The Harrisburg Case

The city’s problems started with a massive, broken incinerator. The adminstration hoped to turn earn over a billion dollars in revenue by serving as a centralized burning location for all of Pennsylvania’s garbage. Elected officials assured voters that this project could morph a municipal expense – garbage disposal – into a profitable product – electricity. But problems ensued from the start. The incinerator broke down regularly, and was later closed by the US Environmental Protection Agency for breaches of regulation. Instead of simply accepting these losses, Mayor Stephen Reed decided to double down. In 2003, he ordered a retrofit of the entire facility. Poor management and a shocking lack of contractual oversight meant that the project continued to bleed cash.

The result was that by 2011, Harrisburg, a city of less than 50,000, had amassed a public debt in excess of $300 million, giving it the largest debt-per-capita ratio of any U.S. city. Voters tossed out Mayor Reed, and the new city government drafted a plan for municipal default. The state government of Pennsylvania, however, had a slightly different idea.

Enter David Unkovic, a mild-mannered, bowtie-wearing attorney. Unkovic, a municipal bond expert, had never wanted power. However, when he was appointed by Governor Tom Corbett to recommend and implement a plan for debt reduction in Harrisburg; he hoped to use his knowledge of public finance for the good of his home state’s capital.

Team of Rivals?

Unkovic presented a 200-page plan to the community, calling on Harrisburg to increase taxes, cut union benefits, and ask creditors to take a loss. Knowing that austerity could be unpopular, Unkovic stressed the need for cooperation. He announced from his first day in office that Harrisburg’s fiscal problem could only be solved if each of the groups of players cooperated fully and shared in the sacrifice.

Instead of unity, however, Unkovic’s plan was met with division and general aversion towards cuts. Everyone from city councilmen to bondholders denounced the plan; unions refused to accept the cuts demanded of them. Meanwhile, the Harrisburg mayor and controller, rather than cooperating to reduce the debt, spent much of their time and effort suing each other. One group of citizens, outraged that a technocrat had been appointed to run an American city, filed a lawsuit claiming that Unkovic’s appointment was unconstitutional.

Unkovic’s naive hope that the residents of Harrisburg could cooperate and share losses slowly gave way to cynicism. At a final press conference, he left his diplomatic attitude behind, calling for a comprehensive investigation of the incinerator project and laying blame on a lobbyist, a state senator, and the former mayor. Two days later, on March 30, Unkovic took a single piece of stationary and scrawled out this letter:

I have done my best to use my powers as receiver to bring fiscal stability to the city of Harrisburg. However, I find myself in an untenable position in the political and ethical crosswinds and am no longer in a position to effectuate a solution.

Unkovic’s resignation was completely unexpected. No one in the media has heard of his whereabouts for the past two weeks. Unkovic’s position remains vacant.

Unkovic was a first-class professional; his appointment should have brought an opportunity to reshape Harrisburg for the better. But the refusal of all important stakeholder groups to cooperate drove him to the brink of madness.

America’s Debt

In 2010, Meredith Whitney, a Wall Street analyst who famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis, turned her gaze to municipal finance. Citing the trillion-dollar gap between what the state and local governments owe retired workers and the money they have to pay them, Whitney said that the next few years could witness “fifty to a hundred” defaults of US cities. Harrisburg is a reminder of that fear, and the reality that our governments are as addicted to debt as we are.

David Unkovic’s plan failed because of key stakeholders’ rejection of compromise, even in the face of an uncontrolled debt spiral. This political paralysis is evident at all levels of government in the United States. The broader failure of the Congressional “supercommittee” to come to an agreement on deficit reduction is an alarmingly similar national parallel.

This publication has argued before that technocracy, and the promise of experts removed from political battles, has gained appeal in the face of complex global economic issues. Harrisburg’s story makes clear, however, that it will take much more than technical prowess for America to face the problem of growing national debt. It will require cooperation at all levels of American society, and deep commitment on the part of all stakeholder groups. That’s something that no single expert can ever give us.

Now, standing at the end of the thirty-year-old Apollo project that took men to outer space and then to the Moon, there is a grim feeling among us, especially those who shared the excitement of the moment when Neil Armstrong’s foot touched the extraterrestrial dust on the cover of the Moon. As the Apollo project takes its place on the dusty covers of history, and Atlantis, the last space shuttle, completes its mission, it is quite clear to many that humankind’s dreams of exploring the secrets of the outer space is quietly dying with the project as well.

What will happen to the dreams of the previous generation, to the dream of mankind walking among the stars? The next target, the next dream has been to successfully send a person to Mars and bring him safely back to Earth. However, as a society, we face many critical problems that prevent us from achieving this dream.

John F. Kennedy during his famous speech in Congress.

