Category Archives: Labor

When Did It Become Patriotic To Avoid Paying Income Taxes?

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Mitt Romney has been smart and very lucky.  The son of a famous father, he has used his privileged childhood and education to make millions – often by bankrupting companies and offshoring American jobs.  To make himself even wealthier, he also offshored his money in Switzerland, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg.

That allowed Romney to pay income taxes at a rate of less than 15 percent in 2010. Now insiders from Bain Capital claim that Romney didn’t pay any income taxes at all for at least 10 years before that!

No wonder he doesn’t want to release those tax forms.

But Teapublicans don’t see anything wrong with such behavior.  Many even claim that it’s patriotic to avoid paying taxes.  Seriously?  That’s your definition of patriotism?

You can ignore the sacrifice of soldiers who have served 5, 6 or more tours of duty in a war zone?  You can ignore those who take less than they deserve to serve soldiers in Veteran’s hospitals?  You can diminish those who work long hours for little money to teach children?  You can ignore those who risk their lives to save others as first responders?

None of that is patriotic according to Romney’s supporters.

According to them, true patriotism is squeezing every possible dime from your tax form.  It’s cutting food stamps for the poor.  It’s turning your back on homeless veterans and homeless children.  It’s allowing thousands to die each year for lack of access to healthcare so you can buy another vacation home or a bigger yacht.

If this is the Republican definition of American patriotism, it’s time for the party to crawl into the deepest recesses of history.

Mitt Also Outsourced The Olympics.

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Last week, Congress was in an uproar upon finding out that the uniforms for the US Olympic team were made in China.  As it turns out, this is not the first time.

Mitt Romney, who counts his experience as “savior” of the 2002 Winter Olympics among his qualifications to become president, outsourced the uniforms for the US Olympic team to Burma (AKA Mynamar).

But that should come as no surprise to anyone.  After all, Mitt outsourced jobs from numerous companies to other countries, just as he outsourced his money to Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Switzerland in order to avoid paying US taxes.

The Freedom To Fail On Your Own.

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There’s a long-standing attitude of individualism in the US that causes people to inherently dislike any form of collectivism, such as collective bargaining through labor unions.  As I wrote in a previous post, we come from a long line of independent-minded people; people who were pushed out of Europe by dictators of all ilks, from royalty to the Roman Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, corporations and their lackeys on the right have been able to exploit this inborn streak of independence to extract money from us.  They have used a combination of lobbyists, campaign contributions, exportation of jobs, and right wing media megaphones to undermine labor unions and pit workers against one another in order to maximize profits while minimizing wages and benefits.

As a result of the propaganda, far too many Americans equate labor unions with socialism or communism.  Many poor and middle class workers vote for candidates that will continue the pattern of withdrawing employee benefits, eliminating pensions, depressing wages and foreclosing on homes.  Now they are turning their attention to the “entitlements” – Social Security and Medicare.

Yet many of us will continue to support corporations out of the fear of losing our jobs, misplaced loyalty, or the determination to “make it on our own.”  What these people don’t understand is that any individual’s disagreement with a large, heavily capitalized corporation is not a fair fight.  A retail clerk cannot fairly negotiate with a big box retailer.  An assembly line worker cannot win against a large manufacturer.  A maid cannot fight a large hotel chain.

The only chance they have to improve their position and their wages is to band together.  Individuals, no matter how hard they work, are far more likely to fail on their own than to make it on their own.

Greedy Bastards!

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Lately, I’ve been reading Dylan Ratigan’s book, Greedy Bastard$.  This is an even-handed account of how corporations and banks are sucking America dry.  I recommend it to everyone – Democrats, Independents and Teapublicans alike.  I warn you:  It will not only educate you about the state of our nation and how we got here.  It will infuriate you by showing you how corporations and politicians are destroying the nation while, at the same time, wrapping themselves in the American flag (which by the way is now made in China).

If you read it, you will get angry.  But that’s exactly what we need.  Check it out at: http://greedybastards.com/

President Obama Can Recapture His Popularity With Men.

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Recent polls have shown that President Obama’s popularity with white men has declined.  As a result, some Democratic “strategists” have suggested that the president should focus his attention on minorities, women and educated, successful men.  They reason that trying to reach blue collar white men would be a waste of time and money.

