“Media Fantasy Becoming Completely Undone”: GOP’s “Deep Bench” For 2016 Is Now In Splinters
Last time I saw former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, he was sashaying around Tampa, Fla., in 2012 as though we’d see him again, big time, in 2016. Elected with Chris Christie in that 2009 statehouse rebuke to President Obama, he’d been a rising star, tapped to make the 2010 GOP State of the Union reply and an opening night convention address in Tampa. He made sure to shake my hand as I replaced him in the shared CNBC/MSNBC makeup cubby off the convention floor. Good times. Now McDonnell’s only thoughts of 2016 are making sure he doesn’t spend it in prison, as he fights public corruption charges for taking an estimated $165,000 in gifts from a grifting donor.
Meanwhile his class of 2009 buddy Chris Christie looks at McDonnell and has to worry: the wheels of justice turn slowly, but they turn, and they are inexorably turning now for Christie – lots of them. Between the genuine George Washington Bridge retribution scandal involving his closest aides, and newer charges that his lieutenant governor threatened to use Sandy aid as payback if Hoboken’s mayor blocked a Christie donor’s development deal, the New Jersey governor is vulnerable on more fronts than McDonnell ever was, though to be fair, investigators aren’t in Christie’s kitchen – not yet, anyway.
So concern-troll Hillary Clinton all you want, Beltway pundits. You’re missing the only 2016 story that matters, and not surprisingly, it involves a lot of you. The mainstream media fantasy of a remarkably “deep bench” of 2016 contenders for the GOP was never founded in reality – but such a bench, if it ever existed, is surely in splinters today.
That “deep bench” metaphor, by the way, seems to have come directly from Mitt Romney’s V.P. vetter Beth Myers, although you had to ask, then and now: if the GOP bench was so deep, how did they wind up with Paul Ryan, who couldn’t even carry his home state of Wisconsin? (More on Ryan in a moment.)
But for now, let’s revisit that bench: It’s not just McDonnell (No. 3 on the National Journal’s 2012 “deep bench” list for 2016) and Christie (he was No. 1) who are finished. No. 2 contender Sen. Marco Rubio is, too: He made a play for the center with immigration reform, panicked and tacked right, and now he’s nobody’s top choice. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (lucky No. 7!) flamed out after telling the GOP to stop being “the stupid party,” then acting, well, stupidly, and becoming, by August of 2013, the most unpopular Republican governor in the country (and that’s saying a lot).
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz isn’t even on the list, but he deserves some attention. He came out of nowhere in 2012, but he’s already imploded spectacularly, going from a top-tier contender in early polls to far behind because of his self-promoting and nasty (not to mention extremist) brand of politics.
Sen. Rand Paul made many lists (the National Journal’s No. 6), and he still has a few admirers, especially among his father’s old fans. But Paul has proven to be a lightweight with a plagiarism problem whose one somewhat interesting attribute – his national security and foreign policy skepticism — is politically suicidal with the GOP (and most of the Democratic) establishment. He will not be the GOP nominee.
Then there’s Rep. Paul Ryan, last seen reinventing himself as a friend of the poor and a fan of Pope Francis (even if he couldn’t resist lecturing the pope for his faulty knowledge of capitalism). He plays a wonk on TV, but badly; his only contribution to the 2012 ticket was to hurt Romney. While the National Journal had Ryan at No. 5, no defeated V.P. candidate has ever become president except FDR, and no number of loving McKay Coppins profiles will ever make Paul Ryan FDR.
While we’re in Wisconsin, let’s look at Gov. Scott Walker, who’s getting a little play now that Christie is tumbling. Walker is a charisma-free Koch brothers toady who has more in common with Christie than alleged statehouse pragmatism: his own ethically challenged aides, back in Milwaukee. Three Walker associates were convicted in an earlier probe into campaign finance violations; last October, a new investigation began. Walker was named one of the nation’s “worst governors” by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He is not ready for the glare of a national campaign.