First of all, the public faces diminishing marginal returns from space exploration. Placing satellites into orbit in inner space has distinct advantages compared to sending probes to outer space, especially manned ships. The most obvious advantage is the economic one: it much cheaper to send a rocket into the Earth’s own orbit than to send one into the orbit of another planet. It is also true that we obtain many societal advantages from our satellites and probes in Earth’s orbit; these devices have revolutionized weather forecast, telecommunications, geology, and agriculture. Other than the overhyped “colonization of outer planets to save our species” argument, we do not get the same level of tangible benefit from the probes we send to Mars or the rest of the Solar System.

Second, it is unfortunate yet accurate to state that society in the 21^st century does not share the same passion for outer space exploration that its counterpart in John F. Kennedy’s time did. A major component of space exploration is the sheer human curiosity and imagination that drive humanity’s passion to always move forward. Revenues gained from the public are used to finance these exploration projects, and without the same amount of dedication and determination from society, it is quite difficult to convince the public to pay billions of dollars for a mission whose social and economic returns are unclear.

Another major obstacle is the technological barrier that aeronautical engineers have to overcome. Sending probes without humans into space is technologically complicated enough. Adding the human variable complicates the process beyond imagination. We can send humans to Mars with the current technology we have, but we do not possess enough technology to supply the force needed to bring them back from the surface of Mars.

All of these arguments leave us with an upsetting question: has the Space Age come to an end?

The historic moment: Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the surface of the Moon, with the flag of the U.S.A.

The leaders of the last space race from the Cold War, the United States and Russia, still have the most developed space technology in the world by far, but both seem to have prioritized social engineering over rocket engineering. Although the Russian agencies are continuing their space missions to some extent, the most likely future leaders in space exploration are the Chinese and Indian governments. The Chinese government has made considerable progress in space exploration, including sending a man into orbit in 2003, becoming the third country to do so. Yet the Chinese still have no rigid government agenda like the one John F. Kennedy had in 1961 . Even if they manage to send a man to the moon in the next decade or so, they are still more than half a century behind the original space race.

Many argue that private companies can prosper in the space race in lieu of public investment. Considering the economic and technological circumstances of outer space exploration beyond the Moon, however, this is a highly unlikely option. Sending a space tourist to the International Space Station costs around $30 million, while the cost of the Apollo program was nearly $20 billion (which is significantly more in today’s dollars). Yet, considering the fact that only a handful of people can afford space tourism beyond the limits of Earth’s atmosphere, it is quite unrealistic at this point to imagine that private enterprises can pick up from where NASA left off.

As men decide to walk only on Earth, it seems as if the dreams of an entire generation – to walk among the stars, to go where no man has gone before – are slowly falling into the ancient pillars of history.

Photo Credit 1: NASA History Office

Photo Credit 2: Daily Mail

Recruiting season

Recruiting can be a polarizing topic here. For many students, it is a busy, stressful time: info sessions are attended, hands are shaken, free food is accepted, and bonds that will last at least several minutes and at most a few weeks are forged. (This, I’m told, is networking, and there’s a chance that recruitees’ future happiness and success depend on it.) Other students spend recruiting season lamenting the fact that so many of their peers take jobs in finance and consulting, careers that ultimately, these students argue, offer high salaries but contribute little to society.

But there is yet another group of students who are often forgotten in the fray. You probably have not heard much from us, but that is only because we’re not saying anything. We are united only by our apathy, and although most of us have no interest in spending two or—god forbid—more years of our lives working in finance or consulting, we take no issue with the students who do pursue those careers. Let me explain why I count myself in this group.

We like to celebrate diversity at Harvard, and in many ways, this campus has become a much more diverse place over the decades. Still, for most undergraduates, getting into Harvard meant following the same path. We took the most advanced classes in high school, we excelled in them, we wrote good essays, we tested well, and we each had a handful of impressive extracurricular achievements to boot. There are exceptions to any rule, but for the vast majority of us, this was the path that took us to Harvard. It is an uphill, but well-marked, path, and for most—but certainly not all—of us, the question was not whether we would attend college, but where.

Senior year of college is the first time when most of us face truly uncertain futures. Of course, I’ve always known this day would come, but I had imagined it would be different. No doubt these past four years have been a formative time for me, but I had always thought they’d be more formative. I imagined that I would leave college knowing exactly what I wanted in life and exactly what I would need to do to get it. But I’m increasingly aware that the path to fulfillment—whatever the hell that is—is not a leisurely walk up a gentle slope. I look down the road, and I realize that on this path there is scrambling and rock climbing, wrong turns and backtracking. It is easy to get lost, and the farther I hike, I fear, the farther I might feel from my destination. (One day when I’m old and wise, I’m sure I will understand that the hike itself was my destination.) This is an exciting time of life, but it is also—and no one had properly warned me of this—incredibly scary. The world is a big, intimidating place, and it is hard not to feel a little small and confused and just overwhelmed by it all.

