Hot on the heels of the United Federation of Teachers’ annual union rally this past Sunday, Hizzoner Bloomberg’s threatened yet another massive round of cuts to the schools and 2,500 teacher layoffs.

I can’t help but feel I’ve heard this one before, and though I’m no longer on the chopping block like I was the last two times he demanded his pound of flesh from the schools, it’s disheartening to see that no real progress has been made in the interim. It really is, consequently, a two year cycle: I was laid off in 2011 after a round of ultimatums between the NYCDoE and the UFT, and I was laid off in 2009 after a round of ultimatums between the NYCDoE and the UFT. Each time, the school budgets were cut, but the teachers’ jobs were saved, meaning that DC37 – the support staff – had to make up the gap.

I’m not surprised that Bloomberg is continuing to use this plan, as it’s worked for him in the past and, as a lame duck and a long shot for national office, he has no particular reason to concern himself with the blowback of his policies. Of course, it’s not as if anybody’s really paid close attention to the travails and tribulations of our nation’s largest school system and most powerful union anyway. Education reform has always been a snoozer, and until very recently, unions have been nothing but vilified in the national press.

I mention this all, however, because I got to attend the union’s annual rally at the Waldorf Astoria on Sunday (and the irony of a union holding a function in a notable bastion of privilege was not lost on me or the other attendees) where I got to jaw about their principles of solidarity. The points I made were twofold:

1. Until the UFT figures out how to reattach teacher retention to student success, they will always be working from a position of weakness in their deliberations with the city. When their historic strike in 1967 divorced the two, standards slipped and a succession of poor alternatives have created the dysfunctional system we have today. More importantly, they have opened themselves up to a constant barrage of withering criticism from city administration and a black eye in public image: To the union’s eyes, what’s good for the teacher is good for the student. Not so in many parents’ eyes. Thus, they must be the ones to dictate how they will resolve this issue, and they must be proactive in bringing it to the city before the city comes up with a policy they don’t like, or else they lose the initiative and this will continue to happen. They must bend lest they break, and being the most powerful union in the country, they cannot afford to break.
2. I cannot believe this has to be emphasized, but until the UFT extends a hand to the far broader, but much weaker, sister union of DC37, unionism itself will continue to weather defeat after defeat. Every UFT victory is soon followed by a DC37 defeat, and where they should be standing together, they are divided and suffering. DC37 would be a powerful ally with the UFT in securing public support and shoring up public image, but the UFT must first defend DC37 from the city. The only reason I can imagine that they are not already doing so is class division: They view themselves as educated professionals whereas DC37 are of largely lower positions, and if this is the case, this cannot and must not continue.

So I made these arguments, and unsurprisingly, their reception was largely based on the rank of the person I was talking to within the union hierarchy. The fact that I was a union member until I was laid off should be illustrative in just how they are hurting themselves with this current course. I would like not only to be working within New York Public Schools, but I would also like to be the member of a responsible and responsive union. That I am not, despite repeated attempts, is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed. Even were I to be hired in this atmosphere, I suspect next time a fight broke out, I’d be the first to be laid off once more. That is no way to run a union.

The Times did a piece about a state court that decreed that “gay” is no longer slanderous per se. I’d agree, to an extent, though I think the article got a bit confused as to the definition of “gay.”

Namely, I interpret the appellate court’s decision as based on the definition of “gay” as “homosexual.” It is no longer defamatory, in other words, to call somebody a homosexual, as being homosexual isn’t a bad thing and, arguably, enough of society realizes that now. Ginia Bellafante’s article on the Times conflated that use of the term with the definition that certain teenagers use, which she rightly describes as synonymous with “stupid.”

I’d expect, however, that teenagers aren’t in the habit of providing the fodder for slander nor are they suing anybody for it.

At my most cynical, I’ve been known to declare that the best form of government is an enlightened dictatorship. The only problem, of course, is the enlightenment. I say this having never lived under a dictatorship, nor can I easily point to a dictatorship that may be considered “enlightened.” I can think of a number of despots that had and implemented good ideas – indeed, far faster than the mechanisms of democracy can spin – but none that had truly unqualified benevolent rules.

