The Outpost Observer

Pundits may be wrong about Obama re-election chances

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Monday, November 21, 2011 

By John A. Ostenburg

Every time I pick up a newspaper, turn on a television news station, or read a commentary on the internet, I hear the same thing: Barack Obama is in trouble and his re-election chances are iffy at best. 

And, truthfully, there are only two basic reasons the pundits put forth as the basis for his election trouble: (1) the bad economy that President Obama inherited hasn’t magically improved overnight, and (2) he can’t get anything through the 112^th Congress of the United States.

Now the pundits’ argument seems to me to defy logic for several reasons.

First of all, the bad economic conditions that Mr. Obama has been unable to completely turn around were created during a Republican administration and that administration played a key role in allowing them to happen. Given that fact, why on earth would voters want to elect another Republican president at this time? Because Mr. Obama can’t walk on water?

Secondly, the current congress matches the famed “do-nothing” congress of 1947-1949, when Republicans at that time blocked virtually every proposal put forth by President Harry S Truman. And know what? In the election of 1948 not only did Mr. Truman prove all the pundits of his day wrong by winning re-election, voters also threw out the Republican majorities in both the House and Senate after their brief two-year tenure of being in charge.

I think the same thing may happen in November 2012.

I happen to believe that Barack Obama has been a very effective president during his first three years in office, especially considering the huge number of roadblocks that have been thrown in his way – some naturally, and some not so. My belief isn’t based on the fact that I’m a lifelong Democrat, nor on the fact that the President hails from my home state (he may have been born in Hawaii, but he was an Illinois resident when elected to the White House and his voting residence remains in Chicago). Rather, my opinion of Mr. Obama’s performance is based on the facts.

Health Care – It may not be as complete a bill as some would have desired, but Mr. Obama’s health care initiative is the most far-reaching since Medicare was created during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. Mr. Johnson managed to pass Medicare because he had a solid majority in Congress, which had massively gone Democratic in the elections of 1964 as an aftermath to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Medicare first was proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt as a component of the Social Security Act but failed to pass the Congress at that time. President Truman also tried to get national health insurance for the elderly enacted but failed to do so. It was on the agenda of President Kennedy before his administration came to a sudden halt on November 22, 1963. The post-Johnson extension of health insurance to a larger population than just the elderly had been a major item for President Bill Clinton, but his efforts also failed. What President Obama was able to accomplish, with a slight Democratic majority in Congress during his first two years in office (especially given that many of those Democrats were almost as conservative as some Republicans), truly was a wonder.

The Economy – The Obama administration was overly optimistic about the extent to which the National Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 would positively change our national economy, and it shared that optimism with the American public. As a result, because the Recovery Act didn’t accomplish as much as had been anticipated, too many people view it as a failure. It wasn’t. In fact, it made major steps in stopping the extremely rapid down-hill slide that was occurring when Mr. Obama took office in January of 2009. The U.S. auto industry was saved, and that meant thousands of jobs protected. Major public works projects were undertaken across the U.S., putting construction workers back on the job and allowing them to earn money to keep their families in their homes and to keep food on the table. And – perhaps one of the most crucial components of the Act – unemployment benefits were extended for those who were out of work and unable to find a job. The Recovery Act was an investment in America and its people and it worked.

Jobs – Even before Mr. Obama introduced the American Jobs Act – a monumental undertaking that has the potential of restoring the U.S. economy to its former position at the same time that it addresses major national needs, such as infrastructure repairs and improvements – private sector jobs were on the increase. The major component of increases in unemployment over the last several months has been the loss of public sector jobs. As governments are receiving fewer tax dollars because of the economic downturn, more and more state and local governmental workers have been laid off. Jobs, however, are increasing in the private sector, at a rate of about 100,000 per month, and much of that growth is directly attributable to federal policies initiated by the Obama administration.

Terrorism and America at War – Democrats always are described by Republicans as being soft on national security. What a myth! Who oversaw the removal of Osama bin Laden and other key figures within Al-Qaeda? Who gave U.S. support to those seeking to end lengthy dictatorships in Egypt and Libya? Who has brought closure to the U.S. engagement in Iraq, restoring that nation to self-reliance and withdrawing our troops from that country? Mr. Obama’s predecessor issued a dramatic proclamation of victory in Iraq when he made a tailhook landing onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln; that publicity stunt occurred in May 2003, but the real end of the conflict was eight years in the coming. It is President Obama who has ended the U.S. presence in Iraq and who is bringing U.S. troops back home.

