all of which are in the news and on our minds.

          My first example is the reassessment debate which has finally come to a forced legal resolution in Washington County.  Never have I seen elected officials play on the greed and fear of the electorate with more success.  It is an easy game when such officials have unpopular school districts and the Courts as their foil.  Taxpayers (who are also voters) hate property taxes to begin with.  They see their younger neighbors, with children and in smaller homes getting all the benefits from property taxes while they pay the larger tax burden.  They see new schools or old ones with enhanced facilities being built with little pay back for them.  They know that their assessments are too low but are unwilling to consider that they may not be paying their fair share.  Most of all, they fear a large increase in their property tax bill and believe that taking no action is in their best interest.

On the other hand, our elected officials know the truth about reassessments but will never admit it in public.  They know that a higher assessment does not necessarily mean a higher tax bill until the new median is calculated and the appropriate millage set by each school district.  They know that under existing law and with further actions officals can take, reassessment will not produce unjustified windfalls for school districts. They know that the poorer residents of Washington County living in over assessed communities are paying more than their fair share.  They know that property owners who end up paying higher taxes after reassessment should thank their officials for unfairly saving them money over the last two decades while those with reassessed lower tax bills should be mad as hell for incurring years of unwarranted expense.  They know that most property owners will end up paying the same in property taxes once all the post assessment calculations and adjustments are completed.

Of course, the real issue that should be debated is the use of property taxes to fund public education, when other alternatives are available.  But here again, the public officials know that replacing property taxes is a non starter at the State level.  Better to pander to the greed and fear of your misinformed voters and make a bad system even worse and more expensive to rectify.  Better to fight reassessment until forced to take action under threat of legal contempt and sanctions.  The thankful voters will be sure to pull the lever of the politician who supports greed and fear at the next election.

The second example is the much maligned Affordable care Act also known as Obamacare.  The Republican scare tactics feeding on the greed and fear of the electorate has been ramped up as the start date approached on October first.  Socialism!  Death Panels! A jobs killer!  Americans do not want it!

Again, our elected Republican officials know the truth, but will not share it with the voters.  They know that most of the ideas for the Health Care Bill came from conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.  They know that the law passed muster in the conservative leaning Supreme Court.  They know that no program of this size can be perfect and that there will be revisions as the roll out continues.  They know that republican obstructionism at the state level only makes it harder to implement the law and to save money.

Unfortunately, getting elected trumps responsible leadership.  Stubbornly fighting the new law while invoking greed and fear will get republicans reelected.  Working on how to improve healthcare will not.

Lastly, let us consider the stock market (where greed and fear have always been the order of the day) and self directed retirement funds.  In this case it is the liberals who have promulgated the greed and fear. 

The wise investor, who follows the advice of Warren Buffet and others who have made their mark, knows that the time to buy financial products is when fear is prevalent and the time to sell is when run away greed has created valuation bubbles, as in 2000 and 2007.  The average middle class investor, who directs his own retirement account, tends to do exactly the opposite.

 Progressive pundits are wrong in blaming financial policy, implemented to save the banks and corporate America from the 2007 crash, for degrading the working middle class in America.  In essence they argue that the common man must fear the greedy capitalists who are building empires on top of their own broken dreams.  In fact, the working middle class have harmed themselves, by greedily buying up financial instruments at the top of financial bubbles and selling their ravaged holdings, out of abject fear, at the bottom.  Those individuals who did not sell at the bottom and who simply rode out the sell-off and maintained diversified, rebalanced index funds since the crash would be well ahead on their retirement accounts.  While this approach requires discipline, it is not difficult to perform.

           Ignoring the much needed debate on the “lack of investment skill” among middle class Americans and replacing it with the more flamboyant greed and fear based argument that present economic policy is: “saving the big guys at the expense of the little guy” is doing the middle class a grave disservice. With the financial markets, the game is fear and greed and either the middle class must learn to play by the rules, or retirement savings must be governed by a safer passive annuity based system.  The markets are what they are.  Maybe Uncle Joe is never going to be able to invest like Goldman Sacks, but he can certainly buy stock in Goldman Sacks.

          These three examples, and there are many others, highlight how politicians from all levels and both parties stay in office by encouraging the greed and fear of the electorate, rather than acting as leaders and seeking long term solutions.  Of the many possible explanations for this trend, short term election cycles are certainly high on the list.  If election cycles were twice as long and limited to one term, our elected officials might actually get down to solving problems rather than seeking reelection.

CELEBRATIONS BRING US CLOSER TOGETHER

 

With great satisfaction the eminent elder statesman at our lunch table pulled out the program from the wedding reception he had attended the previous weekend.  The affair was held in upstate Erie and featured two gay women tying the knot.  Unfortunately, because of Pennsylvania’s draconian laws on gay marriage, the happy couple was forced to perform the formalities of marriage in New York State.  They then returned to Pennsylvania for the celebration: our ancient land from the dark ages, proud of its state owned liquor stores; Prothonotary offices; duplicitous mayors, tax collectors and police officers in every hamlet; and a bastion of preserving heterosexual marriage.

          Our friend, the elder statesman, just turned 90, has the vim and vigor of a young 70 year old, but he is certainly not a progressive. He is renowned in republican politics and as a lifelong conservative in these parts.  What struck me was how his initial hesitation in attending the event turned into pure joy on seeing two families support their respective daughters (also known as the Dick Cheney-gay daughter effect). He was truly moved as the couple began a new life together with all the rights, benefits and responsibilities of any other married couple.

          As gay marriage becomes a common event and more heterosexuals take part in such festivities, the stigma of gay unions as well as legal and religious objections will quickly fade.  Gay married couples will become passé at the grocery store, our community events, dinner parties and houses of worship.

          I have been thinking how my attendance at “out of orbit” family occasions and religious ceremonies over the years have played an important role in my assimilation into our diverse American culture.  My first Passover meal and High Holiday service at a Jewish Temple; listening to the liturgy of a Catholic mass; enjoying a Hindu temple with my sister-in-law; and attending a special service at an African American Baptist Church all come to mind.

          Celebrations are a tremendous opportunity to get to understand one another.  An entree to appreciate the uniqueness of other ethnic groups, religions and sexual orientations, while marveling at the things we have in common.  After all, everyone is in a festive mood and social and political differences are left at the door.  At the wedding reception the elder statesman got to dance with the bride and the groom.

 Lately I have been reading a great deal of history on Islamic culture.  The overlap with Jewish and Christian traditions is quite extraordinary.  I recently added attendance at a Muslim service and seeking an invitation to break the fast at Ramadan to my bucket list.  Maybe the elder statesman has a free afternoon and will want to come along.