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If life does begin at conception as claimed by Gov. Bobby, he may be constitutionally prohibited from seeking presidency

Posted in Courts, Economy, Elections, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Politicians, Transparency on March 11, 2015| 18 Comments »

Gov. Bobby has a serious problem.

Yeah, we know. We have to narrow that down a bit.

We already know about his ethical and moral problems. But more specifically, he has a major constitutional problem.

We’re not talking about the Louisiana State Constitution here; we’re talking about the U.S. Constitution.

And all you birthers out there who have gotten your innards twisted in knots trying to prove that President Obama is (a) not a U.S. citizen and (b) is a closet Islamist working from within to bring this country down, we have a new assignment for you along those same lines.

And you aren’t going to like it because this time the shoe is on the other foot, i.e. the right (as in right-wing) foot. What follows has been alluded to on several occasions in comments to blogs and online news stories but to our knowledge, no one has written extensively on the subject.

Now pay attention because this gets a little dicey and will require that you follow some logic and everyone knows by now that Gov. Bobby’s faithful followers aren’t very logical. They seem to prefer that he do their thinking for them.

It is common knowledge that Gov. Bobby has aligned himself solidly with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) and Gene Mills of the Family Forum. In fact, one might say that Gov. Bobby is joined at the left hip by one and the right hip by the other. Which hip doesn’t really matter.

In fact, not quite two years ago, Gov. Bobby even appointed Perkins to the Louisiana Law Enforcement Commission, though Gov. Bobby’s office, for whatever reason, steadfastly denied the appointment until it finally became the subject of national news. http://cenlamar.com/2013/09/26/bobby-jindal-appoints-unethical-hate-monger-tony-perkins-to-law-enforcement-commission/

About that same time, Gov. Bobby attended a Family Forum banquet and posed with Mills as the two held Mills’s “Gladiator” sword, whatever that is.

Bobby Jindal holding Gene Mills's "Gladiator" sword during last week's Louisiana Family Forum banquet

And just last month, it was learned that Gov. Bobby will be traveling to Israel next fall as the special guest of Perkins’ FRC. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/02/bobby_jindal_israel_tony_perki.html

Perkins and Mills, both personally and through their respective organizations, have continued to oppose abortion and to maintain that life begins at conception. That, of course, is their right but it’s important to point out here that Gov. Bobby is right there with them on this issue, even vetoing a bill that would have allowed contracts for surrogate births. In vetoing the bill, he said life is created by God, not a test tube.

In fact, Gov. Bobby has claimed that it is a biological fact that life begins at conception.

And therein lies his knotty little constitutional problem.

Are you keeping up? We hope so, because it’s about to get a bit more difficult to follow.

According to the U.S. Constitution, one must be a natural born citizen of this country to become president. And we concede that Gov. Bobby was indeed born in this country on June 10, 1971.

Without wading into the argument ourselves about just when life begins, it is nevertheless important to note that his parents immigrated to America from India when his mother was three months pregnant—meaning that while he may have been born here, he was actually conceived in India.  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/world/americas/22iht-22louisiana.7991675.html?_r=1&

So here’s the logic: If life begins at conception, a claim Gov. Bobby says is supported by biological fact (and remember, he was a biology major at Ivy League Brown University), and if he was conceived in India, then he would have to necessarily be considered a native of India and therefore constitutionally disqualified from seeking the U.S. presidency.

We know that’s a bitter pill for him and Timmy Teepell to swallow, but the facts are the facts—and they are supported by no less than biological science, according to none other than Gov. Bobby himself.

So, the way we see it, he’s in something of a pickle. He has boxed himself in, outsmarted himself, as it were. Consequently, he now has no choice other than to announce that he not only will not, but cannot, seek the Republican nomination for president because of that pesky little constitutional prohibition.

We are certain that a man of his unimpeachable ethics and high moral character would never wish to ascend to the presidency on the mere technicality that he was born in this country when it must be his inevitable conviction that his life began at conception—in India.

As an added twist to the plot, let’s consider the question of religion.

Some of Obama’s detractors, and there are many (and we’re not exactly fans either, for that matter), have tossed out broad hints that he may just be a secret Islamic agent in disguise with the intent of bringing down this country on behalf of his Islamic brotherhood.

