U.S. Economy Officially Enters Its 'Uncle Earl' Phase

The Los Angeles Times ran a story in Friday's paper about the disappearance of employee pension plans and the likelihood that the pace of that disappearance will accelerate.

The story starts by looking at workers at Delphi Corporation, the auto parts manufacturer. The company's leaders took it into bankruptcy earlier this year and the employee pension plan was one of the first things targeted to be wiped out. They also demanded that employees take a 2/3 pay cut, but have since withdrawn that demand. The thought that this might be good news for Delphi employees just seems like wishful thinking at this point.

Here is a key section in the story:

Although Delphi has since backed off a bit — it says it's willing to negotiate with its unions and its former parent and largest customer, General Motors Corp. — the parts firm has left little doubt that its ultimate aim remains steep reductions in wages, benefits and retiree costs.

Delphi is at the cutting edge of a crisis that's engulfing the U.S. auto industry, much as it did steel and airlines. Its actions are adding to a gathering trend, a shift of economic risks once largely borne by business and government to the backs of working families.

Before the trouble is over, some believe, a corporate icon such as Ford Motor Co. or GM could be swept from the American landscape. So too could much of what remains of the already frayed relationship between millions of working people and their employers.

"When the history of this period is written, Delphi will be viewed as the tipping point where the auto industry either got its act together or failed," said David E. Cole, the son of a former GM president and head of the Center for Automotive Research, based in Ann Arbor, Mich. "The spillover to the rest of the economy is going to be tremendous."

Delphi is, as the article points out, tearing a page out of the playbook of the airlines and others who used the bankruptcy process to shed their pension obligations to employees. The burden ultimately falls on other (temporarily?) healthy pension plans, as the agency that steps in to make good on at least some of the promises (the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation) is funded by what amounts to a tax on other pension plans.

So, the pension plans will likely go the way of job security, company loyalty and other myths that defined post-World War II America. But, these pensions were based on promises companies made to their workers during those years and many of those promises were codified in contracts between workers and companies. The phrase "not worth the paper they were written on" comes to mind, but let's not get brutally honest about it during the holiday season.

Instead, allow me to explain my belief that this tipping point we've just encountered has ushered in the "Uncle Earl K. Long Era" of American economic life.

As source material, I'm using A.J. Leibling's book on Earl Long, called The Earl of Louisiana. In my copy (the 1981 paperback edition from LSU Press), on pages 40-41, Leibling reports one of the great stories about Uncle Earl that appears to have taken place during his third term as governor:

"Earl likes to cut them down to size before they get too big and fresh," Tom Sancton said. "You heard what he did to the fellow from Alexandria who got a big retainer from the theater owners to try to remove a two per cent tax on movie admissions? The fellow went to see Earl before the last campaign and came back and told his clients that it was in the bag. Then he went out and worked like a dog for Earl — speaking on television and radio, and stumping and conspiring and kissing babies and hustling votes — until Earl was elected Governor. One of the first things Earl did in new Legislature was to oppose removal of the tax. The fellow from Alexandria went to see him — he was afraid he would have to refund his fee, or the theater owners would shoot him — and he said, 'I told my clients that you said you wanted their support and that you wouldn't block removal of the tax. What do I tell them now?' You know what old Earl said? He said, 'I'll tell you what to tell them. Tell them I lied.'"

That is, apparently, what a number of corporations have decided to say about their pension plans. If we have, in fact, crossed a tipping point, others will follow. That is to say, corporate America is telling those who (in the words of Bruce Springsteen) made those companies "rich enough to forget my name" that the promise of a secure retirement in return for years of service was a lie. Contracts are, apparently, for suckers.

This is more of the "one way street America" that big money and their Republican allies are creating here. Reciprocity is out; cashing in is 'in.' The idea of shared responsibility is out. So, too, is the concept of the general good. Nope, it's 'all for one and all for one' in this age. And, Uncle Earl's statement to the man from Alexandria nicely captures the essence of the new era.

By the way, another great book on Earl K. Long is Uncle Earl Deserved Better, by my good friend Jack McGuire of Mandeville. I did the production and printing on the book back in 1995, so I'm a bit biased, but it's a well-documented, highly enlightening read.

Abramoff Scandal: "The Enron of Lobbying"

The Washington Post tries to provide an overarching story on the scandals that are rapidly closing in on Jack Abramoff. They do a pretty good job.

