I am hosting History Carnival #10 at Spinning Clio this week. The History Carnival is a bi-weekly roundup of blog posts that deal with history with the goal of giving the general public an idea of what historians and others are thinking about history and how they are applying it to contemporary matters. There is a wide variety of topics covered and a wide variety of interpretations: expect a diversity of opinion. (And keep that in mind before firing off an email to me!)
[Open full post]Here is the link to an interview on National Public Radio with Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri where he talks about pressing state issues, including public pensions.
[Open full post]Articles here and here have raised fresh questions about U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s behavior in the oil-for-food program controversy.
The first article notes:
Investigators of the U.N. oil-for-food program said Tuesday they are “urgently reviewing” new information that suggests U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan may have known more than he revealed about a contract that was awarded to the company that employed his son.
The December 1998 memo from Michael Wilson, then a vice president of Cotecna Inspections S.A., mentions brief discussions with Annan “and his entourage” at a summit in Paris in 1998 about Cotecna’s bid for a $10 million-a-year contract under oil-for-food.
If accurate, the memo could contradict a major finding of the Independent Inquiry Committee – that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that Annan knew about efforts by Cotecna, which employed his son, Kojo, to win the contract. Cotecna learned it won the contract on Dec. 11, 1998, days after the meeting.
The statement from the Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, said it would “conduct additional investigation regarding this new information.”…
Both Annans also deny any link between Kojo Annan’s employment and the awarding of the U.N. contract to the company…
The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, Wilson said he “had brief discussions with (Kofi Annan) and his entourage” about Cotecna’s effort to win the contract.
Cotecna “could count on their support,” Wilson wrote.
The memo, dated Dec. 4, 1998, was written a week before the company won the U.N. contract…
In an interim report in March, Volcker’s committee accused Cotecna and Kojo Annan of trying to conceal their relationship after the firm was awarded the contract.
It said Kofi Annan didn’t properly investigate possible conflicts of interest surrounding the contract, but cleared him of trying to influence the awarding of Cotecna’s contract or violating U.N. rules.
The second article notes:
…evidence, obtained by FOX News, appears to contradict Annan’s claim that he knew nothing about the awarding of a major Oil-for-Food contract to a company that employed his son.
Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss firm which won one of the most lucrative contracts in the multi-billion-dollar program.
One of Kojo Annan’s supervisors there was a man named Michael Wilson…
The secretary-general has consistently denied ever discussing the Cotecna contract with any of the company’s executives.
“I have no involvement with granting of contracts either on this Cotecna one or others,” Kofi Annan said in November.
But Cotecna has given a new document to investigators with the Independent Inquiry Committee [IIC], the U.N.-approved panel headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker charged with looking into corruption associated with the Oil-for-Food program.
The document is an e-mail from Wilson, the old Annan family friend, to other executives at Cotecna describing a meeting in Paris just weeks before the Oil-for-Food contract was awarded.
The e-mail refers to the U.N. Iraq Program and says: “We had brief discussions with the SG [the acronym for Secretary-General] and his entourage. Their collective advise [sic] was that we should respond as best as we could to the Q and A session of the 1-12-98 and that we could count on their support.”
The numbers “1-12-98 ” refer to a Dec. 1, 1998, meeting between Cotecna executives and U.N. officials in New York at which the contract was discussed.
Asked to explain the contradiction between this evidence and Kofi Annan’s claim never to have been involved in contract discussions, a spokesman for the secretary-general said the office was looking into it…
The e-mail from Wilson adds to doubts about Kofi Annan’s denials of familiarity with the Cotecna contract.
In March, a report from the Volcker panel concluded there was no evidence the U.N. chief tried to influence the world body’s decisions in order to benefit his son’s business interests. The panel reached its conclusion despite Annan’s own omissions about his contacts with Cotecna. [For more information, see this article.]
Annan at first did not tell investigators that he had met twice with Cotecna representatives as the Swiss company began soliciting United Nations business. One investigator for Volcker reportedly was so concerned with Annan’s veracity that he sought to make note of it in the report.
But the final report toned down the language offered by Robert Parton. He and another member of the IIC quit the panel following the report’s release…
Here is another news article.
Kofi Annan has no credibility.
We are at war. We are a land of liberty. We have a federal government whose appetite for meddling seems to be growing.
Two recent news articles have raised questions about the extension of the Patriot Act:
Patriot Act Push Angers Some on Right: A Senate panel vote riles conservatives concerned about the reach of federal power
Conservatives, liberals align against Patriot Act
These articles relate to an earlier posting entitled FBI Asks Congress For Power to Seize Documents.
There are people who have the expertise necessary to judge the merits of the arguments on these issues. I am not one of them.
