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

January 14, 2015 by tomaswell

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.

 

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

If you think Chance McNeely’s appointment to head DEQ compliance was an insult, just get a handle on his salary

January 13, 2015 by tomaswell

It took a while but we have an update on Chance McNeely, the 26-year-old who recently made the quantum leap from a policy analyst for the governor’s office to Assistant Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Office of Environmental Compliance.

Before we get to that, however, let’s review a couple of items.

What’s it been, five years now that state classified employees have gone without a pay raise?

And didn’t the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) recently raise premiums and reduce benefits, all because Gov. Bobby Jindal manipulated premiums to help cover gaping holes in his state budget, thereby reducing the OGB reserve fund from more than $500 million to something like half that amount?

And hasn’t Jindal issued two expenditure freezes and two hiring freezes within the past 12 months, even specifying that no agency could “use employee transfers, promotions, reallocations or the creation of new positions” in order to circumvent the freezes?

So how is it that Chance McNeely, with a degree in agricultural business and all of four years’ experience (three of those as a legislative assistant for the U.S. House of Representatives. And just what does a legislative assistant do in Washington?), is deemed to be qualified to oversee something as critical as environmental compliance?

As this is being written, there is a federal trial ongoing in Baton Rouge over leaks of toxic chemicals at a DuPont chemical plant in Ascension Parish. But it’s a whistleblower suit, not one initiated by any regulatory agency. And does anyone remember the 1978 death of a truck driver at Bayou Sorrel? That happened when the driver exited his truck and was overcome by lethal chemical fumes.

Most of the state’s environmental issues are situated in South Louisiana, primarily along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans—the corridor that has been dubbed, deservedly so, as Cancer Alley.

But North Louisiana is not immune. The most controversial issue in the state right now is that proposed open tray burn of 15 million pounds of M6 artillery shell propellant at Camp Minden. Experts say cancer-causing emissions could be spread from Shreveport to Monroe.

We don’t know Chance McNeely, but it is the position of LouisianaVoice that given our track record in protecting Louisiana’s air and water, the job of environmental compliance should be entrusted to (a) someone with an environmental background and (b) someone with vastly more experience.

And the position most certainly should not have been handed to someone who purportedly is planning to walk away come next September in favor of entering law school.

But, adding insult to injury, McNeely’s salary, according to State Civil Service records, just increased by a whopping 57 percent—from $65,000 per year to $102,000.

This for someone who has worked in the governor’s office as a policy analyst (we don’t know what that entails, either) for all of nine months when there are thousands of state employees who have been working for decades for much less than half that.

And DEQ Secretary Peggy Hatch can stand on top of the State Capitol and proclaim (as she already has, but not from atop the Capitol) that McNeely was her first choice for the job, but we aren’t buying it for one nano-second. She hired McNeely at Jindal’s specific instructions and was given her talking points as well.

If, as she claims, it was her idea to recruit someone with no experience for a position as important as environmental compliance for the entire State of Louisiana, then we contend she is no more qualified for her position than he.

But again, we know whose decision it was to make this horribly ill-advised move. And if the citizens of Louisiana were not already aware of how Jindal has turned his back on this state in favor of his own self-promotion, then this move should underscore it.

It’s the biggest slap in the face of the state’s four million citizens since, well, since 1996 when Gov. Mike Foster appointed a 24-year-old named Bobby Jindal as head of the Department of Health and Hospitals.

Posted in Politics | 13 Comments »

Taking a chance on Chance: or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the proposed M6 open burn at Camp Minden

January 12, 2015 by tomaswell

All you folks up in north Louisiana who have been burning up Facebook over that proposed open burn of the 15 million pounds of M6 propellant at Camp Minden need to relax.

All of you who have been in contact with Erin Brockovich in an effort to solicit advice on stopping the burn should just cool your jets.

All of you alarmist who have been saying serious health issues could result from the burn ought to go back to whatever your day job is.

And as for north Louisiana’s congressional delegation, you have your 2016 re-election to think about so perhaps you would be wise to start calling campaign contributors and stop worrying about such things as environmental toxins.

After all, as of today (Jan. 12), Chance McNeely is on the job—until next September anyway—as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Office of Environmental Compliance at a cool $102,000—a 36 percent bump from his $65,000-a-year salary in the governor’s office.

