One of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) that has aroused the most controversy (perhaps because it is one of the few provisions that most people can readily understand) is the "employer mandate" requiring that all businesses with 50 or more workers provide their full-time employees with health care coverage by 2014. While the employer mandate does not affect nearly as many people as the "individual mandate" requiring that every man, woman, and child purchase health insurance by that date or face a substantial monetary penalty, it has generated its own little tempest. Most of the resistance to the employer mandate has come from restaurant chains, most notably from the CEO of Papa John's Pizza, John Schnatter. He made quite a splash last December by predicting that companies like his would "find loopholes to get around" the requirement, opining that "its common sense for companies to reduce workers hours so that they no longer fit the definition of full-time employees. Darden Restaurants, which owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden, acknowledged that it was experimenting with cutting workers's hours for the same purpose. The owners of Carl's Jr. and Hardees chains announced that they would employ many more part-time workers in the future. One Denny's franchise owner in Florida said that he would add 5% to the price of each meal. Papa John himself calculates that providing health insurance coverage would add from 11 to 14 cents per pizza. (Maybe I am missing something here, but don't hours reductions and price increases place the burden on employees and customers, rather than on owners and managers?) Reacting to a customer backlash (workers obviously have a choice between working part-time and seeking other employment with more sympathetic fast food entrepreneurs), some companies and their executives have softened their original positions. Last week, Darden announced that it would not reduce the hours of current employees (what about new hires?), while Papa John said that while he could not speak for individual franchise owners, the corporation itself would not cut workers hours. In addition, he announced on The Huffington Post "the good news" that full-time workers would receive coverage, and that the company would not be put at a competitive disadvantage because "our competitors are going to have to do the same thing."
Incredibly enough, the concept of employer mandate originated during the administration of that notorious crypto-socialist Richard Nixon. Realizing that the Democrats had accumulated a lot of political capitol by enacting Medicare and Medicaid, and aware that the rising costs of health care were a serious drag upon the economy, he proposed that all employers be required to pay health benefits for their workers. He even suggested a subsidized government insurance program for all Americans that employer coverage did not reach. (This was a giant leap from his position during the 1960 presidential debates when he had half-heartedly suggested that those who who so desired should have a choice government or private insurance.) Of course, he was not unaware that such a program would mean millions of new customers for private insurance companies, but let's give the devil his due.
As Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker has observed, Nixon seemed "more interested in rationalizing health care than promoting national health insurance. Although as many as 20 separate bills were introduced during Nixon's administration. no proposal for universal coverage received a majority vote from a Congressional committee until the ill-fated measure designed by Hillary and Bill Clinton in 1994. Perhaps the major result of Nixon's efforts was the formation of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), which were a great boon to insurers and to the medical profession in general. Membership in HMOs was clearly out of the financial reach of millions of citizens. Ironically, opposition to Nixon's proposals was led by none other than Ted Kennedy, who wanted single-pay universal coverage. It was a mistake that he later regretted. He had erroneously believed that the momentum for universal health insurance was irresistible. "It was that rare moment in his Senate career when he made a fundamental miscalculation about what was politically possible--a lot of liberals did," according to Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker. "What was not recognized by anyone at the time was that this was the end of the New Deal era" he adds, and that the tax revolts of the 1970s "ushered in Ronald Reagan and a conservative, antigovernment [sic] philosophy." That mindset, in turn, was given a momentous boost by the Watergate Scandal and Nixon's forced resignation, (Poor Trick Dick. Even when he tried to "appeal to the better angels of our nature", he was sandbagged by his baser instincts.) As for Ted, Chappaquiddick proved to be his Watergate. He had earlier joined with Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers and several physicians, professors, and politicians in forming a Committee for National Health Insurance, which produced an ill-fated Health Security bill. In 1991, he
co-sponsored an unsuccessful Health America bill that combined an employer mandate with "Medicare For All.".(Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt even facetiously asked the "Liberal Lion" if he intended to give Nixon a footnote.)
So, for better or worse, the employer mandate has been one of the cornerstones of our health care policy, for nearly 40 years. It is clearly nothing new or radical. In fact, it has generally enjoyed bipartisan support. What, then, is causing all this brouhaha? Maybe it is because "Obamacare" signals a greater determination on the part of the federal government to expand and enforce the mandate. Much of it is certainly due to the fact that today's health care industry is much better organized, more powerful, and more intransigent than it was in the 1970s. Much of it is certainly due to the fact that today's Republicans make those of the Nixon Era seem like flaming liberals--or even, heaven forfend, socialists. As noted above, many employers fervently believe that the mandate will force them take measures that would pain them to the quick--raise prices, cut back workers' hours, or mechanize and computerize because machines don't get sick and don't require health coverage. It would also put them at the mercy of private health insurers, which is a state that no savvy businessman would submit to willingly. They understand that insurers would make them "pay through the nose," because that is exactly what most of them would do in a similar situation.
Fortunately, there is a solution, one that would employer and employees alike, as well as the millions of Americans who have not been able to secure or hold a job that entitles them to health care coverage. It would liberate employers from an onerous and expensive obligation, significantly lower their cost of doing business, and free them to spend more money on adding new workers, paying higher wages and other benefits, research and development, and service to their communities. It would free them from conforming to the endless paperwork and red tape imposed by business and government bureaucracies alike. It would eliminate the need to haggle with unions or other employee advocates. over the relative merits of insurance plans, and to worry if they were doing the best possible job of providing the best possible health care for their employees It would eliminate one major bone of contention between employers and employees. It would eliminate the nagging fear that their workers have decided to work for them, instead of one on their competitors, solely because they have a better health insurance plan. We could call it universal health coverage, single-pay, a public option, Medicare for All, or any of the various models that grown-up countries already have. We could even call it something like a free market in health insurance. It would validate the first principle of insurance: the larger the pool of subscribers, the more the risks are spread out and their total cost minimized. It would not necessarily eliminate private, for-profit health insurers. It would only require them to compete on an equal footing with their peers and against the "yardstick" provided by a public option. Of course, it might cut down on their profits and dividends, as well as on the salaries and benefit packages of their executives, but that would be a relatively small price to pay for creating a much more efficient and economical health care system.
Come to think of it, such a system would also eliminate the even more odious individual mandate.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Sunday, January 6, 2013
My Invitation to Join the NRA
My mailed invitation to join the NRA is headed "Dear Friend," and is signed by Wayne LaPierre, the organization's executive vice-president and CEO. That greeting seems overly familiar and grossly impersonal, all at the same time.
I have never owned a gun of any sort and have never contributed to any organization nor subscribed to any publication even remotely connected to the NRA. In fact, the only time in my life that I ever held a gun in my hand and fired one at a rifle range is when I was in compulsory Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps at Loras Academy back in the 1950s. I learned to take apart and reassemble a World War II MI carbine, as well as to march and drill with one. Even though I rose to the rank of major and executive officer of our battalion, and won the Chicago Tribune Award for excellence in military science and tactics, ROTC was not one of the most pleasant experiences of my high school career. I have never touched a handgun of any description, unless you count playing "Cowboys and Indians" as a kid. We had "cap pistols" that made noise and gave off the smoke and smell of ersatz gun powder. I never even asked for a "BB Gun" for Christmas like Ralphie in "A Christmas Story," although I am sure that my parents would have refused, probably because they were afraid that "you will shoot your eye out." My father, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, told of people that he knew who had been seriously wounded or even killed by the "unloaded" shotguns that some of his neighbors kept behind their kitchen doors. Besides that, I am a long-time, card- carrying member of the Wisconsin Democratic Party,belong to more progressive organizations and subscribe to more progressive publications than I can remember , and have signed numerous petitions advocating almost every kind of gun control imaginable. My ideological orientation virtually screams from my blog posts, Facebook info, and other devices of social media, as well as from my myriad publications and letters to the editor.
So what?, you.ask. My point is this: If the NRA sponsored a contest or a survey to find the people least likely to join their organization, I flatter myself that I would at the very top of the shortest possible list. So how on earth did the NRA possibly single me out as a potential member? How in hell do they generate their mailing list?
Regardless of the answer to that puzzle, I have to admit that the NRA offered me a lot more incentives to join than I have ever gotten from other organization. To begin with, the invitation offered me a substantial discount just for joining: $25.00 for one year (normally $35.00) and $70.00 for three years, instead of the normal $85.00.
It was also very careful to inform me that "contributions, gifts, or membership dues made or paid to the National Rifle Association of America are not refundable or transferable and are not deductible as charitable contributions for Federal income tax purposes." It also acknowledged that "$3.75 of the membership dues are designated for magazine subscription," and that I could choose among American Rifleman, American Hunter, or Freedom First..American Rifleman is also available in Digital or Premium Digital editions. The latter also includes several bonuses, including instant videos, links to other sites, photo galleries, interactive ads, social media sharing, sound, animation, and "special editions." The digital edition is narrated by a professional quality voice-over which assures me that subscribing puts the viewer "in the driver's seat," and saves the organization the cost of printing and postage which can then be applied to the "fight for firearms freedom." There is also a "juniors only" magazine called Insights.
In addition, new members also receive $7,500 of insurance, free admission to the NRA's Annual Guns, Gear, and Outfitter Show, membership card and decal, and invitations to "special events and more." New members can also have a choice among three free gifts: a Rosewood Handle Knife, a Black and Gold Duffel Bag, and a Digital Camo Duffel Bag. They can also contribute to the Military Membership Fund, shop at an NRA Stores, access its video-on-demand archive, Wayne LaPierre's daily blog, live web casts on NRANews.com, and the NRA Car Buying Service, as well as shop at NRA Stores. By calling toll free numbers, members can also receive a Visa credit card and checks bearing the NRA logo, as well as property, casualty, auto, home, and term life insurance. They can also receive a 15% discount from Beverly Hills International, Inc. [located, oddly enough, in Boca Raton, Florida], "which supplies corporate awards, business gifts, and promotional products to companies and organizations worldwide." And that is only the tip of an iceberg of "perqs" and "bennies".
Members are also eligible for a veritable cornucopia of additional Members Only Discounts, including those from: Lifelock Identity Theft Protection, North American and Allied Van Lines, and Air Brook Limousine Service ("A chauffeur-driven full service featuring luxury sedans, stretch limos, vans, mini -buses and full size motor coaches, including day trips, tours and packages."); I did not have the intestinal fortitude to print out the entire list, but I did determine that, if I had, it would run to 68 pages with several items on each page. Even more informative and awe-inspiring is the roster of "NRA Affiliate Discounts": MoveBenefits that include mortgage and real estate services, Outdoor Affinity Telecom, bsecure Family Protection, NRA wine club, holiday cards, and video collections, Lifeline screening, hearing benefits, prescription drug plans, health services, Hertz, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, National. and Alamo car rental services, Baymont, Knights Inn, Best Western, Hawthorn, Microtel, Howard Johnson, Ramada, Super 8, Wyndham, Travelodge, and Wingate hotel chains. Then there are the NRA Licensed Products that include Gun Safes by Liberty, Second Amendment Revolvers, Moose ATV and UtV Products, Resistol Hats, Sportsman's Bench Products, and T-Shirts By Buck Wear. You can also shop online at <NRAProducts.com> and access NRA Program Materials Center, Fold-Up Duck Decoys, Blue Book Publications, and Palladium Press.
To broadcast its message as widely and completely as possible, the NRA maintains no less than 40 web sites, including Business Alliance, Civil Rights Defense Fund, Firearms For Freedom, Gunsmithing, Hunters Rights, National Firearms Museum, NRA Country, NRA Digital Network, Life Of Duty, Women's Network, Political Victory Fund, Shooting Illustrated, and NRA Instructors and Programs. There is also a membership recruiting program called "NRA Recruiter" that invites members to "join the thousands of NRA certified instructors, affiliated clubs, independent businesses, and dedicated members who are already participating," This program "provides a great opportunity to not only strengthen the NRA by increasing membership, but also to earn money at the same time." There is no cost to enroll and "participants are furnished with NRA recruiting materials, as well as effective recruiting techniques.?
On a less mercenary level, the organization proclaims that "the NRA is you," millions of Americans representing a diverse contrast of age, sex, race, and religion. You are patriots one and all. You believe in the Constitution,
staunch in the defense of your rights, and you actively pursue some of the country's finest traditions--Hunting and Sports Shooting. Since its incorporation in 1871, the NRA has grown as a service organization involved in all aspects of the shooting sports and a proud defender of the Bill of Rights[at least the second half of the Second Amendment]." Just in case that lofty appeal is not sufficiently motivating, the organization's pitch reminds prospective members that they will also be eligible for "a wide range of benefits that add up to savings, convenience, and fun." For many Americans, the NRA seems little different from the myriad fraternal/benevolent societies that have always been a distinguishing hallmark of the United States, except that none of the others offer such a dazzling array of member benefits.
Of course it is impossible to calculate how much of the NRA's ability to recruit and retain members is a product of its incredible benefits package. Its very existence, however, suggests strongly that the organization is afraid to rely entirely upon its ideological orientation for success. Moreover, even a casual reading of the list of discounts, benefits, and perquisites outlined above, and of the roster of mainstream businesses and organizations that are engaged in providing those member benefits, strikingly demonstrates the degree to which the NRA has succeeded in making itself seem a "normal" and non-threatening part of our economic and social fabric. By bonding its members to an "all or nothing" dictum of gun ownership, it has effectively forestalled possible defections over such proposals as a ban on automatic assault weapons or opposition to "concealed carry" laws. It success at this strategy is demonstrated by the fact that only 44% of Americans currently support stricter guns laws, compared to
78% in 1990. Since that time, it has expanded to more than four million members with an operating budget of some $300 million, an increase of about 400% since 1990. According to a recent article on the Huffington Post, the NRA has 140 times more dues paying members than does its opposite number-- the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence--and spent 1,000 times more money on the 2012 election. Although it received "a ton of money from gun manufacturers and vendors (including those who manufacture assault weapons and high capacity magazines), such as Arsenal, Beretta, Browing, Brownells, DPMS Panther Arms, Glock, Remington Arms, Smith and Wesson, Sturm, Ruger &Co., and Winchester", the "majority of its funds still come from ordinary citizens--from kits 4.3 million members." Small wonder that the NRA is so attractive to so many different people, and so intimidating to so many politicians. After all, "nobody shoots Santa Claus."
I have never owned a gun of any sort and have never contributed to any organization nor subscribed to any publication even remotely connected to the NRA. In fact, the only time in my life that I ever held a gun in my hand and fired one at a rifle range is when I was in compulsory Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps at Loras Academy back in the 1950s. I learned to take apart and reassemble a World War II MI carbine, as well as to march and drill with one. Even though I rose to the rank of major and executive officer of our battalion, and won the Chicago Tribune Award for excellence in military science and tactics, ROTC was not one of the most pleasant experiences of my high school career. I have never touched a handgun of any description, unless you count playing "Cowboys and Indians" as a kid. We had "cap pistols" that made noise and gave off the smoke and smell of ersatz gun powder. I never even asked for a "BB Gun" for Christmas like Ralphie in "A Christmas Story," although I am sure that my parents would have refused, probably because they were afraid that "you will shoot your eye out." My father, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, told of people that he knew who had been seriously wounded or even killed by the "unloaded" shotguns that some of his neighbors kept behind their kitchen doors. Besides that, I am a long-time, card- carrying member of the Wisconsin Democratic Party,belong to more progressive organizations and subscribe to more progressive publications than I can remember , and have signed numerous petitions advocating almost every kind of gun control imaginable. My ideological orientation virtually screams from my blog posts, Facebook info, and other devices of social media, as well as from my myriad publications and letters to the editor.
So what?, you.ask. My point is this: If the NRA sponsored a contest or a survey to find the people least likely to join their organization, I flatter myself that I would at the very top of the shortest possible list. So how on earth did the NRA possibly single me out as a potential member? How in hell do they generate their mailing list?
