New Geography

Author: admin

  • Jim Russell

  • Pittsburgh’s Brain Drain Game

    Rust Belt communities are obsessed with brain drain. The demographic losers of economic restructuring, cities are employing a variety of strategies to stop the bleeding and keep the talent from leaving the region. Akron, OH recently voted down a proposal to lease the city’s sewer system in order to fund a scholarship program designed to plug the holes of out-migration. The voters balked at the initiative partly as a result of the 30-year residential commitment necessary to reap the full benefits of the funding for post-secondary education in Akron schools.

    You would think plugging the brain drain seems like a good idea. I thought so when I decided to help Southwestern Pennsylvania solve its declining population problem. However, a few months into the project I determined that the exodus from Pittsburgh ended almost two decades ago. The devastating loss of young adults in the early 1980s still echoed throughout the area and informed a great deal of policymaking.

    The most comical anti-brain-drain campaign was Border Guard Bob, a product of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance who was invented to keep local graduates around home. The pitch was that Pittsburgh is too great of a place to leave, if you knew where to look. Bob was retired before his unveiling, hopefully because he was too ridiculous even for our local leaders, but the spirit behind it remained.

    I’m not aware of any successful anti-brain-drain program, but Pittsburgh continues to try despite having more college graduates than the region can employ. If anything, Greater Pittsburgh suffers from a glut of talent that stubbornly tries to stay. Average wages are below even those in nearby Cleveland, which sports notably more unemployment and a much more acute foreclosure crisis. Yet the initiatives keep coming.

    The Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project (PUMP) claims to better enfranchise young adults living in the city. The ultimate goal is to retain talent by giving them reasons to stay. Empowering residents is noble enough, but I doubt PUMP can deliver the population boost the City of Pittsburgh desperately seeks.

    Maybe the problem is not that Pittsburgh or other Midwest cities are unattractive places to live. Instead the roots of the out-migration lie elsewhere – in dysfunctional economies and wretched politics. It’s not lack of “cool places” to hang out but things like a declining tax base and a growing pension debt that effectively hamstring the city.

    Frustrated job seekers aren’t heading to the Sun Belt because they need a cooler place to hang out. They are looking for jobs and opportunities. And if they hang around until their thirties, they then leave to the surrounding suburbs and their better schools.

    The Pittsburgh Promise, a child of the Kalamazoo Promise, offers a better alternative. Thanks to money from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), the City doesn’t have to lease its sewers in order to provide graduates from Pittsburgh public schools with scholarships. The suburban schools don’t look quite so attractive when we are talking about a free ride for college.

    But even if it’s a step in the right direction, the Pittsburgh Promise still won’t keep families from moving to Charlotte, NC. It certainly won’t attract families from Austin, TX. Therein lies the flaw. There are no mechanisms to bring new talent into the region. Without substantial in-migration, particularly immigration, no Rust Belt city is likely to experience an economic renaissance. But the focus is always on the people who leave. The real problem is why people don’t come.

    Just about anywhere in the Rust Belt, the perception of brain drain and actual rates of out-migration are horribly out of whack. This past summer, the Land Policy Institute at Michigan State University issued a report that concluded that the number of young adults in the state was growing faster than the national average during the period of 2000-2006. The cry to stop brain drain in Michigan – epitomized by Governor Jennifer Granholm’s “cool cities” program – has never been louder. The rhetoric doesn’t concern me, but the ineffectiveness of the programs should give everyone pause.

    Basically fighting out-migration is a losing cause. The US Census found a positive correlation between increasing levels of education and the greater likelihood of leaving a region. Should Pittsburgh stop investing in its schools in order to better retain residents? Of course not. But this is no more absurd than spending a lot of money to keep people from seeking opportunity elsewhere.

    If you are a parent, then the idea of moving in order to improve your children’s opportunities makes sense. However, for a community to invest in a student likely to leave the economic area presents a conflict of interest.

    The Pittsburgh Promise isn’t a bad idea. Maybe it will encourage people to stay or even move in from the suburbs given the carrot of subsidized college tuition. But that won’t alleviate anemic regional population growth. Pittsburgh needs to sell itself globally as a place where you can access opportunity, either for yourself or your children. Pittsburgh must attract new blood. Pittsburgh, essentially, needs economic growth.

    I’ve labored over the best way to align the interests of individuals with that of the community concerning geographic mobility. I think the solution is, counter-intuitively, to promote out-migration. Pittsburgh’s exodus during the early 1980s was impressive, perhaps uniquely so. The result is what I call the Burgh Diaspora, the scattered expatriates who still retain an unusual preoccupation with their hometown.

    My idea is to use the Burgh Diaspora like an alumni network, to help Pittsburghers get a leg up on globalization. You can always find an ex-neighbor prepared to help you. Facilitating this odyssey could deepen loyalty and might eventually spark a return migration. But my hope is that non-natives would also appreciate this value proposition, seeking access to the diaspora network.