That leaves Jeb Bush (National Journal’s No. 4*). He and his brother are disliked by the Tea Party, but the former Florida governor is beloved by the GOP establishment; he could be said to embody it. But is the country ready for another Bush? His own mother says no, and his wife, Columba, is also said to be against it. And as long as pundits insist Hillary Clinton’s ties with Wall Street could hurt her in this populist era – and they could – Bush’s will do the same thing, because they’re even closer. He went to work for doomed Lehman Brothers after leaving the governor’s mansion, because apparently Bushes aren’t wealthy enough.
Then, sadly, Florida’s state and local pension funds lost $1 billion when the firm went bankrupt. Bush came in for blame, since he was also on the State Board of Administration, which invests public funds, but he insists he played no role in advising public fund administrators to use Lehman. Still, the potential conflict would get new oxygen from a national race.
So let Larry Sabato and Ron Fournier concern-troll Hillary Clinton. It’s true, she may not run, and if she runs, she may not win. But if you want to be president in 2016 — man or woman, black or white, Republican or Democrat — you’d rather be Hillary Clinton than anyone else in the world.
Especially anyone on that shattered GOP bench.
* Just in case you’re curious, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence rounded out the National Journal list.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, January 24, 2014
“Right-Wing Unemployment Myths Debunked”: When You Look At The Data, It’s Just Not There
Surprising many supporters, a three-month unemployment extension bill survived an initial Senate test Tuesday, with six Republicans joining 37 Democrats in voting to let the bill proceed to debate. But GOP members in both chambers have suggested they’ll withhold or withdraw their support unless Democrats offer up conservative concessions – be they parallel budget cuts, deregulation measures, new requirements for the unemployed or an Obamacare mandate delay. Others have argued that unemployed people would be better off without unemployment benefits.
In a Sunday CNN interview, Wisconsin governor and potential presidential contender Scott Walker argued that “the federal government doesn’t require a lot” of the unemployed, and urged that rather than “just putting a check out,” Congress tie unemployment extension to tightened eligibility requirements.
“Making them jump through more hoops will definitely increase administrative costs, but it’s not going to generate more jobs,” Economic Policy Institute economist Heidi Shierholz countered in a Tuesday interview with Salon. “Unless he’s looking at it as a jobs program to hire more public sector workers.”
Shierholz, a former University of Toronto professor now at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, panned several of the right’s other diagnoses and prognoses for the unemployed. A condensed and edited version of our conversation follows.
Some of the same Republican senators whose votes were necessary for unemployment extension to move forward Tuesday are implying they could still vote against final cloture if it isn’t offset with cuts. Is insisting on budget cuts to “offset” the cost of unemployment extension good policy?
It isn’t in this context. And I say that sort of carefully. Because if we were at full employment, and the economy was humming along, and fully utilizing all its potential, then if you’re going to spend a big chunk of money, you might want to think about offsetting it, because the economy doesn’t need any more demand.
We are so far away from that situation that this is exactly the kind of time where you do not have to worry about trying to do offsets like that.
It’s not a bug of the UI system, it’s a feature that it actually costs money. Because at a time like this, when the labor market is so weak, the economy is so weak, and we know that the overwhelming factor behind that weakness is just weak demand, we’re operating way below our potential. People don’t have the income, so they’re not spending. Businesses aren’t investing as much as they would if we were in a strong labor market. Weak demand for goods and services means businesses don’t have to ramp up hiring, they don’t have to ramp up to meet the demand, because demand isn’t there.
So the fact that you’re spending this money on UI, you’re getting money into the economy, is actually exactly what we want to do at a time like this. So trying to sort of bend over backwards to offset it actually just undermines one of the key features of extending UI, which is that it increases economic activity at a time when the economy desperately needs it.
Scott Walker told CNN that “one of the biggest challenges people have who are either unemployed or underemployed is many of them don’t have the skills in advanced manufacturing, in healthcare and I.T. where many of those job openings are.” What’s your assessment of that claim?
You hear that claim made a lot: that the reason we have this weak unemployment, or high long-term unemployment, is that workers don’t have the right skills for the jobs that are available.
