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I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but frankly I'm not convinced. You?The approach is winning applause from local officials and urban thinkers, who credit the administration for quietly beginning the most ambitious new policy for the nation's cities since the Great Society programs of the 1960s.
Quite a scene in Pittsburgh last night in the wake of the G-20 on Forbes Avenue, in front of the Carnegie Museum, a block or two away from the campuses of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. It's literally two blocks from my old Heinz School office, a block from my favorite coffee shop, and three blocks from where I lived.
Here are some eyewitness reports from the Post-Gazette.
Drew Singer, editor of the student newspaper The Pitt News, watched the events from a window in the William Pitt Union, which has a view of Schenley Plaza. Two Pitt News photographers were among those arrested. "There were way more police than there were civilians, nonpolice," he said. He said the police gave a loud order to disperse. He said police usually arrest people who are especially unruly, but Friday night, "it seemed like anybody who didn't leave immediately was being arrested even if they were just kind of watching. Technically, they did not disperse." He said some Pitt News reporters saw people passing out note cards earlier in the day at the permitted "People's March to the G-20," which announced a rally that night in Schenley Plaza. While there may have been protesters, he said, "I personally didn't see a single protester. There was absolutely nothing like Thursday night. It was overwhelmingly spectators and people who just wanted to see what was going on. It seems like just after Thursday night, [police] just weren't taking anything. They just weren't up for any funny business. They gave the orders to disperse, and I guess anybody who didn't immediately disperse they were going after, it seemed like."
"It was all students and no protesters -- it looked like any Friday night in Oakland but with more people," said Nathan Lanzendorfer, 23, of Mt. Lebanon. He went to Oakland out of curiosity to see the protests. Shortly before midnight he was caught on Forbes Avenue, with police deploying OC gas from two directions. He was hit with a rubber bullet in his right leg and his left, started to run, and was then hit in an arm and his lower back. "I never heard any warning to leave the area -- all four [rubber bullet] shots were within five seconds," he said. "All the wounds on my back. If I was opposing [the police] at all you'd think I'd have a front wound." Mr. Lanzendorfer went to UPMC Presbyterian for treatment of his contusions, one of which is softball-sized, he said.
Post-Gazette reporter Sadie Gurman, 24, was among those arrested on the Pitt Cathedral of Learning lawn."I was arrested on the cathedral lawn while truly trying to get out of the fray," she said. Ms. Gurman said she had gone to Schenley Plaza because of news alerts she received on her cell phone. At Schenley Plaza, she was talking with colleagues and others she had met while covering G-20 events. In the plaza, she said there was one person on a loudspeaker. Others were standing around talking, running or playing games, such as duck-duck-goose. She estimated the number of civilians in the plaza at about 200.
Much of the plaza was flanked by police officers. "There was definitely an energy that was very ominous at that point," she said. Even as police ordered the crowd to disperse, Ms. Gurman said some people in the plaza stayed and chanted, "You're sexy, you're cute, take off your riot suit." Ms. Gurman said she left the plaza and went onto Forbes Avenue."I was trying to move in a way that would not be in their perimeter. I was walking on Forbes toward Craig Street to get out of it. Another police van pulled up. Additional officers in riot gear jumped out and said to 'move back, move back' and were pushing us the opposite direction back toward Bigelow." She went that direction and ended up having to jump over bushes on the Cathedral lawn to get out of the way of police. "I thought I was OK there. The cops jumped over the bushes, too," she said. She said a helicopter was overhead. With the cathedral behind a group of people, the police made a half circle and ordered people to lie down on the ground. "Some of the girls were hugging each other and crying, saying to the police, 'Tell us how we can get out of here peacefully. We don't want to be here, but you've trapped us.' "She estimated about 30 people were put into a police vehicle. She was released about 10 hours after her arrest.
