Who Is DeRay Mckesson of Black Lives Matter?: The Man Who Won't Say Where His Money Comes From Appears To Be A Front Man for Privatizing Public Schools

I reached Mckesson by phone soon after he announced his candidacy for mayor. When I asked him how he funded all of his travel despite not having a job, he initially replied, “I don’t have an answer to that. There’s an answer in the New York Times article.”

After being informed that the Times offered no such answer, Mckesson stated, “You know, people ask me this, and I haven’t even had to answer this. I, you know, me and you don’t have a relationship. You know, you’re a reporter to me, you know—I’ve answered it many times. I will put that on my list of things and try to double back with you.” Several hours later, Mckesson texted me the link to a Tweet from last spring claiming that his excursions were funded by unnamed “family and friends.”—Drew Franklin

DeRay Mckesson (Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Drew Franklin
For those who’ve never paid much attention, Teach For America sounds like a benevolent and benign idea: recruit bright college grads, give them some teacher-training and place them in some of the nation’s neediest schools for a two-year commitment to teach kids.

The reality behind TFA’s sunny exterior is somewhat more sinister. Education policy experts today consider the nonprofit founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990 to be at the vanguard of the school privatization movement. TFA is also a media juggernaut in its own right, known for deploying a sophisticated public relations arsenal to advance an agenda focused on crushing teachers’ unions and privatizing public school systems. TFA's funders, including the Waltons, Bill and Melinda Gates and top Fortune 500 corporations, all have plenty to gain from the commodification of public goods and the destruction of public service unions, and its 11,000 corps members provide a valuable service to that end.

Teach for America’s peculiar brand of social justice was on bold display at its 25th Anniversary Summit the weekend of February 5. The confab drew 15,000 corps members, alumni and supporters to Washington for three days of seminars on lofty issues like, “Allies, Co-Conspirators and Coalition Building: Showing Up for Justice Across Lines of Power.” But one of the biggest draws was the discussion on “The New Civil Rights Agenda and Education,” co-headlined by DeRay Mckesson, the TFA alum and 30-year-old Black Lives Matter activist who received a $10,000 award from TFA last year.

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The Cory Booker Effect

How A Republican Operative Turned Black Democrats Into Shills for School
Vouchers, Charter Schools and Public School Privatization
An exposé by activist and journalist Glenn Ford

________________

When Mckesson announced his campaign for mayor of Baltimore this month, his name topped the list of trending topics on Twitter for several hours. Even without outlining a strategy to defeat better-known, more entrenched candidates, Mckesson received nearly $130,000 in online donations, met with President Barack Obama (who said Mckesson and associates “were better organizers than I was”), and secured his status as one of the country’s most closely watched political outsiders. Headlines appeared across national media, from Slate to the Guardian to the Washington Post, with the progressive online magazine Truthdig proclaiming Mckesson "Truthdigger of the Week."

With his candidacy for a city whose public schools are a key target of the education reform movement, the time seems right to scrutinize Mckesson’s relationship with Teach for America more closely. His high-profile appearance at the TFA gala only days after filing his last-minute bid to enter the race was only the latest collaboration with the organization spearheading a sustained attack on teacher's unions and traditional public schools.

Promotion From TFA, Shade From Local Organizers

DeRay Mckesson is a prolific Twitter personality who first came to national prominence during the uprising of 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. His live-tweeting of protests in the wake of Michael Brown’s death quickly garnered a massive following, and as a wave of protests swept the United States, Mckesson was consistently among the first on the scene, making him and his Twitter feed an invaluable source of information for journalists.

With his rapid emergence, Mckesson developed a well-tailored image as a media darling, known in equal measure for his ubiquitous blue Patagonia vest and composed attitude, holding his own in interviews with the most confrontational cable news hosts. The name “DeRay” became synonymous with the Black Lives Matter protest movement, boosted by features in mainstream news magazines and promotion from international celebrities like Beyonce. His influence emanates from Twitter, where he maintains over 300,000 followers, mixing live updates from demonstrations against police brutality with commercial-style promotions of corporations like McDonald's and Spotify.

As Mckesson rose to prominence, TFA was there to provide promotion through its powerful PR apparatus.

Mckesson had no connection to Ferguson when he first arrived on Aug. 16, 2014, according to an interview he gave Huffington Post later the same year. But it didn’t take him long to connect with another protester named Brittany Packnett, with whom he began working the same day. The fact that Packnett is executive director of TFA’s St. Louis chapter likely contributed to their immediate rapport.