I think because you hear this anecdote a lot, there’s been a ton of research done on it — a ton. And economists have dug in, and looked at the data from all sides. The overwhelming consensus: People who aren’t just relying on anecdotes, but who are actually digging in and looking for any sign of a skills-mismatch in the data, don’t find it. The divide on who finds this is more those who are relying on anecdotes versus those who have looked at the data, not right-leaning or left-leaning. Because of those who have looked at the data, you just don’t find evidence that the problem right now is due to workers not having the right skills.
If it were due to workers not having the right skills you would have to see some evidence in some meaningfully sized group of workers of actually tight labor markets relative to 2007. [But] unemployment rates are higher now relative to before the recession started across every education group, across every gender, across every age group, across all racial and ethnic categories, in all major occupations, and all major industries.
If we were seeing tight labor markets, you’d see wages being bid up for the workers who can’t be found, people poaching from other companies. And that you also don’t find. You actually find basically no group that is even seeing wage growth keep pace with overall productivity growth. In any group meaningfully sized enough to be actually driving anything, you don’t see any sign of wages being driven up. Same story with hours.
You’re not seeing any sectors of meaningful size where there’s more job openings than people actually looking for those jobs.
You hear anecdotes a lot about people saying, “I just can’t find the workers that I need.” This may be some interesting sort of psychological stuff about the echo chamber of how those things get so much play at a time like this. When you look at the data, it’s just not there.
One of the senators who voted against proceeding with the unemployment bill, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said, “First and foremost, unemployment insurance is treating the symptoms of the problem. It’s an aspirin for a fever, but the fever has been raging for weeks now.” Is that a revealing analogy in any way?
It’s treating the symptoms and it helps actually be part of the cure.
They actually are a lifeline to the people that were most hurt by the downturn — people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and have not been able to find another one in the period of weakest labor market we’ve seen in 70 years. The fact of the matter is that the labor market is still extraordinarily weak. It’s way weaker by far than at any time we’ve ever allowed extensions to expire.
So it definitely is part of dealing with the symptoms. And then it is absolutely part of the cure: You get money in the hands of the long-term unemployed.
Those are people who are almost by definition cash-strapped. They are going to spend that money. It goes straight into the economy and generates demand for goods and services, which generates demand for workers. So it helps strengthen the recovery.
You put out an estimate that not extending unemployment benefits would cost 310,000 jobs this year. How?
Around $25 billion would be spent if the extensions were continued [for a year]. Some spending is actually more stimulative to the economy, and it has everything to do with how fast and how completely that money goes into raising and creating demand. So unemployment benefits are consistently the second most efficient way that a government can spend money — either through direct spending or through tax cuts to support an economy, to generate economic activity. The only thing that consistently comes in ahead is food stamps.
You have that [unemployment] money spent on rent and groceries and clothes. So you increase demand for goods and services. Then there’s the fiscal multiplier. Then from there, that’s where you get the total amount of economic activity generated — the boost to GDP. And then from there, there’s a direct walk to jobs created.
It’s a rough measure. But that’s an idea of the scope.
Scott Walker also argued that instead of “just putting a check out,” the government should require more from people on unemployment, in terms of entering job training and looking more often for work. What do you make of that argument?
We do know that it’s already keeping people in the labor market, looking for work. There’s good evidence that receiving benefits actually keeps people looking for work.
A helpful bit of information, to know if the reason people are long-term unemployed is because they’re not looking hard enough, is the following: You’d want to know if our long-term unemployment situation is somehow weird, if it’s unexpected, if there’s something going on with our long-term unemployed, like they’re not looking as hard as they should, or they’re not being as flexible as they should. Like, is there something about these benefits that’s keeping them from doing those things? And that you don’t find.
So there’s a paper by Jesse Rothstein that looks very carefully at today’s long-term unemployment situation in the historical context. And he found that what we’re experiencing now is exactly what you would expect given three things: given how deep the period of economic weakness has been; how long it’s been as bad as it’s been; and then a little bit of this longer-term trend in long-term unemployment share. Which has to do with declining incidences of temporary layoff and stuff like that — but that’s not a big component.
