It sometimes feels like we’re carried by the current, floating past events that we know affect us but are beyond our control—at the southern border, say, or with the budget showdown in Congress. We look to our elected leaders to handle these things.
Instead of making tough choices, our leaders prefer to join us on the raft. Solving the budget crisis, for example, requires dealing with the pervasive waste in federal programs that GAO regularly reports on.
Those who “underestimated the political power of the [public employee] unions … were mistaken.” That’s the conclusion of a New York Times Magazine cover story on teachers union leader Randi Weingarten. Union power and money were largely responsible for the recent election of Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, a prominent union leader. Public union power caused former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to call Weingarten “the most dangerous person in the world.”
Read MoreThe pace of modern life is often dizzying, in almost all areas of human endeavor. Astonishing advances in science and technology rush towards the future alongside global threats of war, pandemic, climate change, and scarcity.
But there’s been almost no focus on how things work on the ground. Modernizing infrastructure, fixing lousy schools, reducing red tape in healthcare, and cutting waste in government are largely matters of execution, not policy.
Read MoreThe Los Angeles teachers union this week joined a three-day strike by school service workers, such as custodians and cafeteria workers. This means 400,000 students were locked out for three days. Many of these students get their only square meal of the day at school.
It’s not a surprise that the teachers union put its interests above the students. What’s rich is that the teachers union contract is the reason the school district lacks resources to pay service workers more.
Read MoreWe read this week, in a column by teachers union president Randi Weingarten, that teachers unions “empower teachers’ professionalism,” cause “higher student achievement,” were heroic during COVID, and create “a more just and fair society.” Ms. Weingarten also accuses Philip Howard of “empty rhetoric.” So let’s look again at the facts: Near-zero accountability, endemic failure of many inner city schools, refusal to return to the classroom during COVID until six months to a year after other schools reopened, and political bullying aimed at closing high-performing charter schools.
Read MoreSchoolchildren all learn that the spoils system in the 19th century was evil. No matter how inept, political hacks got and kept government jobs. The currency was campaign support: Public jobs were for sale to the highest bidder. The idea of “good government” was an oxymoron.
Fast forward to today. No matter how inept, public employees keep their jobs.
Read MoreWhich is the party of good government? Democrats like to claim that mantle, but Joe Klein in his new Substack "Sanity Clause" describes how public employee unions are "an issue no Democrat wants to talk about." Klein, former senior columnist at TIME and best-selling author, is clear-eyed about the unholy alliances that make liberal sanctimony so hard to take. Fixing lousy schools and toxic police cultures is impossible as long as public employee unions call the shots.
Read MoreHere’s the public failure of the week: Twenty-three schools in Baltimore have not one student who is "proficient" in math—i.e., performing at grade level. Another 20 schools have only one or two students who are proficient. In Chicago, Wirepoints discovered, 33 schools similarly have no student proficient in math, and another 22 schools have no student proficient in reading.
Read MoreThe headache of managing government under union strictures is not exactly a secret. But the managerial disempowerment of governors, mayors, and other elected executives seems to have caught people by surprise.
There may be ten million management books, but we can’t find one that talks about what happens when managers no longer have authority to manage—for example, to hold employees accountable, or to redeploy resources to meet new circumstances.
Read MoreThe ingredients of a bad public culture are hard to pinpoint with precision. But, in the case of the police squad that beat Tyre Nichols to death, the factors include inadequate training and police union collective bargaining agreements that allow experienced officers to avoid the street duty where experience is most needed.
Read MoreNot Accountable is now out, exposing the harms to democracy caused by public employee unions that should be unconstitutional. This week it received a number of thoughtful reviews.
Read MoreIt’s time to recognize that no overhaul vision will come from either party. Rocking the boat is too uncertain. Better to stick with the status quo. So nothing much will change, and voter frustration and cynicism will grow. A new governing vision is needed to fill the vacuum. With enough support, some candidates in 2024 might embrace it.
Read MoreWashington doesn’t work, as we know. But the harsher reality is that Washington can’t realistically make itself work. The governing structure is legal quicksand, allowing any naysayer to block almost anything. Perhaps worse, the political culture has settled into a downward spiral of failure, in which parties compete, not by getting things done, but by blaming the other side.
Read MoreAn uncomfortable truth underlies the frustration with democracy that drives people to extremism. That truth is this: Governing sensibly is basically impossible in a bureaucratic and legal jungle. Common sense disappears into the quicksand of thick rulebooks, lengthy processes, and claimed rights. Teachers can’t maintain order, officials can’t approve new transmission lines, and mayors can’t fire rogue cops.
Read MoreThis week, Senator Joe Manchin’s infrastructure permitting reform, aimed at energy projects and supported by The White House, was killed by a weird coalition of Republicans and far-left Democrats. The bill would have expedited the construction of high-speed transmission lines—a reform strongly supported by the editorial board of The Washington Post and other mainstream observers.
Read MorePaul Light at Brookings released a report last week which concluded that “public demand for ‘very major’ government reform is at a twenty-year high” and that “confidence in government to do the right thing is at a historic low.” Citing our work, the report calls for “large-scale repairs to aging systems and broken bureaucracy.”
Read MoreGoverning is not a process of perfection. Like other human activities, governing involves tradeoffs and trial and error. One of the most important tradeoffs involves timing. Delay in governing often means failure. Nowhere is this more true than with environmental reviews for infrastructure. Every year of delay for new power lines, modernized ports, congestion pricing for city traffic, and road bottlenecks means more pollution and inefficiency.
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There’s a lot going on in the world, with Ukraine, Canadian truckers, and more. So it was easy to miss the report of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, released on February 7. The Task Force, chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, calls for expanding collective bargaining throughout society, including in government.
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The first anniversary of the January 6 mob at the Capitol has prompted lots of commentary about how polarized America is. But why is America polarized? The frustration and anger that drives people to extremes isn't made up.
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America needs a new public narrative, with new leaders. The key, we think, is to replace red tape with human responsibility. Nothing will get fixed until we re-empower Americans to roll up their sleeves and make things work again.
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