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A Last Word on the Controller’s Race

  By 2013 Controller race, Philadelphia, Progressive Politics, Ward politics

The response to our letter on Brett Mandel has been predictable, and for the most part good. Many progressives who have shared our qualms about Brett have come out and taken a public position. And many of those progressives who support Brett have denounced us for joining a “ward leader, party hack” who is backed by Bob Brady and John Dougherty. To the larger first group I say thanks and I encourage you keep getting the word out. Share our letter via email and Facebook. Join the Progressives against Mandel group on Facebook. The second group, I want to suggest you take this episode as a learning experience about politics. First, politics is about coalition building. It’s about getting people together in support of legislation or a candidate who might not agree on other matters. People don’t wear black hats and white hats in politics. With very few exceptions, all… Continue reading

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My Brett Mandel Problem—and Ours

  By 2013 Controller race, Philadelphia

Political life is sometimes difficult, especially when friendship and ideology come into conflict. I made a difficult decision the other day, to sign a statement opposing Brett Mandel’s candidacy for City Controller. Elections are blunt instruments for expressing one’s preferences because multiple concerns come into play when we decide for whom to vote. And that’s why my decision was so hard. I consider Brett a friend. I like him a great deal. I respect his mind and his commitment to the good of the city. There are a few people in the city whose ideas I always take into account when making up my own mind. Brett is one of them. I agree with Brett on many things. But I’ve decided that I can’t vote for him for Controller. Good Government If I were to focus all of my attention on good government issues like transparency, honesty, openness, and government… Continue reading

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More on Why PLCB Privatization is a Bad Idea: State Revenues

  By Pennsylvania, Politics

As I prepared to do a radio interview with Marty Moss-Cohane yesterday (which you can listen to here), I delved more deeply into the issue of privatizing the state wine and spirits stores than I had before. And it turns out that the arguments for not doing so is even stronger than I had realized when I wrote an op-ed at Newsworks. As the House of Representatives moves toward a decision about this today, I want to explain how I came to that conclusion. This, the first of two posts, will focus on state revenues and show that privatizing the PLCB will blow a huge hole in the state budget requiring us either to raise other taxes or reduce spending for education, health care, and other important common goods. The second will focus on the public harms of alcohol abuse and how privatization of the PLCB will make them worse.… Continue reading

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Allyson Schwartz and the Abortion Issue

  By Pennsylvania, Politics, Women and Health Care

I keep hearing from intelligent people who know something about politics that Allyson Schwartz can’t win statewide because she directed a women’s health center—the Elizabeth Blackwell Center—that along with providing a wide range of health services, also provided abortions. (BTW, my wife’s first job was working at the Blackwell Center. Yes, we go back with Allyson a long way.) Now, do I need to add that every one of those intelligent analysts are men? (And that a few of them appear to be working for other potential candidates for Governor who presumably support abortion but are raising questions about Allyson’s support of it?) The DGA poll that showed Allyson beating Corbett in every part of the state really pushed on that issue and it had no effect on the polls. Why not? Why are the (male) analysts wrong? The reason is that both the state and our nation as a… Continue reading

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The Progressive Moment

  By Politics, Progressive Politics, Public Policy

This is a progressive moment, when we have an opportunity to once again reinvent the government to meet our goals. We have to recognize our opportunities, and also recognize that our task is not to mimic the right and talk only to ourselves but capture the imagination of the public as a whole. We have to articulate new innovative public policies that articulate the progressive ideals that Americans broadly share. Continue reading

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Take the Money for Medicaid

  By Health Care, Pennsylvania, Public Policy

Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, February 11, 2013 By Valerie Arkoosh and Marc Stier Imagine a new federal program guaranteed to provide Pennsylvania with $43.3 billion between 2013 and 2022 for repairs to roads and bridges. Imagine that the program is paid for entirely by the federal government for the first three years. After that, Pennsylvania will have to put in $4 billion. Imagine that despite the expenditure, Pennsylvania saves a greater amount because the new federal funding would replace almost $4 billion in state funding. And imagine that the new funding would create tens of thousands of jobs in the state and generate millions of dollars in state and local tax revenue. Can anyone imagine Gov. Corbett turning down this deal? Of course not. Yet in his budget address Tuesday, Corbett did just that, failing to embrace $43.3 billion from the federal government over 10 years to expand… Continue reading

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Lose Our Newspapers and We Lose Our City

  By Civic virtue, Media Justice, Politics

Originally published by Newsworks, January 31, 2013 It appears that Congressman Bob Brady has followed up on his promise to do “everything we can” to save the 2013 Manayunk Bike Race. I’m glad Brady has come through again. The Bike Race plays an important part in the life of the Northwest where I live. Losing it would hurt businesses here — and our civic spirit. But while a great deal of heated effort has gone into saving the bike race, the city and region may yet face a devastating blow: the loss of our two daily newspapers. The new owners of the Inquirer and Daily News, Interstate General Media (IGM), have threatened to “liquidate” the newspapers if the Newspaper Guild, which represents reporters, and nine other unions, doesn’t agree to substantial concessions. And not only are our leading politicians not raising a stink about that, outside of the City Paper… Continue reading

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Some Democrats Stand in the Way of Filibuster Reform

  By Congress, Politics

It’s many of the Senate Democrats that are standing in the way of filibuster reform. They are worried about not having the filibuster if the Democrats are in the minority again. The argument is not entirely wrong. But it shows a lot less confidence in our party and ideals and most importantly democracy (with a small d) than we Democrats should have. The filibuster we have today is not only undemocratic, it is unconstitutional. Continue reading

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Ask Allyson Schwartz to Run for Governor!

  By Pennsylvania, Progressive Politics

Barack Obama is back in office and moving in a liberal direction. So now it’s time to think ahead about building progressive power. The most important thing we can do in Pennsylvania is to replace Tom Corbett as Governor. So it’s a little surprising to me is that, with all the talk about this candidate or that, the one Pennsylvania politician who is best placed to defeat Governor Corbett, Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz, is not being asked by everyone to run. The main reason, I suspect, is that most people who pay close attention to politics don’t think she will do so. And some folks, for the usual reasons, have trouble getting their head around the idea of a woman as Governor. I have no inside knowledge about whether Congresswoman Schwartz is considering a race. But I strongly believe that she should run. After explaining why, I’ll come back to the issue of… Continue reading

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Is Socrates A Model for the Rest of Us?

  By Uncategorized

An earlier and very different version of this paper appears under this title in Craig de Paulo, Patrick Messina, and Marc Stier, eds. Ambiguity in the Western Mind(Peter Lang, Inc. International Academic Publishers, 2005). The current text is a substantial revision that brings out some themes that were only implicit in the early version.  The original text was written to be delivered as a talk at conference sponsored by the Intellectual Heritage Program of Temple University entitled “Ambiguity in the Western Tradition.” It was directed not to specialists on Plato but to anyone interested in the issues raised by the text. As such, my argument does not turn on any disputes about the meaning or translation of particular passages. So, it has not seemed necessary to point the reader to the particular passages I paraphrase. Continue reading