Author Archives: Sheila

Pigs Get Fed, Hogs Get Slaughtered

That old saying usually refers to excesses of greed, but it has relevance to other examples of  over-reach.

Take the embarrassing effort by majority Republicans and Governor Pence to deny Glenda Ritz the office to which she was elected (by more votes than Pence received, not so incidentally). The GOP is stripping her of everything but the title.

I have no idea whether Ritz might have done a good job as Superintendent of Public Instruction in the absence of the sustained assault she’s endured. (Given several less-than-strategic responses to that assault, I have my doubts.) Under the circumstances, however, her performance really is irrelevant–the Governor moved against her before she’d had time to perform.

Brian Howey has a recent column delving into the background of the hostilities involved, and the role played by the politics around Common Core. The column included this observation, which I think is dead on:

The other political subtext has been the two-year feud between Ritz and the State Board of Education, made up of mostly Pence appointees. Republican legislation is targeting Ritz’s chairing of the board. The legislation has energized Ritz’s base, as well as the sprawling Indiana education community that helped forge her upset of Bennett.

 The visuals here are Republican supermajorities and the governor seeking to take away duties of an elected official, and a female at that.

Bad optics.

 If Pence had clamped down on the legislation aimed at Ritz, the ISTEP story would be hers, not his. He now finds himself in a political minefield, not impossible to escape, but …“He has now taken ownership of the issue,” said one Republican county chairman speaking on background. “The jungle drums are beating.”

The resentment from teachers (including those who typically vote Republican) is palpable; the turnout at last Monday’s statehouse rally–despite bitter cold and snow–should have sent a message to lawmakers about the pitfalls of energizing an opposing base.

Granted, a clueless GOP super-majority is approaching a number of issues in an equally ham-handed fashion. The assault on the state’s “common wage” is unlikely to affect more than a handful of projects, but the symbolism of attacking it is calculated to enrage and motivate union members and sympathizers. The all-out assault on the environment–via a number of ALEC-drafted measures meant to insulate corporate farms from lawsuits for polluting state waterways and to hobble regulation–has similarly galvanized the environmentally-conscious.

But it is the over-reach against Ritz that has garnered the most headlines–and pissed off the most people–and it is that childish assault that is mostly likely to come back to bite Pence and his legislative consiglieri’s. 

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Time to Find a New Planet

Maybe I should just join that group that’s being sent to Mars.

According to Think Progress, 

An Oklahoma legislative committee overwhelmingly voted to ban Advanced Placement U.S. History class, persuaded by the argument that it only teaches students “what is bad about America.” Other lawmakers are seeking a court ruling that would effectively prohibit the teaching of all AP courses in public schools.

The sponsor of the legislation, one Dan Fisher, belongs to a group called the “Black Robe Regiment” which argues “the church and God himself has been under assault, marginalized, and diminished by the progressives and secularists.”

I hate to inject snark into this deep theological debate, but–if God exists, and is the personal, all-knowing deity who favors some athletic teams over others, sends hurricanes to punish gays and otherwise demonstrates fearsome omnipotence–wouldn’t He (and believe me, this version of God is all male) be able to take care of Himself? Could such a deity really be “diminished” by people teaching accurate American history?

But I digress.

The Black Robe Regiment also attacks the “false wall of separation of church and state,” and claims that a “growing tide of special interest groups is indoctrinating our youth at the exclusion of the Christian perspective.”

Talk about projection!

So here we are in the 21st Century, with a Wisconsin governor who wants to replace university education with job training, and an Oklahoma legislature that wants to replace high school education with religious indoctrination.

I understand that crazy people have always been among us. I can handle that. What I want to know is who the hell elects these people?

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Not So Fast, Mississippi!

Doug Masson sort of summed up the Indiana General Assembly’s current legislative session when he posted “Indiana should change our slogan from “Honest to Goodness, Indiana!” to “Not so fast, Mississippi!”

Our lawmakers are back in session: engaging in childish vendettas against the lone Democrat who won statewide office, ignoring environmentalists and family farmers who oppose creating a constitutional right to use “effective” farming techniques (aka a “right to pollute” measure desired by the big corporate farms),  advancing a “religious” right to refuse service to LGBT customers, exempting charter and voucher schools from ISTEP….the embarrassing list goes on. And on.

