Biden, Absolutely

If there were a category for "white privilege from black guy," this tweeter would win hands-down.

Labor must divest from Democrats and Republicans.

You can not be align with Labor and Democrats at the same time.

Shawn Fain is such a sellout, using radical language to fool people.. he is the AOC of Labor https://t.co/57xlCAYTuy

— Revolutionary Blackout Network (@RevBlackNetwork) January 25, 2024

 

 It's easy to be easy to be in favor of anything when there is no downside to support of a organization, cause, or movement. Not so with Joe Biden being the most pro-labor President since Lyndon Johnson or possibly beyond.  In October, Peter Nicholas and Peter Alexander of NBC News wrote 

Joe Biden’s tight alliance with organized labor has unnerved some of his business supporters, who worry that his rhetoric and administration's actions make it tough to rally corporate leaders and CEOs and win their energetic backing of his 2024 presidential candidacy.

Advisers have directly urged Biden to state bluntly that he wants to help business succeed — a message that tends to get lost as he courts working-class voters and embraces their cause for better pay and working conditions, said a top political ally who requested anonymity to speak frankly about internal discussions.

 “You deserve what you’ve earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid now," Biden said last month during a first-of-its-kind appearance with striking workers at a picket line in Michigan. Talking through a bullhorn, he stood alongside United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain who, when it was his turn to speak, said that CEOs "sit in their offices, they sit in meetings, and they make decisions. But we make the product."

The video to which the tweet links is a portion of the message delivered by United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on January 22 at the union's annual National Community Action Program Conference.. Fain referred briefly to the war in the Mideast but

also criticized the wealthy for using issues like gender identity, sexual orientation, race, and nationality to divide the working class, and it was in this context that he criticized the scapegoating of immigrants. He also emphasized the UAW's history of backing civil rights and environmental justice.

That highlights a stark divide between Democrats and Republicans, which can be missed only by an individual with a serious sense of privilege. Biden is not only pro-labor but with a perspective radically different than that of his immediate predecessor. And so 

The criticism Biden faces may be driven in part by the pendular shift since the Trump administration, when business flourished under tax cuts and deregulatory measures. Most of the tax cuts that Donald Trump signed into law in 2017 wound up benefiting corporations and higher-income individuals, a Congressional Research Service report showed.

Today, business leaders point to a Biden appointee, Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, along with heads of agencies that oversee labor and consumer relations as impediments to competition and survival in the marketplace.

“Biden at his core is a blue-collar guy from Scranton. He’s never worked in business and he doesn’t have any particular interest in those issues and I don’t criticize him for that,” said Steven Rattner, a longtime Democratic donor who headed the auto industry task force in the Obama administration. “Rightly or wrongly, there’s a perception that there’s a fair amount of hostility toward business, and that makes the business community nervous.”

One Democratic fundraiser, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, said: “As a general matter, the business community has felt very much ignored by Biden. In our part of the business community, where we raise money, Lina Khan’s name — both of them — are four-letter words." Khan has rankled business by targeting large companies, such as Amazon and Microsoft, and stoking uncertainty about future mergers.

Upon announcing his union's endorsement, Fain asserted "instead of talking trash about our union, Joe Biden stood with us. Donald Trump stands against everything we stand for as a union, as a society."  Radical or not, it is an inescapable observation.

  

 

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Open Borders Sarah

Sarah Huckabee Sanders- as well as most Republicans- wants to divert our attention. In her rebuttal in February to the State of the Union Address of President Joe Biden, the Arkansas governor declared

Upon taking office just a few weeks ago, I signed executive orders to ban CRT, racism and indoctrination in our schools, eliminate the use of derogatory term, LatinX in our government....

President Biden is unwilling to defend our border....

A rebuilt military and a world that was stable and at peace, are now killed from drug overdoses, largely from fentanyl pouring across our southern border. Yet the Biden administration refuses to secure the border and save American lives.

Do you know who else (or maybe not "else") is unwilling to defend or secure our border? It's Open Borders Sarah. While politicians, pundits, and people affix their glaze upon the governor banning history not taught in public schools and use of a fairly obscure term not widely used in Arkansas (Arkansas!), Sanders is going after her real target. CNN reports

Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law this week that rolls back a number of child labor protections across the state, including a measure that had required employers to obtain work certificates for children under the age of 16.

“The Governor believes protecting kids is most important, but this permit was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job,” Sanders’ spokesperson Alexa Henning said in a statement. “All child labor laws that actually protect children still apply and we expect businesses to comply just as they are required to do now.”

Well, no, they don't expect businesses to comply because if they did, they wouldn't be giving encouraging them to employ children. Previously

minors under the age of 16 needed to verify their age and get the written consent of a parent or guardian before a work certificate could be issued by the state’s Division of Labor. But H.B. 1410, known as the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, which passed the Arkansas state legislature earlier this month, no longer requires youth under the age of 16 to have that work certificate as a condition of their employment.

The bill’s passage comes after the Biden administration announced last month plans to crackdown on labor exploitation of migrant children across the country, the New York Times reported, following an investigation conducted by the publication.

However, it appears the government in Little Rock is pleased to encourage exploitation of the labor of migrant children while

Proponents of the legislation argued that removing the certificate would eliminate a tedious step that stood in the way of minors getting a job quickly in the state. They also said that the bill would restore decision-making to parents about their children and streamline the hiring process for minors.

But opponents of the legislation have argued that the work certificate served as a form of protection for vulnerable youth, especially immigrant youth, who may not always have a parent or guardian to sign off for them to work and who could be exploited without that certificate.

“When we think about kids working who are 14, we think about who this might protect, it’s not the 14-year-old who’s working at the ice cream parlor in your hometown, whose parents have given them permission to work. We’re worried about the children who are at risk of being exploited and who are being exploited today,” Laura Kellams, the northwest Arkansas director of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a group that advocates for children’s rights in the state, said earlier this month during a committee hearing on the bill.

It's not good for the rights of children because they will be easily exploited. It's also not good for the wages of adults and young men and women as children enter the workforce, compete for jobs, and drive wages down.

It is good, however, for private sector employers who want to pay their employees as little as possible with as few rights and benefits as possible. It's good for the business of immigration, legal and illegal, which Sarah Sanders is promoting.

Evidently, employing children is big business, one which the Governor is doing her best to encourage whileSanders’ signing of the bill comes after a major US food sanitation company that operated facilities in eight states, including Arkansas, recently paid a $1.5 million civil penalty for employing minors in hazardous conditions.

Packers Sanitation Services illegally employed at least 102 children between the ages of 13 and 17 in jobs that required them to use toxic chemicals and clean razor-sharp saws.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is striving to be the kind of Republican the party movers and shakers are looking for.  Get the left outraged about the indignities foisted upon racial and sexual minorities while boosting the interests of business by employing children of immigrants, keeping wages down and workers subservient. driven by a surprising source. woke capitalism is thriving in Arkansas.

