Civic Values

Door to Door in Philadelphia-Committeepeople

People active as block captains are often clueless as to the role that committee people are supposed to play. That's too bad, because an active committeeperson can be a real asset to a neighborhood.

I was a committeeperson for 14 years in three different wards and the ward leader of the 13th Ward back in 1978. As a Councilman-At-Large in the 1980's, I hired several committee people to perform constituent service since the best committee people (and there are plenty of them) do this better than anyone else.

Committee people are party officers, not City employees, with the formal responsibility to get out the vote and win victories for the candidates of their choice. Whatever money they receive on Election Day comes from their wards and (occasionally) candidates who are trying to work around or against a ward leader - not the City. So blaming the City for what happens with committee people is not fair. The line of blame goes from the committeeperson to the ward leader.

But if a committeeperson takes his or her job seriously - the job being to get out the vote - -then they will work hard to help people solve block and neighborhood problems because that's the way you can persuade people to vote. The nastiest comment a voter can make to a committeeperson on Election Day is, "We don't see you until it's Election Day." That's another way of saying, 'Who the hell cares what you think?' in response to the sample 'approved' ballot that the committee person distributes on Election Day. Not good at all.

Good committee people take block captains seriously. In fact, I became a block captain after I was elected committeeperson back in 1976 because I saw it as a great way to help my neighbors and get them to vote in response. It worked well. We increased registration by 50% and I was able to get a higher than average turnout in every election. Why? People voted because they knew I was fighting for our blocks and the neighborhood and that if they voted, that gave us more clout in City Hall.

It's important to understand where the committeeperson's clout in City Hall lies - City Council. City Council is rooted in the ward system. Six of the nine Democratic Council people are ward leaders.  Most of the Republican State Representatives are also ward leaders. They'll work through the one Republican District Councilman on matters related to the City. And all of them will respond to their own committee people.

The committee person calls either the ward leader or City Council person and they get faster service. Council is the key here. When a Council office calls a department, the department listens - or there's hell to pay the next time the City Budget hearings come up. And when a committeeperson calls a Council office, he gets a good response, because committee people and ward leaders elect the Council.

There's a good way to deal with an ineffective committee person: elect someone else. It happens a lot. But we just had those elections so you'll have to wait four years to do that.

But you can get the same clout as a committeeperson simply by going down your block, registering every vote, and making sure that they vote in every election. If you start delivering results to your block, your committee people will appreciate it and Council people will listen to you as well. Call the ward leader. Tell what you're going to do. Occasionally a ward leader will even force a committee person to resign if he/she isn't getting results. A call from you will be taken seriously.

This is National Security?

The cost of the War in Iraq is now at least $75 billion a year.

Citizens for Tax Justice reports that tax cuts benefiting the top 1% of the country--households earning more than $1.2 million a year (who now receive $44,000 in tax cuts)--will cost the government  $61 billion--nearly the entire cost of the War.

In 1861, Abraham Lincoln persuaded Congress  to impose a  tax on personal incomes to pay for the military in the Civil War.  By 1864, people with incomes between $400 and $5,000 were taxed at a rate of 5%. People with incomes over over $5,000 were paying 10%.

Today, households earning more than $1.2 million pay only 3.5% of their annual income in taxes.

In 1898, under our first modern Republican President--William McKinley--Congress passed the first inheritance tax in American History to help finance the Spanish-American War.

Today, the Bush administration is fighting to *end* the inheritance tax--calling it a "death tax."

The guiding principle here is that while it's an honor to die for your country, it's an imposition to pay for it.

So how *are* we financing the War?

Well, we're borrowing a lot of money from other countries. That's what the deficit forces us to do.  More than $ 1 trillion in American bonds is now held by foreign banks led by Japan and China.  If Communist China stopped buying US bonds, or sold them outright, bond prices would fall and interest rates would rise wreaking havoc on mortgage rates and home sales throughout the United States.

I know that American conservatives are perfectly happy to buy goods "Made in China" but how do they feel about going deeper and deeper in debt to the Chinese government?

The other way to reduce the deficit is to cut spending. The Bush administration is big on that.

But what does the administration want to cut?

"First Responder" Homeland Security. Down 26% since 2003.

Local Law Enforcement.  Bush wants to end just about all federal support for it.

Support for Local Police. Bush fought to end it last year. Failing that, now he wants to cut it by 86%

Firefighters Grants. Cut them by 60%.

In Philadelphia, the National Park Service wants to cordon off the area around Independence Hall as if this somehow will blunt a terrorist attack.

Meanwhile, 300 people have died in our streets since January but federal funding to support local police is gone.

If  this is the Bush administration's idea of security in the United States, what on earth must they be doing in Iraq?