San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed made it official today – sort of. Speaking to a pension “restructuring” conference at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Reed said he hoped to file papers “in a few days” to put a ballot measure before voters that would allow cities in California to gut the retirement plans of their public employees. But he acknowledged that he and a group of fellow activists weren’t sure whether to put the measure on the ballot for November 2014 or sometime in 2016. (If the pension group wants to beat an approaching deadline and keep 2014 open as an option, it has to file papers soon.)
The lack of urgency contrasted with Reed’s half-hour talk, during which he painted a picture of a California teetering on the brink of pension-fund disaster, in which public safety employees would be laid off, libraries closed and retirement benefits decimated.
“Time is of the essence,” Reed warned – claiming that the longer his proposed amendment to the state constitution is postponed,
“I would dispel the rumor that is going around that you hear on every newscast, that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will default on our debt,” says Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). “We won’t. We’ll continue to pay our interest.”
This is crazy talk. While the Treasury Department could prioritize interest payments after October 17 – the day the Treasury Department says it no longer has legal authority to pay the nation’s debts – and not pay Social Security and Medicare, this would buy a few days at most.
Meanwhile, interest rates will soar, stock prices will plummet, the global economy will begin spiraling downward, and millions of Americans wouldn’t receive their Social Security and Medicare.
So why are Republicans talking like this? Because they want to sound as if they’re willing to blow up the economy if they don’t get their way.
» Read more about: Debt Ceiling Talk from Congress’s Crazy Corner »
Across the nation, private companies are looking to take over public services. A legislative battle in Sacramento over a bill to privatize state trial courts epitomizes the promises and pitfalls of privatization.
Assembly Bill 566 (Wieckowski, D-Fremont) would require that before contracting services out, courts must provide proof of cost savings, create employment standards, engage in a competitive bidding process and undergo regular financial and performance audits. The bill now sits on the governor’s desk for signature or veto, and the lobbying on both sides is intense.
As in most debates over outsourcing of public services, its opponents’ central claim is that privatizing essential courtroom services such as court reporting, processing cases, probate investigations and interpretive services, saves dollars.
Yet the track record on privatization of public services and assets is decidedly mixed. Public agencies that hire private companies without strong mechanisms of accountability, transparency, rigorous evaluations of contracting costs and standards have learned this the hard way.
» Read more about: Private Control of Public Services Requires Extra Care »
The caption under this front-page photo in Friday’s Los Angeles Times read: “Gov. Jerry Brown, center, is surrounded by cheering officials, from left, state Sen. Kevin de Leon, L.A City Councilman Gil Cedillo, Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.”
Missing from that list is the smiling woman right behind Brown. That’s Angelica Salas, executive director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (CHIRLA), a key leader of the immigrant rights movement in California and nationwide and a major force behind passage of the bill that Brown was signing. Salas is also missing from the news story that accompanied the photo. The article quoted politicians and law enforcement officials, but none of the activists whose years of work resulted in this new law as well as several other recent legislative victories, including a domestic workers bill of rights and an increase in the state minimum wage to $10 an hour.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s new term, which began yesterday, could spell a world of hurt for working Americans. People who believe this aren’t simply looking at worst-case scenarios — in which, say, the conservative majority sides on every point with plaintiffs represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. No, their view rests on the conservatives’ well-established penchant for producing rulings that go far beyond the original cases before the justices – rulings that make laws that didn’t previously exist, grant awards that weren’t sought and answer briefs that were never filed.
But equally as ominous as the handful of labor-related cases that will start pleadings in November is McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which began arguments today.
It seems like only yesterday that the high court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, pried opened a portal to a spending orgy by lifting limits on how much corporations and unions could contribute to election campaigns.
» Read more about: McCutcheon v. FEC: “Citizens United” on Steroids »
For the past seven days America has watched a government shutdown unfold, courtesy of the Tea Party-controlled House of Representatives – a moment of political vaudeville more worthy of the description “circus” than “theater.” Beginning this week, however, we may be in for the start of a truly Grand Guignol event befitting the Halloween season.