 

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Race, and Beyond

1. Pretty much every right-wing politician will mark MLK Day with the same quote, stripped of all context

REMINDER: MLK SAID MORE THAN 35 WORDS

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) January 16, 2023

Judd Legum makes a good point: One-sided portrayals can rival comic books in their simplicity but are often unreliable. If you can see his (16) tweet thread, you'll see that Legum notes (emphasis his) "the idea that today, MLK would advocate IGNORING racial and economic inequality is absurd." 

We would do well to remember- heck, even merely to acknowledge, as the mainstream media strives to avoid- that King believed that racial and economic justice are interwoven. In the video below from eleven years ago, journalist John Nichols makes that point.  Thus referring in 1961 to right-to-work laws, Reverend King stated

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.

Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.

In its 2017 decision in Janus whose majority opinion was written by Antonin Alito, the five GOP Justices ruled "states and public sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from non consenting employees."  The number of states with right-to-work laws has grown from 20 to 27. Elizabeth Warren has thrice submitted bills to outlaw such laws, the latest last autumn and co-sponsored by several Democratic senators. 

The failure of legislation to gain traction, combined with the Supreme Court decision, should underscore continuing opposition by Republicans to the rights of workers.  And that the GOP remains hostile not only to Martin Luther King's vision of racial, but also of economic, rights.

 

 

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No Thanks

The Interior Secretary is planning to undermine implementation of the Endangered Species Act and a peeved Malcolm Nance remarks

Nice. Thank You Jill Stein & @GreenPartyUS. Never ever call yourselves environmentalists. #ButHerEmails https://t.co/Dl2bDwQw6W

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) August 11, 2018

Environmentalism is the raison d'etre of the Green Party which, among other things, helped pave the way for the Trump presidency and probably put George W. Bush, instead of Al Gore, into the White House sixteen years earlier. And so Dr. Stein and her cohorts probably are unconcerned that, as the Los Angeles Times found earlier this week

The day before she was to testify before President Trump’s school safety commission, Jennifer Johnston, an expert on media coverage of mass shootings, received a phone call from an Education Department advisor who asked her to “refrain” from any gun-control remarks.

The official, Kent Talbert, cited a section of her pre-submitted testimony that called for federal officials to “greatly restrict the sale of semiautomatic and automatic weapons across states,” Johnston recalled.

Johnston ultimately backed off and additionally

During more than 20 hours of testimony in five panels, three field visits and two public listening sessions so far, commission officials have largely avoided, limited or, in Johnston’s case, suppressed discussion of gun-control measures, according to interviews with participants and a review of official video recordings of events available on the commission’s website.

Gun safety probably is not a high priority of 77-year-old Connie Kessler, an Ohio resident of the Mahoning Valley, which is midway between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. It is an "old steel country full of labor union members," which "has been loyal Democratic turf for generations" and

"He's the one that turned me," she says at her makeshift reception desk near a giant cut-out of the president, with his signature thumbs-up gesture. "When I walked in here to sign up as a volunteer, I was a Democrat," she says. "I don't want Democrat next to my name anymore."

The Administration headed by Donald Trump continues to address the interests of such hard-working, salt-of-the-earth traditional Democrats by

- rescinding a Department of Labor regulation which required employers to pay overtime if employees worked over 40 hours a week;

- rescinding a Department of Labor regulation in which employers were barred from "tip pooling," which redistributed tips paid to service workers'

- signing a congressional resolution which required employers to report workplace injuries or illnesses to OSHA;

- blocking "the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which banned government contracts from going to companies with poor safety or labor records, and kept track of violations;"

- killing the fiduciary rule, in which economic advisers were bound to act in the best interests of their clients;

 - appointing to the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch, who cast the deciding vote in a  May decision which made it more difficult to file class-action lawsuits against employers, and in June's Janus vs. AFSCME, which puts all public employees under right-to-work laws, in which unions cannot charge non-members fees for representation, and which mandates new employees opt-in for membership.

President Trump is only getting started. Laws or regulations protecting the environment, workers, the elderly, schoolchildren, poor people, and others are in his sights.  There is a whole lot of blame to go around for Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party, and many others who assisted the election of Donald Trump. It may be that the animals to which Malcolm Bunch referred are not the only endangered species.

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Walker Leading The Red Meat Primary

Perception is reality, some people say. Actually, perception isn't reality. If it were reality, it would be spelled "reality.".

So Scott Walker recently claimed

I have two sons. … I know all of you as parents feel the same way. I want a commander-in-chief who will do everything in their power to ensure the threat from radical Islamic terrorists will not wash up on American soil. We will have someone who leads and ultimately will send the message that will protect American soil but “Do not take this upon freedom-loving people here or anywhere around the world.” We need a leader with that kind of confidence. If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.

Some conservatives, astonishingly and boldly, criticized Walker's remarks. Once and possible future GOP candidate Rick Perry noticed "These are Americans (and) to try to make the relationship between them and the unions is inappropriate.” The National Review's Jim Geraghty found Walker's comment "insulting to the protesters, a group I take no pleasure in defending," one which "earned plenty of criticism but is "not ISIS." "The protesters in Wisconsin, asserted Geraghty, "so furiously angry over Walker’s reforms and disruptive to the procedures of passing laws, earned plenty of legitimate criticism. But they’re not ISIS."

The Republican critics, though bold given their audience of elites which believes pro-union protesters may be worse than ISIS, at least did not argue they would harm the Wisconsin governor's presidential prospects. Meanwhile, Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall stated "Walker managed to come off as offensive, callow and silly, all at the same time" while Firedoglake's GS Wright maintained "Walker either genuinely thinks unions are truly as wicked as ISIS or is incapable of articulating himself without saying something dumb and offensive."

Skepticism of Walker's comment as strategy extends even to those who ostensibly defend the governor.  John Dickerson of Slate argues the Walker argument

"is reductionist foreign policy aimed at protecting every free country across the globe is a little trickier than that- and it's a logical fallacy, but it's not a comparison.The logical fallacy is that strength in one category can be transferred to another. (You may know its cousin: If we can put a man on the moon … ) It’s also a familiar candidate gambit.

He adds, nevertheless, "At the start of his CPAC remarks, Walker said that President Obama 'thinks we grow the economy by growing Washington.' That’s not exactly a complete and fair rendering of the president’s views. Walker has just now gotten a taste of what it’s like being president."

And if he keeps doing this sort of thing, he may get halfway to president (in a sense, more than halfway) by winning his party's nomination. Steve M. quotes Laura Ingraham at CPAC (in video below, beginning at approximately 4:20) stating

But we have to realize, my friends, you go into battle with the political system you have. And we already know that the media and much of the donor class is hostile to conservatism. And guess what? That's been true for a very long time. They were joking on MSNBC this morning about Scott Walker's comment yesterday....