But wait! Isn’t he a Baptist? No matter. That’s just his cover.

Well, then, what about Gov. Bobby?

That’s not fair, his supporters (mostly limited to his staffers by now) might protest. Everyone knows he is a devout Catholic. Why, by his own admission, he even performed an exorcism while a student at Brown.

And what about all those visits to the north Louisiana Protestant churches where he handed out those giant federal checks to communities during his first term?

Pretty clever, eh? Pose as a good Catholic, conduct an exorcism and even write a paper about it later like it was the real deal and then suck up to the Baptists just to support your cover. Quite the chameleon. But deep down, he could be a Hindu—like his parents. Why, his parents could have been dispatched to this country by the Hindu hierarchy with the express intent of grooming him for the presidency just so he could then dismantle the entire country in the same manner that he has destroyed Louisiana’s economy, higher education and health care and then hand the entire country over to India.

We have to be completely honest, however, and admit that scenario is not only lame, but downright ludicrous. Offensive? Maybe. Politically incorrect? Most definitely.

Frankly, we much prefer the life at conception disqualification theory. It smacks of just enough hypocrisy to fit Gov. Bobby like a glove.

Plus, if it gains traction, Timmy Teepell might even actually find it necessary to go out into the private sector and work for a living like the rest of us.

 

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Gov. Bobby’s misleading claims in USA Today op-ed piece mindful of 2011 TV ad on job gains in reelection campaign

Posted in Elections, Governor's Office, Jobs, Layoffs, Media, Politicians, Transparency on March 10, 2015| 10 Comments »

As we wrote in Monday’s post, Gov. Bobby appears to be quite adept at embellishing the facts when it comes to his claims of resuscitating a moribund Louisiana economy. But a seasoned politician should know better than to put claims out there that are so easily debunked.

Of course, we have to give him credit: he was apparently way ahead of the curve on using private emails to conduct public business. While the national media is obsessing over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account as a means of keeping the public in the dark, the Louisiana media, namely AP’s Melinda Deslatte, called Jindal and his staff out more than two years ago on that very issue. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/top-jindal-aides-use-personal-email-strategize

But back to the matter of Gov. Bobby’s pumping up his résumé. Back in September of 2011, LouisianaVoice cited his inaccurate claims in TV ads during his 2011 reelection campaign. https://louisianavoice.com/2011/09/29/jindal-plays-fast-and-loose-with-jobs-claim-tv-campaign-ad/

In those ads, he made all sorts of claims about the number of jobs created during his first term. He named 17 companies across the state, leaving the unspoken impression that each was a new company when in fact many were companies already domiciled in Louisiana that announced expansions which were, in all likelihood, already in the planning before he ever took office.

The ad flashed purported job gains for which he took full credit. But a closer look at the actual number of jobs as posted on the companies’ own web sites should have raised eyebrows then and certainly should result in anything he says now to being taken with a huge grain of salt.

For example, he claimed responsibility for the following figures (actual jobs created are in parenthesis):

  • 3,970 new jobs at the Foster Farms chicken processing plant in Union Parish (1,060);
  • 6,050 new jobs at the Nucor Steel plant in St. James Parish (650);
  • 1,570 jobs at Blade Dynamics in New Orleans (600);
  • 1,300 jobs at Globemaster in Covington (500);
  • 2,282 jobs at LaShip in Terrebonne Parish (1,000);
  • 1,253 jobs at DG Foods in Bastrop (317);
  • 1,970 new jobs resulting from CenturyLink expansion in Monroe (1,150);
  • 1,920 new jobs at the ConAgra sweet potato processing plant in Delhi (500);
  • 650 new jobs from expansion of Schlumberger oilfield equipment company in Shreveport (120);
  • 500 new jobs from Ronpak fast food packaging company in Shreveport (175);
  • 446 new jobs at Northwest Pipe (120);
  • 805 jobs at Zagis USA in Jefferson Davis Parish (161);
  • 880 new jobs from expansion of Aeroframe facility in Lake Charles (300);
  • 727 new jobs at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass terminal in Cameron Parish (77);
  • 339 new jobs at the Northrop Grumman facility in Lake Charles (80)

In all, Gov. Bobby’s 2011 TV ad claimed that he created 25,425 new jobs through the Department of Economic Development when in fact only 6,729 new jobs were actually created, or about 26.5 percent of the total claimed.

