Why Fast Track Is Bad

    If you needed a quick primer on the downsides of "fast track"--that would be the legislation that allows the executive branch to negotiate trade agreements and, then, submit the deals to the Congress, which can only vote up or down on the whole package...meaning no amendments--this testimony is worth reading.

Make Bush Pay For The War

    Why not call the president's bluff on his escalation plan and continued funding for the war--using the very principle the Democrats declared would be a rock-solid commitment for all new spending? Pay as you go or, in Beltway lingo, "pay-go."

    Personally, I do not support the obsession with the deficit as a short-term emergency. BUT, if the party is going to promote such a principle when it comes to domestic spending, then it should apply to the war, too. Within the coming weeks, the president is expected to ask Congress for an "emergency supplemental" for at least an additional $100 billion to keep the bombs dropping and the bodies piling up in Iraq.

    There are a lot of ways to force a "pay-go" provision. My own favorite: when the appropriation reaches the Ways and Means Committee, Charlie Rangel, the chair of the committee (who has also pushed legislation to re-institute a military draft), could attach an amendment stating that every dollar has to be paid for by hiking the taxes of the top one percent of the country, effectively rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the very rich. As I've pointed out before, the top 1 percent--those who pull in at least $1.3 million a year--will pocket more than $347 billion in the next four years if Congress does not roll-back the tax cuts. According to data from Citizens for Tax Justice, if Congress just rolled back the tax cuts on that top 1 percent for just 2007 and 2008, it would reap $136 billion--probably enough to cover the costs of the emergency supplemental request.

    What would the president and Republicans say then? No, we won't ask the richest people in the country, who have carried virtually none of the sacrifice of the war and occupation, to pay up? Indeed, while working-class and poor American of all races have been dying and suffering grave wounds on the battlefield, the top one percent has been pocketing staggering amounts of money. Under such a condition for passing the supplemental, I'd wager the authorization for that money would be dead in the water. 

    Understand, I support legislative initiatives pushed by the Progressive Caucus members of the House (and driven by grassroots efforts spearheaded by Progressive Democrats of America) to end funding for the war and allocate money only for safe, rapid withdrawal of the troops and reconstruction of Iraq. But, if the funding for the war cannot be stopped, the sacrifices should be born by everyone in the country.

Herbert on the March

    Bob Herbert has a good column today in the protest against the escalation and continued occupation of Iraq. The column is behind the Times' Selection subscription. Here's a snippet:

But the thought that kept returning as I watched the earnestly smiling faces, so many of them no longer young, was the way these protesters had somehow managed to keep the faith. They still believed, after all the years and all the lies, that they could make a difference. They still believed their government would listen to them and respond.

“I have to believe in this,” said Donna Norton of Petaluma, Calif. “I have a daughter in the reserves and a son-in-law on active duty. I feel very, very strongly about this.”

Betty and Peter Vinten-Johansen of East Lansing, Mich., said they felt obliged to march, believing that they could bolster the resolve of opponents of the war in Congress. Glancing toward the Capitol, Mr. Vinten-Johansen said, “Maybe we can strengthen their backbone a little bit.”

    Having been there myself, I think those feelings reflect the general sentiment of the crowd.

The Media Decides

    I think this has been commented on here and there but it's worth amplifying. The mainstream media is already beginning to play its role: deciding who is a "credible" candidate in the 2008 races and who is not. The coverage for some candidates is far more prominent than others--almost regardless of their positions.

    I'll actually start with Republicans. Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Duncan Hunter announced that they are running for president--except you really wouldn't know they were running unless you found the small mentions in the back pages of The New York Times. This is true of the other main papers. Yet, the mainstream media is awash in stories about John McCain--even though I think he is tanking very quickly with his embrace of the Iraq escalation plan, which is hated even by large number of Republicans. My point is this: why shouldn't the voters actually get a full, broad range of coverage about the positions of Brownback and Hunter? I shudder to think of a country under the leadership of either one--but it's the voters who should decide that. And that's hard when they are marginalized.

