Author Archives: Sheila

Speaking Of Florida…

Speaking of Florida…

Ron DeSantis–the delusional and dangerous governor of Florida–is evidently doubling down on his insistence that government has no business protecting the public health via vaccine mandates.

According to The Week,

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday stepped up his fight against the White House over COVID-19 restrictions, calling for a special legislative session so the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature can block President Biden’s vaccine mandates. “We have an opportunity here to take additional action, and I think we have to do it,” said DeSantis, who also has vowed to challenge Biden’s mandates in court. “I think we have got to stand up for people’s jobs and their livelihoods.” Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls said his office had not received details on the plan for a special session. Biden in September said his administration would impose vaccine mandates on federal workers and businesses with more than 100 employees, prompting criticism from Republicans who said getting vaccinated should be a personal choice.

I don’t have any special insight into whether DeSantis is really as stupid as he sounds, or whether he has decided that his political future rests with the delusional Trumpian base of the GOP, but this latest bit of theater is driving rational observers over the edge.

The hypocrisy is bad enough. This sudden libertarianism is jarring, coming as it does from Republicans who have waged culture war on behalf of government’s right to dictate everything from citizens’ right to smoke weed to who they can marry and and how they must reproduce.

What is especially infuriating, however, is the insistence that protecting others from serious illness and possible death should be a matter of “personal choice.”

As most readers of this blog are aware, I spent six years as the Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU. I came to that position as a libertarian Republican (a category that no longer exists in the GOP, despite these sudden dishonest exhortations about “personal choice.”) I was–and am–a believer in what is called the libertarian premise, the  Enlightenment construct that says citizens are entitled to pursue their own telos, their own life goals–in today’s jargon, entitled to “do their own thing” and make their own “personal choices”–so long as they do not thereby harm the person or property of a non-consenting other, and so long as they are willing to accord an equal liberty to others.

The legitimacy of government action rests on those caveats.

There can certainly be arguments about what constitutes sufficient harm to justify government rules and regulations. Those arguments have been especially relevant to so-called “victimless crimes.” We distinguish, for example, between the guy who gets drunk in the privacy of his own home and the guy who gets drunk and takes to the road in his car. People who smoke in their own homes and cars are free to do so, but we have regulated smoking in public places ever since medical science discovered that passive smoke  endangers others. We argue whether the gambler who sustains losses poses a threat to others sufficient to legitimize laws against gambling, and whether the driver who doesn’t “buckle up” endangers anyone but himself.

The argument that vaccination is a “personal choice” doesn’t fall into that category.

Previous epidemics have not spawned similar, widespread debates about government’s right–actually, government’s duty–to protect public health. American courts, including the Supreme Court, have upheld both vaccination and quarantine mandates, because they are most definitely not matters of personal choice. A decision to forego vaccination for a non-medical reason is a declaration of disregard for ones fellow-citizens. Period.

If today’s insane Republicans want to risk their own lives in order to make a political statement, I’m fine with that. When they want to risk the lives of other people, not so much.

In Florida, a large percentage of the population is composed of elderly folks who are particularly vulnerable to the pandemic, That makes DeSantis’ opposition to vaccination especially heinous. He isn’t protecting “personal choice;” he’s signaling his willingness to add to the 59,000+  deaths the state has already suffered from COVID.

He has made a “personal choice” to elevate politics over morality.He’s despicable.

Comments

A Different Kind Of Florida Man

“Florida man” has become a comedy label, a phrase recognizing the ubiquity of stories about someone from the Sunshine State doing something idiotic or bizarre (but definitely funny).

Business Insider, however, recently had a different sort of “Florida man” story, and it’s worth pondering.

As businesses across the country advertise for workers, as “we are hiring” signs proliferate and every day brings complaints from businesses that tell us they are struggling to find employees, a Florida man decided to test their claims. He submitted at least two applications every day in September, taking care, as he told the magazine, to apply only for positions for which he was qualified.

Joey Holz had watched as business after business complained that the availability of government stimulus money was keeping workers at home and out of the job market. The complaint–and the attribution of the scarcity to government largesse–“was so ubiquitous that he joined a ‘No one wants to work’ Facebook group.”

He said he found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. The expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states ended them early in June and July.