The Deficit – Republicans like to say the deficit is growing because of policies of the Obama administration. Again, a myth! The two major causes of the current U.S. deficit are (1) the hugely costly two wars that have been going on for nearly 10 years, and (2) the reduction in revenue coming to the federal government because of the huge tax cuts that the Bush administration gave to the wealthiest Americans. The current tax rate on the wealthiest Americans (those who earn about $350,000 or more) is between 30 and 40 percent. That’s the lowest since the Great Depression, when taxes on the wealthy were at about 25 percent. During the time that Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, the wealthiest Americans paid taxes at a rate of about 70 percent; during Republican Ronald Reagan, it was about 50 percent. At the same time that George W. Bush dramatically escalated U.S. costs by engaging in two wars (USA Today estimated in 2010 that the cost of the two wars was approximately $1 trillion per year), he cut the revenue that could pay for those wars by reducing taxes on the wealthy. By withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, and by seeking an end to the conflict in Afghanistan, President Obama is advancing a key component for bringing the deficit under control; by urging Congress to return the tax rate for the wealthiest of U.S. citizens to the level it was at before the Bush cuts, he is advancing the next best key component to deficit reduction.

These are just a few high points of the Obama administration’s accomplishments. And, meanwhile, there are some areas – such as education, the environment, and immigration – where solid administration proposals have been put on the back-burner while some of the more crucial issues are given more comprehensive attention. We can only hope, in a second Obama administration, that more of those other issues will be given major attention.

Whatever accomplishments President Obama has had, however, have not come without battles with his opponents. Can anyone ever recall any other president whose place of birth has been contested? Even at the highest point of anti-Vietnam protest, were either President Johnson or President Richard M. Nixon subjected to the personal insults that have been hurled at Mr. Obama? The venom that being spewed by his opponents is unprecedented in the history of the U.S. presidency.

But I think my final reason for being convinced that Mr. Obama will be successful in his re-election bid is the cast of characters on the Republican side who are vying to be his November 2012 opponent.

Mitt Romney can’t make up his mind on what be believes. Rick Perry can’t remember what he believes. Michele Bachmann can’t get U.S. history straight. Herman Cain constantly refers to himself in the third person, perhaps as a way of not owning up to some of his past questionable behavior with women. Newt Gingrich does remember his past womanizing, but says he was unfaithful to two wives because of his patriotism. Ron Paul believes in tradition: he thinks that people who can’t afford health care should just die as they have in the past. No one knows what the other two candidates think because they never gain the media attention that the six front(?)runners do.

So, bottom line? I think the pundits are wrong. I think Barack Obama will win re-election. I also think the Democrats will regain control of the U.S. Congress. Now, let’s hope that Mr. Obama and his Democratic compatriots will spent the four years between 2013 and 2017 putting in place some of those back-burner items that so far have not been given the attention they deserve.

John A. Ostenburg is in his fourth four-year term as mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He retired in July 2010 as the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union after holding various CTU posts over a 15-year period. A former newspaper reporter and editor, he also has been a teacher and/or administrator at elementary, secondary, community college, and university levels. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.

Leading "ugly" not the answer for organized labor

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Friday, November 18, 2011 

By John A. Ostenburg

Public employees’ unions got a shot in the arm on one day, and a sharp stick in the eye on the next. 

The resounding vote of support for the right of public employees to organize and bargain collectively that came in Ohio on November 8 had a little of its shine diminish when only days later a video of Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis – making less than even remotely professional comments before a large gathering of social justice educators – was splashed across the internet and television news channels. In the video, Ms. Lewis makes fun of the speaking manner of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and also brags about her extended pot-smoking during her college years.

Viewing the video is like watching an elementary school child challenge a playmate: “Your mother wears combat boots!” Or perhaps an adolescent bragging to teenage companions about getting away with an illicit act. But Ms. Lewis shouldn’t be emulating a small child or an adolescent; she should be showing the kind of leadership that negates all the unfair criticism that these days is being directed at public employee unions and their members.

My intention is not to poke fun at Ms. Lewis for her gaffe, for doing that would be little more than what she did in speaking sarcastically of Secretary Duncan’s slight lisp. Nor is it to chastise her for her confession of youthful drug use, for such a confession – in the proper setting and circumstances – could have positive benefit. Instead, I want to address the issue of how a once powerful union is slipping every day in its influence, and of how this slippage is bad for organized labor in general.

