Corporate America's Sunshine Patriots

Up the Revolution
By MICHAEL WINSHIP

We went to Mount Vernon in Virginia a few weeks ago. It was the first time I'd been to George Washington's family estate since a whirlwind day tour of Washington, DC, when I was a high school freshman. Our guide then was a fast-talking cabdriver who interlaced his rapid-fire wisecracks with an impressive command of facts and figures, many of which may even have been correct.

Today, the Washington plantation, once in sorry shape, has been beautifully restored, from mansion to slave quarters. At two, state-of-the-art visitor and education centers, sightseers can learn all about the great man's life and times, including a sound and light presentation on battles of the American Revolution that features howling wind and falling "snowflakes" -- tiny bits of soapsuds pumped into the theater -- when Washington crosses the Delaware.

The whole thing isn't run by the National Park Service, as you might have expected, but by a private, nonprofit organization, the genteelly named Mount Vernon Ladies' Association (MVLA), which raises money from ticket sales, food, souvenirs and money from individuals, foundations and corporations.

A lot of money. According to the MVLA's most recent annual report, "In 2010, 47,242 individuals, corporations, and foundations contributed more than $17 million to the Mount Vernon cause." With George Washington a favored Founding Father of the American right, no small amount of those funds have come from such conservative contributors as the Heritage Foundation, the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, the Mars family of candy bar fame, and newspaper publisher Richard Mellon Scaife.

Conservative screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd scripted the introductory film at the site's orientation center. And during her recent bus tour, Sarah Palin had paid a visit just a couple of weeks before our arrival, writing on her website that daughter Piper mentioned to her how hard Washington must have worked "to keep that farm going." Stephen Colbert responded, "It's true. I cannot imagine how hard he worked, with no help other than his African volunteers."

A quick perusal of Mt. Vernon's annual report reveals that its many corporate funders include the Ford Motor Company, Toyota, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, Altria (formerly Philip Morris), Coca Cola, the American Gas Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers, M&T Bank, Stanley Black & Decker and BAE Systems -- the massive, British-based defense contractor that last year pled guilty to criminal charges related to bribery allegations and paid almost $450 million in penalties to the United States and Great Britain. (Wonder what the George Washington of slaughtered cherry tree and "I cannot tell a lie" fame would make of that?)

In fairness, they all have helped preserve a beautiful historic landmark, but as I looked at their names, I couldn't help but think that they and their big business colleagues could perform an even greater patriotic service to America by working to create more jobs.

Naive? Not really. After all, as of last week, as per the website Zero Hedge and data analysts Capital IQ, 29 public companies -- including Bank of America, JP Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, GE and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway -- each have more cash on hand than the US Treasury. And as Citigroup's Peter Orzag, former director of Obama's Office of Management and Budget wrote on July 13, we need to be "as bold as we can." Says he, "The right policy response is a combination of more aggressive attention to bolster the job market now and much more deficit reduction enacted now to take effect in a few years."

So why not make a sacrifice bigger than a nice hefty grant to Mount Vernon or the historic location of your choice and commit instead to finding employment for at least some of the 14.1 million out of work? After all, the Republicans keep telling us these corporations and their rich executives and stockholders need every last one of their outlandish tax breaks -- because they're job creators!

Yeah, right. In May, when Fortune magazine released this year's list of America's top 500 companies, its editors wrote, "The Fortune 500 generated nearly $10.8 trillion in total revenues last year, up 10.5%. Total profits soared 81%. But guess who didn't benefit much from this giant wave of cash? Millions of U.S. workers stuck mired in a stagnant job market... we've rarely seen such a stark gulf between the fortunes of the 500 and those of ordinary Americans."

In June, a report from Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies found that since the economic recovery began two years ago, "Corporate profits captured 88 percent of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than one percent." It goes on to declare, "The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented. The lack of any net job growth in the current recovery combined with stagnant real hourly and weekly wages is responsible for this unique, devastating outcome."

The report concludes that in this jobless, wageless recovery, "The only major beneficiaries of the recovery have been corporate profits and the stock market and its shareholders."

A new study conducted for The New York Times by the executive compensation data firm Equilar found that the median pay for top executives at "200 big companies" last year was $10.8 million: "That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009." The richest one percent makes almost 25 percent of the nation's income. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that the United States has the worst income inequality of the 24 industrialized nations that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- more horrendous, in fact, than Pakistan and Ethiopia.