Regardless of the answer to that puzzle, I have to admit that the NRA offered me a lot more incentives to join than I have ever gotten from other organization. To begin with, the invitation offered me a substantial discount just for joining: $25.00 for one year (normally $35.00) and $70.00 for three years, instead of the normal $85.00.
It was also very careful to inform me that "contributions, gifts, or membership dues made or paid to the National Rifle Association of America are not refundable or transferable and are not deductible as charitable contributions for Federal income tax purposes." It also acknowledged that "$3.75 of the membership dues are designated for magazine subscription," and that I could choose among American Rifleman, American Hunter, or Freedom First..American Rifleman is also available in Digital or Premium Digital editions. The latter also includes several bonuses, including instant videos, links to other sites, photo galleries, interactive ads, social media sharing, sound, animation, and "special editions." The digital edition is narrated by a professional quality voice-over which assures me that subscribing puts the viewer "in the driver's seat," and saves the organization the cost of printing and postage which can then be applied to the "fight for firearms freedom." There is also a "juniors only" magazine called Insights.
In addition, new members also receive $7,500 of insurance, free admission to the NRA's Annual Guns, Gear, and Outfitter Show, membership card and decal, and invitations to "special events and more." New members can also have a choice among three free gifts: a Rosewood Handle Knife, a Black and Gold Duffel Bag, and a Digital Camo Duffel Bag. They can also contribute to the Military Membership Fund, shop at an NRA Stores, access its video-on-demand archive, Wayne LaPierre's daily blog, live web casts on NRANews.com, and the NRA Car Buying Service, as well as shop at NRA Stores. By calling toll free numbers, members can also receive a Visa credit card and checks bearing the NRA logo, as well as property, casualty, auto, home, and term life insurance. They can also receive a 15% discount from Beverly Hills International, Inc. [located, oddly enough, in Boca Raton, Florida], "which supplies corporate awards, business gifts, and promotional products to companies and organizations worldwide." And that is only the tip of an iceberg of "perqs" and "bennies".
Members are also eligible for a veritable cornucopia of additional Members Only Discounts, including those from: Lifelock Identity Theft Protection, North American and Allied Van Lines, and Air Brook Limousine Service ("A chauffeur-driven full service featuring luxury sedans, stretch limos, vans, mini -buses and full size motor coaches, including day trips, tours and packages."); I did not have the intestinal fortitude to print out the entire list, but I did determine that, if I had, it would run to 68 pages with several items on each page. Even more informative and awe-inspiring is the roster of "NRA Affiliate Discounts": MoveBenefits that include mortgage and real estate services, Outdoor Affinity Telecom, bsecure Family Protection, NRA wine club, holiday cards, and video collections, Lifeline screening, hearing benefits, prescription drug plans, health services, Hertz, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, National. and Alamo car rental services, Baymont, Knights Inn, Best Western, Hawthorn, Microtel, Howard Johnson, Ramada, Super 8, Wyndham, Travelodge, and Wingate hotel chains. Then there are the NRA Licensed Products that include Gun Safes by Liberty, Second Amendment Revolvers, Moose ATV and UtV Products, Resistol Hats, Sportsman's Bench Products, and T-Shirts By Buck Wear. You can also shop online at <NRAProducts.com> and access NRA Program Materials Center, Fold-Up Duck Decoys, Blue Book Publications, and Palladium Press.
To broadcast its message as widely and completely as possible, the NRA maintains no less than 40 web sites, including Business Alliance, Civil Rights Defense Fund, Firearms For Freedom, Gunsmithing, Hunters Rights, National Firearms Museum, NRA Country, NRA Digital Network, Life Of Duty, Women's Network, Political Victory Fund, Shooting Illustrated, and NRA Instructors and Programs. There is also a membership recruiting program called "NRA Recruiter" that invites members to "join the thousands of NRA certified instructors, affiliated clubs, independent businesses, and dedicated members who are already participating," This program "provides a great opportunity to not only strengthen the NRA by increasing membership, but also to earn money at the same time." There is no cost to enroll and "participants are furnished with NRA recruiting materials, as well as effective recruiting techniques.?
On a less mercenary level, the organization proclaims that "the NRA is you," millions of Americans representing a diverse contrast of age, sex, race, and religion. You are patriots one and all. You believe in the Constitution,
staunch in the defense of your rights, and you actively pursue some of the country's finest traditions--Hunting and Sports Shooting. Since its incorporation in 1871, the NRA has grown as a service organization involved in all aspects of the shooting sports and a proud defender of the Bill of Rights[at least the second half of the Second Amendment]." Just in case that lofty appeal is not sufficiently motivating, the organization's pitch reminds prospective members that they will also be eligible for "a wide range of benefits that add up to savings, convenience, and fun." For many Americans, the NRA seems little different from the myriad fraternal/benevolent societies that have always been a distinguishing hallmark of the United States, except that none of the others offer such a dazzling array of member benefits.
Of course it is impossible to calculate how much of the NRA's ability to recruit and retain members is a product of its incredible benefits package. Its very existence, however, suggests strongly that the organization is afraid to rely entirely upon its ideological orientation for success. Moreover, even a casual reading of the list of discounts, benefits, and perquisites outlined above, and of the roster of mainstream businesses and organizations that are engaged in providing those member benefits, strikingly demonstrates the degree to which the NRA has succeeded in making itself seem a "normal" and non-threatening part of our economic and social fabric. By bonding its members to an "all or nothing" dictum of gun ownership, it has effectively forestalled possible defections over such proposals as a ban on automatic assault weapons or opposition to "concealed carry" laws. It success at this strategy is demonstrated by the fact that only 44% of Americans currently support stricter guns laws, compared to
78% in 1990. Since that time, it has expanded to more than four million members with an operating budget of some $300 million, an increase of about 400% since 1990. According to a recent article on the Huffington Post, the NRA has 140 times more dues paying members than does its opposite number-- the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence--and spent 1,000 times more money on the 2012 election. Although it received "a ton of money from gun manufacturers and vendors (including those who manufacture assault weapons and high capacity magazines), such as Arsenal, Beretta, Browing, Brownells, DPMS Panther Arms, Glock, Remington Arms, Smith and Wesson, Sturm, Ruger &Co., and Winchester", the "majority of its funds still come from ordinary citizens--from kits 4.3 million members." Small wonder that the NRA is so attractive to so many different people, and so intimidating to so many politicians. After all, "nobody shoots Santa Claus."
Friday, December 21, 2012
Hollywood Joins the Subsidy Scam
Up there on the "silver screen" Hollywood productions usually portray themselves as ardent foes of Big Business graft and corruption. In the real world, not so much. There the emphasis in Motion Picture Industry is more often on the "Industry" part. In the second installment of her "The United States Of Subsidies" series, New York Times reporter Louise Story details the saga of how the once mighty capital of the automotive industry--Pontiac, Michigan--"woos Hollywood, but ends up with a bit part." The studio--a state-of-the-art facility supposedly fit for the making of Hollywood blockbusters--was the brain child of a small group of local investors with grandiose plans. The studio, they reasoned, would attract prestigious film makers, and the movie productions would "create" jobs to pump money into the local economy. It would also transform the much-derided symbol of the Rust Belt into a glamorous, world-class, entertainment capital. Perhaps appropriately, the first movie to be produced in this Midwestern film capital was to be a big-budget Disney production entitled "Oz: the Great and Magnificent."
This transformation had its genesis in August, 2007, just as the automobile industry was on the verge of collapse. Seeking to avoid the apparently inevitable disaster, Governor Jennifer Granholm got together with Michigan-born actor and director Mike Binder,who persuaded her that extending incentives to the movie industry--euphemistically referred to as "film credits--would be Pontiac's salvation. Herself a one-time aspiring movie actress, the governor embraced the project wholeheartedly. Within eight months, according to Story, "the capital of the flailing auto industry became the capital of film tax credits". The legislature, equally desperate to combat the impending doom, agreed to a program that offered film makers a deal in which the state would return nearly one-half of every dollar that Hollywood spent locally. The news was greeted with enthusiasm by several movie moguls. Within a week after the announcement, the director of the state's film office attended a a movie conference in Santa Monica, at witch she was besieged by everyone from "the baby studios to the big guys." As Story wryly observes, Hollywood makes lots of movies about the evils of capitalism, "but it rarely works without incentives, which are paid for by taxpayers." Within two months, 24 movie productions had signed up to film in Michigan, up from two the year before. All told, these productions planned to spend $150 million filming in the state, of which $70 million would be refunded. According to a state-by-state survey by the NYT, $1.5 billion in tax breaks are lavished upon the film industry each year.
It wasn't long. as Story notes, before Pontiacers were rushing out on their lunch breaks to catch sight of such celebrities as Drew Barrymore, Clint Eastwood (sans chair), and Michael Moore. Movie making was a great escape from the economic disaster that blighted their lives. G.M. and most of its workforce left town, half of downtown Pontiac was boarded up, and landlords accepted rent checks through slots in doors locked for protection. State government was suffering budget shortfalls,while some of the lawmakers who had voted for tax credits were already questioning whether the state could afford such largess. But, just like in the movies, a savior appeared in 2008, in the person of Linden Nelson, a well-connected local entrepreneur with a charismatic personality (God save us from people with charismatic personalities) who had made a considerable fortune out of making removable key chains for valet-parkers and trinkets for AT&T and Harley Davidson. He had recently received a hefty insurance settlement for an "accidental" office fire that destroyed much of his factory. Much like "Professor Howard Hill" of "Music Man" fame, he proposed to save the town by turning an abandoned G. M. plant into a "world class" movie studio "right here in River City,"Ooops, Pontiac.
Nelson conveyed his enthusiasm for the project to Ari Emmanuel, promoter extraordinaire and brother of Rahm, soon to be President Obama's chief of staff and then to be mayor of Chicago. In his best Hollywood patois, Ari
expressed his confidence in the project to the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce: "I'm like, blown away by it....I think this is a no-brainer for the state of Michigan." He and Nelson, along with John Rikolta, the head of a commercial construction company, and A. Alfred Taubman, a prominent investor who made billions building shopping malls nationwide, teamed up. (Tannenbaum spent 10 months in prison in 2002 over price fixing accusations related to Sotheby's auction house, one of his vast holdings. He still maintains his innocence.) The four of them founded Mot5own Motion Pictures, LLC in May 2008. They bought the former auto plant from G.M., for virtually nothing," according to Rikolta. How much? Rikolta later boasted that G.M., which had just received a massive federal bailout, "spent more on the carpet than we spent on this building." The four invested between $10 and 12 billion of their own money and proposed to raise another $70 million using borrowed money and incentives from state and federal government. Of these sources, "Michigan appeared to be the largest competitive advantage to the company." In public, the investors touted the plan as an altruistic gesture on behalf of Pontiac. Taubman told the Detroit Free Press that, while he usually went into deals primarily to make money, this was different. "I just want to help create jobs," he announced, "and this can create 36,000 jobs." In February, 2009, Pontiac declared itself to be in financial crisis and appointed an emergency manager, Fred Lieb. He found that the city had overspent its budget by an estimated $7 to 12 million, and was still liable for old incentives it had given to G.M. and other corporations. Even sizable redevelopment tax credits from state and federal governments failed to make up the deficit. In particular, the city was asked to waive virtually all of the revenue from property taxes. During their deliberations, Lieb asked for job numbers to be written into the contract, but the investors refused. "We started seeing some backpedaling," he told Louise Story, and acknowledged that the meetings featured some "knock-down, drag-out fights." Nelson, et. al. insisted that they did not recall Lieb making that stipulation, and that whatever jobs were created were the responsibility of the film makers renting out the studio. Under pressure from the governor's office, Lieb later claimed that the city had little choice but to accept the deal. In her 2009 state of the state address, she praised the contract as "very exciting," and as "a classic transformation, The phoenix rising from the ashes." (That summer, Nelson suffered another loss from a fire of "undermined origins:, this time to his 23,000 square foot lake shore mansion in Bloomfield Hills.)
Sinking further into the abyss, the legislature agreed to use the state workers' pension funds as collateral for borrowing $18 million in municipal bonds. Needless to say, if the investors failed to repay the loan, the pension fund would be liable. Moreover, neither the state or federal government was aware of the deals each other had made with the investors. At the studio's groundbreaking ceremony on July 7, 2010, Nelson attempted to justify the incentive package because it would create a large {still unspecified} number of jobs. "It is a very competitive landscape out there," he insisted, "and that some "40 states have some some rebate or another in this industry. It kis an industry that's fought after." Although the Motion Picture Association of America claimed to employ some two million people and support 115,000 businesses, the non-partisan Tax Foundation, which opposes film industry incentives, reported that such claims were based upon, "fanciful estimates of economic activity." As the Pontiac studio opened, it announced that it was receiving $40 million from the state for the filming of "OZ." Although some Pontiac residents were employed upon making the film, the majority were "from L.A.", according to one local actress. In fact the studio admitted to hiring only 200 people, most of those employed on constructing the studio itself. According to its own records, the studio had created only two local jobs in 2010 and 12 in 2011. While that paltry number made it impossible for the studio to collect the $110 million contingent upon job creation, it did collect on other credits, including $14 million for a "Film and Digital Media Infrastructure Investment Tax Credit." Meanwhile, the city's third emergency manager, who was an avid foe of incentives, announced his opposition to such deals because it was "detrimental" to the city's revenue because "the money is needed for police, fire, and trash pickup." Frustrated in his attempts to collect taxes from a convoluted Disney corporate maze, he acknowledged that while the movie business was glamorous on the outside, "it's not very glamorous for the municipality that wants to collect something." He freely admitted that Pontiac had been "outgunned."
In November, 2010, however, Michigan elected a right-wing Republican governor named Rick Snyder. He is pretty reprehensible on most issues, but he quickly moved to rein in incentive programs. His budget director announced that "states harm themselves by competing on tax credits." Almost immediately, film makers deserted the state in droves. The Michigan Motion Picture Studio (which Nelson referred to as "Hollywood-land in Pontiac") began to lose out on contracts to states, like North Carolina, which continued to offer incentives. When the date for the studio's bond interest came due in February, 2012, the studio paid only a fraction of the bill due--"$210,000--
leaving the remaining $420,000 to be paid for by the state pension fund. Nelson and cohorts insisted that they would have been willing and able to pay the full freight, if only the state had not changed its tax credit law. Ruefully, the new head of the state's development agency declared that the pension fund might "end up owning these studios." (can anyone say "white elephant"? The "investors" themselves admitted that they had never considered making the entire interest payment, but that the state had agreed to cover the entire bond. The studio CFO insisted that the investors already stood to lose twice as much as they had originally intended to invest. In August, the studio defaulted on the entire $630,000 interest payment, despite the governor's offer to reinstate some of the tax credits. The investors began to lobby the state legislature to put more money in the tax credit fund, and even formed a political action committee to win public support. They initiated public tours of the studio. "Please don't hesitate to contact your state representative,' Nelson lobbies tourists, "tell them you've been here, you believe in it, so please appropriate enough money so it will work." If the state failed to up the ante, Nelson warned, they would probably have to shut down the studio. The last film made at the Pontiac studio was "Black Sky," a movie about a town ravaged by a tornado. Whether that was a case of life imitating art, or art imitating life, is a matter of perspective. In either case, Pontiac's love affair with using movie making as a redevelopment strategy is as dead as the studio's deserted sound stages.
Whatever else Pontiac's debacle might prove, it clearly demonstrates two absolutes. The first is that the once powerful cities of the "steel belt" turned "rust belt" are so desperate that they are willing, even eager, to buy into any redevelopment scheme, no matter how fanciful. The other is that corporations, film or otherwise, hold all the cards. They can make any preposterous claims about creating jobs and revitalizing local economies, but they cannot be pinned down to a legally-binding "quid pro quos" that would obligate them to deliver on their promises They can walk away at any time, with no financial or legal repercussions. They can cynically pit states and municipalities against one another, reward those who give them the best deal, and abandon the rest. It is not quite as good as a "license to steal," but it comes close enough.