First, my own confession. I was a staff member for the Chicago Teachers Union for 15 years. I began as a communications consultant and then held positions as editor of the union newspaper, legislative director and lobbyist, head of the Communications Department, and ultimately chief of staff. I served three presidents but chose to resign when Ms. Lewis was elected, in large part because I didn’t like the tone that she had set in her campaign for the CTU presidency, but also because I felt it was time for me to move on.

During my tenure at the CTU, I didn’t always agree with the leadership on all issues. For one thing, I felt that each of the three presidents under whom I served was much too inclined toward patronage in the selection of persons who held staff positions within the union. This is a very common occurrence in organized labor, just as it is in many areas of government. Persons who work in the campaigns of the successful candidates are rewarded with staff positions, many times without any regard whatsoever for whatever skills, experience, or knowledge they might bring to the job. That’s not always the case; but it certainly is true too often.

I also was disappointed with all three administrations because such rudimentary actions of good management as employee evaluations never occurred. Nor did comprehensive long-range planning. Too much attention was directed toward grievances and matters of that sort, which actually only concerned a small portion of the total union membership. The CTU is the largest local union in the state of Illinois and has tens of thousands of members; by contrast, grievances during any year might benefit a handful of a few hundred. What about the needs of all the rest? Professional development for members, for example, garnered only a slight percentage of the union’s overall budget, even though all the members of the union regularly faced criticism – unjustly, I might add – that they were not up to par in the delivery of instruction to the students and could  benefit from more union-sponsored professional development.

But even with these areas that caused me concern, I always believed I was working for an important cause in doing the work of the union. One of the tasks I undertook throughout my years at the CTU was to spend lots of my own time reading, studying, and writing about the history of the union. The CTU will be 75 years old in October 2012; it was born in a period of labor unrest that was the aftermath of the creation of the Chicago Teachers Federation (CTF) in 1897, which was the first teachers’ union in the United States. The CTF was one of the initial creators of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in 1916, and both CTF and CTU members served in key roles in the AFT in the initial years of the national organization.

At the time the CTU was chartered by the amalgamation of several small unions and in its early years, educators in the Chicago Public Schools faced lots of problems. There was a period when teachers were paid in scrip because the Board of Education didn’t have sufficient funds to meet regular payroll obligations. Teachers often were hired because they were patrons of powerful politicians, and many who were serving with distinction arbitrarily were fired in order to make room for the patronage hires. The union wasn’t immediately successful in changing things – it took 30 years before the union gained collective bargaining rights and entered into its first contract with the Board of Education – but dignified and steady leadership eventually won the day and the CTU was recognized statewide and nationally as a powerful force.

During all those years, even though some folks were hired for positions within the union as a result of supporting the caucus that controlled things, the organization itself was stable and individuals moved up the ranks of leadership based on the experience they gained in posts at lower rungs on the ladder.

In 2001, the dominant caucus – the United Progressive Caucus – was defeated in the union elections and a new group came into power. While many of the persons hired by the new caucus were inexperienced, the new president herself had been an employee of both the CTU and the AFT and had a sense of what union leadership was all about. The three years Deborah Lynch served in office weren’t the best for the union – the contract she negotiated, for example, had lots of holes in it – but she managed to keep the organization afloat. The biggest problem facing the Lynch administration was that the president was somewhat alone in the area of experience; virtually everyone around her was totally new to the union leadership role.

When Marilyn Stewart was elected as president in 2004, she had the wisdom to call back into the staff ranks a number of individuals who had worked or held office in previous administrations and were greatly experienced in union matters. As a result, in 2007, the Stewart administration negotiated one of the best contracts in the union’s history. President Stewart also oversaw the greatest financial reform the union ever embraced, taking the organization from a deficit of more than $600,000 to a surplus of more than $2 million over a two-year period. Unfortunately, though, some internal problems among the officers resulted in a deep split within the union ranks and after six years in office Ms. Stewart lost her post to Karen Lewis.

