Blog entry

CEOs Get Bailed Out. Workers Get Sold Out

Tula Connell — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:11:32 -0400

Before she became the first female Labor secretary in 1933, Frances Perkins had seen firsthand the tragedy of Manhattan’s 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Locked in by their employer, 146 mostly young girls died when they couldn’t escape the burning building where they toiled in sweatshop labor. Later, as the New York industrial commissioner, Perkins held employers accountable for workplace safety and health, expanding factory investigations and championing other pro-worker laws, like unemployment insurance.

Now, imagine if Elaine Chao had been there instead. Rather than improved job safety legislation, Chao likely would have pushed laws forbidding workers to challenge employers for unsafe working conditions, fair pay or anything that would cost greedy employers a dime.

In fact, Chao, the nation’s current Labor secretary, once again has taken the side of Big Business against working people. As Congress debates whether and to what extent to approve the corporate financial dictatorship proposed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Chao, on Wednesday, said Congress must pass the bailout “quickly and cleanly.”

Cleanly as in giving Paulson, a political appointee with no accountability, powers so sweeping even the president couldn’t override his decisions.

Quickly, as in making sure the Wall Street CEOs, whose greed outpaced their brains and created the current debacle, get away with golden parachutes and massive bonuses.

(We at the AFL-CIO strongly oppose giving Paulson a blank check on the bailout. More info here and here. You also can tell Congress “No Blank Check for Wall Street” by clicking here.)

Fittingly, Chao was speaking to reporters at an event in posh Fairfield County, Conn., famous for its expensive houses and site of many hedge funds and other financial service companies. She also took the opportunity to dodge a question about whether she favored extending the unemployment insurance time frame, saying Congress already had extended it this year.

(Let’s see…Chao’s Labor Department reported on Wednesday there were 1,772 mass layoffs initiated in August, the most since September 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And two weeks ago, Chao’s Labor Department reported unemployment worsened from 5.7 percent to 6.1 percent, a figure that economist Jared Bernstein noted in Sunday’s FDL Book Salon is more like 10.7 percent when underemployment is factored in. But I digress. Why would rising unemployment have anything to do with a need to extend unemployment insurance?)

At the same time that Chao was carrying out her role as a Bush-Paulson puppet, a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining pay discrimination heard from Lilly Ledbetter. After years of working at an Alabama Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant, Ledbetter discovered she was being paid less than the lowest-paid man doing the same work.

But although a jury awarded her $3.8 million, Goodyear appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Bush-packed Supreme Court essentially said “tough luck,” and Ledbetter now not only is out tens of thousands of dollars in income, but her Social Security and pension are smaller as well.

As Christy at Firedoglake pointed out a few days ago:

Even worse for all of us, the Ledbetter decision has now been cited in hundreds of cases nationwide to justify disparate treatment based on race, gender, age, disability and other reasons to pay someone less or treat them differently because these cases have been jimmied into an analogous argument to what Lilly faced in her claim. The SCOTUS decision effectively undercut decades of precedent on equality in one, fell swoop in favor of companies who want to justify internal discrimination.

Now, let’s imagine Frances Perkins was our current Labor secretary. It’s a safe bet that rather than backing massive CEO pay bailouts while making the rounds in a wealthy New York bedroom community, Perkins would be in those Senate hearings.

Right next to Lilly Ledbetter.

(This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.)

Here's A Little Straight Talk, My Friends. John McCain Hates Social Security.

Bill Scher — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:29:54 -0400

Sen. John McCain, I'm one of your friends, right? The kind of friend who can handle some of your special brand of Straight Talk™.

So why won't you just tell me you hate Social Security?

Twice this week you lambasted the founding principle of Social Security, that, as you described, "we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today." In separate appearances, you called the way Social Security has been structured for more than 70 years an "absolute disgrace," and a "broken" system.

Twice! You even called that pronouncement "Straight Talk™." That's no slip of the tongue. You must mean it.

So why did you backtrack yesterday when asked about it from reporters? Instead of saying that you hate the founding principle of Social Security, you revised your remarks: "They are paying into a system that they won’t receive benefits from on the present track that it’s on – that’s the point."

That's not even Straight Talk™! As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explained after the last Social Security trustees report, "Social Security is structurally sound and does not require drastic changes."

While I thought we were friends, this sadly hasn't been the first time this year in which you didn't give me Straight Talk™ on Social Security.

You told the Wall Street Journal in March that you support President Bush's earlier proposal to partially privatize Social Securtiy, saying, "As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed." When the Journal pointed out your website said something different, you promised to change the website.

You still haven't! And do you know how hard it is to even find the two sentences describing your Social Security position on your website? It's not even mentioned under your "Issues" menu on the homepage. You just said "Americans have got to understand" what a "disgrace" the program is. How can they if your website won't tell them?!