    Read Jim’s Rust Belt writings at Burgh Diaspora.

  • Two-Timing Telecommute Taxes

    Telecommuting — or telework — is a critical tool that can help employees, businesses and communities weather the current financial crisis, and thrive afterward. However, right now, the nation is burdened with a powerful threat to the growth of telework: the telecommuter tax. This tax is a state penalty imposed on Americans who work for employers outside their home states and sometimes telecommute.

    Proposed bi-partisan federal legislation called the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act would abolish the telecommuter tax. To help assure that the nation can take full advantage of the economic relief telework offers, Congress must pass this bill – either as stand-alone legislation or as part of a new economic stimulus package.

    Relief for Employees

    Working from home (or alternative sites close to home) can save struggling families money on gasoline, parking, train and bus fares, dry cleaning, business wardrobes and work-week meals. They can save on dependent care by providing some of the necessary care themselves during the time they previously spent commuting.

    Telework can also relieve the considerable strain on Americans nearing retirement who have unexpectedly lost their pensions and must now continue working. Working indefinitely may be a hardship for many older employees. Some may not be able, physically, to continue making a daily round-trip commute. Some may need to move closer to their adult children who live out-of-state, either to receive physical help from them, or to help them with child-care costs by baby-sitting. If Americans who have been robbed of their retirements can work from home at least some of the time, they can stay on the job without having to travel as often or live as close to their offices.

    Relief for Employers

    Employers (both public and private) can use telework to slash real estate and energy expenses. When fewer employees work on-site every day, employers need to rent, heat, cool and light less office space.

    Implementing telework can also reduce recruitment and turnover costs: Employers offering flexibility can attract top-tier candidates from a wide geographic area, and generate loyalty among valued employees.

    Telework can reduce business interruption costs when an emergency or other major disruption occurs near the main office. If, for example, a severe storm, fire, bomb threat or transit strike affects the employer’s area, a staff trained to work remotely can keep operations running smoothly.

    And organizations adopting telework can become more productive. Employees can replace commute time with work time; concentrate better because they are less exposed to the frequent interruptions typical in busy offices; reduce absenteeism by completing tasks at home instead of taking whole days off when they have to meet non-work responsibilities, like caring for sick children, and reduce “presenteeism”, the phenomenon of employees showing up at the office when they are too sick to be productive and are likely to compromise the health and productivity of co-workers.

    Relief for Communities

    Telework can bring new Internet-based jobs to rural areas with sagging economies. It can also bring new home buyers to such regions: Americans who want to maintain their high paced, big-city careers in a slower paced, more scenic environment. A significant growth in the population of home-based workers in these communities can also produce growth in businesses catering to their needs, such as home office supply stores and business service providers.

    The Telecommuter Penalty Tax

    Despite the important help telework can provide during and after the financial meltdown, states may punish nonresident teleworkers by subjecting them to a telecommuter tax. New York has been particularly aggressive on this front.

    Under the “convenience of the employer” rule, when a nonresident of New York and his New York employer agree that the employee may sometimes work from home, New York will tax him on his entire income, both the income he earns when he works in New York, and the income he earns when he works at home, in a different state. Because telecommuters’ home states can also tax the wages telecommuters earn at home, they are taxed twice on those wages.

    In some cases, a telecommuter’s home state may give him a credit for the taxes he pays New York on the income he earns at home. However, even in such cases, the employee may be penalized for telecommuting. When New York taxes income at a higher rate than the home state, the telecommuter must pay taxes on his home state income at the higher rate.

    By subjecting nonresident employees to double or excessive taxation if they telecommute, a state like New York needlessly limits the strategies available for coping with our ailing economy.

    Harm to Employers

    By deterring telework, the telecommuter tax frustrates businesses trying to decentralize their workers and prevents them from exploiting telework’s business benefits.

    In addition, the hefty payroll obligations the telecommuter tax imposes on businesses can force companies to relocate. Indeed, The New York Times reported this year on a small business that planned to leave New York because tackling the state’s claims under the convenience of the employer rule proved too draining. (See David S. Joachim, “Telecommuters Cry ‘Ouch’ to the Tax Gods,” The New York Times, Special Section on Small Business, Feb. 20, 2008.)

    Further, by thwarting the growth of telework, the telecommuter tax encourages traffic congestion, a menace to productivity. Excessive traffic can, for example, cause employees to arrive late for work and delay customer deliveries.

    Harm to States

    In addition to employees and employers, telecommuters’ states of residence also suffer under the telecommuter tax. Consider a Virginia resident who telecommutes most of the time to his New York employer. If Virginia grants the telecommuter a credit for taxes paid to New York on his home state income, Virginia forfeits its tax revenue to New York. In so doing, Virginia effectively subsidizes public services in New York (like transportation, police, fire and other emergency services) while it makes the same services available to its resident who is working in Virginia. States currently struggling with steep budgetary shortfalls cannot afford to cede their own revenue to other states. The employee who telecommutes, meanwhile, suffers under a reduced budget for home state spending.

