Someone this week asked how I kept my sanity writing on the Vanguard every day and my short answer was playing with my children quickly grounds me in reality, but, at the same time, one of the biggest job requirements for this job is to have really thick skin.
If you care about each barb and criticism thrown out by the readers, you are not fit to be writing in the public on a forum where the readers can respond. Still, I was taken aback and then bemused by a comment from a regular poster who accused me of “pretending to be something you are not, a liberal.”
The genesis of the discussion was a piece I wrote this week that the budget crisis in the city is worse that we feared. I got accused of wanting to “balance the budget with pay cuts and outsourcing.”
In actuality, what I wrote is that “in the short term the city will put a tax revenue measure on the ballot. In the longer term, the city is looking at economic development strategies to increase the tax base. But by the time that kicks in the city may be in far more hurt than we have ever anticipated.”
For that I got accused of being “on the edge of right wing Neverland.”
What became clear is that his view of what a liberal meant was very narrowly focused as “an unabashed champion of the labor movement.” By that Mr. Toad apparently means that being an unabashed champion of the labor movement means never having a wage, pension or benefit increase that you oppose.
I have a different view of the world. I once read an article about Ron Dellums and why he decided to become chair of the armed services committee. He did it because he wanted to free up money for the types of social spending programs that he championed.
Ron Dellums, as Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, became an expert on the budget for military weapons, so respected during his prime that even people who disagreed with him acknowledged his expertise.
That left an impression on me that we if want money for schools and social services, then we need to be budget hawks on the left, and we cannot allow public monies to be sunk into enriching already well-paid public employees.
The biggest failure of Mr. Toad is that he fails to differentiate between support of the labor movement and supporting groups which are largely manipulating the policies meant to benefit the average worker, not to serve the community, but to enhance their own bottom line.
At the local level we see this most clearly with the firefighters’ union who make, as an entry level, total compensation of $175,000 annually and that is before overtime. At the state level, we see that with the prison guards.
Moreover, with these large amounts of compensation comes corruption, and a good deal of focus that we have had is not on the firefighters, not even on the rank and file in their union, but rather on the corrupt activities of their union boss.
I am a strong supporter of defined benefits pensions. I believe that most public employees, especially those at the state level, took jobs with the belief and understanding that they would be taken care of at retirement. However, six figure pensions threaten to undermine the defined benefit system.
It undermines the system to provide public safety employees 3% of their final pay at an age of retirement of 50. One of the most pervasive myths in the debate over pension for public employees has been the justification for receiving the enhanced safety benefits.
In actuality, public safety employees and miscellaneous workers, according to a 2009 report by CalPERS, actually have the same life expectancy.
It undermines the labor movement to increase pension formulas without funding them. It undermines the labor movement to create unfunded liabilities by failing to properly fund retiree health care plans.
I also remain a strong supporter of unions. Historically, without unions we would not have the forty-hour work week, the eight-hour day, child labor laws, workplace protection laws, and all sort of other protections that we take for granted today.
The history of the labor movement shows us that those things were not given to the workers. They have to fight for them – literally. Even one hundred years ago, a strike was met with armed militias and strike breakers, and there were frequent clashes and violence.
Being pro-union and pro-labor movement does not mean blindly supporting everything that is labeled as union or labor. Supporting people who make $150,000 to $200,000 is not the same as supporting those who are fighting paycheck to paycheck for decent wages and benefits.
In fact, I believe that supporting people who make that kind of compensation does more harm to the cause of labor than good.
The question at this point is what we have to do going forward. This week, I have laid out the mistakes that have been made to get us to this point.
Mr. Toad argues, “A sales tax increase therefore of $3.4 million gets us a long way towards solvency. Increasing our revenue stream by a few million dollars a year through economic development should get us to the finish line.”
Mr. Toad is wrong here. In fact, he is not even close. A sales tax increase that generates $3.4 million only gets us 68% of the way to a balanced budget in the best of circumstances.
The numbers we are looking at far exceed that $5 million. As we demonstrated this week, those numbers do not account for things like roads, parks, water, and building infrastructure.
By way of example, just to keep the roads at the current level over the next five years will add between $5 million and $8 million annually.
As we argued this week, the city balanced the budget from 2008 until 2011 through attrition and failing to fund infrastructure needs. So while the city has, through contract restructuring, addressed a number of structural issues, the policies of the previous council are undermining what should be fiscal sustainability.
Mr. Toad’s solution does not begin to address the problem in the short term. It is my view that laying off additional city employees to balance the budget is far worse than asking all city employees to take additional pay cuts – but that may be where we need to go.