    The same is true of the Democrats. Dennis Kucinich is running--though you'd barely know it. The entire focus has become celebrity-driven: the "rock stars" dominate...need I mention those names. Sad state of affairs again when it comes to full public debate about issues.

Coming Battle On Trade

    Right after the election, I pointed out that the 2006 elections may have signaled the beginning of the end for so-called "free trade." Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, had a story a few days ago that described how some of the battles are starting to shape up. It's subscription only but here are a few snippets:

Business groups say they are willing to offer Congressional Democrats major concessions if that’s the price to pay for passage of a long list of contentious free-trade agreements. But with both sides gearing up for huge battles this year, activists against the trade agreements scoffed at what business lobbyists deemed concessions.

Trade agreement critics said they are looking to steer clear of any traps that big corporate interests might set to help get the agreements across the finish line.

“The trap is that the multinational lobbyists, and their friends in Congress, have said ‘OK, you’d like to get better labor and environmental standards? OK,’” said Alan Tonelson, a fellow with the United States Business & Industrial Council and a vocal trade critic. “The problem is, it would be very easy for them to offer a purely symbolic compromise and one that would do absolutely nothing to solve our trade problems.”

Yet lobbyists for big companies that support new agreements with countries such as Peru and Colombia say their opponents are shifting their demands in mid-debate and making it impossible to find compromise. In addition to those agreements, a bruising fight is shaping up this year over whether the Bush administration should keep its fast-track negotiating authority.

    And...

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a group that has lobbied against several recent agreements and opposes the current drafts with Colombia and Peru, said her coalition could be swayed to drop its opposition.

“The outside groups — labor, environment, poverty — we’ve all come to a point, for the Peru and Colombia agreements, if the really outrageous stuff was taken out, we’d stand down,” Wallach said.

Wallach included as “outrageous stuff” patent protections for pharmaceutical companies. Another sticking point with the Peru and future agreements is they would give companies that operate ports in those countries “an absolute right to set up business in the United States,” she said, reigniting this past year’s debate over whether Dubai Ports World should operate U.S. ports. The Dubai company operates ports in Peru, Wallach and Lopes said.

Wallach added that the concessions on labor that business groups are willing to make are ones they lived with in past agreements, including one with Jordan. But pro-free-trade lobbyists said they didn’t have to make such concessions for the past six years of Republican dominance.

“Now the business guys are running around, acting like it’s a revelation, basically trying to get credit for saying that they are unbelievably flexible,” Wallach said. “The business guys haven’t done anything new.”

    We'll see. I still don't like trade deals that have some labor and environmental provisions stuck on to deals whose framework is corporate rights. What we need is a total revamping of the framework of trade. But, in the interim, I suspect the people out there fighting the good fight feel that getting some improvements is worth the effort.

The Beast Pay To Make A Deal

    Most of you know that Wal-Mart had ripped off thousands of workers, failing to pay overtime pay. So, the Beast of Bentonville has made a deal: $33 million to pay back tens of thousands of workers for wages that should have been over the past five years. Wal-Mart Watch has a compilation of the media stories.

  $33 million may seem like a lot of money to you and me but it's small change for the Waltons. The only way to stop this kind of behavior is for executives to spend some time vacationing on the dime of the county: three square meals a day and a little time in the exercise yard at the local jail. Believe me, you put one or two of these folks in prison and the violations will dry up over night. Think of it as a government efficiency program: fewer violations means a lot less time grinding the cases through the court system. Hey, maybe some Republicans might like the efficiency rap, don't you think?

The Workman's Comp Sham

    The Fiscal Policy Institute has a report out today that shows how employers are killing the worker's compensation system in New York. According to the report, "Between 500,000 and a million New York workers who should have workers' compensation coverage do not, and the system's revenues are $500 million to $1 billion lower than they should be. Fragmented responsibility for enforcement has allowed employers to provide unemployment insurance but not workers' compensation coverage to some workers; in other cases employers misclassify employees as consultants to keep them out of both systems."