We’re not seeing something abnormal right now in the long-term unemployment situation, except for an incredibly abnormally weak labor market that’s been incredibly abnormally weak for a very long time. Once you have that, then what’s going on with long-term unemployment is exactly what you would expect.
So it’s not like, “if we just get them to look harder, they’re going to find jobs.” The real problem, why we have this long-term unemployment crisis, is that the labor market has been so weak for so long.
So making them jump through more hoops will definitely increase administrative costs, but it’s not going to generate more jobs. Unless he’s looking at it as a jobs program to hire more public sector workers to deal with more administration. But I don’t think that was probably his angle. The real problem right now is weak demand for workers, and this won’t touch that.
The reason we have elevated unemployment is not that workers don’t have the right skills for the jobs that are available. It’s just that we don’t have jobs available. It’s not like training can never help an individual, but that’s not why we have high unemployment right now.
By: Josh Eidelson, Salon, January 8, 2014
“In The Name Of Creating Jobs”: Corporations Are Hijacking Government With GOP Help And At Taxpayer Expense
After being swept into statehouses in the red wave of 2010, Republican Govs. Scott Walker, John Kasich and Terry Branstad each presided over the replacement of a state agency responsible for economic development with a less public, more private alternative. Arizona’s Jan Brewer did the same in 2010 after replacing Janet Napolitano, who’d been tapped for Obama’s Cabinet. Walker’s Wisconsin, Kasich’s Ohio, Branstad’s Iowa and Brewer’s Arizona were only the latest to institute a “public-private partnership” approach to development: States including Indiana, Florida, Rhode Island, Michigan and Texas had done the same years earlier. Now North Carolina’s Pat McCrory, who entered the governor’s mansion in January, aims to do the same. A new report from a progressive group warns that means good news for the wealthy and politically connected, but bad news for just about everyone else.
“Privatization augurs against transparency …” Good Jobs First executive director Greg LeRoy told Salon. LeRoy is a co-author of the new report “Creating Scandals Instead of Jobs: The Failures of Privatized State Economic Development,” which his group released Wednesday afternoon. Based on recent years’ scandals and controversies in several states, the authors conclude that “the privatization of economic development agency functions is an inherently corrupting action that states should avoid or repeal.” They argue the record shows that “privatization was not a panacea,” but instead fostered misuse of taxes; excessive bonuses; questionable subsidies; conflicts of interest; specious impact claims; and “resistance to accountability.” Goods Jobs First funders include unions and foundations.
A spokesperson for Gov. Kasich emailed Salon a one-sentence take on the report: “We don’t pay much attention to politically motivated opponents whose mission is to combat job creation.”
Kasich promised as a candidate to substitute a new entity, led by “a successful, experienced business leader,” for the existing Ohio Department of Development. The result, JobsOhio, features prominently in the GJF report. The authors note that its board included some of Kasich’s “major campaign contributors and executives from companies that were recipients of large state development subsidies.” They write that JobsOhio “received a large transfer of state monies about which the legislature was not informed, intermingled public and private monies, refused to name its private donors, and then won legal exemption (advocated by Gov. Kasich) from review of its finances by the state auditor.”
The authors also fault the Arizona Commerce Authority, whose first head reaped a privately paid $60,000 bonus and resigned after one year; and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., which they charge has been “racked by scandals and high-level staff instability.” They cite accusations against WEDC including spending millions in federal funds “without legal authority”; failing to “track past-due loans”; and having “hired an executive who owed the state a large amount of back taxes.” LeRoy told reporters on a Wednesday conference call that, of the four newest public-private partnerships, Iowa’s was the only one to so far avoid significant scandal.