Most importantly, why did you tell the Wall Street Journal that you support "private savings accounts?" Why bother with the Karl Rove/Frank Luntz poll-tested phrases? That's not Straight Talk™! Say what you really mean: "privatization!"
That's what you did in 2004.

After being asked if "privatizing Social Security [would] be a priority for you moving forward," you responded, "Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits."

Yet, last month, you pretended you never said that, telling voters at a town hall, "I'm not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be."

What is it about Social Security that makes you allergic to Straight Talk™? Are you worried about keeping one of your few leads in the polls, among seniors?

I'm sure if you told seniors that you hate Social Security, always have and always will, they'd understand.

Maybe they wouldn't vote for you, but at least you could still be friends.

Sour Notes on Social Security

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:46:05 -0500

Like an “American Idol” reject, John McCain keeps warbling George W. Bush’s greatest flops.

The latest is Social Security privatization, a proposal so roundly rejected by the American people when Bush tried to foist it on the nation in 2005 that even a solidly Republican and sycophant Congress couldn’t swallow it.

But the Arizona Republican senator can’t let it go. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, McCain said that he would, if president, seek to implement “private savings accounts … along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

His words to the Journal are mirrored on his website, which says, “John McCain supports supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts — but not as a substitute for addressing benefit promises that cannot be kept.”

The ominous phrase after the “but” is not-so-thinly-veiled code for benefit cuts. Under McCain, you’ll have to work longer before you retire and get a smaller benefit when you do. Your check will be designed not to keep up with inflation, as Social Security does now, so that as you age, you will continue to fall behind as expenses rise.

Meanwhile, you will have to take some percentage of your money that would have gone into the Social Security trust fund and invest it in the stock market. You will have to navigate a dizzying array of options presented by brokers hungry to claim a slice of your personal account for their wallet. And then you will have to pray that you made a wise choice. If you didn’t, or if you ended up being taken to the cleaners in an Enron-style rip-off, well, tough.

This is the social insecurity that John McCain offers to senior citizens. And this man is not being laughed off the presidential stage?

As Roger Hickey, a co-director here at the Campaign for America’s Future and one of the leaders responsible for derailing the 2005 privatization scheme, put it:

Amazing! John McCain embraces the idea that made George W. Bush a lame duck! Clearly McCain learned nothing from George W. Bush's failed attempt to privatize Social Security. Over the past four years, Bush tried hard to achieve the holy grail of right-wing ideologues: dismantling our most important retirement system and putting part of people's contribution in the stock market. And the American people said NO, resoundingly. The fact that McCain is willing to campaign on this dangerous and elitist privatization proposition—even as the economy and stock market goes into a dive— shows that McCain is more concerned about right wing priorities (and Wall Street dreams) than with securing retirement security for the American people.

McCain wants to convince the public that he is going to take on a tough political challenge that no one else has been able to solve. If he was really all that politically macho, he would take the advice from a number of experts who have concluded that Social Security will remain solvent at current levels for at least another 40 years and will be solvent indefinitely through some relatively modest steps, such as simply raising the cap on the amount of earned income subject to Social Security taxes.

The problem is not that people don’t have private options for investing in their retirement—the millions of dollars worth of ads on television, print publications and the Internet hawking all manner of IRAs and 401(k)s testify to that—but it is that politicians have bought into one more Big Conservative Lie. The public saw through it in 2005 and said that the bedrock of our retirement should continue to rest on a platform of shared responsibility, not on a Wall Street gamble in which the house is the only assured winner. That same aware and mobilized public will deliver that same bit of “straight talk” that will sideswipe any bus that tries to take that privatization road again.

Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up

Bill Scher — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:18:58 -0500

Another 0-for-3 day for the Watchdog.

Neither Secretary of State Condi Rice nor Sen. John McCain were asked if the continued White House support for Pakistan's dictator Pervez Musharraf shows that its foreign policy does not promote democracy or defeat terrorism.

Instead, both portrayed Musharraf as a positive force for Pakistan. On ABC's This Week, Rice claimed "Pakistan is a country that has come a long way from 1999 and the military coup," as if a fresh crackdown on political opponents constitutes some sort of democratic progress.

On Fox News Sunday, McCain praised Musharraf as someone who "came to power to replace a failed state," not someone who took power from a democratically-elected leader in a coup. He then said he would continue sending US taxpayer dollars to Musharraf.

Over on CBS' Face The Nation, former Gov. Mike Huckabee was not asked about his false assertion that most of the founding fathers of Ameria were clergymen.

And on NBC's Meet The Press, while Sen. Barack Obama was asked about Social Security, the exchange on both sides was based on the inaccurate premise that the program is in dire straits and requires major changes.