What I do know is that a public debate about these issues is more than appropriate.
An earlier posting entitled Outrageous Employee Compensation Liabilities Continue to Haunt General Motors; Will American Taxpayers End Up Paying the Bill? highlighted pension and healthcare cost issues that have made American auto makers like General Motors cost the high cost producer in a competitive global marketplace.
These points and the structural problems that sustain them are highlighted in a Wall Street Journal article entitled UAW Is Facing Biggest Battle In Two Decades:
…UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and other UAW leaders face the union’s worst crisis since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when oil price shocks and a surge of Japanese cars forced thousands of layoffs at Detroit’s Big Three, and drove Chrysler Corp. to seek a government bailout. How Mr. Gettelfinger handles the challenge could be critical in whether General Motors Corp. and several major U.S. auto parts makers pull out of their recent financial crises.
…the UAW is again facing management demands to give back some of what it has won, particularly in health benefits, or risk even more job losses…
“I do get a little bit irritated when I constantly hear and read that the problems are UAW,” Mr. Gettelfinger told a popular Detroit morning radio host, Paul W. Smith, Wednesday morning on ABC-affiliate WJR. The question, he says, should be why the U.S. can’t create a single-payer, universal health-care system. And he says the U.S. needs a tougher trade policy. “You say we can’t rely on Washington,” Mr. Gettelfinger told Mr. Smith and his Detroit audience. “Well, why can’t we? These people are elected by us, and I think our expectation is way too low.”
You know the economic debate about uneconomically high American car manufacturing costs is getting off to a good start when the ideas of socialized medicine and some sort of tariff/import restrictions – both of which would raise costs – are the initial counter proposals to the challenges arising from global competition. Are these UAW people really that economically illiterate? E.g., see Canadian Supreme Court: “Access to a Waiting List is NOT Access to Health Care” for more information on the failures of socialized medicine.
The article continues:
…Rick Wagoner, GM’s chairman and chief executive, used Tuesday’s annual shareholder meeting to deliver his strongest public warning yet that the No. 1 auto maker is prepared to take action to cut its $5.6 billion U.S. health-care bill — with or without the UAW’s agreement…an agreement with the union to cut health costs is “our very strongly preferred approach”; then he added, “Either way, it is crystal clear that we need to achieve a significant reduction in our health-care cost disadvantage and to do so promptly. We are committed to do that.”…
Yesterday, UAW leaders representing union locals from GM and Delphi plants throughout the country gathered in Detroit for the first of two meetings to review the two companies’ situations. Officials who were there say the focus of the first session was on GM and health care. Richard Shoemaker, the UAW official charged with negotiating with GM and Delphi, spelled out GM’s dire situation. A Power Point presentation highlighted its declining market share, rising health-care costs and legacy burden of retiree benefits. The message was grim: Each percentage-point drop in market share means 170,000 fewer vehicles built by UAW members.
Mr. Shoemaker’s thrust: What can the UAW do within the confines of the contract to help GM? But he also said the UAW wouldn’t reopen the contract, which isn’t set to expire until 2007, the officials said…
A crisis is at hand – and has been for years now – and the UAW’s response is to say “see you in 2 years.”
The article continues:
Mr. Coven said several officials stood up and said that while they would bend on health-care issues for current workers, they wouldn’t be willing to bend on retiree issues…
Retirees form an increasingly large share of all UAW members. Since 1980, active membership in the UAW has fallen by more than half to just over 622,000, according to the UAW. The union says it currently has more than 500,000 retirees.
Two-tier contracts are already becoming more common at auto suppliers…
Think about how much the current employee contracts are going to have to change if nearly one-half of the costs (for retirees) are defined as off-limits. It begs the question of whether they can change enough to even make a competitive difference to General Motors.
Here are further excerpts from the article:
Workers in China earn an average of $1.96 an hour, compared with $36.55 for the average American auto worker, says automotive consultant John Hoffecker of AlixPartners, Southfield, Mich. Chinese car makers are gearing up for a major export push, he says, as their car-making capacity outstrips that nation’s demand.
But even more threatening for auto workers is the grim scenario playing out now in the airline industry: Unionized carriers, such as UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, have sought bankruptcy-court protection, then shed their union pension plans and forced through big wage cuts.
While none of the Big Three auto makers has suggested bankruptcy protection as a way to shed health-care or pension obligations, several big auto suppliers have made Chapter 11 filings in bankruptcy court in recent months…
The health-care coverage GM currently offers hourly retirees is more generous than the coverage it offers white-collar retirees and the coverage many comparable large companies offer their retirees. GM’s UAW retirees pay no premiums, compared with monthly premiums of $75 paid by GM’s white-collar retirees and an average of about $166 paid by retirees at comparable large firms, according to Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Brian Johnson.