Not bad for a 26-year-old with virtually zero experience—especially considering how rank and file state employees have gone without pay raises for five years now.

The title alone should scare the bejeezus out of anyone who might endanger the health of residents by the open burning of 15 million pounds of ammunition propellant. I mean, it’s not like they’re spraying Agent Orange on the peach trees in Ruston.

Chance is a 2010 graduate of LSU (B.S. in agricultural business), which gives him four full years of experience in the real world. What more could we ask of someone in charge of compliance with environmental regulations?

Why, just look at his impressive curriculum vitae:

  • He worked for the U.S. House of Representatives from August 2010 to September 2010 (that’s an entire month, folks!);
  • He worked from September 2010 to May 2011 (nine months—almost enough time to give him tenure) as a program assistant (whatever that title entails) for the NRA (speaking of propellants);
  • He then returned to the U.S. House of Representatives as a legislative assistant in May of 2011 and remained there almost three years (that’s two years longer than Vance McAllister served the residents of Louisiana’s 5th District in Congress);
  • Since last March, he has served as a “policy advisor” for Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office. We’re somewhat in the dark as to what type advice an agricultural business major with four years’ experience may have provided Jindal, who has about as much knowledge of agriculture as he does of constructing $250 million wash ‘n’ wear berms in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Office of Environmental Compliance is charged with conducting inspections to ensure facilities are complying with terms of their permits, responding to complaints, evaluating of air and water conditions statewide, underground storage tank regulations and enforcement.

As DEQ liaison for the governor’s office, McNeely, 26, is said to have helped with air quality issues, landfill matters and the Explo Systems explosive issues near Minden. explo-la-4-14-site-removal-action

Well, that’s certainly a comfort. After all, Jindal was only a year older than that when Gov. Mike Foster appointed him to head the Department of Health and Hospitals.

And like Jindal, McNeely doesn’t seem destined to remain in one place long. Sources tell LouisianaVoice he plans to enroll in law school in September.

“He was completely my choice,” said DEQ Secretary Peggy Hatch of McNeely’s hiring. “He has been our policy adviser at DEQ on a number of matters. He was the first who came to my head.”

Hatch may have been more accurate to say she was told by Jindal that McNeely was her choice.

It will certainly be interesting to watch McNeely’s performance in the brewing controversy in Minden. However it plays out, it won’t be pretty.

The M6 was abandoned on site after the bankruptcy of Explo Systems in 2013. A year earlier, in October 2012, one of Explo’s bunkers exploded, rattling homes and shattering windows four miles away and creating a 7,000-foot mushroom cloud.

An ensuing investigation by state police revealed the millions of pounds of M6, used as an explosive propellant for launching artillery shells, stored in 98 bunkers scattered throughout Camp Minden. http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/local/2015/01/08/controversy-heats-open-burn-camp-minden/21468283/

The EPA has issued assurances that a controlled open burn is inexpensive and safe, with little environmental impact.

Others disagree.

“Our Louisiana politicians have allowed our beautiful state to become a dumping ground for toxic waste,” said retired Gen. Russel Honoré, leader of the Louisiana Green Army. “Our elected officials have allowed Bayou Corne, Grand Bayou, Mossville, and other communities to be polluted by their out-of-state political donors.

“The EPA-sanctioned open burn at Camp Minden without a doubt puts the health and safety of communities at risk and would not be allowed in California or Massachusetts. The good people of Louisiana deserve no less. The GreenARMY supports the citizens’ demand for accountability and their demand for no open burn at Camp Minden.”

Despite pending EPA approval of the burn, LSU-S organic chemistry professor Brian Salvatore said the EPA’s test burn was only to determine how the material burns and not the by-products in the smoke.

Salvatore said he posed the question of how much uncombusted dinitrotoluene (DNT, one of four chemicals contained in M6) escaped with the burn but was told the heat was too intense for monitoring. DNT causes cancer, he said. “It’s known as a definite carcinogen.

Other chemicals, he said, can cause birth defects and can trigger issues for those suffering from asthma. “All of these things are associated with these chemicals,” he said. “And they will happen.”

He said munitions similar to M6 were burned in Merrimac, Wisconsin in the 1970s and the chemicals leached into the area’s groundwater. He said it took years for symptoms to manifest themselves but officials are now seeing declining health among residents.