Unfortunately, the “pro-labor” council in 2009 made agreements that did not go nearly far enough. That is not Monday-morning quarterbacking – we were arguing this point at the time, and were ignored.
The result is that the next round of MOUs had to address the structural issues and therefore could not address the salary issues.
At the end of the day, I think everyone involved would prefer not to lay off another 100 employees, but right now the numbers are that bad. Until we are willing to accept this, and figure out a way through, things are not going to improve.
For me, as we finally move into good times at some point, the lesson of this recession is that liberals need to become deficit and budget hawks. If we wish to be able to sustain and fund social programs, revamp education and restore social services, we need to do so by finding ways to be more creative and more restrained in other spending.
It is ironic but the biggest threat to the labor movement is the labor movement being given too much during good times. In order to protect the labor movement, we must be fiscally cautious, even in good times.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
The water group members are doing their part to help balance the budget in the face of extreme pressure by wealthy interest groups that stand to make billions from the water plant while it sucks our community fiscally dry. The firefighters are only drops of water in the pond.
The current rate structure takes from the poor and middle class and subsidizes the elites in town.
Be careful Mr. Harrington about being fiscally responsible, you wouldn’t want to be called that dreaded word “conservative” now would you?
Michael
I see this situation somewhat differently.
It seems to me that the “water group members” seem to correspond to the previous “no new water source” members and the “no new tax” members and possibly the “no new growth” members. What I would ask of this group, just as I have asked it of the “grow as much as we can ” members, what is your realistic plan ( including projected numbers) for how to meet the economic challenges that we are indisputably facing ?
Mr. Harrington, your statements are erroneous on a number of different levels.
Your efforts to challenge the water rates will do nothing to help balance the budget because the unbalanced budget is in the General Fund and the rates you are challenging are in the Water Enterprise Fund. By California Law those two Funds can not be commingled.
Your efforts to challenge the the water rates can not by law call into question the total amount of the costs of the surface project. Your challenge only calls into question the proportional distribution of those costs to individual rate payers. You are currently engaged in an exercise of trying to move around the deck chairs on an ocean liner that is under full steam proceeding to its designated destination.
Until you challenge the legality of the actual surface plant costs you will not be saving the ratepayers as a group even one penny. You might end up moving money from one rate payer to another, but in each case that movement will always net out to zero.
Since water doesn’t drop into General Fund budget balancing at all, the firefighters are in fact the biggest drop in the pond.
The firefighters are not the biggest drop in the pond because there are not that many. They could be the lowest hanging fruit but not the biggest drop in the pond.
That is one way of looking at it Mr. Toad, but when one firefighter position is cut from the budget the amount of money saved is a much bigger drop than when one DCEA employee or Police Department employee is cut.
“Yes, that’s precisely what I said, balance the budget with pay cuts and outsourcing.”
David you forgot to include the above quote where you confirmed my assessment nor did you respond to my excerpt from E.J.Dionne’s piece about George Miller where he defends labor unions. Look you can declare you are a liberal all you want but if you need to defend it you probably are not. Its like the opposite of Nixon and Christie who denied being a crook or a bully. If you have to deny it you probably are a crook or a bully. Recently you have repeatedly written about your lack of sympathy for people taking pay cuts.
As for a tax increase that gets us 68% of the way home on our operating deficit in an improving economy that might go a long way to getting us to the finish line. I also wrote at some length about other things we could do. The employees of Davis have either taken cuts or had them imposed on them. Its time to start looking at other solutions. You want to go right back to that well for more, you want to do things that under current conditions and law seem impossible like cutting pensions of current employees. But worst of all you want to rub it in the workers faces. It may come to more cuts or layoffs for city employees but your hard line in your face approach is not helpful in getting people to agree on a path forward. In San Jose where Chuck Reed went the initiative route they just had to raise the cops salary because they were all leaving for other jobs. Yesterday you were complaining about how few applicants we have for cop positions and how their pay doesn’t stack up against other local communities. So is this who you want to cut.
You complain about the firefighters being over paid even though they don’t have the best salary in the region. Its still above average agreed but they just had a contract imposed and the city is outsourcing new hires to the university where the scale is lower. How much more of your supposed 13 million deficit do you think can be squeezed out of the fire department? We already reduced the crews to 3 and did the boundary drop, We already imposed a contract and raised their contributions to their retirement. You have argued that the health care cash out has been minimized (something I question). Now we have merged fire services with UC saving $20,000 per employee hired on that side of the ledger. So lets assume we got to austerity right wing neverland and cut our firefighters to the UC rates even though they make less than the area median that doesn’t even save us one million dollars a year in total compensation. Not even 20% of our deficit.