    Even the state imposing the tax loses. In addition to driving business away, New York’s telework tax policy can drive part-time telecommuters away. Because the convenience of the employer rule applies only to nonresidents who spend time working in New York, nonresidents can avoid the rule by avoiding the state: They can increase their telecommuting from part-time to full-time, or take jobs in their home states. When nonresidents stop traveling to New York for work, New York gives up the opportunity to tax any of their wages, and New York restaurants, hotels and other businesses lose the income these teleworkers would have generated on their commuting days.

    The Remedy

    The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act would eliminate these ills, prohibiting states like New York from taxing the income nonresidents earn at home in other states.

    The bill has bi-partisan support in both Houses of Congress, including the support of lawmakers from Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi and Virginia. Outside Congress, the measure has been endorsed by advocates for telecommuters, taxpayers, homeowners and small businesses.

    To help assure that the greatest number of employees and businesses can maximize telework’s economic benefits – during the current crisis and afterward – Congress should pass the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act. Whether as an addition to a new stimulus package or in a separate measure, Washington must see to it that telecommuter tax fairness becomes the law.

  • St. Louis Blues

    The night of the election, my husband and I greeted with elation the news that the presidency would go to Barack Obama. Then, seconds later, we hunkered down on the sofa with anxious expressions and asked the talking heads: “What about Missouri?”

    It’s our state, and we want to know just where we stand as residents and in which direction the region is headed, but we also find it embarrassing to live in a red state. Our friends who live elsewhere pay little, if any, attention to what goes on here in St. Louis. In conversation, it’s hard not come away with the impression that they assume we are bereft of cultural institutions, public transportation, nightlife, public parks, ethnic and racial diversity, creative schools or, even, sometimes, vegetables. All of these assumptions are more about the amorphous realm of culture than they are about the bread-and-butter issues that determined this election. Yet, somehow, it is the amorphous that defines who I am the moment that I hear Missouri labeled “red state.”

    So, as it began to look like McCain was going to eke out a victory in Missouri, I did what all upper middle-class people in the United States do when anxious: I went online. My interest was in how the city of St. Louis compared to those cities where many of my friends live and where, frankly, I have often wished to live myself. I looked up the percentage of voters who favored Obama in the counties that included my “destination cities.” And, from greatest to least, here’s what I found:

    Washington D.C.: 92.9%
    San Francisco: 84.7%
    St. Louis: 83.7%
    Philadelphia: 83%
    Brooklyn: 78.9%
    Boston: 77.5%
    Portland: 77%
    Santa Fe: 76.8%
    Chicago: 76.1%
    Denver: 75.3%
    Queens: 74.4%
    Seattle: 71.4%
    Los Angeles: 69.3%
    New York: 62.1%

    That’s right: The city of St. Louis is one of the bluest places in America.

    There, are, of course, several caveats. St. Louis City, as opposed to St. Louis County, which includes the city’s suburbs, is incredibly small. I live in St. Louis County, where a far less dramatic proportion of folks, 59.5%, favored Obama. Yet, the inclusion of comparable areas in other cities, say, Riverside County for Los Angeles, where 50.8% of voters went for Obama, would yield a similar result. And for all the claims that Obama’s victory is ushering in a post-racial era, it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that race had some role to play in places with large African American populations like D.C., Philadelphia, and St. Louis. Indeed, Missouri’s own status as red or blue rests on how many provisional ballots state officials will count, and most of those provisional ballots were cast in African American neighborhoods in St. Louis and Kansas City, where voters waited in line long into the night. Nonetheless, even taking into account urban size and white flight, it would appear that people who live in blue cities are often (but, of course, not always) next door to or at least near to, red counties.

    In the 1990s, red and blue state labels were shorthand for the policies that shaped funding for the arts and affirmative action and gay and lesbian rights. To a lesser extent, they were also about health care and education and housing and poverty and the perception of the U.S. abroad, but I can’t say that either set of issues jumped to mind when I heard the term: “red state, blue state.” Instead of culture wars, I more often thought of a battle between cultures of consumption – which cars were on the road, which greens were available at the supermarkets, the density of independent bookstores.

    These are rarely the images that spring to my mind now, nor are carbon emissions or food policy or literacy. For the first time in my voting life, I am preoccupied more by what I can do and less by what I can buy.

    I may have changed my opinions because I’m older, employed, and a parent. Nonetheless, I now think that to be blue on those all-too-simple electoral maps has a new meaning. I think it carries with it a new responsibility to talk to neighbors and to follow those issues that seem to cut through partisan divides, issues like economic security, public transportation, education, health care, and insuring a safe local and global environment.

    I thought about this new sense of responsibility this morning. I headed out my front door, turned right, and walked 110 steps. As red leaves fell, I stood in one of the bluest cities in America.