So what does any of this have to do with recruiting? We are often reminded that a Harvard education is a privilege, and with this privilege comes a responsibility to give back to our society. I believe this to be true, and I think that, ultimately, giving back will be an essential part of living a fulfilling life. But we seniors also face the stark reality of needing to find the trailhead at a time in our lives when, quite frankly, we are all pretty clueless about the world, in general, and what we want from it, in particular. If one of us thinks that his or her path to a fulfilling life might begin on Wall Street, at a consulting firm, in the Teach for America corps, at the White House, in Hollywood, or in a tent in Harvard Yard, who are any of us to say otherwise? At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to find our ways and make a difference in this crazy, scary world, and we should be supportive of our classmates’ endeavors as we begin our journeys beyond the gates.

Among other things, we may need to borrow money from our investment-banking friends some day. Let’s hope they’re well-networked.

Jeremy Patashnik ’12 is the Humor Editor and the U.S. Editor Emeritus.

Photo Credit: Tim Sackton, Flickr

Can universities prepare graduates to lead?

In Harvard College’s 2011 Baccalaureate address, University President Drew Faust declared that the recession and slow economic recovery actually meant that the current generation of graduates was, “in a strange sense, liberated.” Faust urged students to embrace uncertainty and take career risks to pursue passions that they might otherwise abandon. Yet despite their apparent freedom, many graduates find it increasingly difficult to justify taking public sector jobs beyond a few years. Indeed, though Teach For America and other service organizations enjoy great interest among graduates, most students seek well-paying private sector jobs for the long term. Likewise, the percentage of graduates of elite institutions entering finance, though slightly dampened by the recession, has remained high.

From expanding financial aid to subsidizing internships and community service work, universities and colleges have attempted to promote diverse career paths. However, the responsibility of educating the next generation of America’s public servants cannot fall solely on educators alone. Ultimately, government career- building initiatives are necessary to provide youth with critical real-world support and direction.

The Role of Elite Education

Faust told the HPR that Harvard’s sustaining legacy has been its mission to “create people who seek knowledge their whole life and use that ability, and that commitment to knowledge, to make a difference in the world.” However, what constitutes that difference? Though many of her students enter into finance and consulting, Faust insists that these fields make, “important contributions in enhancing economic growth for the world” and are “personally satisfying because of the kind of questions it raises and talents it calls on.”

Anthony Marx, former president of Amherst College and current president of the New York Public Library, offers a different perspective. He insists that elite higher education has a “responsibility…to hold up public service, and examples of public service, as life paths that we value and need as a society.” Universities and colleges should be concerned with the career paths of their graduates, particularly those in the public realm. According to Marx, “To the degree that the graduates of top universities are not going into public service, into teaching, and into all kind of arenas that require talent for us to have the kind of society that we want that is something we should worry about.”

Still, Marx and other education experts conclude the best way to shape students’ post-graduation plans to present them with “the opportunity to explore alternatives and… leave it to them to decide what they want to do with their lives,” as Marx puts it. These experts agree that the liberal arts curriculum should not explicitly tell students what fields they should enter upon graduation, but rather provide students with a wide array of choices. These higher education institutions can go even further, alleviating key obstacles that students face in entering the public sector.

Reducing the Burden of Student Debt

Education policymakers should first seek to remove the constraint finances play when students consider career options. For example, when expanding Amherst’s financial aid to ensure that students did not need loans, Marx increased the number of low-income students matriculating to his college. However, while the no- loan policy, similarly adopted at other universities and colleges over the past decade, was aimed primarily at making college more accessible, its secondary effect was to make opportunities for public sector careers after graduation more obtainable.

Expecting undergraduates to shoulder the debt burden precluded many from pursuing low salary public careers, including teaching and social work. Marx believes this effectively meant “coming to college was reducing options rather than opening options for how you want to spend your life.” Likewise, Julie Morgan of the Center for American Progress told the HPR that reducing college debt during the economic slump is more important than ever in keeping doors open for students struggling to “tell what kind of job will be waiting on the other end.”

Higher education institutions also have a responsibility to subsidize summer internship opportunities for low- income students. Faust insists that such formative experiences in public service can be quite inspiring and serve as practical training, observing, “We try to give students the support to undertake public service while they’re undergraduates, because we find that students try it out and often love it and will continue it as a career.”

The Government’s Role

Despite colleges’ and universities’ efforts, major gaps still exist. A Brookings Institute study found that Millenials, that generation born after 1985, were far more interested in public service than their immediately preceding antecedents. Yet, while interest abounds, government agencies from the Pentagon to USAID have lamented impending retirements and subsequent expected labor shortages. According to Peter W. Singer, an author of the Brookings study, a disconnect exists. “We have a public sector that still hasn’t figured out how to recruit the Google generation…and is instead more attune to the Mad Men Generation.” While opportunities exist for public sector work, many students need assistance to make the transition possible.

