As a lifelong Democrat, I’ll probably continue to be for a while despite the party’s considerable problems. It’s just that, compared to the opposition—MAGA Republicans—Democrats are far superior. At the very least Dems haven’t promoted radical religious maniacs to positions of power within their party, and they’re not vicious homophobes.
At much as I dislike White, Christian-nationalist Republicans, I do listen to what they say. You can always learn something from hearing out your enemies. As the saying goes, even a broken clock is correct twice a day. So when I came across a broadcast over the weekend with a fellow named Steve Hilton, I stayed tuned. He was saying a lot of things I agree with.
Hilton, in case you don’t know him, is a Republican who looks likely to run for Governor of California. He’s rightwing and, some would say, a demagogue, a frequent guest on Fox “News” (I always put it in quotes) and half-British, which explains his delightful accent. Here are some of his observations on unions (which, as you probably know, I’m not a fan of in Oakland).
Like me, Hilton recognizes that there are two basic types of unions: those that represent workers in private industry (such as the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers) and those that represent employees of government. The latter, as I noted in my blog of April 25, since the 1950s have grown enormously in wealth and power, and they overwhelmingly support and donate money to left-leaning politicians. Here in Oakland, the most important, in terms of their financial clout, are SEIU and IFPTE. Their candidates, such as Barbara Lee, Carroll Fife, Sheng Thao and Nikki Bas, almost always win.
It’s the government unions that Hilton, like me, has a problem with.
As he points out, “Unions fund the same politicians with whom they later have to negotiate. This is insane.” It was the government unions that got Barbara Lee elected, and now Lee is going to have to sit with them and renegotiate their contracts. Everyone knows that Oakland employees and their generous salaries and benefits are a major cause of our massive budget deficit; those salaries, or at least their rate of increase, are going to have to come down if Oakland is to have a fighting chance of financial solvency. But how is Lee supposed to get tough with the unions if she proposes salary and benefit reductions? The unions will respond with, “Madame Mayor, we’re the ones that got you elected. If you step out of line, we’ll take you out.” And they can do it, with their unelected power. They also own the City Council, which Lee badly needs to accomplish her agenda. If the unions threaten the City Council, a shudder of fear will sweep through City Hall, and Lee—a weak mayor by the City Charter--will find herself isolated, her agenda in tatters, her poll numbers (never high to begin with) plunging. So we can expect the unions to remain in charge of city policy—along with the lawyers. Unions and lawyers: As Hilton puts it, “not a good combination.”
If you take a look at the kinds of people who worm their way on to the City Council, they’re essentially soulless bureaucrats (Dan Kalb was a perfect example), whose only skill is navigating the political machine in Oakland. They don’t work to actually help Oaklanders, but to advance their equity goals, which have nothing to do with financial stability or public safety. This is why I say our politicians are driven by ideology. They see literally everything through the distorting lens of race. Until and unless Oakland politics can move beyond narrow, rigid racist ideology to common sense solutions to our problems (like hiring more cops), we’ll never get out of the ditch the progressives have run us into.
I’m not saying I’ll vote for Steve Hilton if he runs for Governor. His Republican party simply has too many items in the debit column. But he’s right about these government employee unions. It’s the blind leading the blind. We don’t need ideological fanatics in City Hall, we need thoughtful, intellectual leaders who are not blinded by slanted racist beliefs that favor one group over others.
Steve Heimoff