Best and Brightest

A Facebook friend asked the day after Tuesday's recall election, 
"Why do so many people hate unions, teachers and public servants in general?" 

That was in response to this cartoon: 

My answer was,  "Because they're easy targets and the Repubs have been working on this for decades. They way to defund the Democrats (noun) is to get rid of or defang their funders. Unions have long been big donors to the Democratic (adjective) Party. It's all about money, control and power."


Another Facebook Friend said,  "...all three have done a miserable job in selling themselves and their roles to the public. They need to study the GOP playbook on the utility of lying, cheating and deception. Only way to succeed in these partisan days. A sad commentary on America.


Yet another Facebook Friend commented:  "They had Unions because unions make corporations follow the laws and uphold the rights of workers. They had teachers because they help to inform individuals, spread the information about all sides of the issue (good, bad and ugly), because we force people to express themselves and make the THINK instead of being drones. They hate public servants in general because they think of them as leaches of their tax dollars. What they fail to remember is ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS are PUBLIC SERVANTS TOO! And Elected Officials and Administrative position salaries, benefits, and retirement packages far exceed those of your average union trade worker, average teachers ( whole salary with a Masters degree and 5 yrs of experience is about $40,000 yr.), and your police, fire, and other emergency services. The outcome only indicates how uninformed society really is -- These groups want drones and to turn America into a for-profit society."


This brings to mind a conundrum that has long vexed me. 

Corporations and their Boards of Directors -- which are generally composed of other corporations' CEOs -- justify CEOs' obscenely bloated compensation packages by saying it's necessary to pay them a lot so they can attract the brightest and the best.

I've heard the same about university chancellors and top administrators, most recently in Wisconsin where the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents rationalized a 10 percent raise for that system's chancellors, while faculty has gone for three years with no raises.

I also keep reading and hearing that state and local elected officials and parents say schools want only the best and the brightest teachers for their children and that schools need to weed out bad and mediocre teachers. Yet their idea -- which a growing majority of the public is embracing -- is to cut teachers' already modest pay (I have yet to see any public school teacher living in a McMansion, driving a Mercedez or owning a yacht),  their healthcare and pension benefits.

So the incentive to hire the best and the brightest corporation CEO and university chancellor is money, money and more money, plus expensive perks (which we consumers and taxpayers pay for), but the incentive to attract the best and the brightest teachers is to pay them mediocre salaries, provide a swiss-cheese type of benefits package, make the pay out of pocket for many classroom necessities because school budgets have been slashed, and demonize them.

What kind of thinking is that? And yet voters fall for it.

Regulate this!

Everyday, somewhere someone (generally with an "R" party designation) blames 'over regulation' for our country's economic woes, its trade deficit, the horrendously high national debt, obscenely profitable corporations' refusal to create jobs, the nation's devastatingly high unemployment rate, and probably even toenail fungus.

Everyday, I find reason to celebrate and give thanks for government regulations.

This morning, it was when I learned my son was sick with what he suspected was food poisoning.

This afternoon it was an NPR "Fresh Air" interview with the author of a book about how A&P changed the way Americans shop.

It wasn't that I was celebrating or thankful that my son had food poisoning. Learning about his plight made me think for at least the millionth time how amazing it is that food poisoning isn't more rampant that it is, and remind myself that a major reason that it isn't is  -- ta-da! -- government regulation.

As for the "Fresh Air" program, the descriptions of how food was sold in the "good old days" really amped up my appreciation for government regulations. Back in those days, grain, meal and even vinegar was transported, sans inspection for contaminants or noshing and nesting varmints, in wooden barrels. Once in the general store, those barrels were often left open or at least unsealed where they could be -- and often were -- invaded by whatever opportunistic life form happened to be around.

So, strip away regulations that "keep companies from creating jobs" and you get to buy dry goods and all kinds of food supplies -- and these days, all kinds of processed foods, which is just about all a lot of people put in their mouths -- that might be riddled with weevils and/or maggots, cut with sawdust and watered down with, well, with water which might be contaminated.

