Kevin’s Gift: “I Only Need One Reason To Oppose Mitt Romney’s Policies, And His Name Is Kevin”
At my father’s funeral, the presiding minister, Ebb Munden, was a man who had been one of my dad’s closest friends. Ebb talked about how the last time he had gone to see my dad before he lost consciousness, he had been very emotional but that my dad had comforted him by gripping his hand and telling him it would be alright, that my dad was at peace and Ebb should be too. The lesson was that even at our physically weakest we could still be helping other people and making things better in the world.
I was thinking of that this past weekend when I went to see my brother Kevin back home in Lincoln, Nebraska. Kevin is one of those people who followers of Ayn Rand’s philosophy would call a leech on society — Rand believed that people with disabilities were leeches and parasites on society, and that the “parasites should perish.” Kevin’s birth father broke a chair over his head and gave him brain damage, making him developmentally disabled and making it hard for him to speak clearly. He came to my family when we were both 11 years old, and has been not only my brother but one of my closest friends ever since. As an adult in recent years, his body has continued to betray him as he is hard of hearing, can’t see well, and has muscular dystrophy. Recently he had to go into the hospital for major surgery and then developed pneumonia — his muscular dystrophy makes it especially tough to recover from all this.
For all of that, though, Kevin still contributes to the world around him, just as he always has. He has always shown great tenderness to the people around him, and still does. He can’t talk right now because he is on a ventilator, but his expressive hands still say a great deal. After I was watching him go through strenuous rehab exercises, I came over to him after he was done and asked how he was doing, and he just grinned and patted me on my too-big tummy, not only telling me he was okay, but that maybe I should be doing more exercise too. Even with all the tubes attached to him, he was still up for playing catch with a plastic ball in his room. He still had smiles for, and played ball with, a 5-year-old girl who came to see him. One of the nurses at the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital told me how touched she had been when he gave her a hug even though she was doing painful rehab exercises she knew he didn’t like. He still gave me all kinds of trouble, taking delight in showing me two stuffed dogs people had given him because he had named the big dog Kevin and the little dog Mike. And when I had to leave to go the airport and had tears in my eyes as I was leaning down to hug him goodbye, he rubbed my head to comfort me. I had come to comfort him in his time of pain, and he had comforted me even more. Kevin being a part of my life has been such a gift to me, and has made me 100 times better a person.
Kevin has also shaped my values and philosophy of life, and given me a perspective on policy issues. Conservatives are obsessed with the idea that somewhere, somehow there are lazy “undeserving” welfare recipients, but more than 90 percent of government support dollars go to the elderly, people working hard but are still below the poverty line because of low-wage jobs, and very disabled people like Kevin — those whose middle-class families like mine would be plunged into poverty if we had to pay for all their medical costs on our own.
It is Kevin who I think of when I see that the Ryan-Romney budget slashes money from Medicaid and from the Social Services Block Grant, a fund specifically targeted to help states meet the needs of their most vulnerable citizens. It is Kevin who I thought about when the audience at a Republican debate cheered about a man who had no health insurance dying. It is Kevin who I thought of when an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference laughed and cheered when Glenn Beck gleefully proclaimed that “in nature, the lions eat the weak.”
A society that does not value my brother Kevin at least as much as it does the Wall Street titans who grow rich as they speculate with other people’s money, and use the tax code to write off the debt they use to buy and sell companies regardless of the consequences to the families who work there, is a sick society. A government that would cut support to middle-class families trying to support their disabled children so the wealthy can get more tax breaks — a government that actually decides to help the wealthy and powerful more than the poor and disabled — would be a government with no decency. That is what Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the Republicans are proposing for us. Their hero Ayn Rand would be proud.
I have many reasons for working to oppose Romney’s policies. I think his economic policies are a disaster for an economy still weakened by allowing Wall Street to run roughshod over the rest of us for the first decade of this century. I’d like for people to have access to contraceptives, and all of us to have access to quality health care. The idea of appointing more Supreme Court Justices who support cases like the Citizens United ruling that have allowed “corporations are people, my friends” is destructive to our democracy. But even if all of that wasn’t there, I would only need one reason to oppose Romney’s policies, and his name is Kevin.