I think of this as I read David Weigel’s implied repudiation of democracy’s ability to solve the problems of the Rust Belt. Namely, he lauds Emergency Manager Louis Schimmel for his efforts in balancing the budgets of Pontiac, Michigan and similar formerly industrial towns. Schimmel uses terms like “right-sizing,” – a euphemism of a euphemism of a euphemism – is given carte blanche by the governor to break union contracts, and, well, ends up sounding like the consultant a major corporation hires to do all their layoffs for them.

Yes, laying off civic employees and cutting union contracts would be a very difficult thing for a democratically-elected representative to do, especially in a company town like Pontiac, Michigan. However, there should be no reason to force a mayor to do so, nor should there be a reason to hire a consultant to play axe-man.

Why?

Because it is not the job of individual townships – or even their county and state governments – to reverse the woes of the Rust Belt. That’s a national problem. The city of Buffalo and, indeed, all of upstate New York, has been dealing with a shrinking population and a consistently high unemployment rate. A streamlined Pontiac, Michigan, will not generate business investment because firing everybody doesn’t provide reason for businesses to invest there. There is nothing a township, democratic or otherwise, can do to reverse national trends, and the only reason they would cut services and jobs is due to immediate budgetary concerns – a problem far better served by federal subsidies than the execution block. Like jobs training programs, cutting local government doesn’t change the economy; it only changes who’s best placed to survive a bad situation: Each town is pitted against its neighbors; a grudge match for scraps. A zero-sum game.

As such, what happens under this policy is that northern Rust Belt cities are brought down to the same level of southern Right-To-Work cities, and as I’ve argued earlier, that is a net loss for the working man. In essence, as the body has no more fat to burn, it instead burns muscle. We have been forced to eat ourselves to survive, and while we can cut jobs and wages and pensions all we want, but not only is that not new demand, it’s actively working against generating new demand. To force this future on these townships by destroying their democratic institutions seems only to add insult to injury.

City planners in upstate New York have, similarly, been talking about “reducing housing stock” in order to raise the value of housing. This is, in my opinion, another ironic attempt by appointed “experts” at enforcing an “economy of scarcity” above all other considerations. In protecting the welfare of the public, it’s ghoulish. In terms of economic policy, it’s still bad: Will this generate new demand for construction jobs? No, because if the population was there, they probably couldn’t afford new housing. Few people can. So why do it? Who benefits? The top, of course – landowners, remaining business owners – and they were never friends of democracy.

If there’s to be an argument as to the failures of democracy, it should be situated at where the problem actually lies: The federal level. It should be a well-reasoned debate as to the fact that a democratic system set up with multi-layered protections against doing no ill can be hijacked by cynical operatives and held hostage against those wishing to do good, however incrementally. Abusing filibuster rules to hamstring Congress from its appointed task – even in the face of a crisis that threatens the country – is as perfectly legal as it is unethical, unconscionable and immoral.

However, even then, it is a policy debate, and to answer this problem by appointing an executive with sweeping unilateral powers is a perversion of the argument. In short, this Emergency Manager is yet another method used to make sure that the poor burden the most of the economic downturn; the rich are given yet another tool in their toolbox to destroy elements of our government and governance that they find inconvenient. They’ve already gotten municipalities – big and small – to give decades-long, endlessly renewed tax moratoriums of the largest industries at the cost of the public services the industries depend on. Why should we accept this current ploy – this destruction of democracy – with anything but adamant hostility?

David Sirota argues that cities – at least city politics – are experiencing a sea change in favor of corporatist policies, what with the inception of business-friendly leaders like Bloomberg and Emanuel, which calls into question their reputation as being liberal bastions.

Thing is, cities are not all one thing or another – that’s more indicative of company towns, or communities that are small enough to be more homogenous, demographically. New York has always held corporatist ties, despite being as radically liberal as it’s been known to be. All those massive towers and headquarters in Midtown didn’t just crop up in the last nine years. Chicago’s been home to just such a duality as well.

