Tag Archives: Ken Cuccinelli

Mark Obenshain on “the so-called living wage”

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Mark Obenshain on “the so-called living wage”

Back on May 7, 2006, State Sen. Mark Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) published a Commentary piece in the Richmond Times Dispatch on the evils of the living wage. Obenshain has not authored many published articles, and this short piece provides a glimpse into his likely thinking should he occupy the Commonwealth’s Attorney General’s office, now inhabited by Ken Cuccinelli II.

Obenshain

The topic of the living wage arose because some University of Virginia students had demonstrated in favor of the university’s placing a floor under what it pays staff who clean the restrooms and maintain the grounds, etc., for Thomas Jefferson’s beloved brainchild.

University of Virginia rotunda

Obenshain calls it a “so-called living wage policy.”

Signs of the times

Obenshain titled his commentary “A Teachable Moment?; UVa’s Casteen Could Have Taught Lesson in Econ 101.” While some people might think it commendable that the students cared about someone other than self, Obenshain, au contraire, is cool with their being jailed:

“For four days in April, UVa president John Casteen was the target of a ’60s style sit-in protest by students agitating for the university to adopt a so-called living-wage policy. After trying to talk, cajole, and even starve the students out of his office, Casteen finally called the cops. UVa police ultimately hauled the protesters away and gave them the opportunity to finish their protest at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail.”

If anything, Obenshain seems to have favored a sterner response, although he does not say what. (“As it turns out, Casteen just wanted his office back.”)

“Here is what the protesters want at UVa: They want the university to raise the minimum wage it pays its employees to $10.72. Moreover, the protesters want the university to quit doing business with any private enterprise that refuses to adopt the same minimum hourly wage.”

Imagine the effrontery. Some students on Jefferson’s historic grounds actually wanted the university to adopt a policy of paying $10.72 per hour to employees who bag up and cart away used tampons or clean up the school’s cafeterias and other eating places.

As Obenshain points out, “Right now, unemployment in the Charlottesville-Albemarle region is about 2.1 percent.” His take-away? ” There is absolutely no indication that the university is unable to hire qualified people for jobs classified at the bottom of its pay scale.” In other words, the standard CEO-type argument for paying more–that higher pay is needed to attract job candidates–cannot be made.

That argument absent,  in this mindset there is no argument  for improving the pay of those at the bottom:

“The bottom of the UVa pay scale is already $9.37 per hour–81 percent higher than the federal minimum wage and nearly 40 percent above the state’s minimum hiring rate!”

Today, caviar; tomorrow, the world!

It would be nice to hear Obenshain–or Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, or now-Attorney General Cuccinelli–say this kind of thing about CEO pay.

But this kind of justification is precisely what is not offered about CEO pay, in the public discourse–that it’s already higher than the minimum amount paid to other CEO’s, that it could be lower, etc. They just don’t go that way. They just don’t say, never get around to saying, “Hey, it could be lower, you know.”

The mindset displayed in Obenshain’s commentary is more recognizable. When confronted by something you dislike, such as the proposition that people doing the dirtiest jobs should be paid a little better, always make a threat:

“Some of those employees recognize that if the university’s minimum hourly rate of pay goes up, the university will have a choice–employ fewer employees or raise tuition. A victory by the living-wage campaign could mean no wage for an unlucky few.”

Let’s hope the author did not do himself justice.

Here’s where he spent more ink:

“Capitulation to the protesters’ demands also would have a tremendous impact in the private sector. Many businesses competing with UVa in the limited labor market immediately would have to pay more to attract and retain qualified help. “

–And by paying more, we mean what, exactly?

“A UVa business partner might be required to raise its entry-level pay from $6, $7, or $8 per hour to $10.72 per hour.” [emphasis added]

That way catastrophe lies. As ever in this kind of thinking, consequences run the short gamut from dominoes falling to apocalypse now:

“That business would have to charge the university more for goods and services because of the increased labor cost” [no evidence]

One thing leads to another:

“–which the university undoubtedly would pass on to students or to taxpayers.” [no evidence]

And on:

“That business might even flounder and fail because competitors that are not UVa business partners would have lower labor costs.”

I always like that one–the argument that the only way a business can stay afloat is by underpaying its employees, or at least the ones at the bottom.

Imagine: a business failing because it could not pay its employees the going or market rate. So much for ‘responsibility’. Incidentally, when was the last time that happened?

