Citizens' Daily Lobby

Things are black and white as usual over at the ultra conservative Arkansas Family Council.   Folks who use the groups bill tracking site will find that the group has made things very simple for them.   Bills will be classified as “good bills” or “bad bills.”   No independent thought required.   The good news is they don’t have any bills up yet.

Arkansas Citizens First Congress also has a bill tracking site.  They give you a link to the bill and will tell you whether they “support” or “oppose” without laying claim to those emotion-laden moral qualifiers.    Currently the group is tracking HB1008 which will require proof of citizenship or legal residency in order for students to obtain in-state tuition at state colleges.  Note that it’s apparently going to be OK for undocumented people (read students of tax-paying parents who have completed high school in Arkansas public schools)  to attend state-supported universities…they will just have to pay more.   This act is sponsored by Republicans Harris and Woods.

The Arkansas General Assembly has made it possible (and easy) to track bills.  Simply sign up, add the bills you wish to follow to your account, and you will be notified via email as action is taken on the bills.  I tried it, and it works.  This is outstanding progress for our state!  If you aren’t sure who your Representative and Senator are, you can search for them using your zip code at ProjectVoteSmart.  You can find them on the State Assembly page as well, but it’s more complicated.

Get ready for your daily lobby!  All politics is local, after all, and our best chance to make a difference is to act right here in our state.

An Arkansas Progressive group is planning to meet in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, January 10 to speak out in defense of health care reform. 

After two years of much blood, sweat and tears to build support for Affordable Health Care Reform. The historic legislation was signed into law less than a year ago and will provide hundreds of thousands of people in our state access to affordable quality health care, freedom from the discrimination of pre-existing conditions and real controls on the insurance company monopolies. http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/repealcosts/ar.html

On Wednesday,Rep Tim Griffin and the Republican led US House of Representatives will vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. While we oppose this action, we believe it can provide us with a serious opportunity to talk about the positive benefits of this legislation for the people of Arkansas.
Join us Monday, January 10 at 1:00 PM in the Rotunda of the State Capitol to tell our elected officials that we support many of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act and that we want to see it implemented. -Arkansas Progressives

Come out if you can.  If not, please call or email your Congressman (Mike Ross is planning to vote for repeal, I am told), and your state representative and senators.  Health care reform is already working for small businesses, in spite of doomsday warnings from Republicans (Forbes).   Not only are more employees of small business getting coverage, but the insurance industry benefits from small business tax incentives through increased policy sales.  That tends to annihilate the “socialist” argument against reform.

It turns out that, averaged over all types of jobs, including the lowest-level minimum wage positions, total benefits and compensation for public employees is higher nationally  compared to the private sector, largely due to better benefits.  Let’s be clear, however, that we aren’t talking about extravagant benefits here, just better than private sector benefits.  Given the abysmal status of private sector benefits, with profit-driven companies seeking to minimize their contributions to employee well-being, health, and retirement, that’s not necessarily saying all that much.  It certainly doesn’t demonstrate a public class of workers looting taxpayer money for outrageous benefits. 

The current movement to attack and denigrate public service, as voiced most loudly by newly elected Republican governors,  is forcing states to move toward the lowest common denominator in terms of salary, benefits, and protective labor laws for all workers.  And that, currently, is corporate-level compensation, where employees get to bear the brunt of shareholder-driven cost cutting.   The problem is not that public servants are being compensated too much; it’s that private-sector labor is being compensated too little!  In fact, most private sector employees would love to get their hands on a  401k with employer match that might give them even the slightest hope of retiring before they die of myocardial infarction. 

By creating a gulf between middle class public servants and the rest of the middle and working classes, the GOP may also hope to pave the way for ultimate privatization of services currently held in the public trust.  Business can do things more cheaply, says the GOP.  Sure it can, unless it’s contracting to government (and contracting is exactly how privatization will take place).  The problem is that taxpayer dollars will go to create huge profits for shareholders and bonuses for obscenely overpaid CEO’s instead of coming back to the people in the form of decent wages spent in the local economy.  

Ultimately, private-sector labor will feel the burn as states rush to block the power of government workers and unions.   Corporate America is holding states hostage to predatory labor practices that are legal in less progressive states and around the world.    Right to work states are what corporations are looking for these days.  One only has to look to the South, undisputedly dead last on any economic scale, and notoriously unfriendly to labor, to see that right to work does not work.  Somebody here in Arkansas is getting rich, but it’s not labor.