At the time, Mckesson was senior director of human capital for Minneapolis Public Schools. He says he commuted to Ferguson on weekends before eventually quitting his job to protest full-time.

A Twitter search query produces a clear timeline of Mckesson's subsequent transition from human resources manager to social justice talent, aided by promotion from Teach For America. It begins with a post to TFA’s official blog, in which Mckesson pontificates on his activities in Ferguson. TFA tweeted a link to that post on Aug. 21, 2014, at which point Mckesson would have been in the besieged midwestern town for five days.

The next item on the timeline, dated October 29, is an advertisement for a “national conference call featuring TFA alumni @MsPackyetti [Packnett] and @deray.” Two weeks after that, the Washington Post published a profile of McKesson and TFA promoted it on social media, identifying him again as a “TFA alumnus.” On Dec. 10, Time Magazine named him along with a handful of peers, collectively referred to as the “Ferguson protesters,” as runners-up to its 2014 Person of the Year, and TFA promoted that too.

Mckesson’s big break, however, was a cover story for the May 4 issue of the New York Times Magazine, with the headline "Our Demand Is Simple: Stop Killing Us." The 6700-word article profiles McKesson and fellow overnight celebrity Ferguson protester Johnetta Elzie, as they drop in to demonstrations in cities across the United States over the course of nine months.

Post-strategy session and training. TFA love. @MsPackyetti and I. #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/fBYDDYkL75

— deray mckesson (@deray) October 6, 2014

I reached Mckesson by phone soon after he announced his candidacy for mayor. When I asked him how he funded all of his travel despite not having a job, he initially replied, “I don’t have an answer to that. There’s an answer in the New York Times article.”

After being informed that the Times offered no such answer, Mckesson stated, “You know, people ask me this, and I haven’t even had to answer this. I, you know, me and you don’t have a relationship. You know, you’re a reporter to me, you know—I’ve answered it many times. I will put that on my list of things and try to double back with you.” Several hours later, Mckesson texted me the link to a Tweet from last spring claiming that his excursions were funded by unnamed “family and friends.”

Read More

The Cory Booker Effect: How A Republican Operative Turned Black Democrats Into Shills for Public School Privatization (Video)

The Cory Booker Effect:

How A Republican Operative Turned Black Democrats
Into Shills for School Vouchers, Charter Schools
and Public School Privatization

An exposé by activist and journalist Glenn Ford

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.

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Republicans HATE Unions and Their Members: Yet Many White Union Members Keep Voting For Republicans

The "leader" of the Republicans in the Senate is willing to render retired miners homeless for political revenge. The Republicans are more concerned about their friends on Wall Street than they are about their staunchest supporters: whites in the working class.—Ronald David Jackson

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.

A Huge Coal Miners’ Pension Plan is on the Brink of Failure. One Senator is Blocking a Fix.

Despite bipartisan support for a plan to save the workers' retirement and healthcare, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stands in the way
By Joby Warrick and Lydia DePillis
When Sen. Mitch McConnell strode into the Capitol for last month’s State of the Union speech, he took with him a guest whose presence was sure to be seen as a slap against the Obama administration and its policies on coal.

“I brought along this unemployed coal miner here,” McConnell (R-Ky.) said, gesturing to fourth-generation mineworker Howard Abshire, “to see the person who put him out of work.”

The Senate majority leader said he wanted to call attention to President Obama’s “heartless” regulations that he argues have devastated communities in Abshire’s native eastern Kentucky. Yet just weeks earlier, McConnell’s office had delivered its own blow to Appalachian coal towns: It blocked efforts to rescue health and pension funds on which thousands of retired and disabled miners rely.

A plan that would ensure the solvency of the funds nearly made it through Congress in December as part of the bipartisan budget deal that cleared both chambers. But the bailout attempt — backed by key lawmakers from both political parties — was excluded from the deal at McConnell’s request, according to four Senate officials directly familiar with the events.

McConnell’s spokesman does not dispute that telling of events. And McConnell has not publicly explained his opposition to the measure.

Legislators from coal states had pressed for federal help to prevent what some have described as a looming national crisis: The United Mine Workers of America’s retirement and health-care funds currently support about 120,000 former miners and their families nationwide, but the account balances have rapidly declined as some coal companies shed dues-paying workers and others filed for bankruptcy protection. Without intervention, some of the funds — chiefly those associated with firms in bankruptcy — could run out of cash before spring, Congressional officials say.

McConnell has repeatedly clashed with the UMWA, the union that administers the funds. Two years ago, UMWA officials donated heavily to his political rival, Democrat Alison Grimes, during McConnell’s successful reelection bid.