By: Mike Lux, Partner, Democracy Partners, Published in The Huffington Post, May 29, 2012
“Lobbyists Evading The Law”: Minnesota Elections Board To Investigate ALEC
Minnesota’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board will investigate whether the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) should be registered as a lobbyist in the state, according to a letter sent to Common Cause-Minnesota. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has also asked Wisconsin’s ethics board to investigate ALEC’s activities, and this month the Wisconsin Attorney General referred a joint complaint about ALEC’s lobbying — by CMD and Common Cause-Wisconsin — to the state ethics board.
Response to Common Cause’s Complaint in Minnesota
Common Cause-Minnesota filed two requests for investigation in recent months presenting evidence that ALEC lobbies state lawmakers to pass “model legislation” voted on by corporations and legislators at ALEC meetings. The Board has responded to the first complaint, which alleged that despite participating in lobbying, ALEC has failed to register as a lobbying organization. The Board says it “will investigate.”
“Corporations can no longer hide behind ALEC as they try to influence state law behind closed doors,” said Mike Dean, executive director of Common Cause-Minnesota. “This investigation should expose how ALEC has attempted to avoid laws that regulate lobbyists in Minnesota,” Dean said.
The complaint mirrored a letter to the IRS filed by the national Common Cause office last year. That office also filed formal a whistleblower complaint in April alleging ALEC has committed tax fraud.
ALEC has come under increased scrutiny in recent months for its role in promoting as a national “model” the Stand Your Ground/Shoot First law cited in the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, as well as other bills that make it more difficult for American citizens to vote, for workers to organize and bargain, and for regulatory agencies to protect the environment and health.
Common Cause-Minnesota filed a second complaint with Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson alleging that, because of ALEC’s substantial lobbying, it is in violation of state laws limiting such activities by charities. To date, Common Cause has filed similar requests for investigation in 37 other states.
On May 17, Common Cause-Wisconsin and the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) filed a similar letter with Wisconsin’s Attorney General requesting an investigation into whether ALEC’s lobbying activities violate its charitable status, which was referred in part to the state ethics board. The letter was filed as part of a larger report detailing how ALEC facilitates corporate influence in the state, and counting more than 32 bills or budget provisions introduced in the 2011-2012 session reflecting ALEC model legislation. That report, “ALEC Exposed in Wisconsin: The Hijacking of State,” can be viewed here.
GAB Investigation in Wisconsin
Earlier this year, CMD requested that Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) determine that ALEC’s so-called “scholarship program” violates state ethics and lobbying laws.
In a complaint filed March 23, CMD described how the program allows global corporations to pay for ALEC member legislators’ travel to resorts for ALEC meetings, which would appear to violate Wisconsin laws prohibiting elected officials from accepting anything of value — even a cup of coffee — from corporations that employ lobbyists in the state. CMD also noted that while at ALEC meetings, legislators are offered invitations to corporate-sponsored receptions and given additional gifts like free tickets to the party box at a major league baseball game. CMD named all known Wisconsin ALEC members in the request because complete records about which lawmakers accepted these gifts in recent years are not publicly available.
ALEC subsequently disclosed that in 2010, it had asked the GAB to sanction these corporate-funded gifts, but offered a description of the so-called “scholarship” program contradicted by ALEC’s own bylaws, by ALEC’s filings with the IRS, and by other documents. CMD documented these contradictory claims in another letter filed in April.
Senator Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), who is a member of ALEC’s Telecommunications and IT Task Force, sought to distance himself from the program, declaring that he had never received an ALEC “scholarship” and asking that he be dropped from the complaint. CMD applauded Senator Wanggaard’s acknowledgement through his actions that receiving corporate-funded flights and hotel rooms could compromise a legislator’s official judgment.
The Wisconsin GAB has acknowledged receipt of CMD’s complaint but is prohibited by law from commenting on the status of an investigation.
By: Brendan Fischer, Center For Media and Democracy, May 30, 2012
Record Shows Gov Scott Walker’s Office Stonewalled DA Inquiry Of “John Doe Criminal Investigation”
Milwaukee County prosecutors opened the secret John Doe criminal investigation more than two years ago after being stonewalled by Gov. Scott Walker‘s office when he was county executive, according to a newly released record.
The document appears to cast doubt on some of Walker’s claims about his role in launching and cooperating with the investigation.
On May 5, 2010, Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf filed a petition with court officials asking if his office could initiate a secret investigation into what happened with $11,000 in donations intended for Operation Freedom, an annual event honoring veterans.
By making it a secret John Doe investigation, Landgraf wrote that prosecutors might get better cooperation from Walker’s office, which had been “unwilling or unable” to turn over records and information needed in the investigation. He said he would need to subpoena county records and officials.
