New York City's Next Mayor

 By the time we leave New York, probably in 2023, we will have been here ten or eleven years. For the first eighteen months, Michael Bloomberg was mayor. Since then it has been Bill de Blasio. Next week the primaries take place to start the process of choosing our third NYC mayor.

 

Mayor of the city is quite an influential job, although power in many areas is circumscribed by the state and federal authorities. New Yorkers are obsessed by transport, reasonably enough, and love to blame the mayor for its failings, but in truth that is an area where the state has the power. But there are other fields, notably schooling and housing, where the mayor is an important voice. Further, the mayor controls many agencies and a large budget.

 

Bloomberg is an interesting character, unappealing in many ways, but he certainly left his mark as mayor. His overriding principle was to make decisions based on data, and that helped him to challenge shibboleths. The establishment did not like him but he got some good things done, including stabilising finances and enabling useful growth. Our expanding skyline, for good and ill, is a Bloomberg legacy.

 

De Blasio has been a more traditional mayor, and, like most politicians, is coming to the end of his term amid public derision, so much so that all but one candidate to take his job has said they would rather not have his endorsement. I think that judgment is harsh: he has been flawed but can also point to some signature achievements.

 

On the plus side, De Blasio successfully implemented the signature policy that got him elected, the admirable programme offering universal pre-schooling. Pre-school is a proven long-term driver for reducing poverty, crime and inequality, and NYC will enjoy the benefits of De Blasio’s effort for generations.

 

The other policy that de Blasio might be remembered for is bail reform. A laudable advocate for improved criminal justice, De Blasio set in place a process that will eventually close the squalid Riker’s Island prison. He also stopped the practice of using slow courts and bail as a way to keep many youths almost permanently on remand there, despite many not being convicted of crimes. It is a good policy, but one that clearly has a downside. Many of these youths are troubled and are habitual criminals, and now they are back on the street. This must be factor in the increase of murders and gun crime since 2020. Many New Yorkers remember when the city was unliveable and fear a return of that.

 

De Blasio’s long-term solutions for this problem are the right ones, but he has not managed to execute well during his tenure. He placed his wife in charge of an expensive mental health and rehabilitation program, which has so far not yielded results. And he has not had success in reducing homelessness either.

 

I give De Blasio a similarly mixed performance grade in other areas. Vision Zero for road safety is well chosen but could have been bolder, as were his initiatives to promote cycling and for open streets. During the pandemic he spoke well and showed heart. He avoided the rabbit hole of Trump bashing, but did not manage the same feat with Cuomo – perhaps the governor deserves the most blame for this, but De Blasio has also been naïve and petty. De Blasio was blamed for flip- flopping on school reopening, but on that I thought he was brave to push for a laudable priority, and it was a no-win to take on a public game of bluff with the teachers union.

 

De Blasio has also bloated the budget and has not succeeded in taking on vested interests. Efficiency and follow through do not seem to be important enough to him. He made a start with the NYPD but backed off, and other public sector workers are as entrenched as ever.

 

Although I will be glad when all the dull political ads stop on TV after next week, I have enjoyed the Democratic primary. The coverage on New York 1 has been excellent throughout – chapeau to Errol Lewis and his team.

 

There are some unfortunate quirks to the process. The main problem is that the election itself is in November and will feature a Republican, probably the odious vigilante leader Curtis Sliwa. We should not discount the chance that he might win, should crime get worse before November and if the Democrat is somehow tainted. Surely the Californian system of blended primaries leading to a run off between the two best candidates overall is an improvement.

 

A consequent problem is that the electorate is pitifully small for such an influential post. Many will vote in November, but in the June primaries only registered party members can vote, and the number of Democrats who will may be as few as 100,000.

 

Lastly we have the introduction of ranked choice voting. Another laudable initiative, this might have unintended consequences. It might be the reason that we still have such a large and confusing pool of candidates. It also might lead to a result where the driving factor is people trying to block one candidate.

 

The Democratic candidates are an interesting mix. The good news is that all seem informed and many seemed qualified to be mayor: partly thanks to New York 1, there has been meaningful exposure and debate. The race has ebbed and flowed as more people have tuned in to the candidates.

 

Eric Adams seems to be the favourite. A black career politician, he seems to have done a reasonable job as Brooklyn borough president, and even more circumscribed position. He comes across as austere, perhaps having had to sell himself for so long as an acceptable African-American. He has skilfully exploited the current fear of crime in the city, posing as a former NYPD officer who understands how to control crime. He lost my support though on the day he told Pat Kiernan on New York 1 that he thought De Blasio had done a good job in managing placard abuse by the NYPD. That laughable claim told me that he was in the pocket of the disgusting Pat Lynch. Police advocates have done a good job at reframing the debate since the left’s unwise slogan of Defund the Police. In reality, the police must be reformed. Adams would not do this.