My friend Craig Shirley reminded me of this. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was campaigning—I think it was before the New Hampshire primary -- and he said, I know how to deal with the Soviets. I can bring them to the negotiating table. After all, I had to deal with the old studio chiefs in Hollywood. And the media, just like they did with Scott Walker, went after him. Oh, how could he compare dealing with the studio heads? And Ronald Reagan basically said, 'I have a sense of humor, and you don't.









Recognizing what the GOP has become, SM comments

Even if Ingraham is trying to help Walker to do a climbdown, she's saying his remark is being pounced on by the same sorts of evil media liberals who hated and underestimated Reagan, the greatest human being who ever walked the earth. 

How the hell does that comparison leave Walker with any lasting damage as far as rank-and-file Republicans are concerned? If you say Walker joked the way Reagan joked, how does he lose face with the voters he seeks?

SM believes Walker is hitting the sweet spot with the GOP voter base. And if he is doing so, it appears, he is accomplishing it without alienating members of the donor class with no talk of "legitimate rape," without saying their gay daughter should not be able to marry her friend, and without even suggesting any specific military response to ISIS (or any terrorist group). SM continues

By the way, I can't find Shirley's anecdote online. I searched a number of ways, including within the texts of Shirley's voluminous history of the 1980 campaign. My search skills may be failing me, but if I'm right, this never actually happened.

Then again, Reagan liked to make up stories that "proved" his point, didn't he? Reagan was criticized in the media for this, but it never seemed to do him serious harm.

Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6) was the master of anecdote, some truthful and some made up, the latter no obstacle.   As of now, the only Republican contemplating a presidential run who has been at all courageous or "tough" (as Donald Trump would put it) is Rick Perry.  But his party's voters aren't looking for a candidate who will call out another politician for blasting middle-class and working-class people.  They're looking for someone who is certain who the villains are, and that they're all the same.






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A Nice Thing To Say

Politico's Kevin Robillard reports that (in a shocking blow to the middle class)

Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., have rejected the United Auto Workers, shooting down the union’s hopes of securing a foothold at a foreign-owned auto plant in the South.

The vote was 712 to 626, said the UAW, which blamed the loss on “politicians and outside special interest groups"...

the decision is a triumph for Tennessee Republicans like Sen. Bob Corker, who lured Volkswagen to Chattanooga as mayor in the early 2000s. Corker and other Republicans warned workers that the UAW’s presence would irreparably harm the plant, and in recent days he claimed — with little evidence — that Volkswagen would choose not to expand the plant if workers unionized.

“Needless to say, I am thrilled for the employees at Volkswagen and for our community and its future,” Corker said in a brief statement Friday night.

The D.C.-based Center for Worker Freedom, a division of conservative activist Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, also campaigned against the union drive by blaming unions for Detroit’s economic woes and saying the UAW supports liberal politicians who favor gun control.

In a statement, the UAW blamed the conservative groups and Tennessee Republicans for their stinging defeat, with UAW Region 8 Director Gary Casteel saying that “politically motivated third parties threatened the economic future of this facility and the opportunity for workers to create a successful operating model that would grow jobs in Tennessee.”

“While we’re outraged by politicians and outside special interest groups interfering with the basic legal right of workers to form a union, we’re proud that these workers were brave and stood up to the tremendous pressure from outside,” UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams said. “We hope this will start a larger discussion about workers’ right to organize.”

Or, as is more likely, embolden anti-worker politicians and groups.  Robillard continues

If the UAW couldn’t succeed in Chattanooga, it’s unlikely to find success elsewhere in the South.

The UAW had advantages in organizing the Volkswagen plant it probably won’t find elsewhere. For starters, Volkswagen — under pressure from the powerful German steelworkers’ union, IG Metall, which holds seats on the company’s board — decided not to resist unionization. The union’s presence would have also allowed the company to set up a German-style “works council,” in which representatives of both workers and middle management offer advice to executives on how to best run the plant.

“I don’t think this is a bellwether for future success for the UAW,” said Donald Schroeder, a management-side labor lawyer at Mintz Levin, before the results were announced. “The UAW almost has had a free run at unionizing.”

While the German union also has seats on the boards of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, those companies haven’t indicated they’d welcome a works council at their plants in South Carolina or Alabama. But the works council concept is still alive.

Other foreign-owned automakers in the U.S., like Nissan and Hyundai, are also likely to strongly resist unionization attempts.

In addition, Volkswagen’s workers were underpaid by industry standards, with wages topping out in the low $20-an-hour range.

President Obama, however, weighed in with his support for the workers in their conflict with Tennessee rightists.  According to reports from anonymous sources, Obama responded to a question about extension of unemployment benefits by charging GOP legislators "are more concerned about German shareholders than American workers."

The ironies abound, whether "having a free election just freaks people out" (as Chris Hayes put it Thursday) or Repubs go all in for the heavy hand of government when they can interfere with a union-management issue.  And on Friday, Hayes argued that concern of the GOP legislators probably has more to do with maintaining the tradition of cheap Southern labor than with French shareholders.

Intriguingly, Obama's largely unsolicited remarks supportive of union labor were made at a closed-door session at an annual retreat of House Democrats which took place Valentine's Day "near the end of the (voting) period."   After we've watched this nominal Democrat govern for five years, it is not too cynical to suggest that he decided to score a few points with the left, including the progressive wing of his Party, while incurring relatively little controversy for remarks made too late to have a significant impact upon the election outcome.  It's unlikely that a whole lot of autoworkers took time out of their work day to scour the Internet or listen to the local news.

But it was a nice gesture. And for a guy who still is looking for those shoes comfortable enough to join a picket line, it was a step forward.











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As Unions Wither


David Atkins notes

Dealing with the long-term unemployed and the minimum wage only barely scratches the surface of the conversation on income inequality. It's a conversation to which the comfortable asset classes would like to limit the conversation, because it allows them to wedge the middle class against the poor, when the real divide is between the 1% and 99%.

There is probably no Senate Democrat who more clearly belongs to "the comfortable asset classes" than the darling of Wall Street, Chuck Schumer. Nonetheless, other neo-liberals and/or centrists, including Barack Obama, have joined the bandwagon to extend unemployment compensation and increase the minimum wage. They recognize the growing disaster of long-term unemployment as well as their party's ongoing commitment to helping the poor, the truly destitute. But Atkins realizes

The treatment of the poor and unemployed isn't where the economic progressive line is drawn. Ensuring that the most vulnerable are well taken care of in society is a bare minimum standard. The energy behind the cause of income inequality is about increasing the negotiating power of workers across the spectrum while disincentivizing the hollowing out and rent-seeking of the economy by the parasitic asset classes. Progressive action on income inequality is about expanding Social Security, reinvesting in pensions, eliminating student loan debt, raising the capital gains tax, instituting a financial transaction tax, reinstating Glass Steagall, expanding labor unions, enhancing worker protections, and a host of similar issues designed to maximize middle class negotiating power.