Polonius economics. As follows the night the day, we proceed to the inevitable billboard mantra:

“The bottom line is that the market, not the state, is best equipped to set wages. This is simple economics.”

Ah, back from the brink.

The simple economics here are pretty clear–the piece boils down to a Send-Me-Money message, from a state senator to businesses averse to the minimum wage.

Less clear is why this mindset would be good for the Attorney General’s office. You can offer a lot of criticisms of the state administration of Gov. McDonnell, but you cannot convincingly accuse him, or Cuccinelli, of being insufficiently friendly to business.

 

Those pesky regulations and the empty threat of filibuster

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Regulation, public policy and the hollow threat of filibuster

Family responsibilities and work have taken me in recent months to Louisville, Ky., Shreveport, La., and Houston, Texas. The changes of place did not change the big picture. In every place, local news stories and larger news stories–this is something one can count on–reconfirmed the need for what the GOP calls ‘job-killing regulations’. This phrase is quite the talking point, by the way, notwithstanding its lack of validity. The nonprofit web site Think Progress reported in April that use of “job-killing regulation” increased 17750 percent in U.S. newspapers between 2007 and 2011.

Orwell lives, and this is one of the big Orwellianisms. Repeat it often enough, and it starts to seem plausible? –Let’s hope not. There is no evidence that regulation kills jobs.

On the contrary, there is every indication that unregulated outsourcing, off-shoring, merger and consolidation do kill jobs, or at least U.S. jobs. This is one of the big reasons why the rightwing noise machine is so against what it characterizes as regulation: protection of jobs, like protection of public health and public safety, works to the advantage of the many, rather than just of the few.

There is also every indication that lack of regulation–genuine regulation, backed up by oversight and enforcement–kills people. Does any responsible person really want an Alzheimer’s facility, or any long-term care facility, to be unregulated and unmonitored? Unlikely, and the same goes for day care centers, private schools, and children’s camps. For that matter, the same goes for the athletic program at Penn State (State Penn).

Travel is a continuing reminder of the need to protect public safety and public health. From the interior space on an airplane–if any–to getting from airport to final destination, from questions like whether your luggage arrives to more essential questions like whether you do, our predominant business model tends to create a continuing tug-of-war between efforts to cut corners at the top (corporate management) and efforts to survive at the bottom (customers). The same goes for every other industry. There are some honorable exceptions, such as CREDO, and they deserve kudos. But exceptions do not disprove the general rule.

Among the local news stories in Kentucky:

  • Neighbors in one community gathered at an elementary school to hear about ground contamination from lead, arsenic and DDT from a 29-acre industrial site near their property.
  • Three day care centers in Louisville recently closed, after the driver of a van crashed, killing a woman passenger and sending 14 children to the hospital, three in intensive care. The company operating the centers had previously been cited by state agencies for dozens of safety violations; this is a perfect example of the kind of ‘small business’ where ‘job-killing regulations’ are bemoaned by Mitt Romney and his spokespersons including Ed Gillespie.
  • In other local news, an abandoned theme park has been getting only minimal maintenance, meaning that its structures will at some point just fall down. The company that owns it, Six Flags, was in bankruptcy reorganization, and the Kentucky State Fair Board faces its own budget constraints–like virtually all state and local agencies.

When we lose ‘government jobs’–another favorite Orwellianism–we lose independent oversight for dangerous occupations and sites.

Speaking of oversight and dangerous sites, word of fraud in the investment world also continually seeps out. A few familiar examples suffice:

  • Bernard Madoff’s brother Peter has pleaded guilty to fabricating compliance reports and deceiving the SEC. This case–the record-breaking Madoff Ponzi scheme–is another reminder of the need for good, honest record-keeping, and for someone to watch the custodians.
  • Houston can do you an Allen Stanford, investment scheme $8 billion.
  • An investment advisor in Glasgow, Ky., is indicted for allegedly defrauding investors in Kentucky and Indiana of $2.4 million. Having promised to invest customers’ money, the so-called advisor allegedly spent it on a shooting range he set up in an old rock quarry, and on himself.
  • Closer to home (D.C. region), the former CEO of Virginia’s Bank of the Commonwealth has been indicted for alleged fraud conspiracy in covering up the bank’s financial condition since 2008.
  • On a grander scale, we have august Barclays bank allegedly depressing its interest rate on lending–and thereby short-changing institutional investors including Baltimore City on returns they could have gotten. The city of Baltimore is suing. Time will tell whether Virginia Attorney General Ken (“Kooky”) Cuccinelli elects to do the same.

