Sirotablog

Free Trade: A Primary Concern for 2008 Democrats

In These Times now has the web version of my latest piece for them. It is a writeup of how trade - and some Democrats' continued "free" trade zealotry - may have some very unpredictable ramifications in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. Go check it out.

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Economic Development in the States

The Progressive Legislative Action Network's Stateside Dispatch today goes into strategies to increase job growth in our states. Too often, economic development turns into corporate welfare - but it doesn't have to. Check out PLAN's writeup here.

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The War Over Shareholder Democracy

USA Today reports that "like activist U.S. shareholders monitoring companies, investors worldwide want businesses they own to embrace tougher corporate governance standards, according to a report being released this week." This is not surprising - owners of companies want company executives to stop ripping off companies with exorbitant pay packages, and excess expenditures. But as I noted in an earlier piece for the San Francisco Chronicle, there is a counter-effort being waged to short circuit shareholder democracy.

The New York Times this weekend reported on one of the weapons being used: legal loopholes. A new report shows that "investors, no matter how few of a company's shares they own, [are able] to profoundly affect the outcome of corporate resolutions that are put to a vote at the annual shareholder meeting" by "borrow[ing] a large number of shares for a nominal fee and use them to cast a corresponding number of votes." In other words, savvy investors - including management - is able to vote more votes than they should be able to.

"Shareholder democracy is an ideal that is perhaps rarely achieved under the best of circumstances," the Times goes on to note. "It's not likely to be attained if sophisticated investors can manipulate the outcome of corporate voting merely by borrowing the shares they need."

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Democrats' Seinfeld Strategy

Just got back from a weekend in Denver with my family, and wanted to pass on this lead editorial in the latest edition of In These Times. The editors at the magazine asked me to write it, and I decided to focus on the Democrats "Seinfeld Strategy" for 2006. Check it out.

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White House Refuses Information to Congress About Another UAE Deal

Why is the Bush administration refusing to tell Congress about its review of a UAE bid to buy defense contractors in America? We just went through this kind of thing with the port security issue - the least they could do is give Congress some information.

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Field & Stream Shows Dems' Opportunity

In past articles for the Washington Monthly and In These Times, I noted that Democrats throughout the country have a chance to attract votes from the more culturally-conservative hunter/angler/outdoorsman demographic. Now, in the latest edition of Field & Stream, that opportunity comes into even starker relief, as the magazine laces into the Bush administration for its disregard for hunters, anglers and outdoorsmen. Check out the magazine's article.

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Want Proof of the Hostile Takeover? Read This.

The basic premise of my upcoming book Hostile Takeover is that there are no longer any lines or distinctions between Big Business and government. In Washington's corrupt, money-dominated politics, Corporate America and the American government are one and the same - both looking to fleece the average citizen as much as possible. The book goes onto note that the only way we are going to take our government back is to stop letting both parties deny that a hostile takeover has occurred. To help end this denial, I find it helpful to show folks concrete examples of what I mean by a "hostile takeover." A new story in the Wall Street Journal today is one of those concrete examples.

Back in 2003, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) led a bipartisan group of lawmakers to introduce an amendment to outlaw so-called "cash balance" pension conversions whereby companies, without warning, reduce the pensions they promised workers without giving those workers a choice to stay in their old pension plan. The amendment ultimately passed the House of Representatives (though was killed in the final conference committee) over the strong objections of Corporate America, including IBM, which had been one of the biggest companies to try to shaft its workers with these kind of pension rip-off schemes.

But the amendment didn't pass without the Bush administration quite literally turning over the Treasury Department to IBM. As the Washington Post reported at the time, IBM sent around a document to congressional offices labeled "Treasury talking points" that said the Treasury Department "strongly opposes the Sanders amendment to the Transportation/Treasury appropriations bill." Treasury soon admitted that "the department had prepared" the materials, but had never actually released them to corporations to help them lobby to defeat the bill.

Now, years later, the Wall Street Journal reports that "an investigation into ties between Treasury Department officials and International Business Machines Corp. shows the Treasury worked closely with IBM on pension issues and provided information that was subsequently misused in the company's lobbying." A report demanded by Sanders from the Treasury Department's Inspector General "said a Treasury official disclosed nonpublic information to IBM and failed to report expenses paid by a lobbyist for a pension-industry trade group."

Those are shocking revelations, even for a corporate-owned administration like the one we have now. However, perhaps more shocking is the fact that the Journal also notes that "the Justice Department didn't pursue criminal or civil charges in the matters because they didn't meet the agency's 'prosecutorial threshold.'" In other words, yeah, they broke the law, and illegally turned the people's government over to Big Business, but that's not worth prosecuting.

This is your government, ladies and gentlemen of America - a government that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business. A government where an agency as powerful as the U.S. Treasury Department routinely operates like an arm of the companies such as IBM that it is supposed to be regulating. A government, in short, that is the victim of a Hostile Takeover.