The article traces Abramoff's rise and fall. It somewhat understates a key fact: Abramoff is a product of the Republican Party. He, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist came up through the party at the same time, starting with College Republicans (and apparently playing fast and loose with money in those days, too, according to the story).

In the 1980s, Abramoff was at least peripherally involved in the Iran-Contra Scandal. He made a political friendship with Tom DeLay back in the mid 1990s and that opened some significant doors. He's been involved with gambling interests for quite some time and his involvement in the Bush/Cheney transition team at the Department of the Interior provided him the access and influence that he turned into rivers of cash from various Indian casinos.

The paper provides a helpful chronology of Abramoff's career. And, a graphic that ties together some of the activities and some of those with whom he worked most closely.

Yeah, this is a Democratic blog and there can be no doubt that most Democrats think that the corruption exemplified by Abramoff is closely tied to the attempt of DeLay, Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove to grab all of the power in Washington.

But, the Post does a great service by providing quotes from two Republicans that confirm what we've been saying here: that this is a huge scandal that is quantitatively and qualitatively different from anything seen before in American politics.

Here's the first:

Alan K. Simpson (R), the former Wyoming senator who was in Washington during the last big congressional scandal -- the Abscam FBI sting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which six House members and one senator were convicted -- said the Abramoff case looks bigger. Simpson said he recently rode in a plane with one of Abramoff's attorneys, who told him: "There are going to be guys in your former line of work who are going to be taken down."

Here's the second:

Former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards (Okla.), usually a defender of lobbying and Congress, said there have always been members who get caught "stuffing money in their pants." But he said this is different -- a "disgusting" and disturbingly broad scandal driven by lobbyists whose attitude seemed to be "government to the highest bidder."

"This is at a scale that is really shocking," said Edwards, who teaches public and international affairs at Princeton. "There is a certain kind of arrogance that in the past you might not have had. They were so supremely confident that there didn't seem to be any kind of moral compass here."

Abramoff and his team are the poster boys for the Culture of Greed that has come to define Republican operations in Washington.

These people came to power claiming they would 'clean up the mess' and demanding accountability. They've created a much bigger mess, but the demand for accountability is now more important than ever.

While the Post points out that some congressmen and senators who received money from Abramoff and his clients and associates are returning that money, no Louisiana legislator has done so. Many of them have taken that money. Their silence on what will be one of the largest corruption scandals ever to strike the national government is deafening!

How about it Congressman Boustany?

How about it Senator Vitter?

How about Congressman McCrery?

How about it Congressman Jindal?

Yes, How about it Senator Landrieu?

An accountability moment is fast approaching. Who's going to respond?

UPDATE (Wednesday afternoon): The Post includes this story naming those who've drawn the interest of investigators who are looking at various aspects of Abramoff's operation.

Poll: Republicans Give Higher Priority to Iraq than Gulf Coast!

Will someone please call Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and tell him to look no further for the reason for the Federal government's slow response to Katrina (and to Rita) than his own party?

Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi and former chairman of that party, has raged against the slow response of the Feds to the needs of communities in the wake of Katrina. Our Governor Blanco has done the same thing, but that all gets lost in the extreme partisanship of our nation's capitol because she's a Democrat.

The reason for the slow federal response is revealed in a Washington Post story published on the day after Christmas. The real reason is that Republicans don't want the job done!

It turns out that a plurality of Republicans believe that the nation should focus on Iraq rather than on rebuilding the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast of their own country! The margin is 46-37 percent.

The good news is that the country as a whole favors rebuilding the Gulf Coast by a 58-28 margin. Which means that there are large majorities of Democrats and Independents who want the President to make good on his promises to the coast. It also means that the Republican Party is badly out of step with the rest of the country.

The bad news is that Washington is run by Republican majorities in the House and Senate and a White House that doesn't know much else BUT playing to its base.

So, getting our coastal communities the aid they need, that they were promised, and that they deserve will be harder work than it by any right ought to be. But, isn't that the story of the Bush administration: it's always WAY too hard to get them to do the right thing and, all too often, not possible to do so!

Contributions + Contracts = Corruption? Nah! They're Republicans!!! Charlie B. Got Some $$$, too!

Yet another of Charlie Boustany's Republican Congressional patrons has cropped up in a news story about a congressman and a contractor skirting very close to the edge of ethical conduct.