And yet a recent headline on CNBC's website reads, "Firms Have Record $800 Billion of Cash But Still Won't Hire." Maybe they've never heard the Bible's exhortation that to whom much is given, much is expected, a sentiment well understood by George Washington, who gave up the life of a gentleman farmer -- twice -- to come to the aid of his fledgling nation.

Just a couple of days before Washington crossed the Delaware during that bleak Christmas of 1776, with real ice, wind and snow -- no soap suds -- Thomas Paine famously predicted that "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country." Today's corporate giants, blinded by greed, oblivious to the despair around them, are doing much the same. That can't last.

By the way, all those complaints about corporate tax rates and hanging on to their precious loopholes, subsidies and Bush tax cuts? The Center for Tax Justice, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, finds "the U.S. is already one of the least taxed countries for corporations in the developed world" -- as a percentage of GDP second only to, wait for it, Iceland. 

Up the revolution.

The Human Cost of Slashonomics: "Recovery" Leaves Women Behind (2 articles)

Monday, March 21, 2011 by The Nation

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

 

An important new initiative from Half in Ten, a national campaign to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years, and the Coalition on Human Needs, is putting a face on irresponsible “slash and burn” deficit reduction by showing how it would damage real lives. The organizations are collecting people’s stories so that the cruel consequences of draconian cuts to key federal programs are plain to see.

Consider the story of Carolyn, who was in her 40s when her husband of 25 years left her with two daughters. She had never received any kind of assistance and describes turning to her local community action agency as “the hardest thing I had ever done.” Her fears were quickly allayed as she “was treated with respect and was never made to feel like a drain on society.” She enrolled in a workforce development program that helped her with tuition and books while she attended community college. 

“I went to college five days a week and spent the weekend working, so I never had a day off,” writes Carolyn. “When I graduated I became a Registered Nurse, able to support myself and my family. I couldn’t have done it without the Federal Workforce Development Program and the supportive services the local Community Action Agency provided.”

But the Boehner-led “so be it” Republicans would nearly eliminate funding for Community Service Block Grants (CSBG) for the remainder of 2011, and President Obama proposes cutting it in half in 2012. The cuts would disrupt the antipoverty services provided by 1,065 community action agencies nationwide to over 20 million low-income people, including 5 million children, 2.3 million seniors and 1.7 million people with disabilities. What makes the cuts even more insane is that the agencies generate $6.54 from state, local, and private sources for every federal dollar received, according to the Coalition on Human Needs.

People like Carolyn would be hit doubly hard—not only would the community action agencies reach fewer people, but the kind of workforce development programs that allowed her to change her life would also be slashed by Republicans. In fact, at a time when 14 million Americans are out of work, more than 8 million adults and youth would lose access to job training and other employment services. Job training under the Workforce Investment Act programs for adults, youths, and dislocated workers would essentially be shut down until July 2012.

But, hey, at least folks can turn to higher education, right? Actually, not really. At a time when the US is now 12^th in the world in the percentage of 25 to 34 year olds with a college degree, the GOP bill would result in 9.4 million low-income college students losing all or some of their Pell grant. It would reduce the maximum Pell grant by a whopping 17.4 percent! (Obama would increase Pell Grant funding by 20 percent.)

The GOP cuts would be a disaster for students like this senior at University of Missouri who anonymously writes, “I will be applying to medical school at the end of this year. I come from a single-parent household and my mother makes about $20,000/year; hardly enough to put me through college. Without federal aid such as the Pell Grant, I would not have enough money to attend college at all.”

The student also works as a medical assistant at Planned Parenthood, where the GOP would eliminate all federal funding. That means zero funding for 820 health centers that do 90 percent of their work on preventive, primary care.

“I know first-hand how important the services we provide to people really are,” writes the Mizzou student. “The majority of our patients literally cannot afford to go anywhere else, and without our care, they simply would not receive services such as cancer screenings, birth control, and so much more.”