That’s because the Supreme Court will hear several key labor cases this term, along with yet another plea from billionaires to be allowed to purchase a larger share of the electoral process. Just as the shutdown has battered the economy and harmed countless Americans through its curtailment of Headstart programs, the closing of federal parks and suspension of government health programs, so could damage be done to the national welfare by a handful of pro-business decisions by the high court. If the present conservative majority continues to vote within its ideological groove,
Louis T. Wigfall would have loved Ted Cruz.
Wigfall was another Lone Star State senator who viscerally hated a president of the other party.
The object of Wigfall’s deep disaffection was Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president. Wigfall was a rabidly pro-slavery Democrat.
The GOP of “Lincoln and Liberty” is long gone. So is the Democratic Party of secession and slavery.
One could make a pretty fair argument that if Lincoln came back he’d be a Democrat, and Wigfall, a Republican.
Anyway, Wigfall was a leader of the “Fire-Eaters,” a group of fanatical Southern politicians who demonized and tried to delegitimized Lincoln and his anti-slavery “Black Republican” Party while whipping up secession sentiment in Dixie.
Lincoln was elected president in 1860 on a platform that called for stopping the spread of human bondage into the federal territories. White supremacists like Wigfall said Lincoln’s victory,
(Note: George Zornick’s post was originally published by The Nation and is republished with permission.)
We’ve seen this movie before: Republicans force a showdown in Congress over funding the government, the debt ceiling or, in the present case, both. Then a “grand bargain” is proposed to solve the impasse—one that includes serious reductions to social insurance programs.
That’s just how the GOP would like the current drama to play out. Wednesday, National Review’s Robert Costa reported that House Speaker John Boehner and Representative Paul Ryan are rallying nervous Republicans by telling them that while Obamacare may not end up getting defunded, GOP leadership is cooking up another big budget deal that includes cuts to the safety net so cherished by many conservative members. “It’s the return of the grand bargain,” one member told Costa. “Ryan is selling this to everybody;
» Read more about: The Shutdown: Will Safety Net Programs Be Shredded? »
At a small gathering in Los Angeles last week, Miles Rapoport, president of the 13-year-old progressive think tank Demos, declared that although the U.S. economy is struggling at best, the gap between rich and poor is ever-widening and a host of other seemingly intractable problems are worsening, we’ve arrived at a key historical moment: Everything we need to address these crises is at hand.
Demos is a Manhattan-based nonpartisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to “a democracy where everyone has an equal say and an economy where everyone has an equal chance.” Demos has done pioneering work on such issues as reducing the role of money in politics, expanding voter access, ending predatory credit card practices and raising wages.
Demos is also an institutional platform for leading and emerging writers and thinkers. Its Fellows Program includes Bob Kuttner, Bob Herbert, Nomi Prins, Richard Benjamin and David Callahan. Its reports are often cited in the media,
Not long ago I was walking toward an airport departure gate when a man approached me.
“Are you Robert Reich?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re a Commie dirtbag.” (He actually used a variant of that noun, one that can’t be printed here.)
“I’m sorry?” I thought I had misunderstood him.
“You’re a Commie dirtbag.”
My mind raced through several possibilities. Was I in danger? That seemed doubtful. He was well-dressed and had a briefcase in one hand. He couldn’t have gotten through the checkpoint with a knife or gun. Should I just walk away? Probably. But what if he followed me? Regardless, why should I let him get away with insulting me?
I decided to respond, as civilly as I could: “You’re wrong. Where did you get your information?”
“Fox News. Bill O’Reilly says you’re a Communist.”
A year or so ago Bill O’Reilly did say on his Fox News show that I was a Communist.
