Over the past several days, my blog and my attention
have been dominated by the mess in Baltimore. Like everyone else, I have
watched events unfold there with a combination of sadness and anger. But
mostly, I have been overcome by a sense of hopelessness, the idea that the
problems in our cities are simply beyond remedy. My son, after reading one of
my blogs, made this statement: “OK, so liberal policies haven’t worked. What’s
YOUR plan?” His question has hung in the air ever since. It is one thing to
point out the clear failures of others, another thing entirely to offer up a
reasonable alternative. I have thought of little else since.
What follows is the result of all of this introspection.
I must state up front that I’m no social planner, I have no particular training
in urban studies and certainly, I am no politician. So, I have no idea whether
the solutions I’m about to offer would actually work. My ideas aren’t immune to
that worst nightmare of all central planners, the law of unintended
consequences. Still, these are a start, if for no other reason than to provide
me with a sense that our problems might in fact have a workable solution.
I should probably point out that most of the
problems of the inner city have their origins in the erosion of the family, an unintended consequence of a whole host of policies which had loftier intentions. Despite the fact that most of America's big cities have been run almost exclusively by the Democratic Party for the past 40 years, I will endeavor to discuss these problems without assigning blame because
frankly, at this point it doesn’t matter whose fault it all is. It just needs
to be fixed! The question then becomes, are there policies that could be
brought to bear that would encourage the re-establishment of the family structure,
and are there policies that we could eliminate that discourage intact families
from staying so?
So, without further delay, here’s what I would do if I
were King to attempt to fix our cities.
1 1. End
the War on Drugs.
By any measure, the War on Drugs has been a colossal
failure. We have spent a fortune, made criminals out of two generations of mostly
black men and accomplished no significant public good. This war has been fought
almost entirely in the inner city and the vast majority of those in jail for
drug crimes are black. This despite the fact that white suburbanites have
prodigious appetites for everything from pot to heroin, and without white customers
willing and able to pay, the drug business would be in serious trouble. One has
to ask the question, what societal good is accomplished by arresting a twenty
year old for smoking a couple of joints and saddling him with a criminal record
and jail time? Are his prospects of finding gainful, lawful employment helped or hurt by his time being locked up with a
thousand other hardened criminals? And before you start lecturing me about how
horrible a problem drug addiction is for society, check yourself. There’s no
chance in hell that pot smoking is more injurious to society at large than alcohol
abuse. How many people get killed by people driving while high compared to
driving while drunk? How many pot smokers get all hyped up on cannabis and then
go home and beat their wives?
I’m not a drug user and I would strongly discourage
anyone I know and love from becoming one, but the only thing the War on Drugs
has accomplished is removing millions of black men from their homes, and from
their neighborhoods, creating the very fatherless homes that conservatives
lament.
2. Replace
welfare with a jobs program.
Yes, yes, I know what all of you House of Cards fans
are thinking, “He stole that idea from Frank Underwood!” No, not exactly. Well,
maybe…a little. First of all, what I’m about to propose will sound strange
coming from someone as Libertarian as I am, I know. Secondly, I am very aware
that the government has shown itself to be pathetically inept at “creating jobs”
so I concede that this idea has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. But, hear
me out.
FDR’s famous New Deal did not bring this country
out of the Great Depression; that would have been World War II and the beneficial
impact of placing the entire nation’s industrial output on a war footing.
However, the jobs that the government did create accomplished something quite
profound. They transformed, in the public imagination, the notion that they
were not
on the public doll…something for Americans of all races in the 1930’s would
have been anathema. Instead, men like my grandfather, who worked on the Civilian
Conservation Corps that built the
Skyline Drive, were able to hold onto their pride as working men. When they
cashed their government paychecks it was for services rendered, and that
allowed them to be in full possession of their dignity.
By contrast, the checks that keep most inner cities
barely viable are in exchange for nothing. In fact, the more dysfunctional your
life becomes the bigger the check. Accordingly, I propose putting every
able-bodied welfare recipient to work as a requirement of receiving government
assistance. If we are committed to spending money on welfare, why not allow its
recipients to earn it. What kind of jobs would these be? Frankly, I don’t know.