And now, with Gov. Bobby flailing away like a drowning man in his desperate attempt to gain traction in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, makes a whole new laundry list of distorted claims in Monday’s USA Today op-ed piece that reads more like a campaign ad than a legitimate opinion piece.

We listed several of those in Monday’s post but overlooked one major claim, the inaccuracy of which came to light on Tuesday when LouisianaVoice received its monthly report from the Louisiana Department of Civil Service.

That report, which is a public record not controlled by the Division of Administration and Commissioner Kristy Nichols and thus, immediately available to any member of the public, is the monthly state employee layoff report and when comparing its contents with Gov. Bobby’s USA Today claim, the differences were quite striking.

You will need to scroll down to the third page to get to the meat of the report but the gist of it is that since Fiscal year 2008-2009, which started six months prior to Gov. Bobby’s first taking office, the number of state jobs abolished is 13,577 and the number of actual employees laid off is 8,396 (the difference is that were 5,181 of those that were vacant positions). ELIMINATED STATE POSITIONS BY YEAR

And, it should be noted, the bulk of those layoffs were the result of his giving away the state’s charity hospital system and, in the process, separating thousands of medical staffers from the state payroll.

That’s a far cry from Gov. Bobby’s spouting that there are “over 30,000 fewer state workers then when we took office in 2008.”

In fact, the actual reduction in the number of employees is 72 percent lower than the number he claims.

That’s 194 percent higher than his current approval rating of 27 percent.

It’s enough to make one wonder if the man is even capable of telling the truth—and that’s no embellishment.

 

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Say it ain’t so, Bobby; tell us DHH (your area of expertise) is not a party to Ethics violation with Kliebert’s brother-in-law

Posted in Audit Reports, Commissions, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, DHH, Ethics, Health Care, Privatization, Transparency on February 26, 2015| 4 Comments »

There is more damage control awaiting the most ethical administration in Louisiana history and just as with the Bruce Greenstein saga, the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) is front and center.

The Louisiana Board of Ethics last Thursday (Feb. 19) voted to file ethics charges against Galen Schum, DHH Secretary Kathy Kliebert’s brother-in-law, because of his failure to comply with state law requiring him to report income he received from a company under contract to DHH. ETHICS CHARGES

On Nov. 17, 2011, while Schum was serving as Director of Regional Operations for the Office of Behavioral Health (OBH), Magellan Health Services signed a two-year contract with OBH to administer behavioral health managed care services for children and adults.

That contract, approved on Jan. 23, 2012, and which went into effect on Mar. 1, 2012, was originally in the amount of $354 million for two years, but was amended to a three-year contract for $547.78 million and is scheduled to expire on Saturday.

On Feb. 13, 2012, just three weeks after the contract was approved and just over two weeks before it went into effect, Schum submitted a job application to Magellan and was hired on Feb. 27, only two days before the contract took effect.

He resigned from Magellan on Jan. 31, 2014 but during the time he was employed there, he earned more than $146,000 in salary, according to documents obtained by LouisianaVoice.

Kliebert was serving as Deputy Secretary of DHH when the Magellan contract was approved on Nov. 17, 2011, and remained in that capacity until April 1, 2013, when she was elevated to her current position of Secretary.

State law (R.S. 42:1114) provides with respect to the filing of financial disclosure statements, “…that each public servant and each member of his immediate family who derives anything of economic value, directly, through any transaction involving the agency of such public servant or who derives anything of economic value of which he may be reasonably expected to know through a person which (1) is regulated by the agency of such public servant, or (2) has bid on or entered into or is in any way financially interested in any contract, subcontract, or any transaction under the supervision or jurisdiction of the agency of such public servant shall disclose the following:

  • The amount of income or value of any thing of economic value derived;
  • The nature of the business activity;
  • Name and address, and relationship to the public servant, if applicable, and
  • The name and business address of the legal entity, if applicable.

The disclosure statement is required to be filed each year by May 1 and shall include such information for the previous calendar year.

R.S. 42:1102 defines “immediate family” as the children of the public servant, spouses of his children, his siblings and their spouses, his parents, spouse and the spouse’s parents.