The Higher Education Act, passed in 2008, achieved some progress in recruiting students for fields with high demand, including nursing and teaching, by providing student debt relief. Similarly, the Brookings’ study found that 71 percent of the Millennials studied were interested in a scholarship program entailing five years of government service upon graduation, paralleling the military academies. Morgan believes that along with additional support provided by the Obama Administration, “Programs like [the Higher Education Act] can really help guide individuals back to [the careers] that might have been their original intention before taking on the debt.” Indeed, strengthening institutional support for students hoping to enter public service would be an exceptional step towards resolving this dilemma.

Changing the Discourse

Mark Bray, a representative with the Occupy Wall Street press team, suggests that connections can be made with the movement’s frustrations. He maintains, “There is the sense [amongst Occupy protesters] that the boards of trustees and presidents of universities prioritize certain types of programs…related to corporate interests and donations,” and expend less effort supporting social work. Bray believes the Occupy movement understands that students have difficulties paying off high student debt and “justifiably search for the most high income jobs possible,” whether or not these jobs “best promote the well-being of society.”

Regardless of Occupy’s other goals, the prospect of students entering the public sector has not garnered such attention since the Kennedy era. Supporting youth in entering these careers is a challenge that will entail support from both institutions of higher learning and the government. The sooner policymaker’s act, the more society will benefit.

ImeIme Umana ’14 is a Contributing Writer. Beatrice Walton ’14 is the World Blog Editor.

Photo Credit: Harvard University Public Affairs and Communication

Jeffrey Sachs’

Sachs, an economist at Columbia University and president of the school’s Earth Institute, is one of many authors who have lately focused on forming an account of America’s problems. His diagnosis largely concerns what he sees as the political transformations aligning American governance with the interests of the elite over the masses. Yet all this is but a symptom of a larger national malaise, one Sachs hopes to address by shifting the public interest from the pursuit of wealth to that of happiness.

In covering controversial issues of such a sweeping character, Sachs occasionally comes off as polemical, and at times loses track of the firm economic basis for his prescriptions. In large, however, The Price of Civilization stands out as an astute overview of America’s contemporary ills—economic, political, and even cultural. Moreover, Sachs uniquely works to broaden the scope of his macroeconomic inquiry, changing the target of his policy proposals from material affluence to a more holistic understanding of public wellbeing.

Patient History

Sachs views his work as “clinical economics,” focused on understanding all the particularities of his patient in order to prescribe an effective cure. The book’s first part documents the deleterious symptoms afflicting America, exhibiting the issues—decreasing infrastructure spending, declines in human capital, abysmal PISA test scores—in literally graphic detail. Sachs does not, however, overuse his reams of data. Instead, he succinctly presents the relevant and alarming evidence with all the panache of a scatter plot, before moving on to his more substantive work of the book.

As a clinician and commentator, Sachs rightly concerns much of his investigation with the patient’s history: in this case, America between the presidencies of Carter and Obama. During this period, the author argues, popular governance gave way to plutocracy. The country ceased to be a “mixed economy,” Sachs believes. In this narration, it was initially Carter who “began the processes of deregulation,” supplying momentum for the looming “Reagan Revolution” of tax cuts for top earners, decreased spending on civilian programs, deregulation (especially in finance), and outsourcing of core government services. “All four of these major policy changes took hold in the 1980s,” Sachs writes, “and are still in place today.”

Undue Infection

The lasting triumph of the Reagan Revolution is due in no small part to Reagan’s successors, Sachs argues, who have been subsumed into what the author derides as a “corporatocracy.” Moneyed interests stifle more populist and progressive public policy in Sachs’ account, infecting even the supposedly left- wing administrations of Clinton and Obama. Ultimately, the undue influence cripples the possibility of solving America’s chronic problems, leaving the country in a “New Gilded Age.” Pressing concerns of the larger public, such as healthcare or outsourcing, seem wholly alien to the powerful elite.

Here Sachs’ writing takes on a vitriolic tone, sometimes at the expense of accuracy. For example, it is certainly true that, like his predecessor, Obama ignored campaign finance reform during his first term as president, leaving the floodgates of corporate electioneering ajar. But when Sachs seriously asks, “What have been the real differences between Bush and Obama?,” one has to wonder if the author is evenhanded about “Obamacare’s” namesake. Passages like these sound more like Paul Krugman than an honest clinician.

