“Tough Times, Tough Choices”: Talk About Bogus!
Just the title of the Penn-sponsored budget forums “Tough Times, Tough Choices”, sets my radar off, as Philadelphians are set up to decide which programs we should cut, rather than how we can continue to pay for these essential services. A number of people I know have personal experience fighting what they called the University’s bogus process during Penn’s attempt to enact what was essentially a tax for themselves in West Philadelphia. One vet of that fight writes:
The Penn process is highly predictable. A few of us recently saw the charts and pie graphs which will be used, and have seen the “doom and gloom” scenario that will be provided in the first phase of these workshops. The Penn process skips all of the actual steps to civic engagement, according to the concepts of deliberative democracy. This has to be the target that we expose, and the understanding of everyone in this coordinated strategy and action
The first phase of the Penn process uses a panel of carefully chosen journalists to ask prepared questions of the Deputy mayors. Then small groups will be divided with a specific false dichotomy to debate. The trained moderators will be very skilled at demanding that the group participants stay “focused on the topic.” We have seen one example of the types of groups formed, and false dichotomy, in the press releases which came out after the recent rehearsal for the press.
Example: With the 30% cut, should the streets department privatize trash collection or pick up trash every other week with an exploding rat population.
There will be no group to discuss an evaluation of what the people feel are “essential services” There will be no group to discuss progressive taxation or ending the various taxpayer “give aways” which I often call, welfare for the wealthy. Any data which we ask for, will have been left at city hall.
If this is so, people should be prepared to ask real questions. There’s a reason they’re called essential services, and instead of thinking about where to cut, the city and the Mayor should be asking how we can pay for our services.
How come nobody’s asking why it is that banks and insurance companies don’t pay taxes in Philadelphia? How come the banks don’t have to pay their fair share? Didn’t they get us into this mess to begin with? Aren’t they getting hundreds of billions from us? How come the insurance companies don’t have to pay their fair share, when our premiums go up every year? Will we get to talk about that at the forum, or will we be given what’s effectively a choice of shit or shit with cheese?
How come nobody’s talking about all the money the state owes Philadelphia for the court costs they’re supposed to pay? That’s like hundreds of millions of dollars and the state won’t fork it over? Is that one of the “tough choices” we’ll be talking about, or are we only interested in protecting wealthy corporations and universities from paying their fair share?
Are we going to talk about the impact of the stimulus on our city? I know gambling is Mayor Literacy’s priority and all, but maybe now that DC denied him $125 million for a slots parlor in a busy shopping concourse filled with kids every weekend, there’s a better use for that money, like libraries and fire engines and pools.
What about the wasteful spending in our prison system for nonviolent drug offenders, totaling tens of millions of dollars? Is that part of the discussion?
There are a lot of questions that I don’t feel will even be up for discussion given the frame of “Tough Times, Tough Choices”. Whatever happened to “We Shall Overcome”? The people need to go to these forums wary, prepared not only to ask hard questions, also to undermine the very premises of the forum’s underlying assumptions. I get a very bad feeling that our communities are being set up for a predetermined outcome, which goes right along with the administration’s talk of “hearing” as about to “listening.” “The report,” a friend familiar with the process remarked to me today, “is already being written.”
These are temporary hard times Mr. Mayor, and the solutions you propose for our libraries are as short-sighted as they are permanent. You have to back off our essential services. There are wealthy corporations who get huge breaks to stay here, and it is time they start paying their share. It’s time to look at savings instead of cuts. And above all you have to start looking at things as a member of the community, not as a CEO or Wharton graduate.
That reminds me, how long will Penn get away without paying taxes on Penn Towers, hmmmmm? Maybe someone should ask that question too.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:35 am
[...] What Brendan said. [...]
February 14th, 2009 at 12:35 am
[...] I’ve been concerned that the forums were going to be an exercise in predetermined outcomes, as a friend who witnessed a rehearsal explained via email earlier this month. By and large, at least by my experience, his predictions were [...]