That about covers it, though Atkins, a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, hasn't noticed the impact of unrestricted illegal immigration in lowering the wage rate and undermining worker protections. (Immediately making illegal immigrants citizens upon legalization would reduce that effect. Don't hold your breath.)  The 7th and 8th factors cited by Atkins have been on display in Seattle, Washington- and not favorably.   The New Republic's Alec MacGillis writes

In November, by a 2-1 margin, unionized Boeing machinists in Washington state voted down a contract proposal from the company that included freezing their pensions in favor of less generous and riskier 401(k) plans, increasing their out-of-pocket health spending and limiting raises to just 4 percent over the contract's eight-year term. Boeing promptly threatened to move the assembly of its new 777X aircraft to a state with anti-union right-to-work laws, and received no shortage of offers of states eager to provide incentives and bargain-basement labor. Boeing offered the Puget Sound workers a slightly revised contract that reversed a proposed change in the length of time it would take workers to achieve the top wage, but kept the most objectionable elements, including the pension freeze. Boeing’s hard line could hardly be justified by hard times: it is enjoying huge profits and a record $400 billion backlog in orders and two weeks ago raised its dividend by some 50 percent and signed off on a $10 billion stock buyback. 

Local leaders of the International Association of Machinists recommended the 31,000 unionized employees reject membership the awful contract, while the union's national leadership  recommended approval because, MacGillis believes, it did not want to lose the $25 million in union dues.

The revised contract was very narrowly approved and MacGillis explained

So Boeing will put the 777X assembly in the Puget Sound, pocketing $8.7 billion in new tax incentives from Washington state, saving untold millions in labor costs as a result of the new deal and establishing yet another major marker on the graph that has seen workers’ share of corporate gains steadily eroding. Who’s to say what the right vote was for the workers and the Seattle area, given the company’s threats—the Seattle Times couldn’t even bring itself to make a judgment in its milquetoast editorial on the matter. But this chapter should serve as a wake-up call to Obama, Bill de Blasio and other Democrats intent on doing something to reverse rising inequality, stagnating wages and falling economic mobility. The speeches are fine and good, and some solutions are straightforward, such as pushing for a higher minimum wage.

But to really address the underlying trends will also mean taking on the more fundamental forces that lead to an outcome like we just saw in the Puget Sound: strengthening labor laws and unions in right-to-work states to weaken employers' race-to-the-bottom threats to move south; raising taxes on upper incomes and capital gains to slightly rebalance the equation between the McNernys of the world and their flush investors on the one hand and their overmatched workers on the other; and, perhaps most difficult of all, changing the norms for acceptable behavior by corporate titans, even if they've been named to the presidential exports council.

"Oh," MacGillis remarks, Boeings' "CEO Jim McNerny's total compensation is somewhere north of $20 million."

If you have a particularly good memory, that name might sound familiar.  On March 11, 2010 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported

President Barack Obama Thursday named Boeing Chairman, President and Chief Executive Jim McNerney as chairman of the President’s Export Council.

Obama also named Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Ursula Burns as vice chairwoman of the council.

“Jim and Ursula are tremendously talented and experienced, and I am grateful that they have chosen to serve in these important roles as we work to strengthen our economy and create good jobs by boosting our exports,” Obama said in a news release. “I look forward to working with them in the weeks and months ahead.”

So one of Barack Obama's favorites, Jim McNerny, gets a 16% increase to nearly $23 million in gross compensation and threatens to move jobs out of state to coerce the union into accepting a contract substituting a defined contribution pension plan for a defined benefits plan and cutting workers' health benefits.

President Obama cannot by himself end the downslide of unions and workers- hence middle class incomes (graph, below) engineered over three decades by Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6). But the federal government employs by far the greatest number of individuals earning under $24,000 per year (roughly 2,000,000) of whom 500,000 are contract employees. It's too much to expect this President to end this travesty through Executive Order. But it should not be too much for him to acknowledge, as Atkins notes

Obviously, raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits are crucial not only to those affected but also to the broader economy. But even this misses the point. Income inequality isn't just about the poor and those who are most vulnerable. It's about the broad middle class, too, and the fact that the top 1% have hollowed it out.

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For Small Business, One Day A Year

How quaint and heartwarming (feel-good photo, below).  Talking Points Memo contends

President Barack Obama is doing his part to support small businesses.

Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha dropped in Saturday at Washington's Politics and Prose bookstore and purchased what he said was a "long list" of books that included "The Kite Runner," ''Harold and the Purple Crayon," and "The Sports Gene".

The president said he bought a reader for every age, from 5 to 52 -- his age. He paid by credit card. The total was not announced.

Obama sent a tweet earlier Saturday about the importance of supporting small businesses.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving has become known as "Small Business Saturday." It's designed to drive business to mom and pop shops between the whirlwind of Black Friday sales offered by large retailers and Cyber Monday deals from online sellers.

The eminent and profitable Politics and Prose bookstore, sold in 2011 for a reported $2 million, apparently is President Obama's idea of small business, unsurprising given the Administration's enthusiastic support for America's premier killer of small business.  Two months ago, Salon's Josh Eidelson wrote

Since President Obama’s first term, administration officials have joined Walmart executives for events devoted to issues ranging from boosting U.S. manufacturing to hiring returning veterans, including a series of appearances by First Lady Michelle Obama touting Walmart’s role in providing healthy and affordable food. A Walmart press release following a February 28 event at a Springfield, Missouri store quoted the First Lady saying that while before “the conventional wisdom said that healthy products simply didn’t sell…Thanks to Walmart and so many other great American businesses, we are proving the conventional wisdom wrong.”

“It irritates me,” Joe Hansen, the president of the 1.3 million-member United Food & Commercial Workers union, told Salon in a recent interview.

Hansen said that a few years ago, when the UFCW first received word that the First Lady planned to do a Walmart event, “We thought we could ask them not to do it, and we had allies in the administration at the time – we still do, I think, but the ones we had then – and they could not persuade her.” Hansen said the First Lady had “decided that it was more important [to promote] what she considers this healthy food, which really irritates me because you can get just as healthy food in Safeway and Kroger and other places.”

Hansen added that after the first such event, he met with White House advisor Valerie Jarrett, and “she felt we ought to have a conversation. I said I’m willing to do it. The phone still hasn’t rung. And that’s a couple years ago.”

Asked about Hansen’s account, White House Spokesperson Matt Lehrich e-mailed, “We’re proud that many companies…have answered the First Lady’s call to hire veterans and provide healthy foods. The President remains focused every day on building a strong and growing middle class and an economy that works for everyone.”

Critics have questioned whether the numbers announced by Walmart on hiring veterans and U.S. product sourcing are substantial, whether the jobs Walmart is offering vets are worth celebrating, and whether the federal government’s definition of “food deserts” lacking access to healthy food options presupposes large chain stores as the solution.