Nonetheless, the author’s course of treatment for America’s political paralysis largely makes up for his polemical forays. Though he at first stumbles, hinting at his hopes for a third party under the moniker of “Alliance for the Radical Center” to galvanize the voting populace, Sachs finds firm footing promoting such initiatives as public campaign finance and bans on lobbying. With these in place, the author foresees a Congress that is no longer “a maze of special interests,” and a president who can stand as a real agent of change.

The Pursuit of Happiness

As central as these political concerns appear, though, Sachs sees America’s problems as rooted in a deeper “moral crisis.” Not only are national politics rotten, the constituents are ill informed or misled about its functions—if they even care about them in the first place. Sachs points to more profound failings: Americans watch too much television, buy too much on credit to satisfy ephemeral cravings, and are overall unhappier than their global peers, not only in Sweden and Denmark, but also in countries like Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. America is caught, Sachs writes, on a “Hedonic Treadmill” of sorts, clamoring to get richer and ending up more miserable in the process.

In his freewheeling furor Sachs sometimes manages to stray from his primarily empirical enterprise. Do we really need, as the author suggests, the spiritual teachings of the Dalai Lama to tell us to turn off the TV or reign in our shopping sprees? Fortunately, Sachs returns to his more mundane subject of national welfare in due course. Here the author’s choice of words from the late senator Robert Kennedy ring truer than those of the Buddha: “For too long we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community value in the mere accumulation of material things.” Wealth for Sachs is not an end unto itself; it is a means towards common happiness, broader issues, broader scope

To this more “holistic” end, as he calls it, Sachs proposes establishing “national metrics for life satisfaction,” the goal being to shift the public focus from “How much money are you making?” to “How are you feeling today?” Granted, such an approach is at times more emotional than economical, just as The Price of Civilization more closely resembles a work of public psychology than one of sterile statistics. Yet for Sachs, the quantitative and qualitative poles of his study inform a larger, more accurate macro snapshot of both states of the union—material as well as mental. Adhering to the above dichotomy merely amounts to policy analysis with one eye closed.

The rub, of course, comes down to paying for these pleasing programs. But as Sachs notes, Scandinavian governments maintain national euphoria through prudent practices, without any gaping deficits. While the requisite trade-off is higher taxes, it is a bill that Sachs thinks America can and should foot. This is, perhaps, the price of a civilization worth inhabiting.

Eli Kozminsky ’14 is a Staff Writer.

Today, the UN climate change conference begins in Durban, South Africa. The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the major global forum for climate change, with the aim “to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.” Though hopes have not been high after the U.S. announced just a week before the start of the conference that a climate treaty was not foreseeable until 2020, the urgency of a deal now could not be greater.

UN climate conference begins in Durban

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said earlier this November that the world has five years to avoid dangerous run-away climate change. The only way to prevent this is to rapidly transition away from fossil fuel infrastructure. IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol pointed to the importance of a globally binding deal saying, “If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door will be closed forever.”

CO2 emissions rose by record amounts last year, despite the global recession. One of the key priorities is to negotiate and sign onto a legally binding agreement for the reduction of emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. However, political pressure to bring about a Kyoto 2 has been modest and major polluters have not placed enough value on their promises to cut emissions. Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions remains a major issue as well as a potential stumbling block.

Adding to the urgency, already poor countries along the equator will be the first to suffer the effects of dangerous climate change. These countries have little resources, technology, and money to adapt to a phenomenon they had little blame in bringing about in the first place. The ecological footprint of the average person in China, at 1.8 global hectares, is still only a fraction of the average American’s 9.0 global hectares. So developing countries and the global poor have been searching for justice and compensation through international environmental law. They have now put their hopes in the UNFCCC framework, especially in funding for adaptation and mitigation, and expect an equitable outcome.

Finance is therefore another crucial matter. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, among others, has called for the global Green Climate Fund, for which developed countries promised $100 billion annually by 2020, to be finalized at Durban. This would mean making the Fund, which a transitional committee has been planning since last year, operational at Durban. The fund should ideally be composed of new and additional funds in the form of grants, exceed the modest $100 billion promised, and include innovative sources to supplement public funds, including elimination of fossil fuels subsidies and the establishment of aviation and shipping taxes.

My personal favorite for innovative climate finance is the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT), endorsed by Bill Gates, which has outstanding potential to leverage greater funds in an equitable manner toward climate, poverty, and social justice issues. A tax of just 0.05% on speculative trade of financial products and specific transactions could generate between $400 billion and $1 trillion per year globally and bring much-needed stability to financial markets.

