Sometimes, reading the newspaper, I wonder if Mayor Bloomberg is reading this blog. Several months ago I wrote the United States of America is about ready for an Il Duce, and beginning in New York City (but not ending there), we will have one. Many people seem to be saying that as long as someone promises that they don’t have to pay more, or accept less, for themselves today, they don’t care about the future, or about democracy. My tongue-in-cheek suggestion that rather than giving non-citizens the vote, as some have proposed, they should be allowed to exchange the right to vote with American citizens who can’t be bothered and don’t want to serve jury duty, makes more sense every day. And when the promise of something for nothing can no longer be met, even for the limited number of people who matter, the result will not be competitive elections, which do not exist, no matter what the New York Times likes to pretend. The Times editorial board apparently prefers the hope of a Good Tzar to elections anyway, I doubt it will have the honesty to admit. What is left of citizen participation is going extra-electoral, perhaps extra legal. Protest is all that is left.
The Times, the News and the Post have, on their boards and on their staff, how many people who were willing to sacrifice their jobs and thus their families to run against a legislative incumbent in the current era (of perhaps 20 years)? Maybe one. And they want to tell me about elections. And now, I want someone to tell me why I shouldn’t de-register to vote, and stop participating in what any honest person knows is a farce. “If the voters don’t like the result, they can register their views at the polls,” the Times said. Is the Times, when making these statements, prepared to face up to what elections are? De-registration appears to be the only response by anyone with any legitimacy.
“This is not the time for fantasy,” Mayor Bloomberg said today. Very well Mayor Mike, I’ll drop the fantasy that democracy and citizen participation mean anything, and that most people even deserve a say in their own affairs. Let’s move on to more meaningful things. The price New York City will pay for the end of term limits is not limited to a loss of elections as a way to influence the future. On his way out while serving out his last term, the Mayor could have told the truth and confronted the city’s situation head on in his last budget, beginning next June. Not now. Reported the New York Times “according to a person who has advised the mayor in the past, he ‘does not care what it costs’ to win a third term.” That person didn’t specify he didn’t care what it would cost in his own money. It could be the city’s future that is sold.
It wouldn’t be the first time. “In 2005, Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire, spent more than $70 million and won nearly 60 percent of the vote,” according to the Times. He also sent $400 checks with his name on it to all homeowners, increased the pay of those public employees who were about to retire and paid for it by steeply cutting the pay of new hires. In 2002, he borrowed $5.5 billion ($3 billion under special state authority after 9/11, and $2.5 billion to be paid back by the state – later funded by cutting the city’s general state aid) to defer tax increases and service reductions until after Governor Pataki and the state legislature were safely re-elected. They didn’t return the favor then. And they won’t return it now, because their re-election is coming first.
Post about-face on term limits, Mayor Bloomberg’s whole legitimacy will rest on his purported ability to protect all existing deals and privileges without requiring any sacrifices of anyone. He will be running against Anthony Weiner, who is likely to make all kinds of promises to anyone looking for a special deal, and real guarantees those who already have them, and no doubt the Mayor will match this. He will need to buy off the remaining people who matter. The newspapers are neutered and can’t go back, as are the business and real estate interests. He’ll have to buy off the state legislature and public employee unions, who represent the retired and those about to retire at the expense of everyone else and the future. But how?
Among the likely choices: quieting the state legislature by agreeing to thank them for helping the city, even as they (once again) slash the city’s share of state education funding, and agreeing to additional pension enhancements for the public employee unions. Allowing members of DC 37, the largest public employee union, to move out of the city so they won’t be affected by the collapse of public services and soaring taxes here is clearly part of the deal — that legislation suddenly moved forward in the City Council.
But as John Tasini pointed out, DC 37 members also want to be able to stop working and get a full pension at age 55, putting in far less than that could cost the city based on fraudulent assumptions. Bloomberg already handed out retirement at age 55 to the teachers, based on similarly fraudulent assumptiosn, and the UFT might now go for 50, at least on a temporary basis. The TWU has already gone on strike to retire at age 50. And in what strikes them as a gross unfairness, police officers and firefighters have to lie about health problems, and go to a doctor who is willing to lie for them, to retire at ¾ pay in their early 40s, rather than ½. Why not just end the charade?
He can’t just have the city borrow more money, because there is no more to borrow. The only way anyone can borrow is if other people live below their means, sacrifice and save. Who are those people? There are fewer and fewer in the United States, and those abroad are starting to cut us off. Bloomberg’s own company is reporting New York City is paying 9 percent to borrow, a sky-high rate, up from 1.6 percent just a few weeks ago. Some of that is a panic, but a lot of it is a recalibration of supply and demand that no one seems willing to face up to. Sell all future tobacco settlement dollars to get money up front? Already done. Sell the Brooklyn Bridge? The one place he will be able to go to get billions of dollars up front to offset falling tax revenues, disproportionate cuts in state aid, and pension sweeteners, is the pension funds themselves. To get through November 2009, he will have to raid them.