The UFCW is the largest private sector union in the AFL-CIO. As I’ve reported, it’s also the key player behind OUR Walmart, a non-union workers’ group which has mobilized hundreds of employees in Walmart retail stores for protests over wages, benefits, and working conditions, including a high-profile one-day Black Friday strike last November. Within the six months following that work stoppage, Walmart released a January press release in which the First Lady urged “every business in America to follow Walmart’s lead” in hiring veterans; Michelle Obama made her healthy food-focused visit to the Springfield store; she was introduced at a March business roundtable event by Walmart CEO Mike Duke; and Barack and Michelle Obama and Joe and Jill Biden held an April announcement on veteran hiring with Walmart US CEO Bill Simon at the White House.

Twenty OUR Walmart members have been fired since participating in a longer strike in June, and fifty-some other strikers have been disciplined in what OUR Walmart alleges is a wave of illegal retaliation; Walmart denies targeting strikers. (The company did not respond to a Friday inquiry.) Last month, a civil disobedience action by fired Walmart workers in Washington, DC,took place the same afternoon as a Walmart US Manufacturing Summit in Orlando featuring Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker.

Asked what Pritzker’s appearance there reflected about the administration’s view of Walmart as an employer, U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez told me, “Well, we’re working with everyone on the issue of growing this economy…I think what Senator [Ted] Kennedy taught me as much as anything is that idealism and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive.” Noting the late senator’s work with Republicans on healthcare and hate crimes, Perez said it was “important to bring a wide array of stakeholders to the table to engage in a meaningful way in how we grow a vibrant middle class.” Asked about Walmart’s firings of activist workers, Perez said he hadn’t “studied that situation in sufficient detail,” and so didn’t “feel comfortable opining about the specifics of a particular action.”

As Walmart faces heightened attention to its labor practices and resistance to its urban expansion plans, perceived approval from the President – who joined his opponents in criticizing the company during the 2008 Democratic primary – is a valuable commodity. Walmart’s then-executive vice president of corporate affairs and government relations, Leslie Dach, told investors in 2010 that “our reputation” was “a lever” for achieving Walmart’s aims, among them entering “new markets.” The Nation reported in 2011 that “in a historically black Washington neighborhood where the chain wants to open stores, Michelle Obama stood before a giant Walmart banner and overflowing produce bins and endorsed the chain’s new plan to cut prices on healthy foods and open stores in food deserts.”

On Black Friday, according to union organizers, more than 110 individuals (who now face possible retaliation) were arrested in 1500 protests of Walmart policies.  Five Democratic Representatives and two Democratic Senators (Ohio's Sherrod Brown and Massachusetts' Ed Markey) issued a statement arguing "It is time that Walmart pays its workers a fair wage and stops tramplig on their right" and noting the gigantic retailer "has systematically and illegally retaliated against workers who have had the courage to stand up to improve conditions."

On the same day, Eidelson put the struggle of Walmart employees in context as he explained

Chief among the challenges is this: While U.S. law generally bans companies from punishing workers for organizing (whether toward unionization or as part of a non-union effort like OUR Walmart), it does precious little to avert or avenge such retaliation when companies are dead set on maintaining control. In the months after 100-some strikers staged a several-day work stoppage and protest caravan to Wal-Mart’s June 2013 shareholder meeting, 23 of them were fired – exactly the scenario that’s kept many Wal-Mart workers on the sidelines. While “I do not think I have ever hated any one thing in my life” as much as Wal-Mart, one employee told meshortly before those firings began, he’d be keeping his mouth shut because “Wal-Mart does not tolerate dissenters.”

Wal-Mart denies that it retaliated for striking (but not that it punished some strikers for violating its attendance policy, a pretty specious distinction). The federal National Labor Relations Board announced this month that it was prepared to issue a complaint – similar to an indictment – against the company for illegally trying to restrain strikes; that’s a symbolic victory for the campaign and one step in a potentially years-long legal process that could ultimately see fired employees returned to work.

But what neither Wal-Mart nor OUR Walmart can come out and say is this: While core activists say they’re only emboldened by the fear campaign, by all appearances Wal-Mart threats and firings have so far succeeded in stemming the growth of Wal-Mart strikes. (Alternate explanation, per Wal-Mart: “The opportunity is incredible…We’ve never held a good person back.”) Organizers have declined to say whether today’s protests will see more employees out on strike than last year, but touted growth in total protests, civil disobedience actions, worker support and community backing. (Wal-Mart employee participation in a September 2013 day of civil disobedience and protests – not strikes – also numbered in the hundreds, according to the campaign.)

Placerville Wal-Mart employee Dorothy Halvorson told me she was stirred to get more active with OUR Walmart when she saw the company crack down on her co-workers. But she said such retaliation “has put fear back into some of the people that were thinking about joining us.” When three activists were fired in her store, said Halvorson, others “stepped back into like, ‘Oh no, we’ve got to be careful — we might be fired too.’” She said that because of the NLRB’s planned complaint against Wal-Mart, “people are starting to feel more empowered again about doing it.”

The statement from the five members of Congress could have been echoed by the White House, whose current occupant once declared (video, below)

And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.










But that was in the distant past, and Barack Obama now would rather do a photo op at a renowned bookstore than demonstrate any substantive support for the rights of workers.  If he is "standing in their corner," he must be in camouflage.



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A Threat, Challenge, Or Something

In a speech to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans on Monday, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka issued a challenge for individuals who try, as it's called, to "reform entitlements." The Huffington Post reports

"No politician … I don’t care the political party … will get away with cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits. Don’t try it...

"This warning goes double for Democrats," he said. "We will never forget. We will never forgive. And we will never stop working to end your career."

As House and Senate negotiators work over the next couple of months to reconcile the budgets the two chambers  have proposed, we may find out whether the labor organization is bluffing.  If not, it may well be taking on major figures in the Democratic Party.

Based on pessimistic economic projections, the Congressional Budget office and the Social Security Trustees expect Social Security benefits to be reduced in 20-25 years to 78% of current levels.  But that didn't stop Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin from repeating on Fox News Sunday the lie fast becoming a classic: "because Social Security is going to run out of money in 20 years. I want to fix it now, before we reach that cliff."

Only slightly less dishonestly, he continued

Medicare may run out of money in 10 years, let's fix it now. And that means addressing the skyrocketing cost of health care. That's what ObamaCare is focused on, and yet, the Republicans want nothing to do with it.

If we don't focus on the health care and dealing with the entitlements, the baby boom generation is going to blow away our future. We don't want to see that happen. We want to make sure that Social Security and Medicare are solid.