Note the key words: UAW retirees receive rich healthcare benefits – and pay no premiums for that coverage. And the UAW says changing that is off limits – when they finally get around in 2007 to negotiating a new contract.
What could the impact of such changes be?
Raising the monthly premiums for hourly retirees to $50 would improve GM’s annual earnings by about $1.44 per share and its cash situation by about 73 cents per share, Mr. Johnson said. If the monthly premiums were raised to $100, GM’s earnings per share would be boosted by $2.93 a share and its cash would be improved by $1.45 a share, Mr. Johnson wrote in a report published recently. GM has more than 565 million shares outstanding.
According to Mr. Shaiken, the labor expert, only two times in the UAW’s history has its agreed to reopen a master contract. Once was in the 1950s; the second time was in 1982. He described the 1982 re-opening as “politically explosive” and “a very painful process.”
In 1982, the UAW agreed to concessions with GM. But after the agreement was officially ratified, GM disclosed a new, more-generous bonus plan for the company’s top executives. “You can imagine how that played,” Mr. Shaiken said. “So, when the UAW says, ‘Let’s figure out what else we can do,’ that doesn’t come out of thin air. There’s a history behind that.”
What sort of buffoons in management would introduce a new, self-serving bonus plan at the same time they are taking away compensation from hourly workers? It is hard not to reach the conclusion that these management and union personnel deserve each other.
Economics 101 is the ultimate reality show. If you won’t deal with economic reality, then it will deal with you – on its own terms.
ScrappleFace does it like no one else.
Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, we forget to do what ScrappleFace does – poke fun at political actors. Here are two great recent examples:
GOP Senators Shocked: Judge Brown is Black:
Republican Senators, who yesterday confirmed President Bush’s appointment of Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, today expressed shock at learning that the California Supreme Court justice is black.
The revelation comes in same week that Democrat party Chairman Dr. Howard Dean released his research showing that Republicans, and especially their leaders, “all look the same” because they’re “white Christians.”
“I’m concerned about how this is going to play with the white base,” said an unnamed Republican Senator upon learning of Judge Brown’s non-mainstream race. “I feel betrayed by President Bush, who has now managed to sneak a number of non-whites, not to mention women, into high-ranking government positions. The White House tricked us into focusing on the accomplishments of nominees, distracting us from the key genetic and theological markers that Dr. Dean has identified as determining factors of Republicanism.”…
Rumsfeld: Move U.N. to Guantanamo:
[Open full post]On the day that a bipartisan U.S. commission reported that the United Nations is stuck in a quagmire of mismanagement, corruption and ‘dismal’ staff morale, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested moving the headquarters of the global organization to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay…
The panel probing the U.N. found that the organization has failed to stop genocide, mass killing and major human rights violations.
“Even if you believe Amnesty International’s outrageous claims,” said Mr. Rumsfeld, “It would be, ethically speaking, a big step up for Kofi Annan to associate himself with the name Gitmo.”
The defense secretary said that if Mr. Annan accepts his proposal, the U.S. would throw in several thousand free copies of the Koran as a “signing bonus.”
I was at the Gaspee Days parade over the weekend and was canvassed by a representative of Operation Clean Government who was looking for signatures supporting a Voter Initiative referendum question this November. I signed it, with some trepidation, but the proximate situation of the current state of Rhode Island politics won out over my more philosophic, long-term reservations. I took a look at OCGRI’s logic and their specific, and I must add, limited version of the voter initiative (ie; OCGRI claims their’s is not as broad as that of California) and I encourage you to do the same. I think it’s worthy of the consideration of Rhode Island conservatives. A voter intitiative isn’t a magic pill by any means, but any method that will allow Rhode Islanders to bypass the currently entrenched members of the status quo seems like a good thing. In the end, it seems to me that the willingness to support the initiative is derivative to how dire one views the current political situation here in the Ocean State.
[Open full post]A new ProJo editorial comments on the plan to unionize babysitters in Rhode Island:
…the Rhode Island General Assembly is roaring ahead with a very bad plan to unionize babysitters — and send the gigantic bill to the taxpayers…
…The bill would create a new and very powerful special interest added to the one that often rules the roost on Smith Hill. In doing so, it would also create an astronomically expensive and permanent entitlement.
The plan, to be voted on in both the House and the Senate Tuesday, represents a very big present to the public-sector labor leaders who exert enormous influence in the legislature, and another assault on good government, the common interest and common sense. The only thing that will stop it is citizens rising up before Tuesday and saying to their legislators: Wait a minute, represent the public’s interest!
Here is what the labor chiefs want the legislature to do: force the state to start negotiating pay and benefits with about 2,600 certified and non-certified “day-care providers” — in some cases, no more than untrained friends and neighbors who babysit.