The U.S., however, has expressed that it will not sign the Green Climate Fund, along with Saudi Arabia, claiming the Fund does not sufficiently incorporate the private sector. This is hugely disappointing. The U.S. is responsible for almost a third of historical CO2 emissions over the past 150 years, ranking above the EU and accounting for three times the emissions of China. Climate models furthermore suggest that the cost of mitigation and adaptation grows exponentially with time: the longer we wait, the more people suffer. Above all, through its stubbornness, the U.S. is not only risking just the fate of poor countries and sinking island nations, it is also risking the fate of its own people. Food production is hindered by climate change, especially by extreme and unpredictable weather patterns that will affect the entire planet, including the U.S. Most major U.S. population centers are on the coasts and will suffer from rising sea levels. Delaying an internationally binding treaty is certainly not in the long-term interest of the U.S. and of American children to come.

Global democracy and social justice are at stake too. The UN’s credibility as a mediator of international issues like climate change, poverty, and health will be tested at Durban. If the test fails, it will have repercussions not only on important upcoming conferences like the UN Earth Summit in 2012, but also on our hope of democracy and justice in the world. Bilateral treaties will increasingly replace the perhaps imperfect but unprecedentedly democratic participation of diverse stakeholders at the UN. If we can’t work within the UN toward global justice, then where will we do it? COP17 must succeed in something globally significant, and, as outlined above, there are still ways this could happen.

As of now, delegates have two weeks to come up with this something. As part of a delegation at COP17, I will be reporting in from South Africa on the HPR Blog during the second week leading up to the end of negotiations. For COP17’s idealistic but hugely urgent motto, “working together, saving tomorrow today,” let’s keep fingers crossed.

I was intrigued. For the question bearing down on me (on all of us), is why, one week later, is Occupy Harvard so unpopular? Why has it failed to excite our sympathy?

I’m skeptical of the typical tropes. Is Occupy Harvard unpopular simply because the administration locked the gates? Is it really because we’re un-self-conscious about our privilege? The problem demands an explanation, for Occupy is a broadly popular movement and Harvard is a highly progressive university. What’s gone awry?

My friend’s answer begins by noting that there are roughly two different cases for setting up tents in Harvard Yard: either to express our community’s support for the national Occupy Movement, which is righteous and in need of all the help it can get; or otherwise, to express our community’s disgust at Harvard itself, our administration and all of its inadequacies. Both cases are cogent, but they diverge rather sharply.

If Occupy Harvard had chosen the first path, instead of the second – if they had designed their mini-“tent city” as a platform for exploring progressive alternatives for America; for dreaming up institutional change and excogitating on the future of capitalism; and for attracting young progressives to the Cause – “I’d be living in a tent right now,” my friend remarked. “I agree,” I said. That would be extraordinary.

But of course, Occupy Harvard didn’t choose that path. They opted instead to fight against the Harvard community (its administration; those students getting finance jobs) on behalf of local concerns (union negotiations; legacy admissions; and the transparency of the endowment management company), rather than doing the opposite — that is, rather than mobilizing our community on behalf national change.

In an almost-cynical way, the Harvard occupiers have “occupied” the Occupy brand. They’ve reduced a rich national movement, likened by some to the first rumblings of a “progressive era for our time,” into a special interest campaign for a few.

Are Harvard unions important? Yes. Is legacy admissions just? Probably not. But during this worldwide “crisis of capitalist democracy,” are workers with unionized jobs, who bring in salaries far above market rate (NB: as Marina Bolotnikova has pointed out in The Crimson, “the salary of every Harvard service worker is greater than or equal to the US median household income.”), or talented high school students whose spots at Harvard were lost because of legacy admissions, rightly the centerpieces of our activist consciences? Setting the smallness of their campaign against the largeness of our problems has an almost dizzying effect.

To ask another question: Is an insistence on the moral purity of our home, even at the costs of ignoring greater injustice, an indicator of the same sort of privilege that the occupiers officially detest? Or more simply: Can any institution be perfect, when so many are patently cruel?

Dylan Matthews has suggested that Harvard deserves our ire because it “ushers its students into jobs as socially respectable gamblers at banks and hedge funds to line its own endowment” and because it “helps perpetuate a ‘merit’-based caste system that is morally beyond defense.” These are interesting ideas — that Harvard selects and trains bankers to fill up its own coffers; or that the meritocracy is simply discrimination by another name. But soft conspiracy theory, and a Rawlsian argument about the giftedness of merit, are lonely ice floes on which to build a social movement.

Hence the unpopularity. It’s not that Occupy Harvard is wrong, per se; it’s that the fight they chose to pick is significantly harder to justify, and ultimately much less important, than the fight they chose to ignore – the fight for progressive change writ large. They’ve taken an extremely easy case – that America needs help! – and made it into a harder and less popular one – that Harvard is the problem, or synecdoche for the problem, rather than the solution. In doing this, they’ve alienated so many young progressives who could have otherwise been recruited to the cause.