“Galen Schum violated …the Code of Governmental Ethics by failing to file a financial disclosure statement on or before May 1, 2013, disclosing income received during 2012 from Magellan Health Services, Inc., and on or before May 1, 2014…at a time when Magellan Health Services, Inc. had a contract with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals—Office of Behavioral Health and while his sister-in-law, Kathy Kliebert, served as the Deputy Secretary and Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals,” the Board of Ethics document says.

The board issued a formal request that the Ethics Adjudicatory Board:

  • Conduct a hearing on the foregoing charges;
  • Determine that Galen Schum has violated (state law) with respect to the foregoing counts, and
  • Assess an appropriate penalty in accordance with the recommendation of the Louisiana Board of Ethics to be submitted at the hearing.

Other documents obtained by LouisianaVoice indicate that Schum, on Jan. 18, 2011, in his capacity as Director of Regional Operations for OBH, presented a report to the Louisiana Commission on Addictive Disorders on the status of OBH’s ongoing privatization efforts—efforts which led directly to the awarding of the Magellan contract.

It was at that same Jan. 18 meeting that Kliebert announced to the commission that she had been selected as the new DHH Deputy Secretary and would be leaving her position at OBH.

Schum also participated in a commission meeting on Oct. 11, 2011, at which time he gave the commission “a brief update on the Louisiana Behavioral Health Partnership,” according to commission minutes of that meeting.

Schum said that the selection of the Statewide Management Organization (SMO) had been completed and that Magellan Health Services “was the vendor selected to be the Louisiana SMO, and that the Office of Behavioral Health was currently involved in the contract negotiation process with Magellan.”

Finally, the minutes of a Magellan Governance Board meeting of June 20, 2012, indicate that Schum was employed as a Reporting Analyst for the company.

Magellan had come under sharp criticism from the Legislative Auditor’s office in August of 2013 in a report that said the administration’s privatization of mental health and addictive disorder treatment programs had created confusion and added costs for local human services district that provide the care. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/audit_shows_privatization_of_m.html

That audit report, which examined privatization results at human services districts in Baton Rouge, Houma, New Orleans and Amite, said privatization had caused problems with claims payments which increased costs for the districts and made it more difficult for the districts to receive reimbursement for services. The report also said the districts lost money under a requirement that they use Magellan’s electronic health records system.

The Capital Area Human Services District in Baton Rouge, for example, told auditors that its administrative costs for billing claims had increased $270,000 a year since the privatization took effect. That cost was attributed to problems with claims reconciliation and collection, the audit said.

Meanwhile, the report said, DHH failed to ensure that Magellan processed claims in a timely manner, often taking weeks or months to process claims. The report also said DHH failed to penalize the company when it did not meet planning and technical benchmarks. “No sanctions have been imposed on Magellan for not meeting all required contract provisions,” it said.

Just another Jindaled state agency headed for yet another privatized train wreck.

But don’t say we never warned you.

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Auctioneer Board attorney Larry Bankston advises denial of inspection of auctioneer files that clearly are public records

Posted in Auditor, Boards, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency on January 14, 2015| 11 Comments »

By Robert Burns

Special to LouisianaVoice

As many Louisiana Voice readers are aware, I am a former auctioneer and was appointed by Gov. Jindal to the Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board (LALB) during the early months of his first term. What I encountered was corruption both on the board itself and among auctioneers in the industry. I sent regular emails to the head of boards and commissions routinely expressing my shock and dismay. In less than two years, Jindal terminated my services, providing no other explanation other than, “things just aren’t working out.”

The next meeting after my termination, I began videotaping auctioneer meetings and have continued to do so to this day. I also have made occasional public records requests to view auctioneer files. My purpose in reviewing those files is that often times consumer complaints are filed and LALB attorney Anna Dow works with the complainant and the auctioneer to work the complaint out.  These solutions, however, are never even referenced to the board itself and even board members themselves are in the dark as to their existence.  Basically, Dow keeps the board members on a “needs to know basis,” and it was my experience as a board member that she deemed me to “need to know” very little. Hence, the only way anyone (board member or member of the public) can know of these complaints and other auctioneer issues is to examine the auctioneers’ files.