A rapidly emerging theme for 2011 is the brilliantly engineered corporate and, therefore, Conservative, message attacking public servants.    Seeking, perhaps, to divert public anger away from CEOs that make 400 times the average worker’s pay, or the top 1% of Americans that control 42% of our country’s financial wealth,  Republicans are increasingly setting public sector workers out as scapegoats for US financial woes.    The epic myth, constantly bubbling at low levels in the psyche of the private-sector working class, that government employees are getting rich at their expense, has come to full-blown boil courtesy of the Tea Party and right-wing talking heads.   Like most myths, this one survives in spite of a crushing lack of evidence.   I challenge my readers to produce a single example of a person’s getting rich through legitimate public service.  (On the other hand, examples of private riches growing out of public funds through unethical contracting practices abound).

Are public-sector employees overcompensated compared to their private-sector counterparts?  It’s a complicated question, and a simple comparison of total compensation, wages, or benefits, will never tell the full story.   Any comparison must take into account the job type  and other confounding factors.   For example, many if not most government jobs require a relatively higher educational level, and it wouldn’t be exactly fair to compare government workers to all other jobs including minimum-wage positions like entry-level food service.

Here in Arkansas, it is fairly clear that public servants are not overcompensated, in terms of salaries and wages, compared to private-sector worker bees.   On average, state employees, especially in management positions, earn significantly less.   (Click here for Arkansas data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics).  A look at Arkansas’ public teacher salaries speaks volumes: the state average for entry-level teachers is$31,592 for 2010-2011, and pay maxes out at $48,710 (data from Arkansas Department of Education).  Anyone seeking the “American Dream” of unlimited earning potential and fabulous wealth will avoid a teaching career in public school.

How did teachers, firefighters, and public-works employees become the Right Wing’s whipping boys?  Future posts on this topic will explore potential drivers for the denigration of public service, the ways in which leveling private and public sector compensation and benefits will exploit labor to the benefit of Corporate America, and the potentially devastating societal effects of making public service ignoble.

It’s Christmas Eve, and I know everyone is thinking about family and gifts and the good stuff in life.  And rightly so.    This Holiday season, I hope you will also take a few moments to speak out for public and environmental health here in the Natural State.

Southwestern Electric Power Company has asked for a permit to put a coal ash landfill at the already hotly contested Turk plant site.   The state already has two such dumps, at Flint Creek and Independence Stream.  Currently, the EPA does not regulate water pollution caused by toxic coal ash, although the agency is reviewing its position.  This means that if a permit is approved, SWEPCO will dump an unregulated pollutant next to sensitive wetlands.  Coal ash leaches toxins such as arsenic and lead into nearby water sources.  Recently, a joint report by several organizations, including the Sierra Club, documented contamination of water near both existing Arkansas ash dumps (In Harm’s Way).  The proposed dump would have a lifespan of 34.3 years, and would involve over 6 million tons of coal ash deposited within 300 feet of valuable wetlands.  There’s a high probability of storm overflow in this sensitive location.

The Sierra Club has made it easy to comment.  Please edit and personalize the letter provided (It’s very important to personalize!) and send it on its way to Teresa Marks and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.  The deadline for comments is Dec. 27th, so please act today!

It’s December, and in defiance of the jaunty lighting, days off work, and happy faces all around, I have fallen into my usual mid-winter funk.  I’m moving into the acceptance phase as my intellectual love affair with the idea of Barack Obama ends.  So, too, ends my brief hiatus into the notion that any change can be effected at the national level.  I have long suspected that this is the case, but I chose to believe that just this once my vote could really make a difference.

Speak Truth to Power, we are told.  And then what?   Power doesn’t have to hear the truth, especially not from the likes of us.  There are far too many dollars arguing the other side.   I propose a radical, and, perhaps ultimately as unsuccessful, strategy:  let’s speak Truth to the Disempowered.   Let’s speak  to those who have fallen on hard times and don’t understand the reasons their jobs have evaporated.  To those who live permanently in unsafe neighborhoods without a decent place even to buy groceries.  To the children who believe they have no hope of attaining prosperity.  And let’s speak at length to the comfortable, who want desperately to believe that everything will be OK if they can only weather this latest financial downturn.    The Disempowered are angry, rightfully angry, and it is up to us to see that their anger is channeled at the real perpetrators of our national decline.

In so doing, let’s build our local economies and local food systems.  Advocate for sustainable communities at home.   Work with local governments to promote a business model that rewards small business equally with multinational corporations.    It will take work.  It will take conscious efforts on the part of Progressives to stop propping up the system that has failed us.  Buy local.  Buy more  important stuff and less trivia.  Spend less money on mind-numbing entertainment.   Turn off cable, and shut out the constant barrage of advertising and political propaganda.  It’s not about opting out.  It’s about opting in to a better way of life.  The new year is coming.  Make it count.

As it becomes increasingly clear that the federal government will take no steps to help the working and middle classes in the struggle to keep jobs and earn a decent living, local communities will increasingly  have to help themselves.  That’s what the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Local 204 of Taunton, MA, are doing.   Esterline Technologies plans to take 100 jobs out of the town and move them to a non-union plant in California and a low-wage plant in Tijuana, Mexico.   This move is planned in spite of consistently good production by the plant in Taunton, which boasted profits of $119.8 million last year.