During December’s bipartisan budget agreement, his stance was clear.

“It was a no-go issue for McConnell,” said a senior Senate aide with direct knowledge. Three other Democratic congressional officials confirmed his opposition to the measure. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity citing the sensitive nature of the budget negotiations.

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Hog Brains and a Mysterious Illness Linked to Bacon Processing by LadyDrawers

In Ladydrawers' latest strip in the "Growing Season" comics exploration of public health, race and food policy, Laura Ķeniņš and Anne Elizabeth Moore explore how the production of certain popular meat products is linked to corporate malfeasance, public health risks and profound, citywide racism - not to mention all the weird additives. For workers and eaters alike, the world of meat processing is packed with dangers.

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Laura Ķeniņš
Laura Ķeniņš has been self-publishing comics and zines since 2003 and others have been publishing her work for nearly as long. She graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia, specializing in printmaking and photography. Her work has been exhibited in locations across Europe and Canada.


Anne Elizabeth Moore
Anne Elizabeth Moore is a cultural critic and author of several award-winning, best-selling nonfiction books including Unmarketable (The New Press) and Cambodian Grrrl (Cantankerous Titles). She has held Fulbright scholarships and was a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Baffler, Al Jazeera, Salon, The Onion, Talking Points Memo, Wilson Quarterly, Tin House, and in international art exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial and solo shows at the MCA Chicago. She has appeared on CNN, NPR, and in The New York Times, among others, and currently lives in Chicago.


Originally Published on TruthOut

Koch Spy Agency Targets Liberals and Unionizers — And It's Led by a Voter Fraud Huckster

By Brendan Fischer
The Kochs have been complaining about a "lack of civility in politics" as they seek to boost their public image--but one of their top operatives helped propel perhaps the most egregious case of race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years.

At the same time that the Kochs have been on a PR blitz, publicly spinning an image of themselves as well-intentioned patriots trying to make the world a better place and decrying "character assassination," they've been quietly ramping up a clandestine surveillance and intelligence gathering operation focused on their perceived political enemies, Ken Vogel reports at Politico.

At the helm of this "competitive intelligence" operation is a man named Mike Roman, Vice President of Research for Kochs' Freedom Partners and who was paid $265,000 last year, according to Freedom Partners' recent tax filing.

But who is Mike Roman? He's been described generally as a longtime GOP operative. However, he's also the guy who was behind the release of the 2008 "New Black Panthers scaring old white ladies at the polls" video. The clip dominated Fox News for months and went on to fuel unfounded allegations that the Obama administration's Department of Justice was biased against white people.

Roman made a name for himself by releasing the video, which showed a New Black Panther Party (NBPP) member holding a billy club outside a Philadelphia polling place, on his voter fraud-peddling "Election Journal" website. He then worked with Republican vote fraud conspiracist J. Christian Adams to try uncovering evidence that voters were intimidated--which they could not find. But that didn't stop Roman, along with Fox News and the conservative echo chamber, from conjuring up a vast racist conspiracy inside the Obama administration, a theme that continues today.

As the conspiracy theories grew, Roman was given a column at Breitbart.com, where he continued to push a "scandal" narrative and to suggest a wide-ranging conspiracy involving ACORN, NBPP, and the Obama administration to steal elections. (Roman even launched a voter fraud app.)

In 2010, another vote fraud conspiracy theorist, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund, put right-wing video hitman James O'Keefe in touch with Roman for intel about a purported SEIU voter fraud scheme in Boston, which turned out to be bunk.

During this same period, the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was similarly targeting ACORN and pushing a model "Voter ID Act" to combat the nonexistent scourge of voter fraud--but which had the documented impact of disenfranchising potentially millions of students and voters of color who do not have the limited forms of IDs required under the law.

In 2010, Roman was named chief of staff to Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL) when he was elected to Congress for one term. Koch Industries and John Fund were among Schilling's top donors.


It is not clear when Roman was formally folded-in to the Koch network. Freedom Partners' new tax filing for 2014 is the first where he appeared as Vice President of Research. But tax filings as far back as 2012 describe Roman as the trustee of the mysterious "Public Engagement Group Trust," which has the same address and suite number as another Koch group, the Center for Shared Services Trust.

Apparently Roman's years of stoking unfounded paranoia about stolen elections prepared him for a high-ranking position in the Koch operation.

In his role as the Kochs' top spy, Vogel reported, Roman has "worked to keep himself and his activity low-profile even within the discreet Koch operation."

