I’m advised that the organization called “Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community” (or The Coalition) has scheduled what they are calling a “Community Town Hall” the purpose of which, according to their press release, is “To call on the City of Long Beach to ensure a fair and equitable return on the taxpayers’ $750 million investment in the tourism industry.”
Historically, town hall meetings have been public gatherings wherein community members are invited to ask questions of, and voice opinions to, elected and appointed government officials on matters of public policy and then to receive responses and information.
In the past few decades, however, the phrase “Town Hall Meeting” has been twisted to mean all sorts of different things including, as in the case with The Coalition’s scheduled event, a gathering in a public place that is facilitated, hosted and orchestrated by a special interest group for the specific purpose of presenting carefully contrived information to the public in support of its agenda. The presence of elected and appointed public officials at this event isn’t requisite, but their attendance might lend certain gravity to the production that it might not otherwise attain on its own.
The carefully contrived information to be presented in this case is a study by another like-minded special interest group, The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (or LAANE) entitled “A Tale of Two Cities – How Long Beach’s Investment in Downtown Tourism has Contributed to Poverty Next Door” which The Coalition commissioned and which LAANE released earlier this month.
I recently published an article that discussed some of my thoughts concerning this so-called “study” and what I believe to be the overall lack of intellectual honesty demonstrated throughout much of it.
Two of the primary agenda items of groups like The Coalition and LAANE are to unionize as many hospitality workers as possible and to achieve the passage of so called “living wage” legislation. These groups hold “Community Town Halls” like the one currently planned for February 26th to better publicize their rhetoric and produce so-called “studies” like the “Two Cities” report in an attempt to support their positions.
The underlying premise of both the “Community Town Hall” and the “Two Cities” report is clear: The Coalition and LAANE feel that because some of the hotels in downtown Long Beach were subsidized, in part, with public funds, the City should, among other things, “explore policy options for raising standards at hotels and ensuring community benefits”.
I’m not much of a fan of expending public funds for private purposes (hotel development, for example). I feel that when our government does this it exceeds its proper purpose. Government-managed public funds almost always come with very large strings attached; strings that can very easily be tugged upon by the offering government entity at any given time. Many corporations in our finance, lending and mortgage sectors are learning this very hard lesson as I type this. This is another reason that private enterprise is usually better off saying “thanks but no thanks” when public funds are offered in assistance.
Dr. Thomas Sowell, eminent Economist and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is apparently of a similar mind. In a recent column published on Jewish World Review, Dr. Sowell put it this way:
“I hate to hear about “partnerships” between government and business, or between government and other organizations. When there is a partnership between an ant and an elephant, who do you suppose makes the decisions?
There are too many people, especially among the intelligentsia, who will never appreciate the things that have made this country great until after those things have been destroyed — with their help.
Then, of course, it will be too late.”
During their Community Town Hall, I think The Coalition is rather hoping we will all become better convinced that our City government should play the “elephant” to the “ant” of some of our downtown hotels and begin to dictate terms to them in these areas much as the federal government is now doing (has been doing for some time, in fact) in our nations financial sector.
This approach to improving wages and working conditions in our hospitality sector is at once non-sustainable and very short-sighted. It attempts to inject further artificiality into a labor market that should be left alone to seek its own steady-state created by the necessary tension between the needs of the employer and those of the employee.
Among others, an economist is scheduled to present during The Coalition’s Community Town Hall.
Somehow I doubt that economist will be Dr. Thomas Sowell.
I welcome your comments and your questions.