He said if the open burn takes place, residents in a 50 mile radius, from the Red River to the Ouachita River, could be affected. http://www.ktbs.com/story/27811846/lsu-s-professor-warns-camp-minden-open-tray-burn-could-cause-cancer-birth-defects

Citizens for Safe Water around Badger, an organization based in Merrimac, has been in contact with local opponents of the Minden burn.

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has even gotten on board via Facebook. In a message to one Minden area resident, she said, “Change, no matter what it is, starts with you, but sometimes finding the resources for you to enable change can be difficult. It’s about creating awareness of the issues that we all should be concerned about.”

But not to worry. In Washington, the House has passed a bill that effectively prevents scientists who are peer-reviewed experts in their field from providing advice to the EPA.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) sponsored H.R. 1422, the Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which changes the rules for appointing members to the Science Advisory Board (SAB).

SAB provides scientific advice to the EPA administrator but the Stewart resolution stipulates that board members “may not participate in advisory activities that directly or indirectly involve review or evaluation of their own work.”

Said another way, a scientist who has published a peer-reviewed paper on a particular topic, say open burning of M6, will not be able to advise the EPA on the findings contained in his or her paper. This means the very scientists who are most knowledgeable about a subject will not be allowed to discuss it.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) told House Republicans: “I get it, you don’t like science. And you don’t like science that interferes with the interests of your corporate clients. But we need science to protect public health and the environment.” House Passes Bill that Prohibits Expert Scientific Advice to the EPA | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

So all things considered, it’s good to know Chance McNeely is on the job.

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Politicians | 19 Comments »

Walter Monsour resigns from EBR job paying $365K, joins local firm with hefty state contracts and ties to Gov. Jindal

January 12, 2015 by tomaswell

We really don’t like clichés and while it may be the pot calling the kettle black, a rose by any other name should be avoided like the plague. And at the end of the day, we like to think outside the box and avoid the low hanging fruit.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Take, for example, the latest twist in the saga of Walter Monsour, erstwhile Executive Director of the Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority (RDA), an agency responsible for the redevelopment of blighted areas of East Baton Rouge Parish.

The problem was that RDA was operating on a shoestring budget of $847,000 and from that meager allocation, Monsour was drawing down $365,000 in salary and benefits—about 43 percent of the agency’s total budget.

On top of that, his son’s law firm was getting about $190,000 in contract payments from firms that received contract payments from RDA.

Mayor-President Kip Holden had earlier rejected RDA’s request for $3 million in funding from the city-parish and funding from federal tax credit programs had been drying up.

Under fire for his salary, Monsour resigned in November. In his resignation letter, he said he made his decision to leave in order to “extend the financial life of the RDA.”

Of course that’s not the end of the story. Things just don’t end that way in the realm of Louisiana politics and the politically connected.

Monsour, it turns out, has landed on his feet. He has been hired by CSRS, Inc., a self-described firm of engineers, architects, planners, surveyors and fund-sourcing experts.

Monsour joins the Baton Rouge-based firm’s “senior leadership team” and will lead a newly-formed private sector development business unit, according to an announcement by CSRS.

If the name CSRS seems familiar, perhaps it’s because we included them in our recent post about state contracts and campaign contributions to Gov. Bobby Jindal.

In that post, we discussed Jindal’s executive order to cut back on state contracts and speculated whether or not those cuts would apply to those who contributed generously to his various political campaigns.

We noted that CSRS had a $5 million contract with the state—to provide landman services on an “as-needed” basis—and that the company and its principals had contributed $10,000 to Jindal.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It turns out CSRS has been awarded 11 contracts totaling $15.2 million during Jindal’s administration and the campaign contributions total $20,000.

There were, besides the $5 million contract, which began on July 1, 2013 and will end on June 30, 2016, two others which combined to account for the bulk of that $15.2 million.

The first was a contract with the Office of Coastal Restoration for $4.1 million that ran from July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2011 that called for the firm to “augment” existing professional engineering staff. Upon expiration, it was immediately renewed for $4.2 million.

As for Monsour, he may have been thrown under the bus but he’s got his game face on and it looks like a win-win situation for him as he steps up to the plate with his boots on the ground for this cash cow and you can bet he won’t leave any money on the table.

And that’s the elephant in the room.

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Politicians | 9 Comments »

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

January 11, 2015 by tomaswell

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.

Posted in Congress, Ethics, House, Taxes, Transparency | 8 Comments »

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