It would be an absurdity to treat such self-employed day-care providers as the near-equivalent of unionized employees, simply because they receive some subsidy from, and are licensed by, the state. Imagine all the money that would have to flow from the taxpayers to pay for the additional pay, health care, pensions and other benefits!
Babysitters would become a vast state monopoly and entitlement, wrapped in rigid and irrational rules.
And that would be just the start. What other people who sell some service to the state would be next in line for similar goodies?…
This has nothing to do with helping women and children. It has everything to do with further empowering the public-employee-union leaders and squeezing more money out of citizens.
If the union leaders get their way, millions of dollars in dues will pour into their coffers, and they will expand their armies of campaign workers, further strengthening the public-sector unions’ power in state government.
We know where that has gotten the state to this point…
It has to stop…
State Senator June Gibbs and State Representative Susan Story, who serve as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Permanent Legislative Child Care Commission respectively, have contributed to the public debate with this important editorial:
…we are disappointed and disturbed by the Service Employees International Union Local 1199’s recent push to expand its membership at the expense of the working families and child-care workers who have been helped by our Starting RIght system. Through glossy brochures and news releases, the union leadership has made some grossly unfair and inaccurate statements about child care in Rhode Island. With our experience and knowledge of the state’s child-care industry, we want to set the record straight about the harmful effects that unionizing the private, home-based family child-care providers would have…
Read the entire editorial to get the real story.
Bruce Lang calls it:
[Open full post]…the most raw power grab I’ve ever seen in Rhode Island. There is absolutely nothing good or fair about this effort…
There is one advantage to the voters: If this does come up for a vote in the legislature, we all will get the clearest proof ever of which senators and representatives are truly against the people of our wonderful state. Those “public servants” who vote yes for this outrageous legislation certainly do not deserve our respect or to be re-elected.
One can just about picture the commercial that RI Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams would release to correspond with his recent presentation to the RI Bar Association, “Killing Justice: The Judiciary Under Siege.” It would begin in black and white, with dark footage and creepy music:
“Political pressure and agenda-driven criticism also fray the fabric of judicial independence … the current trend is especially worrisome because the sentiments are being voiced not just by a powerless fringe but by those in positions of power.”
The sun breaks through the clouds, bringing a shift to color and to cheerful music:
“Here in Rhode Island, we are lucky enough to have a General Assembly which understands, respects and supports judicial independence and our separation of powers.”*
But a darkly ambiguous chord plays and shadows appear:
“Judicial independence faces yet another threat. This once comes quietly and from the rear flank. Simply put — nationally and locally — judicial salaries do not reflect the respect due the office. Judicial independence is endangered.”
Luckily, as some readers may recall, and as Projo writer Edward Fitzpatrick reminds us (and as would likely be left out of the commercial):
Last year, the General Assembly approved a budget article that prevented the governor from changing the judiciary’s budget and gave Williams control over judicial salaries. This year, Williams proposed $1.57 million in pay raises for judges, magistrates and nonunion employees in the courts. Their salaries would increase by between 4 percent and 38 percent next year, and he’s also seeking raises for 2007.
Mr. Williams admits that he does somehow manage to put food on the table with the $146,098 that the inadequately respectful tax payers give him (plus benefits, including a $7,305 longevity bonus). Surely, however, with proper promotion — perhaps meaning with prudent silence — the people of Rhode Island will agree that appropriate respect for judges is more important than their own ability to make ends meet while remaining in the state.
* Ostensibly, Williams isn’t referring, here, to the General Assembly’s interest in having a “separate power” through which to filter nepotistic hiring so as to diminish the impression of impropriety.
[Open full post]One offshoot of returning to school is that it has brought me into contact with several teachers from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Nearly all of them agree that it is in middle school that a child’s educational future, and by extension post-educational future, is largely determined. If parents and teachers don’t reach them then, very few will change direction in high school. The ProJo’s on the Woonsocket middle school, though it may be the most drastic example that can be offered, is nevertheless a depressing case in point. And remember: the problems detailed aren’t just Woonsocket’s problems, they’re all of Rhode Island’s. The school receives $12.4 million a year to operate, and a good portion of that comes from state tax dollars. Further, and this is just a guess on my part, if the average teachers’ salary’s are any indication–$64,700 for elementary teachers; $61,680 for middle-school teachers; and $63,240 secondary-school teachers–it would seem that the least experienced teachers are cutting their teeth in the middle schools and then moving on when they can. Again, I can’t say that for sure, this is just based on a conclusion drawn from the aforementioned average salaries. [HINT: I’m looking for some input!] Julia Steiny concurs with this assessment, and offers her own solution.
[Open full post]