Also, because scales in grocery stores of old could vary widely from one store to another, if we go back to those good old unregulated days when merchants, manufacturers and corporations "had the freedom" to conduct their businesses however they wanted to, unless you carry your own scales with you when you shop, the "pound" of hamburger you think you're buying might very well weigh only 14.5 or 15 ounces. And should you be fore-thinking enough to carry your own scales, any discrepancy you find will simply devolve into a "he-said, she-said" argument.

What Rs demonize as  business-crushing regulations, I see as efforts of our government to keep us safe, to try to keep mega agri-farms from fouling ground water and feces-laden run off from getting into neighboring streams and rivers, to keep asthma- and other respiratory-damaging pollutants from filling the only air we have to breathe, and to keep food-producing/processing/packaging/transporting/selling people from sickening and killing us with bacteria-laden food.

Deregulation advocates maintain that if people aren't happy with a company, they'll take their business elsewhere. I say, when, after they're dead or maimed? Heck, these same corpor-ites and their elected lackeys are making sure we can't even sue for such malfeasances in court. So what incentive  would they have to put people's health and well being or the public good above making as big a profit as they possible can unless the government regulates them?

I keep hoping (in vain, so far) that someone, some news organization with a mass-media megaphone would pin these regulation demonizers down on just what they would deregulate. Chances are they will be very liberal about wanting to slash all manner of regulations that either don't affect them or that don't put money in their pockets (like those who demand spending cuts in every program that doesn't benefit them or that they aren't slopping at the trough at.

As for me, I'm truly conservative about not letting people who run companies for a pure profit motive to operate completely unchecked or with no oversight. We see over and over what the henhouse looks like with nothing but foxes standing at the ready.

Economy-Tanking Tax Cuts

Minnesota Congressional Rep. Michele Bachmann officially declared her presidential candidacy yesterday and vowed to get the U.S. economy going again by cutting corporate taxes.

That raises the question I ask -- and wish more media voice pieces would also ask -- every time I hear Bachmann, Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and so many others who call themselves fiscal conservatives say that cutting taxes is the way to economicy prosperity in this country.

My question is, if cutting taxes brings economic prosperity, why did the country's economy tank after Bush II cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003?

A follow-up question is when, in U.S. history, did the economy boom as a result of tax cuts?

I find lots of assertions and postulations in Internet searches theorizing that cutting taxes puts more money in consumers' hands to spend on goods and services, thus increasing tax revenues, but nothing indicating when that has actually occurred to the point that it boosted the economy.

Conversely, we have a very real and painful recent example of when and how cutting taxes -- especially while at the same time waging two horrendously expensive, yet unfunded, wars and a horrendously expensive, unfunded Medicare drug benefit -- plunged the nation into the worst recession since it dug its way out of the Great Depression by, not cutting taxes, but with government spending that put Americans back to work.

Evidence abounds in other countries' tax policies. Which country in the developed war suffered the least in the recent and ongoing global financial crisis? Germany, which is a high-tax country. Which countries are suffering the most? How about Greece, whose population is renowned for not paying taxes.

Contrarians assert that World War II should be credited as the real reason America recovered from the Depression. That no doubt contributed. But why? Government spending and imposing taxes to cover, at least in part, the cost of that war.

So why didn't the Bush-era tax cuts infuse the economy with lots of revenue thanks to consumers having more money to spend? One reason is that people didn't spend the money they no longer sent to Uncle Sam. They paid off credit debt and put it into savings. The other is that the vast majority of the cuts went to those in the highest income bracket, who also didn't spend it on consumer goods -- unless you count yachts (a yacht manufacturer in Wisconsin after years of benefiting from Bush tax cuts closed down for a while in 2009 because business dried up and got millions in government assistance a couple of months ago) -- but invested it in Wall Street.

Americans in lower income brackets are not only still waiting for that to trickle down, but are shouldering the tax burden that has been -- and increasingly continues to be -- shifted from the wealthy and big business to the rest of us.

The Real Downward Spiral

GOP presidential hopeful T.PAWlenty (what he reportedly prefers to be known as) railed at the RightOnline convention in Minneapolis yesterday that it's imperative to elect more regressives (my word, not his) to high office and "end the downward spiral this country's in."

But, wait! I shot back (granted it was only at my NPR-tuned radio). Wasn't it the regressive policies of the previous president and fellow corporate/megawealthy-friendly elected officials that plunged this country off the cliff in the first place?

