Maybe because it's accepted as an inevitable, unchangeable part of local political culture, the influence of special interests on government is perhaps nowhere more nakedly apparent than in Philadelphia. What occurs behind the scenes and through lobbying channels in Washington is shamelessly paraded in Dilworth Plaza every time a piece of legislation designed to promote the common good runs up against the interests of a connected few. The amount of money in question may be a pittance compared to what is bandied about on the state and federal level, but in an already cash-strapped city, bad fiscal decisions hurt more.
Take the recent fight over Mayor Nutter's proposed soda tax. Designed to raise money to fill a $35 million budget hole for city schools, it was clearly progressive: tax an unhealthy, non-essential item for the sake of the city's children, and maybe strike a blow against obesity at the same time. Who could be against it? The Teamsters, and a coalition of beverage industry groups (bottlers. etc.), that's who. With claims of jobs lost and a black market for soda as a result of residents having to pay 2 cents more per ounce of sugar water, the diabetes peddlers won the day. Instead, Council voted to increase already onerous property taxes.
The Jobs Question
Taxing soda has become an issue in other parts of the country as well. It's attacked as a "jobs killer." Whatever jobs are lost from adding pennies to the price of Pepsi (my guess would be something astride zero) is NOTHING compared to the jobs that have been bartered away by lawmakers looking to benefit executives and investors by opening up trade markets with countries that maintain protectionist policies (like China) or have low consumer spending (like Mexico). This is on my mind because of an excellent piece in the Inquirer recently about the trade deficit, "Why Jobs Keep Vanishing." The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) alone turned a nearly $2 billion trade surplus with Mexico in 1993 into a massive $631 billion deficit by 2010. An estimated 1.5 million American jobs have been lost to NAFTA, while 791,000 jobs have been created—a net loss of 700,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In 1993, Sens. Orrin Hatch and Phil Gramm said Americans would look back on the trade agreement as a great wellspring of prosperity and "have a hard time understanding what was controversial" about it.
I lived in North Carolina at the time and still remember Sen. Jessie Helms' proclamations in favor of NAFTA. Has any single American politician ever supported something worse for their own state? Textiles were once one of North Carolina's most important industries. There were 738,000 U.S. textile jobs in 1989. There are now 128,000. I'd like to know how many of those laid-off workers now fold shirts at Wal-Mart.
If I were a Teamster, I'd be more concerned about American highways being opened up to Mexican truckers (a never-implemented part of NAFTA that Obama plans to greenlight) than I am about Philadelphia soda. Does this mean I'm now siding with a special interest group? In the end, every single thing government does, or doesn't do, benefits some constituency. If you're a Republican, 99 percent of the time that special interest group is the very rich. (My litmus test for any piece of legislation is, "Does It Benefit the Koch Brothers?" If yes, the GOP will support it.) Whether in Philadelphia's City Hall or the halls of Congress, I'd like us to make more decisions that benefit the less powerful — students, taxpaying city residents, those who work manufacturing jobs, teachers and firefighters, the unemployed, the uninsured. Does that make me a radical?
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