All of these problems are a function of privatizing gain, socializing risk; reserving gains for the few and shifting the burdens of compliance, taxation and monitoring to the general public, to the individual, and to state and local government. The pattern fits into a larger one: Over-all family wealth in the U.S. declined 39 percent from 2007 to 2010, while the wealthiest gained 2 percent.

No one talks about it this way, but the NRA and nut-right mantra that what everybody needs are bigger guns and more guns also fits into the same pattern. Why, when you think about it, should a private citizen be expected to go out and purchase ludicrously expensive semi-automatic weapons for protection? Why should the onus of acquiring combat gear and combat training be on private citizens in the first place? Socializing risk, privatizing gain–the big-time weapons commerce fills the bill, and our docile GOP lawmakers relentlessly forward this agenda by talking about it as a “right.” Funnily enough, they do not talk about purchasing health insurance the same way.

For self-defence, there is actually no evidence that bigger magazines and more clips mean more protection. Even at worst–firing a gun at someone–you need one good shot, not a spray of careless rounds. That’s if you really care about self-defense rather than aggression.

But our NRA, and the politicians hired by the NRA, have been intent for decades now on blurring the line between self-defense and aggression.

Again when you think about it, the sole use for automatic and semi-automatic multiple-shot firearms, as for big magazines that hold hundreds of rounds of ammo, would be to kill off a whole crowd or army of attackers. It happens in movies. In real life, armed attacks are generally perpetrated by–what’s that word again?–oh, yes!–loners. In reality, unlike in film, attacks with big-time weapons are more liable to come from one gunman or two, shooting into a crowd or a classroom, than from a crowd shooting at the one lone individual (you, in this paranoid view).

This fact could represent something of a hurdle for the guns-and-ammo industry, the NRA, and the GOP officeholders who support them, if they were to permit its transmission. So they prevent its getting out, as much as possible–no small feat, given that it surfaces again every time some disturbed young guy, heavily armed, commits a mass shooting. So what’s a guns-and-ammo industry to do? –Why, market to the paranoid and unstable, of course. What are the cartel-supporting NRA and the NRA-supporting GOP to do? –Why, vent as much hyperbolic us-and-them rhetoric into the air as possible (Michelle Bachmann’s nonsense about Huma Abedin is only the most recent example).

Anything to obfuscate the fact that mass shootings are committed by the lone off-base guy, against the masses, not the other way around.

James Holmes

This point should not be oversimplified, but it also should not be lost sight of. Back to ‘regulation’ again–that being the GOP word for providing for public safety and public health: Public safety and public health require decent regulation of indecent commerce. Multiple clips and magazines, body armor, automatic or so-called semi-automatic rifles, assault weapons, military-grade- and SWAT-team gear–there is no reason why unauthorized civilians should be allowed to buy them. We need regulation of the online commerce that gets around state and local attempts to protect public safety. We need for private gun sales, second-hand gun sales, straw purchases, auctions, and gun shows to operate under the same law as storefront owners who sell guns do.

The laws, furthermore,  need to be good.

Contrary to the thrust of some media representations, the situation is not hopeless. There is no such thing as perfect safety or perfected public safety, as there is no other perfection on earth. But the fact that we cannot do everything is not an argument for doing nothing. In public policy, some specific remedies are clear.

And in the politics that lead to policy changes, some highly specific small steps are also clear, and timely. There is no reason, for example, why strong public support for reasonable public safety measures should be contravened by a minority in the senate–by the mere threat of filibuster.

Calls to abolish the filibuster by amending the constitution are about as good an idea as most proposed constitutional amendments, which means not very. There is a simpler, cleaner and more legitimate means to address this ridiculous problem that never should have been allowed to arise in the first place: When our GOP minority in the U.S. Senate threatens to filibuster, make them actually filibuster. Let Mitch McConnell and Jim Inhofe and Dan Coats and the rest get up there and do like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, albeit with less idealism. Let them read aloud from the Bible they profess to love so much, read Shakespeare, read Little Women or Anne of Green Gables for that matter.

Mitch McConnell

Having the mere threat of filibuster substitute for putting in the time on the floor, preventing needed legislation, is unconstitutional.

