brainiac conspiracy

Wasn't Much Else They Could Do

Can see the point here . . . but it bears repeating that the GM assembly plant in Janesville was where they built Chevy Suburbans; keeping it open through a recession where consumers had all but abandoned purchasing large SUVs, would have meant re-tooling the entire plant to produce some other vehicle (like a small car) that would have had greater sales potential, and given that the costs can run into the millions for an initiative of that sort, GM was on no position financially to do that. The Kenosha engine plant that Chrysler shuttered---well yeah, that was a cost-cutting/outsourcing initiative that coulda-shoulda been resisted a little harder, but both GM's and Chrysler's cash burn rates were so astronomical in the weeks leading into the bailout that both companies would have needed to make enormous cost reductions (which they did) in lieu of a much-bigger rescue package. Remember, they both had to shutter hundreds of dealerships, too---not because they were outsourcing jobs, but because no one was buying cars in the winter in 2008-9, they just couldn't afford to keep them all open.

Yeah, it was painful, but bottom line, it worked. Both companies were saved, and both companies have enjoyed a resurgence in sales and a return to (tentative) profitability. The administration deserves its fair share of blame for other recession-fighting measures that didn't accomplish much (e.g., mortgage relief), but its rescue of the automakers was arguably its single most significant domestic policy achievement to date. Yes, the contraction of the auto industry hurt places like southeastern Wisconsin---but on the other hand, when you have a Teabilly governor who turned down stimulus money, which could have brought back some lost manufacturing jobs, just in order to score political points, blame him, not the President. Also too (ahem), that region's representative in the Congress, for not lobbying more aggressively for more stimulus for his constituents.

---Vitelius

Chronic High Unemployment

Can't speak on the record about this since I'm not authorized to discuss union-busting job-creation strategies, but I can confirm that whenever you have a large unemployed and underemployed workforce out there, desperate people will take whatever jobs are offered, at whatever wages the boss will pay:

Caterpillar makes no bones about the fact it intends to bring its “market-based” approach to worker pay and benefits to every location. That message, apparently, was lost on the 465 unionized workers at a 62-year-old locomotive plant in London, Ontario, that Caterpillar bought a few years ago. Those workers had been getting $35 an hour. Caterpillar’s take-it-or-leave-it offer was for half that, along with substantial cuts in benefits. When the workers balked, Caterpillar closed the plant, took its cutting-edge diesel-electric technology and moved production to Muncie, Ind., where workers lined up for a shot at one of $12- to$18-an-hour jobs.

Lots of good points in this op-ed, but one he missed was: Organized labor is in trouble these days because, among other things, our political system has largely abandoned it. Team Democrat, I'm looking at you here.

---Former Caterpillar Executive

America's Job Creators

Are quite skilled at, well, creating jobs. They just don't believe in compensating you for your labor:

Some 28% of workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs in 2020, roughly the same percentage as in 2010, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.

The study defines low-paying jobs as those with wages at or below what full-time workers must earn to live above the poverty level for a family of four. In 2011, this was $23,005, or $11.06 an hour.

Sure glad we passed that Employee Free Choice Act when we had the votes. It'll make things a lot easier for workers to unionize so they can demand higher wages, better benefits, etc. Oh, wait.

Meanwhile, job creation.

---Vitelius

Merit Pay

As a rule, the policy only applies to lazy overpaid union workers:

Not only will the new salary increases bring the CEO’s of the CSU campuses in question to over $325,000, but will include $60,000 per year for housing allowance and $12,000 per year for transportation. New Cal State Northridge President Dianne F. Harrison will receive $324,500, including $29,000 from the campus foundation; incoming Cal State San Bernardino President Tomas D. Morales will receive $319,000, with $29,000 coming from the campus foundation; new San Francisco State President Leslie E. Wong will receive $325,000, including $26,251 from the campus foundation.

Now, I have no idea if this is too much money, or still not enough, to attract and retain top-notch administrative talent, but it's a little hard to justify in the current economic climate when you realize who's footing the bill, wouldn't you say?

---Vitelius

More Shared Sacrifice

Seems to be part of an ever-growing trend:

Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy on Wednesday announced sweeping cuts and tax increases totalling €65bn (£51bn) in austerity measures that opposition politicians warned would sink Spain further into recession.

In a spectacular U-turn, Rajoy raised sales tax by three percentage points, contradicting his government's insistence that this would damage consumer spending, strangle growth and punish the poor.