"They act all cloak and dagger–like the CIA," one source told Vogel. "There was a joke about how hardly anyone ever met Mike Roman. It was like, if you wanted to find him, he'd be in a trench coat on the National Mall."

Roman's GoodReads profile fits his carefully-cultivated cloak-and-dagger persona.

His favorite reads include books like "Data Mining and Analysis" and "Intelligence Analysis: a Target-Centric Approach," as well as Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, the left-wing organizer's manual that has gained traction on the right in recent years.

Mike Roman's favorite author? Charles Koch.

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CMD Executive Director Lisa Graves contributed research to this article.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

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Do the Kochs Have Their Own Spy Network?

By Jane Mayer
Five years ago, when The New Yorker published my piece “Covert Operations,” about the ambitious and secretive political network underwritten by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, the Koch brothers complained mightily about the story’s title, protesting that there was nothing at all covert about their political activities. Since then, the two have embarked on an impressive public-relations campaign meant to demonstrate their transparency and openness. But today, the Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel came out with a blockbuster scoop suggesting that the brothers, whose organization has vowed to spend an unprecedented eight hundred and eighty-nine million dollars in the 2016 election cycle, are more involved in covert operations than even their own partners have known.

After culling through the latest legally required disclosures, Vogel unearthed a new front group within the Kochs’ expanding network of affiliated nonprofit organizations—a high-tech surveillance and intelligence-gathering outfit devoted to stealthily tracking liberal and Democratic groups which Politico calls the “Koch Intelligence Agency.” The sleuthing operation reportedly includes twenty-five employees, one of whom formerly worked as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, and follows opponents by harvesting high-tech geodata from their social-media posts.

According to Vogel, the effort is so secretive that very few people know of it even within the Kochs’ own sprawling political operation. Housed with other Koch nonprofit organizations in a bland office building in Arlington, Virginia, the outfit is managed by a limited-liability partnership called American Strategies Group, LLC. The company is part of the Kochs’ main political group: a circle of ultra-conservative donors called Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, which describes itself as a “business league” and so claims that it can legally hide the identities of its members.

Reached for comment, James Davis, the spokesman for Freedom Partners, described news accounts comparing the organization’s operation to espionage as “inaccurate.” Davis said, “Like most other organizations, Freedom Partners has a research department that benchmarks our efforts against other organizations.”

While it’s big news that the Kochs are now running their own private intelligence-gathering operation in order to track political opponents, including labor unions, environmental groups, and liberal big-donor groups, it actually isn’t surprising, given their history.

For decades, there have been reports suggesting that Charles and David Koch and Koch Industries have employed private investigators to gather inside information on their perceived enemies, including their own brother, Bill Koch, with whom they fought over control of the family business and fortune. My forthcoming book, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” which will come out in January, builds on earlier reporting about this, including my 2010 New Yorker piece. In fact, again and again, those who have challenged the Kochs and Koch Industries—whether they are federal officers, private citizens, or members of the press—have suspected that they have been under surveillance.

Read More

Charter School Chain Accused of Union Busting — Lawsuit

In some states, the main purpose of charter schools is to avoid unions and the rights, wages and power they provide for teachers. 

Photo by Ted Eytan.

By REBEKAH KEARN
A chain of public charter schools is using its charter status to harass and threaten teachers for trying to unionize, California's Public Employment Relations Board claims in court.

The PERB sued Alliance College-Ready Public Charter Schools and its 27 Los Angeles area campuses in Superior Court on Friday.

United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents thousands of public schoolteachers in collective bargaining, is named as real party in interest.

An Alliance spokeswoman called it a "dishonest, malicious and desperate" attempt by the teachers union to "intimidate" Alliance leaders.

It's the latest of dozens of lawsuits over the years to accuse charter schools of using their status as a smokescreen to spend tax dollars without following state and federal laws on public schools.

"The core of the injunctive complaint is the allegation that the charter schools are engaging in a campaign of anti-union activity," the PERB's General Counsel J. Felix De La Torre told Courthouse News.

The status quo injunction is intended to "end this pattern of conduct" so the PERB can investigate four charges already before it and determine if state law has been violated, De La Torres said.

About 70 teachers emailed Alliance's board of directors in March, announcing their intent to unionize with United Teachers and asking Alliance to meet and discuss "a fair and neutral process to organize," the complaint states, citing one of the open letters.

In response, Alliance sent a 4-page letter "that was critical of UTLA, collective bargaining, and unionization and urged employees not to sign authorization cards," the complaint states.