JDB
This transformation had its genesis in August, 2007, just as the automobile industry was on the verge of collapse. Seeking to avoid the apparently inevitable disaster, Governor Jennifer Granholm got together with Michigan-born actor and director Mike Binder,who persuaded her that extending incentives to the movie industry--euphemistically referred to as "film credits--would be Pontiac's salvation. Herself a one-time aspiring movie actress, the governor embraced the project wholeheartedly. Within eight months, according to Story, "the capital of the flailing auto industry became the capital of film tax credits". The legislature, equally desperate to combat the impending doom, agreed to a program that offered film makers a deal in which the state would return nearly one-half of every dollar that Hollywood spent locally. The news was greeted with enthusiasm by several movie moguls. Within a week after the announcement, the director of the state's film office attended a a movie conference in Santa Monica, at witch she was besieged by everyone from "the baby studios to the big guys." As Story wryly observes, Hollywood makes lots of movies about the evils of capitalism, "but it rarely works without incentives, which are paid for by taxpayers." Within two months, 24 movie productions had signed up to film in Michigan, up from two the year before. All told, these productions planned to spend $150 million filming in the state, of which $70 million would be refunded. According to a state-by-state survey by the NYT, $1.5 billion in tax breaks are lavished upon the film industry each year.
It wasn't long. as Story notes, before Pontiacers were rushing out on their lunch breaks to catch sight of such celebrities as Drew Barrymore, Clint Eastwood (sans chair), and Michael Moore. Movie making was a great escape from the economic disaster that blighted their lives. G.M. and most of its workforce left town, half of downtown Pontiac was boarded up, and landlords accepted rent checks through slots in doors locked for protection. State government was suffering budget shortfalls,while some of the lawmakers who had voted for tax credits were already questioning whether the state could afford such largess. But, just like in the movies, a savior appeared in 2008, in the person of Linden Nelson, a well-connected local entrepreneur with a charismatic personality (God save us from people with charismatic personalities) who had made a considerable fortune out of making removable key chains for valet-parkers and trinkets for AT&T and Harley Davidson. He had recently received a hefty insurance settlement for an "accidental" office fire that destroyed much of his factory. Much like "Professor Howard Hill" of "Music Man" fame, he proposed to save the town by turning an abandoned G. M. plant into a "world class" movie studio "right here in River City,"Ooops, Pontiac.
Nelson conveyed his enthusiasm for the project to Ari Emmanuel, promoter extraordinaire and brother of Rahm, soon to be President Obama's chief of staff and then to be mayor of Chicago. In his best Hollywood patois, Ari
expressed his confidence in the project to the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce: "I'm like, blown away by it....I think this is a no-brainer for the state of Michigan." He and Nelson, along with John Rikolta, the head of a commercial construction company, and A. Alfred Taubman, a prominent investor who made billions building shopping malls nationwide, teamed up. (Tannenbaum spent 10 months in prison in 2002 over price fixing accusations related to Sotheby's auction house, one of his vast holdings. He still maintains his innocence.) The four of them founded Mot5own Motion Pictures, LLC in May 2008. They bought the former auto plant from G.M., for virtually nothing," according to Rikolta. How much? Rikolta later boasted that G.M., which had just received a massive federal bailout, "spent more on the carpet than we spent on this building." The four invested between $10 and 12 billion of their own money and proposed to raise another $70 million using borrowed money and incentives from state and federal government. Of these sources, "Michigan appeared to be the largest competitive advantage to the company." In public, the investors touted the plan as an altruistic gesture on behalf of Pontiac. Taubman told the Detroit Free Press that, while he usually went into deals primarily to make money, this was different. "I just want to help create jobs," he announced, "and this can create 36,000 jobs." In February, 2009, Pontiac declared itself to be in financial crisis and appointed an emergency manager, Fred Lieb. He found that the city had overspent its budget by an estimated $7 to 12 million, and was still liable for old incentives it had given to G.M. and other corporations. Even sizable redevelopment tax credits from state and federal governments failed to make up the deficit. In particular, the city was asked to waive virtually all of the revenue from property taxes. During their deliberations, Lieb asked for job numbers to be written into the contract, but the investors refused. "We started seeing some backpedaling," he told Louise Story, and acknowledged that the meetings featured some "knock-down, drag-out fights." Nelson, et. al. insisted that they did not recall Lieb making that stipulation, and that whatever jobs were created were the responsibility of the film makers renting out the studio. Under pressure from the governor's office, Lieb later claimed that the city had little choice but to accept the deal. In her 2009 state of the state address, she praised the contract as "very exciting," and as "a classic transformation, The phoenix rising from the ashes." (That summer, Nelson suffered another loss from a fire of "undermined origins:, this time to his 23,000 square foot lake shore mansion in Bloomfield Hills.)
Sinking further into the abyss, the legislature agreed to use the state workers' pension funds as collateral for borrowing $18 million in municipal bonds. Needless to say, if the investors failed to repay the loan, the pension fund would be liable. Moreover, neither the state or federal government was aware of the deals each other had made with the investors. At the studio's groundbreaking ceremony on July 7, 2010, Nelson attempted to justify the incentive package because it would create a large {still unspecified} number of jobs. "It is a very competitive landscape out there," he insisted, "and that some "40 states have some some rebate or another in this industry. It kis an industry that's fought after." Although the Motion Picture Association of America claimed to employ some two million people and support 115,000 businesses, the non-partisan Tax Foundation, which opposes film industry incentives, reported that such claims were based upon, "fanciful estimates of economic activity." As the Pontiac studio opened, it announced that it was receiving $40 million from the state for the filming of "OZ." Although some Pontiac residents were employed upon making the film, the majority were "from L.A.", according to one local actress. In fact the studio admitted to hiring only 200 people, most of those employed on constructing the studio itself. According to its own records, the studio had created only two local jobs in 2010 and 12 in 2011. While that paltry number made it impossible for the studio to collect the $110 million contingent upon job creation, it did collect on other credits, including $14 million for a "Film and Digital Media Infrastructure Investment Tax Credit." Meanwhile, the city's third emergency manager, who was an avid foe of incentives, announced his opposition to such deals because it was "detrimental" to the city's revenue because "the money is needed for police, fire, and trash pickup." Frustrated in his attempts to collect taxes from a convoluted Disney corporate maze, he acknowledged that while the movie business was glamorous on the outside, "it's not very glamorous for the municipality that wants to collect something." He freely admitted that Pontiac had been "outgunned."
In November, 2010, however, Michigan elected a right-wing Republican governor named Rick Snyder. He is pretty reprehensible on most issues, but he quickly moved to rein in incentive programs. His budget director announced that "states harm themselves by competing on tax credits." Almost immediately, film makers deserted the state in droves. The Michigan Motion Picture Studio (which Nelson referred to as "Hollywood-land in Pontiac") began to lose out on contracts to states, like North Carolina, which continued to offer incentives. When the date for the studio's bond interest came due in February, 2012, the studio paid only a fraction of the bill due--"$210,000--
leaving the remaining $420,000 to be paid for by the state pension fund. Nelson and cohorts insisted that they would have been willing and able to pay the full freight, if only the state had not changed its tax credit law. Ruefully, the new head of the state's development agency declared that the pension fund might "end up owning these studios." (can anyone say "white elephant"? The "investors" themselves admitted that they had never considered making the entire interest payment, but that the state had agreed to cover the entire bond. The studio CFO insisted that the investors already stood to lose twice as much as they had originally intended to invest. In August, the studio defaulted on the entire $630,000 interest payment, despite the governor's offer to reinstate some of the tax credits. The investors began to lobby the state legislature to put more money in the tax credit fund, and even formed a political action committee to win public support. They initiated public tours of the studio. "Please don't hesitate to contact your state representative,' Nelson lobbies tourists, "tell them you've been here, you believe in it, so please appropriate enough money so it will work." If the state failed to up the ante, Nelson warned, they would probably have to shut down the studio. The last film made at the Pontiac studio was "Black Sky," a movie about a town ravaged by a tornado. Whether that was a case of life imitating art, or art imitating life, is a matter of perspective. In either case, Pontiac's love affair with using movie making as a redevelopment strategy is as dead as the studio's deserted sound stages.
Whatever else Pontiac's debacle might prove, it clearly demonstrates two absolutes. The first is that the once powerful cities of the "steel belt" turned "rust belt" are so desperate that they are willing, even eager, to buy into any redevelopment scheme, no matter how fanciful. The other is that corporations, film or otherwise, hold all the cards. They can make any preposterous claims about creating jobs and revitalizing local economies, but they cannot be pinned down to a legally-binding "quid pro quos" that would obligate them to deliver on their promises They can walk away at any time, with no financial or legal repercussions. They can cynically pit states and municipalities against one another, reward those who give them the best deal, and abandon the rest. It is not quite as good as a "license to steal," but it comes close enough.
JDB
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Taxpayers Subsidizing Corporations, How Come?
In a recent two-part series in the New York Times entitled "United States Of Subsidies," reporter Louise Story documents how taxpayers at the federal, state, and local levels are subsiding corporations to the tune of $80 billion a year, and getting nothing of value in return. Her first installment, "The Empty Promise of Tax Incentives," focused on Michigan and the machinations of General Motors, but GM was clearly not the only offender and Michigan towns not the only victim. "In the end," Story concluded, "the money that towns across America gave General Motors did not matter." For the last several years, as GM was imploding, mayors and governors anxious about about local jobs, "had agreed to G.M.'s demands for cash rewards, free buildings, worker training and lucrative tax breaks." As late as 2007, the company was assuring those officials that these sorts of incentives would "further G.M.'s strong relationship" with them, and be a "win/win situation,' making the company and the municipality virtual "business partners." When G.M. declared bankruptcy in 2009, however, at least 50 properties on their liquidation list were in towns and states that had awarded incentives, adding up to billions in taxpayer dollars, according to a New York Times investigation. Moreover, Ohio had proposed a $56 million deal to save its Moraine plant, while Wisconsin, fighting to save its Janesville (home town of Paul Ryan) factory, offered $153 million. But, Story relates, "their overtures were to no avail," as "G.M.walked away and, and thanks to a federal bailout, is once again profitable." The towns in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, however, "have not been so fortunate, having spent scarce funds in exchange for thousands of jobs that no longer exist."
Ypsilanti Township, Michigan has already brought suit against G.M. for its extorsionist practices. The township's attorney has charged that you "can't just make these promises and throw them around like they're small change in the drawer." (Of course, they are merely "chump change" in G.M's gigantic stash, but an earth-shaking amount for a locale still reeling from the initial collapse of the auto industry.) Nevertheless, Story insists, manufacturing companies throughout the entire country, "have been doing just that. And the giveaways are adding up to a gigantic bill for taxpayers." The Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of such local initiatives and discovered that states, counties, and cities are pledging $80 billion a year in just such "deals" to beneficiaries from virtually every corner of the corporate world, including oil and coal behemoths, high-tech and even entertainment purveyors, banks, and "big-box" retail chains. Actually, the total cost of these giveaways is far larger because they involve thousands of different "givers," many of whose officials do not know the sum total of their obligations, which are often spread out over several years. Moreover, most communities do not even attempt to track the "bang from their buck," and, even if they did, it is practically impossible to determine whether the jobs are a direct result of the subsidies, or the product of wholly extraneous forces. "How can you even talk about rationalizing," as a frustrated senior economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research asks, "when you don't even realize what you are doing? " The Times study analyzed more than 150,000 "awards" and created a data base of incentive spending which is accessible on its Web site. It has supplemented that with more than 100 interviews of officials in government and business organizations, as well as corporate executives and consultants. The resulting picture that emerges is one of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs being outsmarted by multinational corporations, and short on the wherewithal to fact-check what companies tell them. A great many of these governmental officials confessed that they came away from corporate "pitch sessions" alarmed by the not-too-subtle threats to move jobs overseas or to another locale if they did not get the subsidies demanded.
Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, and have crafted a high-stakes bazaar in which they pit state against state, cities against their suburbs and other cities, and small towns against larger communities in order to extract the most lucrative subsidies. It is a variation on the central theme of right-wing Republicans--divide and conquer. According to the Times,most of these companies have no intention of leaving the country. It is only a diabolical bluff to get a better deal Incredibly, the kabuki budget negotiations in Washington have totally ignored the issue of whether the extorted subsidies are worth the cost, even though 20 % of state and local funding comes from the federal government. That is not surprising considering that there is a consensus among the leaders of both parties to cut corporate taxes in order to complete internationally. If the scam works in one place, it can work even better on a larger stage.
The Times analysis shows that Texas holds the lead in extorted giveaways with more than $19 billion, while Alaska, West Virginia, and Nebraska surrender the most per capita. In the larger, more populous states, the skim is absorbed without serious damage to the overall budget, but in Oklahoma and West Virginia, they absorb nearly one-third of the budget, with no significant benefit in jobs or tax revenues, The only states relatively immune to this corporate extortion are states with little or no business taxes in the first place, and so no real incentive to seek tax credits. Easily the most incentives go to manufacturing corporations--$25.5 billion a year. Agriculture comes in second, while oil, gas, and mining industries combined siphon off the third largest amount. Somewhat surprisingly, the fourth most goes to the film industry, which will be the subject of my next post. Technology giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, come close behind, as are seen as a major component of "the world to come." Even giant retailers and hotels, whose business obviously roots them to a specific locale, bargain for subsidies as if they were about to pull up stakes.
Among manufacturers, GM leads the league with at least $1.7 billion over the past five years (in addition to the federal stimulus money that they have already received, supposedly to avoid bankruptcy.) Michigan, which gave GM $779 million in credits in 2009, just a month after it had received $50 billion in federal bailout money and decided to close seven plants in the state. Incredibly, GM can use those credits to offset its tax bill at any time in the next 20 years. According to an official at the state's economic development agency, "you don't know who will take a credit and when." So much for planning! Ford and Chrysler follow close behind in giveaways. (At least Ford ostentatiously refused stimulus money.) All three companies attribute their newly found prosperity strictly to their own initiative. ("We built it," as everyone chanted at the Republican national convention.) Of course, the automobile behemoths attribute the lust for incentives to their desire to "keep companies competitive and "retain or create jobs," Even when these automakers were "forced" to close plants in the last few years, according to GM spokesman James Cain, that doesn't mean that "companies and communities didn't benefit while the plants were open, which was often for generations." Besides, Cain added, GM "received less money per job than foreign automakers operating in the US," whatever that is supposed to prove. Of course, when pressed, corporations always fall back on their all-purpose justification: that their most important--indeed only-- responsibility is to make a handsome profit for their stockholder. If that is true, then, shouldn't all of the officials who so spectacularly failed in that sacred task be held accountable, financially and personally, to their superiors? Don't the subsidies and stimulus money entitle the American taxpayers (including employees, who are also taxpayers--at least when they are allowed to work)-- to a substantial vested interest? I think that this is called, at least in some circles, CAPITALISM!!!!
At least one corporate executive, the CEO of Hallmark, acknowledges that such rip-offs are hurting his home base of Kansas City, MO by diverting funds from public education. "It's really not creating new jobs," adding that the competition for graft has revived the long-dead border war between Kansas and Missouri, After Kansas recruited AMC Entertainment with a $36 million award, the state cut $104 million from its education budget. the company then moved just a few miles across the border from Missouri. Worker saw very little change, except minutes in commuting time and office decor. Just a few months later, Missouri retaliated by luring Applebee's headquarters across the state line. The vice-president of the Downtown Council of Kansas City admitted to Story that "it gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach." Although he confided that it feels like he is talking himself out of a job, he said that "there ought to be a law against what I am doing."