The report also slammed some of those four entities’ predecessors, including the Indiana Economic Development Corp. – GJF noted “a state audit found that more than 40 percent of the jobs promised by companies described by IEDC as ‘economic successes’ had never materialized” – and Enterprise Florida Inc.: while “more than $20 million in subsidies has gone to EFI board member companies,” in 2011 the Orlando Sentinel “reported that since 1995 only one-third of 224,000 promised jobs materialized.”
Gov. Scott’s office referred an inquiry to Enterprise Florida Inc., whose strategic communications director emailed that the group’s “efforts have resulted in an increase of competitive jobs projects established, private-sector jobs created and capital investment.” He noted that EFI “has received a clean opinion on its financial statements as conducted by its independent auditors and presented to EFI’s Board of Directors.” The offices of Govs. Walker, Brewer and Pence did not immediately respond to Wednesday evening inquiries.
“If we don’t know how the money’s spent, if we don’t get accurate assessments of the outcomes that we accept from our economic development subsidies or support, then there’s no way for us to evaluate the job they’re doing,” Donald Cohen, who leads the foundation- and labor-backed privatization watchdog In the Public Interest, told reporters on Wednesday’s call. “It’s fundamental to being able to manage our resources.” Cohen added, “When we’re talking about giving away the power and authority to give away public dollars, to make public decisions, then it is all the more important that public control be established in the strongest possible way.”
By “mingling private money or having board seats for sale,” LeRoy told reporters, public-private partnerships are “giving undue influence to a tiny share of mostly large companies that can afford to pay and play, potentially to the detriment of the focus of the entity.”
“You want people who are covered by ethics and disclosure and sunshine laws and oversight,” said LeRoy. “We know that government agencies aren’t perfect, but they by far are more accountable.” He also argued that public sector collective bargaining – which came under high-profile attack by Walker and Kasich – was also a check against abuse, because it “helps shield whistle-blowers and protect taxpayers.”
While GJF has proposed various safeguards for public-private economic development groups, it emphasized that its first choice would be for states to simply return their functions to fully public departments. “The economy is soft right now – we need to focus on the basics,” said LeRoy, rather than “tweaking the rules of a captive entity that co-mingles public and private money to get into all of these sort of gray areas.”
By: Josh Eidelson, Salon, October 24, 2013
“The Scott Walker Of New Jersey”: Why “Moderate” Chris Christie Is Just As Conservative As The Kochs
Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) is a “moderate” the same way Moe from the Three Stooges was an academic: only in comparison to the other Stooges.
While his amicable embrace of President Obama during Hurricane Sandy and willingness to actually sign a bill related to firearms will give his 2016 GOP primary opponents fodder for attack ads, the governor doesn’t have to inflate his severely conservative credentials.
Christie is the Scott Walker (R-WI) of New Jersey, one of the bluest states in the union. His agenda is nearly indistinguishable from that of Wisconsin’s controversial governor, with a nearly identical dismal performance when it comes to job creation.
“From the time he took office at the beginning of 2010 to March of this year, the state’s performance on the measures tracked by Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States puts it 45th among the states,” Bloomberg‘s Christopher Flavelle reports. Wisconsin is ranked 43rd on the same scale. The Bureau of Labor Statistics currently rates Wisconsin 33rd in job creation. New Jersey is 38th.
The real difference between Walker and Christie isn’t their beliefs or their below-average success at creating jobs. The difference is Christie knows how to pose as a moderate. Walker’s dominant appeal is as an ideologue. Christie’s strength is he’s a politician.
But today’s Republican Party loves ideologues and is suspicious of those like Christie who just want to win.
After being shunned by CPAC and being branded the “King of Bacon” by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), New Jersey’s governor has embarked on an apology tour that began with him endorsing the Koch-loving Republican nominee to replace Frank Lautenberg in the U.S. Senate, Steve Lonegan – who will be trounced by Democrat Cory Booker so hard that Christie wasted millions of taxpayer dollars to make sure he wouldn’t be on the same ballot as Newark’s mayor. Next Christie will meet with some of the party’s biggest funders in the Hamptons.
Here’s five reasons why any questions they have about his loyalty to the conservative agenda can be answered by simply pointing to his record.