Shortly afterward, the board says, principal Lori Rhodes kicked a union representative off an Alliance campus for discussing unionization with teacher Michelle Buckowski. Rhodes then harassed Buckowski, telling her that supporting the union "was an uneducated position," and that Buckowski should "focus on her upcoming formal performance evaluation."

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Secretive Group of Millionaires (ALEC) Still Wreaking Havoc On Workers — ALEC 'Give Workers Less' Legislation Pops Up in Multiple States

Cookie-Cutter ALEC Right-to-Work Bills Pop Across Country

By Jody Knauss and Jonas Persson
This week, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed an anti-union right-to-work (RTW) bill into law. RTW laws require unions to provide the same representation and workplace services to all workers in a workplace but make contributing to the cost of that representation optional. They lead to smaller, weaker unions and lower worker wages and benefits.

The Center for Media and Democracy detailed the fact that the Wisconsin bill was taken almost word for word from the American Legislative Exchange Council "model" bill. (See CMD's side-by-side here.) And we reported on the Koch and Bradley Foundation funding behind the panoply of usual suspects that flew into the state to testify on behalf of the bill, including "experts" from the National Right to Work Committee, the Mackinac Center and the Heritage Foundation with assists from ALEC "scholar" Richard Vedder and State Policy Network "stink tanks" like the Wisconsin Public Research Institute. And let's not forget the $1 million in TV ads from the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity group.

But the push for RTW continues in multiple states in a variety of forms. From a legally dubious executive order in Illinois to an equally suspect county-level strategy in Kentucky, ALEC's effort to disable unions as an organized voice for working families marches on.

New Hampshire: Working families won a round last week when two Republicans in the State Senate voted with all 10 Democrats against a RTW bill, resulting in a 12-12 tie which defeats the bill. Even so, two other RTW bills continue to move through the State House. H.B. 658 is taken straight from the ALEC playbook. (See side-by-side here and below.) Democratic Governor Maggie Hassan is a RTW opponent.

Missouri: Missouri has two identical RTW bills (H.B. 116 and H.B. 569) that borrow language from ALEC, sponsored by two ALEC legislators (Rep. Eric Burlison and Rep. Bill Lant respectively.) H.B. 116 bill passed the Missouri House on February 12, the first time a RTW bill has ever been approved in a chamber of the state’s legislature. Despite an overwhelming Republican House majority, 23 Republicans voted against the bill. The legislation now moves on to the State Senate, where Republicans hold a 25-9 majority.

Last night there was an "informational" hearing in the Senate on S.B 127 by ALEC legislator Senator Dan Brown, with key portions taken verbatim from ALEC. (See the side-by-side here.) If the bill also passes the Senate, Governor Jay Nixon has vowed to veto it. On the evidence thus far, and despite a promise from Grover Norquist, Republicans do not have the votes to overturn a veto.

New Mexico: The Republican-controlled New Mexico State House passed a combined public- and private sector RTW bill (H.B. 75) on February 25. ALEC has versions of both these bills and bill author Rep. Dennis Roch is an ALEC member. In an apparent effort to make the legislation more palatable, the measure also includes a 50-cent increase in the state’s minimum wage, to $8.00 per hour. The bill now moves on to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where a hearing was held Sunday and a vote is expected this week. Senate Democrats claim to have the votes to stop it. Republican Governor Susana Martinez is a supporter.

Late last night, the Senate's Public Affairs Committee voted to table the legislation for the session.

West Virginia: Republicans took control of both houses of the state’s legislature in 2014 and ALEC member Rep. John Overington promptly introduced an ALEC RTW bill H.B.2643 (see side-by-side here). However, Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael said recently that, with the session due to end March 14 and the bill still in committee, RTW was dead for the 2015 session. Just to make sure, 6,000 union supporters rallied at the State Capitol on Saturday.

Kentucky: Democrats in both the State House and governor’s office have stymied the corporate push for RTW at the state level in Kentucky. An ALEC RTW bill (S.B. 1) authored by ALEC member and Senate President Robert Stivers, passed in the Republican-controlled Senate but did not make it out of committee in the House. (See side-by-side here.)

The bigger action in Kentucky is at the local level. Since mid-December, ten counties in Kentucky have passed local RTW ordinances, and others are exploring the possibility. Challenging a half-century of settled labor law, the Heritage Foundation and the new ALEC offshoot, the American City and County Exchange (ACCE), are promoting the idea that localities also have authority under National Labor Relations Act to enact RTW. Kentucky’s Attorney General does not share that interpretation and a coalition of Kentucky unions has filed in federal court to overturn the ordinances. This ALEC/ACCE strategy was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

Illinois: Billionaire Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has issued an executive order implementing RTW for Illinois public sector workers and preemptively filed suit in federal court trying to get the current law declared unconstitutional. He has also pushed for enabling legislation to allow Illinois localities to pass Kentucky-style local RTW ordinances. An ALEC RTW bill (H.B. 4139) has been introduced in Illinois, but may not pass in the Democratic-controlled legislature. (See the side-by-side here.)