 

Andrew Yang started in the lead, but has run a disappointing campaign. It is not enough to smile a lot and run ads enjoying roller coaster rides. Maya Wiley is an accomplished media performer, a true progressive and seemingly intelligent, but was too slow gathering endorsements from AOC and others (were they initially behind Stringer?), and has missed the mood on crime.

 

A dark horse is Kathryn Garcia, on stage a rather dull manager but someone who everyone seems to admire. Both Adams and Yang declared her their second choice, which may have been a tactical ploy to appear collegiate without feeding a genuine rival. But Garcia has patiently risen through the pack and ranked choice will certainly benefit her, as will her New York Times endorsement.

 

Scott Stringer was a very credible candidate, and has the best ads too, but lost the race the day a former staffer accused him of inappropriate sexual advances years ago. Sean Donovan is no doubt competent but is also dull, while Ray McGuire may also be competent but has not managed to differentiate himself. Diane Morales has differentiated herself strikingly, but in a bad way, revealing the sadly all-to-common managerial incompetence of the left.

 

I am not an eligible voter, but if I were I might go for Garcia and then Wiley and Yang, in an attempt to block Adams and his cosy NYPD relationship. Adams will probably win, but a surprise is possible with such a small electorate. In the same way, any of them will probably beat Sliwa, and we must pray that turns out to be the case, or we will have a Trump-like experience on our hands.     

Smarter Covid Reviews

 Last week Joe Biden announced that he had asked his secret service to explore the possibility that Covid originated in the Wuhan lab in China. It seems to me that this is a rather pointless exercise, and there are at least five alternative studies that Biden could sponsor that might have more value.

 

The study is one more example of how the world is in the process of fracturing into two competing blocks, manifested as a second cold war. The driver for Biden to become sucked in is mainly political. The Republicans have few credible policy arguments, and they can only win with jingoism. So Fox News carries continuous coverage of the Mexican border and also drums up fear of China, reminding us how “tough on China” Donald Trump was. The tangible benefits of this toughness are hard to discern and the global consequences are dire, but Biden feels he has to dampen the political threat. Publicly implying that China is so incompetent as to release a deadly virus into the world and so devious as to cover it up serves his purpose well.

 

Why is the study pointless? It is political theatre. It is also unlikely to decide the issue at hand, so long after the fact and with few useful trails of evidence. But the many reason for its pointlessness is that essentially it does not matter. It is possible that Covid originated in the Wuhan lab. It is also possible that it transferred from animals, likely involving the Wuhan wet market. Both possible origins offer lessons to minimise the risk of future pandemics, and no doubt China is busy quietly applying those lessons and other countries can too. But whichever cause was to blame, Covid is here and knowing the origin won’t make dealing with it any easier. It would make sense to assume that both causes could have been to blame rather than wasting time, money and diplomatic capital trying to establish which. But that would not be such good domestic politics.

 

So what about the five alternative studies? I would start with a critical review of the US health institutions during the period between December 2019 and February 2020. One quote that has remained with me from my reading during the pandemic was from an epidemiologist who claimed that almost all viruses are circulating for many weeks or months before symptoms appear en masse. This makes sense to me and was obviously the case with Covid, since the virus managed to travel from Wuhan to Italy and New York somehow and then quietly disperse among unsuspecting populations.

 

During this period the US seems to have been asleep at the wheel. To be fair, it was not just the US, but US is the place with the largest budgets and the claims of pre-eminence. Surely some of this resource should have been trying to understand Covid, putting early measures in place while preparing a menu of tougher measures, and briefing politicians. It is too easy to blame Trump. If he wouldn’t listen, others could have been briefed instead. It was usually possible to work around Trump on important issues. It is too easy to blame the WHO as well, or the Chinese.

 

Michael Lewis, he of Moneyball and The Big Short fame, studies the root causes of this inaction in his latest book. I intend to read this book soon, but the reviews and preview material are already clear. The CDC is one of many US agencies that has become bloated and politicised. The leader is a political appointee, so liable to be short-term, under-qualified and in hoc to those with impure motives. The permanent staff become thinned out, disillusioned and risk averse. Bad news does not receive the airtime it needs. Meanwhile by all sorts of role overlaps with other institutions magnify confusion and inactivity. There is the NIH, the Health and Human Services agency, the WHO and many state bodies. It is no wonder that policy in practice is set by political imperatives and the lobbyists for Big Pharma.

 

Such bureaucratic muddle tends to spread over time. Whoever coined the phrase “never waste a good crisis” knew this well. Biden has a rare chance to improve some key institutions. Will he take it? No, of course not, he will bash China instead.

 

A second useful study would review how the guidance changed in light of new information about how the virus spread. Here it has become clear that an early mistake took far too long to correct, indeed parts of the US establishment still stubbornly defend out-dated findings.