» Read more about: I Was a Communist in Bill O’Reilly’s Dreams »
For the third time in less than 20 years, congressional Republicans are bringing the nation’s government to a halt in an attempt to reverse the outcome of national elections. The first instance was Republicans’ shutdown of the government in 1995-96 (which, actually, was two shutdowns in rapid succession). The second was their impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. Today, we’re slogging through the third — yet another shutdown.
Each instance had its proximate causes. In 1995, the GOP-controlled Congress, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, refused to fund the government after Clinton rejected its spending cuts to Medicare benefits and Republicans failed to muster the votes to override his vetoes. In 1998, the House, led by then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay, impeached Clinton for having sex with an intern but denying it to a special prosecutor (whose charge, uncovering Clinton’s alleged business scandals, had turned up nothing).
» Read more about: GOP Pulls Plug on Government — And the Party’s Future »
Union organizing could suffer a devastating blow by the U.S. Supreme Court this term.
In November, justices hear a case on labor-management “neutrality pacts” — agreements which spell out each side’s role in organizing. Usually, this means employers are barred from engaging in overt anti-union practices and accept some form of “card check” certification.
Unions use neutrality pacts to reduce the legal entanglements and employer intimidation that have become widespread in National Labor Relations Board-supervised elections.
After years of struggle, UNITE HERE, for example, recently pressured Hyatt Hotels to accept neutrality terms. And unions in Los Angeles, when possible, make such deals in return for support of large development projects.
It’s been a bad decade (and a bad half-century) for the American labor movement:
Union membership percentages continuing to slide, states restrict public sector bargaining and right-to-work laws have spread.
The case before the Court is technical and may not produce a sweeping ruling.
“Will Work for Food.” How many times do we see these signs at most every street corner? For those of who are federal employees and who are also union representatives and officers, the time seems to be right for us to get out our Sharpies and make our own signs.
The last several years have seen my sisters and brothers in Social Security and other agencies continually being threatened with shutdowns and furloughs as a result of the lack of federal budgets or continuing resolutions, failure to raise the debt ceiling as well as the fiscal cliff. Now as of October 1, 2013 we are going to be shut down again.
In 1995, Social Security employees such as myself were called “non-essential” and sent home. After a press blitz, we were called at home told we were essential and should come back to work —
Those of us who grew up in public school systems were taught two indelible but contradictory lessons. One, from civics classes, was that laws are created (and government run) according to the necessities of compromise. (The reason politics is called the art of the possible.) The other, drilled into us by history instructors, reminded us of the evils of compromising with fanatics. (The endless Sudetenland analogies we sat through.)
But these two lessons never held equivalent weight because while we could see compromise all around us, history was for other countries. The Atlantic’s James Fallows, happily, has pointed out the error of that thinking in a couple of recent online pieces about the pending government shutdown. His thesis, basically, is that the media have it all wrong in their reporting on the shutdown (which could come tomorrow, October 1) and the even more troubling likelihood of a debt default (see how much your 401(k) is worth in two weeks).
» Read more about: Tea Party Over Country: Why the Shutdown Is Coming »
In a move to slash the retirement benefits of public employees in California, a group of mostly conservative policy advocates has been working behind the scenes on a possible 2014 ballot initiative. A copy of the still-secret draft initiative, which could dramatically impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians and send a signal nationwide, has been obtained by Frying Pan News. (See the document’s text following this article or click here.)
If enacted, the proposed law would allow the state and local governments to cut back retirement benefits for current employees for the years of work they perform after the changes go into effect. Previous efforts to curb retirement benefits for public employees have largely focused on newly hired workers, but the initiative would shrink pensions for workers who are currently on the job.
“This initiative defines that a government employee’s ‘vested rights’ only applies to pension and retiree healthcare benefits earned for service already rendered,
» Read more about: Exclusive: Pension-Cutting Ballot Initiative Revealed »
On ABC’s This Week, Newt Gingrich and I debated whether House Republicans should be able to repeal a law — in this case, the Affordable Care Act — by de-funding it. Here’s the essence:
GINGRICH: Under our constitutional system, going all the way back to Magna Carta in 1215, the people’s house is allowed to say to the king we ain’t giving you money.