Earned benefits, maligned as "entitlements" (which people interpret as  "things others believe they have a right to just because they're breathing") by conservatives, neo-liberals, and the media establishment, is the politically correct way of referring to Social Security, Medicare, and (sometimes) Medicaid.  Though Social Security is distinct and separate from the budget and Medicare is not "going to blow away our future," Dick Durbin is one of only many claiming he wants to cut Social Security benefits so Social Security benefits don't end.

One of the GOP's Senate's conferees, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, has

said he hopes both sides set "sensible and realistic" goals. He laid out three of his aims Tuesday:

Preserving the savings included in a 2011 deal and carried out in the automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester;" allowing new flexibility for those cuts, which have worried both Republicans (because of the impact on defense) and Democrats (because of the impact on domestic programs) (and) shifting some of the cuts to the Government's big "mandatory spending" programs, such as social security, medicare, and medicaid.

"That's something that we absolutely ought to be able to find some common ground on," he said, saying President Obama has proposed changes to those programs in the past.

And so he has, most recently claiming "The challenges we have right now are not short-term deficits; it’s the long-term obligations that we have around things like Medicare and Social Security.  We want to make sure those are there for future generations."

Curbing Medicare and Social Security benefits are critical to debt reduction, the President suggested, immediately after he noted "remember, the deficit is getting smaller, not bigger.  It’s going down faster than it has in the last 50 years." And so with the deficit heading downward, incomes flat, much of the elderly dependent on Medicare for their health and Social Security for their survival, earned benefits must be cut so that the deficit is reduced.  Makes sense in ObamaWorld, apparently.

The President and his allies, including Dick Durbin, really do want to cut entitlements in because of the deficit, though it is cruel to the poor and the elderly, and is an inefficient way to reduce the debt burden.  But Republicans, masters at exploding the deficit when a Repub holds the White House, seek to undermine Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in order to undermine the programs. With the GOP's goal, and the leader of the Free World and allies anxious to alter the debt curve in ways which won't offend Republicans, Richard Trumka has his work cut out for him.



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Little Help From Washington

Author and journalist Thomas Schaller has a few interesting statistics for Labor Day:

according to a cross-national study released earlier this year by the International Labor Organization, American workers are the most productive in the world. Based on the most recent data available for each country, workers in the United States on average produce $63,885 of wealth annually; compared to other industrialized countries of Europe, only Norway's workers produce more wealth per hour ($37.99 in U.S. dollars) than do American workers ($35.63.)

We already knew American workers are singularly productive, even though powerful economic interests and their allies avoid acknowledging it.   But Americans also work hard, with Schaller noting

Although workers in third-world countries put in roughly 2,200 hours per year, compared with other industrialized nations U.S. workers rank first, averaging about 1,800 hours annually. That's 400 more hours than the Norwegians and 330 more hours than the French...

Almost 3 in 5 American workers in 2011 ended the year with unused vacation time. In a typical year, the estimated number of unused vacation days nationwide is 175 million. Divide that by a standard, 250-day work year, and that equates to 700,000 worker "years" of unused vacation annually.

Workers are getting little help from the federal government.  Today, Mike Elk, labor reporter for In These Times, is concluding a Summer of Solidarity tour drawing attention to issues of economic justice.  In an interview earlier this summer, he explained

in 2010, a lot of uranium workers at Honeywell’s Metropolis, Illinois, facility were locked out from their job for 14 months. It was a lockout that really drew some questions to the White House about which side they’re on. David Cote, CEO of Honeywell, is considered Obama’s closest ally in the business community. When Obama introduced the stimulus in January 2009, Cote gave a speech. Obama appointed Cote to the deficit commission, where he’s called for things like cutting social security and implementing chained CPI. During the lockout, Obama flew on Air Force One with Cote to India as part of an official state visit. Last year, I obtained internal confidential Honeywell documents stating that Honeywell’s relationship with the Obama Administration was crucial to breaking up union cohesion across the country. And what we’ve seen across the country are a number of lockouts and labor struggles at Honeywell plants across the country, at defense contractors and other federally regulated facilities, where the federal government could step in to stop the lockouts but don’t. Indeed, by not stepping in, they’re giving aid to them.

Elk sees the Honeywell situation as a metaphor "for what’s happened with this administration not sort of showing what side they’re on when it comes to workplace struggles."  Or maybe we do know what side he's on. Contrary to the masquerade as at least a semi-populist in his ascent to the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama has not negotiated labor (or consumer) modifications to the NAFTA.  He has promoted a Grand Bargain but not the Employee Free Choice Act. He is pursuing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which has been described as "a worldwide corporate power grab of enormous proportions," and is the only President of the past four who has not signed a minimum wage increase into law.    Nor should we forget Rahm Emanuel, former chief-of-staff to President Obama, nor Obama taking a pass when unions were under assault by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, now a viable possibility for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

And then there is the increase in H-1B visas in the misleadingly named Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act.  Passed by the Senate and (presumably) awaiting House action, it would increase the number of highly-educated workers brought in to lower salaries in the STEM sector.  On this Labor Day (cartoon below via franklycurious.com), most of the threat to workers comes from the right.  But not, sadly, all of it.

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Just Another Guest Worker Program



A press release of the American Federation of Teachers reports a righteous decision in Nunang-Tanedo et al. v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Board in which

A federal court jury late Monday ordered Universal Placement International of Los Angeles and its owner and president, Lourdes Navarro, to pay $4.5 million to the 350 Filipino teachers they lured to teach in Louisiana public schools following Hurricane Katrina and forced into exploitive contracts after arriving in the United States through the federal guest worker program. 

The verdict in the class-action lawsuit follows a two-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. The case was filed on behalf of the teachers by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Covington & Burling law firm. 

"This groundbreaking verdict affirms the principle that all teachers working in our public schools must be treated fairly, regardless of what country they may come from," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "The outrageous abuses provide dramatic examples of the extreme exploitation that can occur, even here in the United States, when there is no proper oversight of the professional recruitment industry. The practices involved in this case—labor contracts signed under duress and other arrangements reminiscent of indentured servitude—are things that should have no place in 21st-century America." 

Mary Bauer, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said, "The jury sent a clear message that exploitive and abusive business practices involving federal guest workers will not be tolerated. This decision puts unscrupulous recruitment agencies on notice that human beings—regardless of citizenship status—cannot be forced into contracts that require them to pay illegal fees."

Dennis Auerbach, lead attorney on the case from Covington and Burling, praised the perseverance of the Filipino teachers. "We are very pleased with the verdict in this case and proud to have stood by these brave teachers as they finally obtained justice," he said. 

Other Background Information: 

The teachers began arriving in the United States in 2007 as part of the H-1B guest worker program. Administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, H-1B visas permit foreign nationals with special skills to work in the United States for up to six years. Most teachers paid the placement service about $16,000—several times the average household income in the Philippines—to obtain their jobs. 

Nearly all the teachers had to borrow money to pay the massive recruiting fees. The recruiters referred the teachers to private lenders who charged 3 to 5 percent interest per month. Teachers were forced to pay these exorbitant fees because they had already made substantial investments that would not be returned. The recruiters confiscated their passports and visas until the teachers paid. 

