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Public Policy Propaganda Inoculation Kit

From the start Mayor Emanuel has made it clear that his take on public policy is likely to take the “public” right out of the title. He’s also shown an uncanny knack for picking people who truly make you believe that he is a mob boss who desperately wants to metastasize into a super villain. That being the case our job is to stop him making that transformation and casting the Earth into the Sun. His transition team featured a legislator turned lobbyist who had to leave for ethical/legal reasons, the front guy for the worst Daley Administration corruption, a corrupt bureaucrat at the CHA, an investment banker who still thinks that commoditized mortgages aren’t necessarily a bad idea and a police officer-chef whose best quality is clearly loyalty. This led to a financial team reads like a who’s who of the brilliant financial mindset that ran the country off the fiscal cliff and the education team looks like the kind of folks that are on board with the movie Waiting for Superman, the No Child Left Behind strategy and it’s idiot brother the Race to the Top plan.

If this makes you feel as if the city is in the hands of a hungry band of raccoons, that’s because like all bandits they are indeed wearing masks and gloves. Most of the people leading this administration are constitutionally not capable of entertaining solutions that qualify as good public policy if you are not already wealthy and connected. I predict that once they start churning out public policy you are going to start hearing a number of phrases that will be designed to disarm you. As a public service the Tutorial is providing you a handy propaganda inoculation to reality translation device so when you hear these phrases you will react properly.

  • Shared Sacrifice: Means that the middle class, working class and poor will be sharing the burden so that the wealthy and corporations will not get any of that sacrifice stuff on them.

  • The Future: Means something terrible is about to happen to you in the present so that the people in charge will not have to worry about you in the future.

  • Child Metaphors: Means that the powers that be are about to sacrifice workers’ services, rights and economic standing while Wall Street bonuses, salaries and tax cuts for the wealthy increase and what they are going to do is going to be so painful it demands the policy makers hide behind children.

  • Adult Conversation: Means that the public policy is going to take rights, jobs, benefits, security or protections away from the general public and give something to the wealthy and corporate and if you don’t like that you are whining and not being an adult.

  • Class warfare: Means that someone who is upset about losing some of their rights, jobs, benefits, security or protections is complaining about it way too loudly and needs to shut up.

  • Live within our means: Means that people who don’t have a lot of extra means or means at all are going to have to get along with less means so that people with a lot of means can have more means.

  • Tighten our belts: Means that people who are already economically thin are about to get thinner.

  • We’re going to run the city like a business: Means that we’re going to turn a profit for the business owners by squeezing everything we can out of the people we’re cutting services for. You know, just like a business.

Some Examples of Bad Public Policy

In order to further arm you against bad public policy here are just a few policy ideas that have routinely ended in bad outcomes for the public.

  • Corporate and upper income tax cuts that are designed create economic growth. Think trickle down and supply-side nonsense whenever you hear these words.

  • Managed Competition, this is a glide path to a corporate monopoly. Think of a company big enough to drastically cut prices/profit and even take a loss in one aspect of its business to win a contract and then after securing it adjusting their rates and citing the market that they control.

  • Tax breaks to increase public/private partnerships. Public/private partnerships do not usually work out well for the public partner. This is typically because it turns out that businesses often want something very different than what ordinary people want.

  • Vouchers for Anything. If the government already can’t afford to provide a service what makes you think the same government can provide enough money to allow an individual to purchase a service a government can’t buy in bulk cheaper?

  • Lotteries and Gambling… are our schools fully funded yet? No, but that’s just one of the things it was supposed to make possible before we added a dozen new games.

  • Decreased Regulation of a business that impacts the commons has always led to absolute disaster.

A good steward of our dollars should be following the cui bono rule, which is Latin for “to whose benefit”. When a candidate starts talking about wanting to reform this or doing that, you should ask yourself four questions.