    Flannery Burke is an assistant professor in the Department of History at St. Louis University. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, she writes about the American West, the environment, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.

  • The Two Obamas

    President-Elect Obama has promised us a new day but early signals show that if change is on the way, it might follow the course most expect. Just look at his choice of Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. It appears Mr. Obama has picked a very partisan Democrat from Chicago’s Democratic Machine. Rahm Emanuel’s closeness to Mayor Daley and William Daley should raise eyebrows.

    Emanuel presents the other grittier face of our new President. As Obama reminds reporters on occasion, he is no political weakling. He comes from the world of Chicago politics, where the ends always justify the means. Power, patronage and influence are the primary currency of the regime; consistent good performance is nice, just not as important. In some senses, we need to see this as the Chicago Machine going national. The aldermen are already salivating at the prospect of unprecedented new pork coming direct from the heart of national power.

    They can certainly expect sympathy from Rahm Emanuel since, at heart, he is one of them. Emanuel rose to power with the help of an illegal patronage operation still the continuing subject of a major federal criminal investigation. Rahm Emanuel became a Congressman by defeating a grass roots local Democrat with the help of Mayor Daley’s illegal patronage army. John Kass of The Chicago Tribune reports:

    It’s likely that if City Hall had not sent Don Tomczak, the corrupt city water department boss, to Emanuel’s congressional campaign in 2002, he may not have ever been elected. Tomczak’s political army of hundreds of city workers stumped the precincts with the promise of overtime.

    Don Tomczak is now a convicted felon for his efforts.The New York Times explained some of the methods of the patronage army working for Rahm Emanuel: “concocted ‘blessed lists’ of preselected winners for certain jobs and promotions based on political work or union sponsorship. The scheme involved sham interviews, falsified ratings forms and the destruction of files to cover it up.”

    Ok, so that’s inside Chicago politics. But how about this? Before coming to Congress, Bill Clinton appointed Rahm Emanuel to the board of directors of Freddie Mac.Few can say they’ve ever been on the board of directors of an S&P 500 company – particularly before the age of 40. What did Rahm Emanuel know about the bogus accounting numbers of Freddie Mac? Obviously, Barack Obama should be concerned about having someone so associated with the housing debacle being a major part of his administration.

    Ultimately, the rest of America is going to have to get used to two Obamas – one a rough edged Chicago poll and the other the spinner of rhetoric brilliance and the beloved of the planet. The Chicago side could prove troublesome even with allies. Emanuel once proposed taking away the driver’s licenses of high school drop outs – an idea which made members of the Congressional Black Caucus irate.

    On the other hand, Emanuel’s practical, “yes to power” political views might play a positive role on issues such as trade. His relatively pro-free trade stance already has created the first panic among left-wingers about what many thought would be the administration of their dreams.

    And what about the slide of America Emanuel has been representing all these years? Between 2000 and 2005, his district lost 5.1 percent of its population. It was one of the country’s ten fastest-shrinking districts. Bad public schools, high taxes, and high crime have caused the middle class to leave Emanuel’s district for the suburbs.

    An Obama Administration with Rahm Emanuel in the key position of Chief of Staff has great symbolic value. It suggests less attention to be paid to the post-partisan reform and more to hardboiled politics. It grows from an economic climate that has over the past few decades lost jobs, the middle class and families.

    In this sense, Rahm Emanuel does not symbolize a change in the way politics is conducted. If our new President wants to do this, he will have to do so over the likely objections of his chief of staff – and also in contrast to his own record of conciliation with one of the most corrupt city machines in American history.

    Can someone who works with the Chicago Democratic Machine be for political change? History would suggest it would be a first.

    Steve Bartin is a resident of Cook County and native who blogs regularly about urban affairs at http://nalert.blogspot.com. He works in Internet sales.

  • Bringing Hope to Red America

    In the end Appalachia remained out of sync with much of America this year. West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and much of the hill country went for John McCain. Senator’s Obama’s message of “hope” did not play as well here as elsewhere.

    This may seem a bit odd. The major targets of the election were Joe six-pack, Joe the plumber; Joe the ordinary man. Joe represented the disaffected males, the lost ones yearning for a simpler time and a better time. Enough Joes in other states voted for Obama to get him a spectacular victory in places like Ohio, Florida and Michigan.

    But no one thought much of Joe the coal miner and not much thought has been given to what this election means to the many “Joes” who live in Appalachia. For too many generations, our Joes have either hunkered down and worked the coalfields, or eked out a meager living on rocky hillside terrain. Many survive on the cash economy, tinkering as best they could to put together a living. My father tells me his grandfather made mandolins to supplement his farm earnings and played them at family gatherings. He describes his upbringing as poor, but happy.

    There were town centers where, as my dad put it, families would come to “trade” on the weekends. Baseball teams formed and played in the circuit of small towns. I once saw a 1914 picture of my grandfather as a member of one of those teams – called the Mize Nine. Today you could not get nine people together in Mize, now barely a wide place in the road.