He also cut unemployment payments, pledged to bring forward a move to retirement at 68 years old and reduced civil service pay. Promised changes to energy laws looked likely to increase electricity tariffs [...]

Other measures he announced included further cuts in government spending, closures of state-owned companies and the privatisation of ports, airports and rail assets. While Rajoy spoke, thousands of coal miners marched on the industry ministry in Madrid to protest against a 63% cut in subsidies to mining companies.

You really have to wonder how long it's going to be before the Molotov cocktails start exploding in the streets of Madrid. Not advocating violence here, but people are only going to put up with their own government telling them to fuck themselves for so long before they decide to change governments. And if they can't get the government they want at the ballot box . . . well, sometimes it can lead to extremely ugly outcomes.

Update: Not long, apparently.

Update II: Accolades for a job well done:

The European commission has welcomed Spain's austerity measures, calling them an "important step".

The EC also said it was "working on the principle that private sector distribution" of the losses in Spain's banks will be needed, but that depositors and senior bondholders will not be involved.

So, as feared last night, this means that tens of thousands of citizens who hold preferred shares and subordinated bonds will be hit---and perhaps wiped out.

---Vitelius

Heroes of 9/11

It was a pretty good alias, but in reality they're just a bunch of lazy overpaid government workers:

Scranton, Pennsylvania sent out paychecks to its employees Friday, like it does every two weeks. But this time the checks were much smaller than usual. The mayor has reduced everyone's pay, including his own, to the state's minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. Scranton's mayor says that his city has just run out of money [...]

I talked with the president of the local firefighters union. His name is John Judge. He also works as a firefighter for the city. He says checks were supposed to come out Thursday but they were a day late. His typical check is about $1,500 every two weeks after deductions. And yesterday, his check was less than $600 before deductions. So, Judge says he has some savings but the reduced pay is going to be hard on his family this summer.

---Vitelius

Somebody Gets It

This is how you wage a political campaign:

“Think about it, think of this, a man who wants to be the president of the United States took his great wealth, and instead of investing that great wealth in America, the country he hopes to lead, he somehow chose to find the tax haven, Switzerland, where he opened up a bank account,” Strickland said. “He invested in the Cayman islands, has a corporation in Bermuda, and he took money from shadowy south American investors when he started Bain Capital and now my friends, he conveniently has decided that he will not release his income tax returns. Doesn’t it make you wonder what Mitt Romney is trying to hide from the American people?”

This is how you campaign against a rich Republican asshole: by reminding the voters that your opponent is a rich Republican asshole, and you're not. That your rich Republican asshole opponent and his rich Republican asshole friends are one of the main reasons why so much of the country has come to resemble Mexico with better wireless, and why so many working-class citizens no longer have any money in their pensions, their 401(k)s, or even their own homes. The Serious Persons may grow apoplectic at such talk, but if you want to win an election, give the voters a clear and unambiguous reason to vote for you. I know our current Postpartisan-in-Chief doesn't prefer this style of campaigning, so it will largely be up to surrogates like Ted Strickland to do most of the mucking and grinding, but when your rich Republican asshole opponents have pledged to wage a scorched-earth campaign against you, you'd better have something stronger than a pistol to bring to the rhetorical gunfight: A bazooka, perhaps, or better yet, a flame-thrower.

---Vitelius

What We Talk About When We Talk About Voter Fraud

Nothing of substance, surely, but every minute we devote to it is a minute we don't devote to election fraud.

---Vitelus

Pension Reform

Our here on the Left Coast, it has become the Serious Persons' existential crisis du jour since there's no greater threat to the financial stability of our state, apparently, than ensuring that police officers, firefighters, Highway Patrol Officers and other people who basically risk their lives every day on our behalf should enjoy a fair and comfortable retirement once they've put in 25 to 30 years on the job. Of course, the entire proposition is bullshit, unfunded liabilities or no (which is a red herring anyway, so long as adequate contributions are coming in to meet current obligations), and if we had anything resembling a functioning rational government, we'd simply raise taxes to make up any shortfalls. But as the Serious Persons remind us, you don't raise taxes in a recession because it will sabotage the recovery, and you don't raise taxes in a recovery because it will plunge us back into recession, and if you run a Google search or two, you'll find the Serious Persons are, generally speaking, spokesmodels from think tanks with innocuous-sounding names that seem to have an an inordinate preoccupation with public-sector employee unions and how they spend their money. I wonder why that is.