 

A limited early study concluded that the primary means of spread was either close contact or from surfaces. Remember how we all feared touching doorknobs early in the pandemic? Slowly we started reading that an alternative means of spread was via aerosols lingering in the air, but the formal advice did not seem to react quickly enough to this new information.

 

A key data point was the early super spreader event involving a choir in Washington State, where one person managed to infect as many as fifty others with fatal consequences for some. As a choir singer, friends of mine made me aware of this event, and it has spooked us all ever since, leading us to be very cautious about singing, for good reasons. It never made sense that this event could have involved spreading via surfaces or very close contact, and surely it was a strong pointer towards aerosols, which linger longer and further after the strenuous exhaling involved in singing. But much guidance continued to emphasise surfaces over airborne spread, to the extent that many officials doubted the efficacy of masks for too long, giving ammunition to the deniers and conspiracy theorists. How experts incorporated new data in a timely fashion, domestically and internationally, would surely make a valuable study.

 

A third study might try to learn from a positive bi-product of Covid. The rapid development of vaccines is a triumph for science, one where the US should share credit and one that even casts Trump in a very good light. One interesting consequence has been that suddenly vaccine development has accelerated in other fields, such as finding an effective vaccine against malaria or dengue fever.

 

My study question is how it took the Covid crisis to spur innovation in areas that cried out for solutions for decades. What were the mechanisms in place? Where were the incentives? And what changes could be made that could accelerate innovation without the kick-starter of Covid? Humanity could have benefited generations ago from a malaria vaccine, and science could probably have developed one if the right incentives had been in place. If malaria were prevalent in the rich world, I suspect it would have been supressed a long time ago, in the same way that if it were men who suffered menopause, mitigating treatments would be a lot better by now. This are is ripe for international study. I am sure Bill Gates would have some useful ideas.

 

My fourth study is about efficient state disbursement of benefits. Another wonderful side effect of Covid has been to open up the political possibility of direct payments to those who need them. The Biden child support initiative might become his most enduring legacy.

 

But, admittedly acting in haste, Congress probably wasted a lot of money too and misfired with other money. There are stories about small business grants being swallowed by large businesses and those with strong relationships with banks (and therefore good sources of alternative support). No doubt many schemes are open to fraud, or simply too slow to be useful. It is great to offer a total of $3200 in cash, but the eligible member of my family has not seen a cent of his yet. If, as we can hope, that direct transfers will play a bigger role in public policy going forward, then it is important to learn practical lessons from early attempts.

 

There are many candidates for my fifth review. Perhaps somebody could work out how to help Americans understand the concept of probability (rather worrying given how many seem to enjoy gambling). It would be good to avoid debate about whether six feet is a better safe distance than five, or why somebody had a vaccine and still caught the virus. A specific review about how to keep schools open during pandemics would be useful, given what a low priority most states seemed to place on that. Something about state versus federal roles might help too.

 

I expect Biden will call for none of these potentially useful reviews. To be fair, the Republicans would probably try to spike most of them, like they spiked the insurrection review. But I do wish he would not drag himself down to their level with petty, pointless barbs at China. 

Non Solutionism

 This weeks Economist coined a new term – Non Solutionism. More bravely, it did so in the context of promoting a new policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict. For the Economist,the dream of a two state solution is now so unrealistic that it prefers focusing on improving the lot of Palestinians on a more immediate basis.

 

Non Solutionism is defined by The Economist more or less by looking at the behaviour of the protagonists in the conflict, most notably Israel under Netanyahu. The parties agree to a rather vague long-term end point to the conflict, that of two states living side by side. Many details are unclear, and a stepwise process nominally seeks to negotiate each of these details so that the end point can eventually be reached. Meanwhile facts are being created on the ground that do not exclude the professed desired end point but make it more difficult to achieve and more likely to skew the details of any negotiated settlement in favour of one side. There is no incentive to accelerate progress towards an end point while these facts are moving the goalposts.

 

Netanyahu’s actions fit this description neatly. Most of the time he professes lukewarm support for a two state solution. He claims a willingness to negotiate but states, reasonably, that there currently is no “partner for peace” on the other side. He gives the impression of moving the process forward when possible, for example with the hopelessly one-sided proposals drawn up with Jared Kushner with no Palestinian input at all. This is generally enough to maintain support from key international allies.

 

Meanwhile the ground is constantly shifting in Israel’s favour. Palestinian rights are eroded step by step, perhaps most notably when Netanyahu declared Israel as a Jewish state despite 20% of its population being Arabs. Settlements spread, taking more and more of the best land and leaving the rump of the potential second state less and less viable. Varying between those living in Israel, the West bank or Gaza, Palestinians have limited rights and very limited economic prospects, all justified by credible imperatives of security. If this is not apartheid, I don’t know what is.