That only shows how little these overpaid “strategists” really know.  Dismissing the committed Teapublicans and racists, President Obama has a strong record to sell to men.  His American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and loans to the American auto industry saved millions of construction and factory jobs.  If the president’s case is properly stated, many of these men will understand that they owe their jobs to him.

Moreover, the “strategists” miss what is probably the real reason that the president’s popularity among male voters has declined.  Until recently, he has shown a lack of cajones.  Men – all men – respect another man who stands up for what he believes in.  They need to be reminded that President Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden.  And they need to see the president continue to stand up and speak out strongly against the obstructionist Teapublicans.

How Performance-Based Compensation Is Killing America.

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Sometime in the late 70s, I met with a client to discuss his marketing plans for the year.  When I asked about the company’s long-term plans, the client said that his Fortune 500 Company no longer does long-term planning.  When the client noticed my obvious surprise, he told me that things were changing too quickly.  He went on to explain that the company’s CEO is now compensated with a base salary and performance-based stock options.  The higher the stock price, the more the CEO would be paid.

Now more than 30 years later, the effects of performance-based compensation are obvious.

CEOs now base their companies’ success on the share price of securities.  Not on brand value, number of offices and employees, company holdings and investments, or sales.  As a result, many CEOs are now willing to mortgage the future of their companies in order to maximize share price.  Of course, one way to accomplish their short-sighted goal is to increase productivity, aka employee layoffs.  Another popular method is to cut or eliminate employee benefits.  Yet another method is to export jobs to countries that have a plentiful supply of low-cost workers, no labor unions and few regulations.

There is no loyalty to long-time employees, vendors, communities, the nation or the environment.  The only thing that matters is the stock value and how that translates into executive compensation.  The average tenure of a CEO with any one company is slightly more than 8 years.  As a result, they often don’t care about what happens to that company 10, 20 or 30 years from now as long as they have time to cash in their stock.  If the company is aquired or merged, that only means the stock price is likely to go up.

If we want to take back our country from these greedy few, we have to change the way performance is measured.  The price of a share of stock is not enough.  We must also measure the value of corporations to our nation – the number of jobs provided, impact on our environment, contributions to communities, value of natural resources consumed, and taxes paid.

Until that happens, you will continue to see CEOs lead our nation in a race to the bottom.

The Teapublican Book of Lies.

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You know those things Teapublicans present as facts that just never quite make sense?  The ones that are repeated day after day on Fox News Channel and right wing radio?  The conservative ideas that have been tried and failed, but keep coming back?

I’ve taken 50 of those so-called “facts,” researched them, and presented my findings in a new book:  The Teapublican Book of Lies.  It’s a sort of handbook for debates with your conservative friends and family members.

Pardon the shameless self-promotion, but you can buy the book from Amazon.

This Is A Reason To Vote For Romney?

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Teapublican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, has said that anything more than 4 percent unemployment is a failure for the Obama administration.  (It should be noted that the US has rarely achieved such a low unemployment figure.)  Now Mitt says that by the end of the first term of a Romney presidency, unemployment should be somewhere around 6 percent!

Hmmm…so Romney is already predicting that his first term will be a failure?

Even more puzzling is the fact that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that continuing the policies of President Obama will result in an unemployment rate of 6 percent by 2015 – a year before the end of President Obama’s second term!  So, if this election is all about jobs as Mitt Romney has said, tell us again Mitt:  Why is it we should vote for you?

What Politicians Aren’t Telling You About The Economy.

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As a result of the 2008 economic crash created by the lack of regulation of Wall Street gamblers, new home construction has slowed to a relative trickle.  According to the National Associaton of Home Buildiers (NAHB), the number of housing units started in the U.S. totaled only 609,000 in 2011.  That compares to 1,131,000 in 2006 as measured by the US Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Using NAHB estimates that for each new home built three jobs are created, these numbers represent a loss of more than 1.5 million jobs.  They also represent a loss of $67,000 in federal taxes and $23,000 in state and local taxes for each home not built!