Michigan: Republican State Rep. Gary Glenn, a founding member of the Michigan Freedom to Work Coalition, has decided Michigan's 2012 RTW law did not go far enough. Glenn has introduced a bill (H.B. 4312) to extend RTW to the police, fire and public safety unions exempted from the 2012 law, and another (H.B. 4311) that would do away with exclusive representation in the public sector by banning public sector unions from representing non-members.

Other states: A public-sector RTW bill died in committee in the Montana House on February 27. An ALEC-modeled RTW bill died in committee in the Colorado House on Feb. 4.

See CMD's side-by side comparisons between ALEC's Right to Work Act and bills introduced in: New Hampshire, Missouri, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois and Colorado.

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co_rtw_alec_.pdf	90.29 KB
mo_rtw_alec_.pdf	91.12 KB

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Jody Knauss is Senior Analyst and Writer at CMD. He has two decades of business, labor, and economic policy experience.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

Greece: Fascists At the Gate — Under Threat by Neo-Nazis

Golden Dawn rally outside of the Greek Parliament in Athens. (Demotix/Nicolas Koutsokostas.
Some rights reserved)

By Conn Hallinan
When some 70 members of the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn go on trial sometime this spring, there will be more than street thugs and fascist ideologues in the docket, but a tangled web of influence that is likely to engulf Greece’s police, national security agency, wealthy oligarchs, and mainstream political parties. While Golden Dawn—with its holocaust denial, its swastikas, and Hitler salutes—makes it look like it inhabits the fringe, in fact the organization has roots deep in the heart of Greece’s political culture

Which is precisely what makes it so dangerous.

Golden Dawn’s penchant for violence is what led to the charge that it is a criminal organization. It is accused of several murders, as well as attacks on immigrants, leftists, and trade unionists. Raids have uncovered weapon caches. Investigators have also turned up information suggesting that the organization is closely tied to wealthy shipping owners, as well as the National Intelligence Service (EYP) and municipal police departments.

Several lawyers associated with two victims of violence by Party members—a 27-year old Pakistani immigrant stabbed to death last year, and an Afghan immigrant stabbed in 2011— charge that a high level EYP official responsible for surveillance of Golden Dawn has links to the organization. The revelations forced Dimos Kouzilos, director of EYP’s third counter-intelligence division, to resign last September.

There were several warning flags about Kouzilos when he was appointed to head the intelligence division by rightwing New Democracy Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Kouzilos is a relative of a Golden Dawn Parliament member, who is the Party’s connection to the shipping industry. Kouzilos is also close to a group of police officers in Nikea, who are currently under investigation for ties to Golden Dawn. Investigators charge that the Nikea police refused to take complaints from refugees and immigrants beaten by Party members, and the police Chief, Dimitris Giovandis, tipped off Golden Dawn about surveillance of the Party.

In handing over the results of their investigation, the lawyers said the “We believe that this information provides an overview of the long-term penetration and activities of the Nazi criminal gang with the EYP and the police.” A report by the Office of Internal Investigation documents 130 cases where Golden Dawn worked with police.

It should hardly come as a surprise that there are close ties between the extreme right and Greek security forces. The current left-right split goes back to 1944 when the British tried to drive out the Communist Party—the backbone of the Greek resistance movement against the Nazi occupation. The split eventually led to the 1946-49 civil war when Communists and leftists fought royalists and former German collaborationists for power. However, the West saw the civil war through the eyes of the then budding Cold War, and, at Britain’s request, the U.S. pitched in on the side of the right to defeat the left. In the process of that intervention—then called the Truman Doctrine—U.S. intelligence services established close ties with the Greek military.

Read More

The Solution to Racial Unrest in Ferguson?: Missouri Republicans Say Destroy the Unions

Missouri Republicans think the answer to racial unrest in Ferguson is to bust unions and leave workers at the mercy of employers.

By Brendan Fischer
The protests that erupted in the wake of 18 year old Michael Brown's death at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri police officer in August have many causes, ranging from longstanding tensions between the largely African-American community and a largely white police force, systematic targeting of people of color fueled in part by revenue-driven law enforcement practices, residential segregation, and disparities in racial power arising from under-representation in local government thanks in part to Ferguson's unusual elections calendar.