 

The Palestinians and their Arab brothers do not help their own cause. Indeed, The Economist reasonably argues that there is Non Solutionism going on there too. Old man Abbas sits in Ramallah with no legitimacy but an incentive to maintain a status quo with possibly corrupt income for cronies. Hamas has no credible plan either beyond exploiting the exploitation to build support. Egypt is happy to continue to take dollops of much needed US aid in returning for keeping a lid on things.

 

So The Economist says that enough is enough. We hide behind the fig leaf of a moribund peace process, meanwhile tolerating human atrocity and despair. Its recommendation is to call out the peace process for the sham that it is, abandon any thought of a two state outcome for the time being, and instead focus on immediate improvements. That implies demanding that Israel follows international law and principles of human equity in all of the territory it currently controls. Any progress forced upon Israel should also improve the leadership of both sides, and help to give pause to the zealots and voice to those demanding fairness in the US and elsewhere.

 

I am not an expert in the conflict, but I like the courage and the logic of The Economist. My only qualm is that the change of policy in some way seems to reward Israel for its actions in creating favourable conditions until now. But I accept that sort of thinking only perpetuates the status quo, and the opportunity for Israel to create even more favourable conditions.

 

When I thought it through, Non Solutionism is present in many situations; indeed most of us practise it again and again. As a parent, our adolescent child rebels and demands more than we are willing to offer and more than their maturity warrants. What do we do? We procrastinate. We make vague promises for the future. We lock them in to our system while we have most of the power. We are experts in Non Solutionism.

 

Even more simply, how do we behave when we have an impulsive boss throwing tasks around? We say yes, but delay, expecting that the task will be radically changed or even superseded if we wait. If pressed, we might ask questions of clarificationor seek to wrap the task into a more complex context. This is also Non Solutionism.

 

Many businesses follow similar logic. The most notable examples are banks. Banks like it best when their clients teeter along the edge of failure, because that maximises their income. At least in the US, a bank is reluctant to offer a credit card to somebody who pays all their bills on time: that client is gaining free credit at the bank’s expense. They much prefer someone who lets the balance hover near its limit, incurring more and more interest charges. By the time they pull the plug, the client has paid interest much higher than any final bad debt. During this process, of limited demands and apparent tolerance, the bank is using Non Solutionism. It is exactly the same with overdrafts and loans to businesses.

 

Other examples abound. Putin is an expert. Look at how he uses patience and cynicism in his treatment of Lukashenko, and previously in Ukraine. Moldova, bordering the EU, has been a divided country with a frozen conflict for thirty years. In some ways it defies logic: consider the incentives of the protagonists and the use of Non Solutionism as a strategy and it is all too understandable.

 

In the US, Mitch McConnell is a prime exponent of Non Solutionism. His guiding principle is for congress to pass as few laws as possible, since he thinks big government is bad and his pet interests are well served by legal neglect. He has a great ally in partisanship and the filibuster rules. He outmanoeuvred Obama, essentially timing him out after Obamacare and the rescue act after the financial crisis. Biden witnessed this and his determined not to fall into the same trap: expect a lot more use of reconciliation in the next eighteen months.

 

Benign neglect is not always a silly strategy, as we parents can attest. It works when the alternative is impulsiveness, or pandering to a fad, or risking uninvited consequences. But Non Solutionism as a default strategy can also be disastrous. If equilibrium is unstable then the strategy can hamstring action: consider climate change. It can also be judged based on its human effects, such as the never-ending suffering of Palestinians.

 

I have a theory to propose: Non Solutionism will occur more frequently and for longer than logic seems to dictate. If you are betting, bet on Non Solutionism. The theory is similar to my idea that cock-ups are far more frequent than conspiracies.

 

An example of my theory in action is to look at tobacco companies. Logic suggested they were doomed from the 1960’s, when evidence that cigarettes caused cancer became clear. Instead, they thrived until very recently. The reason is Non Solutionism. They made vague promises and participated in a process, all the time delaying and seeking short-term advantage. They had witting and unwitting allies on the other side: which politician wants to lose billions of tax revenue or to upset millions of constituents? The result is that tobacco company shares were great investments for many years, for anybody whose ethics permitted such a cynical bet.

 

For those of us interested in stifling Non Solutionism, the first step is to recognise it. That can be tough: consider that we have all fallen for it in Israel for a generation. Once recognised, the next steps are short-term focus and project management. Rather than allowing people to hide behind vague long-term goals, instead organise behind promoting well-defined short-term targets and actions. Sadly, liberals are not often good at this, as the Guardian proves week after week.

 

I have sold all my oil company shares, but this was premature. At least, if I follow my own logic, it can reduce any anxiety about my primary financial asset, my Shell pension. Non Solutionism usually wins.