The Pope's Visit and Nutter's Downtown Dictatorship

Pope Francis's visit is still more than a month away, but it's been dominating the news in Philadelphia for several weeks.  Summer is effectively the season for violent crime, and there have been a rash of recent scandals involving politicians and police, so papal primacy in the headlines has hardly been preordained.

More private conversations also seem to be turning to the upcoming papal visit, which will follow the World Meeting of Families to be held in Philadelphia.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that many people take a decidedly negative view of what lies ahead.  If you knew only that "the Pope" was coming to Philadelphia, and heard some of this talk, you'd think that "the Pope" was either the leader of an invading army or a nickname for the Ebola virus.

But the source of most of the negativity seems to have little to do with the Holy Father himself.  Instead, Mayor Michael Nutter and his administration are to blame.  They've decided to turn Center City and its surroundings into a mini-dictatorship while the Pope is in town.

Nutter's administration has prepared a "daily progression of street closures" barring access by vehicle to Center City and its surroundings.  At a news conference on August 13, the mayor marveled at "just how complicated vehicle traffic will be," as though his decision to block access to Center City was a major achievement.  

Having judged it unsafe for people to drive into town, the mayor and his advisers have also decided that arriving by public transit is too risky to allow more than a few people to use.  Thus, they contrived to make it impossible for more than a small percentage of the people expected in Philadelphia for the Pope's visit to ride in on SEPTA and other public transit systems.  SEPTA and other agencies are running on unprecedented limited schedules, bypassing all but a few stops, and charging especially high fares for tickets that must be purchased in advance through a lottery.  When parking lots at the few stops that will be serviced fill up, some lottery winners may find themselves to be losers after all.

Without cars or trains, what are people supposed to do?  A Mayor's Office press release of August 10 tells them simply to "be prepared to walk to your destination... up to a couple of miles."  If they can't do that, presumably they can't come downtown.  Too bad for the injured, the aged, and the disabled-- not to mention the people who are physically able to go through this unnecessary hassle.

To add to the welcoming spirit, Nutter has also ordered the closure of the public streets throughout an area encompassing Center City and areas bordering it to cars and pedestrians who do not submit to searches.  This will be accomplished with massive police overtime, the rental or purchase of screening equipment, and the construction of temporary walls.  Visitors to our city will get a taste of pre-1989 East Berlin.  How retro!

Another Communist Bloc throwback will be empty shelves and shops with nothing to sell.  The cordoned-off area where masses of visitors are expected will be largely unable to receive deliveries while Center City is under Nutter's lockdown.  Assuming employees of shops and restaurants manage to make it to work through the mayor's walls, they will have nothing more to sell once the crowds exhaust their supplies.  Nutter hasn't yet explained what crowds of hungry and thirsty people should do if this happens.  Based on his earlier comments, he'd probably tell them to keep walking until they found sustenance.

I wish I were the well-compensated consultant who came up with the name "Traffic Box" for the area barred to vehicles, and "Secure Perimeter" for the area where police will arrest anyone walking down the street who's unwilling to submit to searches.  But if I were the well-compensated consultant, I would likely have been fired for questioning Mayor Nutter's decision to declare war on all residents and visitors.  I would have pointed to other cities around the world, in both rich and poor countries, that have hosted the Pope.  Do those places go to the extremes Nutter is contemplating?   Certainly not.  Even many cities in developing countries are better managed than Philadelphia is.  Their leaders have taken a more reasonable approach to ensuring security than Nutter, and haven't wasted resources and caused disruption to nearly the extent that his plans entail.

The effect that Nutter's mini-dictatorship will have on turnout is becoming clear in the results of the ticket lotteries being held by the public transit authorities.  The lotteries were supposed to offer a limited number of tickets so that SEPTA and the other authorities wouldn't have to turn people away.  But so many people feel deterred by Nutter's unreasonable preparations that there are many more places available in the lottery than people who want them.  The hassle and dangers being created by City officials are simply too great.

The Mayor's Office has repeatedly made piecemeal additions to its elaborate security preparations, some maps of which are still labeled "draft."  This suggests that Nutter and his advisers are basing their preparations not on any objective measure of need, but on changing political assessments of what they can get away with.  Why would they want to do this?

I think the administration wants to set a precedent that will be used repeatedly in the future.  All the talk about how extraordinary the Pope's visit is will be forgotten then, and city residents will be asked to endure similar restrictions on their freedom and their commerce every time a major convention is in town.  

The "Traffic Box" and "Secure Perimeter" will become part of a package that the City tries to sell to organizations to try to attract them to hold events here.  Philadelphia has not attracted as many conventions or major events as it should.  Rather than fix problems with the City that have kept conventions away, such as inadequate and overly expensive parking, the high cost of holding conventions here, or the widely held perception that Philadelphia is a dirty and dangerous place, City officials intend to add this new feature to the deal they offer to convention organizers.  The Pope's visit is the first demonstration of the mini-dictatorship as a feature of events in Philadelphia; the Democratic convention next year will be another.

The idea is to show that Philadelphia can function like Davos or Bilderberg.  Those places simply order the closure of large public spaces so that rich people who've paid for the privilege can use them exclusively, without having to deal with any undesirable people they don't wish to see in their midst.

City officials haven't consulted the public about this, but in all likelihood, they don't feel they have to.  They view voters here as docile and ignorant, and city residents as mere objects to be moved out of the way to accomplish their goals, however foolish and unattainable they are.  Smell Center City in the summer, look at the trash in the streets, or get your car broken into if you manage to park it, and you'll understand why no one will mistake Philly for Davos.

It's a shame that the visit of the Pope is being exploited by Nutter and City officials in furtherance of their scheme.  If I were the Pope's advisers, I'd consider telling him to cancel the visit.  The City's misguided preparations will keep so many people away that it will appear as though people don't want to see the Pope, or don't care enough to turn out.  Why risk that embarrassment?