Cities have always been the citadels of capital and the bastions of anti-capitalism. Chicago is the city of rail barons and rail strikes. New York is the city that built the Chrysler building on 42nd street at the same time the American Communist party set up shop on 23rd Street; the city that simultaneously housed robber baron John Rockefeller and anti-trust legislator Teddy Roosevelt. New York donates the most money to both the Republican party and the Democratic party. It’s no surprise that local politics would reflect the battle between the moneyed and the masses – and sometimes the moneyed win.

It’s not a new thing, per se. It’s exactly how things have always been!

Is it just me, or does Slate hire writers solely based on their work on topics they know nothing about? Richard Ford has written an article about why Ladies’ Nights are discriminating against men as an argument as to where Civil Rights can go wrong.

Justice Bird’s admonishment notwithstanding, legal prohibition must depend on judgments about which practices are important or harmful. Not every distinction—even if based on race or sex—is invidious.

He’s just as wrong as the people in the examples he gives:

In 2006 Stephen Horner sued a Denver nightclub over its ladies’ night policy. Horner explained his opposition to the unfair advantages women enjoy in American society: “Women are growing up these days feeling they’re entitled to favors. I believe this entitlement mentality is counterproductive to the social goals of a[n] egalitarian society.” He then added, apparently without irony: “I’m going to ask for every dollar I’m owed to the letter of the law, which is $500.”

Have these people never gone to clubs? They waive fees for women so that, when their club fills up with women, men show up. The entire practice is done to entice men to that club. Horner was wrong because, far from being discriminatory against men, it’s actually a service for men. Hell, by using those women as window dressing, arguably the whole thing is sexist against women! Ford – and the judge in that hearing – is wrong for allowing people like Horner to frame the debate. It’s not a Civil Rights case any more than senior discounts at the movie theater is a discrimination case, despite what a bunch of rather creepy blowhards say when they have to pay the cover.

But then, the article’s just one in a series of essays Ford is writing that attempt to make the argument that Civil Rights can go too far, and the second is worse:

Under IDEA, schools that fail to effectively educate disabled children can be made to pay for private school tuition. But the public schools—especially those in large cities like New York—are failing to educate many of their students who aren’t disabled, too. In 2004, more than 3 percent of all students served by the District of Columbia schools were in private placements, at a cost of 15 percent of the district’s entire budget. Yet D.C. schools “struggle to provide an adequate education to any of their students,” write two researchers at the Manhattan Institute. “Disabled students are entitled … to demand an adequate education,” they note, while nondisabled students “lack the same mechanism for exiting failing schools.”

Ford’s argument is that, because the public school systems in a lot of cities are failing, they are discriminating against people who are not offered options to escape the public school system. Indeed, Ford concedes this point: “The solution is obvious: better services for everyone. But IDEA doesn’t make the public schools better.”

It’s not meant to. Because a system is broken to the point that anybody with a means to escape it immediately does so – and I know the NYC Department of Education is well aware of just how unrepresentative its public schools are compared to the general youth, as they’re filled with those who couldn’t finagle their way into magnet schools, private schools or charter schools – doesn’t mean that the program itself should be scrapped, and least of all things be nixed as discriminatory.

Yes, the public school system propagates a Separate But Unequal situation. But IDEA is not the cause of that, despite certain parents’ abuse of the program to get the feds to pay for private school education, and to argue that Civil Rights legislation is somehow wrong because of IDEA’s inability to rectify our broken schools is, at best, mistaken, and at worst deliberately misleading.

I’m at a loss as to figure out the point of Robert Neuwirth’s article on Foreign Policy magazine. It describes “Systeme D,” which is a shortening of “l’economie de la debrouillardise,” which is itself “the economy of resourcefulness.” He describes it as the fastest growing sector in the world economy, and as an interesting – if wild – form of entrepreneurialism (if I may use another French loan word) in the face of failing governments and stymied commercial prospects in the formal market.

I studied City Planning in college, and they spoke of the same concept in the same form of awe and wonderment, as if it was an applicable and acceptable patch on the inability for government to properly execute social services. Neuwirth’s example du jour is a Nigerian businessman’s under-the-tables deal with a Chinese manufacturer to import electric generators as a way of solving grid problems. The example given in Planning 102 was garbage picking in Buenos Aires as an alternative to proper sanitation departments.