The Washington Post reports on the dealings between Congressman Harold 'Hal' Rogers of Kentucky and a Massachusetts company trying to make its way in the world as a homeland security contractor. Low and behold! They gave some money to Rogers (did we mention that he chairs the Homeland Security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee?) and landed a pretty nice ($463 million — but who's counting?) contract from the Transportation Security Administration.

Some call it corruption. Others call it getting their due. Some, apparently, call these relationships at least worthy of review.

It is worth noting that Congressman Rogers' political action committee (HALPAC) has been a persistent and significant contributor to Congressman Charles Boustany's 2004 and 2006 campaigns. Pardon me, I take the liberty of calling $18,500 a significant amount of money.

Is there something about being a Republican congressman from the Seventh District in Louisiana that makes is near impossible to get out of the way of tainted contributions? Congressman Boustany's steadfast refusal to separate his campaign from corrupt (DeLay, Abramoff, et al) contributors and tainted contributors must surely raise questions about Mr. Boustany's ethical judgment. Oh, I forgot, he's a Republican, so he must be presumed to be ethical!

For someone who promised to separate us from the corrupt politics of the past, Charlie is sure running in extremely tight formation with the most corrupt elements of his chosen party. Has he even hinted at returning a penny of this tainted money? Not that I know of, but that's just me!

How long can one run in corrupt circles without being affected by it? Is Charlie Boustany trying to make himself a test case? How long do we have to wait for answers?

Dang! Another Boustany Contributor in Ethics Trouble!

Poor Charlie Boustany! Copley New Service is reporting that another contributor to the Republican Congressman's campaign is in ethics trouble tied to a questionable relationship with a lobbyist.

The contributor is California Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis (not the entertainer), who has made at least three contributions to Boustany's campaign fund.

While our Congressman has not been personally tied to corrupt behavior, a growing number of his Congressional patrons have.

Unlike a number of other congressmen who've felt some sense of shame for having been tied to 'dirty money,' our Congressman has steadfastly refused to give back even a penny of the tainted dough that's made its way into the coffers of his two campaigns.

That's backbone for you! Ain't nothin' gonna keep Chuck from a buck! Ethics? Smethics!

Daschle: Bush Claims "Power We Didn't Grant"

Former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle exposes the lie in President Bush and his defenders' claims that Congress granted him the power to violate civil liberties when it authorize the government to pursue al Qaeda.

In an Op-Ed piece in today's Washington Post, Daschle said Bush/Cheney and their 'amen chorus' are wrong about the additional powers they claim Congress gave them:

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

Here is the proof Daschle offers:

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of authority.

The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.

Daschle goes on to say that he doesn't believe there is anything in the constitution or the law that gives Bush the power he's claiming.

Gee! Not in the constitution and not in the law. Would that make these NSA wiretaps and email fishing expiditions unconstitutional and illegal? Article One, Section Three of the U.S. Constitution does offer a suggested remedy.

Decade of Accumulated Republican Corruption Nears Detonation

Almost out of money and definitely out of luck, lobbyist Jack Abramoff is reported nearing a deal with federal prosecutors that could implicate as many as a dozen members of Congress in a corruption scandal unlike anything seen in modern American politics.

If a deal is struck (there are two sets of federal investigators unravelling Abramoff's various scams), what will set this scandal apart from others will be the fact that it reached so high up and so wide into a single party (that would be the Republican Party that had as its public face that of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay).

Congressman Charles Boustany is travelling on a photo-op to Iraq with one of the Congressmen who will likely be among the first Abramoff will bring down with him, Bob Ney of Ohio.

Boustany is also linked to the scandal through the significant amounts of money his two campaigns (2004 and the upcoming 2006 campaign) received from DeLay's main political action committee (Americans for a Republican Majority). DeLay figures to be another of the elected officials Abramoff will implicate.

In exchange for that 2004 campaign money, Boustany voted to effectively shut down the House Ethics Committee in order to protect DeLay in a vote cast by the rookie Congressman on his first day official day as a member of the House of Representatives.

What has become clear through press coverage (and what Abramoff's plea deals will confirm) is that a culture of corruption arose in Washington centered around the efforts by DeLay and others in the Republican leadership to grab control of the legislative and lobbying mechanisms in the capital. The extent of the corruption that will be revealed will only prove the success of the effort.

Like the Texas redistricting scandal in which DeLay finds himself facing criminal charges, all of this Washington scandal is about seizing money for political gain to distort the electoral process and usher in an era of permanent Republican majority rule.

These are the people and the methods that brought Charles Boustany to Congress. Now he's going to have to dance with the ones that brung him!