Civic Values

Bush Budget Shortchanges America's Communities

On February 5th, President Bush proposed a budget for FY2008 beginning next October that once again recommends drastic cuts in a wide range of programs benefitting America’s communities.

If the President has his way, community development, housing for the elderly, aid to local law enforcement, support for children and families, grants for safe and drug free schools, and job training will all face another round of cutbacks that have been implemented since 2004.

At a time when crime rates are rising in cities throughout the country, the President again proposes to cut support for local law enforcement in half.

At a time when the infrastructure problems facing America’s communities continue to grow, the President proposes to reduce the $4.1 billion Community Development Block by more than $1 billion.

At a time when millions of Americans seek employment and training to compete in the workforce, the President proposes to cut our $5.2 billion training budget by $1 billion.

At a time when suburban counties are struggle to help the growing number low income residents living in their communities, the President proposes to eliminate the Community Services Block Grant which has been the major source of support in this area and make new cuts in the Low Income Heat Emergency Program (LIHEAP)

The Democrats who now control Congress have promised a new direction to the American people. A critical test of this commitment will be their willingness to restore and even increase support for these programs which have critical to security and well-being of communities and families throughout the country.

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?

The Crisis of Civic Values

The year was 1800 and Thomas Jefferson was running for President. Reverend John Mitchell of New York’s Scotch Presbyterian Church was not at all happy about it. "The federal Constitution makes no acknowledgment of this God who gave us our national existence," he proclaimed in a "Voice of Warning to Christians""If you appoint an infidel for your president, and such an infidel as Mr. Jefferson, you will sanction that neglect, and you will declare, by a solemn national act, that there is no more religion in your collective character." Notwithstanding this diatribe, Thomas Jefferson won the election of 1800 and served two terms as President. Somehow, both the United States and Christianity survived.

Jefferson did, indeed, oppose any formal relationship between denominational religion and government. It was he who characterized the First Amendment as "building a wall of separation between church and state" in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1802. In his first inaugural address, he condemned the "religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered." and warned that "we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions."

Yet for Jefferson what could provide moral guidance to both government and citizens in America were civic values--the self-evident truths set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This has been a distinguishing feature of our democracy. In 1922, no less a devout Catholic than G.K. Chesterton observed in What I Saw in America that "America is the only country in the world that is founded on a creed... set forth with theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just.. There is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things." This is precisely what Jefferson had in mind.

Jefferson had the opportunity to apply these principles as President. "Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles," he urged in his inaugural address. "Political debate should be shaped according to the rules of the Constitution." People should unite in "common efforts for the common good." and "restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things." This is what it meant to rely on civic values to shape the democratic process.

I would suggest that this is just the sort of politics that millions of Americans are seeking today. Unfortunately, leaders in both parties have failed to provide it. Our own Senator Rick Santorum writes a book called "It Takes a Family" that urges us to work for the common good and then blames most of the problems facing America’s families on liberals. He asserts that since the Preamble to the Constitution speaks only of "promoting the general welfare," there is not much government can do, somehow ignoring Article I where Congress is mandated to "provide" for the general welfare." So much for a careful and accurate explication of Constitutional principles.

The national Democratic Party isn’t much better. Many Democrats now promise to defend "the people against the powerful," in a modern day form of Populism. But while the Populist Platform of 1892 certainly did condemn economic policies that were "breeding two great classes--tramps and millionaires," it went on to say that their purposes were identical with the "purposes of the national Constitution"--justice, domestic tranquillity, the common defense, the general welfare, the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. They understood--as many Democratic leaders today do not-- that the only way we can only change America for the better is by reminding people again and again what America is supposed to be.

So there is, indeed, a crisis of values in America today, but it is not about religion. Our main conflicts revolve around civic values. We are deeply divided on how best to apply the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the problems facing America today. What does it mean to "promote the general welfare?" How can we "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity?" These are questions we ought to be asking. The sooner political leaders start addressing them, the better off the rest of us will be.

Fight for America's Communities

The following were remarks made at the close of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values' "State of Our Values" session in Philadelphia in response to the State of the Union.

We were pleased to cooperate with a number of community and faith-based organizations  in Philadelphia to put together this event, which was one of 400 "State of Our Values" events coordinated  nationally by Sojourner.

Here's the PodCast of the Speech. You need Apple QuickTime to watch it but that's easy to download (Version 7).

Fight for America's Communities, Ed Schwartz,  Philadelphia, January 31st, 2006

The following are news reports  covering other "State of Our Values" sessions held in response to Sojourner's Call.

Media Coverage of "State of Our Values Sessions."

Ed Schwartz

Martin Luther King and America's Civic Values

For those seeking online resources for Martin Luther King Day observances, I've assembled a web page of online articles, audio clips, and educational programs that might help.

Martin Luther King and America's Civic Values

No one in the 20th century--and perhaps throughout our history--articulated America's civic values more powerfully than Martin Luther King.  Now that much of his work is online, we can work even more effectively to keep his legacy alive.