---Vitelius

Not Earth-Shattering News

That in America, as a rule, retail service jobs basically suck when it comes to pay and benefits. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but the level of employee compensation in retail is generally proportional to the degree of union representation in the labor force. Got no union? You're hosed, then, and it really doesn't matter whether you're flipping burgers for Fast Food Inc. or selling hip new products that all the kewl kids want, with an app for everything but good wages and health care. Maybe our leaders would consider doing something about this?

---Vitelius

Making Shit Up as We Go Along

When they say "strict constructionism" and "original intent," that's basically what they mean:

In Knox v. Service Employees International Union, the five—Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito—reached out to decide a question that was not argued or briefed; their opinion all but begs right-wing advocacy groups and public employers to use its emerging First-Amendment jurisprudence to take down public-employee unions and in essence find a Southern-style “right to work” law in the Constitution.

Guess this means we lose health care next week too. Perhaps next time, our Democratic leaders will push for single-payer coverage, and dare the Federalist Five to declare Medicare unconstitutional. Not saying the crazies on the bench wouldn't do it, but there'd be a hell of a political price to pay that Team Democrat could take ample advantage of. Then again, why would they want to do anything so divisive and partisan.

---Vitelius

Lazy Indolent Workers

Time to abolish their minimum wage and their 40-hour work week:

Making a point that will no doubt be noted by Angela Merkel and Bild Zeitung, a junior minister in the Italian government, Gianfranco Polillo, has claimed that his country's factory workers are taking three months of holiday a year.

Polillo, a junior minister at the economy ministry, said he had reached this conclusion by dividing the total number of hours worked in Italy by the number of workers. "And I discovered that an [average] worker is in the factory for nine months and for three months, more or less, on holiday."

The three months presumably includes sick leave, but in an interview published by La Repubblica this morning Polillo made it quite clear that he thought that was not the whole story. "We're in the Bel Paese, my dear friend", he said. "That's what they call it, and that's how we plan to be able to continue---accustomed to leisure".

The minister proposed that every worker should put in another week's work. The effect, he says, would be to increase Italy's shrinking GDP by a full percentage point.

Naturally, his numbers are completely full of shit. And this guy's a finance minister.

Why do our leaders hate us so much?

---Vitelius

More on Unions

Just finished posting the previous when I came across this Perlstein piece that elaborates on one of my gripes vis-a-vis Democrats and labor, but does so much more eloquently:

Someday, some clever political scientist might figure out a way to quantify just how many points on election day Democrats have to make up to bring things to square. Until that point---or probably even after that point---we can expect the usual Wednesday morning diet of earnest reflections on what the polling just past "says" about the electorate. Republicans will keep pushing, pushing, pushing their vision for what kind of world they want to live in – union and public-employee free. Democrats, free of any particular vision for society at all, will go into "battle" retailing themselves as the nicer fellows in the contest, and earnestly hope the electorate goes along.

The answer is not for Democrats to cheat. But it begins with the Democratic establishment doing business in a way that doesn't make their most devoted partisans feel like slapping them upside the head.

Bill Clinton cut his political teeth in a state run by union-busting reactionaries who made sure that nothing, but nothing, happened in the legislature in Little Rock without the consent of the Waltons, the Tysons and the J.B. Hunts. Clinton tried bucking the power structure in his first term, lost a re-election bid, and had to tailor his politics accordingly to reascend two years later to the Governor's mansion. The "tailoring" took the form of a more moderate, pro-business approach to tax and economic policy that largely embraced corporate values such as deregulation while distancing itself from the party's labor and activist wings, and it was the cornerstone upon which the "New Democrat" DLC movement of the late '80s was founded. While it may have been an effective political strategy for a Democrat in Arkansas, it has seldom proved successful for very long when exported elsewhere. Our Democratic leaders should have learned by now that ignoring their base in the name of appealing to "moderates" generally won't persuade the moderates of their candidates' sincerity, and drive the base voters home. So kindly cease and desist with the "sensible centrist" shit that people like Clinton and Tom Barrett still traffic in because it's a political sales pitch most voters despise.