Yet a leader of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Missouri, House Speaker Tim Jones, says he has the solution to unrest in Ferguson: bust the unions.

Missouri Digital News reported Wednesday that: "Republican Speaker of the House Tim Jones said the legislature could pass right-to-work legislation and that would instantly help economic development in and around Ferguson.

'One of the biggest things we can do is become the 25th right to work state in the country and give workers freedom. Missouri is now an oasis of big labor influence and power. If you look at a map of the country, we're nearly surrounded by states that have gone to worker freedom states.'"

On twitter, Jones confirmed that his remarks were not taken out of context:

House Speaker Jones was the ALEC co-chair for Missouri until this year, and is a member of the ALEC Education Task Force. He has also been an unapologetic birther, and joined a 2009 lawsuit seeking to have President Obama removed from office on grounds that he was secretly an Indonesian named Barry Soetoro.

__________
Brendan Fischer is CMD's General Counsel. He graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

Wanna Know Why Obama Doesn't Stand For Anything? — Look At The People Surrounding Him: Ex-Top Obama Aides Now in the Business Of Undermining Unions

Photo by Lady Buffalo.

By Steven Rosenfeld
Another top Obama presidential campaign consultant has crossed over to the dark side, not merely becoming a lobbyist but signing on with a decidedly un-progressive cause: working for Uber and against organized taxi driver unions.

“We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber, and the opponent is an asshole named Taxi,” Travis Kalanick, Uber’s CEO, said at a tech conference in May. “Nobody likes him, he’s not a nice character, but he’s so woven into the political machinery and fabric that a lot of people owe him favors.”

Enter David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager and then a senior White House advisor. On Tuesday, Plouffe signed a contract to work as a top political strategist for Uber, the ride-networking company that helps people make money by ferrying passengers. Uber is in a nasty fight with the unionized taxi industry, which is heavily regulated and more costly to operate. Uber was valued at $17 billion in June and has been assembling its own political army, the Daily Beast reported.

“I could not be more excited to join such a vibrant company and its people who will be at the absolute leading edge of tomorrow’s innovations and changing people’s lives and their cities for the better,” Plouffe said in an Uber blog post, announcing he will become senior vice president for policy and strategy. “It will be a privilege to jump in the foxhole with the team.” Plouffe is the fourth highest ranking ex-Obama campaign consultant to sign on with anti-labor clients, according to Buzzfeed.com, which noted that Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign manager, Jim Messina, left to work for England's Conservative Party, whose platform includes outlawing strikes.

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Why Big Business Loves Desperate Workers: Work Starved Employees Can Be Underpaid, Overworked and Abused in Other Ways

Photo: flickr/cc/ Matt Wetzler

By Stephen Pimpare
We don’t think enough about the economic functions of social welfare policy, or about the relationship between the safety net and labor markets, and this hinders our ability to make sense of why some people fight so hard against programs that aid poor and low-income people: We mistake them for anti-welfare ideologues, and dismiss them as cruel or ignorant, but there’s an economic logic to their activism, one that’s revealed if we look at the relationship between welfare and work from both the employee’s and the employer’s perspective. Let me explain.

Imagine that we have two workers, worker K and worker O, each with two young children.

Worker K is laid off when the company “downsizes.” K is nervous, but has some savings, is eligible for Unemployment Insurance benefits, Medicaid, food stamps (SNAP), and TANF, has access to free local day care, and lives in a Section 8 apartment, with their monthly rent tied to their income.

While K is not living as well as when working, if K were eligible for all of these programs, which would be highly unusual, K will be able to get by. K can pay the rent and buy food and remain insured and with some belt-tightening, will be okay for a while.

Worker O, by contrast, is fired, even though O didn’t do anything wrong. O is therefore ineligible for UI. O has no savings, cannot afford insurance, even with a subsidy through the Affordable Care Act, is not eligible for Medicaid or food stamps or TANF, has no reliable, affordable day care, and has no access to a housing subsidy. As a result, O is in trouble, and is desperate and perched on the edge of homelessness.

Now, let’s turn our attention to an employer with a job to fill, Z. This job is terrible. It’s minimum wage, has no health benefits, no paid days off or vacation time, has irregular hours -- some weeks you’ll need to work days, some weeks nights (and you won’t know in advance so you can plan), and you'll get 20 or maybe 30 hours each week, if you're lucky. There’s no opportunity for upward mobility, it’s a two-hour drive each way, with no reliable public transportation to get you there, and the working conditions are unsafe -- there have been lots of injuries there. As I said, it’s a terrible job.