Nationwide, according to the Times study, billions of dollars are being awarded as state governments face steep deficits. Last year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, states collectively cut public services and raised taxes by $156 billion. The "incentives' come in the form of cash grants and loans, sales tax breaks, income tax credits and exemptions, free services, and property tax abatements. The income tax breaks alone add up to $18 billion and sales tax relief an incredible $52 billion, out of the total of $80 billion. Collecting data on property tax abatements is the most difficult task because very few states track the amounts given by cities and counties. In New York, businesses save an estimated $1.1 billion a year in property taxes. The American Insurance Group (AIG) continued to benefit from a $23.8 million abatement from New York City, at the same time it was being bailed out with $180 billion in federal funds.Since 2000, the New York Times itself has received more than $24 million from the city and state. Shell has been offered a tax credit of $1.6 billion over 25 years from Pennsylvania, which competed with West Virginia and Ohio for an energy production facility. Its "parent" company--Royal Dutch Shell--realized profits of $31 billion in 2011--about $3.5 million per hour--while its CEO made $13.1 million. Pennsylvania predicts that the plant will "create" thousands of long-term jobs, but it did not require them in exchange for the tax credit. Would any corporation make a deal like that with another business without receiving an absolute iron-clad guarantee of its quid pro quo? Caterpillar has received $196 million in local aid since 2007. It has recently been offered $44 million in incentives to build a new plant in Georgia, which is "more business friendly" than its home base of Illinois. Local counties in Georgia have chipped in with free land, $15 million in tax breaks, and $8.2 million in road, water, and sewer repairs. This at a time when Caterpillar recently placed a six-year freeze on wages in several plants and is making record high profits. San Francisco exempted Twitter from some $22 million in payroll taxes at the same time the company received a $300 million investment from a Saudi prince and $800 million from a private consortium.
I try to absorb these numbers while awaiting the surging property tax bill on my middle class home in Racine, Wisconsin.
How does this keep happening--and even escalate? Much of it has to do with clout of the companies versus that of local government officials. "They dictate the terms, and we are not really in a position to question their deal terms," says an overwhelmed county commissioner in Texas, who has just been bullied into submission by Apple and Hewlett-Packard. "We don't have the sophistication or the resources to negotiate with a company that has the wherewithal the size of a country," she laments. Even if they would like to do so, local and state officials seldom have the relevant data on how well or ill the corporation kept its pledge in other places and, even if they did, they have no way of knowing the exact role that "incentives" played in the outcome. "I don't know there is a way to know other than talking to the businesses and the businesses telling us that that was a factor in creating jobs," moans the city manager of one California municipality.WOW!!
Those pitiful laments from local officials speak volumes about who really has the power in our "United Corporations of America."
JDB
is
Ypsilanti Township, Michigan has already brought suit against G.M. for its extorsionist practices. The township's attorney has charged that you "can't just make these promises and throw them around like they're small change in the drawer." (Of course, they are merely "chump change" in G.M's gigantic stash, but an earth-shaking amount for a locale still reeling from the initial collapse of the auto industry.) Nevertheless, Story insists, manufacturing companies throughout the entire country, "have been doing just that. And the giveaways are adding up to a gigantic bill for taxpayers." The Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of such local initiatives and discovered that states, counties, and cities are pledging $80 billion a year in just such "deals" to beneficiaries from virtually every corner of the corporate world, including oil and coal behemoths, high-tech and even entertainment purveyors, banks, and "big-box" retail chains. Actually, the total cost of these giveaways is far larger because they involve thousands of different "givers," many of whose officials do not know the sum total of their obligations, which are often spread out over several years. Moreover, most communities do not even attempt to track the "bang from their buck," and, even if they did, it is practically impossible to determine whether the jobs are a direct result of the subsidies, or the product of wholly extraneous forces. "How can you even talk about rationalizing," as a frustrated senior economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research asks, "when you don't even realize what you are doing? " The Times study analyzed more than 150,000 "awards" and created a data base of incentive spending which is accessible on its Web site. It has supplemented that with more than 100 interviews of officials in government and business organizations, as well as corporate executives and consultants. The resulting picture that emerges is one of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs being outsmarted by multinational corporations, and short on the wherewithal to fact-check what companies tell them. A great many of these governmental officials confessed that they came away from corporate "pitch sessions" alarmed by the not-too-subtle threats to move jobs overseas or to another locale if they did not get the subsidies demanded.
Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, and have crafted a high-stakes bazaar in which they pit state against state, cities against their suburbs and other cities, and small towns against larger communities in order to extract the most lucrative subsidies. It is a variation on the central theme of right-wing Republicans--divide and conquer. According to the Times,most of these companies have no intention of leaving the country. It is only a diabolical bluff to get a better deal Incredibly, the kabuki budget negotiations in Washington have totally ignored the issue of whether the extorted subsidies are worth the cost, even though 20 % of state and local funding comes from the federal government. That is not surprising considering that there is a consensus among the leaders of both parties to cut corporate taxes in order to complete internationally. If the scam works in one place, it can work even better on a larger stage.
The Times analysis shows that Texas holds the lead in extorted giveaways with more than $19 billion, while Alaska, West Virginia, and Nebraska surrender the most per capita. In the larger, more populous states, the skim is absorbed without serious damage to the overall budget, but in Oklahoma and West Virginia, they absorb nearly one-third of the budget, with no significant benefit in jobs or tax revenues, The only states relatively immune to this corporate extortion are states with little or no business taxes in the first place, and so no real incentive to seek tax credits. Easily the most incentives go to manufacturing corporations--$25.5 billion a year. Agriculture comes in second, while oil, gas, and mining industries combined siphon off the third largest amount. Somewhat surprisingly, the fourth most goes to the film industry, which will be the subject of my next post. Technology giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, come close behind, as are seen as a major component of "the world to come." Even giant retailers and hotels, whose business obviously roots them to a specific locale, bargain for subsidies as if they were about to pull up stakes.
Among manufacturers, GM leads the league with at least $1.7 billion over the past five years (in addition to the federal stimulus money that they have already received, supposedly to avoid bankruptcy.) Michigan, which gave GM $779 million in credits in 2009, just a month after it had received $50 billion in federal bailout money and decided to close seven plants in the state. Incredibly, GM can use those credits to offset its tax bill at any time in the next 20 years. According to an official at the state's economic development agency, "you don't know who will take a credit and when." So much for planning! Ford and Chrysler follow close behind in giveaways. (At least Ford ostentatiously refused stimulus money.) All three companies attribute their newly found prosperity strictly to their own initiative. ("We built it," as everyone chanted at the Republican national convention.) Of course, the automobile behemoths attribute the lust for incentives to their desire to "keep companies competitive and "retain or create jobs," Even when these automakers were "forced" to close plants in the last few years, according to GM spokesman James Cain, that doesn't mean that "companies and communities didn't benefit while the plants were open, which was often for generations." Besides, Cain added, GM "received less money per job than foreign automakers operating in the US," whatever that is supposed to prove. Of course, when pressed, corporations always fall back on their all-purpose justification: that their most important--indeed only-- responsibility is to make a handsome profit for their stockholder. If that is true, then, shouldn't all of the officials who so spectacularly failed in that sacred task be held accountable, financially and personally, to their superiors? Don't the subsidies and stimulus money entitle the American taxpayers (including employees, who are also taxpayers--at least when they are allowed to work)-- to a substantial vested interest? I think that this is called, at least in some circles, CAPITALISM!!!!
At least one corporate executive, the CEO of Hallmark, acknowledges that such rip-offs are hurting his home base of Kansas City, MO by diverting funds from public education. "It's really not creating new jobs," adding that the competition for graft has revived the long-dead border war between Kansas and Missouri, After Kansas recruited AMC Entertainment with a $36 million award, the state cut $104 million from its education budget. the company then moved just a few miles across the border from Missouri. Worker saw very little change, except minutes in commuting time and office decor. Just a few months later, Missouri retaliated by luring Applebee's headquarters across the state line. The vice-president of the Downtown Council of Kansas City admitted to Story that "it gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach." Although he confided that it feels like he is talking himself out of a job, he said that "there ought to be a law against what I am doing."
Nationwide, according to the Times study, billions of dollars are being awarded as state governments face steep deficits. Last year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, states collectively cut public services and raised taxes by $156 billion. The "incentives' come in the form of cash grants and loans, sales tax breaks, income tax credits and exemptions, free services, and property tax abatements. The income tax breaks alone add up to $18 billion and sales tax relief an incredible $52 billion, out of the total of $80 billion. Collecting data on property tax abatements is the most difficult task because very few states track the amounts given by cities and counties. In New York, businesses save an estimated $1.1 billion a year in property taxes. The American Insurance Group (AIG) continued to benefit from a $23.8 million abatement from New York City, at the same time it was being bailed out with $180 billion in federal funds.Since 2000, the New York Times itself has received more than $24 million from the city and state. Shell has been offered a tax credit of $1.6 billion over 25 years from Pennsylvania, which competed with West Virginia and Ohio for an energy production facility. Its "parent" company--Royal Dutch Shell--realized profits of $31 billion in 2011--about $3.5 million per hour--while its CEO made $13.1 million. Pennsylvania predicts that the plant will "create" thousands of long-term jobs, but it did not require them in exchange for the tax credit. Would any corporation make a deal like that with another business without receiving an absolute iron-clad guarantee of its quid pro quo? Caterpillar has received $196 million in local aid since 2007. It has recently been offered $44 million in incentives to build a new plant in Georgia, which is "more business friendly" than its home base of Illinois. Local counties in Georgia have chipped in with free land, $15 million in tax breaks, and $8.2 million in road, water, and sewer repairs. This at a time when Caterpillar recently placed a six-year freeze on wages in several plants and is making record high profits. San Francisco exempted Twitter from some $22 million in payroll taxes at the same time the company received a $300 million investment from a Saudi prince and $800 million from a private consortium.
I try to absorb these numbers while awaiting the surging property tax bill on my middle class home in Racine, Wisconsin.
How does this keep happening--and even escalate? Much of it has to do with clout of the companies versus that of local government officials. "They dictate the terms, and we are not really in a position to question their deal terms," says an overwhelmed county commissioner in Texas, who has just been bullied into submission by Apple and Hewlett-Packard. "We don't have the sophistication or the resources to negotiate with a company that has the wherewithal the size of a country," she laments. Even if they would like to do so, local and state officials seldom have the relevant data on how well or ill the corporation kept its pledge in other places and, even if they did, they have no way of knowing the exact role that "incentives" played in the outcome. "I don't know there is a way to know other than talking to the businesses and the businesses telling us that that was a factor in creating jobs," moans the city manager of one California municipality.WOW!!
Those pitiful laments from local officials speak volumes about who really has the power in our "United Corporations of America."
JDB
is
Thursday, December 6, 2012
My Personal Political Odessey
My personal political odyssey has proceeded along two parallel tracks: 1) My scholarly understanding based upon more than 50 years of researching, teaching, and writing about political history, and 2) My personal, real world experiencing of every presidential election since 1948. I was 11 years old in 1948 and living in a family for whom the Democratic Party was almost as vital a component as the Catholic Church. I vividly recall my "Guppy Gup" (maternal grandfather) listening to President Harry S.Truman on the radio and periodically interjecting "Give 'Em Hell, Harry." I also recollect one of our parish priests coming on to our playground at St. Patrick's School to show us a headline in the Chicago Tribune that read "Dewey Beats Truman," and laughing about it because we all knew by then that HST had somehow beat the odds, despite the defections of Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat Party and Henry Wallace progressives. In a lot of ways, it was the fifth election of FDR, since the majority of Democrats apparently saw HST and his Fair Deal as a continuation of the New Deal. It certified that the New Deal/Fair Deal world had become the status quo, while Dwight D. Eisenhower's two terms signified the acceptance of that reality by mainstream Republicans. ("Ike" had won the nomination from Senator Robert Taft of Ohio who disputed that consensus. In retrospect, Taft and Thurmond, combined, foreshadowed what was to become the Republican Party of the 21st century. (Taft was a "dirty word" in my union-affiliated household, and his defeat for the Republican presidential nomination by Ike in 1952 and 1956 was further proof that the majority of Republicans were what HST ridiculed as "Me too, Republicans.", They criticized the New Deal/Fair Deal, but promised to do a better job of administrating its "alphabet agencies.") I was a freshman at Loras Academy in 1952 when I suggested to my parents that they should vote for Ike because his military experience was needed to wage the "Cold War" against the Soviet Union. They soon disabused me of such specious reasoning
By the time of the hotly contested election of 1960, I was a graduate student/teaching assistant in history at Georgetown University. It was fantastic to be a history student in the nation's capital and to have the resources of the Library of Congress and the National Archives "at my fingertips." Back home in Dubuque, JFK had been placed on the same pedestal as FDR, the more so because he was Irish and Catholic. The night of the 1960 election, my friends an I stayed up all night watching the election returns on television, because the outcome was not officially decided until noon of the next day. I had to teach a "discussion section" at G.U. at 9:00 a.m., so I went home, showered and changed, sleepwalked through the class--and then went home to sleep. The following Sunday, JFK attended mass at Holy Trinity on the G.U. campus, and I was one of the few fortunate enough to actually get inside the church. On January 20, my friends and I nearly froze to death watching the inaugural parade that was complicated by the residue of one of the greatest blizzards in the city's history. I was also present at the National Mall for the March On Washington and heard Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. On November 22, 1963, I was working on my doctoral dissertation in our apartment, while baby sitting for my gorgeous baby daughter, Jeanne Marie, when I heard the news of the assassination in Dallas. I was teaching at Prince Georges Community College, which was only a few miles from Andrews Air Force Base, where the president's body arrived that night. We tried to view his remains which in state in the Capitol Rotunda, but were discouraged by the eight hour wait in the bitter cold with a 5 month old baby. It was the longest and saddest weekend of my life, and I can still hear the wail of the funeral dirge, as it wended its way across the 14th Street Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery.
Scarcely a year later, I was still living in D.C., working on my dissertation, and teaching at PGCC, when LBJ was elected in a landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964. It was even more of wipe-out where we were, because LBJ won a unanimous vote in several D.C. precincts. I am not sure how much I realized it at the time, but Goldwater carried only six states besides his native Arizona--Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, the same states, save Georgia, that Thurmond had won in 1948. The backlash pattern was starting to form, but we were too euphoric to realize its long term significance. With both houses of Congress firmly in Democratic control, LBJ enacted the mainsprings of his "Great Society": the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the Hart-Celler Immigration and Naturalization Law, Medicare and Medicaid, and the various components of his "War On Poverty." We were certain that America was finally beginning to live up to its professed principles, and that the momentum was irresistible. Little did we know!! While we were rejoicing, the administration was immersing us ever deeper in the quagmire that was the Vietnam War.
