Welcome friends!
I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge at some point yet another senseless conservative-inspired American tragedy that took place a few weeks ago. This time it was the unfortunate suicide of a young man (29 years old) named Huy Pham. As you may recall Mr. Pham was the municipal maintenance worker from Costa Mesa CA who tossed himself off the roof of the local civic center shortly after being peremptorily laid off as part of a conservative Republican cost cutting scheme to eliminate city departments and transfer city services to private companies.
This is all particularly poignant to me because if newspaper reports are to be believed Mr. Pham was quite the exemplary employee and citizen. He had apparently given no previous indication of being depressed or under undue stress. Indeed, he had received his contractor’s license and was apparently planning on entering the building trade. Unfortunately, construction in CA is a little down right now (you know, the whole housing bubble and financial crisis the conservative market worshippers conjured out of nothing). So Mr. Pham apparently didn’t feel he had very good prospects at the moment. What he did have was a large extended family he was helping to support on what I’m sure was a relatively modest income as a municipal maintenance worker. However, neither his exemplary work ethic nor his family responsibilities made much of a difference to his wealthy conservative employers on the town council, who basically gave him the boot as a matter of course along with about half of the city’s other employees.
Of course, it’s one of the standing conceits of conservatism that the magic of the marketplace renders government services unnecessary and that even when they are inexplicably necessary one can always save a buck by outsourcing the work to private companies (because, you know, government employees are invariably lazy and incompetent). I have to say I’ve never seen any evidence for this theory myself. I’ve always just assumed it was another bit of stale old dogma expressing conservatives’ general contempt for government and working class people and their corollary adulation of private business and rich people (the kind of people who tend not to need most government services in the first place). However, to be fair, I wouldn’t rule out one might see some modest cost savings, at least at first. After all, all levels of government in this country are rather unique in their relatively open and accountable employment practices, and of course they have legal responsibilities to their customers, while private companies are relatively free to do whatever they can to screw their workers (and actually their customers as well whenever they get enough market power to get away with it, which seems to be quite often from what I can see). So let’s give it a chance. I’d be interested in knowing what kind of cost savings we’re talking about in this case. You know, nothing wrong with trying some things. If it doesn’t pan out then we can always go back to business as usual, although I suppose it might be a little trickier to resurrect Mr. Pham. Oh and yes, I know what you’re thinking, but I haven’t seen any evidence anyone on the city council had financial relationships with the private companies that stand to make a buck.
But setting aside these nickel-and-dime issues what I find more interesting about this story is how all these economic conservative bully boys go about their business. I’ve mentioned in many of my previous posts the rather obvious propensity of social conservatives to become bullies (seems hardly a week goes by where I couldn’t write something on that topic) but I don’t think I’ve discussed the very similar propensity of economic conservatives to do the same. What am I talking about? Well, I gather from the newspaper articles some people in Costa Mesa are more than a little upset about how the city council went about its business. Basically, it seems they were in quite the rush to tell Mr. Pham and his many colleagues to get the hell out, apparently delivering all two hundred or so layoff notices on a single day. Now I’m not sure if anyone actually said, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” but I do know one of Mr. Pham’s co-workers said in the papers he felt the city council and their “quick-acting decisions” led directly to Mr. Pham’s suicide. And I also know some Costa Mesa city workers accused the conservative city council of not even attempting to work with their employees to bring down costs, which all sounds pretty familiar and entirely plausible to me.
To add a small note of levity to the tragic story someone apparently photographed the conservative mayor of Costa Mesa, local businessman Gary Monahan, celebrating St. Patrick’s Day at the Irish bar he owns less than two hours after Mr. Pham’s tragic demise (and looking quite the jolly old elf with his kilt and glass of beer, I must say). Mr. Berardino, the general manager of the Orange County Employees Association, was a little incredulous. He says he asked Mr. Monahan why he was celebrating when one of his employees had just killed himself apparently out of despondency from having been summarily fired. Turning on that old conservative charm Mr. Monahan explained he had a business to run. Well, he did. He later accused the union of trying to embarrass him, which is after all much the bigger issue here. Of course, to be fair, Mr. Monahan denied having any sort of conversation at all with Mr. Berardino or knowing anything about Mr. Pham’s death at the time. But, you know what? I think I believe Mr. Berardino’s account. It certainly corresponds with my experience of the conservative mentality in this country. So some working class schlub lost his job and killed himself? So what? I have a business to run!
Nor is this an isolated case by any means. The conservatives’ hugely successful agenda over these past several years of transforming American society into a sort of top heavy winner-take-all banana republic; their contemptuous mass layoffs of middle class government workers; their determination to bust unions; their assault on government job and educational programs; their reckless enthusiasm for deregulation in any and every context; and their self-serving support of the financial elite of the country have left many young people in quite the precarious financial position indeed. The financial elite seem determined we deem this entirely intolerable situation the “new normal.” Right. Sorry folks, but a normal society looks after their young. (I know, I know ... all together now ... we have a business to run!) So to me Mr. Pham actually represents a great many young people in our society today who maybe aren’t driven entirely over the edge as was Mr. Pham but who are certainly somewhere near it and liable to follow him over at any time.
Oh, and I would like to just add one more thing, which is I think Mr. Pham is the type of person I would like to have known personally. I don’t know, maybe I’m just tired of all the obsequious hagiographies of the rich and famous, the only people who really matter to conservatives, but I actually think I have a little more interest in and respect for a responsible and struggling young man who was doing his best under trying circumstances, who ended up being abruptly fired from his job in difficult economic times through absolutely no fault of his own, and who ultimately killed himself to protest the unjust system under which he lived. You know, I think I’d be interested in a TV program on that. But the only thing on is a ten part mini-series on famous rich people. Oh well. I suppose realistically that’s probably the last we’ll hear of Mr. Pham. Hey, who knows, maybe there’s an afterlife of some sort after all. Maybe one day I’ll meet Mr. Pham. Maybe we’ll raise a glass or two and share our thoughts on what really ails the nation. But for now, let me just say so long, Huy Pham. You were a good man.
