RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
April 9 to April 15, 2023 Featured Investigation: For decades major cities have promised generous pensions down the road to police officers, firefighters, and civil servants. Now those bills are coming due, squeezing current services, including public safety. This paper, which focuses on America’s 10 largest cities, warns that the need to fund pensions may spark an urban doom loop: As cities raises taxes and cut services, more taxpayers will flee, requiring bigger tax increases and deeper services cuts. “In this scenario, reduced economic activity and lower daytime populations downtown invite increases in antisocial behavior, preventing the rebounds that have generally followed past downturns. Continual underperformance of commercial real estate leads to lower tax revenues and precipitates service cuts, pushing cities further down the negative spiral.” The reports key findings are: -
Pension spending increased in all of the 10 largest American cities over the last decade, with a few cities doubling or even tripling spending in 2021 dollars. -
Almost all cities saw an increase in pension spending per employee.
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To respond to rising pension demands, some cities have reduced employment, often in the area of public safety. -
A worsening market environment for pension funds will require cities to raise spending in 2023 and beyond, worsening pressure to limit or reduce employment and, thus, city services.
While the cities might turn to their states for relief, many have their own suffocating pension obligations. That leaves the federal government, which holds record amounts of debt and envisions large deficits as far as the eye can see. In a separate article for RealClearInvestigations, Open the Books reports that the U.S. holds $39 trillion in liabilities with only $4.9 trillion in assets, leading the Department of the Treasury to say "the current fiscal path is unsustainable.” Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Biden, Trump and the Beltway In a move that defies historical precedent, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is using a legal loophole to prosecute a man granted clemency by President Trump. A former executive overseeing a network of skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, Philip Esformes was found guilty of money laundering and related charges, as well as bribing regulators to give him notice of upcoming inspections so he could attempt to obscure shoddy conditions at those facilities. But his case drew Trump’s attention because prosecutors were found to have committed substantial misconduct. One lawyer quoted in the article says Esformes' second prosecution "directly violates the double jeopardy clause." Another observes: "While there are a lot of people who disagree with how Donald Trump handled his clemencies, it's his absolute right as a president to issue commutations and pardons. And I think that's an important right to protect," says the prominent left-leaning attorney and advocate Jessica Jackson. … Some of Trump's clemency recipients, including Esformes, were widely deemed unsympathetic. But setting a precedent in which changing administrations can countermand the previous president's clemency decisions is a dicey game, should you want to ensure the security of future recipients you find more palatable. Principles, by definition, are not actually principles if you discard them when the moment is opportune. Despite claims that it learned of the raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence only after it was searched for classified documents, new documents suggest the Biden White House knew of the armed effort in advance. Emails obtained by America First Legal (AFL) show that the Department of Justice (DOJ) made a “special access request” ‒ “via the Biden White House” ‒ to review the documents. The “special access request” appears to indicate that the Biden White House and the DOJ worked to coordinate to get the Trump documents and “perhaps create a pretext for the law enforcement raid,” AFL wrote. The coordination between the White House and the DOJ through a “special access request” raises legal concerns, since “the special access statute authorizes special access requests to an incumbent president only when the records in question are needed for ‘the conduct of current business’ of the White House. Providing documents to the DOJ for purposes of a criminal investigation is not the ‘current business’ of the White House,” AFL wrote. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway Other Noteworthy Articles and Series The Air Force has wanted to kill the Warthog for decades. It says the A-10 jets, nicknamed for their bulky silhouette and toughness in a fight, have passed their prime and will be vulnerable in the wars of the future. But Congress has other ideas. Bowing to members whose constituencies are dependent on the jet for jobs and the flow of federal tax dollars, Congress has instead insisted nearly all the planes keep flying at a cost of more than $4 billion over the past 10 years. This article reports that lawmakers also barred the Air Force from retiring its C-40 VIP passenger planes and have limited the service’s authority to shrink its fleet of aging E-3 AWACS radar planes. This kind of intervention is common ‒ and is impairing the U.S.’s ability to respond to rapidly modernizing Chinese forces in a new era of great-power competition, say current and former senior defense officials and military analysts. Efforts by lawmakers to bring military jobs and funding to their districts and keep them there are as old as Congress itself. But they come at a huge opportunity cost at a time when the U.S. is facing its most formidable adversary since the end of the Cold War. Congress is in effect forcing the Pentagon to spend billions on programs for which it sees no role in future wars. This article reports that El Salvador ceased being Central America’s murder central since the government declared a state of emergency to quell gang violence, deploying the military onto the streets in force. Homicides plunged. Extortion payments imposed by gangs on businesses and residents, once an economy unto itself, also declined. Now children play soccer late into the evening on fields that were gang turf. But “critics” say this peace has come at an incalculable price in terms of mass arrests and an the erosion of civil liberties. Still: Most Salvadorans appear willing to accept that deal. Fed up with the gangs that terrorized them and forced so many to flee to the United States, the vast majority of people here support the measures and the president behind them, surveys suggest. With approval ratings around 90 percent, El Salvador’s president, the 41-year-old Nayib Bukele, has become one of the world’s most popular leaders and has earned fans across the Western Hemisphere. As politicians from Mexico to Guatemala vow to emulate Bukele’s iron-fisted approach, critics now worry that the country could become a model for a dangerous bargain: sacrificing civil liberties for safety. The FBI recently sought to develop sources inside Christian churches and Catholic dioceses as part of an effort to combat domestic terrorism, according to internal documents released by House Judiciary Committee. This article reports that the documents show the FBI planned to use churches as "new avenues for tripwire and source development." In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Ray, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan wrote: "Based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis, and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith." Major organ procurement networks are implementing new policies to make skin color a crucial factor in who receives life-saving kidney transplants. In the name of equity, this article reports, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and the United Network for Organ Sharing ... ... claim that the longstanding system for such transplants is racist, pointing to how black patients make up 30 percent of the dialysis population and transplant wait list but receive a smaller fraction of kidney transplants. Activists assert that this disparity reflects bias on the part of treating physicians, particularly when referring black patients for early kidney care. But a study from the Veteran’s Administration found that more referrals for expert care did not improve outcomes or prevent progression of advanced kidney disease to the need for kidney replacement therapy. If racism doesn’t explain the discrepancy, what does? This article notes several including: the advanced age and complex medical conditions of many black patients with diabetes-related kidney failure; many of these patients are also relatively satisfied with dialysis treatments and unwilling to undergo extensive evaluation for transplant suitability. Others include insufficient health literacy, concern about the surgical procedures associated with transplantation, and lack of a support system for post-operative patients—an especially important factor in transplant suitability. Black families are also less likely to supply kidney donors from relatives. |