    It is a world where the much discussed disappearance of the middle class didn’t apply because it never existed. Like my father, many of them left for the factories of the north in the 40s and 50s. The culture was and is a story of unparalleled literary and artistic musical strength, but little in the way of jobs outside of coal.

    Appalachian people were sometimes portrayed during the primary as racist, ignorant and pathetic. Appalachian towns like Inez, Kentucky – the site of LBJ’s proclamation of the war on poverty in 1964 – were visited and heralded as the towns to be rescued – only to once again be left behind.

    In an era of demand for change, what can be expected of or for Appalachia? It is a land where minerals are king and largely owned by outside interests. It has resisted change and remains ridden with poverty and an image that defies change even in the face of success – and there are some success stories in Appalachia.

    Barack Obama is the candidate known for his message of hope. He is known for his soaring speeches that lift us up. But, he is a Chicago kind of guy and seems to grasp the need to pay attention to the big cities and surrounding regions where 75 percent of Americans will likely live in the year 2050.

    But, “hope” also applies to places like Appalachia. We don’t need to be caricatured in the national media as pathetic, poor and somehow outside the brave new world.

    Yet we should not expect that help will come from Washington and solve the problem. It is dawning on all of us that what is big and glittery may not be what we seek. The environmental, energy and fiscal crises have converged to drive home what Katrina only began – the need for a realignment of our priorities.

    Those priorities are not fundamentally about big new investments in infrastructure or Washington support for improved education. Those would be welcome, but the change that will work long-term comes from the local level, from the ability of smaller places to reinvent themselves.

    I see some signs of this. Places that were left behind or written off are coming alive once recalling the early days of the Mize Nine as we seek to build locally what is beyond our scale in those more glamorous venues.

    Being “left behind” is something that implies that others must reach out and provide the rescue. In Inez, the people are speaking and they are saying we will take control of our own destiny. We want to write a new story that transcends poverty and the painting of images by the 24 hour news outlets. Perhaps, instead of trying to catch-up, these places can leap forward to lead the way toward local prosperity and a better quality of life. Will we in Appalachia now finally make the intentional choices to secure a better future or will we continue to let others tell our story of woe and misery?

    The truth is that the story won’t change if we don’t begin to write and tell our own stories. As the new administration grapples with the many issues it faces – health care, energy and fiscal distress to name just a few – it should remember the words of Colin Powell: “All villages matter.” Small places – and big ones – do not need Washington to save them, just to acknowledge that they are important and deserving in their own way.

    So, as President-elect Obama looks to the future, he should grasp the opportunity that is upon us to build great communities in all corners of the nation under the new rules of the game of the 21st century. Appalachia may not have voted with him, but we are still part of his constituency; “red” America, as he suggested last night, is still part of his America.

    Our new President needs to realize – as do we – that the tired old policies of Washington will not work any longer – “handouts” have never been the answer. And, as one voter here said: “We intend to hold Obama accountable in his presidency.” She paused before adding: “And, we expect him to hold us accountable as well.”

    Sylvia L. Lovely is the Executive Director/CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities and the founder and president of the NewCities Institute. Please send your comments to slovely@klc.org and visit her blog at sylvia.newcities.org.

  • Spanish, Obama, and Cambio in St. Louis

    There are two definitive differences between St. Louis and Los Angeles: Autumn is better in St. Louis, and more people speak Spanish in Los Angeles. And, yeah, there’s the Mississippi River and the humidity and the beach and the film industry and the palm trees, but in terms of my own private geography and topophilia, autumn and Spanish are the differences that matter. I long for LA in every season but fall, and a part of my longing is, inevitably, a longing for Spanish.

    Let me be clear: my Spanish is not as good as it once was, as it should be, or as I would like it to be. At my best, I could read a newspaper, and now I struggle with verb conjugation as I try to teach my son a limited number of phrases. I had to correct my pronunciation of Sepulveda when I arrived in LA, and I had to constantly remind myself that Californians do not place the accent in Cordova on the first syllable as they do in my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico. But during my time in California, the straining to understand when I rudely eavesdropped, the sorting of accents (Guatemalan, Mexican, Honduran), the delight in piecing together the history behind the names of the streets and the neighborhoods and the mountains – from Pico to Los Feliz to the San Gabriels – wrapped me in Spanish, and somehow made me feel comfortable with the constant struggle to comprehend a landscape written in a different language.

    I knew I moved through the city with a cloak of privilege. White Angelinos stereotypically treat Latinos, especially recent immigrants, as invisible workers. I tried to buck the stereotype, but my stumbling Spanish was usually no more than comic relief to native speakers. No one ever questioned (as they have some of my Latino friends) whether English was my first language. And when I was tired or distracted or just disinclined, I never had to speak Spanish to navigate the metro or read the paper or, even, to order at a restaurant. I’m willing to entertain the thought that my relationship to Spanish was no more than a condescending quest for local color, but I like to think it was more than that. I like to think that the city loved me in Spanish.