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Tom Friedman's Utopia

Last month, the public was treated to yet another column by the New York Times' Tom Friedman trumpeting the supposed utopia of "free" trade in the developing world. In that column, Friedman held up the United Arab Emirates as a model of what we should hope the Arab world becomes. Now, a month later, this Washington Post story describes Friedman's low-wage, anti-union utopia - and it tells you everything you need to know about what the economic elitists like Friedman really want the world to look like.

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Solidarity in Kansas

Nathan Newman highlights an inspiring story of solidarity in Kansas, as workers there walked off the job in solidarity with other workers who a Dodge City meatpacking plant tried to discipline for missing work to show their support for real solutions to the immigration issue. Many of the policies being discussed in Washington are designed to pit workers against each other. And employers readily join in. No matter what your position on the immigration bills, people still have First Amendment rights to express themselves in this country - without fear of economic retribution. And it is truly inspiring to see workers reject these divisive intimidation tactics and stick together to fight for their collective rights.

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Schweitzer Nabs LA Times Profile

There's a great profile on Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer in today's Los Angeles Times. Go check it out.

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The Consultant Red Herring

There's a lot of talk - and a lot of books out - these days about how consultants have ruined the Democratic Party. Consultants are, of course, an easy target - they are nameless, faceless svengali-like figures. It doesn't take a ton of courage to simply bash "the consultant class." As Time columnist Joe Klein shows, all you need is egomaniacal opportunism - not insight, ideology or ideas (the excerpt Klein self-references in his latest Time column shows just how vapid he really is). But here's the thing: most people who have worked on political campaigns know that this consultant bashing is just a bit off the mark.

Let me preface the explanation of what I mean with a disclaimer: I in no way endorse the tired, pathetic, often half-witted thinking of today's consultant class. And I do believe consultants have contributed to the Democratic Party's awful election record in recent years.

But the operative phrase is "contributed to" - not "responsible for." Why? Because to focus more blame on consultants - as opposed to the politicians who hire them - is to avoid the real problem. In many cases, that is deliberate avoidance, so as to prevent raising the ire of politicians many in Democratic circles are still afraid to challenge - no matter how many times they sell us out. It's like pretending that when you get sick the real problem is your stuffed nose, rather than the cold that is causing the stuffed nose in the first place. Actually, it's worse: it's like blaming the stuffed nose because you don't want to make the cold germs feel bad.

The fact is, candidates choose to listen to consultants. If a consultant is an idiot, the candidate is an even bigger idiot for listening to them in the first place. If a consultant gives terrible advice, the candidate who listens to them is even more terrible for listening to it. And often, the difference between a winning and losing campaign is a candidate who knows what they stand for and what they want to do and puts their consultants to work in the pursuit of those goals; Or, a candidate who has no idea what he/she stands for, and lets the consultants drive the entire campaign - often into the ground.

The flip side is also true. No consultant is responsible for an election win. As much as the media would like to build up the genius of people like Karl Rove and James Carville, the candidates are the ones who win elections.

That goes for lower-tier elections as well. The Montana Republican Party regularly hyperventilates in its newsletter that I am some sort of political guru for Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Anyone who has met Brian Schweitzer for more than 5 seconds knows what a complete joke that is. He is a guy who is a real leader, and a powerful political force because he knows what he wants to do, and he demands the people who work with and for him get it done - not the other way around. The idea that he takes orders from anyone - especially me - is, to put it mildly, laugh-out-loud funny (which is why the Montana GOP e-brief is always one of my favorite pieces of comedic reading materials each week). And anyone who tries to take credit for a politicians' success has either been in Washington too long, or is a consultant themselves trying to get you to hire them.

Let's be clear - Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong's new book Crashing the Gate is far more astute on this subject than Klein or other Washington pundits/operatives who are so afraid of being knocked off politicians' Christmas Card lists that they are trying to blame the Democratic Party's demise purely on the faceless, nameless consultant effigy - instead of on the often confused, soulless politicians who hire and listen to them.

While most in the media have simply said their book bashes consultants, Crashing the Gate touches on the one area of the consultant class that, I will admit, really is damaging to Democrats: not consultants' out of touch elitism or their idiocy (that, after all, is everywhere in politics), but the system designed to force new, first-time, or lower-tier candidates to hire and follow orders from consultants without question. Yes, that's right: the Democratic Party in Washington and in various urban power centers very brazenly demand that candidates submit to the consultant stranglehold - or face real consequences in the form of choked off campaign resources.

This isn't theory - it's fact, and you can confirm it with anyone who has worked on a Democratic race in recent memory. Or, you can look at Ryan Lizza's nauseating, desperate-to-suck-up-to-power piece on Sen. Chuck Schumer. Lizza, attempting to trumpet Schumer, accidentally ends up highlighting what should be embarrassing: namely, that the Democratic Party in Washington - which claims to respect candidates' autonomy - is actually trying to micromanage everything. That means not only insisting on candidates using often bad consultants, but hand-picked staff from Washington - or else face the sharp end of the fundraising bayonet. As Lizza writes:

"In exchange for helping candidates raise money, Schumer makes a demand: no amateurs. Anybody who wants DSCC help must have a campaign manager, a finance director, and a communications director personally approved by Schumer and his aides."