Virtually no one who is part of the Lewis administration is an experienced union leader or administrator, and the problems that the CTU has faced during the past year clearly are a result of that. When Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor of Chicago in early 2011 – less than a year into the Lewis presidency – he quickly took on the CTU and the union’s leaders seemed clueless in how to deal with him. Aside from a number of antagonistic public statements, CTU leadership seemed unable to enter into effective talks with the new mayoral team. The biggest loss the union experienced was the defecting of members at several schools from the union’s position on a longer school day; as union members in one school after another chose not follow the CTU directive on the length of the school day, and instead to accept what Mayor Emanuel was requesting and offering, the union looked more and more like a paper tiger. Finally the CTU itself caved in on the longer-day issue.

Whether or not a longer school day is needed wasn’t really the true issue in the battle Mayor Emanuel was waging with the CTU. He wanted to show that he was stronger than the union and he won. A more experienced leadership at the CTU would have handled the situation in a manner that saved face even if losing on some fronts. That, in fact, is the essence of good negotiations: each side gets something in the end. As regards the longer-day issue, in the end CTU members got only what Mayor Emanuel had offered from the very start. The union appeared almost as an uninvolved bystander in negotiations between the mayor and the teachers.

Mayor Emanuel effectively defeated collective bargaining by successfully wooing teachers in some schools to follow his lead rather than maintain solidarity with their colleagues at other schools. The whole basis for collective bargaining is that the membership is represented by one voice and what is negotiated is applicable to everyone and not just segments of the membership. That concept flew right out the window in the longer-day settlement.

Now, the comments made by Ms. Lewis at the social justice gathering do even more to diminish her effectiveness as a leader, and thus to erode the power of the CTU. Leaders don’t make fun of the physical defects of their opponents; leaders don’t childishly boast about how they violated laws and customs; leaders sit down across the table from one another and work out effective solutions to problems.

If the Chicago Teachers Union fails in its purpose of representing the best interests of its members, the spin-off effect on other unions will be devastating. Soon Chicago and Illinois will be seeing the same kind of anti-union actions by legislators and statewide elected officials as have been seen in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio.

The CTU has been quick to offer the explanation that President Lewis comments were taken out of context and are being exploited by right-wing anti-labor organizations.

On the first of these arguments, the video itself seems to prove the contrary. There was no legitimate context for saying that Arne Duncan would have lost his lisp if he had attended public, rather than private, schools; Ms. Lewis herself acknowledged that was an “ugly” comment. Likewise, there was no legitimate context for implying to an audience that included school-children that smoking pot is a good way to “self-medicate” at times of personal crisis.

As regards the charge that the comments are being exploited by right-wing anti-labor forces, the CTU is correct. However, while it’s true that the anti-labor groups are taking shots at the CTU, it’s also true that the gun the anti-labor folks are using was loaded by Karen Lewis.

John A. Ostenburg is in his fourth four-year term as mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He retired in July 2010 as the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union after holding various CTU posts over a 15-year period. A former newspaper reporter and editor, he also has been a teacher and/or administrator at elementary, secondary, community college, and university levels. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.

Wake up, Congress: create jobs, fix our crumbling infrastructure

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Saturday, November 12, 2011 

By John A. Ostenburg

It wasn’t that many years ago that “infrastructure” wasn’t a part of our everyday vocabulary.

As the nation grew, government put more and more money into roads, bridges, water and sewer lines, school buildings, parks, and other public facilities. The need was there, and so funds were appropriated to meet that need. Citizens just took it for granted that government would continue this course long into the future.

Perhaps a highpoint in modern improvements of this type was the interstate highway system created during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. By the late 1950s, nearly every family in America had at least one automobile, post-World War II families were prosperous enough to take regular vacations, many individuals had re-located from their original place of residence to elsewhere in the U.S. because of a job or to advance their educations, and so the President proposed a highway system to accommodate that kind of travel and he got bipartisan support in Congress to fund it.

In the years since the creation of the interstate highway system, however, not a whole lot of attention has been focused on what we now refer to as infrastructure.

During the administration of President John F. Kennedy, attention went in the direction of creating an advanced space system. During the Lyndon Johnson years, the Great Society program focused on funding social needs, and at the same time a large portion of American tax dollars went to fund fighting in Vietnam. Richard Nixon’s administration continued the war funding, and then got so caught up in Watergate problems that little else gained much attention. The administration of Gerald Ford was too brief to accomplish much; Jimmy Carter’s term in office was consumed with the developing oil crisis; Ronald Reagan thought the best use for federal dollars was his “Star Wars” missile program; George H.W. Bush got caught up in the war thing too with Desert Storm.