But you can’t tell me that a nation that put a man on the freaking moon can’t get
the smartest people from business and government together and figure this thing
out. How about cleaning up the streets, block by block? How about replacing
burnt out empty lots with gardens, not ones planted by a bunch of do-gooder
college kids, but by the people who live next door?
Of course these make-work jobs are temporary. But
make-work jobs are infinitely better than no job. To provide more permanent,
sustainable employment, we will need to consider….
3. Repealing
NAFTA.
Back in the 1990’s I was a vocal supporter of the free
trade movement. Nafta was a bi-partisan policy that was initially pushed by
Republicans but ultimately passed by Bill Clinton. I thought at the time that
the benefits of free trade would far outweigh the negatives. On the positive
side, I thought that we would all benefit from lower prices on practically
everything, and I was right. Witness the rise of giant retailers like Walmart
and Costco who sell us adorable clothes for toddlers at everyday low low prices. But, I challenge you
to go into your closet right now and see if you can find any garment that was
made in this country. Chances are, you won’t, because we no longer have a
textile industry, especially in the State of Virginia, the southside of which
used to be filled with textile plants churning out everything from jeans to
overcoats. Who used to work in those plants? Generally speaking, whites and
blacks with high school educations or lower who despite their limitations could
get a factory job and manage to enter the middle class. Where do they work now?
Many of them don’t. But, not to worry, they get welfare and food stamps so, it’s
all good. No…it is not!!
We manufacture nothing in this country anymore which
may be fine for many people since that adorable Osh Kosh By Gosh jumper is on
sale for $3.99, but for large segments of what used to be called the Middle
Class, it matters greatly. It turns out that the noble idiot, Ross Perot, was
right when he described that giant sucking sound as the sound of American jobs
for the working classes heading down to Mexico!
Yes, many jobs that were shipped overseas have been
replaced with other jobs in industries that were unheard of in the 1990’s and that’s
all wonderful. But if you eliminate the jobs that working people relied upon
and replace them with jobs that require a Master’s Degree in computer science, that’s
not going to help Bubba and Leroy provide for their families. When we tell
welfare recipients in Baltimore to “get a job,” where exactly do we suggest
they go to look? Nepal? Because that’s where those adorable toddler jumpers are
being sewn together by 12 year old girls working 17 hour days so we can have money
left over for our pedicures.
And yes, I know that one of the reasons American
workers aren’t as competitive as those elsewhere in many cases are the result
of ridiculously generous and inflexible union contracts. But again, somewhere out
there, there has got to be someone who can come up with some sensible
compromises that can begin to bring manufacturing jobs back to America.
4. Demilitarize
Policing
No one appreciates the job that policemen do more than
I do. These men and women work long hours doing a demanding job for embarrassingly
low pay. The vast majority of them do their jobs well. But something has gone
terribly wrong with policing tactics when video keeps surfacing showing three
cops using violent force apprehending a citizen guilty of nothing more than
selling loose cigarettes. The rules of engagement that encourage such extreme force
have to be revisited. Our cops look more like members of some elite SWAT team than cops. Now, I know that Mayberry was a fictional place and that Sherriff
Andy Taylor was a character in a television show, but who among us doesn’t long
to be protected by a cop with the wisdom and grace of Andy Taylor, he of the
empty gun holster.
Yes, times have
changed. Today’s criminals are meaner, and better armed than ever. Still, it’s
hard to see the benefit of armored personnel carriers, tanks and strike forces
loaded down with automatic rifles roaming the streets and think to yourself, “Aww…to
protect and defend.” What jumps quicker to mind is, “Aww…to invade and destroy.”
Something is wrong when hardly a week goes by without some cell phone video
hitting the Drudge Report showing some officer somewhere beating the crap out
of some unarmed kid…or worse. It makes a cynical person wonder how often this
type of stuff went on before cell phone cameras became ubiquitous.
My advice? Dial it back about ten notches with the
Dirty Harry routine. Start demonstrating some restraint and go back to
reserving the rough stuff for guys who are committing actual violent crimes,
not the poor slob who has a blown out back up light.
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