By 1968, I was on the faculty of Eastern Illinois University, and becoming more vocal in the burgeoning anti-war movement. Like most college campuses, we had acrimonious demonstrations, teach-ins, and moratoriums. Pretty tame stuff compared to Madison, Berkeley, and Columbia, but contentious enough. While Nixon battled his way to the Republican nomination, Democratic Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy challenged LBJ's bid for renomination. Like millions of other Democrats and liberals, I was deeply conflicted by the apparent contradiction between LBJ's Great Society achievements and his escalation of the war. Seemingly out of the blue, LBJ resolved a lot of our ambivalence by announcing that he would not run for reelection. The contest for the Democratic presidential nomination resolved into a battle among three of my erstwhile political "heroes": McCarthy, Kennedy, and Vice-President Hubert Horatio Humphrey. I was selected by the Coles County Democratic caucus as a delegate, pledged to Kennedy, to the State D.P Convention in Springfield. Before it could convene, however, RFK was assassinated, just minutes after winning the California primary, in which he had apparently secured enough delegates to receive the nomination at the national convention in Chicago. In one of the most acrimonious and violent conventions in history, HHH secured the nomination, but the damage to the party and the country was horrendous, both short and long run. The normal Democratic vote was seriously diluted by the independent candidacy of Alabama Governor George "Segregation, Now. Segregation Forever" Wallace, who not only captured Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, but also made significant inroads into the white, working-middle-class vote in the Northeast, Midwest, and Border States. All told, Nixon won the electoral vote 301-191-46 and the popular vote by less than 1%. Wallace siphoned off nearly 14 % of the latter, primarily from HHH. (Humphrey closed the gap significantly in the last few weeks. Conventional liberal wisdom still holds that he would have passed Nixon if he had broken earlier with the Johnson Administration over the Vietnam War. Less conventional liberal wisdom opines that Kennedy would have won, based mostly on studies showing that many Wallace voters in the Northeast and Midwest would have voted for Kennedy instead. The 1968 election was the death blow for the Roosevelt Coalition, as both white Southerners and working class whites deserted in droves. It also put the political party system itself on the road to oblivion--or at least irrelevance. In the name of reform, and in a spirit of revenge against "bosses" and "machines," the 1972 convention adopted a radically new nomination system that privileged "grass roots," caucuses and primary elections over conventions. It also empowered millions of racial minorities and women who were previously shut out by the "old boy network,"
It was George McGovern's misfortune to gain the party's presidential nomination in the midst of all this turmoil and transformation. Hailed by none other than Bobby Kennedy as "the most decent man in the Senate," a decorated World War II hero, a certified New Deal liberal, and the point man for the new "politics of inclusion," McGovern was shunned, both by those who wanted more thoroughgoing "reforms," and those who wanted to turn back the clock. (I remember that actress Shirley McClain, sister of Democratic actor/activist Warren Beatty and one of McGovern's ambassadors to the women's caucus, being booed by the latter when she informed them that the party leaders had given women a guaranteed percentage of seats on the national committee. They wanted a 50/50 split and they wanted it right now! On the other end of the political spectrum, many of "the big city Democratic machines" did little or nothing to turn out their normal contingent of voters.The tension within the party between "the politics of identity" and "old-fashioned bread and butter liberalism" was institutionalized in 1972. It is still alive and virulent in 2012. With all of that going for him, Nixon was a virtual cinch to be reelected, but "Tricky Dick" was constitutionally incapable of trusting to chance---let alone to the democratic process. Hence "Watergate" and the myriad "dirty tricks" that eventually led to his impeachment and subsequent "resignation." The funny thing was that, at least on many "bread and butter" issues, Nixon was almost a reincarnation of the "Me-Too Republicanism" of the Eisenhower years. The quintessential Anti-Communist and Cold Warrior, he nevertheless made overtures to the Soviet Union and China. If a Democratic president had undertaken such actions, Nixon would have been among the first to accuse him of treason. Then there was his abysmal suppression of civil liberties, a harbinger of horrors to come. (One of my greatest regrets of my professional life is that I was not sufficiently vocal or important enough to make his infamous "enemies list.")
To his unfortunate successor, Gerald Ford, Nixon bequeathed the responsibility of orchestrating American withdrawal from Southeast Asia, as well as of that of issuing his predecessor an unconditional pardon that even extended to offenses not yet uncovered. Talk about a "Get Out Of Jail Free Card"!! Talk about committing "political suicide"!! Ford had virtually zero chance of being elected in his own right, but the Democrats almost managed to snatch defeat from victory. Unable to choose between "identity politics" and "bread and butter liberalism," they nominated somebody "who nobody sent": (See my earlier post on Voter Repression.) Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. (I confess to voting for him on four separate occasions and still respect him as "the greatest former president" in history. As president, however, he was totally out of his element. In retrospect, I wish that I could have voted for his wife, Rosalyn). By 1980, I was sufficiently disillusioned to support an ill- considered attempt by Ted Kennedy to hijack the nomination. I would also like to admit that I voted for McGovern in 1972, and grow more proud of that vote with every election.) In many ways, Ford may have been the last "Eisenhower Republican." The disintegration of the mainstream political party and its concomitant takeover by what passes for the G.O.P today is told in excruciating detail by Geoffrey Kabaservice in Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party. From 1952 until 1964, the moderates, led by such luminaries as Nelson Rockefeller, John Lindsay, Jacob Javits, Kenneth Keating, and, believe it or not, George Romney, managed to retain control of the party apparatus and the presidential nomination. Many of them were in the vanguard of the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War movements. In 1960, Richard Nixon was chosen by the Republican National Convention as a compromise candidate between the two factions. His defeat by JFK was the last straw for the burgeoning right wing of the party, who blamed it on the "Me Too Republicanism" of the moderates and liberals. The 1964 convention was a wild affair, in which Rockefeller was booed vociferously and liberal/moderates were, almost literally " read out of the party". Baseball hero Jackie Robinson, a Rockefeller delegate and living symbol of Republican commitment to Civil Rights, later said that he felt like "a Jew in Hitler's Germany." .
In 1970, we moved to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, precariously perched between Racine and Kenosha. where I spent the next 33 years "doing history." Maybe it was an "omen" that the day on which we officially moved to Racine---August 20, 1970---was the same day that a handful of anti-Vietnam War protesters blew up the Army Math Research building on the campus of the U.W. Madison.True to its beginning, my 42 years living in Racine and working in Kenosha have been a real roller coaster ride, so far as national and state politics are concerned. From Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Bush I to Clinton to "W" to Obama. On the surface,this orderly-looking juxtaposition of parties seems like a rerun of the Age of Political Equilibrium that characterized (and paralyzed) the national political system during much of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The Republicans held the presidency from 1969 to 1977, from 1981to 1993, and from 2001 to 2009, while the Democrats held it from 1977 to 1981, from 1993-2001, and from 2009-2017. Congressional elections were even more "helter-skelter"; only rarely did the same party control both the executive and legislative branches at the same time. Clearly, however, I was "missing the forest for the trees," because the most important trend of those years is that both parties moved inexorably to the right side of the political spectrum. McGovern in 1972 was, in many ways, the last of the New Deal Democrats, but he was also the first of the New Centrist Democrats who seemingly privileged "the politics of identity" over the"bread and butter" variety that had sustained the dominance of the New Deal Coalition for the previous 40 years. The "reforms" adopted during the 1972 Democratic convention, with McGovern's backing, had seriously undermined the power of the big city machines and labor unions,alienating what became the white, working class "Reagan Democrats." That rift has widened and festered ever since.That same reorientation caused the majority of Southern whites to abandon the party of the "Solid South" in favor of the once-despised party of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Democrat's growing emphasis on equal rights for women and minorities, and the corresponding decline of its class-oriented focus, was matched by the "Southern Strategy" of Nixon and his successors. The "New Democrats" of the 1970s and beyond tended to be "cultural liberals,"rather than economic ones. Their orientation on economic issues became much more that of the middle and upper middle classes. Liberal Democratic support for the Civil Rights Movement, Affirmative Action, and the like were viewed by increasing numbers of white working class voters as occurring at their expense. The former believed that they were being deserted by their erstwhile allies, while the latter felt as if they were being driven out of the Democratic Party. These Reagan Republicans became part of a curious coalition with newly-minted white Southern Republicans, breadwinner conservatives, and Tea Party adherents. The only Democratic leader who might have held the New Deal coalition together had been assassinated on the very evening that he won the California primary and clinched the party's 1968 presidential nomination. No one else has even come close.
"Since Robert F. Kennedy's campaign in 1968 and George McGovern's run in 1972," according to the Center for American Progress, "progressives have sought to create a multiracial, multiethnic, cross-class coalition--made up of African Americans, Latinos, women, young people, professionals, and economically populist blue-collar whites--supporting an activist government to expand economic opportunities and personal freedoms for all people." (As a "professional" with "economically populist blue-color white" origins, I am sure that I fit in there somewhere, although the "age thing" would seem to disqualify me. I can only say that there are a lot of people in my age bracket who feel as I do, and that most of us aren't going to be around all that much longer anyway.) In the Center's view, based upon their analysis of the 2012 election returns, "this progressive coalition has clearly emerged, albeit in an early and tenuous stage." Obama is the first Democratic president since FDR to win two terms with more than 50 percent of the total popular vote, but he has done so with "an historically low percentage of the white vote"--only 39 percent, slightly less than Michael Dukakis received in 1988. Obviously the key to future success is to win back a significantly larger portion of the "white vote," while retaining the support of the other elements of this progressive coalition. No problem, right???
Naturally, the demographic trends of the past 40 years almost guarantee a continued increase of every other segment of the putative coalition, but what cheers them obviously alarms a lot of "white voters." hence the Reagan Democrats, breadwinner conservatives, and Tea Partiers. There are, however, grounds for optimism on that score. white working-class support support for Democrats has been higher than the norm in such key "battleground" states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, while white, college-educated support for Democrats has been growing in such emerging battlegrounds as Colorado and Virginia. By way of contrast, the Republican coalition of older, whiter, more rural and evangelical voters is not only shrinking, but also becoming more geographically concentrated and less important in the country's overall political landscape Concurrently, here has been an ideological shift away from the trickle-down, supply side.survival of the fittest, socially rigid "steel chain of ideas" toward a more pragmatic emphasis on problem solving that embraces strong governmental concern for that elusive "middler-class," public "investment" in education and infrastructure, a fairer and more economically productive tax system, and more inclusive social policies. Post-election polling by Democracy Corps shows that Obama enjoyed a 51-42 margin over Romney on the question of who would be the best at "restoring the middle class." By the same token, voters express far more interest in in a post-election deficit plan that invests in jobs and growth, raises taxes on the the wealthy, and protects the middle class and social programs than the tired, old right-wing mantra of top-down economics, dismantling of economic and social programs, and a bloated defense budget.
The Center for American Progress report acknowledges that "the 40 year transition of progressive politics--from Robert Kennedy to President Obama--has not been without difficulties, setbacks and outright failures." It has been overwhelmed by the rise of a resurgent right-wing movement that successfully shifted political discourse and public policy away from the progressivism of the 1930s through the 1960s to the world made by Ayn Rand, Reaganomics, the "neocons," Hayek, Norquist, Friedman, the Koch Brothers, and aggressive militarism. The loss of traditionally Democratic states, especially in the South, the continued antagonism of the majority of white, working-class voters, and the harsh reaction to the centrist Democratic presidencies of Carter, Clinton, and Obama, however, demonstrate how much work is yet to be done. The task is not to gravitate to the right or downplay diversity in order to win back white, working-class voters, but to unite disparate constituencies behind a populist, progressive vision of middle-class economics and social advancement for all peoples that includes a significant portion of the currently disaffected white, working-class. The primary strategic question is how to build on the foundation established in 2012 and to harness it to achieve progressive policy victories. That requires that the members of this coalition continue to pay close attention, stay involved, and press our elected representatives--especially President Obama--to defy the army of K Street lobbyists and billionaire "malefactors of great wealth," who will certainly fight against any and all progressive policies, tooth and nail Anything less than that will simply not cut it. The "one percent" has been waging class warfare against the rest of us for the best part of four decades. It is time to show them that democracy--effectively organized and sufficiently motivated--can eventually triumph over unbridled greed and rapacious ignorance.
By the time of the hotly contested election of 1960, I was a graduate student/teaching assistant in history at Georgetown University. It was fantastic to be a history student in the nation's capital and to have the resources of the Library of Congress and the National Archives "at my fingertips." Back home in Dubuque, JFK had been placed on the same pedestal as FDR, the more so because he was Irish and Catholic. The night of the 1960 election, my friends an I stayed up all night watching the election returns on television, because the outcome was not officially decided until noon of the next day. I had to teach a "discussion section" at G.U. at 9:00 a.m., so I went home, showered and changed, sleepwalked through the class--and then went home to sleep. The following Sunday, JFK attended mass at Holy Trinity on the G.U. campus, and I was one of the few fortunate enough to actually get inside the church. On January 20, my friends and I nearly froze to death watching the inaugural parade that was complicated by the residue of one of the greatest blizzards in the city's history. I was also present at the National Mall for the March On Washington and heard Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. On November 22, 1963, I was working on my doctoral dissertation in our apartment, while baby sitting for my gorgeous baby daughter, Jeanne Marie, when I heard the news of the assassination in Dallas. I was teaching at Prince Georges Community College, which was only a few miles from Andrews Air Force Base, where the president's body arrived that night. We tried to view his remains which in state in the Capitol Rotunda, but were discouraged by the eight hour wait in the bitter cold with a 5 month old baby. It was the longest and saddest weekend of my life, and I can still hear the wail of the funeral dirge, as it wended its way across the 14th Street Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery.
Scarcely a year later, I was still living in D.C., working on my dissertation, and teaching at PGCC, when LBJ was elected in a landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964. It was even more of wipe-out where we were, because LBJ won a unanimous vote in several D.C. precincts. I am not sure how much I realized it at the time, but Goldwater carried only six states besides his native Arizona--Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, the same states, save Georgia, that Thurmond had won in 1948. The backlash pattern was starting to form, but we were too euphoric to realize its long term significance. With both houses of Congress firmly in Democratic control, LBJ enacted the mainsprings of his "Great Society": the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the Hart-Celler Immigration and Naturalization Law, Medicare and Medicaid, and the various components of his "War On Poverty." We were certain that America was finally beginning to live up to its professed principles, and that the momentum was irresistible. Little did we know!! While we were rejoicing, the administration was immersing us ever deeper in the quagmire that was the Vietnam War.
By 1968, I was on the faculty of Eastern Illinois University, and becoming more vocal in the burgeoning anti-war movement. Like most college campuses, we had acrimonious demonstrations, teach-ins, and moratoriums. Pretty tame stuff compared to Madison, Berkeley, and Columbia, but contentious enough. While Nixon battled his way to the Republican nomination, Democratic Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy challenged LBJ's bid for renomination. Like millions of other Democrats and liberals, I was deeply conflicted by the apparent contradiction between LBJ's Great Society achievements and his escalation of the war. Seemingly out of the blue, LBJ resolved a lot of our ambivalence by announcing that he would not run for reelection. The contest for the Democratic presidential nomination resolved into a battle among three of my erstwhile political "heroes": McCarthy, Kennedy, and Vice-President Hubert Horatio Humphrey. I was selected by the Coles County Democratic caucus as a delegate, pledged to Kennedy, to the State D.P Convention in Springfield. Before it could convene, however, RFK was assassinated, just minutes after winning the California primary, in which he had apparently secured enough delegates to receive the nomination at the national convention in Chicago. In one of the most acrimonious and violent conventions in history, HHH secured the nomination, but the damage to the party and the country was horrendous, both short and long run. The normal Democratic vote was seriously diluted by the independent candidacy of Alabama Governor George "Segregation, Now. Segregation Forever" Wallace, who not only captured Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, but also made significant inroads into the white, working-middle-class vote in the Northeast, Midwest, and Border States. All told, Nixon won the electoral vote 301-191-46 and the popular vote by less than 1%. Wallace siphoned off nearly 14 % of the latter, primarily from HHH. (Humphrey closed the gap significantly in the last few weeks. Conventional liberal wisdom still holds that he would have passed Nixon if he had broken earlier with the Johnson Administration over the Vietnam War. Less conventional liberal wisdom opines that Kennedy would have won, based mostly on studies showing that many Wallace voters in the Northeast and Midwest would have voted for Kennedy instead. The 1968 election was the death blow for the Roosevelt Coalition, as both white Southerners and working class whites deserted in droves. It also put the political party system itself on the road to oblivion--or at least irrelevance. In the name of reform, and in a spirit of revenge against "bosses" and "machines," the 1972 convention adopted a radically new nomination system that privileged "grass roots," caucuses and primary elections over conventions. It also empowered millions of racial minorities and women who were previously shut out by the "old boy network,"
It was George McGovern's misfortune to gain the party's presidential nomination in the midst of all this turmoil and transformation. Hailed by none other than Bobby Kennedy as "the most decent man in the Senate," a decorated World War II hero, a certified New Deal liberal, and the point man for the new "politics of inclusion," McGovern was shunned, both by those who wanted more thoroughgoing "reforms," and those who wanted to turn back the clock. (I remember that actress Shirley McClain, sister of Democratic actor/activist Warren Beatty and one of McGovern's ambassadors to the women's caucus, being booed by the latter when she informed them that the party leaders had given women a guaranteed percentage of seats on the national committee. They wanted a 50/50 split and they wanted it right now! On the other end of the political spectrum, many of "the big city Democratic machines" did little or nothing to turn out their normal contingent of voters.The tension within the party between "the politics of identity" and "old-fashioned bread and butter liberalism" was institutionalized in 1972. It is still alive and virulent in 2012. With all of that going for him, Nixon was a virtual cinch to be reelected, but "Tricky Dick" was constitutionally incapable of trusting to chance---let alone to the democratic process. Hence "Watergate" and the myriad "dirty tricks" that eventually led to his impeachment and subsequent "resignation." The funny thing was that, at least on many "bread and butter" issues, Nixon was almost a reincarnation of the "Me-Too Republicanism" of the Eisenhower years. The quintessential Anti-Communist and Cold Warrior, he nevertheless made overtures to the Soviet Union and China. If a Democratic president had undertaken such actions, Nixon would have been among the first to accuse him of treason. Then there was his abysmal suppression of civil liberties, a harbinger of horrors to come. (One of my greatest regrets of my professional life is that I was not sufficiently vocal or important enough to make his infamous "enemies list.")