Weekend Watchdog

Bill Scher — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 01:57:19 -0500

Apologies for a belated Weekend Watchdog post, as I'm back from a vacation and long flight delay. But as usual, on Sunday at 4 PM ET, tune in to Air America Radio's "Seder on Sundays" program, where I'll offer the Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up.

For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (ABC's This Week) and Sen. John McCain, R-AZ (Fox News Sunday): Time Magazine reported this week from Pakistan:

...as [Musharraf's] regime cracked down on lawyers, journalists and human-rights activists, it agreed to a cease-fire with a powerful militant leader who had taken 213 soldiers hostage in the lawless northwestern region. The irony was not lost on Asma Jahangir, Pakistan's best-known human-rights activist, who wrote in an e-mail from house arrest, "Those [Musharraf] has arrested are progressive, secular-minded people, while the terrorists are offered negotiations and cease-fires."

Yet, Condi Rice and President Bush have continued to describe Musharraf with kind words and have refused to take any substantive action in response to his dictatorial crackdown. And McCain has not criticized the White House for continuing to provide aid to Musharraf.

You claim your foreign policy is to defeat terrorism by promoting democracy. Isn't this further evidence that your actual foreign policy does neither?

For former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark. (CBS' Face The Nation): Last month, you asserted that "most" of the "56 brave people" who "put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence" were "clergymen."

That is false. Only one was active clergy and three others were former clergy.

Why should Americans elect as president someone who either doesn't know the basics about our country's founding, or is deliberately misrepresenting it?

For Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. (NBC's Meet The Press): Economist Dean Baker blogged this week:

The Washington Post reports that Obama is making plans for raising SS taxes and/or cutting benefits if he is elected. It would be appropriate to remind readers that the Congressional Budget Office projects that the program will be fully solvent until 2046 with no changes whatsoever. This is almost thirty years after the latest date that Obama could possibly leave the presidency.

Readers should know that there is no urgency to address the projected shortfall in Social Security although there are many powerful actors who would like to see the program privatized and/or have its benefits cut.

Last month, you said yourself that "Social Security is not in crisis." Why then are you making significant changes to an effective program a campaign priority?

Stop Blaming The Baby Boomers

Dean Baker — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:49:01 -0400

Guest blogger Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Over the last two decades, there has been an effort by the enemies of Social Security and Medicare to demonize the baby boomers as a threat to country’s prosperity and the well-being of our children and grandchildren.

They have repeatedly warned of the enormous projected cost of Social Security and Medicare and called on the current or future elderly to sacrifice their benefits under these programs for the common good. We heard endless tales of $70 trillion dollar-plus deficits and how our children and grandchildren would face crushing tax burdens unless the greedy soon to be geezers accepted large cuts in their Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Those of us who challenged this story now have an important ally in Peter Orszag, the new director of the Congressional Budget Office. Orszag has made a point of distinguishing the extent to which costs are projected to rise due to aging and the extent to which they are projected to rise as a result of the rising cost of health care in the United States. As he recently said at a press event, “The long-term fiscal problem truly is fundamentally one involving the rate at which health care costs grow and much less about the aging of the population.”

This is hugely important. The way to deal with scary long-term budget projections is to fix our health care system, not to gut Social Security and Medicare. While aging will impose some additional costs in the future, this is not new; life expectancies have been increasing ever since the United States came into existence. The new threat is a health care system that is projected to consume more than 30 percent of gross domestic product in just over three decades. If health care costs in the United States looked more like those in any other wealthy country, we wouldn’t have to look at scary budget projections.

The moral of Orszag’s analysis is that those who are concerned about the huge deficits projected for future decades should be working first and foremost on reforming the health care system. If we fix our health care system, then our other budget problems are manageable. If we don’t fix the health care system, we can look forward to a future of bad health care and a weak economy. We will also have insoluble budget problems.

Weekend Watchdog: Rice, McCain Spin

Bill Scher — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:04:00 -0400

We were hoping to hear some tough questions asked of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain on the Sunday talk shows.

For Rice (CBS' Face The Nation): You did not claim executive privilege when you were asked to testify under oath to the 9/11 Commission. Isn't it inconsistent to claim executive privilege now, when you've been subpoenaed to testify about the White House charge that Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Niger?

On ABC's "This Week," Rice pre-empted George Stephanopoulos. Without being asked, she delivered her talking point to justify her refusal to comply with a fresh House subpoena, when in 2004, the White House backed down from executive privilege claims and had her testify to the 9/11 Comisssion.

I testified before the 9/11 Commission. At the time, the President made clear that he did not consider that a precedent, but that the overwhelming concerns about 9/11 did make it necessary.

Well, there you have it. It's not a precedent because Bush said so. Besides, there's no "overwhelming concerns" about how intelligence was manipulated anyway.