Louisiana Association of Professional Auctioneer (LAPA)’s founder and President, Rev. Freddie Lee Phillips, and I have been concerned about the sheer number of such complaints and some troubling details of these “workouts.”  Examples include:  One auctioneer, William Jones,  deceiving the LALB for eight years about his state of residency; National Auctioneer Association (NAA) Hall-of-Famer Keith Babb threatening a complainant against pursuing a complaint against him, and complainant Robert Kite alleging collusion and shill bidding entailing NAA Hall-of-Famer Marvin Henderson and NAA Past-President Joe Wilson. None of this type of information is available anywhere but in auctioneer files. Accordingly, we decided the best thing for us to do is conduct an audit of all auctioneer files. Because the LALB is a one-person office (with the individual almost never actually working in the office but rather working from home), we knew this should be a project extended out over a 2-3 year timeframe so as not to impose too great of a burden on the office.  Accordingly, I made this simple public records request of 12/4/14 for the first 10 files. Material gleaned from the files is incorporated into this indexed webpage of auctioneers having issues with the LALB.

The one-person executive director of the LALB, Sandy Edmonds, balked at the public records requests associated with the project.  Edmonds is the same one who has been cited by the Inspector General’s Office for payroll fraud and lying about it to investigators. Specifically, she reported both to the LALB and the Interior Design Board that she was “on the clock” even though she actually was on vacation. They subpoenaed her cell phone records, after which she refused to answer any more of their questions.

Edmonds is paid $32.67/hour, or $25, 480 for the LALB and $25/hour, or $32,500 for the Interior Design Board ($57,980 total). She received numerous pay raises which Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera characterized as illegal.

In a meeting on January 3, 2013, Inspector General Lead Investigator Tom Boulton said, “There is no such thing as a performance-based employee.  It’s illegal.” Both he and Inspector General Investigator Rob Chadwick said that they found it inconceivable that the office for both boards (it’s a shared office) is almost never occupied, and both men wanted to know how much rent was being paid for an essentially-unoccupied building.

Purpera, whose office also investigated the work setup, issued this damning report, and referred the whole matter to East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore for possible prosecution of Edmonds for payroll fraud. When Vice Chairman James Sims asked what the LALB should do about the Legislative Auditor report, Board Attorney Anna Dow relayed “nothing,” and Edmonds added, “Welcome to politics,” and indicated that Jindal himself said they were not to worry about it and that the board “cannot” recover funds which Edmonds had been overpaid. Board Chairman Tessa Steinkamp said, “We have to follow the Governor.”

Why re-hash old news?  Well, at the LALB meeting of Tuesday, January 15, 2015, Board Attorney (and convicted felon) Larry S. Bankston asked the Board to deny future requests from me and to seek “legal instruction from the court.” Notice how vague he is about the timeframe of the project (i.e. he neglects to inform the board that this is a 2-3 year project.

The board did not respond to Bankston’s request for it to resist my public records requests, but in light of Edmonds’ past employment reports issued by the Inspector General’s Office and the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office, we feel the public has a right to full disclosure about auctioneer problems, and clearly this is a legal requirement Edmunds has no intention of meeting.  She has even insisted that public records requests be subcontracted out to the Attorney General’s Office, which charges $50 per hour for that service.

Just another episode of typical Louisiana political chicanery.

 

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Five-member state GOP Congressional delegation votes to sacrifice employee pay; protects corporate CEO tax breaks

Posted in Congress, Ethics, House, Taxes, Transparency on January 11, 2015| 8 Comments »

Pulitzer Prize winning author Hedrick Smith’s best-selling book Who Stole the American Dream? is a real eye-opener for anyone who still believes our elected officials in Washington are the watchdogs of democracy and are ever-vigilant in protecting the interests of their constituents (that would be you and me).

Smith is not the only one who has tried to warn us of the unholy alliance between Wall Street, large corporations, lobbyists and members of Congress. Charles Derber’s Corporation Nation, says one critic, “is the single best explanation of how big corporations have usurped the power of ordinary citizens…”

David Cay Johnston, another Pulitzer winner, has three books (Free Lunch, Perfectly Legal and The Fine Print) that illustrate how complicated tax laws and federal regulations favor the very rich by transferring the tax burden and other costs to the fast disappearing middle class.