In addition to paying up-front fees, the teachers also were forced to sign away an additional 10 percent of the salaries they would earn during their second year of teaching. Teachers who resisted signing the contracts were threatened with being sent home and losing the thousands of dollars they already had paid. Those contracts were declared illegal and unenforceable by the court as part of this case.

Approximately 20% of the 700,000 workers in information technology in the U.S. are here on an H-1B visa.   While supporters of the program argue that it allows imporation of workers with unique talents, that need can be met by the O (for "outstanding") visa program, which has no quotas.

But the claimed shortage of skilled technical workers has little basis in reality.  Robert Oak of The Economic Populist has found

There were 614,636 Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees awarded to U.S. Citizens and green card holders in 2011, yet there were only 145,930 jobs gained in all of STEM in 2011. In other words, the United States already produces far more STEM than can be employed....

Even before the recession, less than a third of S&E degree holders were working in areas requiring or even closely associated with their degree. A full 65% of STEM graduates were in other occupations after just two years of graduating. By 2011, 53% of all college graduates couldn't either find any job or a position in their field of study.

And Dan Rather last year explained

Over the past year, Dan Rather Reports has done a series of programs about the foreign labor force brought here by a vast array of U.S companies ostensibly to do jobs they can't find Americans to fill. Using an alphabet soup of special temporary work visas, employers have imported millions of foreign workers -- from hotel housekeepers to farm laborers to software engineers. It's part of the federal guest worker system and it's perfectly legal.

Most people --- including guest workers -- might assume that if a U.S. company decides to sponsor a person to come here on work visa, they must have tried to hire an American first. But that's not the necessarily the case. According to U.S. Department of Labor, a guest worker visa known as H-1B for "specialty occupations" especially tech workers -- may be issued "even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job." In fact, the bulletin notes, "A U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."

Guest workers have little leverage to complain about wages or working conditions because unlike citizens or legal permanent residents, they are dependent on their employers not just for their paycheck, but also for their immigration status. If they lose their job, they may lose their right to be in the country. Despite laws requiring H-1B employers to pay guest workers what's known as a "prevailing wage," the cost savings offered by visa-holders are an open secret in the tech world.

As the graph (below) from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities indicates, there were, as of October, approximately ten unemployed persons for every available job.   Even in the STEM field, there is a surplus of qualified workers, yet the disinformation industry and their political allies are hard at work convincing Americans that other Americans aren't up to the task, that they need more training or education or a better work ethic.  In the Louisiana case, it was teachers who, even at the time of Katrina, were likely in surplus.

Foreigners lured into the U.S.A. by unscrupulous outfits like Universal Placement International are at particular risk of being exploited.   But native-born workers who find salaries and benefits lagging also are exploited, even if they don't have the Southern Poverty Law Center to look out for their interests.  

                                                  MERRY CHRISTMAS



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Break Out The Champagne



He's kidding, isn't he?

USA Today's DeWayne Wickham remarks

But these people and the others who filled the small ballroom in New York City's Flatiron district this night were there as much to celebrate the resurrection of liberalism as to toast Jealous. The youngest person ever to lead the NAACP, this nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, Jealous was touted for his support of same-sex marriage,opposition to the death penalty and work to defeat voter suppression legislation.

As the recipient of the 2012 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, he was -- or this group, at least -- the most obvious manifestation of a liberal resurgence. While recent polls show that conservatives significantly outnumber liberals, liberal ideals and causes have not had a better year since Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law.

Proof of this can be found in the approval last month of same-sex marriage laws in Maryland, Maine and Washington, the first states to legalize gay unions by popular vote. And it was evident in the success Democrats had at the polls this year. Liberals revel in the re-election victory President Obama, a moderate Democrat, achieved over Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate whose campaign was a genuflection to the demands of this nation's most misguided conservatives.

Evidence of the banner year for liberals also can be seen in the gains Democrats made in the U.S. Senate, which pushed their majority to 55 seats (including two Independents who are expected to join their caucus). These victories came in a year in which political pundits widely believed Republicans would seize control of the Senate. Among the right-wing Republican Senate candidates who went down to defeat were Tea Party favorites Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana. Both suffered fatal self-inflicted political wounds...

Liberals also chalked up victories in Washington and Colorado when voters in three states that considered measures to legalize the recreational use of marijuana gave their approval. Only in Oregon was this proposition defeated.

One can only hope that the legalization of marijuana, to be regulated, for personal use by adults in two of three states- each a relatively liberal state culturally- will lessen the power of the pharmaceutical and/or alcohol lobbies.  (It also should enable a greater effort by law enforcement to crack down on much more dangerous drugs.)  And legalization of same-sex marriage may lessen the institutional power of.... whom?  Perhaps of people who oppose same-sex marriage.  Or someone.

Wickham's glee may be lost on progressives in the Midwest.    Yesterday in Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed legislation prohibiting union membership (or payment of dues) as a condition for employment in both the public and private sectors.   When a referendum proposing to codify the right to organize was defeated 58-42 last month, Republicans in the state legislature were emboldened.   Arguing "this isn’t Wisconsin. It’s worse. It’s Michigan and it’s the UWA," Rich Yeselson explains

The loss provided what is called in an organizing drive a convenient “headcount” for corporations and their conservative Republican allies. The headcount said simply that the UAW and allied unions did not have the unqualified support of most Michigan voters. The unions could, and are, making some noise, but they wouldn’t create sufficient civil strife to defeat a right-to-work flip. The unions could be rolled, the more quickly the better, even during a lame-duck session. The savvy president of the UAW, Bob King, one of the most progressive union leaders in the country, promises not to give up and threatens recall elections. But state right-to-work laws have only been repealed once, in Indiana in 1965. Indiana reinstated right-to-work laws earlier this year.

Slate's Matt Yglesias writes

It's only going to have a modest impact in the short-term, but far and away the biggest economic news of the week from a long-term perspective has got to be Michigan's rather sudden transformation into a right-to-work state. This is noteworthy in part because, as Alec Macgillis writes, Snyder had positioned himself as more moderate than Scott Walker and other GOP governors from the class of 2010. But the legislation he's just passed is really more far reaching than the legislation Walker signed in Wisconsin or anything that's been discussed in Ohio.

In political terms this really does seem like the tipping point. For a long time the United States has existed as a "house divided" in this regard. Democrats in states like Virginia and Nevada didn't seriously try to repeal right-to-work laws, while Republicans in the northeast and midwest didn't try to implement them. But if right-to-work can pass in Michigan, then why shouldn't Republicans press for it in Wisconsin or Ohio or Pennsylvania?

Yglesias is guilty only of understatement.  Michigan's overnight- literally, overnight- transformation from a state with one of the highest (such as it is) unionization rates in the nation to a right-to-work state is not the biggest economic news of the week.  This assault on middle-class rights is easily the biggest news of the week in the domestic sphere, economic or otherwise.