Then again, while this is certainly a problem, it still does not fully absolve the politicians - whether lower-tier or not - from the bigger responsibility for the party's demise than any consultant. Even under such enormous pressure from the Washington Establishment to submit to the consultant class, a good politician with actual convictions should be able to avoid the pitfalls of the consultant problem - there's ample evidence of this among the few effective politicians the Democratic Party still has.

The problem is, politicians who can resist this pressure are ones who have actual convictions. They are people who aren't willing to take orders from some blowhard consultant spewing out the latest red-state-blue-state B.S. they just read in National Journal and then charging an arm and a leg so they can continue living the high life in their Northwest Washington, D.C. mansion. And today, the Democratic Party has far fewer of those kinds of political leaders than it - and the so-called "liberal" punditry - wants to acknowledge.

Fix the politicians, run better candidates who actually believe in something, and get leaders who will give orders to consultants rather than take them, and you don't have a consultant problem. Continue letting the politicians off because you don't want to make them angry, and the problem will continue into perpetuity.

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What Can States Do to Address Immigration?

Nathan Newman, policy director of the Progressive Legislative Action Network, answers that question in an incisive new article over at TomPaine.com. While much of the national debate has focused on Congress, the immigration issue is a place where state policy is very relevant. Progressives have all sorts of options to make state legislation address this critical issue. Go check out Nathan's article for more.

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The Wal-Martization of America's Banks?

The banking industry in America is no haven of honesty, fairness and consumer friendliness. It is an industry that helped bring us the awful bankruptcy bill and continues to bring us all sorts of unfair and deceptive fees. That said, if the federal government approves Wal-Mart's bid to get into banking, it could get a whole lot worse.

That's right, the world's biggest retailer is trying to get its tentacles into the banking industry - a move that really makes the Wal-mart-is-trying-to-takeover-the-world theories look more and more real. The Associated Press notes that the big concern about such a Wal-Mart bank revolves around U.S. financial stability. "Wal-Mart already is too big, opponents say, with 3,900 stores nearly saturating the U.S. market and unrivaled dominance -- accounting for an estimated 10 percent of the U.S. retail economy," the news service writes. "That means a Wal-Mart bank could pose a risk to the country's financial system, and potentially to taxpayers."

This, of course, says nothing about how a Wal-Mart bank would likely destroy community banking throughout America - much as Wal-Mart has destroyed local business, as documented in Robert Greenwald's recent movie. Hilariously, the AP notes that "the lone Wal-Mart executive who testified [at hearings before the FDIC] -- Jane Thompson, president of Wal-Mart Financial Services -- insisted that the $250 billion-a-year retailer is a good corporate citizen in the communities where it operates, pays its employees fair wages and complies strictly with laws and regulations." The fact that a Wal-Mart excutive can even say that with a straight face should tell you all you need to know about Wal-Mart's new pledges that its banking efforts would be purely inoccuous.

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Talking Infrastructure at YearlyKos

As some of you may have read over at DailyKos, I am going to be on a panel with Markos, Jerome and Dave Johnson at the YearlyKos convention this June in Las Vegas. The panel should be a good one - and the convention should be terrific. I'm really looking forward to being there, and meeting all sorts of different folks. If you have the spare time and the spare plane flight to Vegas, consider coming - it promises to be a blast.

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Schweitzer Takes on Feds To Protect Montana's Water

Gov. Brian Schweitzer's efforts to protect Montana's water supply - and the agricultural communities it supports - were profiled in yesterday's Washington Post. He's taking a hardline against energy/mining companies that think they should be able to pollute Montana's streams and lakes and not have to clean up after themselves. Not surprisingly, the supposedly pro-states-rights conservatives in Washington are trying to stop Schweitzer from asserting Montana's right to keep its water clean. Check out the story here.

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DeWine Dives Right Into the Culture of Corruption

You want to see what a truly desperate politician looks like? Take a look at this Washington Times story about Sen. Mike DeWine (R). Despite running for reelection at a time when both the national and Ohio Republican Party are mired in corruption scandals, DeWine is publicly begging Grover Norquist for help. You may recall that as the president of a corporate front group, Norquist is one of indicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff's closest associates. That doesn't seem to bother DeWine, though. He's so desperate to raise corporate campaign cash he's trying to shake everyone down - no matter how scandal plagued they are.

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Immigration's Supply-and-Demand Solutions

The debate over immigration policy provides a perfect example of how the media and political establishment often try to conceal the real issues at the heart of America's challenges. I've written a piece on this in today's Sunday San Francisco Chronicle. Go check it out.

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