Walmart’s outsourcing of jobs is driving down wages at American factories, according to a report from the National Employment Law Project. Instead of employing its own factory employees, Walmart subcontracts many of the jobs to outside companies that have histories of low wages and labor violations, the report said. “These outsourced workers laboring on Walmart’s behalf toil at the bottom of a complex hierarchy of intermediaries and in alternative employment schemes that leave them vulnerable to significant worker rights abuses and unsure where to seek redress,” said the report, which also noted that workers at multiple Walmart-contracted facilities have sued their employers for violating minimum wage laws and cheating them out of pay.
Category: Corporate Statism
The Times-Picayune
Harry Shearer has written an insightful piece in CJR that really sums up the really stupid thinking of the venture capital crowd that’s taken over the newspaper industry. This is the kind of thinking that’s killing journalism. Come to think of it, it’s killing everything else, too:
So: a city of tightly knit neighborhoods, of varying classes, with mainly local retail. Yet, the model for Advance Publication’s demotion of the New Orleans Times-Picayune metro daily into the Neverland of thrice-weekly print publication—gee, what day is it? Is there a paper today?—was based on, wait for it, a college town in Michigan. Ann Arbor, to be exact. And this plan is being applied to three papers in Alabama, as well—the Press-Register in Mobile; The Huntsville Times; The Birmingham News. All quite similar to New Orleans, of course. This is the kind of cookie-cutter decision-making that gives absentee ownership a bad name.
The Times-Picayune is not Starbucks or Rite-Aid or Winn-Dixie sitting on the sidelines waiting for the recovery. It is the paper people in New Orleans love, or love to hate. You’ve probably read the relevant stats: the TP enjoys the highest rate of print penetration of all dailies in the 50 biggest metro areas.
And 36 percent of New Orleanians are not connected to the Internet. Consider also that nola.com, the website to which Advance Publications now assumes people seeking news in the city will drift, is widely recognized as one of the ugliest and worst-designed such sites—aside from the others in the Advance newspaper stable, all of which are forced by Advance headquarters New York to use the same digital template.
Okay, the argument goes, the decision to turn the paper into the Sometimes-Picayune may ignore local realities both cultural and statistical, but it’s Advance’s bat and ball. If they want to play only on the days when advertisers really want to buy space, that’s their right.
Yet it is funny the word “right” should pop up. The newspaper business lives off the benefits of free speech, which all citizens enjoy, but none more than news outlets, who put out so much of it. The First Amendment offers government protection against almost all lawsuits from angry politicians, lazy ballplayers, and dim-witted celebrities whose exploits may be reported to their dismay. Should there be a societal expectation that the proprietors of such privileged enterprises owe a little something back—perhaps a calm acceptance of a lower profit margin than could be attained, say, in the car-leasing business? The TP, after all, is still reported to be profitable.
On the other hand, Advance has signaled—by this stumble-footed decision—that they don’t understand the New Orleans market. You can’t care about what you don’t understand.
Poor, poor Mike
Via a friend’s email, a luncheon with Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, who represents the Hellmouth. He’s a slimy little weasel, so I’m always happy to see people call him out. By the way, I’ve been to the free clinic he’s talking about, and while they’re good at what they do, they certainly don’t handle serious cases like cancer. It’s immoral of Fitz to pretend they do:
Yesterday Congressman Fitzpatrick had a $100 per plate fundraiser at the (out of district) Huntingdon Valley Country Club. A couple of his constituents came to ask him some questions. He, of course, talked in circles and avoided those questions. He was noticeably flustered. Both constituents have serious health problems and wanted to know how Rep. Fitzpatrick could vote for the Ryan budget (twice) which would cut health care for millions and privatize Medicare all while giving tax breaks to billionaires. Fitzpatrick avoided the questions and told the one gentlemen Dan, who wears a respirator, that he should rely on doctors to donate their services or he should go to the free clinic. Now that’s compassion!