This is but one factor that is viewed through what seems like opposite sides of the looking glass and result in such diametrically different ideas about conditions and policies that form our society and increasingly polarizes the country.

Take the impact labor unions have had on the national economy, for example.

One view is that unions, not corporations, have been the tide that has lifted all boats in this country. Working and workplace conditions, which unions have fought to improve, including job-safety regulations, child-labor restrictions and work-day and work-week limitations eventually became the law of the land, thus benefitting the nation's entire workforce, non-unionized as well as unionized. All workers in the U.S. benefitted from the higher wages, pension contributions and healthcare benefits unions won for their workers.

Then along came globalization and corporate operations and jobs, particularly manufacturing operations and jobs that had formed the backbone of what is viewed as America's middle class, evaporated from American cities and emerged in other countries, countries where the manufacturers didn't have to be bothered with such nettlesome and expensive gnats as healthcare and retirement benefits and livable, by U.S. standards, wages.

This view sees unions as villains. By demanding ever-higher wages and ever-more costly benefits for their workers, unions priced America out of the employment market and drove employers overseas to labor markets where workers are happy to work for a fraction of what companies have to pay Americans and who don't demand or even expect retirement and healthcare benefits.

In the other view, corporations are the villians. It is corporate greed that sends corporations to labor markets when they can pay wages at a fraction of what they would have to pay U.S. workers. That enables corporations to pile up ever-greater company profits, enrich their investors with ever-larger dividends and, in the appallingly incestuous corporate board-of-directors system, reward their top executives more and more obscenely bloated compensation packages and bonuses.

Which view is correct? Perception will probably always depend on which side of the looking glass the viewer is looking at. But here is a reality that, so far as I'm concerned, blows a hole in T.PAWlenty's rant.

For corporations to pay pennies-on-the-dollar wages for goods -- and now even services -- they produce, they are not only driving down their own costs and, thus, increase their profits, which are at record highs -- they are driving down the standard of living in the United States.

The downward spiral this country is in is a correction to the global workforce employers have accessed. As more Americans have less access to what used to be good-paying manufacturing jobs, they have less income to spend on the goods and services employers are providing via foreign workers.

Spending less on goods and services in this country results in less revenue for public services. Just think about the myriad ways people are finding to cut corners: Don't eat out as much, put off major and even minor purchases, take 'staycations' because they can't afford the travel, accommodation and entertainment expenses traditional vacations involve. Not only are the travel, restaurant, hotel and amusement park industries making less, so too are taxes associated with such expenditures drying up.

So now in addition to Americans being paid less and finding fewer jobs in the private sector, they're being laid off in the public-service sector, which results in their having less income to spend on goods and services.

As a result, instead of "keeping up with the Jones", Americans are being forced into "moving down with the Chans."

That, T.PAWlenty, is a downward spiral.

Corporations Don't Create Wealth

A pro-Walkerite who called in to Kathleen Dunn's Wisconsin Public Radio program recently said people should support corporations because corporations create wealth.

Wrong!

Corporations do not create wealth. Corporations are inert fabrications of a legal process.

PEOPLE create wealth. People amass capital to form the structure in which they -- people -- hire other people to do the work. People buy the goods/services produced/offered by the people who do the work, which enables the people running the company to stay in business -- that, and government subsidies/tax breaks which are funded by people, which means capitalism-U.S. style is anything but "free market."

The profit, or lack thereof, depends on how well or poorly people operate the business.

The 'corporation' people form is nothing but a piece of paper. It's a legal procedure enabled by a government.

I'm truly conservative about who or what I think should be called a person or people.

In this context, I might also be considered a birther. If a corporation really is a person, as the SCOTUS 5 says, then show me the birth certificate -- the orginal authentic one, not some gerry-rigged proxy, show me its proof of citizenship.

What Wisconsin Elected

People who are called conservatives these days say they want smaller government and for government to keep its nose out of people's lives.

But that sure doesn't appear to be what's happening in red Wisconsin—red, because Republicans won the governorship and both houses of the Legislature in November.

One of the first laws this triumvirate enacted is actually a huge poke of the government's nose into Wisconsinites' lives. This law restricts individuals' rights to sue, and limits the amount of damages juries can award people who have been harmed. The law not only raises the bar on lawsuit eligibility, it caps punitive damages at $200,000 or double the amount of compensatory damages, whichever is greater, and keeps noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases involving nursing homes from exceeding $750,000. It further prohibits nursing home-abuse reports to be used as evidence in civil and in criminal cases!