“It may be the County Executive’s Office is reluctant to provide information to investigators due to a fear of political embarrassment,” Landgraf wrote, noting that Walker was then running for governor.
But Ciara Matthews, spokeswoman for the governor’s recall campaign, said the filing was inaccurate.
In 2009, Matthews said, Walker had his former chief of staff, Tom Nardelli, contact the DA’s office over concerns about what a local chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart had done with donations it received from the county for Operation Freedom.
“Multiple follow-ups were made by the chief of staff to the district attorney’s office to offer assistance in that investigation, and any statement to the contrary is not correct,” Matthews said.
The document was included in a court filing this week by the lawyer for Timothy Russell, a former top-level Walker aide who has been charged with embezzling more than $25,000 intended for Operation Freedom and two political candidates. His attorney, Dennis Krueger, wants a judge to dismiss the charges against his client because they involved matters that reached far beyond the original scope of the John Doe probe.
The investigation has led to criminal charges against three former Walker aides, an appointee and a major campaign contributor.
On Thursday, Walker’s former county spokeswoman, Fran McLaughlin, was granted immunity as part of the investigation. She is the 13th individual to receive immunity in the case.
Walker’s current spokesman, Cullen Werwie, also has been given immunity to testify behind closed doors.
Records show McLaughlin was given immunity after she invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions to avoid self-incrimination. Her attorney, Michael A.I. Whitcomb, refused further comment.
“I can’t say anything,” Whitcomb said.
Landgraf’s 2010 petition provides new information about the origins of the two-year probe, much of which is veiled in secrecy.
Walker has repeatedly brushed aside questions about the John Doe by claiming credit for launching it.
“Another interesting thing for people tuning in tonight is to know,” Walker said during last week’s recall debate, “this investigation started because my office asked for it nearly two years ago.”
Prosecutors have previously acknowledged that investigators met with Nardelli and another Walker aide in 2009 over Operation Freedom. Nardelli told the DA’s office that Purple Heart’s treasurer had refused to provide any records or accounting of the event’s finances.
But Landgraf’s filing is the first public suggestion Walker’s office later reversed course and quit cooperating.
“As part of the pre-Doe investigation, Investigator Jeffrey Doss sought to obtain documentation that would form the basis of tracing the funds from Milwaukee County to the Order,” Landgraf wrote in his May 2010 petition. “The Office of the County Executive has been unwilling or unable to provide such documentation. It is unclear at this juncture why the Office of the County Executive has not produced (or has not caused another Department to produce) these records.”
Landgraf noted in the petition that the media also would be interested in the investigation if they knew about it, adding that Walker was then running for governor. In fact, the Journal Sentinel wrote about the missing money a month later.
He said publicity about the probe could be “particularly unfair” to Walker.
“It is therefore my opinion that the formality and the secrecy of a John Doe proceeding will increase the likelihood of complete and frank statements by persons who may – in an informal, non-secret setting – feel uneasy about providing a candid, voluntary statement,” Landgraf wrote.
Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Kevin Kavanaugh, a former Walker appointee to the Milwaukee County Veterans Service Board, with five felony counts alleging he embezzled $42,232 from his Purple Heart chapter, for which he was treasurer. The money was supposed to help underwrite the costs of Operation Freedom.
Kavanaugh has pleaded not guilty.
Other records in Russell’s filing this week show that former Appeals Court Judge Neal Nettesheim, who is overseeing the John Doe investigation, agreed to expand the scope of the investigation at least seven times between May 11 and Nov. 30, 2010. In fact, prosecutors first expanded the investigation just three days after the case was opened, presumably in response to a No Quarter piece about a Walker staffer posting favorable comments about her boss on blogs and websites while she was on the job.
“To expand the scope of a John Doe proceeding to include investigating illegal campaign activity and a subsequent theft allegation unrelated to the time, circumstances and witnesses to the original 2006 theft clearly exceeds the scope and intent of the John Doe statute,” wrote Krueger, Russell’s attorney, in his motion asking Milwaukee County Circuit Judge David Hansher to throw out his client’s charges.
Krueger also said in his filing that prosecutors have informed him that Russell remains a target of the investigation, despite having been already charged earlier this year.
By continuing to investigate his client in the John Doe after charging him, Krueger said, prosecutors increase their ability to “leverage the defendant into accepting a plea or (face) the prospect of defending against additional charges.”
Landgraf declined to comment on the filing, saying he had not yet read it.
