Daniel DiSalvo Journalist Profile

Articles

The City of Angels’ Fiscal Abyss

Nov 1, 2024 | city-journal.org | Daniel DiSalvo

The self-styled capital of the American West faces a governance crisis that should alarm urbanists and municipal bondholders alike. Los Angeles teeters on the brink of fiscal emergency, not from some big external shock, but from the predictable consequences of years of financial mismanagement. The immediate trigger is $258 million in liability costs, largely stemming from police misconduct and personal injury lawsuits.
Free information eroded the parties. It doesn’t have to topple them.

Sep 25, 2024 | hypertext.niskanencenter.org | Daniel DiSalvo

Anyone who reflects on the history of democracies must be struck by the inverse relationship between the internal democracy of political parties and their ability to sustain democratic governance. Paradoxically, political parties that have been most internally undemocratic have proved to be the guardians of democracy. Only hierarchical organizations have proved able to perform the parties’ crucial mediating role.
Review of Keeping the Republic by Dennis Hale and Marc Landy

Jun 22, 2024 | city-journal.org | Daniel DiSalvo

Keeping the Republic: A Defense of American Constitutionalism, by Dennis Hale and Marc Landy (University of Kansas Press, 2023). The United States Constitution is under attack—again. The chorus of critics—including prominent law professors, journalists, political scientists, and politicians—seems to grow louder daily. They call it a broken relic, standing in the way of furthering equality and social cohesion.
Review of "Government Project" by Edward C. Banfield

May 15, 2024 | city-journal.org | Daniel DiSalvo

Government Project, by Edward C. Banfield (AEI Press, 248 pp., $14.95)Socialists often say their preferred economic system has never really been tried. In their eyes, the horrific results of the Soviet Union and Communist China’s collective farms don’t undermine socialists’ vision of collective ownership. While many remember Communist countries’ collective farms, fewer remember that the United States built similar sites during the New Deal.
Reassessing Edward Banfield | City Journal

Nov 4, 2023 | city-journal.org | Daniel DiSalvo

In 1970, the Harvard University political scientist Edward C. Banfield published The Unheavenly City. The book sold widely, aroused controversy, and became prominent in political and policy debate, even being featured in Life. University students disrupted Banfield’s classes and protested his speeches. Before “political correctness,” Banfield was already a victim of it.
Review of In a Bad State by David Schleicher

Jun 14, 2023 | city-journal.org | Daniel DiSalvo

In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises, by David Schleicher (Oxford University Press, 248 pp., $29.95)Imagine, sometime in the next decade, that the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago hold a joint press conference to declare that the state and city can’t pay their bills. Schools close, crime spikes, garbage goes uncollected, and public employees protest proposed job and pension cuts. It’s a mess. What, if anything, should the federal government do?
Mentor and Friend

May 10, 2023 | city-journal.org | Daniel DiSalvo

Fred Siegel’s death is a great loss for the intellectual life of New York City—the city that Fred loved and did so much to help revive. In his intense intellectualism and personal style, one might say that Fred was among the last in a long line of Jewish New York writers and thinkers that started with the famous group at City College in the 1940s and 1950s—Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, and Irving Kristol. He had much in common with them.
The Pension Python Comes for New York

Apr 27, 2023 | city-journal.org | Daniel DiSalvo

Few in New York are likely to know, and even fewer to remember, “Squeezy the Pension Python,” the main character in a viral video seeking to win public support for pension reform in Illinois a decade ago. But they might want to give it a look. Pythons squeeze their prey until they asphyxiate. Pension costs can similarly suffocate cities and imperil their growth. New York is, once again, facing such a challenge.
How to Solve the Pension Problem Defunding America’s Cities | National Review

Apr 12, 2023 | nationalreview.com | Daniel DiSalvo |Jordan McGillis

The budgetary strain that public employees' pensions put on the cities will mean either higher taxes or decreased public services, unless our cities embrace a necessary alternative: pension reform.
Big City Pensions and the Urban Doom Loop

Apr 6, 2023 | manhattan-institute.org | Daniel DiSalvo |Jordan McGillis

Introduction The Covid-19 pandemic induced great financial instability for America’s big cities. Pension financing, which constitutes a substantial slice of municipal expenditures, rose and fell, as well. A bull market in 2021 was followed by a market collapse in 2022, wiping out the gains made by state and local pension funds over the previous decade. Pension funds are heavily dependent on their investment portfolios.