“If this extra money that everyone’s supposedly living off of stopped in June and it’s now September, obviously, that’s not what’s stopping them,” he said. Workers have said companies struggling to hire aren’t offering competitive pay and benefits.

So Holz, a former food-service worker and charter-boat crewman, decided to run an experiment.

Holz spent a month applying for jobs, mostly at businesses whose employers had been vocal about a lack of workers . He kept track of those applications in a spreadsheet. After submitting 28 applications, he had received exactly nine email responses, one follow-up phone call, and one interview. That interview was with a construction company that had advertised a full-time job focused on site cleanup paying $10 an hour.

But Holz said the construction company instead tried to offer Florida’s minimum wage of $8.65 to start, even though the wage was scheduled to increase to $10 an hour on September 30. He added that it wanted full-time availability, while scheduling only part time until Holz gained seniority.

None of the companies that bothered to respond were paying over $12 an hour.

On September 29, after submitting 58 applications, Holz posted to Twitter about his saga, saying, ” y’all aren’t desperate for workers, you just miss your slaves.” The post went viral.

Holz acknowledged that his results may not be representative of the larger labor challenges in the country, since his search was local and targeted the most vocal critics of stimulus spending.

Holz is actually employed, and he noted that–despite the media focus on businesses that say they are struggling to hire–his own boss had experienced no staffing issues during the pandemic.

“Nobody leaves those positions because he takes care of his people,” Holz said, referring to his boss.

There is a larger lesson to be learned from the experiment run by this particular “Florida man,” if employers are willing to learn it. Research by the Economic Policy Institute confirms that lesson.

The author of the linked article concedes that, in a large and complex labor market like that of the U.S., there will periodically be pockets of bona fide labor shortages. But the article goes on to confirm “Florida man’s” conclusion: a far more common reason for such shortages is the reluctance of employers to pay enough to attract workers. “Employers post their too-low wages, can’t find workers to fill jobs at that pay level, and claim they’re facing a labor shortage.” A more precise formulation would be “I can’t find the workers I need at the wages I want to pay.”

The EPI analysis also points out that

when restaurant owners can’t find workers to fill openings at wages that aren’t meaningfully higher than they were before the pandemic—even though the jobs are inherently more stressful and potentially dangerous because workers now have to deal with anti-maskers and ongoing health concerns—that’s not a labor shortage, that’s the market functioning. The wages for a harder, riskier job should be higher.

“Florida man” proved the point…

Comments

There Are Unions…And Then There Are Unions…

Yesterday, I explained how my opinion of labor unions had, shall we say, “matured” over the years.  Like many others, I came to see what happens when power becomes wildly disproportionate–when the parties to “bargaining” are so unequal that actual bargaining is impossible.

My belated support for unions recognizes the importance of genuine collective bargaining.

That support doesn’t extend to today’s iteration of police unions, which tend to be powerful protectors of the worst elements of law enforcement.

Public-sector unions are all in a somewhat different situation than those in the private sector. The ability to interrupt a public service gives them additional clout, and they have consequently fared somewhat better than their private-sector counterparts. To the best of my knowledge, most–but certainly not all– have behaved responsibly.

Then there are police unions, which definitely have not. As an article last year in the New York Times put it,

Over the past five years, as demands for reform have mounted in the aftermath of police violence in cities like Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and now Minneapolis, police unions have emerged as one of the most significant roadblocks to change. The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.

They aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that they have battled to keep behind closed doors. And they have also been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability.

That political clout is significant. Candidates for local offices seek to benefit not just from police union endorsements but from contributions: according to the Times, a single New York City police union had donated over $1 million to state and local races between 2014-2020.

The knee-jerk resistance to reform and the “aggressive” protection of their members are troubling, but understandable, “tribal” behaviors. Less understandable–actually, in my view, incomprehensible–is the current anti-vaccine stance being taken by several police unions.

Police departments around the U.S. that are requiring officers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 are running up against pockets of resistance that some fear could leave law enforcement shorthanded and undermine public safety.

Police unions and officers are pushing back by filing lawsuits to block the mandates. In Chicago, the head of the police union called on members to defy the city’s Friday deadline for reporting their COVID-19 vaccination status.

It’s not just Chicago. The Sheriff of Los Angeles County has said he won’t force his 18,000 employees to be vaccinated despite a county mandate. Hundreds of police officers in San Diego say they would consider quitting instead of complying with a vaccination mandate.