As pure news – that is to say, as a report on how people deal with otherwise untenable situations – I see the point of reporting on it. However, there’s always an angle, and my class was how we might make use of that lumpenbourgeoisie to effect policy: Namely, to develop a superstructure around that system and formalize it. To accept it. Which is a weird thing to do, because the people who work in the informal economy tend to be poor and miserable and “it’s better than starving” is a very mercenary way to justify a policy decision.

Nevertheless, Neuwirth’s article mostly plays up individual entrepreneuralism amidst high risk, as well as the lack of taxes due to the grey- and black-market nature of the deals, towards his conclusion that such is being comparatively successful compared to the formal economy. Libertarianism aside – no, wait, that’s the point, isn’t it?

“But the level of competition on the street keeps huge numbers of people employed. It liberates their entrepreneurial energy. And it offers them the opportunity to move up in the world.”

Yes. It keeps them employed at barely subsistence levels and is enforced by pure necessity. This is how people have survived throughout history, because the formal economy has never controlled everything, yet perfectly illustrates exactly why a formal economy is preferable. I’m ashamed I have to point this out, but in the informal economy, the highest risk is carried by the people least able to shoulder it. There are no protections from exploitation, fraud or extortion.

If I were writing the article, the conclusion would be that the world economy, by reverting to more base forms of economic activity, is backsliding. That does not appear to be the tone of his message. He appears to be condoning it because it allows him to ignore the social costs. Starvation? Violence? Bah! It’s the grey market: An Ayn Rand utopia!

I’m reminded of Bloomberg’s efforts to formalize gypsy cabs here in New York. New York’s system of yellow cabs has created a grey market of liveries outside of lower Manhattan: Due to the limited number of medallions that allow yellow cabbies to pick up street hails, the frankly ridiculous cost of them have changed the margins such that cabbies stick downtown at almost all costs. For the black cars, dispatch calls are legal and street hails aren’t, but cops generally turn a blind eye due to social necessity in the outer boroughs. Part of the result of this detente has been an extralegal job sector that beats firefighting in terms of workplace danger. The black car is simultaneously an ATM and getaway vehicle, and the driver has no legal recourse because he shouldn’t have picked up the fare in the first place.

Bloomberg’s response has been to license liveries and then talk of formalizing the process of allowing them to pick up street hails outside of lower Manhattan. The Taxi and Limousine Commission reacted in the only rational way possible: “How dare you devalue the medallions after we paid so much for them,” effectively killing any plans to move forward with the situation. Bloomberg was right in recognizing that such was an untenable situation – which puts him one up on Foreign Policy magazine – but formalizing it as is was also impossible (take that, college professors). The situation needs a sea change, because it’s the result of a plethora of issues, and the informal economy is, there as in all places, the result of bad policy that cannot be quick-fixed.

The medallion system was put in place to ease traffic concerns in lower Manhattan – on the assumption that flooding the area with taxis would cause gridlock – and because of which created a monster what with artificial limitation. The thing is, there are other ways to ease traffic concerns in lower Manhattan.

For one, Bloomberg was certainly on the right track when he sought to implement London-style congestion pricing – which sadly got shot down by a consortium of constituencies claiming to represent working-class Queens commuters – which would have allowed him to justify easing restrictions on medallions, which would further have lowered the running costs of yellow cabs and opened up greater parts of the city to them.

For another, we’re somehow hitting record numbers of mass transit riders yet the MTA is forced to cut services thanks to widespread public defunding. Expanding it would not only work in a Keynesian sense, but relieve the need for said under-served Queens commuters to suffer the Midtown tunnel and city parking. Of course, considering the lack of state support and federal funding, and with idiots across the river like Christie making a policy of killing long-term regional prospects (and in doing so succeeded, albeit briefly, in making Corzine look less disastrous), the problem is clearly indicative of an even larger systemic issue.

But in saying so, I see how far I am in frame of mind from folks like Neuwirth. You can’t propose solutions if you refuse to acknowledge there’s a problem, but then, you can’t acknowledge it if you don’t recognize it as one in the first place.