(Written on February 3, 2011)
I can't help myself. Every time I see one of those Pew Charitable Trust Philadelphia Research Initiative announcements, such as the one last week called "City Councils in Philadelphia and Other Major Cities," I get flashbacks to the old Peter Paul "Mounds/Almond Joy" commercials. Sometimes I feel like I should believe what they're telling me... and, sometimes, I just don't. I must admit, it's hard for me to forget that the Pew Charitable Trust was established by the same family that founded the Sun Oil Company (Sunoco, today) and that the company and its patriarch, Joseph Pew, made no secret of their genuine distaste for Franklin D. Roosevelt, for his Depression-busting New Deal program or for organized labor, of any kind. Somehow, I also can't seem to forget that Mr. Pew was known during his heyday as a source of millions of dollars of political funding and that he consequently became recognized as the "political boss" of Pennsylvania, influencing the outcomes of both statewide and national elections. I remember each time I see a communication from Pew that it was known as a funder, primarily, of extremely conservative issues and organizations, including the John Birch Society, and I wonder how much the organization has really changed, today. More recently and, perhaps, this is my most troublesome Pew association, it was also the Charitable Trust that led the effort to manipulate the transfer of the $25 billion Barnes Art Collection away from historically black Lincoln University's control, as Dr. Barnes, himself, had stipulated in his will, and into the control of Pew, and other major, mainstream non-profits. To further complicate all of this, I'm also aware that Pew Research Center has been called the third-most-powerful think tank in Washington, D.C., and that there is a related entity called the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, which, over the last 17 years or so, has ingratiated itself with( Dare we say "compromised?") an impressive list of print and broadcast media outlets by funding their local community outreach projects. As a result, Pew probably has many more friends, if they need them, in the mainstream media than most of the others of us have, all put together. So, given all of that, whenever I see an announcement about Pew having sponsored a political project, I tend to hold it up to the light, and shake it, to make sure I haven't missed the "real story." After the second reading of last week's "Philadelphia City Council Report," I began to feel that, perhaps, the people at Pew weren't so much interested in just sharing comparative data about Councilmanic bodies nationwide. Rather, I got the distinct impression that they were more interested in getting Philadelphians "fired up" and anxious to "throw out the scoundrels" in City Council, who had clearly, from the way the data were reported, "stayed too long at the party." And, I couldn't help wondering...if the people at Pew are so adamant about getting rid of the Councilpeople we have now, just who would they like to see elected in their places? It's hard to imagine, knowing the organization's history, that they don't have some idea, and that someone over there isn't working to have that done, even as we speak. That's not good. In the opening statement of the report, Pew noted, "The 17 current members of City Council have served longer (an average of 15.5 years), than their peers in 14 other cities," and they comprise "Philadelphia's longest-tenured Council in at least the past six decades." The report moved quickly thereafter to a discussion of the benefits of term limits for City Council elections. Looks as though the people at Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative are just as anxious to make a case for throwing out the City's incumbent Council members as their former colleagues at the Inquirer and Daily News seem to be. Also troubling was the dramatic flourish, in the report, of dividing the Council's annual budget by the number of Council persons and coming up with the meaningless "roughly $1.1 million per seat" figure that taxpayers expend every year for each Councilperson. Using that same logic, are we then expected to divide the 100 U.S. Senators into the $3.8 trillion federal budget and call each of their offices a "$38 billion seat?" Ridiculous, huh? Especially during the ongoing Great Recession, Pew's mention of the $121,107 salary of the average Philadelphia Councilperson was probably expected to raise eyebrows and drop jaws all over the City. I do believe, however, that our friends at Pew lost a bit of intended impact when they also noted that Philadelphia City Council salaries are the fourth-largest out of fifteen City Councils that were reviewed nationwide. Most Philadelphians, I'm sure, recognizing that their city is the nation's sixth-largest, don't have very much of a problem seeing that their Council representatives are fourth-best compensated. I was ready to get incensed by the section of the report that said our Council people have access to city-owned cars, until I got to the part that explained that only seven out of 17 Council members actually take a car from the City, at all. Despite the generally lackluster quality of the overall "findings," there was one section of the Pew report that did get my attention. That was the section of the document that raised the issue of "redistricting," and how it will almost certainly create more difficulty for residents who are interested in doing political organizing and make it easier for incumbents to hold onto their seats. If done in the old, politically self-serving way in which it is usually handled, that process could produce absolutely disastrous results for Philadelphia's 625,000 black residents. Pew was very careful to pinpoint the dual responsibility of the Mayor and City Council, itself, for ensuring that "redistricting" is done on a fair and equitable basis. The report writers also pointed out that neither the Mayor, nor the Council, has given any indication, as of yet, as to how they plan to ensure the sanctity of that process. We should all pay attention to that and follow up with the mayor and our district councilpeople to make sure they pay proper attention to this issue. Then, Pew, surprisingly, brought up the issue of assuring that the "underserved" continue to be fairly represented on City Councils, nationwide. In most cities, they reported, the percentage of blacks in City Council is about the same as in the city's general population. As proof, they offered that blacks make up 43 percent of Philadelphia's population and they comprise 41 percent of the City Council's members. What they chose not to mention, however, is that while whites represent 45 percent of the City's population, the nine members of City Council who happen to be white, comprise 53 percent of all Council seats. Similarly, in Boston, a city which is now 51.6 percent comprised of Black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race persons, whites continue to be overrepresented in that City Council, holding 75% of the twelve filled seats. I know, I know.. the race or ethnicity of a Councilperson really shouldn't matter, but since Pew brought it up...let's tell the whole truth, and find out if it really does make a difference --politically-- and if so, why it does, in the first place. Sounds like a good topic for Pew to include in one of its civic journalism programs. Have we come far enough as a society that the race of our elected officials, the race and ethnicity of our journalists and the race and ethnicity of the leaders of our think tanks and foundations no longer matter in political decision-making? Now, that's a report I would read right away. ######### |
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