Ellyanna Kessler, an 18-year-old freshman, said she had been watching from her dormitory in Forbes Hall when police shot OC gas canisters onto the balcony of the residence. "Everybody got tear gassed," she said.
Tracy Hickey, an 18-year-old freshman, said she had been arrested while watching the protest as an off-duty ACLU legal observer. When she realized that many of those being ordered to disperse had "nowhere to disperse to," she saidheld open the door to a dormitory, ushering a crowd of screaming students into the residence. She said police then arrested her ... By about 10:50 p.m., K-9 units and police with plastic shields had surrounded the plaza began to make arrests. Police fired OC gas canisters into a crowd of mostly students on the corner of Forbes and Bigelow. Many people ran down Forbes Avenue, coughing and screaming, as a line of police several officers deep stretched across the road and marched down the street, ordering the crowd to disperse. Some protesters taunted the police, he said. "How do you feel shooting students," one yelled.
Peter Shell, co-chair of the Thomas Merton Center's antiwar committee, said he had gone to Oakland Friday night to celebrate the day's successful and peaceful People's March to the G-20, which his organization had sponsored. When police made Mr. Shell leave Schenley Plaza, he was forced onto the Cathedral of Learning lawn. When he tried to leave via Fifth Avenue, he was surrounded, trapped and arrested, he said. "We tried going left, we tried going forward, we tried going right," he said. "We wanted to disperse and they did not let us disperse."
Molly Shea said she came to Pittsburgh to protest at the People's March but wanted nothing to do with Friday night's demonstration, she said. A 22-year-old senior at Ohio University, she was studying at Kiva Han coffee shop until about 10:45 p.m. Friday, when she left to look for her friends. She walked to the lawn next to the Cathedral of Learning to find them and soon realized she was surrounded by police, she said."We kept asking them how we could leave, or if we could leave," she said. "Most of them were unresponsive. Some of them just said no."She was on a police wagon and then a bus for about five hours without water or a bathroom break, though many girls with her were asking for both, she said."A few police officers were nice," she said, "but for the most part, they were not."She said one of the officers was "taking a lot of pride" in taking mug shots next to female detainees, and that other officers frequently used profanities specifically derogatory to women."Some of them were making jokes when they were moving around from paddy wagon to paddy wagon about 'getting the hot ones out,'" she said.She was released Saturday morning after being detained for about 10 hours, she said.
A 24-year-old member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Army Sgt. Jeff Bartos had been deployed to Iraq as a medic in 2005. When he came to Pittsburgh this week from New Britain, Conn. to protest the G-20 summit, it was also as a medic.Friday night, he was helping to treat a reporter who had been exposed to OC gas near Schenley Plaza when he realized he was surrounded by police on all sides. He said he was corralled with about 40 "pretty nervous, 'What-are-we-doing-here' protesters" as well as "random college kids," including a girl who had been jogging through the park when she was trapped. He said he was charged with disorderly conduct and released about 6 p.m. Saturday.
Jordan Romanus, 22, who lives in South Oakland, a 15-minute walk from campus, was among those arrested Friday night on the Cathedral lawn. He said they were told to lie face down on the ground. "I feel pretty horrible. I think 99 percent of the people that were arrested had never been arrested before. The anarchists who did all the damage, none of them were there ... It was absolutely atrocious." Mr. Romanus, who said he was released around 12:30 p.m. yesterday, said police kept the detainees handcuffed all night. "My wrists are really sore. I didn't get any sleep. They made us sit in chairs. They [the handcuffs] were on really right. One kid's hand was bleeding by the end."
A former student of mine said in an e-mail:
"The police went totally haywire last night. this article only gives a partial account. they were bashing people, pretty much indiscriminately. Nothing to do with protests, or vandalism, or anarchists. Just people going to get Primanti's (a Pittsburgh institution famous for its sandwiches piled high with french fires and coleslaw) its , and then they get teargassed, or billy-clubbed, or arrested."
Update: Here is a video clip from in front of the University of Pittsburgh.