    It was in a spirit of perversity that, just as the leaves began to turn, the mosquitoes began to die, and the outdoors became bearable, I decided to accompany my husband to Cherokee Street in St. Louis for Mexican food. Cherokee Street has a burgeoning Latino community, boosting St. Louis’s Hispanic population to a whopping 2%. Nonetheless, undocumented residents perhaps double that number, and co-workers tell me they’ve watched St. Louis’s Latino population grow, especially within the Catholic community. For what it’s worth, I can’t stand on more than one street corner at a time, and from the corner of Cherokee and California it could almost have been LA. It was a hot, dry day. Dust actually blew past the furniture rental stores. Squint, and I could almost smell the Santa Anas. Our restaurant had a Spanish soap opera on the television, the waitress served the coke in a tall glass bottle. For a few minutes, it felt like the city loved me.

    Head west on Cherokee, and you will see a huge Obama poster with the word, Cambio – Change – written across the bottom, and an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the corner. In these final days of the campaign, images of Obama seem more and more to reflect what their creators want to see. The poster is, arguably, a picture of St. Louis’s potential future: a majority black city with a growing Latino, especially Mexican, population. I look at the poster, up against St. Louis’s characteristic red brick, and hope that Latinos here will be visible in a new way. I remember a bumper sticker, “Rednecks for Obama,” that I saw recently in my neighborhood. I remember that St. Louis is no blank slate when it comes to race relations. I chastise myself for being naive. I note that the poster says cambio, not esperanza; change, not hope. I think about how to tell my son, in Spanish, where I’ve been that day.

    Flannery Burke is an assistant professor in the Department of History at St. Louis University. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, she writes about the American West, the environment, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.

  • BenW_CityParks

  • Obama and Chicago: Saying Yes to Power?

    With Barack Obama possibly becoming the next President, it’s time to look at the Senator’s hometown. The Senator may have talked a great deal about change as a candidate, but to a large extent he has worked closely with what may be one of the most corrupt political cultures in America.

    Of course every politician has his or her skeletons – McCain for example with Charles Keating and his assorted scandals. But with Chicago, Obama has links to an entire cemetery of corruption. It’s not surprising, for example, that the FBI has its largest public corruption squad located in its city limits. This is the ultimate one-party city: Chicago has had a Democratic mayor since 1931, something of a record for a major city. Today, 49 of the city’s 50 Aldermen are Democrats. Things like the skyline and demographics change in Chicago, but not the politics.

    A a result of this one party system, the city has one of the most expansive and expensive governments in the country. Recently, Chicago’s sales tax made national news because, at 10.25 %, it is the highest in the nation. A major reason taxes are so high: corruption is costly.

    This is not a hard case to make.

    Chicago’s Aldermen have a felony conviction rate that would shock outsiders. Since 1973, 27 Chicago Aldermen have been convicted by U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Illinois. This includes former Alderman Fred Roti whose amazing criminal career helped turn Chicago’s City government into a racketeering enterprise.

    Roti was a Chicago Alderman from 1968-1991. At the time of his indictment in 1990, Roti was Chicago’s longest serving Alderman. Here’s a description of Roti by the Justice Department, “ Fred Roti was convicted of RICO conspiracy, bribery and extortion regarding the fixing of criminal cases in the Circuit Court of Cook County, including murder cases involving organized crime members or associates and was sentenced to 48 months’ imprisonment.” At Roti’s sentencing, federal judge Marvin Aspen reminded everyone of the danger of Alderman Roti. “But there is a bigger victim, and that’s the whole democratic process. When you have the courts of law that are fixed, when you have a city government that is fixed, what are doing, really, is attacking the core of democracy. You’re saying that this democracy…is the same as any other banana republic or corrupt regime.”

    During his time as an elected Alderman, Roti effectively controlled Chicago’s legislative branch. The Chicago Tribune wrote, describing his tenure at Chicago’s City Council, “It’s often said that roll calls could stop after Roti votes-the outcome is already known. Roti, an affable fellow, controls the Chicago City Council with an iron fist.”

    In August of 1999, the Justice Department named Alderman Fred Roti as a “high ranking made member” of the Chicago Mob. Roti’s mission was to hijack the political system and load up Chicago’s government and labor unions with friends, relatives, and Chicago Mob associates. Roti succeeded in his mission. Today, in 2008, Roti’s friends and relatives still make the news for their ability to get caught up in scandal.

    Chicago political corruption is not merely a colorful historical artifact. Alderman Roti’s friends and relatives remain at the forefront of recent political scandals. Chicago’s Hired Truck program, under which private trucks were hired to do city work, lead to several felony convictions. Many of the trucks hired did no work but were paid taxpayer dollars. The Chicago Sun-Times reported 17 trucking companies in the Hired Truck program had ties to the Roti family. Roti relative Nick “the Stick” LoCoco was the boss of the program. Nick LoCoco was a Mob bookie in charge of the $40 Million a year program.