For McCain, R-Ariz. (Fox News Sunday): In your announcement speech, you said:

No government program is the object of more political posturing than Social Security and Medicare. Here's the plain truth ... if we don't make some tough choices today, Social Security and Medicare will go bankrupt or we'll have to raise taxes so drastically we'll crush the prosperity of average Americans.

But if you were really interested in giving the public the "plain truth," why didn't you include in your announcement what you said three years ago: that you support Social Security "privatization"?

Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace did ask about McCain's views, but failed to question why McCain masked his support for "privatization" in his announcement .

McCain did make a hash out of what he would support, telling Wallace he could support a tax increase as part of Social Security compromise, then seconds later, saying he "will not support a tax increase."

Weekend Watchdog Wrap-up

Bill Scher — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:30:41 -0400

Did the Sunday talk show hosts pose our Weekend Watchdog questions?

Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice pre-empted ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

Without being asked, she delivered her talking point to justify her refusal to comply with a fresh House subpoena, when in 2004, the White House backed down from executive privilege claims and had her testify to the 9/11 Comisssion.

I testified before the 9/11 Commission. At the time, the President made clear that he did not consider that a precedent, but that the overwhelming concerns about 9/11 did make it necessary.

Well, there you have it. It's not a precedent because Bush said so.

Besides, there's no "overwhelming concerns" about how intelligence was manipulated anyway.

Regarding Sen. John McCain and Social Security, Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace did ask about his views, but failed to question why McCain masked his support for "privatization" in his announcement.

Weekend Watchdog

Bill Scher — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 02:17:33 -0400

Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked.

Then on Monday, we'll circle back and see if our questions were asked and answered. Let's take back our media!

For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (CBS' Face The Nation): You did not claim executive privilege when you were asked to testify under oath to the 9/11 Commission.

Isn't it inconsistent to claim executive privilege now, when you've been subpoenaed to testify about the White House charge that Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Niger?

For Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (Fox News Sunday): In your announcement speech, you said:

No government program is the object of more political posturing than Social Security and Medicare. Here's the plain truth ... if we don't make some tough choices today, Social Security and Medicare will go bankrupt or we'll have to raise taxes so drastically we'll crush the prosperity of average Americans.

But if you were really interested in giving the public the "plain truth," why didn't you include in your announcement what you said three years ago: that you support Social Security "privatization."

***

Email CBS' Face The Nation at ftn@cbsnews.com

Email Fox News Sunday at FNS@foxnews.com

Remember: always be brief, polite and respectful when contacting the media, so our voices will be taken seriously.

Recesspool

Bill Scher — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:10:55 -0400

Yesterday, President Bush made three significant recess appointments, installing officials without Senate confirmation during the congressional recess.

The abuse of the recess appointment perhaps isn't Bush's most egregious attack on our Founders' carefully crafted system of checks and balances, since others before him have exploited this constitutional loophole.

But the implicit reasons behind each appointment are quite egregious, and each in their own way.

The one that's gotten the most attention is Sam Fox, our new Ambassador to Belgium.

It's typical, if still highly inappropriate, for cronies of the President to get cushy Ambassador gigs.

But Sam Fox wasn't just a big donor of Bush. He gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat liars that smeared John Kerry's war record.

Of course, the Bush campaign always insisted it had nothing to do with the smear merchants, even though the group had ties to Karl Rove.

But to go the extra mile after being stiff-armed by the Senate, to appoint a major backer of filthy politics to a major post, shows how politics are played in the conservative movement.

Get dirty now, get rewarded later. No consequences for your actions. No disincentive to smear again.

The second is Andrew Biggs, to become the #2 man at the Social Security Administration.

Biggs is not only committed to the dismantling of Social Security via privatization. As associate commissioner of SSA, he was behind an effort to use the agency to pump out misinformation and undermine support for the program.

He is one of the many examples of how the White House is trying to cripple the civil service, and prevent our government from providing us with objective, factual information.

Finally, we have Susan Dudley becoming administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, also known as the "regulatory czar" because it reviews regulations throughout the government.

OMB Watch explains her significance:

"Dudley's record is one of anti-regulatory extremism," said Rick Melberth, Director of Regulatory Policy at OMB Watch. "She has opposed some of our nation's most basic environmental, workplace safety and public health protections."

Dudley has falsely proclaimed ground-level ozone to be beneficial, opposed ergonomic standards to protect workers from repetitive stress disorders, and even suggested that airbags should never have been mandated in automobiles.

This is also a big part of the conservative game plan to cripple the civil service.

When civil servants try to implement laws passed by our democratically-elected Congress, like say the Clean Air Act, folks like Dudley are installed to bring the hammer down, prevent the law's implementation, and put the special interest ahead of the public interest.

The abuse of the recess appointment weakens our system of checks and balances. But the specific people appointed threaten to do even greater harm.