Dan is on his wife’s health insurance plan now but is constantly afraid that she will lost her job and he will have no coverage. Fitzpatrick who has had his own health problems has bragged frequently that he is on his wife’s plan and not the government plan. But unlike Fitzpatrick, Dan cannot go on a taxpayer-funded congressional health plan if his wife loses his job.
After the fundraiser another constituent Walt, tried to ask Fitzpatrick a question about his health care situation but Fitzpatrick left the room to avoid him. He also tried to approach Senator Toomey, who was also there, but Toomey made a beeline for the door. Walt and I approached Fitzpatrick who had retreated to an adjacent room and were reprimanded and kicked out by Fitzpatrick’s campaign manager.
Paul Krugman is tired of you people
As anyone who’s ever owned a car probably knows, money serves the same function for the economy as oil does for the engine of your car. We all know what happens when you let the car run out of oil (there’s a very good reason why they call that dashboard warning signal an “idiot light”). You know you can add a tiny bit of oil and get the engine working again, but you’re a damned fool if you don’t put in the full amount ASAP.
Those of us who know basic car maintenance can be, yes, a little bit annoyed with people who don’t understand how to take care of their own vehicle.
And that’s what Paul Krugman’s been talking about for four years now. The Bush administration, followed by the Obama administration, didn’t use enough stimulus oil and the engine of the economy has slowed to a crawl. (Hey pal, don’t you see that flashing IDIOT LIGHT?)
When you have a problem with your engine, the solution isn’t to drain the rest of the oil.
For those four years, I’ve watched Krugman try to explain things reasonably, trying not to offend people. He had the liberal’s fatal flaw: “This is just a matter of giving people the right information and obviously, then they’ll want to do the right thing.” I’d sit and watch, thinking, “When is he going to realize they’re trying to destroy the government and he has to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt?”
Seems like he’s finally reached that point. Good!
The slow, painful death of Dodd-Frank
Matt Taibbi explains why, even if we pass relatively meaningful financial services reform, it’s gutted by the lobbyists before it goes into effect. Read it and weep.
Please support Rolling Stone by subscribing. They are literally the only publication out there devoting major resources to covering these crooks.
GOP fights to keep military fossil-fueled
How will members of Congress who are owned by Big Oil respond to calls for a “greener” military? This one’s a no-brainer, as they say on sports-talk radio:
… The House GOP included a measure in the defense authorization bill this month prohibiting the Defense Department from buying alternative fuels if they cost more than “traditional fossil fuel.” And the Senate Armed Services Committee last week followed suit with an “even tougher” provision mirroring the House version but also exempts DOD from clean energy standards…
Throwdown
Huffington Post:
One of the most vexing elements of the Social Security debate, for both sides, is that so much of it comes down to basic math that it seems like it ought to be an easy thing to solve. We’re not talking about the cost of an MIR here. Yet the two sides can’t agree on much of anything. (Now, HuffPost Hill thinks that’s because the private-equity-funded side is just lying, but whatever.) So Daniel Marans, a young whippersnapper with the liberal Social Security Works, challenged Simpson to debate the program. We called up Simpson, and he quickly agreed. “All they have to do is read the [Bowles-Simpson] report and it tells you exactly what we plan to do with Social Security. It’s very clear. If they’ll read the report, then I’ll talk to them. I want them to read the 67 page report, especially what it says about Social Security and making it solvent for people their age,” he said. “But if they want to know how to save the system so that when they’re 65 they won’t get a check for 25 percent less, yes, I can try to help them.” (Under Simpson’s plan, which would raise the retirement age, they’d actually get zero at 65, but whatever.) Simpson said he worried the debate was “just gonna be a bunch of emotional claptrap,” but he said he was up for it nonetheless. HuffPost is happy to host, but we need a venue. Maybe the American Legion on Capitol Hill? We’re still working out the details, but we’re looking forward to this one.
Transparency
How on earth can you shop around when no one tells you what anything costs? Answer: Profit!