We should be careful. The left has a history of self-immolation. We’re killed by our own conceits: our belief that “perfect justice” (in Amartya Sen’s phrase) is more important than measurable steps to remediate cruelty and immiseration where they’re most obviously manifest; our belief that critiquing power, all power, is more important than soliciting power’s support on behalf of positive ends.

We can do better than this. The Harvard student body knows it, and I hope Occupy Harvard does too. Thankfully, the alternative path is clear enough. My suggestion: see above.

In the wake of the now-landmark Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the face of campaign finance law has changed, opening the floodgates to the influence of corporate money in politics. The introduction of unregulated corporate money into the election cycle may well skewer the political process, enabling the purchase of outsized influence in government and affecting the outcomes of issues citizens care about most.

(Un)intended Consequences

The influx of post-Citizens United money has largely been channeled through independent organizations known as Super Political Action Committees, or “super PACs.” Individuals or corporations can anonymously donate unlimited amounts of money to super PACs, circumventing many previously cumbersome donation restrictions. Further, Super PACs enjoy new freedoms, such as the ability to directly mention the names of specific candidates in attack ads. These well-funded, well-connected political entities have injected tremendous amounts of money into the political process. American Crossroads, a super PAC created by Karl Rove, raised $27 million in the 2010 election cycle alone. As Mark McKinnon, former chief media advisor to President Bush, noted, “Outside organizations today have an inordinate voice relative to their numbers, because they get big checks that allow them to buy big amplifiers and drown other voices out.”

Legally, super PACs cannot confer directly with individual campaigns, but their contributors know the inherent value in giving. “A campaign contribution is an investment,” contends David King, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “Of course there’s an impact of money on policy, otherwise [they] wouldn’t be investing in it.” While the President is under the continuous scrutiny of an entire nation, individual legislators generally fly under the radar and, “most members of congress are exquisitely aware of where their money is coming from.”

The Mega Megaphone

While politicians’ attachment to special interests is hardly new, super PACs are uniquely influential in their abilities to distort the public discourse. Because they are legally prohibited from having “common coordination and control” with campaigns, super PACs can actually usurp the candidate’s platform. Benjamin Ginsberg, an attorney specializing in election and campaign finance law, explained that, “The candidates can’t control the message of a super PAC, nor really have an impact on it.” Therefore, external messages can soon come to dominate the campaign. Steve Grand, a Republican media strategist, contends, “The voters will hear more from the independent groups than they may hear from the candidates themselves. Sometimes these candidates may have a tougher time getting their point out, because they’re not only competing with the other side, they’re competing with the independent expenditures that may or may not have their message right.”

Although super PACs remain unique political forces, they do not necessarily hold allegiance to individual candidates or even one party. By diversifying their investments, Super PACs can create incentives for politicians from both parties to support their agenda, as acting against the Super PAC would swing massive expenditures against the party or candidate. Super PACs can use this tactic to take issues such as reducing oil subsidies off the political table, even though a majority of Americans may support curtailment. Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for Time Magazine, told the HPR that by shifting donations from political parties and open political arenas into secretive super PACs, “Citizens United is changing the way business is done.” For Halperin, effective campaign finance reform would ensure that money is not just squeezed “from one bucket into another,” as he claims happens now.

Alternative Solutions?

With the flaws of existing campaign finance system, experts suggest several options for limiting the influence of special interests in the political process. For some, the path to equitable campaigns and greater democracy lies not with reversing Citizens United, but changing campaign regulations. Ginsberg believes that candidates are handicapped by the $2500 per person limit, McCain-Feingold regulations, and that individual candidates should not solicit funding from, “the groups that have legislation in front of Congress.” Instead, Ginsberg suggests, “Let the parties raise that money, so that they can fund the campaigns.” Yet, this process could inadvertently ensure entire slates of legislators susceptible to special interest groups.

For others, money itself is a problem. McKinnon observes that, “If it’s money that gets you re-elected, it’s money you’re going to pay attention to. And the more money you get, the less you’re going pay attention to the little guy.” McKinnon, founder of the No Labels Movement, a group committed to the creation of a post-partisan Congress through grassroots organization, argues for publicly financed campaigns, claiming, “If politicians aren’t tied to special interests to raise money then they will turn their attention where it belongs – to voters.” However, this change has to come from grassroots organizations, McKinnon believes, because, “Congress is incapable of reforming itself.” Establishing a truly national grassroots movement nonetheless requires strong organization and significant funding: the same thing No Labels attempts to counter. For the time being, however, No Labels and other similar organizations may provide the best hope for curtailing the influence of money in politics.
Lingering Questions
Analyses of campaign finance may involve complex legal opinions, but the significance of campaign finance law echoes at the core of American democracy. Is spending money really a First Amendment right? Should voices cloaked in anonymity have the power to drown out the “silent majority” of Americans not wealthy enough to afford a broad platform? Unfortunately, the aftermath of Citizens United suggests that already, Super PACs’ influence greatly exceeds their numbers. According to Thomas Mann, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, “we are quickly returning to a state of nature in campaign finance akin to the Gilded Age when corporate and individual wealth reinforced economic inequality.” While politics in the United States may not be harmonious, Americans from all walks of life place their faith in the sanctity of ‘one man, one vote.’ Unfortunately, the High Court’s ruling reigns supreme for now, allowing the unfettered access of special interests to the ballot box.