War On Unions
“Unions are the problem,” Christie said at a town hall earlier this year. And that’s been the subtext of much of what he’s done since he took office. He’s taken pride in calling his state teachers’ union “thugs” and celebrated his battles with public sector workers by posting them on his You Tube channel.
One of his biggest “accomplishments” as governor was to pair cuts with a suspension of collective bargaining for public sector workers.
Like Walker, he was able to crush resistance to his policies and take what he wanted from workers. And like Walker, the result was downtrodden public servants and a weak economy.
Tax Cuts
As he’s cut public spending, Christie has continually proposed Bush-like tax cuts that would mostly benefit the rich, even though New Jersey’s rich already enjoy a lower tax burden than the state’s working-class families.
He’s done this, even though his tax cut would create a deficit.
The governor also cut $1 billion from education to help pay for $2.3 billion in tax breaks for businesses, more than doubling in one swoop the amount of breaks corporations had received in a decade.
On a federal level, Christie supports the Ryan budget.
“It calls for a reduction in taxes that, if implemented, would likely give a disproportionate share of benefits to the wealthy,” The New Republic‘s Jonathan Cohn explains. “It calls for radically reducing discretionary spending, so that it is less than 4 percent of gross domestic product by 2050. And it calls for transforming Medicare into a voucher system.”
Starving Infrastructure
Like Scott Walker, Chris Christie immediately made news by canceling a large infrastructure project that would have brought jobs to his state and eventually relieved traffic and pollution.
The governor’s explanation for rejecting the federal funds turned out to be dubious and flawed. The New York Times‘ Kate Zernike explains:
The report by the Government Accountability Office, to be released this week, found that while Mr. Christie said that state transportation officials had revised cost estimates for the tunnel to at least $11 billion and potentially more than $14 billion, the range of estimates had in fact remained unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said the cost would be no more than $10 billion.
Mr. Christie also misstated New Jersey’s share of the costs: he said the state would pay 70 percent of the project; the report found that New Jersey was paying 14.4 percent. And while the governor said that an agreement with the federal government would require the state to pay all cost overruns, the report found that there was no final agreement, and that the federal government had made several offers to share those costs.
Christie’s true goal was to keep the funds the state had allocated for the project in order to prevent an increase on the gasoline tax that would have broken a promise. He also got to publicly reject the president, which is how you get ahead in the Republican Party.
Women’s Health
When people compare a potential Christie candidacy to “Rudy” Giuliani’s 2008 effort, they forget that Christie is avidly anti-choice — the first anti-abortion-rights candidate ever to be elected governor of New Jersey.
As governor, Christie has joined Scott Walker and Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) in an effort to starve Planned Parenthood, the organization that provides basic reproductive health care to millions of women.
Christie demanded $7.5 million in cuts to women’s health care, resulting in clinics treating 33,000 fewer patients in a year, explaining that the money was needed to balance the budget. Democrats have given him several chances to restore the cuts but he’s refused, citing costs.
Of course, spending $12 million on a special election so he wouldn’t be on the same ballot as Booker was no big deal to the cost-cutting governor.
Singlehandedly Stopping Same-Sex Marriage
Same-sex couples in New Jersey know there’s only one reason they can’t enjoy the benefits of marriage: Chris Christie.
Not only has he vetoed a bill legalizing equal marriage, he’s vowed to veto any future bill that lands on his desk and called the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act “inappropriate” and “insulting.”
Christie feigns moderation when he says that marriage should be on the ballot. What’s more cynical than believing that a person’s rights should be up for a vote?
When you’re a far-right Republican who has to win in a blue state, these are the kinds of things you end up saying.
And on this issue, Christie is to the right of David Koch.
Despite this, the governor has the Koch mark of approval.
“Five months ago we met in my New York City office and spoke, just the two of us, for about two hours on his objectives and successes in correcting many of the most serious problems of the New Jersey state government,” David Koch said, at a secret Koch brothers conference in 2011. “At the end of our conversation, I said to myself, ‘I’m really impressed and inspired by this man. He is my kind of guy.’”
