Joshua Glenn over at The Boston Globe/Brainiac has been working on a smart series on American generational categories. In the inaugural post, he takes on the question of whether Barack Obama (born in 1961) is part of the baby boom generation or the post-baby-boom generation. Arguing that the traditional twenty-year generational divisions aren't sufficiently flexible, he proposes the following categories:

1914-23: Greatest Generation
1924-33: Postmodernist Generation
1934-43: Anti-Anti-Utopian Generation
1944-53: Boomers
1954-63: OGX (Original Generation X)
1964-73: PC Generation
1974-83: Net Generation
1984-93: Millennials
1994-03: Too soon to say

While I have criticized John Street on YPP, I have tried to resist as many knee-jerk posts as possible. Why? Because I think he certainly gets enough of that anyway, some of which I think is baseless. That said, I am really looking forward to the post-John Street Philadelphia. I don't think he is a bad guy. Heck, I don't think he was a terrible Mayor (at least not compared to some others). I do think he was a weird character, and I will simply be glad to move on.

For example...

A week or so ago, Street gave a strange, rambling address to City Council, where he talked about how financially secure he was, because of the DROP program. For those who don't know, DROP was a program that gave lump pension payments to City Employees who picked their retirement dates four years in advance. The whole point was to keep skilled, retirement eligible people in City government a little longer, by giving them a chunk of their pension upfront. The trouble was that if anything, the program appeared to be encouraging people to retire early, and it was costing the City money.

Seeing this in 2003, a guy by the name of John Street said the City should eliminate DROP. (Councilman Mike Nutter said it should at least be ended for elected officals.) However, the City Pension Board kept DROP, and Mayor Street promptly opted into it, and four years later, bragged to City Council about the $451,00 bucks he was getting from the City. Nice!

Back in 2004, Street justified his going into DROP, despite saying it should be eliminated, by mentioning that he refused to accept a salary increase for himself that City Council voted him: (Daily News, March 11, 2004)

"Those salary increases were too high," Street said. "But I'm not in a position to tell union members that I'm getting into DROP, and they can't. It's available to them, but I plan to be aggressive in holding down union contract costs and to put pretty severe restrictions on pay increases."

Ah that salary hike he turned down, saying it was too high: (Daily News, Oct 31, 2003)

"...the magnitude of the raises are inappropriate . . . This is a very difficult time economically for our country, [and] our city workers are obviously concerned about raises and benefits. I think it does set a bad tone for Council to be voting a raise for itself."

Of course, this week we learned that despite the doom and gloom we hear about the future budgets of the City, and the looming contract fights with City workers, clearly circumstances must have magically changed, and the City is no longer economically hurting. Because despite turning it down all those years, John Street has retroactively taken that pay raise, as if he never denied it in the first place, pocketing himself another $111,000. In other words, he got credit for turning it down, even though he now is reaching back in time, and taking it all.

Nice!

I don't begrudge the Mayor a good salary. But, when you criticize programs as inappropriate, and then grab $550,000 on your way out the door...

Mayor Street, my friend, as they say on SportsCenter, Aloha means goodbye.