In my assessment David you are bitter and can’t accept the reality that its not possible to strangle the fire department employees to economic death. I accept this and want to take a more gradual approach to getting things under control. As Nancy Pelosi said about the Paul- Murray recent budget deal “Embrace the suck.” Now that is the voice of a liberal.
Mr. Toad
Liberals do not speak with a single voice. I have no animosity to any group, or any individual for that matter, in the controversy over police/ firefighter compensation. However, I believe that you are either not seeing or choosing not to see the nuances in David’s position. One does not have to approve 100% of every action of a union official in order to be over all pro union. I firmly believe that each individual’s actions should be judged separately. It is certainly true that in our community, firefighter union leadership has chosen to take a non evidence based approach to trying to maintain their previous mode of operation and benefits despite being asked many times in different venues to support that position with facts.
This is surely worth some degree of criticism without broad judgements about the overall political ideology of the individuals doing the criticizing. I also have spoken out about the tactics of current union leadership. I also consider myself to be a liberal. Do you honestly believe that my lack of willingness to take what the firefighter leadership is selling on face value without evidence makes me a conservative in disguise ?
You don’t seem to lack empathy for those that are taking an economic hit.
Mr. Toad said . . .
“As for a tax increase that gets us 68% of the way home on our operating deficit in an improving economy that might go a long way to getting us to the finish line.”
Toad, you mathematics once again falls well short of the mark. Our 5-year deficit in the General Fund is $31 million (producing a General Fund Reserves deficit balance of $28 million at the end of that 5-year period). In addition, based on the information presented to Council on 12/10 we have an additional $40 million deficit in streets, bringing the total 5-year deficit to $71 million.
How close does your tax increase get us to that finish line? It generates $11 million to $12 million oer 5 years, which gets us less than 17% of the way to that $71 million finish line.
I ask you, is 17% out of 100% equal to “a long way there”?
Matt you keep claiming I’m wrong on my numbers but you and David don’t offer any other solutions beyond cutting. Maybe we need to put in a parcel tax too. We also need to foster economic growth. As i have said an improving economy, economic growth and a parcel tax can make up a lot of ground. As for the roads we are not going to spend 40 million we don’t have fixing the roads in the next five years without borrowing and amortizing out those costs over time. Its just not possible and you know it. Even doing it your way you can’t cut your way out of this so the answer is a mix of solutions but we just cut city workers through negotiation or imposition so are you suggesting we cut them some more? If so what would you cut to raise your 71 million dollars?
Toad, I have said that the ramp up time for Innovation Park Economic Development is probably 3 years, so in the short run we have no choice other than to add 1/2% to the Sales Tax and a $400 per year Parcel Tax, and both those tax increases should be on the June ballot. Those two incremental Tax increases need to be considered as permanent until, and unless, the voters of Davis pass a measure J/R vote entitling either the East Innovation Park or the West Innovation Park in November.
Additional cuts in the short run face two challenges. First, all the unions just agreed to, or reluctantly acceded to, wage cuts, so at least a little bit of time will have to pass before we ask the unions for further cuts. Further head count cuts may be possible, but not without the elimination of services … unless Steve Pinkerton can identify further outsourcing opportunities.
So the only choice that has any certainty is the increase ofg the two Taxes in the short run and a very clear commitment to crafting a messge to the no-growth part of this community (and the silent middle) that unless we commit to economic growth on the Innovation Park Task Force sites, the Taxes will be permanent.
“Matt you keep claiming I’m wrong on my numbers but you and David don’t offer any other solutions beyond cutting. ”
I’ve offered short term taxes and longer term economic development. I’ve done so many times in the last few months. You are being dishonest here when you say I don’t offer “any” solution beyond cutting.
However, “As i have said an improving economy, economic growth and a parcel tax can make up a lot of ground.”
Longer term, an improving economy and economic
growthdevelopment can make up ground. A parcel tax or a sales tax, will not get us to $5 million this year, and $5 million is not enough.So we are going to have to cut more in the short term, there is no way around it.
Problem is you lead with your chin while trying to punch workers in the nose. We may need to cut more and a $400 dollar parcel tax may be the number in addition to a sales tax increase or perhaps a combination of both or maybe economic growth and financing the road funds over a longer term will lessen the blows. Doing both taxes on the June ballot is a bitter pill and politically hard to do especially when the decision makers and the finance people, the people who actually are responsible for making these decisions, haven’t figured out how much to turn the dials on each variable.