    Alderman Roti’s prolific criminal legacy includes getting Chicago Police Officer William Hanhardt appointed Chief of Detectives. Hanhardt was the Chicago Mob’s long term plant on the force. With Hanhardt as Chief of Detectives, the Chicago Mob had a person who could promote corrupt cops and control criminal investigations. Before and after leaving the Chicago Police force in 1986, Hanhardt ran the most successful jewelry theft ring in United States history which he ran until he was indicted in 2000.

    U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar described Hanhardt’s operation,“Hanhardt’s organization surpasses, in duration and sophistication, just about any other jewelry theft ring we’ve seen.” John Kass of The Chicago Tribune recently described the Hanhardt legacy as an illustration of what he called “the Chicago way.” U.S Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald reminded everyone when Hanhardt pled guilty in 2001 of the danger of William Hanhardt, “It’s remarkable that a person who was chief of detectives of the Chicago Police Department admits to being part of a racketeering conspiracy.”

    In July of 2006, the Justice Department convicted top Daley administration officials for running a massive illegal political patronage operation. Robert Sorich , one of Mayor Daley’s top aids, was convicted of running a massive political scheme in which favored political patronage workers were placed on Chicago’s payroll. As The New York Times reported, “the scheme involved sham interviews, falsified ratings forms and the destruction of files to cover it up.”. One of Alderman Roti’s nephews, Bruno Caruso, was the second most successful individual in terms of getting people jobs. In 1999, according to The Chicago Sun-Times, the FBI named Bruno Caruso as a “made member” of The Chicago Mob.

    The people who run Chicago today still have a soft spot for mobsters

    Six weeks after being named a high ranking “made member” of the Chicago Mob, Roti died. One of the first orders of business when the City Council met on September 29,1999 was to honor his life with a resolution supported by the two most important political figures in Chicago, Mayor Daley and Alderman Ed Burke. The resolution called “Fred B.Roti, a committed public servant, a cherished friend of many and good neighbor to all, will be greatly missed and fondly remembered by his many family members, friends and associates” and Roti “is remembered as a kind, considerate person, who had great love for his family and community.”

    In the summer of 2007, the Justice Department brought one of their largest Mob trials in years. It was dubbed the Family Secrets trial for charging the mob with 18 unsolved murders. This historic trial indicted the entire Chicago Mob as a racketeering enterprise. Not only did Alderman Roti‘s name come up at the trial, but the name of his nephew Fred Barbara also surfaced. Fred Barbara was accused of taking part in bombing a business. Barbara was described by The Chicago Sun-Times as “a close friend of Mayor Daley’s”.

    Senator Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko is much more significant than his association with a bunch of radicals. Obama decided joining the status quo in Chicago was an excellent career move. Tony Rezko’s ties to the Chicago’s establishment are the basis of a major Justice Department investigation titled Operation Board Games. As Rezko’s career shows, Chicago remains a town very much cast in the spirit of Alderman Roti.

    This machine has had far more to do with the rise of Barack Obama’s political career than Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright and the equally unseemly radicals who so unnerve some right-wingers. In contrast, the implications of his close ties to the Chicago machine may tell us more about the man, and the kind of people he might bring into the highest offices.

    Except for an occasional article on Tony Rezko, Obama’s ability to work with, and to nurture his own place within one of the most corrupt regimes in nation has not been a major political issue. Some of this may reflect the press’s infatuation with the man and his well-crafted image; it also suggests the incompetence of the McCain campaign.

    But those of us who will be living with a President Obama for the next four years should consider the implications of his Chicago connection. At very least, his ability to cohabit with the machine says something of his deft ability to talk one way – as a change agent – and to walk another.

    It does not mean that Senator Obama himself is corrupt or even intellectually dishonest. And perhaps his ability to work with the machine suggests a skill that may be useful in dealing with the many thugs who run powerful regimes around the world. Yet it also suggests that, when push comes to shove, he could be more likely to say ‘yes’ to power rather than speak truth to it.

    Steve Bartin is a resident of Cook County and native who blogs regularly about urban affairs at http://nalert.blogspot.com. He works in Internet sales.

  • Why can’t Wall Street be more like Ghana?

