http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/14-5

Published on Saturday, August 14, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
US Cities Face Up to Massive Cuts
US outrage over public service cutbacks across America has found a rallying point in the death of 12-year-old Frank Marasco

by Andrew Clark

PHILADELPHIA – Flanked by two silver balloons bearing the words “I love you‚” and a forlorn blue cuddly toy, the face of 12-year-old Frank Marasco smiles out from a collage of pictures assembled by shocked neighbours on the veranda of his burned-out home. The young autistic boy died in a fire last week thought to have been sparked by a discarded cigarette.

The inferno should have been a routine job for Philadelphia’s 1,900-strong fire brigade, the fifth biggest force in the US which handles four major incidents daily. But the nearest fire station to Frank’s house, just two blocks away, was unavailable after a so-called “brown out”. Firemen at the station, barely 90 seconds’ walk from the site of the fire, were on a maintenance run after a 12-hour shutdown, part of a rota of rolling daily closures imposed by city authorities grappling with a wrenching deficit of $2.4bn (£1.5bn) over five years.

“Everybody was running around trying to get the little boy out – he was stuck on the second floor,” said a distraught neighbour, Virginia DeShields, whose house was damaged by smoke. She believes the boy might have been saved if the local firehouse had been open: “It’s all right if you want to cut. But you shouldn’t cut where lives are concerned. You can cut the prison system, cut the libraries, anywhere. But don’t cut people who save lives.”

Philadelphia’s city authorities contend that first responders reached the scene within three minutes – a timeline disputed by Philadelphia’s fire union, Local 22, which says it was closer to six minutes before an engine with hoses and water arrived. But irrespective of whether he could have been saved, Frank Marasco’s fate is a rallying point in a titanic struggle over cuts engulfing cities and states across the US which are taking desperate budgetary measures, ranging from shutting schools to switching off streetlights and replacing tarmac roads with dirt tracks.

Local government in the US has traditionally been leaner than its British equivalent, with minimal public healthcare, patchy public transport and an ingrained culture of contracting out to private operators. The worst recession since the war has caused a triple-pronged slump: unemployment has eroded income tax takings, a dive in house prices has hurt property tax and weak consumer spending has reduced sales tax. Funding is stretched to breaking point.

The National League of Cities estimates that US municipalities, which had revenue of $398bn last year, face a fiscal hole of between $56bn and $83bn over the two years to 2012. States, which fund broader services such as schools, prisons and highway patrols, are in a worse jam — they grappled with a $192bn shortfall in 2010, equivalent to 29% of their budgets, according to the Washington-based Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities.
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(follow the link above to read the full story.)

I take issue with the idea (last sentence) that ballot initiatives are a bad idea. Like all of the other institutions of government, they are distorted beyond recognition by the unequal distribution of wealth and therefore the unequal ability to exercise the right to free speech and political participation. We do have some initiatives on subjects so obscure or mundane that the Legislature should take care of them for us. But putting rights into the Constitution — and defeating any effort to take rights out of it — is not such a subject.

The sentence, “Does the state have the right to tell the churches what marriages it should hold?”, can be read two ways. The state does not have the right to tell a church that it cannot marry gay couples. But I think these words could also be taken to imply that the state should not allow churches to refuse to marry gay couples. I don’t think that’s what the author meant.

The organized labor movement, with 11 million dues paying members, has both the money and resources! The AFL-CIO gave tens of millions to the Democrats in 2008 and mobilized thousands of man-hours in “getting out the vote” for the Democrats. A terrible waste!

There are now millions of unemployed working people looking for leadership, an organization, to fight for their economic needs of all working people. Many thousands of well-educated union members, school teachers, parents, health care workers, unemployed workers could be united under a common platform to run for office at every level of local, state, and federal government.

The time to start organizing a new party is now! By the time of the 2012 election, we the people could be ready to run our candidate for President, Congress, State and local governments and win!

wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/ufwa-j20.shtml

The article does go into this in a limited way. We learn that “a small contingent of rebels, while generally happy with the benefits brought by wealth, is not pleased by the direction ‘the Plan’ is taking the tribe. The rebels have launched efforts to recall the tribal council in recent years.” But we also learn that there are roadblocks, including the fact that “the tribal government is veiled in secrecy” and refuses to talk to the press.

And then there’s the relationship between the tribe and its government, on the one hand, and the United States and its government, on the other. Whatever trappings of internal democracy the tribe may have are conditional on Washington’s tolerance for what they do.

Having said all that, this article is a fascinating account of events and circumstances most of us know too little about.

Yes there’s a request for better working conditions/wages. But mainly it takes up the call to protect a status quo.

While it’s the case that moving workers from one location to another in order to undercut the moved-onto work force is a union busting and wage busting program by the Owners, aided as has become the usual alliance, by the union, this article reflects the usual contradictions of trying to maintain even the little access the workers have, to survival.

It’s usual for this level of concern to be presented, rather than the desired goal of protection of all workers and protection of the land relative to production.

In particular what’s necessary is for people doing this kind of work to work about 10 hours a week at it; many more people to do the work, and all to get plenty of material comfort – to live as well as The Rich, because there’s enough stuff that that CAN go on. Struggling for the abusive situation that already exists is the opposite of what we want.

That’s why the article sounds so distant from our objectives.

Having said that, however, this is a thought-provoking essay on a matter of great importance. I suspect that I would locate more decisions at the center, and fewer in small communities, than would Green. But the only way to get the right mix in the long run is to learn from experience.

But it’s good to be reminded that the nation-state is not an eternal form of organization.