THE UNION TRIBUNE:UNIONS, CITY FIND COMMON GROUND
Escondido, CA’s city manager and employee union leaders have had a rare meeting of minds. They each agreed to give up something to help close a $6.3 million budget gap in the coming fiscal year. In return for the unions’ willingness to make concessions, City Manager Clay Phillips said he will ask the council to spend $10 million of the city’s $30 million in emergency reserves and special funds, which he had refused to use to cover deficits until this week.
Question to the Blogosphere: Do you think there has been an increase in the number of negotiations between unions, employers, and government since the financial crisis? What skills do you think are necessary to find common ground in these kinds of situations? Economic negotiations have been occuring on the local as well as the regional and global levels. What common ground do you think opposing sides have in economic disagreements and negotiations?
SEARCH FOR COMMON GROUND: CHALLENGING ‘WHAT BLEEDS LEADS’
Below is an exclusive opinion article from Susan Koscis, the Communications Director at Search for Common Ground’s Washington, DC office.
Lest anyone possibly forgot, the media made sure we knew that yesterday was the 100th day of the Obama Presidency. The media frenzy about the significance of the day was shared only with news of the impending swine flu pandemic. This morning’s radio news included an item that Washingtonians are getting scared about the spread of the flu. Well, it’s difficult to not get scared when radio and TV news programming is “all swine flu all the time.”
And then there is Susan Boyle who sang about her dream; and Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, the airline captain who landed on the Hudson; and Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama who gave himself up to Somali pirates to save his crew (and was later rescued). The people have spoken. We love them. They are like us and they have inspired us.
Here’s the thing. They are not extraordinary people. They are ordinary people to whom something extraordinary happened. They stepped up and more than met the challenge in response. That could have been us.
Our work around the world with Search for Common Ground (SFCG), in countries and regions in conflict, brings us countless stories and examples of ordinary people taking great risk to save the life/lives or their “enemy.” In fact, SFCG held a “heroes summit” in Africa, to honor those who saved the lives of Hutu and Tutsi in Burundi. I wish there was a way to bring some of their stories to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Who can watch the footage of an unimpressive looking but somehow confident Susan Boyle walk on stage; see the judgmental expressions on faces of the audience and panel; watch attitudes shift within the first few notes of “I Dreamed a Dream” and not be moved?
I’m grateful for Susan Boyle because she makes me feel good. I hope the media is watching and listening. Sometimes what does not bleed, can and should lead.
FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE: STEVEN WALT: WHAT SWINE FLU TELLS US ABOUT GLOBAL COOPERATION
Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard University and a frequent contributor to Foreign Policy Magazine looked at how the pandemic swine flu has showed us the extent that cooperation is possible in the international system. The nations of the world have much common ground–on indicriminant health vulnerability in the case of the swine flu but also on issues such as the global impact of climate change. Yet health crises such as the swine flu and the SARS outbreak of 2003 have been characterized by more effective international collaboration than many other scenarios in which cooperation is needed. Walt gives three reasons for this:
1. The dangers are immediate and somewhat indiscriminate. Mishandling a pandemic would not only impose major short term costs, it could also affect the political fortunes of incumbent politicians around the world. The effects of global warming, on the other hand, are longterm. This makes it easier for politicians to put off action on these issues until future generations.
2. Pandemics are not an issue where “relative gains” loom large. States don’t see this as an opportunity to improve their strategic position by getting others to bear all the costs or by trying to free-ride (or god forbid, by trying to encourage the disease to spread to one’s rivals). Infectious diseases are too mobile and the world is too interconnected for that approach. If Country A responds vigorously but Country B does not, B is likely to have a more serious problem. But the worse things are for B, the bigger the problem that A might face.
3. Public health is a highly professionalized and comparatively de-politicized field, and the relevant international and national institutions (e.g., the World Health Organization) have a lot of prior experience. One might contrast this with the current economic mess, where different national authorities have rather different ideas about the best way to respond and international coordination has been pretty paltry.
Question to the Blogosphere: Do you think cooperation is possible on global warming as it has been on issues relating to health crises? What is necessary to make issues like the environment and the economy seem as urgent as the health crises? Will it require a global crisis on a scale unseen before in the economy or the environment to get real change or is the problem not that the issue isn’t severe, but that it is just harder to coordinate policy on these issues?
UN NEWS CENTRE: UN NOTCHES UP SWINE FLU PANDEMIC ALERT LEVEL TO 5
The UN noted with alarm the spread of the H1N1 influenza virus throughout the world in the past few weeks. While the UN urged each country to activate their pandemic surveillance plans, representatives from the international organization also commended countries such as the US, Mexico, and Canada on their ability to cooperation internationally on this urgent issue.
Question to the Blogosphere: Do you think that the fact that the US, Mexico, and Canada have a history of peace and common ground has helped them cooperate in order to contain the spread of the H1Ni “swine” flu? Do you think this pandemic would have been much more severe if it had originated in a country who was at war with its neighbors, such as in the Middle East? How important are issues like health and control of diseases to solving international disputes?
Charles Snelling writes about the future of the Republican Party in the wake of Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party this week. He argues that Specter’s switch represents a loss to the Republican Party not just because their ability to balance Democratic policy initiatives has weakened, but that, more importantly, Specter helped the Republican Party keep a share of moderate voters.
The right wing of our party rejoices that Specter is gone. What they don’t seem to realize is that they are pushing the Republican Party into permanent minority status. I’m a big tent Republican. I’m an economic conservative and a social moderate. But I know that to make the Republican Party successful, I have to welcome people who are more moderate than I and people who are more conservative than I. I know that I have to find common ground with people who want to be Republicans, sharing our love of certain basic principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, while overlooking differences of opinion on matters like choice and lifestyles. The hallmark of political failure is political extremism, which alienates the middle ground.
He notes that the governor of Vermont, a Republican, was able to keep his position more than any other Republican in that state because of his moderate stance.
Question to the Blogosphere: Do you think that conservatism is dying in the United States? What is the future of the Republican Party? There are many groups within the country who feel alienated by the Republican Party’s proported social positions who would otherwise be members of the Republican Party for their economic positions–how is the Republican Party working to address these people’s concerns? What needs to happen for the Republican Party to rebuild itself? Recently John McCain’s daughter has been an active voice as a young, moderate Republican–do you think she and other young Republicans like her can bridge the gap and strengthen the two-party system in the US again? Is this an opportunity for the Republican party to reinvent itself or do you think their vulnerability will cause them to have even more extreme positions as a reaction to their vulnerability? What is the future of Conservatism?