Pinkerton has laid out the problem and the Council knows they need to grapple with a tough reality when they get to the budget but you guys think you know the answers and spout off without the popular support of the voters and in Matt’s case without even living in the city where he would be subject to the parcel tax he proposes.
David’s constant, bitter and flippant attacks on the city employees in general and the firefighters in particular doesn’t help the community reach a consensus about what needs to be done. These employees either willingly or through contract imposition have recently taken a hit so asking them for more should be near the back of the line among our choices yet you lead with that issue on an almost daily basis. Verbally punching the workers in the nose with your crass insensitive attacks on a regular basis and your constant demands for austerity calls into question your political philosophy. Saying you support the poorest workers is not enough to call yourself a liberal if you are gleeful about balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class workers whose public sector jobs have wages that may not even allow them to afford to live in the town where they work.
Correction:
Saying you support the poorest workers is not enough to call yourself a liberal if you are gleeful about balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class workers whose public sector jobs have wages that may not even allow them to afford to live in the town where they work.
Mr. Toad said . . .
“Problem is you lead with your chin while trying to punch workers in the nose. We may need to cut more and a $400 dollar parcel tax may be the number in addition to a sales tax increase or perhaps a combination of both or maybe economic growth and financing the road funds over a longer term will lessen the blows. Doing both taxes on the June ballot is a bitter pill and politically hard to do especially when the decision makers and the finance people, the people who actually are responsible for making these decisions, haven’t figured out how much to turn the dials on each variable.
Pinkerton has laid out the problem and the Council knows they need to grapple with a tough reality when they get to the budget but you guys think you know the answers and spout off without the popular support of the voters and in Matt’s case without even living in the city where he would be subject to the parcel tax he proposes. “
I completely agree that seeing both on a June ballot will be a bitter pill to swallow, but it is the reality that we face. We are “kicking the can down the road” if we choose to either increase the already overwhelmingly large inventory of deferred expenses, or incur debt so that we can pay over 65% more for the exact same end result with our streets maintenance.
The problem is that by law the City can not operate with a negative General Fund balance (unlike both the Federal Government and the State). So the 5 million deficit in 2014 that exists before adding any streets expenditures has to be covered. That isn’t something we have any alternatives for.
Pinkerton and Staff have indeed laid out the problem, but because of very understandable time management of a very busy Council schedule, the information has been presented in pieces over the two meetings on December 10th and December 17th. A single consolidated picture of the Budget including the Deferred Streets Maintenance annual costs has not been as yet presented to the Council. That is in part because the Council hasn’t formally chosen which Streets Scenario to pursue.
One option could be to further defer the streets maintenance, but the fiscal implications of that decision are frightening if you look at the graph below:
http://vanderhawk.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ConditionCurve21.png
The Pavement Condition Index (PCI) of our streets is already at the level of the low 60’s, which is right on the border between Fair and Poor, which is also the point where the cost curve changes dramatically as the graphic clearly shows. Choosing not to spend $1 now in exchange for spending $4 to $5 in the very near future is not a fiscally wise decision.
Why do you say we? Will El Macero be paying the parcel tax that you say we need to fund up front for the roads?. Cannery, Nishi and an innovation park are off in the future but a an improving economy is likely to generate some additional revenues over the conservative numbers Pinkerton used in his report.
Good point Toad, I’ll be waiting for Matt’s response with bated breath.
Toad, you appear to be catching hpierce disease. “We” are a community. I volunteer within the non-El Macero part of the community at more than a half dozen different places that benefit Davis citizens almost exclusively. Further, my taxes maintain the County roads that your taxes do not maintain, but you use. If you want to get parochial, please be my guest, but rest assured that the public healthcare services that my taxes pay for, but yours don’t (because those public healthcare services are provided by the County and not the City) are part of a give-and-take services provision system that balances out in the end.
Yes Matt but I don’t tell the county what taxes they should impose on you and imagine if I suggested a massive tax increase in El Macero without concern for what the citizens there might think about the need for a longer payment schedule.
Toad, I am not telling anyone what they should do. That responsibility first falls on the shoulders of the Council and then on the shoulders of the voters. All I am doing is candidly and dispassionately sharing the cold, hard facts of the City’s fiscal situation. Are you saying that the citizens of Davis should make an underinformed, or uninformed, decision about the City’s fiscal present and future? If you are saying that, then you are perpetuating the long legacy of underinformed and/or uninformed decisions that have littered the past 10 years of City of Davis fiscal decisions.
Wait wait maybe you are a Liberal.
“Love Me, I’m a Liberal” was written by Ochs, Phil.