The editorial staff of the Detroit Free Press is disappointed that Rick Snyder (whose election it endorsed), who previously had opposed right-to-work legislation, has undergone a sudden conversion.   It believes

The answer may lie in another Koch-funded group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which promotes a radical right-wing agenda in states across the country, supplying "model legislation" to sympathetic lawmakers.

The organization boasts more than 2,000 legislative members. It also has corporate members, who weigh in on the model legislation before it's approved by the group's public-sector committee, the group's national chairman said in an interview he gave after dozens of pieces of ALEC-written model legislation were leaked last year in a joint project by The Nation and the Center for Media and Democracy.

Michigan's proposed right-to-work bills mirror the ALEC language practically word-for-word.

It's unclear how many Michigan lawmakers are members of ALEC; the group doesn't make its membership rolls public. But at least one of the lawmakers who introduced Michigan's right-to-work legislation has been associated with ALEC.

Certainly, there are a large number of Michigan legislators who are beholden to Americans for Prosperity, or the Koch brothers. Word is the groups threatened Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville's leadership post, and promised him a primary challenge in 2014, if he refused to move right-to-work forward.

While ALEC, which already dominates several Repub-controlled state legislatures (and at least one GOP governor), grows in influence, DeWayne Wickham is joyful that in a few states, individuals now may smoke marijuana and gays now may enshrine their relationship as marriage. How comforting.

To be fair, the veteran columnist also is very pleased- as he should be- that Democrats picked up seats in the U.S. Senate.   And he is elated that Barack Obama was re-elected.

Wickham and others still under the spell of Mr. Obama ought to remember that after the election of the first black President in 2008, The End of Conservatism As We Know It was declared.   And they should take heed of the reasoning of Yeselson, who recognizes "This isn't Wisconsin.  It's worse.  It's Michigan..."  As with the implementation of right-to-work laws, raising the Medicare eligibility age is (as described by Joe Conason) "a direct assault on the standard of living of working-class Americans."  The power elite thrives.

Eliminating the healthiest cohort from Medicare, thus increasing its premiums and eventually undermining public support for the program, is not being sought by a GOP president.  This isn't a Republican President.  It's worse.  It's a president with a "D" after his name.  It's terrible policy, it's terrible politics, and yet more evidence that the glee over the re-election of Barack Obama must be the beginning, and not the end.


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Junk Food Debacle


The broadcast media division of the Republican Party has wasted no time blaming unions for the closing of Hostess' factories and plans tosell of its brands and liquidate the company.   Media Matters noted

Martha MacCallum, co-host of Fox News' America's Newsroom, introduced a segment on the Hostess bankruptcy by saying the company is "blaming a worker's strike for crippling their ability to make and deliver their products." At the end of the report, co-host Bill Hemmer blamed the coming job losses at the company on "a labor dispute," suggesting that the union had put "18,000 jobs on the line." MacCallum said the employees were "paying dues to the union and then the union won't make a deal." 

Rush Limbaugh never misses an opportunity to blame workers and claimed

Yeah, I'm gonna talk about Hostess.  You know what, 18,500 people gone, Hostess Twinkies, Ding Dongs, shut down.  Some people might think it's a buy opportunity if you want to get in the Ding Dong business.  But folks, if you need an indication that the Democrats will never compromise on anything, look at this.  Hostess is going out of business because of unions.

While Rush deftly, without evidence or logic, simultaneously blames unions and the Democratic Party for corporate failure, Dean Baker sets us straight, explaining

Hostess has been relying on pretty much the same mix of products for decades. While other companies have sought to adjust to changing consumer tastes, Hostess still gets the vast majority of its revenue from a relatively small number of products that it has been selling in largely the same form since the sixties. This failure to innovate was the main reason that the company first went into bankruptcy in 2004.

Hostess remained in bankruptcy for five years until it was brought out of bankruptcy in February of 2009 by Ripplewood Holdings, a private equity company. Remarkably, it exited bankruptcy with nearly $670 million in debt, almost 50 percent more than the $450 million it owed when it went into bankruptcy.

Usually companies use bankruptcy to shed debt. With Hostess the opposite was true. This meant that Ripplewood was taking a heavily leveraged gamble. If the company survived, it would get a very high return on its investment. However there was a strong likelihood that the company would not be able to make it given its extraordinary debt burden and the weakness of the economy.

Ripplewood first asked workers for concessions in August of 2011. The workers refused since they had made substantial concessions in 2008 to facilitate the exit from bankruptcy. The concessions did not prevent layoffs of close to 20 percent of the workforce. The company also had stopped making payment to the pension fund in July of 2011 and is now more than $160 million in arrears.

Ripplewood took the company back into bankruptcy in January of this year, owing close to $1 billion. It has used bankruptcy to impose new contract terms on workers. This is the immediate cause of the current impasse, with the bakery workers’ union refusing to accept the reductions in pay and benefits and changes in work rules demanded by management.

Workers had several important issues to consider beyond just the prospect of working for less pay and under worse conditions. First, and most importantly, there was little reason to have much confidence in the current management team. They had done nothing to turn the company around in the three years since the last bankruptcy and there was little reason to believe that they would do any better going forward.

Accepting new concessions would provide no guarantee of job security. In fact, management wanted the unions to agree to the closure of 10-12 plants (of its choosing) as part of a new contract. This means that many of the company’s 18,000 workers would soon have been laid off even if the workers had accepted management’s terms.

Second, management was not shy about rewarding itself in spite of the company’s poor financial condition. The CEO upped his annual pay to $2.25 million and other top executives got raises of 35-80 percent. This doesn’t seem like the behavior of management that puts the survival of the company first.

Third, the financial situation of the pension has to be a top concern for workers. While the pension is guaranteed by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the guarantee for multi-employer plans like the one at Hostess is limited. If the plan were to become insolvent then many workers would see large cuts in benefits.

From this standpoint, if Hostess were to continue to put off contributions to the pension and allow it to become badly underfunded, then workers could be looking at sharply reduced pensions in retirement. Workers who are approaching retirement age may view this prospect as a far greater danger than the risk of losing their job at this stage in their career.

Limbaugh blames AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka for maintaining "What’s happening with Hostess Brands is a microcosm of what’s wrong with America, as Bain-style Wall Street vultures make themselves rich by making America poor.  Crony capitalism and consistently poor management drove Hostess into the ground, but its workers are paying the price."   After a campaign in which the Democratic candidate rarely criticized venture capitalism and his most effective (other than Chris Christie) surrogate, Bill Clinton, unsurprisingly completely avoided the issue, it's downright pleasing to hear someone defend unions and workers by highlighting the recklessness of "job creators."  Months ago, Robert Reich illustrated how it works in the world of venture capitalism:















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