In exchange for those enhancements, he can (once again) get the acquiescence of the legislature and unions for upping the expected rate of return on the pensions, and defer pension contributions for a couple of years, as in San Diego. Perhaps he could even borrow against the pension funds, as in New Jersey, or use them to pay for retiree health care, as at the Chicago Transit Authority. He could simply say that there is no cost to these decisions, as he has in the past. If the News, Post and Times try to assuage their consciences by saying that belief is “risky,” they’ll do in a place where no one will read. Their die is cast.
He could also get additional agreements for drastically lower pay and benefits for new hires, and if public services decline, he could simply lie about it. I was told by someone who knows that there have been a rising number of cases of crimes committed by police officers, after the qualifications had to be slashed to match the level of starting pay. You didn’t read that in the Mayor’s Management Report did you? Uncertified teachers in poor neighborhoods are next. There is no need to seek a formal dispensation. Just don’t release a press release. No one will know.
He will probably allow the infrastructure to fall apart, but not report it is happening. It will only have happened when some other official, some time in the future, is forced to admit it. No press release, no reality. In this era of decline, when younger generations and less well off people must be deceived about the reality, expect “mark to market” accounting to be suspended in the public sector as well as the private.
These expedients will only be enough to delay the day of reckoning one extra year from this November (when the real state budget is passed) to next. Right after the election, and with the city going broke, Bloomberg will have no choice but to reverse course and ask for sacrifices from city residents, and a restoration of a less unfair deal from the state. But you know what? He will have lost all moral authority, and the state legislature and the unions will just laugh, take even more from those who matter, and blame the “out of touch billionaire” for everything bad that would befall the rest of us. When he finally leaves, with the city’s future wrecked, he’ll thus be the least popular politician in history. He’ll end up ranting like King Lear by the end of his term as the city becomes unlivable and ungovernable. No one will listen to him. .
And yet, there is no way to stop this. Most people are ready for an Il Duce, as I’ve said, and if and when he is unable to deliver, those with advantages and privileges will merely be guided to turn on those without them. This is a moment in New York City not unlike the fall of the decrepit Roman Republic. Bloomberg may or may not be Ceasar Augustus, but I’m not sure he’ll be able to deliver the bread and circuses.
And even if he can, the institutional effect of his cynical maneuvering will outlive his administration, and we’ll get a Caligula soon enough. In four years the City Council will vote to once again extend term limits, over his veto if he has had enough, and if he objects, those satisfied with current arrangements that allow them to fiddle while New York City burns will merely make Bloomberg and his hypocrisy the issue. Save us from an institutional collapse? Regardless of his intentions, Bloomberg is going to accelerate it.
Et Tu, Christine?
People less swift on the uptake that I am will reach the same conclusion I have. I’ll say it again, mass general strikes, disruption, vandalism and even riots will be the only means left for most subjects to try to force their overlords to change course. No one will be able to say, with any legitimacy, that the vast majority of people have a stake in their institutions, and should (as voters) take responsibility for them. I’ve said for years we are going to see general strikes and other unrest in this country. My timeline keeps moving up.
I went to graduate school in city planning, received a national certification in city planning, and went to work at the New York City Department of City Planning, which presides over the New York City zoning resolution. After finding that parts of the resolution were obsolete and un-enforced (except against the wrong people), I suggested that it should be fixed. The wise people, the sort of people who showed up late, left early, took every sick day, hid in their office, and did their best not to do any work, said one shouldn’t bother, because it’s all hopeless anyway. But I kept pushing, for years, and wasted a lot of people’s time. It was time to see what a pubic service is, realize what the future holds, admit that those people were right, and either join them or leave. I left.
Now it is time to see the wisdom of the non-voters. The wisdom of the people who throw their trash on the ground at the paddleball courts where I play, hitting the ball against a wall that is cracked and pitted as a result of being “fixed” by someone whose contract was probably fixed. Morons, my friend and I pick up that trash. The wisdom of the people who pay and receive cash, and cheat on their taxes. The wisdom of the people scamming the pension system. The wisdom of the people who wrecked our financial institutions and walked off with big bonuses. The wisdom of those who dump their families when someone else might better satisfy their libido. Etc, etc, etc. These are your people, are they not, Mayor Bloomberg? Ought implies can. If social institutions are doomed, then those who support them, play fair with them, try to save them, are fools, not heroes.
Those at the Times and News will likely see my suggestion that de-registering to vote is the only honest course as evidence they were right to ignore me (and every other “inexperienced” challenger) when I ran for public office four years ago. The generations who run those organizations, and all of our other organizations, have one ability that I do not – the ability to rationalize, to legitimate their deception of others with self-deception. Since no one shows up at special elections, said the Times, it is more “democratic” for the City Council to simply eliminate term limits by a vote. But other than to vote for President (a vote that is only meaningful in a handful of swing states) how many people show up to vote in regular elections?
I’m not an idiot, and will be unswayed by false mantras and propaganda. Qui tacet consentire videtur, he who is silent seems to consent, so he who registers and votes is accepting that those votes have meaning, but it isn’t true. Tell me otherwise. Tell me why I shouldn’t de-register to vote. You either become one of those scamming the system to the point of institutional collapse, or separate yourself from it. Other options are disappearing.