By: David Bice, No Quarter-Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 31, 2012
“Gender Pay Gap Is Alive And Well”: Facts About the Health Insurance Compensation Gap
Unfortunately the gender pay gap is alive and well: Women in the United States earned 77 cents for every $1 earned by men in 2011—an average of $10,622 in lost wages every year. Yet that earnings ratio actually understates the extent of women’s disparate treatment in the workforce because they also experience a health insurance compensation gap. Below are the answers to some key questions about this gap, as well as how the Affordable Care Act—the new health reform law—works to close it.
Q: What is the health insurance compensation gap?
A: Women are less likely than men to receive health care coverage through their employer and are more likely to have higher out-of-pocket medical costs. This results in a health insurance compensation gap on top of the wage gap.
Q: What is the difference between men’s and women’s access to job-based coverage?
A: Women are significantly less likely than men to have access to their own employer-based coverage. Less than half of women (48 percent) are eligible to get health insurance through their jobs, compared with 57 percent of men, in part because women are more likely to work for small businesses and in low-wage jobs. Although two-thirds of women between the ages of 18 and 64 have employer-based insurance coverage, only 38 percent of women are enrolled in an insurance plan they receive through their own employer,1 while 24 percent receive employer-based coverage as a dependent on their spouse’s or partner’s plan. In contrast, 50 percent of men receive insurance coverage through their own employer, and only 13 percent of men receive dependent coverage.
Q: What is the financial impact of the compensation gap?
A: The gap in health insurance compensation translates into women losing an average of $4,508 for single coverage and $10,944 for family coverage in employer contributions to health benefits each year. Given that two-thirds of mothers are either primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families, the compensation gap is a significant burden on the budgets of many American families.
Q: Where do women turn when they don’t have access to job-based coverage?
A: When working women cannot obtain employer-based coverage and earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, they must turn to the individual health insurance market. Yet women often face discrimination in the individual market—they are charged more for coverage, denied coverage for gender-specific conditions, and sold plans that inadequately cover their health needs.
Q: How much more do women spend out of pocket on health care?
A: Even with employer-based coverage, women have higher out-of-pocket medical costs than men. Overall, women of reproductive age spend 68 percent more out of pocket than men on health care, in part because their reproductive health care needs require more frequent health care visits and are not always adequately covered by their insurance. Among women insured by employer-based plans, oral contraceptives alone account for one-third of their total out-of-pocket health care spending.
Q: How are women affected by the compensation gap?
A: The combination of being paid less than their male counterparts and having higher out-of-pocket medical expenses leaves many women struggling to pay their medical bills or trading off other necessities such as food, heat, and electricity to cover their medical costs. Fifty-two percent of women report delaying or going without needed care because of cost (not filling prescriptions or skipping tests, treatments, or follow-up visits), compared with 39 percent of men. Women also report higher rates of medical debt than their male counterparts. And one study showed that more than half of low-income women are underinsured, meaning they spend 10 percent or more of their income on out-of-pocket health care costs and premiums.
Q: How will the Affordable Care Act help reduce the health insurance compensation gap?
A: The Affordable Care Act institutes a series of reforms designed to drastically expand coverage and contain health insurance costs for all Americans. Many of the reforms enacted by the new health law have been and will continue to be especially beneficial for women, as they help resolve many of the problems outlined above. The health care bill:
- Provides insurance premium assistance through income-based tax credits on a sliding scale beginning in 2014
- Expands Medicaid eligibility to people with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level—about $31,809 for a family of four in 2011
- Allows young people to remain on their parents’ health plans until the age of 26
- Ends discrimination that has left women paying up to 150 percent more for the same coverage purely because of their gender
- Bans insurance companies from denying coverage to women through pre-existing condition exclusions Ensures that women receive vital preventive care at no additional cost—significantly including contraceptive coverage, which will eliminate one of the primary sources of women’s out-of-pocket health care spending
- Mandates that maternity benefits be covered as an essential part of women’s health care
- Caps co-pays and deductibles, which will help reduce the amount women pay in out-of-pocket expenses
Through these reforms that level the playing field for women in the health care market, the Affordable Care Act will help reduce the compensation gap that exacerbates the disparity between men and women’s earnings.