And that’s just part of the problem.  In addition to the jobs lost that are directly related to home construction, there are job losses for landscapers, pool builders, movers, the makers and sellers of furniture, window treatments, appliances and more.  Indeed, a writer for The Outer Banks Voice tracked the number of people involved in building his new home in 2010.  He counted a total of 219!

Now multiply that number of 219 times the 522,000 fewer homes built in 2011 than before the Great Recession and you see the scope of the problem.

But there is some good news.  NAHB estimates 1.7 to 1.8 million new homes are needed each year to accommodate population growth and replacement of older housing stock.  So we are creating tremendous pent-up demand.  Sooner or later, the housing market is going to explode.  But it’s going to take time.  Those who bought homes between 2005 and 2008 were burned by home ownership.  They were taken advantage of by unethical mortgage lenders.  They were foreclosed by uncaring banks.  And even if they didn’t lose their homes, they have found that their homes are worth far less than before.

How do you get these people to forget the recent past and jump into the market again?  Given the low prices of homes and low interest rates, there are plenty of incentives.  But, unfortunately, it’s going to take years.

Americans tend to have short memories, but not when it comes to their money.

Taking Back Our Government.

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Over the past 30 years, no organization or group of individuals has had a more negative impact on our nation than ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council).  Sponsored by many of the world’s largest corporations, ALEC’s membership consists of the most partisan conservative legislators.  It maintains an ideological staff that writes legislation and peddles it to its members in every state legislature.  In turn, those legislators sponsor the bills, often without even reading them. 

ALEC’s website brags that, each year, nearly 1,000 ALEC-authored bills are introduced in legislatures throughout the US. ALEC has given us some of the nation’s most extreme bills, including the “Stand Your Ground” law that is at the center of the Trayvon Martin murder, Arizona’s infamous SB 1070 anti-Latino bill, anti-union bills and many others designed to promote an extreme ideology and to serve ALEC’s corporate masters.  And its legislation becomes more divisive every year.

How can we stop it?

Last week, several former sponsors showed us the way to defeat this insidious group.  Due to the public attention focused on the “Stand Your Ground” law, Coca-Cola, the Gates Foundation, Intuit, Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Pepsico and Wendy’s announced they would no longer sponsor ALEC. 

We need to remind the other sponsors that they, too, are vulnerable to public backlash over ALEC’s extreme ideology.  Following is a partial list of the organization’s corporate sponsors according to www.SourceWatch.org.  Contact them and tell them that you will hold them responsible for extreme legislation such as the “Stand Your Ground” law.  If we’re successful, we can starve ALEC of the funds it needs to continue to make a mess of our political system.

Amazon.com, American Express, Amway, Anheuser-Busch, Arby’s, ARCO, AT&T, Bank of America, Bankers Insurance Co., Bayer Corp., Bell Atlantic, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, BP America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, CenturyLink, Chevron, Chrysler Corporation, Coldwell Banker, Comcast, ConocoPhillips, Cox Communications, Deere & Company, Dell Inc., Del Webb Corp., Dow Chemical, DuPont, Eli Lilly, Excel Telecommunications, ExxonMobil, Farmers Group Inc., FedEx, Fidelity Investments, Ford Motor Co., Frito-Lay, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO, General Electric, General Mills Restaurants, General Motors, Georgia-Pacific, Gerber Products, Harris Bank, Henkel, Honeywell, HP, Humana Corp., IBM, International Paper, JC Penney Co., Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, LaSalle National Bank, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Long Term Care, Inc., Marathon Oil, Mars Inc., Mary Kay Cosmetics, Microsoft, MillerCoors, Monsanto, Motorola, Nationwide Insurance, Nestlé USA, Northern Telecom, Novartis, Outback Steak House, Pennzoil, Pfizer Inc., Procter & Gamble, Prudential Financial, Reynolds American, Ryder Systems, Salt River Project, Sara Lee Corp., Schwan’s Sales Enterprises, Shell Oil, Sony Corp., Sprint Nextel, State Farm Insurance, Texaco, TicketMaster, Time Warner, The Traveler’s Companies, Unilever, United Airlines, UnitedHealthcare, UPS, VALIC, Verizon, Visa, Walgreens, Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart, Washington Times, Wausau Insurance, WellPoint, Xcel Energy, and YUM! Brands (owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s and A&W).