    Steve Greenhouse writes about this report today. But, the big piece that's missing is the drive to change the system in New York--a drive supported by Gov. Eliot Spitzer--which will harm workers eve more. Right now, the worker's comp system says that you will get up to $400 per week as long as you are injured; by the way, that amount is a piddling amount, putting New York only above Mississippi, not a great place to be, in terms of worker's comp benefits.

    But, business, using the tired-rhetoric of better "efficiency" and "competitiveness," is pushing to cap the benefits at a certain number of weeks. So, if you are severely injured, you are out of luck if you pass the time limit. Maybe if businesses paid their fair share of worker's comp, then, the costs would be spread among more employers.

    This is an outrage. And people should be up in arms.

Why Were Democrats Applauding?

    It’s too easy to pound on the president’s State of The Union address. I’ll leave that to the red-meat crowd. What annoyed the crap out of me was watching the Democrats. I’m not referring to the perpetual suck-ups like Reps. Eliot Engel and Loretta Sanchez, two of the many Democrats I spotted jostling for position to shake the president’s hand (what is it with the air in Washington, D.C. that makes people want to cozy up to a politician who two-thirds of the voters detest?). I’m talking about the vast numbers of Democrats, sometimes the entire caucus, who applauded, sometimes as part of standing ovations, for speech lines that deserved stony silence.

    Let’s look at just a few. “First, we must balance the federal budget. (Applause, including large numbers of Democrats going wild) We can do so without raising taxes (Applause, including large numbers of Democrats).” And, then, moments later: “In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years. (Applause, including many Democrats).”

    First of all, balancing the budget is not, and should not be, the first priority at a time when, for example, 48 million Americans have no health care. The trade deficit—as distinguished from the fiscal deficit—is a much bigger issue: and, yet, the president said zero, nada, nothing about the trade deficit and how to grapple with a growing threat (I would have said: let the dollar fall more…which would make it a bit more expensive for tourists but mostly agitate powerful corporations like Wal-Mart who depend on a strong dollar to make imports cheaper and keep labor costs abroad nice and low).

    Second, even if you believed that balancing the federal budget was the first priority, it is incomprehensible that Democrats would loudly approve of a line about not raising taxes. That’s simply a lie—if our party has any intention of pursuing a sane domestic agenda. When I wrote about a future Democratic agenda, I argued that it would be nothing short of criminal, given what we need to do in the country, if the Democrats did not push for hiking taxes on the top 1 percent of income earner—those who pull in at least $1.3 million a year—who will pocket more than $347 billion in the next four years if Bush’s tax cuts are allowed to continue. To paraphrase Willie Sutton, if you want to close the deficit, go where the money is.

    The Democratic Party I want, and I believe our country needs, is a party that has to stop pandering to people on the question of taxes. Taxes are a membership fee we pay for schools, roads, safe food, a clean environment and a whole host of things that make our daily lives so much better than many other people around the world. Yes, the average person fears that their taxes will go up simply because they are being squeezed from every direction. But, it’s pretty simple to say: we want to pay for health care for every American by asking those who already have yachts, private planes and mansions to pay a little more to make sure our country stays strong.

    And, of course, there is Iraq: “On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. Let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory. (Applause, with many Democrats going wild.)” There will be no victory in Iraq. We destroyed a country, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, Americans and Iraqis. We will have squandered at least one trillion dollars—perhaps as much as two trillions dollars.

    But, our party, as on taxes, is still caught in a trap. Democrats cheer the words promising “victory” because they don’t have the spine—and, frankly, the moral compass—to admit that Iraq is a defeat. Period. A defeat not just because of the human and economic losses but because what our government has done in Iraq is an obscene shredding of the very values that we would like the rest of the world to believe we stand for. Where is the courageous Democrat, not out of audacity or hope or some other empty sloganeering, who can stand before the country and call Iraq a defeat—and, thereby, start the healing, not just here but around the world?

    As an amusing aside: When Bush congratulated the new majority party in Congress, he did so using the typical Republican reference to the opposition party: “Democrat majority.” And the official White House transcript keeps that language. But, CBS and CNN’s version of the transcript of the speech (I didn’t check other sources because of time) changed the words to “Democratic majority,”—the correct name of the Democratic Party but not what the president said.