Matt Shuham ‘15 and Nathaniel Donahue ’15 are Contributing Writers

Paul Giamatti as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dines with William Hurt as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in the HBO TV Movie "Too Big to Fail"

During a screening of “Too Big to Fail” by IOP Fellow Diane Casey-Landry in Dunster JCR last night, the cognitive dissonance became overwhelming.

Here stood a film that aimed to inform its viewers about the madness that surrounded the financial meltdown, to show the pinched face of Nancy Pelosi, the slow, measured rumble of Henry Paulson, the soft-spoken, stick-wielding Ben Bernanke. Every cello-filled montage of a CEO storming around NYC screaming curses in his Smartphone, every joke about how press must call a bailout a “very large purchase assistance package,” every shot of a white, hairless, old, rich executive complaining that his golden parachute is not shiny enough,  dramatizes the people at the top and emphasizes its true message: that the financial system is an oligarchy of the confused and irresponsible.

However, the take-away is more patronizing than intellectual, and “Too Big to Fail” relies on snappy dialogue and good production values instead of delving into the consequences of its content.

The strangest part of “Too Big to Fail” is its cavalier tone (approximately at the rate of one laugh per minute) mixed with said over-dramatization of financial and federal big-wigs. The sunless Wall Street cannot stand as depressing enough, so why not add cellos and a side-shot of Timothy Geither purposefully striding to Point B? Can’t sit through an explanation of why Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Bear-Stearns, Wachovia, JP Morgen, and Goldman are suddenly having solvency issues? Then add some profane yelps from the CEOs and a few cracks about the fact that TARP was originally only three pages long. Starting to get bored by the cast of usual suspects? Let’s drag out doppelgängers of Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank for some disapproving, fearful glances.

However, despite the range of dialogue and scenes from Washington to New York, there are only two mentions in the whole movie about the consequences of the actors’ decisions. When discussing bailing out AIG, Paulson says that he cannot let them fail like Lehman Brothers because of the dependency of infrastructure, manufacturing, and teachers’ pensions. Second moment: when Timothy Geither goes for his morning run, he feels guilty that passers-by don’t know their economy might not be there the next morning. Otherwise, its a stunning portrayal of the capacity for the top .0001% to care only about their tiny microcosm of pressed shirts and poorly-wielded power.

This is a fine line to tread between showing a group of self-absorbed people as a moral hazard and showing a group of self-absorbed people as entertainment. “Too Big to Fail” should have gone for less laughs and appreciative nods to the likeness of the actors to their role, and more for the message at the end of the movie: that 10 banks now own 77% of investments. However, HBO seemed to think that the fact that our economy could have been destroyed was not dramatic enough for its audience, and resorted to doing what it does best: distracting its viewers from reality.

Courtesy of Wikimedia

In the 1990s, Italy’s pitch to join the Eurozone faced budget criticism; adopting an international currency remained contingent upon the country’s financial health, as agreed in the Stability and Growth Pact, ailing under the burden of national debt.  Much like Greece, Italy tapped the derivatives market with the intention of taking an off-balance sheet loan disguised as a currency hedge;  a contract which was classified as protecting Italy from swings in the Lira-Yen exchange rate was structured explicitly to offer Italy a big initial payout via an extraordinarily low exchange rate and requiring a big payback later via an extraordinarily high exchange rate.

Derivative markets, in precedent and culture, offered Greece a gimmick that was neither unique nor novel. Assigning blame for the Greek debt crisis then becomes more nuanced.  Italy’s issue of yen-denominated bonds was intended to earn admission into the Eurozone and strengthen its economy.  By contrast, Greek currency swaps offered no long-term benefits to its faltering finances and provided little more than delay.  At the same time, the prevalence of off-balance sheet derivatives escaped the purview of European financial regulations; should Greece’s peer countries share the blame in their negligence?  Much like mortgage markets and other financial products, government securities benefitted from arcane legal requirements and minimal scrutiny.  Blame, if merited, can only be allocated in debate.  Understanding precedent, however, is important in considering the causes and suddenness of the financial crisis.  Just as the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that collapsed after betting on alternative fixed-income investments, foreshadowed the mortgage-backed security mania and crisis, Italy’s unchallenged use of derivative contracts granted Greece a tempting opportunity.