Bill Clinton managed to bring some level of fiscal responsibility back to the federal government but the Monica Lewinsky scandal of his administration was the catalyst for much of the partisan bickering that today has become commonplace in the nation’s capitol. George W. Bush was able to reverse some of that and gain bipartisan support when the country went into crisis mode after the September 11, 2001, attack by Al-Qaeda, but that cooperative spirit dissipated as he led America into two prolonged wars and then oversaw the collapse of the U.S. economic system.

So now we are three years into the administration of Barack Obama, suffering from the most devastating financial conditions the nation has faced since the Great Depression, and suddenly coming face-to-face with the reality that everything structurally holding up our country is coming apart and collapsing around us. It’s the worst of all worlds: we finally are recognizing that we need to spend money to fix things at the same time that money is tighter than it has been in decades.

Even complicating matters more is the fact that partisanship in Washington, D.C., has reach its zenith. At one of the most crucial times in our nation’s history, a large segment of our elected representatives is so consumed with the goal of defeating a President of the opposite party that it will not allow anything that he proposes to be successful.

The President’s jobs bill will put Americans to work improving our crumbling infrastructure. It’s a twofer: it attacks the current high unemployment rate at the same time that it makes the necessary improvements to return soundness to our infrastructure. But his opponents would rather see all those Americans remain unemployed, and see our infrastructure crumble, just so the voters will deny Barack Obama a second term in office come November 2012. It’s not a matter of public policy; it’s a matter of absurdity.

In Park Forest, our water and sewer lines are a disaster. It’s likely that we will see an all-time one-year high of almost 200 water-main breaks before the end of 2011. It costs the Village of Park Forest $1 million for every mile of water-mains that is replaced, and there are approximately 72 miles of water-mains in the town. Park Forest definitely could use some federal assistance to improve our infrastructure.

In Cook County, 675 bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. That’s 24 percent of all Cook County bridges. Cook County definitely could use some federal assistance to improve its infrastructure.

Will County has 144 bridges that are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. That’s 20 percent of all bridges in Will County. Will County definitely could use some federal assistance to improve its infrastructure.

Both Cook County and Will County have unemployment rates that exceed 9 percent. Cook and Will County residents definitely could use the jobs the President’s proposal would create.

So why is Congress dragging its feet on the jobs bill? When are the partisan lawmakers in Washington going to wake up to the realities and stop their childish games?

I just returned from the National League of Cities Congress of Cities in Phoenix where I heard speaker after speaker address lack of jobs and crumbling infrastructure as major needs of our nation's municipalities. Without adequate employment, more and more residents of our cities, towns, and villages are losing their homes. Local government is forced to spend increasing amounts of local tax dollars to deal with the problems associated with abandoned and foreclosed homes. Property values of other residents of those communities decrease as the abandoned and foreclosed homes fall into disrepair and cause blight in neighborhood after neighborhood. It's a major problem nationwide, and jobs are the solution.

In communities such as Park Forest, residents are forced to pay increasing amounts on water and sewer bills in order to replace the mains that are crumbling. Those are the very infrastructure problems that President Obama is seeking to correct through his jobs bill, with funding going directly to local communities to make the necessary improvements. These are jobs that cannot be outsourced. They will employ local residents in solving local problems.

The examples of how the jobs bill will provide relief for local communities are legion. Yet, partisan politics are preventing the solution from going into effect. It's time for citizens across the country to insist that politicians in Washington put aside their private agendas and instead focus on the needs of the people.

Unless something is done soon about the decline of America's infrastructure, more bridges are going to collapse, more school buildings are going to be declared unsafe for our children, more roads and highways are going to be virtually impossible to use, and more and more water and sewer lines are going to break. This is a situation that no longer can be put off. It's a crisis. Amazingly, Washington found adequate dollars to enter into a questionable war in Iraq. Why can't Washington find the dollars to help our cities?

For more information on what's happening to the U.S. infrastructure, and on the solutions that are needed, visit the Building America's Future website at http://www.bafuture.org/.

John A. Ostenburg is in his fourth four-year term as mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He retired in July 2010 as the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union after holding various CTU posts over a 15-year period. A former newspaper reporter and editor, he also has been a teacher and/or administrator at elementary, secondary, community college, and university levels. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.