BY: Jessica Arons and Lindsay Rosenthal, Center For American Progress, June 1, 2012
“Assaulted, Victimized And Wounded”: It’s Hard Out There For A Billionaire
Is there a group of people you can think of who have thinner skin than America’s multi-millionaires and billionaires? Wall Street titans have been whining for a couple of years now about the horror of people in politics criticizing ineffective banking regulations and the favorable tax treatment so many wealthy people receive (you may remember the time when hedge fund billionaire Steven Schwarzman said that President Obama suggesting that we eliminate the “carried interest loophole,” which allows hedge fund managers to pay taxes at only the 15 percent capital gains rate instead of standard income tax rates, was “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939”). America’s barons feel assaulted, victimized, wounded in ways that not even a bracing ride to your Hamptons estate in your new Porsche 911 can salve. And now that the presidential campaign is in full swing, their tender feelings are being hurt left and right.
David Weigel points us to this remarkable video, in which someone at the Heritage Foundation interviews an aggrieved Frank VanderSloot, an ordinary businessman whose “life changed forever” when “President Obama’s campaign included his name, and seven others, on an enemies list” because he donated to a pro-Romney superPAC. And what was VanderSloot subjected to, once he was placed on this “enemies list”? Harassment from government officials? IRS audits? Baseless prosecutions? National Park Police pulling him over, smashing one of his taillights, then giving him a ticket for having a broken taillight? Well, no. But it is true that he was mentioned on an Obama campaign web site as a major donor to a Romney superPAC. That’s the “enemies list.” As far as we can tell, no actual government action was taken against him, though he did lose some customers when people found out about his political activities. The entire part of the post concerning VanderSloot reads as follows:
Frank Vandersloot: Frank Vandersloot is the national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign and, through his company Melaleuca, has donated $1 million to Restore Our Future. He is also a “litigious, combative, and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement” who “spent big” on ads in an “ultimately unsuccessful effort to force Idaho Public Television to cancel a program that showed gays and lesbians in a favorable light to school children.”
Shield your eyes from the brutal government oppression!
The quotes come from this Mother Jones article about VanderSloot, his political activities, and his company, a “multi-level marketing” firm that sells supplements and cleaning products. You can argue that the “multi-level marketing” industry is basically made up of con artists who make money by roping gullible people into pyramid schemes and convincing them they’ll make riches without actually working. I don’t know enough about VanderSloot’s company to say if this is an accurate picture of what it does. But what’s critical is that the Obama campaign never criticized VanderSloot’s business practices, or attacked him for being rich. The paragraph they put on their web site about VanderSloot concerned his involvement in politics.
Frank VanderSloot has a lot of money, and has decided to use some of that money to engage in politics, both in his home state and nationally, by doing things like taking out ads about issues that concern him in newspapers and on billboards, and investing heavily in the candidacy of Mitt Romney, whom he’d like to see become president. Which is fine. I’d prefer a system in which it wouldn’t be legal for multi-millionaires to buy presidential candidates, but in America today it is legal. But the whining we get from them is just unbelievable. These guys all seem to think that they are the personal embodiment of the wonder of free enterprise, and if anybody ever criticizes them for their political activities, it can only mean that economic freedom itself is under vicious assault. “We don’t hear about the American Dream anymore, do we? It’s almost a bad thing. It’s almost evil if you become successful in America today,” VanderSloot says in the video. “The whole principle of people getting out there and producing jobs for folks, we ought to go back to knowing that’s a good thing as opposed to believing it’s not.”
I’ve got a deal for Mr. Vandersloot. I’m only an underpaid political writer, but I hereby declare that I will give him one billion dollars if he can show me a time when that committed socialist Barack Obama ever said that “people getting out there and producing jobs for folks” is a bad thing.
I find VanderSloot’s whining particularly grating because as a political writer, I get attacked all the time. People say that I’m wrong, people say that I’m an idiot and a jerk, I get plenty of hate mail, and I’ve even gotten some threats. The latter are a bit unsettling, but as for everything else, it comes with the territory. Like giving a million dollars to a super PAC, writing about politics is a choice, and if you can’t tolerate anybody disagreeing with you, or even calling you names from time to time, you shouldn’t do either one. What VanderSloot obviously wants is a situation in which he can put millions of dollars into influencing the course of elections and policy debates, but nobody ever criticizes him for it. Well, that’s just not how things work in a democracy.
Speaking of one billion dollars, that’s the amount that wealthy people and corporations are planning to spend this fall to make sure that Mitt Romney is the next president. It’s a good investment on their part–just think of all the goodies a Romney administration could shower on America’s beleaguered and oppressed wealthy.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, May 30, 2012
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