 

 

Rick Perry is right about Virginia

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Perry

Rick Perry right about Virginia

Rick Perry is right. Virginia’s rules for gathering signatures to get a candidate on the ballot in Virginia violate the U.S. Constitution.

Quick run-down on the rules:

  • Virginia law recognizes only the Republican and Democratic parties as parties
  • Any presidential candidate who wants to appear on the ballot in the March 6 primary must gather 10,000 signatures of registered voters
  • At least 400 signatures must come from each of the 11 congressional districts
  • The signatures can be gathered only by people who themselves live in Virginia
  • The primary election does not allow write-ins

State GOP party chairman Pat Mullins reiterated the above on the party web site:

 “Under the Code of Virginia, any candidate who wants to have their name placed on the March 6, 2012 Republican Presidential Ballot or the June 12, 2012 U.S. Senate Primary must collect the signatures of 10,000 registered voters statewide, with at least 400 signatures of registered voters from each of Virginia’s 11 Congressional districts.”

Mullins’ statement omits that kicker about signature gatherers having to be from Virginia.

The upshot for 2012, as everyone knows, is that well-funded Texas Governor Rick Perry, Virginia resident and U.S. history consultant Newt Gingrich, and three other Republicans failed to get their names on the ballot in Virginia. Perry did not get enough signatures; Gingrich collected more than 11,000 signatures but had many invalidated by state GOP officials, who hate him; and candidates Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum did not even file to get on the ballot in Virginia. Thus as of now only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are eligible to compete for Virginia’s 50 delegates on March 6.

It’s a Schadenfreudefest.

Signs of the times

Ironies abound.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the rules for getting on the ballot are left to the states, and there is no national standard for state ballot access. Legislation to limit how far states could on restricting ballot access was repeatedly introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, but without success. Paul, again, is the only candidate besides Romney whose presidential campaign organization succeeded in getting him onto the ballot in Virginia for 2012.

Paul’s campaign still had to jump through extra hoops. As the statement of rules issued by GOP state party chairman Pat Mullins continues,

“Any candidate who submits at least 15,000 signatures of registered voters on valid petitions statewide and has at least 600 signatures of registered voters on valid petitions from each of the 11 Congressional Districts shall be deemed to have met the threshold for qualification and will be certified (provided, of course, that other requirements of State law have also been met).”

Romney’s campaign turned in more than 15,000 votes, as the somewhat defensive statement issued by the Republican Party of Virginia notes. Thus Romney’s petition was adjudged valid on its face under the rules. As the RPV puts it,

“any candidate who submitted over 15,000 facially-valid signatures would be presumed to be in compliance with Virginia‘s 10,000 signature law.”

 [boldface in original statement]

Ron Paul’s signatures, au contraire, went through a round of vetting:

“Rep. Ron Paul submitted just under 15,000, and was submitted to signature-by-signature scrutiny on the same basis as the other candidates who submitted fewer than 15,000 signatures. After more than 7 hours of work, RPV determined that Rep. Paul had cleared the statutory 10,000/400 signature standard with ease.”

The RPV situation deserves more attention than it has gotten. Admittedly, a primary pageant featuring Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Rick man-on-dog Santorum, Donald Trump and the rest tends to suck up oxygen that might otherwise go to constitutional questions. Then we got Perry’s televised gaffes. Then Newt Gingrich inveighing against money, negative advertising and lying in politics. Now the prominent alternative to Romney seems to be Santorum, who is also trying to whittle Gingrich down to size. With this kind of air show on television, it is often difficult to turn to reading.

That said, the RPV statement is still an act of epic folly.

Back to Ole Virginny, and we don’t mean to asperse Scandinavians

Virginia Republicans adopted the new rules in October 2011, obviously to prep for the 2012 election. The rules overwhelmingly benefit Mitt Romney and were undoubtedly crafted to enhance Romney as the inevitable nominee. (Romney advisor/strategist Stuart Stevens, a Mississippi native, is among Romney supporters based in Virginia.) The RPV itself clearly knows that the restrictions are, as Perry’s legal challenge says, onerous:

“From the earliest days of the campaigns, RPV has actively told candidates that Virginia’s signature requirements could be a difficult legal requirement to meet for those who were new to Virginia politics.”