Nor would many of them be able to heat their homes, if the Chainsaw Republicans have their way, and President Obama’s 2012 budget isn’t much better. Despite the fact that a record number of households are expected to need assistance to pay for heating or cooling, the cuts in the GOP bill would essentially wipe out the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) contingency fund for 2011. The contingency fund provides aid during periods of particularly severe weather or energy price increases. Obama’s cut of about $2.5 billion would deny assistance to more than three million households.

That doesn’t sit very well with Kimberly Thompson, who turned to her local community action agency when her 89 year old, very independent grandmother was facing “nursing home institutionalization.” Through the CSBG, the agency was able to purchase a walker for her, deliver a hot lunch daily, and “provide a home care worker to do light housekeeping and help her with personal care.” The agency also signed her up for LIHEAP and “weatherized her home which lowered her utility bills and gave her more money each month to buy food and medicine.”

“All of these services enabled my grandmother to stay at home for the rest of her life until she died at the age of 92, three years later,” writes Thompson. “If she didn’t have those community services, she would have had to move to a nursing home which would have been a much greater cost to the government—and therefore, the taxpayers—and also would have caused her much emotional distress.”

What is most maddening about the budget debate is that few legislators are talking about alternatives like increasing revenues by closing obscene tax loopholes and corporate giveaways and making the wealthy pay their fair share. Instead, the proposals hit the most vulnerable people the hardest—lower-income people, children, seniors, people with disabilities, unemployed workers, and others. (For a “Better Budget for All” check out this report.)

Kudos to Half in Ten and the Coalition on Human Needs for collecting these stories and making these budget cuts real. If you have a story to tell, please share it. The only way we win this budget battle is to show the very real consequences of these abstract numbers being thrown around Washington, DC, and then organize and demand alternatives.

+++++++

Monday, March 21, 2011 by The Baltimore Sun
Recession hurt male-dominated sectors, but hiring is lagging for women

by Lorraine Mirabella 

 

It became known as the "mancession" because the recent downturn battered industries dominated by men.


But the economic battle of the sexes has taken a turn. While the nation's nascent recovery has been slow and bumpy for just about everyone, it has been almost nonexistent for women.
Of the 1.3 million jobs gained in the U.S. in the past year, 1.1 million — nearly 90 percent — went to men, Department of Labor statistics show. Women gained just 149,000 jobs during that time. If you count jobs since the recovery officially started in July 2009, men gained more than 600,000 jobs while women lost 300,000, the figures show.

"The recovery is really not happening for women at all," said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women's Law Center in Washington. "It's a slow recovery overall, but it's really leaving women behind."

Some of the disproportionate gains by men were expected because women lost far fewer jobs during the recession, but economists say that doesn't fully explain the trend. Economists point out that public sector jobs more likely to be held by women are disappearing. And some hypothesize that jobless men have been making inroads in sectors traditionally dominated by women.

But for women who have struggled for their place in the American work force — from Rosie the Riveter to Carol Bartz, the Yahoo CEO ranked as the highest-paid woman in the U.S. — this is another painful chapter.

For Annie McLhinney-Cochran, 52, of Havre de Grace, the hunt for a new job has gone nowhere for three years. She recently left San Diego to relocate to Maryland with her husband, who had lost a construction job. She has years of marketing and public relations experience and was convinced her prospects would improve on the East Coast.

"Never has it been this tough," she said. "I think women our age, those 50 on up and getting ready to retire, are the ones getting hit the most."

In San Diego, "we were just kind of making it. Some friends and family have helped. My husband had a few odd jobs. I was one of those people hanging on and hanging on," said McLhinney-Cochran. "It's an awful situation, and I don't see a lot of relief."

While women account for roughly half of the work force, a White House report released this month showed persistent pay gaps between men and women at all levels of education, with women earning about 75 percent as much as their male colleagues. Older female workers face greater pay disparity than their younger counterparts — as 25- to 34-year-olds earn 89 percent as much as men, according to the 2009 statistics.

As the nation begins to crawl out of the deep recession, women are regaining jobs at a much slower pace than they lost them. Women accounted for one of every three lost jobs in the recession, but they're filling just one in every 10 jobs added. And unemployment for women is on the rise.

"It's very frightening because long-term unemployment has worsened," Entmacher said. "It's also alarming because women make up half the labor force and women's wages are so much bigger a piece of the family budget. This is a real crisis for families, especially those headed by women."

Click here to read the rest.