I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I’d lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don’t talk about revolution
That’s going a little bit too far
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
And I’m glad the commies were thrown out
Of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
As long as they don’t move next door
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can’t understand how their minds work
What’s the matter don’t they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
Yes, I read New republic and Nation
I’ve learned to take every view
You know, I’ve memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I’m almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There’s no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I attend all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
And I’ll send all the money you ask for
But don’t ask me to come on along
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
Sure once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
Ah, but I’ve grown older and wiser
And that’s why I’m turning you in
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
Songwriters
OCHS, PHIL
Published by
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Read more: Phil Ochs – Love Me, I’m A Liberal Lyrics | MetroLyrics
LOL. Yes, this song can be named “Liberal By Guilt”. Their support of left ideology stops short of real or perceived material impacts to their happiness, and starts where it results in real or perceived supplements to their happiness.
It is a fundamental difference for the well-off liberal versus the well-off conservative. The former feels guilty about being well-off while also being consumed with a perpetual need to protect and supplement personal happiness from external validation. The well-off conservative is not consumed by guilt, and has no need for external validation to protect and supplement personal happiness.
This makes the well-off conservative prone to being perceived as apathetic by comparison. But the drive to pursue happiness from external validation makes the well-off liberal prone to bad decisions and hypocrisy.
I see the rise of Democrat political power being driven by a demographic voting bubble comprised of the standard young idealist voter (that tend to vote left until they start earning a living), a big increase of minority voters (that tend to vote left until they assimilate) and lastly a phenomenon of middle-aged baby boomers racked with emotional and psychological deficits resulting from an abundance of unresolved childhood issues that derived from parents of a Great Depression and a great World War. And these are the people consumed with a perpetual need for external validation.
And by stupid alternatives offered by the Republican party, including hanging on to an irrational opposition to same-sex marriage, blanket opposition to healthcare reform without articulating a clear alternatives, and in general *not* presenting a positive platform rather than opposing whatever Obama is for. These points I offer are the biggest reason for the demographic voting bubble.
should read: in general *not* presenting a positive platform
The facts are that true conservatism has been lacking for decades, and is directly attributable to our economic and social decline
LOL.
Should have written:
The facts are that true conservatism has been lacking for decades, and the lack of true conservatism is directly attributable to our economic and social decline.
Now I’m very curious. Can you identify any political figure of the last several decades who meets your definition of a ‘true conservative’? Because now I have no idea what you think conservatism really is.
That is your opinion, but then you are ideologically biased. So you naturally don’t value what the GOP presents as a “positive” platform.
And of course you continue to believe that what the Democrats are delivering is a positive platform even as the negative impacts continue to build.
The recent political success of the left is simply explained by two things: one – their corresponding success to falsely brand conservatism as the ideology of failure, when the truth is that conservatism had corrupted itself to be another form of neo-liberal-progressivism. And two – their success using the corrupted-left media to falsely brand conservatives as highly racist, gender-biased and homophobic.
The facts are that true conservatism has been lacking for decades, and is directly attributable to our economic and social decline, and true conservatism is the most accepting and integrating of any superficial group-isms based on a common expectation of socially beneficial behavior.
And this gets back to my previous point about the increase of emotionally and psychologically underdeveloped voters having so many unresolved childhood issues. The voice of conservatives demanding common decent behavior reminds them of the ghosts of their parents. If feels like rejection, and the human animal, because it is so helpless as a child, is naturally wired to respond strongly to any feeling of rejection.
It is this lack of real struggle that has led us to this point, IMO. But the cycle will continue. The lack of struggle results in underdeveloped adults that perpetually demand external assistance and validation to maintain their happiness and this results in a declining society that eventually causes another era of real struggle than then causes in well-developed adults that earn their confidence of self-sufficiency and demand the same from others.
Tocqueville wrote: “Democratic institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy. This complete equality eludes the grasp of the people at the very moment they think they have grasped it . . . the people are excited in the pursuit of an advantage, which is more precious because it is not sufficiently remote to be unknown or sufficiently near to be enjoyed.
Democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy, which leads to a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”
Tocqueville foresaw exactly how this regulatory state would suffocate the spirit of free enterprise: “It rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces the nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
So this is the trajectory. And our children will pay the price with eventual catastrophic failure. My expectation is that a US constantly weakened by the demand of the growing population of under-developed adults will lead to the US being overthrown by military conquest.
History backs this prediction. Especially since the US is such a young country and its people are stupid in truly understanding the source of the countries greatness and the risks to its eventual decline.