    If the president won’t even give you the respect to use the correct name of your party, why would you respect his office by clapping for him, particularly when he’s dead wrong?

UAW Taking Over Auto Healthcare?

    This is a big deal. The UAW (my union) and the major car companies are talking about a deal that would shift the responsibility for retiree health care from the auto companies to the union. I think "Egads" and "hmmm" at the same time. Here's what the Wall Street Journal reports today:

Detroit's auto makers and the United Auto Workers are examining a potentially revolutionary plan that would shift to the union responsibility for tens of billions of dollars in retiree health-care liabilities, according to people familiar with the matter.

A deal is far from certain, especially with formal national-contract talks months away. A big question is where General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. -- both saddled with speculative, or "junk," credit ratings -- would get the cash required to fund a handover of future retiree health-care obligations to a union-managed fund. Another uncertainty is whether the UAW would want the role of bad guy if the time came to cut future benefits.

The preliminary discussions highlight the determination of the UAW and the Detroit auto giants to find a way to restructure the U.S. auto industry without resorting to bankruptcy-court protection, as many unionized steelmakers and airlines did.

UAW leaders and Detroit auto executives agree on this much: Detroit's status quo is unsustainable. UAW leaders and company executives have tried to argue that without health-care overhaul, thousands more U.S. manufacturing jobs will be at risk. The UAW's official position is the federal government should step in. Top executives of the Detroit auto makers have been more cautious but have advocated proposals for the government to shoulder the burden of "catastrophic" health costs.

    This is where you want to scream: SINGLE-PAYER. I've made this point here and other places for sometime--if we had single-payer health care, it would save billions of dollars for companies and make them a whole lot more competitive. GM alone is projected to owe about $55 billion for current and future retiree health care benefits, Ford's number is about $22 billion. Look at this:

But the burden of paying for UAW health-care benefits still adds roughly $1,500 a car to the cost of U.S.-made Big Three vehicles -- a cost penalty the Detroit auto makers can't offset by raising prices.

    There is some precedent to what the folks in Detroit are considering:

The Detroit auto makers and the UAW are looking at an agreement this month between Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and its largest union, the United Steelworkers. Under the deal, which settled a strike, Goodyear agreed to transfer its $1.2 billion health-care liability to a fund managed by the steelworkers union. Goodyear, in turn, would put in $1 billion in cash and equity into the fund.

GM Chief Financial Officer Fritz Henderson told auto analysts this month that "it would be fair to say that we have more than a passing interest in the Goodyear agreement." GM, according to people familiar with the matter, has hired advisers that worked with Goodyear on their contract talks.

    These discussions are more a reflection of the deep crisis that we find ourselves in, rather than a good option. The auto makers will try to buy themselves out of the health care liabilities for something like 70 cents on the dollar, which will help their balance sheets in the short-term. The problem is cost projections: if they off-load the liabilities for a discount and health care costs go soaring beyond the projections, it's the UAW that will have to figure out where the extra money comes from--or impose benefit cuts. Is that where the union wants to be?

    Single-payer. Single-payer. Single-payer.

Wal-Mart Lies On Food?

    This is so shocking and so disappointing--the Beast of Bentonville may be breaking the law. I'm astonished that Wal-Mart--which has broken child labor laws, overtimes laws and labor laws--would be potentially trying to pass off regular food as organic food. From The Independent in the U.K.

US farming watchdog accuses Wal-Mart of mis-selling

Wal-Mart, the controversial retailing giant, is under investigation in the US over allegations it is trying to pass off non-organic foods as organic.

It has been accused of using misleading labelling that is "tantamount to consumer fraud" by an organic farming watchdog, the Cornucopia Institute. The body has handed its complaints to the US Department of Agriculture (Usda).

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection is also conducting an investigation into whether Wal-Mart is placing "natural" produce on shelf space labelled as containing organic items.

The Cornucopia Institute claimed to have found dozens of examples of Wal-Mart's mislabelling products - from "all- natural yogurt" to soya milk "made from organic soybeans".

    The rest of the article is here.