The 174th District Special Election: Vote for Your Favorite Loser

Today is an exciting day for Northeast Philadelphia's political cliques.  Sometime after 9 PM tonight, they'll find out whether Ed Neilson or Tim Dailey won the 174th District seat in the Pennsylvania House, and the right to distribute the jobs and walking-around money that go with it.

But for 174th District voters, today isn't exciting at all.  They must choose, literally, between two losers.

Neilson, a former member of City Council, lost in the Democratic primary in May.  After this defeat, the lame-duck councilman resigned to run for the 174th District seat vacated in May by John Sabatina, who had just won a special election to fill the State Senate seat vacated in January by now-Lieutenant Governor Mike Stack.  Dailey lost to Sabatina in that election.

Voters in the 174th District ought to take note of the contempt the parties have shown for them in nominating Neilson and Dailey.  Rather than choose fresh candidates, the parties both ran warmed-over losers.  In the Neilson-Dailey race, voters are being asked to choose between two men both of whom they may already have rejected within the last six months.  One reject or the other will inevitably be selected.

For anyone who's as serious about democracy as Americans ought to be, that is cause for concern.  Did the parties assume that people in the 174th District are too stupid to notice that their choice is between two candidates only recently rejected by voters?  Did they figure that turnout for a special election date in the middle of the summer would be so low that it didn't matter what most voters might think of the candidates?

I think that the parties regard special elections in Philadelphia as chances to impose bad candidates on unwilling voters.  A few ward leaders essentially handpick candidates from among very narrow groups of party hacks; the narrow time frame involved in holding special elections denies voters in each party the chance to influence their party's choice of candidate through a primary.  Then, in the general election, voters choose between two undesirable toadies of the ward leaders.  In the case of the 174th District, both toadies also happen to be losers of elections this year.

Right now, two small groups of hangers-on of the two candidates are gearing up for a big day of making phone calls and driving aged, disabled, and unmotivated supporters of their party to the polls.  One group will get easy jobs on taxpayers' dime; the other will be disappointed.  I don't disparage anyone who wants to better their lot in life by taking up a new occupation.  But the process by which these political lackeys are getting their opportunity-- a process in which one of two losers will be forced on voters on short notice-- is a total failure.

No wonder voters don't bother to show up.  The recent comments of Mayor Michael Nutter and leaders of the Urban League and Committee of Seventy about the low turnout in recent elections in Philadelphia did not seem to take account of the uninspiring choices facing those who do vote.  In the 174th District, voters who didn't like Neilson or Dailey in elections just a few months ago were simply ignored by party leaders, so it's hard to blame the voters for ignoring this race.

Fattah's Indictment: Obama's Quid for Nutter's Quo?

Chaka Fattah's indictment made national news.  If people in other parts of the country needed a reminder that Philadelphia's politics are the kind in which only the crooked rise, they got it.  If people here needed a reminder that repeatedly reelecting incumbents who face no opposition results in corruption, they got that, too.

The local and national news both focused on the substance of the allegations against Fattah, which center on the use of public money laundered through a nonprofit organization to pay private debts, and taking bribes. Local political custom holds that death and Federal courts are the only ways an incumbent can be made to leave office involuntarily. As Fattah must realize, he could be forced out.  

Other politicians in Philly may also be crapping their pants right now, knowing that they and their staffs behave just as Fattah and his staff are alleged to have done.  But do they really have anything to worry about?

I doubt it.  The funny thing about Fattah's indictment is the timing.  I think it's as important a story as what Fattah is alleged to have done

Much of Fattah's alleged wrongdoing appears to have taken place between 2007 and 2011.  It's been awhile since then.  Even assuming that it took some time for Fattah's alleged transgressions to be discovered and investigated, four years or more seems like a very long time to wait for an indictment.  A potentially career-ending public corruption case against an official as highly placed as a Congressman seems like it might have been a higher priority for the Justice Department.

I suspect that the reason for the wait has to do with an arrangement made a long time ago between President Barack Obama and Mayor Michael Nutter.  Twice, Nutter delivered big votes in Philly to Obama, in effect winning Pennsylvania twice for the President.  What did he get in return?  At one time, it was thought Nutter might join Obama's Cabinet, but that never happened.  Philadelphia did prevail in its bid to host the 2016 Democratic Convention, but that was a bone thrown to the City's Democratic Party collectively, not to Nutter personally.

Instead, I suspect Nutter got Obama's commitment some time ago to help him personally this year, in 2015.  With Nutter's second term ending, he would be looking for a job worthy of the dignity of an ex-mayor.  He or his handlers have been floating trial balloons in the media about his potential suitability for a seat in Congress since last year.

What was needed, though, was an open seat.  That's where Obama could help Nutter.  With a telephone and a Justice Department at his disposal, a President can create open seats in Philadelphia with relative ease.  Few politicians here would likely be found clean on close inspection.  But since Fattah's seat is the one Nutter is after, it was Fattah who found himself charged with crimes.  The Justice Department won't get its hands any dirtier than it has to in order to see Nutter's path cleared.

If Fattah is guilty, he should go to jail, although I wouldn't bank on that.  But if my theory about an Obama-Nutter deal is correct, it's doubtful that anything better can be expected of a future Congressman Nutter.  What Philly's politics needs to become cleaner is more competition, not less.  But if Nutter arranged to have Fattah displaced at a moment when he was overwhelmingly better prepared than anyone else to grab Fattah's seat by exerting influence on Democratic ward leaders, the result won't be a contest.  Instead, we'll see the coronation of a new job-for-life incumbent who needn't answer to anyone other than a Federal court or the Grim Reaper.