One of the main criticisms of consumer-driven health care is that, today, consumers have no way of figuring out how much a particular health care service costs. Indeed, one of the reasons that health care is so expensive in America is because people have no idea what they’re paying for it. Hence, it’s important for reformers to encourage hospitals and doctors to become more transparent about the prices they charge for these services. But an Arizona bill to do just that was killed—by the state’s Republican legislature.
Yesterday, Chad Terhune of the Los Angeles Times told the story of Jo Ann Synder, a woman who was charged $6,707 for a CT scan, after she had undergone colon surgery. Her insurance plan, Blue Shield of California, billed her for $2,336, and paid for the rest. But Snyder was shocked to discover that, if she had paid for the scan herself, out-of-pocket, she would have only had to pay $1,054.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she told the Times. “I was really upset that I got charged so much and Blue Shield allowed that. You expect them to work harder for you and negotiate a better deal.”
Los Alamitos Medical Center, Terhune found, charges $4,423 for an abdominal CT scan. Blue Shield’s negotiated rate is about $2,400. But Los Alamitos told Terhune that its cash price for the scan would be $250.
In Arizona, a state senator named Nancy Barto (R.), who chairs the senate’s Health Care and Medical Liability Reform Committee, sponsored a bill, SB 1384, targeted directly at this problem. The bill would require health care facilities to “make available to the public on request in a single document the direct pay price for at least the fifty most used diagnosis-related group codes…and at least the fifty most used outpatient service codes…for the facility.” Doctors would be similarly required to publish the direct-pay prices for their 25 most common services.
The idea is that patients who have health savings accounts need to know what various doctors and hospitals charge for their services, so that they can shop for value when they need care.
Sen. Barto’s bill passed the Arizona Senate, but it died in March in the state’s House of Representatives, where Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee refused to send the bill to the full House for a vote. (Republicans control both houses of the Arizona state legislature, along with the governorship.)
“Do we want free market health care?” Sen. Barto asked in a recent blog post. “Then why have common sense reforms that will produce one been opposed, defeated and/or vetoed at the legislature for the last 2 years—even though we have a Republican Governor and Republican supermajority?”It’s a good question. “The short answer,” she writes, “is swarms of lobbyists. The longer answer is legislators succumbing to lobbyists on issues that should be rather plain.”
Koch brothers war chest
Sneaky little bastards, aren’t they?
Florida expert suspended for refusing wetlands permit
Wetlands are a vital part of the ecosystem, and there are all sorts of shenanigans that go on with the state mitigation programs – Florida being infamous for all kinds of backchannel practices:
Florida’s top state wetlands expert has been suspended after she refused to issue a permit on a controversial project — one that she said her boss was willing to bend the rules to approve.
The project: turning a North Florida pine plantation into a business that attempts to make up for wetlands that are wiped out by new roads and development. At stake: millions of dollars in wetland “credits” that can be sold to government and developers.
The problem, according to a May 9 memo from Department of Environmental Protection wetlands expert Connie Bersok, is that the owners want the DEP to give them lots of wetland credits for land that isn’t wet.
After being told by Deputy Secretary Jeff Littlejohn to ignore the rules she had followed on other permits, Bersok wrote, “I hereby state my objection to the intended agency action and refusal to recommend this permit for issuance.”
Two days later, Bersok was suspended pending an investigation, her personnel file shows. She declined to comment for this article without DEP permission. DEP officials would not allow a reporter to speak with her. A spokeswoman would not discuss her case.
“It smells really bad to me,” said Aliki Moncrief, a former DEP attorney who is now executive director of Environment Florida, an activist group.
The application that led to Bersok’s suspension came from the Highlands Ranch Mitigation Bank, which has repeatedly tussled with permitting officials.
“They’re scrappy, these guys,” said Glenn Lowe, who lost his job with the St. Johns River Water Management District after he refused to give Highlands Ranch what its owners wanted. Former water district executive director Kirby Green said Lowe and other employees lost their jobs because Gov. Rick Scott’s pro-business administration didn’t like the way they treated Highlands Ranch.