The rationale for restricting ballot access is protecting the integrity of elections. Yet the Virginia rules give a pass to exactly those most liable to jeopardize election integrity, namely the biggest and best-funded campaigns. This is not to suggest that Romney’s signatures are fraudulent. But the rule exempts the biggest list of signatures from any checking at all. RPV defensiveness suggests that the RPV itself recognizes this exemption as questionable:

“The presumption of compliance was set at 15,000 for a variety of reasons.

First, in the party’s long experience with petitions, RPV has never encountered a situation where a candidate who submitted 15,000 signatures has failed to make the ballot (absent cases of obvious fraud).

Second, Virginia’s State Board of Elections advises candidates to collect 15,000 or more signatures to be safe, based on their long experience with average failure rates.

Third, RPV adopted the 15,000-signature presumption because the Party wants all of its candidates to qualify for the ballot. The 15,000-signature presumption served as an incentive for candidates to comply with the law with a safe margin of signatures.

Fourth, under Virginia law, RPV’s Chairman is assigned a profound legal obligation to ensure that each candidate has met Virginia’s legal requirements. The Party was afforded under Virginia law only 5 days over Christmas to review ballot petitions and signatures. The 15,000-signature presumption was intended to assist the RPV Chairman in meeting his legal obligations in an efficient process that would run quickly while providing the Party and the Commonwealth assurances of legal compliance based upon mathmatical [sic] experience.” 

Since the state GOP (clearly) knew that the restrictions were onerous, furthermore,

“RPV officials encouraged candidates repeatedly, through both counsel and field staff, to submit 15,000 or more signatures in an abundance of caution, so that they would meet the legal requirements. 

Candidates were officially informed of the 15,000 rule in October 2011, well in advance of the Dec. 22 submission deadline. The rule was no surprise to any candidate – and indeed, no candidate or campaign offered any complaints until after the Dec. 23 validation process had concluded.

Despite this early notice and RPV’s exhortations to candidates, only one candidate availed himself of the 15,000 signature threshold – Governor Mitt Romney. RPV counted Governor Romney’s signatures, reviewed them for facial validity, and determined he submitted well over 15,000. Never in the party’s history has a candidate who submitted more than 15,000 signatures had 33 percent invalidated. The party is confident that Governor Romney met the statutory threshold.”

Romney gets to pass Go.

Briefly, the other couple of oddities:

As mentioned, the signature gatherers must live in Virginia. No other state has that requirement, which would seem to increase local control over any signature gathering.

No other state requires major parties to spread the signatures around among congressional districts, either. A few states do set that bar for new political parties, or for nonaffiliated candidates:

  • Louisiana requires 500 signatures from each district–OR a fee of $500 instead of signatures.
  • New York requires signatures from a majority of the state’s districts, for candidates from a non-established party.
  • North Carolina requires 200 signatures from at least four districts, for a new political party or for a nonaffiliated candidate.

But only the Virginia GOP brought you that rule that even the Democratic and the Republican parties, established parties, have to spread their signatures around among every congressional district. The rule effectively prevents any college town from harvesting enough signatures to put, say, Ron Paul on the ballot with ease. Further smoothed the path, in October 2011, for Romney.

On Jan. 3, after the Iowa caucuses, Perry was going to reassess his campaign, going home to Texas instead of to South Carolina.

On Jan. 4, Perry tweeted On to South Carolina.

Presumably, staying in the race keeps Perry’s lawsuit in Virginia from becoming moot or from being dismissed for lack of standing.

If so, Perry’s staying in the race a while longer will benefit the citizenry–not for the Machiavellian reason of dividing the field against Romney, but because Virginia’s rules are genuinely weird. One step farther, and the Virginia GOP, entrenched in the state government, would be able to make only one party legal in the Old Dominion.

Briefs in the case are due today (Friday Jan. 6).

Some local back-and-forth has occurred since Perry filed his lawsuit. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was so appalled by the consequences for Virginia’s primary that he initially said he would consider changing the rules for the year. Cuccinelli has announced that he will run for governor in 2013 in Virginia (where elections are held in odd-numbered years, and the governor is term-limited to one term). Cuccinelli changed his position the next day. Even the kookiest state attorney general is not supposed to change election rules for the election in process. AG Cuccinelli’s discomfiture put him at odds with Governor McDonnell (Douglas), who has given no sign of displeasure over Romney’s being the main man on the ballot.

More on the legal challenge later.