To his unfortunate successor, Gerald Ford, Nixon bequeathed the responsibility of orchestrating American withdrawal from Southeast Asia, as well as of that of issuing his predecessor an unconditional pardon that even extended to offenses not yet uncovered. Talk about a "Get Out Of Jail Free Card"!! Talk about committing "political suicide"!! Ford had virtually zero chance of being elected in his own right, but the Democrats almost managed to snatch defeat from victory. Unable to choose between "identity politics" and "bread and butter liberalism," they nominated somebody "who nobody sent": (See my earlier post on Voter Repression.) Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. (I confess to voting for him on four separate occasions and still respect him as "the greatest former president" in history. As president, however, he was totally out of his element. In retrospect, I wish that I could have voted for his wife, Rosalyn). By 1980, I was sufficiently disillusioned to support an ill- considered attempt by Ted Kennedy to hijack the nomination. I would also like to admit that I voted for McGovern in 1972, and grow more proud of that vote with every election.) In many ways, Ford may have been the last "Eisenhower Republican." The disintegration of the mainstream political party and its concomitant takeover by what passes for the G.O.P today is told in excruciating detail by Geoffrey Kabaservice in Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party. From 1952 until 1964, the moderates, led by such luminaries as Nelson Rockefeller, John Lindsay, Jacob Javits, Kenneth Keating, and, believe it or not, George Romney, managed to retain control of the party apparatus and the presidential nomination. Many of them were in the vanguard of the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War movements. In 1960, Richard Nixon was chosen by the Republican National Convention as a compromise candidate between the two factions. His defeat by JFK was the last straw for the burgeoning right wing of the party, who blamed it on the "Me Too Republicanism" of the moderates and liberals. The 1964 convention was a wild affair, in which Rockefeller was booed vociferously and liberal/moderates were, almost literally " read out of the party". Baseball hero Jackie Robinson, a Rockefeller delegate and living symbol of Republican commitment to Civil Rights, later said that he felt like "a Jew in Hitler's Germany." .
In 1970, we moved to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, precariously perched between Racine and Kenosha. where I spent the next 33 years "doing history." Maybe it was an "omen" that the day on which we officially moved to Racine---August 20, 1970---was the same day that a handful of anti-Vietnam War protesters blew up the Army Math Research building on the campus of the U.W. Madison.True to its beginning, my 42 years living in Racine and working in Kenosha have been a real roller coaster ride, so far as national and state politics are concerned. From Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Bush I to Clinton to "W" to Obama. On the surface,this orderly-looking juxtaposition of parties seems like a rerun of the Age of Political Equilibrium that characterized (and paralyzed) the national political system during much of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The Republicans held the presidency from 1969 to 1977, from 1981to 1993, and from 2001 to 2009, while the Democrats held it from 1977 to 1981, from 1993-2001, and from 2009-2017. Congressional elections were even more "helter-skelter"; only rarely did the same party control both the executive and legislative branches at the same time. Clearly, however, I was "missing the forest for the trees," because the most important trend of those years is that both parties moved inexorably to the right side of the political spectrum. McGovern in 1972 was, in many ways, the last of the New Deal Democrats, but he was also the first of the New Centrist Democrats who seemingly privileged "the politics of identity" over the"bread and butter" variety that had sustained the dominance of the New Deal Coalition for the previous 40 years. The "reforms" adopted during the 1972 Democratic convention, with McGovern's backing, had seriously undermined the power of the big city machines and labor unions,alienating what became the white, working class "Reagan Democrats." That rift has widened and festered ever since.That same reorientation caused the majority of Southern whites to abandon the party of the "Solid South" in favor of the once-despised party of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Democrat's growing emphasis on equal rights for women and minorities, and the corresponding decline of its class-oriented focus, was matched by the "Southern Strategy" of Nixon and his successors. The "New Democrats" of the 1970s and beyond tended to be "cultural liberals,"rather than economic ones. Their orientation on economic issues became much more that of the middle and upper middle classes. Liberal Democratic support for the Civil Rights Movement, Affirmative Action, and the like were viewed by increasing numbers of white working class voters as occurring at their expense. The former believed that they were being deserted by their erstwhile allies, while the latter felt as if they were being driven out of the Democratic Party. These Reagan Republicans became part of a curious coalition with newly-minted white Southern Republicans, breadwinner conservatives, and Tea Party adherents. The only Democratic leader who might have held the New Deal coalition together had been assassinated on the very evening that he won the California primary and clinched the party's 1968 presidential nomination. No one else has even come close.
"Since Robert F. Kennedy's campaign in 1968 and George McGovern's run in 1972," according to the Center for American Progress, "progressives have sought to create a multiracial, multiethnic, cross-class coalition--made up of African Americans, Latinos, women, young people, professionals, and economically populist blue-collar whites--supporting an activist government to expand economic opportunities and personal freedoms for all people." (As a "professional" with "economically populist blue-color white" origins, I am sure that I fit in there somewhere, although the "age thing" would seem to disqualify me. I can only say that there are a lot of people in my age bracket who feel as I do, and that most of us aren't going to be around all that much longer anyway.) In the Center's view, based upon their analysis of the 2012 election returns, "this progressive coalition has clearly emerged, albeit in an early and tenuous stage." Obama is the first Democratic president since FDR to win two terms with more than 50 percent of the total popular vote, but he has done so with "an historically low percentage of the white vote"--only 39 percent, slightly less than Michael Dukakis received in 1988. Obviously the key to future success is to win back a significantly larger portion of the "white vote," while retaining the support of the other elements of this progressive coalition. No problem, right???
Naturally, the demographic trends of the past 40 years almost guarantee a continued increase of every other segment of the putative coalition, but what cheers them obviously alarms a lot of "white voters." hence the Reagan Democrats, breadwinner conservatives, and Tea Partiers. There are, however, grounds for optimism on that score. white working-class support support for Democrats has been higher than the norm in such key "battleground" states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, while white, college-educated support for Democrats has been growing in such emerging battlegrounds as Colorado and Virginia. By way of contrast, the Republican coalition of older, whiter, more rural and evangelical voters is not only shrinking, but also becoming more geographically concentrated and less important in the country's overall political landscape Concurrently, here has been an ideological shift away from the trickle-down, supply side.survival of the fittest, socially rigid "steel chain of ideas" toward a more pragmatic emphasis on problem solving that embraces strong governmental concern for that elusive "middler-class," public "investment" in education and infrastructure, a fairer and more economically productive tax system, and more inclusive social policies. Post-election polling by Democracy Corps shows that Obama enjoyed a 51-42 margin over Romney on the question of who would be the best at "restoring the middle class." By the same token, voters express far more interest in in a post-election deficit plan that invests in jobs and growth, raises taxes on the the wealthy, and protects the middle class and social programs than the tired, old right-wing mantra of top-down economics, dismantling of economic and social programs, and a bloated defense budget.
The Center for American Progress report acknowledges that "the 40 year transition of progressive politics--from Robert Kennedy to President Obama--has not been without difficulties, setbacks and outright failures." It has been overwhelmed by the rise of a resurgent right-wing movement that successfully shifted political discourse and public policy away from the progressivism of the 1930s through the 1960s to the world made by Ayn Rand, Reaganomics, the "neocons," Hayek, Norquist, Friedman, the Koch Brothers, and aggressive militarism. The loss of traditionally Democratic states, especially in the South, the continued antagonism of the majority of white, working-class voters, and the harsh reaction to the centrist Democratic presidencies of Carter, Clinton, and Obama, however, demonstrate how much work is yet to be done. The task is not to gravitate to the right or downplay diversity in order to win back white, working-class voters, but to unite disparate constituencies behind a populist, progressive vision of middle-class economics and social advancement for all peoples that includes a significant portion of the currently disaffected white, working-class. The primary strategic question is how to build on the foundation established in 2012 and to harness it to achieve progressive policy victories. That requires that the members of this coalition continue to pay close attention, stay involved, and press our elected representatives--especially President Obama--to defy the army of K Street lobbyists and billionaire "malefactors of great wealth," who will certainly fight against any and all progressive policies, tooth and nail Anything less than that will simply not cut it. The "one percent" has been waging class warfare against the rest of us for the best part of four decades. It is time to show them that democracy--effectively organized and sufficiently motivated--can eventually triumph over unbridled greed and rapacious ignorance.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Why We Need Public Financing of Political Campaigns
In the semi-euphoric atmosphere generated by President Obama's reelection and the strengthening of Democratic control in the Senate, some observers could not wait to proclaim the defeat of Super PACs and the flood of corporate cash unleashed by Citizens United. One analysis in the New York Times was even headlined "After Flood of Cash, Big Donors Return Home with Lighter Wallets and Few Victories." The article specifically focused on the cases of Harold Simmons, a Texas industrialist who gave $26.9 million to Super PACs backing Romney and Republican Senatorial candidates; Joe Ricketts, the owner of the Chicago Cubs who spent close to $13 million bankrolling a super PAC attacking Obama over federal spending; Bob Perry, a Texas home builder who poured more than $21 million into super PACs active in the presidential race and Senate battles in Florida and Virginia where Democrats narrowly prevailed; a donor network organized by the notorious Koch Brothers that raised $400 million for tax-exempt groups that are not required to disclose their spending: and gambling casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who became the largest single donor in political history by contributing $60 million to the campaigns of eight candidates , all of whom lost. They also could have mentioned Wyoming investment broker Foster Friess, who contributed almost $5 million to groups funding Rick Santorum, such as the Red White and Blue Fund, FreedomWorks for America, and Leaders for Families and Joseph Craft, a Tulsa, Oklahoma coal baron, gave $2.1 million to American Crossroads and $500,000 to Restore Our Future. Adelson, who has an estimated net worth of $21.5 billion, contributed his millions to such innocuous-sounding organizations as Winning Our Future and Restore Our Future. He first supported Gingrich and then Romney. He told a Norwegian reporter that "I'm against very wealthy people attempting to influence elections, but as long as it's doable, I'm going to do it."
Similarly unproductive were the efforts of the country's largest "trade association" and lobbyist, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to the Center for Responsive Politics the Chamber spent tens of millions of dollars on pro-business, mostly Republican, candidates in 48 Congressional elections and backed the eventual winner in only seven of those contests. Once an 8oo pound gorilla, says a spokesman for Chamber Watch, a union based group critical of the Chamber's political practices, "now they're a 500 pound wounded gorilla." If you find that assessment reassuring, you obviously are not aware of how much mayhem can be inflicted by a 500 pound wounded gorilla. One is almost tempted to become complacent and assume that we have very little to fear in the future from such politically inept puppeteers.
That, however, would be a mistake of disastrous proportions!!
Whatever else rapacious right-wing billionaires are (and the possibilities are endless), they are definitely not stupid nor overly scrupulous, when it comes to pursuing their own self-interest--as they perceive it They and their minions will analyze every piece of information possible about the reasons for their defeats and adjust accordingly. They still have most of the country's financial resources and will do whatever is "necessary" to ensure that the "right kind of people" are elected. They constitute a powerful "third party" (third rail?) in our supposed two party system. Maybe they are really the only political party, pulling the stings of their Republican and Democratic puppets. In any case, the political world inaugurated by Citizens United is till intact and eminently capable of producing much more disastrous outcomes in future elections, as well as the immediate fiscal crisis. Shaken, but obviously not chastened, the Chamber has already targeted crucial lawmakers, taken out ads and prepared position papers and Internet videos "intended to discourage any debt deal that it believes would deter private investment and free enterprise through higher taxes." Matthew Shay, president of the National Retail Federation, matter-of-factly states that he expects the Chamber "will continue to play an enormously influential role in the debate".
So what is this "brave new world" created by Citizens United? Essentially, the Court struck down those provisions of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act) that prohibited corporations, including non-profits, and unions from spending on "electioneering communications" (read television ads) within 30 days of primaries and 60 days of general elections. Mirabile dictu, the Federal Election Commission reported "a last minute rush of campaign spending with murky origins" from SPs who waited until the last minute to file their reports so as to delay publication of their major donors.
The decision did not lift the ban on direct contributions from corporations and unions (true to its "Alice in Wonderland" view of things),the Court equated the wealth and power of unions and non-profits with that of for-profit corporations. (As I noted in a previous post, that is the equivalent of equating MLB, NBA, or NFL teams with those of your local high school.) to candidate campaigns or political parties. It did, however, "remove the previous ban on corporations and organizations using their treasury funds for direct advocacy." It did permit them "to expressly endorse or call to vote for or against specific candidates," actions that had been banned by a plethora of state and federal laws and court decisions. In other words, corporations (and we must not forget unions) could directly engage in partisan politics so long as they did not give money directly to a candidate's campaign committee or to an officially constituted political party organization. This practically mandated the creation of a third genus of political organization, completely "independent" of the two existing forms.. (It is hard to say with certainty which caused which. Did the decision spawn the organizations or did the organizations spawn the decision? It was probably just plain serendipity?) In any case, the decision quickly gave rise to a bewildering "alphabet soup" of new "independent" organizations with wonderfully beneficent names, such as Americans for Prosperity, American crossroads, Hardworking Americans Committee, Patriot Majority, Freedom Works, Club for Growth, the Sam Adams Alliance, the American Majority, Freedom Fund North America, the Franklin Center, and the Arizona Christian Coalition, but dedicated to financing a single candidate or party. It also allowed big donors to "launder" their contributions through foundations whose putative purpose was to promote "social welfare" through education,health care, anti-poverty and drug rehabilitation programs. With mind-numbing rationalization, the Court promised that such organizations would not foster political or financial "corruption," or even the appearance of such nefarious practices. Most of the offending "non-profits" are covered by their 501 (c) (4) tax-exempt status and therefore can keep the names of their donors secret.