For our purposes here, however, we shall limit the discussion to Smith and his book by highlighting some of the book’s timeline:

  • 1950—Top CEO salary in America: GM chairman Charlie Wilson is paid $663,000, roughly  $5  million  in  today’s  dollars,  and  about  40  times the annual wage of his average assembly line worker. Corporate ethic frowned on CEOs taking stock grants as unfair “competitive avarice.” Economists call this period “The Great Compression because the income gap between the rich and the middle class is at its narrowest in the twentieth century.
  • November 1967—Pat  O’Neill, at nineteen, starts a thirty-five-year career with United Airlines  as  a  jet  airline  mechanic,  working  the  overnight  “graveyard  shift”  at Chicago’s   O’Hare  field. He works his way up to chief mechanic, making $60,000 a year, leading a crew that does repairs and safety checks so that planes are ready to be airborne by dawn.
  • August 1971—Corporate attorney Lewis Powell sparks a political rebellion with his call to arms for Corporate America. Circulated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell’s   memo warns that anti-business attitudes and government regulation are threatening to “fatally weaken or destroy” the American free enterprise system. Powell declares that business must arm itself politically, battle organized labor and consumer activists, and mount a long-term campaign to change the balance of power and policy trends in Washington. Later that same year, President Nixon appointed Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • 1971–1972—The CEOs  of  America’s  biggest  corporations, responding to Powell’s  memo, organize the Business Roundtable, which becomes the most potent political lobbying arm of Corporate America. The National Association of Manufacturers moves its headquarters to Washington. In one decade the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doubles its membership and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (small business) grows from 300 to 600,000 members.
  • 1973—The productivity of U.S. workers rises 96 percent since 1945, and average hourly compensation rises in tandem—94 percent from 1945 to 1973. Average Americans share in the nation’s prosperity.  In the next three decades, from 1973 to 2011, worker productivity rises another 80 percent but hourly compensation rises only 10 percent. Ordinary Americans are cut out of their share of the nation’s economic gains.
  • October 1976—Inspired by their mentor, free market economist Milton Friedman, business school professors Michael Jensen and William Meckling propose in an academic study that CEOs be given stock options to align their interests with those of stockholders. Corporate boards, seeing an advantage because options are not charged as a company expense, adopt this “pay for performance” idea, and by 1980, 30 percent of CEOs are receiving stock option grants.
  • Late 1970s—Business mobilizes politically. The number of companies with Washington lobbying offices grows from 175 in 1971 to 2,445 a decade later. Along with 2,000 different trade associations, businesses have a combined Washington staff of 50,000, plus 9,000 lobbyists and 8,000 public relations specialists. Business lobbyists and advocates now outnumber members of Congress by 130 to 1.
  • 1980—Congress passes a deregulatory bill that overrules state usury laws and effectively abolishes limits on interest rates for first mortgages, paving the way for the future subprime mortgage boom.
  • 1994—The CEO stock option boom takes off. 70 percent of CEOs now receive stock option grants and by 2000, grants of millions of stock options become the norm, hugely increasing CEO pay. Corporate executives overtake the inherited rich as the biggest portion of the nation’s richest 1 percent.
  • 2001–2003—The Federal Reserve, led by Chairman Alan Greenspan, cuts interest rates 11 times from 6.5 percent to 1 percent, providing cheap money to fuel a housing boom and revive the U.S. economy. Home prices rise so fast that Americans borrow $700 billion a year from their home equity. Despite warnings about the dangers of rising personal  debt,  Greenspan  hails  home  owners’  “equity  extraction”  as  the  engine  for consumer demand and economic growth.
  • 2003—Airline  mechanic  Pat  O’Neill  retires from United Airlines after 35 years on the job, but when United Airlines declares bankruptcy, his lifetime pension is drastically cut, and his employee stock option plan collapses. His 401(k) suffers from a sharp stock market decline and he is forced to take another job. To rebuild financially, O’Neill is still working today, and he expects never to retire.
  • 2005–2006—More than half of the people to whom banks sell subprime mortgage loans, at high interest rates with heavy fees, are actually solid mainstream middle-class borrowers who qualified for—and should have been sold—prime loans.
  • 2006—Oracle CEO Larry Ellision, with $706.1 million in pay and stock in 2001, tops a Wall Street Journal compilation of the biggest CEO pay packages from 1995 to 2005. Close behind are Michael Eisner of Disney, with payouts of $575.6 million in 1999 and $203 million in 1993; and Sandy Weill of Citigroup, with pay of $621.8 million in three big years between 1997 and 2000.
  • July 4, 2007—Hundreds  of  workers  at  Sunbeam Razor’s  profitable plant in McMinnville, Tennessee, are laid off and ordered to train their replacements in a factory in Mexico, in a firing ordered by Sunbeam CEO Al Dunlap. Dunlap has makes a personal fortune as a serial downsizer of businesses. Jack Wahl, owner of Sunbeam competitor Wahl Clipper Corporation, criticizes the Sunbeam layoffs as shortsighted and “extremely wasteful,” and says his company runs profitably with U.S. workers.
  • 2007—The richest 1 percent take a near-record 23 percent of the personal incomes paid to all Americans, earning a combined $1.35 trillion a year, which is more than the entire economies of Canada, Italy, or France.
  • 2007—Among economic sectors, corporate profits see their share of national income rise during the Bush years to the highest level since 1943, while the share of national income going to employee salaries and wages sinks to its lowest level since 1929.
  • 2008—In a Cornell University survey, 57 percent of people say they have never benefited from any government program or policy. But questioned in more detail, it turns out that 94 percent have actually benefited from at least one program. The average person has used four government programs.
  • 2009—After a taxpayer bailout, big Wall Street banks rebuff President Obama’s appeal to “hire American.” They continue offshore hiring and domestic layoffs. In the 2000s, the Hackett Group reports, 3.9 million jobs in finance, IT, human resources, and back-office functions have been lost in North America and Europe. In 2011, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup sign new contracts to offshore $5 billion worth of ITJ and back-office work to Indian firms.
  • 2010—Wall Street financial firms hire 1,447 former government officials as lobbyists to fight new banking regulation legislation, attempting to eliminate or water down provisions for strict regulations. After the bill passes, Wall Street bankers and lobbyists continue the battle to delay or weaken new regulations.
  • 2010—In the Congressional elections of 2010, business interests outspend labor $1.3 billion to $79 million, a 16-to-1 advantage for business. In soft-money contributions to political parties, rather than donations made directly to candidates through political action committees, the business advantage is 97-to-1 ($972 million for business to $10 million for labor).
  • 2010—Thirty-three of 60 new Tea Party members elected to the House are millionaires. Tea Party members have an average net worth of $1.8 million. Overall, 261 of the 535 senators and House representatives are millionaires—49 percent compared to 1 percent among the public at large. http://hedricksmith.com/timeline-who-stole-the-american-dream/

