“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”
So begins Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, but the sentiment could just as easily fit Philadelphia at the end of 2008 as it did Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution.
Still drunk with success over the stunning election of Barack Obama as Leader of the Free World, Philadelphians hardly had time to nurse our collective hangovers when Mayor Nutter slapped us in the face with a cold, hard reality.
The City of Philadelphia is broke.
According to the mayor, we started the fiscal year with surplus of $119 million, but then the stock market collapsed, taking our investments with it, including huge chunks of the city’s pension plan. In the space of a few months, that $119 million surplus has become a ballooning $108 million deficit.
It is important to remember that much of the city’s budget is locked in funds – like pensions and other fixed payouts – that cannot be touched. That amount which remains is that you have to work with, and Nutter says it isn’t enough to keep the lights on.
So, here comes the pain.
The city’s aggressive schedule of business and wage tax cuts? Nutter has asked City Council to suspend the cuts until 2015. Those cuts, according to my buddy Brent Mandel and the other progressive tax reform folks, are essential to making Philadelphia an economically viable city again. If it’s any consolation, they don’t bear the burden alone.
Nutter plans to cut police overtime and leave vacant some 200 positions in the department. And a 50 percent cut in Town Watch money, just in case the neighbors were hoping to take up the slack. Over at the Fire Department, they’re eliminating five engine companies and two ladder companies.
The city is also closing 11 libraries, 62 of the 73 outdoor public pools, and putting an end to most snow removal, bulk trash collection, and residential street cleaning.
The mayor and his staff are taking pay cuts, and he’s even asked all employees making more than $50,000 annually to take a week off without pay. In all, they’re laying off 220 city employees and eliminating 600 unfilled positions, 1,660 seasonal part-time jobs and about 570 contractual, non-city jobs.
The details are still being hammered out, but you get the idea. There’s going to be a lot more pain for a lot more people.
As Black folks, we may not understand every nuance of high finance, but we sure understand broke. We know broke well. Broke is an old familiar friend. We have eaten Ramen noodles and hot dogs, and we have paid the light bill this month but the gas bill next month.
But we also understand that to get un-broke, you may need a little help. The mayor has already petitioned the Treasury Department to afford some of the proposed multibillion dollar bailout to help bail out America’s big cities, many of which teeter on the edge of absolute ruin.
The mayors of Phoenix and Atlanta have joined the petition, and I suspect that many more will sign on before long. Already there is stiff opposition, and GOP leaders like Mitt Romney are calling on Congress to allow troubled cities to fend for themselves.
In the midst of all this pain, you may have noticed the big shot corporate types at insurance giant AIG treating themselves to yet another spa weekend with your bailout money. Fat bonus checks are still being cut on Wall Street, and there’s a real danger of this so-called bailout money disappearing before anyone actually gets bailed out.
We should make sure to keep a vigilant eye on this whole bailout thing before it gets away from us. Who gets, who doesn’t get, and what gets done with the money, are very much our concern. Make contact with your public officials – city, state, and federal – and let them know that you’re watching what they do, and that if we have to hurt, then everyone has to hurt. We don’t mind a little belt tightening, as long as we’re not the only ones doing it.
Dickens managed to sum up our situation in the second part of that opening phrase to A Tale of Two Cities:
“We had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
Friday, November 21, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
One Giant Step for Man...
America took a big step this week.
It is difficult to look at the significance of this event coolly and dispassionately - try as we might through tears of joy - overcome as we are by the flood of emotions that have been welling up for almost two years.
Since the returns started coming in Tuesday night, I’ve been thinking of my mentors – all proud, strong Black men, and none of whom lived to see this day. Of my grandfather, who stormed the beach at Normandy on D-Day, fighting an ocean away for a country that he knew considered him a second-class citizen here at home. Of my friend Rotan Lee, who dedicated his life to Black children – a pied piper preaching the gospel of literacy, scholarship, and critical thinking. And of my dad, from whom I inherited my height, my deep voice and my untrusting cynicism. This should have been their day, too. This should have been a day for all our departed parents, teachers, mentors and ancestors – who endured so much and received so little – because on this day, their belief in the American Dream is vindicated.
Black folk finally see a light at the end of the tunnel –the beginning of the end of the American Dark Ages. After all, he was our candidate, they reason – somewhat ignoring the fact that while 91 percent of Black Americans voted for Obama, that’s just slightly better than the 88 percent who voted for John Kerry four years ago. Meanwhile, about half of all white Americans voted for a Black man for president, and they’ll say they’ve got just as much right to stake their prideful claim in the new administration.
There was a flood of emotion from the losing side too – the conservative pundits and bloggers who have been spitting all manner of vitriol at Obama for months now have, if anything, stepped up their attacks since Election Day. And it’s not just the usual sour grapes that follow a political loss, but a seething, deep-seated hatred for the president-elect and his supporters, coupled with the gravest apocalyptic predictions for the future of our country. I mean, these people are wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-mouth, hopping mad, and they’re not afraid to show it.