First, in the corporate world that kind of money doesn't even rise to the level of chump change. To large, profitable companies, $200,000 has about the same value as a penny laying in the street that nobody even bothers to pick it up.

More importantly, though, what is government—a Republican-controlled government at that—doing meddling in people's (and I'm talking about actual human beings who walk, talk, breathe, eat and vote) business, people's own personal business of deciding whether or not they should be able to file a lawsuit? And what is Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled "small" government doing meddling in juries' decisions on what award they (juries) think best fits the harm and/or the negligence or intent of the culprit, or whether or not it's imperative to teach a lesson or send a message to an irresponsible company?

Doesn't such a law violate the U.S. Constitution's separation of powers in that it says the legislative and executive branches can usurp the judicial branch's responsibility? Whatever happened to judges deciding the merits of a case and juries determining what the economic punishment should be?

Proponents of this law say it will curb frivolous lawsuits. But judges have long had authority to dismiss a case on the grounds that it is frivolous.

No, this sure sounds like a nanny government to me, a government in which the governor and legislators are saying they know better than judges and juries, so have to take over the judicial branch and their job for them.

The idea behind this law, as I understand it, is to create a more business-friendly environment. But at what cost? Individuals’ rights? That seems like a pretty liberal (as in generous) policy toward businesses. And very parsimonious and callous policy toward individuals.

And what kind of rap on the knuckles is a $200,000 judgment against a company that puts profits above individuals' health, lives and safety? Shouldn't negligent and/or malevolent corporate decision makers get whacked in a way that really gets their attention?

That’s what a jury decided to do in 1999 when it levied a $4.9 billion judgment against General Motors because four children were severely burned in a car fire that was caused by a known faulty design? One of those children in the Malibu accident, by the way, lost part of one hand and bore grotesque scars over much of the rest of her body, including her face, that were almost unbearable to look at when she attended the trial, which took place several years and 70 surgeries after the accident.

Key to the jury's decision was that the gas tank in the 1979 Malibu in which the victims were riding was mounted behind the rear axle so close to the rear bumper that it was more vulnerable to exploding in a rear-end collision than if it had been positioned in front of the axle. Trial testimony and a smoking-gun internal memo indicated GM officials decided against a safer design that would have cost less than $20 per car more, because, they thought, it would be cheaper to settle any lawsuits that might arise from exploding gas tanks.

The jury said the judgment was intended to do two things: One was to make it so large, it would get GM's attention so that GM wouldn’t just chalk up it up to the cost of doing business. The second was to say that a company making such a cynical, calculated decision that knowingly put the cost of human life at less than $20 a car was not acceptable. The judge in that case reduced the jury's award to $1.2 billion and GM's appeal requested a further reduction, but the judgment sure did get the corporate world's attention.

A friend told me he thinks a $4.9 billion judgment is outrageous. Perhaps, unless it was his child or grandchild who was injured so grievously, had to endure years of unimaginable pain and nearly 100 surgeries, and suffer permanent grotesque disfigurement that was caused by a callously greedy corporation that not only knew about the risky design, but might have been able to prevent it with a $20 fix.

Product-liability jury awards like that in the GM case are an extreme rarity, yet they are trotted out like fairytale boogie-men in order to get laws passed that leave corporations unaccountable, strip power from the third branch of government and rob individuals of their rights, not the least of which is the right to seek redress.

And corporate execs' response to such cases is to fight all the harder—not for consumer safety—but for so-called "tort reform." As Wisconsin's new law proves, the corporate world is winning. That, I believe, is what last November's election was really about.

So, just what did Wisconsin elect in November?

In this case, Wisconsin elected corporate profits over the health, safety and lives of its children—and adults. Because now, if a child or an adult in Wisconsin is permanently disfigured and/or disabled, that child, adult and their families' redress will be the corporate-world equivalent of that penny laying on the street that's not worth anyone's while to pick up.

I'm way too conservative to favor a law as business-liberal as that is a good thing for the people of Wisconsin.

www.anatomyofatrial.com