Box Thinking

Box Thinking

One of the truly sad phenomena in our current society is the prevalence of box thinking.  We hear the cliche, “Think outside the box” so often that it has lost its meaning.  Maybe it’s because of the commercial, “Think outside the bun” that the term “box” has taken on a really constricted meaning.

In our political thinking we tend to think of only one thing at a time.  Thus, people in California have forgotten that the reason California is in such a fiscal mess is that when Gray Davis was Governor, the Republican right wing realized that he was vulnerable if they could come up with a crisis.  So they did.  The energy companies manipulated the market, causing energy prices to go through the roof.  Since Davis wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier he waited way too long to act, and as a result was recalled by the right wing, and we got Arnold Schwartzenegger who promptly drove the economy of California into the abyss.  But people have forgotten this because the current box we’re thinking in doesn’t contain the wisdom we should have learned and of equal importance, remembered.

With that being said, there are some really frustrating politics going on in our local community and state.  Some ten to eleven years ago the largest city in our county could not come to an agreement with the police and fire unions over contract negotiations.  After three years of no contract, the unions went to the people with a ballot proposal that if there were an impasse, the negotiations would go to binding arbitration. The people passed this measure.  Several years ago, the city once again did not negotiate in good faith, there was an impasse and the negotiations went to binding arbitration.  The arbitrator found that the police and fire personnel were drastically underpaid, with the dispatch personnel being the worst.  The pay for these city employees was brought up to parity, which in this financial crunch really put the city in a financial bind, which they had brought on themselves by not negotiating in good faith.  The unions are willing to sit down with the city and come to an agreement not to request further pay increases, and other concessions to assist the city in its crisis, but the city has voted to put binding arbitration back to a vote of the people anyway in lieu of negotiations.  It is the city Chamber of Commerce that is firmly behind this effort to take away a right of the unions, given to them by the very people who voted for binding arbitration in the first place.  There is much pounding of the political drums about the unions bankrupting the city, etc., etc., and the people have the right to vote.

On the other hand, Governor Jerry Brown wants to have a ballot measure this year giving the people of the state the right to vote on whether to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy.  So far, the state legislature has not allowed this to happen.  Now whether Brown can have a ballot measure without the legislature is still, as far as I know, up in the air.  Of course, the very people who in this city are demanding that the people have the right to vote on taking away a union right, are against the people of the state voting to raise taxes, which, of course, would provide enough revenue to repay the cities and counties the funding the state under Arnie had taken away from them to balance its budget.  And which would end the argument in the city over binding arbitration.  Talk about idiocy, this one should be relabeled “profoundly developmentally disabled”.

A lot of the people have forgotten that this whole mess started with the Republicans and the energy companies working together to get rid of Gray Davis.  Who although not a fireball of a governor, at least did not run the state economy into the tank. 

If anyone out there wants to research this, the city is San Luis Obispo, CA.