By: Jasaon Sattler, The National Memo, August 21, 2013
“More Sickening Than Stomach Flu”: With The Help Of ALEC, Corporate Greed Is Making Us Sick
The failure of our corporate and political leaders to make sure every worker gets good health care is causing some unpleasant consequences — like widespread stomach flu.
Ill workers often spread illness, because millions of employees who deal directly with the public are not covered by paid sick leave policies. So, when they come down with something like the stomach flu, they tend to drag themselves to work, rather than going to bed until they recover, since staying home means a loss of pay — or even the loss of their jobs.
Low-wage workers in the restaurant industry are particularly vulnerable and, since they handle food, particularly threatening. Nearly 80 percent of America’s food service workers receive no paid sick leave, and researchers have found that about half of them go to work ill because they fear losing their jobs if they don’t. As a result, a study by the Centers for Disease Control finds that ill workers are causing up to 80 percent of America’s stomach flu outbreaks, which is one reason CDC has declared our country’s lack of paid sick leave to be a major public health threat.
You’d think the industry itself would be horrified enough by this endangerment of its customers that it would take the obvious curative step of providing the leave. But au contraire, amigos, such huge and hugely profitable chains as McDonald’s, Red Lobster and Taco Bell not only fail to provide such commonsense care for their employees, but also have lobbied furiously against city and state efforts to require paid sick days.
Ironically, the top corporate executives of these chains (who are not involved in preparing or serving food to the public) are protected with full sick leave policies. For them to deny it to workers is idiotic, dangerously shortsighted — and even more sickening than stomach flu.
But what about our lawmakers? Where’s the leadership we need on this basic issue of fairness and public health? To paraphrase an old bumper sticker: “When the people lead, leaders will follow. Or not.”
Not when the “leaders” are in the pocket of corporate interests that don’t like where the people are leading. Take Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who never met a corporate pocket too grungy to climb into. This story starts in 2008, when the people of Milwaukee took the lead on the obvious need for a program allowing employees to earn a few days of paid sick leave each year, to be used if they fall ill or must care for a sick family member. Seven out of 10 Milwaukee voters approved that measure in a citywide referendum.
Corporate interests, however, sued to stall the people’s will, tying the sick leave provision up in court until 2011. By then, the corporations had put up big bucks to put Walker into the governorship — and right into their pocket. Sure enough, he dutifully nullified the Milwaukee vote by passing a “state pre-emption” law, autocratically banning local governments from requiring sick leave benefits for employees.
Just three months later, Walker’s pre-emption ploy was the star at a meeting of ALEC, the corporate front group that brings state legislators into secret sessions with CEOs and lobbyists. There, legislators are handed model laws to benefit corporations — then sent home to pass them. At a session overseen by Taco Bell, attendees got copies of Walker’s no-paid-sick-leave edict, along with a how-to-pass-it lecture by the National Restaurant Association. “Go forth, and pre-empt local democracy!” was the message.
And, lo, they did. Bills summarily prohibiting local governments from passing paid-sick-leave ordinances are being considered in at least 12 states this year, and Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee have already passed theirs.
Florida’s process was especially ugly. Organize Now, a coalition of voters in Orlando, had obtained 50,000 signatures to put a sick leave referendum on last November’s ballot. But, pressured by the hugely profitable Disney World empire, county commissioners arbitrarily removed it from the ballot.
The scrappy coalition, however, took ‘em to court — and won, getting the referendum rescheduled for a 2014 vote. Disney & Gang scuttled off to Tallahassee this year to conspire with Gov. Rick Snyder and GOP legislative leaders. Quicker than a bullet leaves a gun, those corporate-hugging politicos obligingly delivered a “kill shot” to Orlando voters by enacting a Walkeresque state usurpation of local authority.
By spreading Walker’s autocratic nastiness from state to state, money-grubbing low-wage profiteers are literally spreading illness all across our land.
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, August 14, 2013
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