The union tried to negotiate with the company to take over running the plant on its own or as a subsidiary of another company, and had negotiated right of first refusal when equipment was sold, but the plans fell through.  Esterline attempted to auction off the equipment on Dec. 12th, but, with the help of the Massachusetts legislature and Rep. Barnie Frank, as well as local civic leaders, the company was pressured to delay the sale until January 19th.

Here’s where the story gets juicy.  The city of Taunton is planning to use eminent domain laws to take over the plant’s facilities and equipment (with appropriate compensation to Esterline) if necessary.   Poetic justice, I would say.  Companies receive huge incentives to move into cities and states, and it seems only just that civic leaders  would expect to get some loyalty for their tax dollars.

Has disgust at corporate greed become deep enough in the American psyche that we can expect to see ever more examples of this type of action?

Check out the full story here.

I would like to say that the country erupted last week in response to President Obama’s proposed tax deal with Republicans.    What really happened was that the politically engaged on both sides of the issue got their collective underwear in a bundle and exchanged words.   From the beleaguered middle class nothing of substance was heard.  Even when the sitting President turned the microphone over to a former President, and Obama had left the building during a press conference,  no heads exploded, and the public chose to whimper in place of an outcry.

Quietly, that same week, Congress also failed to stem the tide of rampant corporate abuse.  The Robert C. Byrd Mine Safety Protection Act of 2010 (HR6495),  penned in response to the Upper Big Branch Mine Explosion of 2010, was not passed.   The bill would have enacted major reform of the mining industry by  imposing criminal penalties (up to $250k and a prison term of up to a year) for underground mine operators that willfully violate a mandatory health or safety standard.  For repeat offenders who knew or should have known that the violation “has the potential to expose a miner to risk of serious injury, serious illness, or death,”  the operator could face a fine of  $1,000,000, or  5 years imprisonment, for not more than 5 years, or both.

From our state, only Vic Snyder voted for this bill.  Mike Ross,  likely facing pressure from mining interests, voted against increased protection for miners.  Given that it’s only a matter of time before mining corporations get their hands on lignite deposits in our state,  protecting current and future Arkansas miners should be a priority. (Roll call 616)

Government is quickly losing any semblance of siding with labor on any issue.    When the US government will not stand between workers and corporate abuse, when unions have been reduced to powerless shells, and when the public will not stand up for its own interests,  labor must beware.  Big Business will not look out for workers’ rights and safety.

I have said this before, but I think it’s worth repeating.  Compromise only works if both sides are doing it.

Making a one-sided compromise is like giving your lunch to the 5th grade bully.   He says, “Hey, let’s compromise.  You give me your lunch, and I’ll let you live another day. “  Compromise?  Maybe, but only if you assume he has the right to take your lunch in the first place, much less kill you.

Let’s review the proposed tax cut compromise. The government will bail workers out of a situation created by the greedy, and the richest 1-2%, the ones who have profited the most at the expense of American labor throughout the recession, will not assume any additional responsibility for the bill.   The GOP will make the deficit worse by almost a trillion dollars.    You can bet that in 2012, the Party of No will blame the entire increase on unemployment extension and will ignore their continued give-away of $700 billion to the wealthy.   This, in spite of good evidence that almost all the unemployment benefit money will go right back into the economy.  After all, the unemployed are not saving.

The common sense plan for the Bush-era tax cuts proposed by Democrats has, predictably, met its match in that most aristocratic of US governmental bodies, the Senate.   Corporatism may take a beating in the House from time to time, but the Senate is and will remain the fairy godmother for Corporate America.    The GOP is holding middle class Americans hostage to the richest 1-2% again.   Both middle class tax cut extension and emergency unemployment benefits are being used as leverage by the GOP to force Democrats to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.  Even a compromise plan to extend benefits to those making under $1 million and also for the first $250,000  of income for everyone, was not enough to appease the Party of No.

It turns out that Americans oppose the GOP tax plan.  A CBS News Poll revealed that a minority of even Republicans want to extend the Bush era tax cuts for everyone.  Overall, 26% of Americans want to keep tax cuts for everyone, while 53% want to let tax cuts expire for those households making $250k or more.  Even more astounding is the 14% of Americans who want the tax cuts to expire for everyone.

Even with bilateral public support for ending tax cuts for the wealthy, President Obama has not found the political courage to stand firm against GOP grandstanding.     It seems that the measure will ultimately end up back in the House.  Will Democrats there proudly stand up for the middle class and for the will of the American people, or will they cave to GOP strong-arm tactics yet again?  I wish I could say I am optimistic for the outcome.