- [Picture by Radder Photos, flickr]
Residents of big cities pay a disproportionate share of federal taxes. That's true not only of growing cities but declining Rustbelt ones, even hard-hit Detroit. Overall, urbanites pay 27 percent more in federal income taxes than workers with similar skills in small cities and rural areas. That's according to an important new study by University of Michigan economist and MPI associate David Albouy in the Journal of Political Economy, Here's a summary of its key findings.
"Workers in cities are generally paid higher wages than similarly skilled workers in smaller towns, so they're taxed at higher rates. That may sound fair, until one considers the higher cost of living in cities, which means those higher wages don't provide any extra buying power. The federal income tax system doesn't account for cost of living. So the effect is that workers in expensive cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago pay more in taxes even though their real income is essentially the same as workers in smaller, cheaper places.
"The extra burden wouldn't be so excessive if more federal tax dollars were returned to urban areas in the form of higher federal spending. But according to Albouy's research, that's not the case. His data show that more federal dollars are actually spent in rural areas, despite the fact that cities send far more cash to Washington. The net effect of all this is a transfer of $269 million from workers in high-cost areas to workers in lower cost rural areas in 2008 alone.
"Over the long haul, Albouy says, the larger tax burden causes workers to flee large urban centers in the Northeast and settle in less expensive places in the South. So to some extent, it may have been the federal tax system that put the rust on the rust belt.
"Detroit is a perfect example of a city that gets the short end of the stick.
"With its high wage levels, Detroit was, until recently, contributing far more in federal revenues per capita than most other places for over one hundred years," Albouy said. The recent federal bailout to Detroit automakers "is peanuts relative to the extra billions the city has poured into Washington over the 20th Century."
"Albouy says that city folk shouldn't expect relief from this system anytime soon.
"Highly taxed areas tend to be in large cities inside of populous states, which have low Congressional representation per capita, making the prospect of reform daunting," he writes.
The full study is here (PDF).
Thanks to the efforts of ProPublica, we can track bailout funds by state. The map below, based on their data, shows the geographic distribution of bailout spending.
The bailout is massively concentrated in just a few states. Total bailout funding, according to the ProPublica data, is $476.5 billion to date. One state, New York, has captured $175 billion of that, more than a third. Michigan is next with $80.7 billion or 17 percent of the total, followed by North Carolina with $56.3 billion, Virginia with $54.9 billion, and California with $34.4 billion. The top three states accounted for 66 percent of bailout spending; the top five 84 percent; and the top two more than 10 percent.
How does the geography of the bailout look when we control for the size of state economies - say, by population and economic output? With the number-crunching help of Ronnie Sanders and map-making assistance of Scott Pennington, both of the Martin Prosperity Institute, we decided to take a look.
The second map shows the geography of bailout funding per person. The average per state, excluding the District of Columbia and based on the ProPublica data, is $1,570.34 bailout dollars per person. Again, two states dominate the tally - New York, where the bailout adds up to $8,978.83 per person, and Michigan where it's $8,067.28. There are just five additional states where bailout funds top $1,000 per person: Virginia ($7,044.47), North Carolina ($6.104.69), Minnesota ($1,379.21), Connecticut ($1,085.33), and Iowa ($1,065.76).
The third map shows the geography of the bailout as a percent of state economic output or gross state product. The bailout, again based on the ProPublica data, was three percent of total state output, with each state on average receiving 1.8 percent of its GDP. Michigan takes the top spot here, with bailout funds equivalent to a whopping 21.1 percent of its total economic output. New York is next at 15.3 percent; followed by North Carolina, 14.1 percent; and Virginia, 13.8 percent. No other state received bailout funding that was more than three percent of its output.
By any measure, the bailout has been massively concentrated geographically.
* An earlier version of this post was incorrectly titled "The Stimulus Maps." Thanks to ProPublica's Chris Flavelle for pointing this out. It has been revised accordingly.