Granted, Mississippi has a definite head start. One recent bit of news from the state that keeps “Hoosier” from meaning “bottom of the barrel”: a Justice Court judge in that state has just been accused of striking a mentally challenged young man and yelling, “Run, n—–, run.” (And yes, the elided word is just what you think it is.)

Reading about that incident was appalling enough, but as I read further, I discovered that in Mississippi, the only requirement to be elected judge of a Justice Court is a high school diploma. (There are those in the Indiana legislature who share Mississippi’s contempt for education, although we haven’t taken it quite that far. Yet.) After taking office, the judges are required to take up to six hours of training a year.

Six whole hours. Every year. That should compensate for the lack of college or law school.

It may seem that Mississippi has a lock on the batshit crazy medal–but back home in Indiana, we’re barely at the midpoint of a long legislative session. Don’t count Indiana out.

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The Cost of Saving Money

Last year, In the Public Interest released a report that highlighted a harmful but frequently overlooked way in which our tax dollars are fueling income inequality.

Every time a city or state outsources a public service to a low-wage contractor, the community loses. Taxpayers have to make up the difference in the form of nutrition assistance, healthcare coverage, and other programs designed to help people working for minimum wage and living in poverty. The report included examples from across the country, including public servants in Costa Mesa and Fresno, CA, who either lost their jobs to – or were at risk of being replaced by – low-wage contractors.

There are a number of problems with government outsourcing–aka “privatization”–and a copious academic literature documenting those problems. When government provides services through surrogates–via third-party contracts–it needs different management skills (skills that are relatively rare in government agencies, meaning oversight is hit or miss). Mayors and governors often give in to the temptation to reward their cronies with lucrative contracts. (Indeed, privatization has become the current form of patronage). And the promised savings are rarely realized, even without accounting for the problem identified by the report.

There are certainly times when outsourcing makes sense, but far too often the decision has been made on the basis of a near-religious belief in the superior performance of the private sector. As this report suggests, those perceived “efficiencies” can end up costing us in less visible but no less expensive ways.

There really is no such thing as a free lunch.

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Is the Light Finally Dawning?

An article in the February 9th issue of The New Yorker reported that Aetna, a Fortune 500 company, plans to raise the pay of its lowest-paid workers, and improve employee medical coverage. The proposed increase is substantial—from twelve dollars an hour to sixteen dollars an hour in some cases.

Mark Bertolini, Aetna’s CEO, was quoted as saying it wasn’t fair for employees of a Fortune 500 company to be struggling to make ends meet.

It isn’t only Aetna.

A recent announcement from Ford Motor Company unveiled the carmaker’s plan to raise the pay of 300 to 500 of its entry-level workers by more than $19,000 a year, or nearly 50%. The announcement was heralded as another sign of the rebound of the U.S. auto industry, but its implications go well beyond that rebound. (Henry Ford would have understood; in 1914, he famously raised his workers’ pay to the then-unheard-of rate of five dollars a day. Turnover and absenteeism plummeted, and profits and productivity rose.)

Little by little, American businesses are recognizing that their own long-term interests are inextricably bound up with the welfare of their employees. That’s a lesson retailers like Costco learned long ago. I’ve previously quoted Business Week’s telling comparison between Costco and Walmart–Costco pays hourly workers an average of 20.89 an hour to Walmart’s 12.67.

Despite paying higher wages and offering more generous benefits, Costco not only nets more per square foot than Walmart, its prices are competitive with—and sometimes better than—those of Walmart.

Early last year Consumer Reports ran a very interesting chart comparing prices for the same brand of purchases like flour, coffee, tall kitchen bags, toilet paper and similar items.  Consumers compared the costs of store brands, Costco, Walmart, various regional chains and Walgreens for each item. Store brands, unsurprisingly, were cheapest overall.

Next was Costco.

As the New Yorker article noted, there are solid business reasons to pay workers more—turnover declines, and better-paid employees tend to work harder. There is also the question of fundamental fairness. American corporations pay their executives truly obscene amounts, while wringing every dime possible out of people who can least afford to work for poverty wages. When Bertolini announced Aetna’s decision, he talked about inequality and corporate responsibility, saying “For the good of the social order, these are the kind of investments we should be willing to make.”

When Charlie Wilson was President of General Motors, during the Eisenhower Administration, he supposedly said “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” What he actually said was “What’s good for America is good for General Motors.”

Wilson was right. Reducing inequality will be good for America, and what’s good for America is good for business.

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