Cats and Dogs

Oakland has snatched back the Raiders from Los Angeles, which now must plot to take the Cardinals from Phoenix, which a few years ago seduced the Cardinals from St. Louis. This same St. Louis, not coincidentally, accepted delivery just last Friday on the Rams, freshly taken from Anaheim, which had taken them from Los Angeles. And that takes care of news from the football division of the hot new American pastime, which is the national battle over what might be loosely termed “stuff.”

Sports teams, computer chip plants, military bases, forklift factories, fast-food chains, prisons, universities--all that stuff and more has been fair game in this raging war of municipal seduction. It’s a rough game, and losers can expect little pity from the pack.

For example, Sacramento today is weeping over the recommended closure of McClellan Air Force Base, a move which could cost the city something like 14,000 civilian jobs. And yet, in the earthquake-torn San Fernando Valley, they will remember with vengeful smiles how just last year Sacramento stole away a Chatsworth-based computer company and its 3,000 jobs. Palmdale remembers too. Palmdale wanted to snatch the same computer company, but Sacramento snatched first.

Similarly, a federal commission decision on Friday to eliminate the Long Beach Naval Shipyard was received with loud hosannas in San Diego, where it will mean more business for private shipyards. To cheer on the commissioners, San Diegans had hung from their facilities huge banners that read: “Close down the Long Beach Naval Shipyard.” Now that’s the spirit.

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These are ferocious times, and any softhearted municipality that frets about taking jobs from a neighbor might wake up one morning to find its own fertilizer factory loaded up and making tracks for the next county. And there always is a next county. As the economy fumbles along, especially here in the Golden State, elected officials and local boosters have become uniformly covetous of their neighbor’s businesses and attractions. Anything to create jobs, jobs, jobs.

And so they raid one another day and night. They swoop in on private jets, governors, mayors, industrial pooh-bahs, dazzling CEOs with promises to suspend taxes, grease permits, sacrifice native fauna--whatever it takes to persuade their quarry to jump ship. This practice has persisted throughout the recession and continues in this, our so-called recovery. At the same time, to prevent defections, these suitors are obliged to offer their own firms the same fiscal delights. It can add up, draining the public coffers, but no one seems to care much during the competition itself. Like the man said, just win, baby. And pay later.

For CEOs, owners of football teams and the like, this naturally makes for great sport. All the world wants them, and will fatten their wallets to prove it. Similarly, triumph can be a heady experience for elected officials. At a joyous press conference Friday, the mayor of Oakland, an otherwise dignified fellow named Elihu Harris, attempted to squeeze on a Raiders helmet. Comically, it didn’t fit. Maybe the helmet was too small--or maybe poor Harris had listened too closely to his own hyperbole, causing his head to grow:

“Nothing can capture the emotion and spirit of this day,” he had enthused for the cameras. “This is truly a historic day. . . . The words Oakland and Raiders are synonymous. It choked many people’s throats to have to put Los Angeles and the Raiders together. And it wasn’t just the smog that made that happen.”

His balloon would pop within hours, when Oakland learned it, too, would be losing a military base, worth 3,000 jobs--or, roughly, 60 football teams.

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The sort of people who find these American intramurals not so thrilling were on display Monday when the 5 p.m. whistle blew at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. The workers who straggled to the bus bench at the shipyard gate wore sullen expressions and talked in low, bitter rumbles.

They described lifetimes of hard work at this one place, and conversely discussed vague futures driving truck or peddling sandwiches. They couldn’t understand why the base had been whacked; they thought a convincing case had been made to keep it open. They had only theories.

They spoke of a commission that was “snowballed” and of unnamed “powers that be” who somehow “got to the admirals” and persuaded the Navy to betray Long Beach in favor of San Diego. They spoke of “politics” and “corporate greed,” of a national betrayal of “the working man,” of an economy that “treats us like numbers.”

In short, theirs was a common lament for an all too common situation. It was the lament of pawns as they are lifted from the game board, disposed of wholesale by unseen, unknown hands. The lament of losers. Ah, but yes, somewhere there was cheering. . . .