The CEOs of the top corporations in the U.S. made, on average, 331 times the wages of the average rank-and-file U.S. worker in 2013, compared to that 4:1 ratio reported in 1950. The CEO-to-minimum-wage-worker pay ratio was 774:1. http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014

Between 1978 and 2013, CEO compensation increased 937 percent.

The pay increase of non-supervisory workers during this same time period? 10.2 percent.  http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/

The breaks enjoyed by super rich at the expense of Joe the Plumber are such that even Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in America, publicly acknowledged the disparity. Noting that his 2010 tax rate was lower than that paid by 20 of his employees.

“While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,” he said. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

So, what has all this to do with the price of eggs?

Plenty.

The House this week defeated by a vote of 168-243 House Resolution 5 which would have barred tax deductions for executive pay packages in excess of $1 million unless the company raised worker pay by a percentage tied to its productivity.

We suppose the executives of Wal-Mart need all the help they can get. WAL-MART TAX BREAKS

So how did the Louisiana delegation vote?

Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond (2nd District) was the only one of the six to vote in favor of the interests of workers over those of in the executive offices.

Voting “no” on the measure were newly elected Reps. Garrett Graves (6th District) and Ralph Abraham (5th District), as well as Steve Scalise (1st District), Charles Boustany (3rd District) and John Fleming (4th District).

We don’t feel that extending even more generous tax breaks for corporate executives to the detriment of those on whose backs they made their fortunes was in the best interest of Louisiana citizens who elected them to be their voices in Washington.

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