---Vitelius

Power Center Shifts

How working-class Americans became evil thugs:

The '60s movements were not just intellectually unprepared for the slowdown in growth and rise in inequality that began in the mid-1970s; they were institutionally unprepared, too. The civil-rights, feminist, anti-war, and environmental movements---and others that came later---operated more or less on their own. They had particularly tense relations with the labor movement, which many of the new organizations saw as a bulwark of the status quo. On the left, solidarity was not forever. When Democrats had congressional majorities, they made no effort to repeal Taft-Hartley, the 1947 law that severely limited union organizing, or to adopt other measures that could have strengthened unions. They failed to appreciate how much their own concerns depended on the unions' role in mobilizing working-class support for progressive goals.

I think there is some truth to this, though it should be noted that some labor leaders, such as Walter Reuther and Cesar Chavez, were at the forefront of the civil rights struggle. And we shouldn't also minimize the influence that consolidation of our mass-media industry into a quasi-monopolistic cartel (six companies basically control everything we read, see or hear) has exerted on how unions are portrayed in the public eye.

But here's a sobering fact to ponder: From 1963 to 2009, every single President of the United States (and there were eight of them) was either a Republican, or a Democrat who hailed from a right-to-work state. It's hard to maintain a prime-mover level of influence in Washington when the access you once had to the upper reaches of power have been essentially cut off, or at the very least curtailed (Lyndon Johnson being the sole exception in this regard). Also too, let's not overlook the influence of Robert Reich's former boss, who was one of the first and leading practitioners of a detested centrist DLC/Third Way politics that largely sacrificed the needs of labor upon the altar of corporate cash.

While we're at it, let's not gloss over the dereliction of our current administration. Granted, there have been some favorable stands taken on labor's behalf, but by and large, its support for organized labor has been, well, tepid. Kinda like its tepid support for immigration reform and marriage equality that became Steadfast & Resolute® support after LGBT and Latino activists lowered the boom and started threatening to withhold their money and/or votes. Perhaps Richard Trumka and some other labor honchos would take a tip from their successes and try tightening a few screws as well.

Finally, to answer the macro-question, "Is organized labor doomed?" Well, nothing is written in stone, obviously, though it is eventually up to labor and its supporters to stay engaged and organized, give no quarter to the right-to-workers, and elect, well, better Democrats who will deliver on their promises. It they don't, primary their timid asses. The Republicans have been doing this to their chosen apostates for several election cycles, and they have paid very little of a political price for doing so. Perhaps Team Democrat would take a hint from that.

---Vitelius

War of The Gargantuas

The green one is good, the brown one is bad, but sometimes you still can't see much difference in them:

Only 38 percent of those up-for-grabs Americans have favorable views of Obama's economic plans, with a majority (54 percent) disapproving. The good news for the embattled president? They aren't much more impressed by Romney's economic ideas---47 percent rate his approach unfavorably, with just 35 percent in favor.

Now I know both campaigns relish the opportunity of framing the upcoming battle for the White House as a clash between starkly opposing visions of the role of government in our lives, and in the case of certain cultural/social issues, that's certainly true more often as not. But on the greater matters of macroeconomic policy---like, where all of our money goes and who gets to keep it---the voters in their wisdom haven't bought into the apocalyptic bullshit. Can't say I can blame them because, frankly, neither have I.

---Vitelius

Awful Human Beings

They take pride in the strangest behaviors:

City Councilman Carl DeMaio, a chief backer of the San Diego measure who is staking his mayoral bid on a pension overhaul, said he has fielded scores of calls from government officials nationwide interested in copycat measures. He predicted the legal challenges in San Diego will fail.

"We're showing the way," he said. "We're offering a model---at least one model."

Because nothing says "good government" like stealing from firefighters and transit workers to preserve tax cuts for rich people.

What's really so foolish about this, of course, is that besides needlessly impoverishing working-class citizens, it only serves as a disincentive for talented people who work in government to stay in their jobs, which means your most gifted and dedicated employees will be more tempted to leave public service for greener pastures elsewhere, leaving the more unemployable laggards and goldbrickers behind. Which then provides further justification for additional rounds of benefit cuts. The tragedy is, this is exactly the purpose of these cost-cutting initiatives---to guarantee government doesn't work, make life unbearable for your hardest workers--yet most voters are too ignorant to realize it.

As an aside, our allegedly labor-friendly Democratic leaders could do a wee bit better messaging job here by maybe arguing for increased benefits for private-sector employees instead of acquiescing to wage cuts for government employees. Heck, they might even find that voters agree with them.