Citizens United was a contentious decision, with five "conservative" judges trumping four "liberal" jurists. The minority opinion,written by Justice John Paul Stevens, presciently detailed seven flaws in the majority opinion.First of all, it asserted that the definition of corruption encompassed far more chicanery than a mere exchange of money for votes (good old fashioned monetary bribes.) It involved mostly the privilege of access to office holders that was impossible to achieve by all but a handful of contributors and lobbyists. Stevens cited a study in which 80% of the public viewed corporate independent expenditures as a means of gaining unfair access. (So much for avoiding even the appearance of corruption.) It also argued that the corporate form bestowed enormous benefits in and of itself: perpetuity, limited liability, access to gigantic amounts of money, no need for internal democracy, no constraining morality or loyalty, and no stated purpose beyond profit=making. He demolished the existence of any such thing as"corporate democracy." Corporate decision-making, especially in the expenditure of funds, was strictly a "top-down" affair. Stockholders and employees have no effective way of preventing corporate money from going to candidates or parties they oppose. According to Public Citizen's Congress Watch, most of these ersatz "independent" organizations were managed by political allies, family members, and employees of the candidates they benefited. Of the 108 Super PACs that had spent more than $100,000 through the middle of October, 65 were active in just one contest. Together, these 65 accounted for 55% of the $375 million spent by SPs in that cohort. Of the 69 SPs devoted solely to Congressional contests, 39 worked on behalf of a single candidate. The Public Citizen report also contains numerous examples of the convoluted machinations that SPs employed to protect the names of their donors, even though their contributions theoretically must be reported. In one case, the candidate was funded by two separate SPs, each of which received nearly all of its funds from the same, identical person. In Pennsylvania, the opponent of an incumbent Congressman was the recipient of $175,145 from the Freedom Fund for America's Future, which, in turn, received 92% of its funding from Fight for the Dream,which got its money from another SP that is allowed to keep its donors secret. The scam was discovered by Public Citizen because its mailbox was registered to the former finance co-chair for one of the candidate's opponents (stupidity or arrogance?) The director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch branded the Court's claims in Citizens United that outside expenditures in elections are not corrupting, while direct contributions are, as "irreconcilable."
With its wealth and power, corporations and billionaires can actually define legislative priorities and give the impression of widespread support or opposition for an issue that is often contrary to actual public opinion. In other words, it "marginalizes the speech of other individuals and groups". Stevens's dissent also takes serious issue with majority's facile assertion that "there is no such thing as too much free speech," noting that the Court, over the years, has upheld numerous restrictions on absolute free speech, based upon time, place and manner of communication.The dissenting opinion also denied the arguments that such restrictions would allow the government to censor the communications media or prevent state legislatures from enacting their own methods of dealing with electoral corruption. Stevens concluded his opinion with a blanket rejection of the majority decision:
At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the
American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from
undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against
the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days
of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense.
While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court
would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.
The only way to combat the world created by Citizens United is to move along two parallel tracks: 1) work to overturn the Court's decision, which would almost certainly require a constitutional amendment, and 2) reinstate effective campaign finance laws that promote a government beholden to all of its people, instead of to billionaires and corporations. Much easier said than done, of course, but the alternative is the end of any semblance of real democracy. So far as overturning Citizens United by constitutional amendment is concerned, Public Citizen's Democracy Is For People campaign has been working with several grass roots organizations to build momentum. This September, Arlington, VA became the 300th locality to pass a resolution to that effect, while the Connecticut legislature presented a letter to Congress, signed by most of its members, backing such an amendment. In October, the New Jersey legislature adopted a similar resolution. On election day, more than 6 million people across the country voted on ballot measures for such an amendment; almost three-fourths of them supported the idea. Colorado and Montana voters supported ballot initiatives by a margin of 3 to 1. They joined 8 other states that had already adopted such resolutions. San Francisco, Chicago, and more than half the towns in Massachusetts also passed ballot initiatives by similar margins. In November, Democracy Is For The People toured several cities in New York urging support for an amendment and giving presentations promoting the state's 2012 Fair Elections Act. Under this law,the state would provide a 6 to1 match for contributions made by small donors. A similar public financing option is already available in New York City that has enabled a significant number of low-income,middle-class and minority voters to participate in the electoral process. (Although this may have changed some since 2008, I always used to show my students that more than 90 percent of campaign contributions come for less than 5 % of the people. The New York plan motivated large numbers of people to contribute for the first time, helping to give them a sense of ownership and participation. More than two million people nationwide have signed petitions urging the adoption of an amendment to overturn Citizens United. In September, Congressman John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, introduced a Grassroots Democracy Act, co-sponsored by dozens of other members that would inaugurate a three step system for public financing of campaigns. The first part would create a public funding system that would match five dollars for every one contributed by individuals who contribute up to $100 maximum. The money raised would be available to any candidate who refused SP donations. The second would provide for a $50 tax credit for contributions to political campaigns. The third would establish a "people's fund" to ensure that the public financing could compete against corporate cash. Connecticut Democratic Congressman John Larson has introduced a sweeping public financing system that would allow Representatives to run viable campaigns buttressed by public funds. Representative David Price, Democrat from North Carolina has introduced a bill to provide a 5-1 match for individual contributions of $250 or less for presidential and congressional elections. Public Citizen other progressive groups are urging other members of Congress to introduce similar measures in 2013.
Would the Adelsons and Kochs of this world allow any measure providing for public financing of campaigns? Not if they and their bought politicians can do anything to prevent it. They understand full well what a sea change in the electoral system that would unleash, and they will do their damnedest to maintain the status quo--and even to make far more undemocratic. Would the "Tea Partiers" and "breadwinner conservatives" support any measures that, on the surface, seem to exacerbate their two most frightening bete noires: an even more powerful federal government and an increasing national debt? But maybe we can change the categories of the conversation. The one thing on which progressives and their right-wing antagonists seem to share common ground: the absolute necessity to eliminate the blatant,pervasive corruption that currently paralyzes our electoral and legislative systems. If we make the elimination of corruption our common lodestar, we can initiate a perpetual--and painful-- dialog that is bound to be more productive than the appalling gridlock that will, otherwise--just get worse. We can begin by becoming active and persistent participants in the two fold strategy outlined above. What is written on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial?" Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Why We Need A National Election Law
The current election season has been defiled by the most massive, coordinated, and deceitful assault on the right to vote in our history--and it will continue unless the defenders of real democracy unite to defeat it, once and for all! If this vicious purge succeeds, it will deprive millions of Americans of their most precious right as citizens, especially racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, the unemployed, the handicapped, the homeless, college students, and those on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in general. Not coincidentally, these are all voters who lean heavily toward the Democratic side of the ledger. Estimates are that the requirement of photo IDs alone could impact as many as 21 million people. This conspiracy is all the more pernicious because its various components are touted as measures designed to prevent "voter fraud," when, in fact, they constitute the most blatant and breath-taking "voter fraud" ever perpetrated, one that dwarfs even the century-long emasculation of the Fifteenth Amendment by the states of the Old Confederacy--because it is nationwide in scope. Although requiring photo IDs has received the most publicity, I have already discussed a variety of other subterfuges toward that same end in my posts on voter repression of September 17 ans 27. I would also remind readers of the comprehensive report "The Truth About Voter Fraud" compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice of the New York University School of Law, the one that concludes that the chances of average voter encountering voter fraud are roughly the same as being struck by lightning.
The major reason that this assault did not have a paralyzing effect on the 2012 election is that the Department of Justice issued temporary stays in South Carolina and Wisconsin, Those reprieves are only temporary, however, and efforts to implement those and similar laws in several other states with solid Republican legislatures and governors will continue. In addition, suppression efforts were countered by the tireless work of the League of Women Voters, the A.C.L.U., the N.A.A.C.P., and numerous other progressive organizations to register voters and to get them to the polls on election day. Even so, there were still widespread instances of voter suppression in several key states on November 6. Thousands of Florida voters were forced to stand in line six hours after the polls officially closed. Congressional races in Florida, Arizona, Ohio and elsewhere were not officially decided until several days later. Voter ID laws in Pennsylvania caused tremendous confusion resulting in long waits, and causing numerous voters with handicaps, jobs, and child care responsibilities to give up and forfeit their votes. Hundreds of voters in Ohio were told that they were not on the registration lists. New Jersey experienced serious difficulties with their email voting system. Incredibly, voters in Colorado and Pennsylvania were outraged to see their computerized votes changed from one candidate to the other right in front of their eyes. Many inner city precincts in my home town of Racine, Wisconsin, where the voter turnout was an amazing 91 percent, ran short of ballots, causing long waits, lots of frustration, and preventing many people from voting.
Of course, not all of these problems were the result of organized voter suppression campaigns. Even those that were so manipulated were exacerbated by the crazy quilt nature of election regulations and procedures in the various states. Many polling places are inconveniently located and ill-suited to the task. Most jurisdictions rely primarily upon volunteers to staff the polling stations;they have often received only minimal training, and are frequently unaware of the intricacies of election laws. Most of them (including my late mother) are honest, sincere, and civic-minded. They are usually of retirement age and hard-pressed to handle challenges or complaints from overly zealous voters or "poll watchers." They work long hours (sometimes as many as 16), with little or no break time. They are the true unsung heroes of the election process.So far as the average American is concerned, it is astounding how little attention or concern is lavished on the process by which we attempt to govern ourselves..
At least as ominous is the fact that the Supreme Court recently announced it intention to hear a challenge from Shelby County, Alabama to Section 5 of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. That provision requires that nine states with particularly nefarious histories of violating the intent of the Fifteenth Amendment by various subterfuges (i.e. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia) clear any proposed changes in their voting requirements or procedures with Department of Justice. If any such laws are found to "deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language group," they can be blocked by the DOJ or a federal court in Washington. This provision has been reaffirmed on four separate occasions, with tremendously bipartisan support. Earlier this year, a federal court struck down Voter ID and Congressional redistricting laws on that basis. But the ultra right-wing majority of the Court has steadily narrowed the standard for enforcing the civil rights provisions in the Religious Freedom Restoration, Americans With Disabilities, and Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Significantly, 7 of the 9 states covered by Section 5 have already enacted Voter ID laws or other statutes to make voting more difficult. these will automatically will go into effect if the Court invalidates Section 5. The Voting Rights Act also provides for a federal Election Assistance Commission to oversee its implementation, but, as incredible as it may seem, none of its four seats are currently occupied.
Taken together, all of these add up to just one logical conclusion: We desperately need a comprehensive national election law, just like a real grown-up country. We should begin by making election day a national holiday--as least as important as Columbus Day or Presidents Day. Doing so would even allow businesses to have another holiday sale. There is absolutely nothing sacred about the first Tuesday in November,any more than there was about March 4th being inauguration day. The problem with that Tuesday--and every other weekday--is that everyone has something else to do: work, school, travel, watch kids, whatever. Setting aside an entire day on which every eligible voter has only one obligation would certainly eliminate just about every possible excuse for not voting. I have thought about making voting mandatory, as it already is in Australia, but that does seem a little too "Un-American." It has been argued, also, that non-voting is really a form of voting--a kind of "none of the above."
Many countries already vote on Sunday and--given our gigantic geographical and population size--making it an entire weekend might not be too far-fetched.
Borrowing from the voter suppression movement, we could require that every eligible voter have a photo ID card. Only the purpose would be to "franchise" everybody rather than "disenfranchise" millions. These would, of course be issued by the federal government to every single person who meets the age and citizenship requirements, which are the only legitimate criteria left. Over the years, I have accumulated a drivers license, a Social Security card and a Medicare card. At one point, long, long ago, I even had a draft card. It would have a certain advantage over a drivers license. You wouldn't need to renew it ever so many years; it only expires when you do.It would even satisfy those who are clamoring for a national ID card in order to prove citizenship or legal alien status, although the purpose would again be inclusive rather than exclusive. The initial start-up process might be cumbersome and time-consuming, but, after that, it would just be a matter of adding each newly minted crop of eighteen year-olds. If you change addresses or polling places, the card will take care of providing the only information relevant to registration. I can only think of one potential problem: if the photo is as bad as the one on my drivers license or my passport, I might have to provide additional documentation.
The most important reason for inaugurating a national election system is to impose some semblance of order on all of the mind-numbing chaos. Simply put, the "election season" is virtually without beginning or end, while the process itself looks like something out of Rube Goldberg. Here it is just two weeks since the 2012 election, and the pundits and talking heads are already speculating about the candidates for the 2016 contest. (For a tongue-in-cheek account that comes painfully close to reality, please read Lionel Trilling's Dogfight:The 2012 Election in
Verse.) This latest battle for the Republican presidential nomination that droned on for almost two entire years was somewhere between a "comedy of errors" and the "theater of the absurd." Although President Obama had no opposition for the Democratic nomination, he spent most of that time fund raising and stockpiling money for the general election. Of course, that saga would not have occurred if we had "real" political parties with "program and discipline." If the parties picked the candidates, rather than the other way around, we could have actually have compressed the "election season" into a relatively few months, just like grown-up nations do. Of course, we would have missed most of the entertainment provided by the Republican nomination process. Imagine how empty our lives would have been without the hilarious antics provided by Perry,Cain, Bachman, Gingrich, Santorum, and "the Donald." What if Mitt had been forced to decide who he wanted to be, without reference to any of his contenders, and before the general election? It might have forced him to resolve his interminable "identity crisis"
What would be a reasonable time limit for the "election season" and how could we achieve it? I realize that a great many people (especially five Supreme Court Justices and lots of billionaires and corporations) would object to any effort at setting a time frame as a violation of the First Amendment. (If corporations really were "persons" and money really was a form of speech, they might have a point.) Suppose Congress passed a law allowing no primaries, caucuses, conventions, and no political advertising radio in non-election years? I would like to propose a more stringent time limit---say six months prior to the presidential election. Most other advanced nations are a lot more restrictive than that. Having a series of four or five regional primaries spread over the late spring and summer months, would provide a framework of focus,continuity and progression. Prospective candidates could no longer "cherry pick" the contests in which to participate, and pundits could no longer pontificate about why the results in one state are more significant than those in another.Candidates could all focus their campaigns in the same region of the country at the same time.
Short of that, Congress could establish a nonpartisan federal elections board to maintain a national registration database, mandate standard voting machines, and establish criteria for counting provisional ballots. As the New York Times recently advocated, a law proposed by Representatives George Miller of California and John Lewis of Georgia "would require a clear early-voting period, removing the issue as a political football in states like Florida and Ohio, and standards for absentee voting." Congress could also provide financial incentives, such as grants to states that make registration easy, allowing same-day registration, early voting, absentee voting "on demand," properly training poll workers, and mandating a sufficient number of easily accessible polling places. Seventeen states already already send electronic registration data from motor vehicle departments to election agencies, while ten allow online registration. What's not to like? Isn't everyone's real goal to provide the best means possible for every eligible voter to exercise his or her most basic right of citizenship, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, physical condition, employment status, and living arrangements?
A national voting system might also have two other unintended, but salubrious, results. It would almost certainly
increase our voter turnout, which is far and away the worst among all of the advanced democracies.There are a lot of different reasons why the 40% don't vote, ranging from the barriers erected against certain categories of potential voters (who almost always would probably vote Democrat) to a "plague on both your houses" attitude espoused by the most intelligent and sophisticated among us. Even so, it is certain that the profile of millions of those who don't vote fairly closely resembles that of those who are the are the targets of today's voter suppression campaign.. (To hear the pundits and organizers tell it, though, the vast majority of non-voters are some kind of deep thinkers who weigh every twist and turn in the campaign, and only decide whether or not to vote at all, or for whom to vote. Regular voting is a habit of the reasonably well-established; it is almost always "learned behavior. Some countries actually fine people who fail to vote. A well-conceived and administered national voting system might go a long way to engaging millions of today's non-voters and giving them the incentive to participate on a regular basis. At the very least, it almost certainly wouldn't have the opposite effect.)
The other beneficial effect would be to eliminate a growing practice that harkens back to the Gilded Age, when workers were threatened with the loss of their jobs if they voted "the wrong way." Prior to Citizens United, according to Populist Progressive columnist Jim Hightower, top executives were barred by federal law from using corporate funds "to instruct, induce, intimidate, or otherwise push workers to support particular candidates." Since that ruling, many bosses "openly conscripting employees to be political troopers for corporate-backed candidates." One CEO, David Siegel of Westgate Resorts, sent a letter to each of his 7,000 employees warning them that voting for Obama would "threaten your job," since he would have "no choice but to reduce the size of this company." Another, Dave Robertson, president of the Koch brothers industrial empire, notified 30,000 workers that they would suffer assorted "ills" if Obama were reelected and enclosed a slate-card of Koch-approved candidates. Thanks to the Roberts Court, what has always been more subtly implied can now be blatantly asserted because corporations are people and the savage wielding of their life-and-control over their employees lives is an exercise of free speech. Remember that the Citizens United decision was based largely on the judgment that it would not lead to any serious form of corruption.