Resistance is bubbling up even though first responders have been hit hard by COVID-19. More than 460 law enforcement officers have died from the virus, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks deaths in the line of duty.

On the news a few mornings ago, the head of the Chicago union pontificated that being vaccinated was a “personal choice” that government had no right to over-rule. That is especially ironic coming from someone who has been deputized by the government to enforce rules against the “personal choices” of, say, marijuana smokers, seat-belt resisters and gamblers.

It’s bad enough that ordinary Americans don’t understand the difference between personal liberty and their obligations to their fellow-citizens. (As a recent Facebook meme parodied that declaration, if I’m on a ship and I saw through the floor of my cabin to the water below, it’s my personal decision…). But these are people sworn to protect  and serve their communities–people who presumably became police officers in order to keep others safe. A “choice” to remain unvaccinated doesn’t simply expose the individual officer to a potentially deadly disease; it endangers anyone in the public with whom that officer interacts.

The research is unequivocal: police unions have a negative effect on innovation, accountability, and police — community relations. “Unionized officers draw more excessive-force complaints and are more likely to kill civilians, particularly nonwhite ones.”

The reason I changed my mind about unionization in general was my recognition that disproportionate power exercised by either unions or management leads to negative outcomes. In the private sector, sapping the ability of workers to bargain effectively has driven the widening gap between the rich and the rest.

In the public sector, the ability of police unions to shield bad cops from accountability–to allow them to defy the very rules they are supposed to uphold– endangers us all.

Comments

The Rebirth Of Unions?

I grew up in Anderson, Indiana, when that town’s Guide Lamp and Delco Remy plants employed large numbers of workers, and unions were strong. My father was a small businessman–he owned and operated an auto parts store–and I can still remember conversations between my parents that focused on the excesses of those unions. Strikes, of course, hurt my father’s business, but it went beyond that; union members sometimes engaged in thuggish behaviors of which my parents strongly disapproved. 

Those snatches of conversations were really all I knew growing up about labor unions, or the issues that came under the heading of “labor-management disputes.” Then, earlier in our married life, my architect husband often railed against construction unions that brought projects to a halt until their complaints were addressed, pointing out how those stoppages–often over “jurisdictional disputes” that seemed petty–drove up costs.

Let’s just say I wasn’t a fan of unions. I missed the point.

What I now understand is that wildly uneven distribution of power is never a good thing. Both management and unions have been guilty of bad behaviors, and those behaviors ought to be punished when they occur, but when management holds all the cards, the economy suffers and inequities and social discord increase.

The success of the business community in crushing unions has been a substantial contributor to the current, enormous gap between the rich and the rest, and to the resentments that feed America’s culture wars. So–despite my earlier bias–I see the signs of union resurgence as unequivocally good news. 

The Guardian recently reported on the elevation of Liz Schuler to the presidency of the AFL-CIO. The article noted that

Public approval for organized labor in the US has climbed to its highest level in more than 50 years, as many young workers are flocking into unions and millions of overstressed, underpaid frontline workers are impatient to improve their lot.

There are obvious barriers to a rebirth of vigorous unionism. At this point in time, only 6% of private-sector workers are in unions, and as the article points out, “the Republican party is intent on weakening unions, and most US corporations – led by behemoths Amazon and Walmart – are fiercely opposed to unionization.” Add in the prevalence of gig workers, tech workers and immigrant labor, and the employment landscape is considerably different than the largely factory-based labor force of my youth.

That said, we need only turn on the evening news to hear reports of efforts to unionize behemoths like Amazon and Starbucks, and more recently, striking workers in a number of sectors. The reluctance of workers to return to low-wage and often dangerous jobs in the wake of the pandemic and the proliferation of “help wanted” signs points to workers’ new ability to bargain for change. How all of this will play out is anyone’s guess.

The new aggressiveness of workers is just one piece of the social upheavals Americans are currently experiencing. Those upheavals remind me of another facet of my earlier life: the period we now refer to as “The Sixties.” Many of us in my (advanced) age cohort vividly remember the Sixties as a time of extreme social discord, a time the nation seemed to be coming apart. But that turmoil generated enormous–and largely positive–social change: it gave impetus to the civil rights movement, expanded healthcare for the elderly and the poor, reinvigorated the women’s movement and the gay-rights movement…The Sixties shook America out of the complacency and conformity of the Fifties. 