---Vitelius

Tacking Toward The Center

Ten years ago, they were the Heroes of 9/11™. Now, they're parasites:

Romney said of Obama, “he wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

Their God certainly is a vengeful God, these people, always needing more sinners to be offered up on the altar of capital as a sign of propitiation. I guess that's a reason why we need to sit right down and work out a sensible deficit-reduction deal with them.

---Vitelius

Fairness and Balance

As mentioned before, the Obama administration seems to feel some strange compulsion to stage a Sista Souljah moment at least once a week or thereabouts:

An IRS decision revoking the tax-exempt status of a small political nonprofit organization may foreshadow an investigation into groups such as Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA that spend millions on the 2012 U.S. presidential election. At risk would be the groups’ nonprofit status, which lets them collect millions of dollars from individuals and corporations while keeping donors anonymous [...]

The IRS decision released last month involved a so-called campaign school in which a partisan group trained candidates. [The nonprofit is Emerge America, which works in ten states to train Democratic women candidates.]

“You are not operated primarily to promote social welfare because your activities are conducted primarily for the benefit of a political party and a private group of individuals, rather than the community as a whole,” said the IRS letter telling the group it was losing its exempt status. (Emphasis added.)

Hate to rain on anyone's parade in the blogosphere, but if the people at Alternet---or anywhere else---really believe this is some sort of precursor to a crackdown on Peak Wingnut 501(c)3 LLC (or whatever the Koch Brothers' latest private-equity venture is calling itself these days), you still don't understand how the game is played. Election fraud only happens when Democrats commit it. Or have we all forgotten ACORN already?

---Vitelius

America's Job Creators

They pay an honest dollar for an honest day's work. If they feel like it:

Nearly two out of three low-wage workers experienced some form of wage theft each week, according to a 2009 survey of nearly 4,400 low-wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Three out of four reported underpayment or non-payment of wages, and one in four said they were paid subminimum wages. On average, these workers lost about $51 a week in unpaid earnings, the survey found.

The lost wages add up. Workers in Houston lose more than $753 million a year, according to a recent study there. While the cities aim to write new protections into law, existing laws often go unenforced.

The U.S. Department of Labor, which monitors compliance with federal wage laws on behalf of more than 130 million workers, has only 1,000 enforcement agents. That’s about one for every 141,000 workers, compared with one per 11,000 workers in 1941.

State wage-and-hour investigators are equally scarce in the wake of massive budget cuts, a 2010 survey found. In 43 states and the District of Columbia, a total of 660 state investigators were covering nearly 90 million workers, about one per 146,000 employees.

Liberal government would put a stop to this. Too bad we're not allowed that privilege anymore.

---Vitelius

Give The Voters What They Want

And you can spare yourself no end of grief:

Phil was a letter carrier in the neighborhoods around the Serb Hall for nearly 40 years, but he retired last year when his days were cut back to three a week as part of the fiscal crisis forced upon the USPS by Republican legislators who would like to see it go away entirely.

"A friend once told me, 'Well, we only need mail three or four days a week,'" Phil told me. "I politely told him, 'Dave, we're gonna have to agree to disagree.' I could have told him, 'Dave, you know, maybe at that engineering place where you work, they only need you three days a week, and then you could come help us.'

"The politicians, I think, it's a tough call, because if you don't keep the postal service in business — you and I will both agree that there's nothing more personal than taking pen in hand to write to your mother, sister, or brother. Until June of last year, I gave my heart and soul to my job. I worked right through lunch most days."

Eventually, I asked him why he was here, at the Serb Hall, supporting Scott Walker, whose politics were far more in tune with the people who are trying to strangle the postal service than they are with the people who still work there. Phil told me that it was about his sister-in-law. "The problem is that, when you start handing out free health care out to teachers, that annoys me to no end," he said. "I never got free health care. My brother's wife is a teacher and I once asked her, when I was getting my teeth worked on, what it cost her and she said, 'Nothing.' It should never get to that point where somebody's getting free health care. Something's way out of whack there."

One can only wonder how many more votes Team Democrat could have won by simply giving everyone free dental care under Medicare For All instead of forcing voters to patronize a for-profit medical insurance-industrial complex that's the cause of our health care crisis in the first place. Put another way: You want to put an end of the politics of resentment, stop giving people more reasons to be resentful. Just a thought.

---Vitelius