To give credit where it is certainly due, Senator John McCain delivered one of the classiest, most gracious concession speeches I’ve ever heard. While his supporters booed and shouted epithets at the mention of Obama’s name, some of the old McCain magic – the American hero, a man of honor, dignity and sacrifice – showed through. After months of sleazy attacks and guilt by association, McCain acknowledged Obama’s victory as a great day for all America, not just people of color. He spoke with genuine remorse of our nation’s shameful racial past, and of his hopes that Obama’s win will serve as an example of how far we’ve come.
You get the feeling that this is more than just an election, it is a changing of the guard. Young people, the nucleus of Obama’s campaign and an essential part of his winning strategy, have shifted the country’s political paradigm. For them, change is important, race isn’t. They didn’t vote for the Black guy, they voted for the young guy, the guy with new ideas.
That could have far-reaching political implications in places like Philadelphia, where old school ward politics, party bosses, and the plain brown envelope are still the status quo. The leaders of the old guard are not going to be happy about giving up power, especially when it involves losing out on those brown envelopes. Expect blood, but that comes later.
For now, allow the winners a few days of jubilation and unbridled glee. Give the losers a suitable period of mourning to sulk and cry in their beer.
The emotions on both sides will soon fade, and the enormity of the challenges that lie ahead will sink in. The people who predict an Obama-led utopia, and the people who foresee the end of the Republic, are both wrong. The government will go on, and our lives will go on, pretty much as usual.
What changes is this: if we’re lucky, we’ll all find ourselves working toward the same goal, probably for the first time in 221 years.
On the back of every dollar bill is the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum, “Out of many, One”. One country, one people, one America.
We may not get there. But it sure is something to shoot for, and this week, America took a big step.
It is difficult to look at the significance of this event coolly and dispassionately - try as we might through tears of joy - overcome as we are by the flood of emotions that have been welling up for almost two years.
Since the returns started coming in Tuesday night, I’ve been thinking of my mentors – all proud, strong Black men, and none of whom lived to see this day. Of my grandfather, who stormed the beach at Normandy on D-Day, fighting an ocean away for a country that he knew considered him a second-class citizen here at home. Of my friend Rotan Lee, who dedicated his life to Black children – a pied piper preaching the gospel of literacy, scholarship, and critical thinking. And of my dad, from whom I inherited my height, my deep voice and my untrusting cynicism. This should have been their day, too. This should have been a day for all our departed parents, teachers, mentors and ancestors – who endured so much and received so little – because on this day, their belief in the American Dream is vindicated.
Black folk finally see a light at the end of the tunnel –the beginning of the end of the American Dark Ages. After all, he was our candidate, they reason – somewhat ignoring the fact that while 91 percent of Black Americans voted for Obama, that’s just slightly better than the 88 percent who voted for John Kerry four years ago. Meanwhile, about half of all white Americans voted for a Black man for president, and they’ll say they’ve got just as much right to stake their prideful claim in the new administration.
There was a flood of emotion from the losing side too – the conservative pundits and bloggers who have been spitting all manner of vitriol at Obama for months now have, if anything, stepped up their attacks since Election Day. And it’s not just the usual sour grapes that follow a political loss, but a seething, deep-seated hatred for the president-elect and his supporters, coupled with the gravest apocalyptic predictions for the future of our country. I mean, these people are wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-mouth, hopping mad, and they’re not afraid to show it.
To give credit where it is certainly due, Senator John McCain delivered one of the classiest, most gracious concession speeches I’ve ever heard. While his supporters booed and shouted epithets at the mention of Obama’s name, some of the old McCain magic – the American hero, a man of honor, dignity and sacrifice – showed through. After months of sleazy attacks and guilt by association, McCain acknowledged Obama’s victory as a great day for all America, not just people of color. He spoke with genuine remorse of our nation’s shameful racial past, and of his hopes that Obama’s win will serve as an example of how far we’ve come.
You get the feeling that this is more than just an election, it is a changing of the guard. Young people, the nucleus of Obama’s campaign and an essential part of his winning strategy, have shifted the country’s political paradigm. For them, change is important, race isn’t. They didn’t vote for the Black guy, they voted for the young guy, the guy with new ideas.
That could have far-reaching political implications in places like Philadelphia, where old school ward politics, party bosses, and the plain brown envelope are still the status quo. The leaders of the old guard are not going to be happy about giving up power, especially when it involves losing out on those brown envelopes. Expect blood, but that comes later.
For now, allow the winners a few days of jubilation and unbridled glee. Give the losers a suitable period of mourning to sulk and cry in their beer.
The emotions on both sides will soon fade, and the enormity of the challenges that lie ahead will sink in. The people who predict an Obama-led utopia, and the people who foresee the end of the Republic, are both wrong. The government will go on, and our lives will go on, pretty much as usual.
What changes is this: if we’re lucky, we’ll all find ourselves working toward the same goal, probably for the first time in 221 years.
On the back of every dollar bill is the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum, “Out of many, One”. One country, one people, one America.
We may not get there. But it sure is something to shoot for, and this week, America took a big step.
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