REICH: Sorry, under our constitutional system you’re not allowed to risk the entire system of government to get your way.
Had we had more time I would have explained to the former Speaker something he surely already knows: The Affordable Care Act was duly enacted by a majority of both houses of Congress, signed into law by the President, and even upheld by the Supreme Court.
The Constitution of the United States does not allow a majority of the House of Representatives to repeal the law of the land by de-funding it (and threatening to close the entire government,
» Read more about: GOP’s Defunding Mania: Instant Constitutional Crisis »
When Kentucky’s legislature adopted a bill intended to transform the Bluegrass State’s troubled pension system last spring, state officials were ecstatic. Signing the bill into law on April 4, Democratic governor Steve Beshear hailed it as groundbreaking legislation that would “solve the most pressing financial problem facing our state – our monstrous unfunded pension liability and the financial instability of our pension fund.”
Not everyone was convinced.
Critics, who include pension-fund experts, lawmakers and AARP Kentucky, claim the new law will hurt workers, taxpayers and retirees. What’s more, they say the law was largely crafted behind the scenes by an unusual alliance between two out-of-state organizations: the Pew Center on the States and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Some detractors go further and assert that the Arnold Foundation is using Pew’s sterling reputation for academic integrity as a fig leaf to hide its own free-market agenda.
» Read more about: Promise Breakers: How Pew Trusts Is Helping to Gut Public Employee Pensions »
It’s been 100 years since ideological conservatives joined with doctors and insurance companies to kill the first movement in the United States for what was then called “compulsory health care.” Now, on the eve of their epic loss, those who deeply hate the idea that we have a collective responsibility to care for each other are desperately trying to stop history’s clock.
Beneath the tested rhetoric from opponents like the Heritage Foundation and Texas Senator Ted Cruz about a government takeover or Obamacare killing jobs and the economy, we can find expressions of the driving force behind the right’s obsession. One telling quote is from Missouri State Senator Rob Schaaf, who declared, “We can’t afford everything we do now, let alone provide free medical care to able-bodied adults.” Another is the proud statement from Steve Lonegan, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, who told me in a debate on Obamacare at the FDR Library,
» Read more about: In Sickness and In Health: Defending Obamacare »
Social justice activists often think that when things are terrible, people will rise up and protest those conditions until they see significant change, and sometimes they do. But usually, especially in recent decades in this country, they don’t. My friends, as well as other readers of the Frying Pan, often ask, Why not?
I always return to one of the classic analyses of dramatic social change, Crane Brinton’s Anatomy of Revolution. The book follows the trajectory of four historic revolutions: England, France, America and Russia. In each, he argues, regime change did not happen because conditions were at their worst. Instead they occurred when the circumstances of everyday life were actually getting better but did not match the hopes of people. Revolution happened, Brinton says, in the widening gap between expectation and reality.
That explanation probably clarifies why demonstrations in Greece and Spain have met with frustration,
Two years ago the “Occupy” movement roared into view, summoning the energies and attention of large numbers of people who felt the economic system had got out of whack and were determined to do something about it.
Occupy put the issue of the nation’s savage inequality on the front pages, and focused America’s attention on what that inequality was doing to our democracy. To that extent, it was a stirring success.
But Occupy eschewed political organization, discipline, and strategy. It wanted to remain outside politics, and outside any hierarchical structure that might begin to replicate the hierarchies of American society it was opposing.
So when mayors, other public officials, and university administrators cleared the Occupy encampments by force — encampments that had become the symbol of the movement — nothing seemed to remain behind. Some Occupiers made plans for further actions, but a movement without structure, discipline, and strategy proved incapable of sustaining itself.
» Read more about: Occupy Wall Street’s Bittersweet Birthday »