    For the past week an irritating little tune has bounced into my head unexpectedly every time I turned to news about the financial collapse. The melody would then remain at the edge of my consciousness for hours at a time like a buzz or a hum in my ear. Though I couldn’t make out the lyrics, I could distinguish the distinct nasal whine that Rex Harrison affected in the musical My Fair Lady. Still, I couldn’t pin down which song was playing on an endless loop in my head. Instead, as I made my way through the Kotokuraba Market in Cape Coast, Ghana, this past week, I found myself absentmindedly substituting my own lyrics to the Frederick Loewe score. At first I sang the line “If only Lehman Brothers was more like the Man! Know Thyself Pharmacy,” and then “If only AIG could be more like Is Not By Might Alone Construction.” Though my feeble attempt did not come close to scanning, I knew immediately that I was onto something. There was a nugget of truth there that I could never have reached through ordinary means of logical analysis. I began to rattle off all the financial behemoths who have crashed or have nearly crashed or will potentially go belly up in the coming months, giants like Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Wachovia, Washington Mutual—the list seems to grow with every passing day.

    I continued to substitute the strange names for businesses that Ghanaians seem to prefer for those of the failing financial industry. After my initial amusement of replacing Lehman Brothers with Man! Know Thyself, I realized that the way businesses are named in Ghana speaks to core values that perhaps would have kept the Wall Street CEOs in check. Ghana is a country steeped in the oral tradition of proverbs. The ancient Akan religion is full of proverbs and sayings about how to live a moral and upright life. Surprisingly, most of these Akan tribal proverbs correlate directly to Christian proverbs despite the fact that they existed long before Europeans introduced Christianity to the region. As a result, these sayings have remained a vital part of the culture and often crop up in conversation in a kind of abbreviated shorthand. On the street conversation is peppered with such statements: “But, I have forgiven you, let us not bite one another,” “So you strike fire among us ever,” “Oh great ancestors, our blood relation chain will never break apart,” “Till death ladder, together we climb to rest,” among scores of others. Since Ghana is a public and communal society unlike Western cultures which are more private and personal, these sayings and expressions of philosophies and beliefs tend to affirm a responsibility toward others.

    I’ve been particularly moved by the name of a small hardware store, “But Like A Chain Ventures,” which is an abbreviation of the Akan proverb “But like a chain, we are linked both in life and death with our people, because we share common blood relations.” As I reflected on the implications of Lehman Brothers being named “But Like A Chain Investment Bank,” I tried to tease out the implications of such a dramatic change in the strategy of naming businesses in most of the Western world. American businesses appear to emphasize ownership, especially in advertisements and product names employing the notion “this is mine”, rather than their moral and ethical relationship to customers and the community. In recent years this has played out intricately in such marketing strategies as “branding.” For Ghanaians, business names are more a form of moral or ethical expression. Names are an opportunity to publicly articulate a belief or philosophy. Because Ghana is such a public and communal society, the way you present yourself is much more important than the product you are offering. Customers are drawn to businesses that express the mores of the community first, and then they determine whether the business offers what they are looking for. In a community where politeness is primary, knowing the kind of person you are doing business with first is a determining factor greater than price, location, or variety.

    With this in mind, I now wonder if such a name would not have stopped this fallen bank’s former CEO Richard S. Fuld Jr. and his brethren from pursuing personal gain to such a degree that the entire globe was at risk. Would the message printed on the stationary and on the front of the building have been sufficient to caution their recklessness? Probably not, but it is nice to consider such a possibility.

    On October 9th, 2008, the Washington Post reported that even the International Monetary Fund, the world’s cheerleader for world markets, has now qualified its support. “Obviously the crisis comes from an important regulatory and supervisory failure in advanced countries […] and a failure in market discipline mechanisms,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF’s managing director, told the Post. She emphasized that African countries with the least free market openness are more prepared than most to survive a major global recession.

    Like most African economies, Ghana is primarily a cash society. The average person on the street, even if he or she has a job, cannot get credit and would never consider attempting to get a loan. No one has a Visa card here because no businesses accept them. When my friend, the playwright Victor Yankah, had to pay his middle son’s college tuition at the beginning of September, he took out a six inch thick stack of ten and twenty cedis from his bank account to pay the university’s 5,000 Ghana cedi fee. As the economic crisis intensifies, Yankah feels prepared because he has diversified the African way. His wife Betty Yankah owns a small dry goods stall in the local market. In addition to being head of the Department of Theater Studies at the University of Cape Coast, Yankah also owns a small orange grove that supplies fruit to local markets as well as a fish hatchery along the Volta River. He has positioned himself to “think globally and act locally.” He hopes that by staying close to the ground he and his family will weather whatever dire economic times lie ahead.

    As I play with renaming the failing titans of finance, the reference I have been trying to remember finally comes to me. The song I am thinking about is “A Hymn to Him,” a solipsistic and misogynist diddy asking, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” I can imagine Lehman’s fallen CEO Fuld Jr. singing a similarly written ode to free market capitalism and self-aggrandizement. To which, I would counter: Why can’t Wall Street Be More Like Ghana? And this verse scans.

    Laban Carrick Hill is a visiting professor at University of Cape Coast in Ghana and the author of more than 25 books, including the 2004 National Book Award Finalist Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. His most recent book America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60’s recently won the 2007 Parenting Publications Gold Award.