Regular readers of this blog may be shocked by this evidence of actual positivity, but as troubling and fraught as the current landscape is, I am convinced that we are going through a time of reordering and reconsideration not unlike what Americans experienced in the Sixties–hopefully, without the degree of violence that erupted during that time.

 If we can protect our basic democratic system–which, in my view, absolutely requires passage of the Voting Rights Act–we can emerge with a new understanding of civic equality and economic justice, a new recognition of the proper balance between “I” and “we,” and a renewed appreciation of the significant degree to which “my” prospects require a healthy and robust “us.”

So I’m cheering on the unions, rooting for the Biden Administration, appreciating the millions of Americans who’ve protected their neighbors by getting their vaccines, applauding the educators and historians who are correcting propaganda in the face of racist blowback– and reminding myself (sometimes daily) that a degree of upheaval–disquieting as it is–really can lead to a better tomorrow. 

Comments

The Golden Mean

Colin Powell has died, and a large measure of grace and public virtue has died with him.

Powell’s passing–and the manner in which he lived his public life–  put me in a reflective mood. Specifically–and for no obvious reason– the news made me think about the ancient Greek emphasis on a “golden mean”–a midpoint between extremes– and the relevance of that concept to public service in our angry, contentious political environment.

Mostly, I’ve been considering what the phrase doesn’t–or shouldn’t–mean.

The golden mean isn’t a center-point between the far-right and the bat-shit crazy–between   Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Green, for example. Just because we live in an era when so many people in positions of influence have embraced autocratic philosophies and succumbed to conspiracy theories doesn’t move the “mean” to a point between fascism and lunacy.

The golden mean also isn’t some halfway point between acquiescence to Joe Manchin’s arrogance and greed and Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialism.

If we define the golden mean as some sort of halfway point between the passions of our various culture warriors, it’s just another word meaning “compromise.” (I hasten to clarify that I am generally in favor of honorable compromise.) It is a more meaningful concept. I particularly like one definition I’ve seen, comparing the golden mean to the Buddha’s middle path between self-indulgence and self-renunciation. For Aristotle–who is credited for refining the earlier concept– the golden mean was the path to moral behavior, a point that lies  between excess and deficiency.

The New World Encyclopedia attributes the origin of the concept to Crete and the mythological story of Daedalus.

The earliest representation of this idea in culture is probably in the mythological Cretan tale of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus, a famous artist of his time, built feathered wings for himself and his son so that they might escape the clutches of King Minos. Daedalus warns his son to “fly the middle course,” between the sea spray and the sun’s heat. Icarus did not heed his father; he flew up and up until the sun melted the wax off his wings.

The Encyclopedia also cites the warning carved into the front of the temple at Delphi: “Nothing in Excess.”

Today, America is positively marinating in excess. Passion all-too-frequently overwhelms reason, and  participants in our political life generally exhibit far more self-righteousness than the humility that characterizes genuine righteousness.

Which brings me back to Colin Powell, who once described himself to a New York Times reporter as a “problem solver”–someone who has views, but is not an ideologue; someone who has passion, but is not a fanatic.

In other words, someone flying the middle course between the sea spray and the sun.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from Powell’s life was, as one headline put it, “the importance of owning your mistakes.” He famously testified to the UN that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; we–and he– later learned that the assertion was false. It is likely that he wasn’t lying, but had been lied to; nevertheless, he was wrong, and accountable for it. He publicly admitted he’d been wrong, and expressed regret. He didn’t blame anyone else. He didn’t offer exculpatory sentiments. He said he’d been wrong and that it was one of the most troubling mistakes of his life.

As the GOP morphed into the White Supremacy Party, Powell–until then, a lifelong Republican–  publicly shared  his deep misgivings about the Party’s rightward march. Unlike other former Republican office-holders, he spoke up as the GOP embraced extremism, racism and  birtherism;  in the run-up to the 2016 election, he pointed out that Trump was a liar who represented a danger to the United States. Unlike so many others, he put country above party.

He was an admirable public figure, an example of someone who tried to act in accordance with the golden mean–and the golden rule. Very few public figures are currently emulating that effort.

RIP.

Comments