Political scientist, Andrew Gelman has some great graphs on the connection between economics and ideology. Comparing income levels, ideology and party idenitification, he and collaborator Daniel Lee found the connection between income and party identification was strongest among conservative Republicans. But the relationship was "close to zero" for liberals. Liberal Dems were spread across all income groups, while conservative Dems had much lower income levels.
My reading is that class continues to play a considerable role in American politics: With the exception of liberal Dems who draw from across the spectrum of classes, the parties and their key factions increasingly represent class blocs. Gelman notes that the connection between economic status and party/ideology underpins America's increasingly polarized policy debates. He's right. In the current zero-sum economic climate, it's only likely to get worse.
But Obama may be on his way to fashioning a broad cross-class coalition, according to this Gallup survey which tracks the president's approval rating by occupation (pointer from Charlotta Mellander).
The president enjoys a nearly two-thirds (65 percent) approval rating overall. He enjoys relatively high approval ratings across major occupational or class groups, and his approval rating is rising across key groups.
Blue Collar Workers: Production and manufactuirng workers provided a 68 percent approval rating, up from 62 percent in March.
Service Workers: Service workers gave the president his highest approval rating in May, 71 percent.
Professional, Knowledge, Creative Workers: The president registered a 65 percent approval rating from professionals (up three points from March) and 60 percent from managers and government workers.
Entrepreneurs and Self-employed Workers: The president's biggest gains came from business owners and self-employed workers, where his approval rating increased 11 points from 44 percent ion March to 55 percent in May.
It's an open question whether Obama can maintain these numbers (Andrew Gelman suggests there are ways the GOP could "win it all back"), but right now they look impressive, especially given the very uneven ways the crisis is affecting these groups.
In an intriguing post, Stirling Newberry suggests that Reaganism set in motion basic economic and geographic forces that have led to a "self-inflicted recession" and shaped the demise of the conservative movement.
[T]he epicenters of that "Reagan Democrat" revolt are now the areas that are hardest hit by the present depression: California, the Upper Midwest, and the Sunbelt South. This is not an accident ...
The only places that are doing well in the Republican universe are those strongly associated with mining, plus Republican metro centers such as Phoenix and Salt Lake City, which are the recipients of the labor draining from the rest of the Republican heartland. Resource extraction is the only bright spot in the Republican world ...
The Bush boom produced a moment where it seemed like the producers of Residential Real Estate, the back bone of the Republican donating and agitating base, were finally at their pinnacle. Truck Dealers, Home Builders, Real Estate Agents, and the Small Business class that catered to the people who lived in the "boomburgs" saw rapid increases in employment, wages, and social power. They had the money and the confidence to try to press their social agenda on the rest of the country. It was, of course, doomed to failure; since none of these people made anything that could be exported; or if they did, it came at the costs of increased imports that counter-balanced them.
Where does democracy come from? What are the social, demographic, and economic factors that shape the onset of democracy in a country and its subsequent stability and subsequent development?
This is a question that has vexed social scientists for decades. A new study puts the question to perhaps its most systematic test yet.
Researchers from ETH Switzerland and Georgetown University used a statistical procedure called "extreme bounds analysis" to test the salience of 59 factors identified in more than three million previous statistical regressions (h/t: Charlotta Mellander). The study finds a "humbling result": Out of all those studies, all those variables, and all those millions of statistical analyses, just five factors predict the emergence of democracy, while four predict its survival.
Most surprising of all is the role played by economic growth, measured as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The study finds that GDP per capita is negatively associated with the transition to democracy. Contrary to "modernization theory", the study finds that richer countries are not more likely to become democracies. Richer countries are more likely to remain democracies once they become one.
The decline in Republican Party affiliation among Americans in recent years is well documented, but a Gallup analysis now shows that this movement away from the GOP has occurred among nearly every major demographic subgroup.
Richard Florida