To establish a viable national election system would almost certainly require reaching a consensus about the relative merits of the popular vote versus the electoral vote. Of course, that would open up a contentious "can of beans., but not only is the electoral vote system clearly undemocratic and skewed in favor of the lesser populated states, it is also a time bomb ticking in the Constitution. It is almost certain to go off someday. By my admittedly unscientific calculation, one vote in Montana (3 electoral votes and a population of about 1 million) is equal to around 963 votes in California 55 electoral votes with a population of about 38 million). If that isn't scary enough, most states operate on a "winner-take-all" basis, meaning that a narrow margin of victory gives that candidate the whole enchilada while the loser gets zip, zero,nada. Many authorities believe that replacing winner-take-all with some kind of proportional distribution, either by percentage of the popular vote or by Congressional district, would significantly lessen the gap between popular and electoral votes. but--absent a federal law or constitutional amendment to that effect--each state would have the right to keep the current system or adopt one of the above mentioned alternatives.
What we have now is both coasts and the Upper Great Lakes (Democratic) versus the other (mostly Republican) states In the last few weeks before the 2012 election, various commentators expressed concern that both candidates would receive the identical 269 votes, thus throwing the final decision into the House of Representatives. Of course, it is theoretically possible that the popular vote could someday end in a tie, but the odds of that happening with more than 120 million votes--as opposed to 538--are infinitesimally long. Although the elections of 1800, 1824, and 1876 had to be settled in the House, it hasn't happened since, and we had better hope and pray that it never will again. For the benefit of those who have not yet memorized the Constitution, each state, regardless of population, is allowed just ONE vote. That would exponentially exacerbate the impact of a system that is already in favor of the less populous states. In Baker v.Carr (1964) a far different Supreme Court mandated the standard of "one man, one vote," and observed that trees can't vote, only people can. With the current Court, you would be wise to put your money on trees. Citizens United absolutely contradicts Baker, but this Court is substantially the same group of people who handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush.
In the 46 elections held over the past 184 years, the winning candidate in 11 of them failed to win a clear majority of the popular vote. In 1876 (Rutherford B. Hayes), 1888 (Benjamin Harrison), and 2000 (George W. Bush), the electoral vote winner did not even receive the most popular votes. In the first case, the winner was determined by a commission established by the House of Representatives. In the second, Harrison won the electoral vote even though he lost the popular vote to Grover Cleveland. You all know what happened in 2000. Gore won the popular vote and probably the electoral vote as well, but the Supreme Court decided to stop the recount because their candidate was ahead at the time.
Clearly, Citizens United the opening wedge in the most massive and blatant assault ever on democracy itself According to Charles M Blow in the NYTimes, 24 states will have "unified Republican control," meaning both houses of the legislature and the governor. There can be no doubt that they will try to use that unified control to enact every right-wing nut, tea party obscenity possible. Only a universal nationwide election system can possibly prevent them from turning the future for the next generation and beyond into serfs and indentured servants of the super rich. We progressives need to do all that we can to prevent that--and to counter it with our alternative vision of a future based upon fairness, equal opportunity, and true social security for all
The major reason that this assault did not have a paralyzing effect on the 2012 election is that the Department of Justice issued temporary stays in South Carolina and Wisconsin, Those reprieves are only temporary, however, and efforts to implement those and similar laws in several other states with solid Republican legislatures and governors will continue. In addition, suppression efforts were countered by the tireless work of the League of Women Voters, the A.C.L.U., the N.A.A.C.P., and numerous other progressive organizations to register voters and to get them to the polls on election day. Even so, there were still widespread instances of voter suppression in several key states on November 6. Thousands of Florida voters were forced to stand in line six hours after the polls officially closed. Congressional races in Florida, Arizona, Ohio and elsewhere were not officially decided until several days later. Voter ID laws in Pennsylvania caused tremendous confusion resulting in long waits, and causing numerous voters with handicaps, jobs, and child care responsibilities to give up and forfeit their votes. Hundreds of voters in Ohio were told that they were not on the registration lists. New Jersey experienced serious difficulties with their email voting system. Incredibly, voters in Colorado and Pennsylvania were outraged to see their computerized votes changed from one candidate to the other right in front of their eyes. Many inner city precincts in my home town of Racine, Wisconsin, where the voter turnout was an amazing 91 percent, ran short of ballots, causing long waits, lots of frustration, and preventing many people from voting.
Of course, not all of these problems were the result of organized voter suppression campaigns. Even those that were so manipulated were exacerbated by the crazy quilt nature of election regulations and procedures in the various states. Many polling places are inconveniently located and ill-suited to the task. Most jurisdictions rely primarily upon volunteers to staff the polling stations;they have often received only minimal training, and are frequently unaware of the intricacies of election laws. Most of them (including my late mother) are honest, sincere, and civic-minded. They are usually of retirement age and hard-pressed to handle challenges or complaints from overly zealous voters or "poll watchers." They work long hours (sometimes as many as 16), with little or no break time. They are the true unsung heroes of the election process.So far as the average American is concerned, it is astounding how little attention or concern is lavished on the process by which we attempt to govern ourselves..
At least as ominous is the fact that the Supreme Court recently announced it intention to hear a challenge from Shelby County, Alabama to Section 5 of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. That provision requires that nine states with particularly nefarious histories of violating the intent of the Fifteenth Amendment by various subterfuges (i.e. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia) clear any proposed changes in their voting requirements or procedures with Department of Justice. If any such laws are found to "deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language group," they can be blocked by the DOJ or a federal court in Washington. This provision has been reaffirmed on four separate occasions, with tremendously bipartisan support. Earlier this year, a federal court struck down Voter ID and Congressional redistricting laws on that basis. But the ultra right-wing majority of the Court has steadily narrowed the standard for enforcing the civil rights provisions in the Religious Freedom Restoration, Americans With Disabilities, and Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Significantly, 7 of the 9 states covered by Section 5 have already enacted Voter ID laws or other statutes to make voting more difficult. these will automatically will go into effect if the Court invalidates Section 5. The Voting Rights Act also provides for a federal Election Assistance Commission to oversee its implementation, but, as incredible as it may seem, none of its four seats are currently occupied.
Taken together, all of these add up to just one logical conclusion: We desperately need a comprehensive national election law, just like a real grown-up country. We should begin by making election day a national holiday--as least as important as Columbus Day or Presidents Day. Doing so would even allow businesses to have another holiday sale. There is absolutely nothing sacred about the first Tuesday in November,any more than there was about March 4th being inauguration day. The problem with that Tuesday--and every other weekday--is that everyone has something else to do: work, school, travel, watch kids, whatever. Setting aside an entire day on which every eligible voter has only one obligation would certainly eliminate just about every possible excuse for not voting. I have thought about making voting mandatory, as it already is in Australia, but that does seem a little too "Un-American." It has been argued, also, that non-voting is really a form of voting--a kind of "none of the above."
Many countries already vote on Sunday and--given our gigantic geographical and population size--making it an entire weekend might not be too far-fetched.
Borrowing from the voter suppression movement, we could require that every eligible voter have a photo ID card. Only the purpose would be to "franchise" everybody rather than "disenfranchise" millions. These would, of course be issued by the federal government to every single person who meets the age and citizenship requirements, which are the only legitimate criteria left. Over the years, I have accumulated a drivers license, a Social Security card and a Medicare card. At one point, long, long ago, I even had a draft card. It would have a certain advantage over a drivers license. You wouldn't need to renew it ever so many years; it only expires when you do.It would even satisfy those who are clamoring for a national ID card in order to prove citizenship or legal alien status, although the purpose would again be inclusive rather than exclusive. The initial start-up process might be cumbersome and time-consuming, but, after that, it would just be a matter of adding each newly minted crop of eighteen year-olds. If you change addresses or polling places, the card will take care of providing the only information relevant to registration. I can only think of one potential problem: if the photo is as bad as the one on my drivers license or my passport, I might have to provide additional documentation.
The most important reason for inaugurating a national election system is to impose some semblance of order on all of the mind-numbing chaos. Simply put, the "election season" is virtually without beginning or end, while the process itself looks like something out of Rube Goldberg. Here it is just two weeks since the 2012 election, and the pundits and talking heads are already speculating about the candidates for the 2016 contest. (For a tongue-in-cheek account that comes painfully close to reality, please read Lionel Trilling's Dogfight:The 2012 Election in
Verse.) This latest battle for the Republican presidential nomination that droned on for almost two entire years was somewhere between a "comedy of errors" and the "theater of the absurd." Although President Obama had no opposition for the Democratic nomination, he spent most of that time fund raising and stockpiling money for the general election. Of course, that saga would not have occurred if we had "real" political parties with "program and discipline." If the parties picked the candidates, rather than the other way around, we could have actually have compressed the "election season" into a relatively few months, just like grown-up nations do. Of course, we would have missed most of the entertainment provided by the Republican nomination process. Imagine how empty our lives would have been without the hilarious antics provided by Perry,Cain, Bachman, Gingrich, Santorum, and "the Donald." What if Mitt had been forced to decide who he wanted to be, without reference to any of his contenders, and before the general election? It might have forced him to resolve his interminable "identity crisis"
What would be a reasonable time limit for the "election season" and how could we achieve it? I realize that a great many people (especially five Supreme Court Justices and lots of billionaires and corporations) would object to any effort at setting a time frame as a violation of the First Amendment. (If corporations really were "persons" and money really was a form of speech, they might have a point.) Suppose Congress passed a law allowing no primaries, caucuses, conventions, and no political advertising radio in non-election years? I would like to propose a more stringent time limit---say six months prior to the presidential election. Most other advanced nations are a lot more restrictive than that. Having a series of four or five regional primaries spread over the late spring and summer months, would provide a framework of focus,continuity and progression. Prospective candidates could no longer "cherry pick" the contests in which to participate, and pundits could no longer pontificate about why the results in one state are more significant than those in another.Candidates could all focus their campaigns in the same region of the country at the same time.
Short of that, Congress could establish a nonpartisan federal elections board to maintain a national registration database, mandate standard voting machines, and establish criteria for counting provisional ballots. As the New York Times recently advocated, a law proposed by Representatives George Miller of California and John Lewis of Georgia "would require a clear early-voting period, removing the issue as a political football in states like Florida and Ohio, and standards for absentee voting." Congress could also provide financial incentives, such as grants to states that make registration easy, allowing same-day registration, early voting, absentee voting "on demand," properly training poll workers, and mandating a sufficient number of easily accessible polling places. Seventeen states already already send electronic registration data from motor vehicle departments to election agencies, while ten allow online registration. What's not to like? Isn't everyone's real goal to provide the best means possible for every eligible voter to exercise his or her most basic right of citizenship, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, physical condition, employment status, and living arrangements?
A national voting system might also have two other unintended, but salubrious, results. It would almost certainly
increase our voter turnout, which is far and away the worst among all of the advanced democracies.There are a lot of different reasons why the 40% don't vote, ranging from the barriers erected against certain categories of potential voters (who almost always would probably vote Democrat) to a "plague on both your houses" attitude espoused by the most intelligent and sophisticated among us. Even so, it is certain that the profile of millions of those who don't vote fairly closely resembles that of those who are the are the targets of today's voter suppression campaign.. (To hear the pundits and organizers tell it, though, the vast majority of non-voters are some kind of deep thinkers who weigh every twist and turn in the campaign, and only decide whether or not to vote at all, or for whom to vote. Regular voting is a habit of the reasonably well-established; it is almost always "learned behavior. Some countries actually fine people who fail to vote. A well-conceived and administered national voting system might go a long way to engaging millions of today's non-voters and giving them the incentive to participate on a regular basis. At the very least, it almost certainly wouldn't have the opposite effect.)
The other beneficial effect would be to eliminate a growing practice that harkens back to the Gilded Age, when workers were threatened with the loss of their jobs if they voted "the wrong way." Prior to Citizens United, according to Populist Progressive columnist Jim Hightower, top executives were barred by federal law from using corporate funds "to instruct, induce, intimidate, or otherwise push workers to support particular candidates." Since that ruling, many bosses "openly conscripting employees to be political troopers for corporate-backed candidates." One CEO, David Siegel of Westgate Resorts, sent a letter to each of his 7,000 employees warning them that voting for Obama would "threaten your job," since he would have "no choice but to reduce the size of this company." Another, Dave Robertson, president of the Koch brothers industrial empire, notified 30,000 workers that they would suffer assorted "ills" if Obama were reelected and enclosed a slate-card of Koch-approved candidates. Thanks to the Roberts Court, what has always been more subtly implied can now be blatantly asserted because corporations are people and the savage wielding of their life-and-control over their employees lives is an exercise of free speech. Remember that the Citizens United decision was based largely on the judgment that it would not lead to any serious form of corruption.
To establish a viable national election system would almost certainly require reaching a consensus about the relative merits of the popular vote versus the electoral vote. Of course, that would open up a contentious "can of beans., but not only is the electoral vote system clearly undemocratic and skewed in favor of the lesser populated states, it is also a time bomb ticking in the Constitution. It is almost certain to go off someday. By my admittedly unscientific calculation, one vote in Montana (3 electoral votes and a population of about 1 million) is equal to around 963 votes in California 55 electoral votes with a population of about 38 million). If that isn't scary enough, most states operate on a "winner-take-all" basis, meaning that a narrow margin of victory gives that candidate the whole enchilada while the loser gets zip, zero,nada. Many authorities believe that replacing winner-take-all with some kind of proportional distribution, either by percentage of the popular vote or by Congressional district, would significantly lessen the gap between popular and electoral votes. but--absent a federal law or constitutional amendment to that effect--each state would have the right to keep the current system or adopt one of the above mentioned alternatives.
What we have now is both coasts and the Upper Great Lakes (Democratic) versus the other (mostly Republican) states In the last few weeks before the 2012 election, various commentators expressed concern that both candidates would receive the identical 269 votes, thus throwing the final decision into the House of Representatives. Of course, it is theoretically possible that the popular vote could someday end in a tie, but the odds of that happening with more than 120 million votes--as opposed to 538--are infinitesimally long. Although the elections of 1800, 1824, and 1876 had to be settled in the House, it hasn't happened since, and we had better hope and pray that it never will again. For the benefit of those who have not yet memorized the Constitution, each state, regardless of population, is allowed just ONE vote. That would exponentially exacerbate the impact of a system that is already in favor of the less populous states. In Baker v.Carr (1964) a far different Supreme Court mandated the standard of "one man, one vote," and observed that trees can't vote, only people can. With the current Court, you would be wise to put your money on trees. Citizens United absolutely contradicts Baker, but this Court is substantially the same group of people who handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush.
In the 46 elections held over the past 184 years, the winning candidate in 11 of them failed to win a clear majority of the popular vote. In 1876 (Rutherford B. Hayes), 1888 (Benjamin Harrison), and 2000 (George W. Bush), the electoral vote winner did not even receive the most popular votes. In the first case, the winner was determined by a commission established by the House of Representatives. In the second, Harrison won the electoral vote even though he lost the popular vote to Grover Cleveland. You all know what happened in 2000. Gore won the popular vote and probably the electoral vote as well, but the Supreme Court decided to stop the recount because their candidate was ahead at the time.
Clearly, Citizens United the opening wedge in the most massive and blatant assault ever on democracy itself According to Charles M Blow in the NYTimes, 24 states will have "unified Republican control," meaning both houses of the legislature and the governor. There can be no doubt that they will try to use that unified control to enact every right-wing nut, tea party obscenity possible. Only a universal nationwide election system can possibly prevent them from turning the future for the next generation and beyond into serfs and indentured servants of the super rich. We progressives need to do all that we can to prevent that--and to counter it with our alternative vision of a future based upon fairness, equal opportunity, and true social security for all
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