Employer Z offers unemployed worker K the job. What’s K’s answer? It’s no, of course. Maybe even hell no. Does K say no because K is lazy? No. K says no because this is not a job that will help K raise a family and move up the ladder, and taking it would mean being unable to look for something better, among other things. It is rational under these circumstances, smart even, to turn down this job. If you can. And K can.

Now, Z offers O the job. What does O say? O says yes. Maybe even yes please. Why? Because O does not have any choice. O is desperate. O is in no position to bargain, or to wait for something better.

It may be even worse than this, because there might be a worker called V who is even more desperate than O. So, V says: “I know you can’t legally pay me less than minimum wage, but if you hire me instead of O, I’ll come in early and work for an hour before punching in, and then after I punch out at night I’ll stay for an extra hour then too.” When workers are desperate, they bid down their own wages.

If you are a worker, would you rather live in a country where most people were in K’s situation, or in O’s? K’s, of course, right? Because in that world, with very generous social welfare benefits, you would have some security, and some bargaining power.

If you are employer Z, would you prefer to live in a country where most people were in K’s situation, or in O’s? O’s of course, right? Because in that world, with very limited social welfare benefits, workers would have no choice but to accept whatever job you offered under whatever conditions; in a world with very generous social welfare programs, by contrast, everyone would have the ability to decline work, and if you want to hire someone, the burden would be on you, the employer, to make the job more attractive -- you might have to offer higher wages, paid vacation or sick days, a regular schedule, health insurance, and opportunities for promotion. Many of those would mean lower profits.

This is why business and their elected allies fight efforts to expand food stamps or unemployment insurance or TANF. A desperate worker is a cheap and compliant worker.

So the next time someone is fighting against a proposal to increase the assistance available to poor and low-income people, take their objection seriously and ask, simply, who benefits?

_____________________
Stephen Pimpare is author of A People’s History of Poverty in America, winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and is currently at work on Ghettoes, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down & Out on the Silver Screen. He teaches U.S. social policy and social welfare history at Columbia University and NYU. You can follow him on Twitter @stephenpimpare

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Koch Brothers Infiltrating Major Black Institutions — AFSCME Union Cuts Ties With United Negro College Fund Over “Koch Scholars” Program

United Negro College Fund's "A Mind Is Gala" - March 7, 2013.

By Joan Walsh
Rush Limbaugh attacked them as “lunatics” running a “plantation” for black “slaves.” Another right-winger claimed a “white” union president was out to hurt “disadvantaged black youth,” even though the union president in question is black.

It’s no surprise AFSCME’s decision to end its partnership with the United Negro Colllege Fund, in the wake of UNCF accepting a $25 million contribution from the Koch brothers to establish a “Koch Scholars” program, as well as participating in their annual right-wing strategy summit, has conservatives trashing the influential public sector union. It fits their favorite story line: Liberals are the real racists.

But even some non-wingnuts have piled on. The Root’s Keli Goff blasted the decision as “progressive intolerance,” insisting that the Kochs’ support of public sector union busting “has nothing to do with educating African-American students.” That’s led to renewed interest in AFSCME’s move, which president Lee Saunders announced two weeks ago.

In a letter to UNCF president Michael Lomax, AFSCME’s Saunders called the Kochs “the single most prominent funders of efforts to prevent African-Americans from voting.” Lomax’s appearance at the Koch brothers’ annual summit, where they plot conservative strategy – this year’s focus was taking back the Senate in 2014 — was “a betrayal of everything the UNCF stands for.” Members of AFSCME, a union that supports Democrats with money and people power, voted unanimously to back Saunders’ decision at their annual convention in Chicago last week.

“This is not a Democrat or Republican issue,” Saunders told Salon, in his first interview since the fracas. “It’s an issue of right and wrong.”

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Three New Ways the Koch Brothers Are Screwing America: Suppressing Wages, Breaking Unions, Disenfranchising Minority Voters

Occupy Wall Street, Day 9 - Sept 25 2011: NYC (Photo by David Shankbone)

The fourth-richest men in America target low-wage workers, minority voters and unions.

By Elisabeth Garber-Paul
"They are truly cowards in the worst way," says filmmaker Robert Greenwald, of the notorious billionaires Charles and David Koch. And he should know. After he released his 2012 documentary, "The Koch Brothers Exposed," Koch-funded organizations took out ads trying to discredit Greenwald and his work, yet the brothers still declined his repeated offers to debate the topics covered in the film, like the re-segregation of schools and the defanging of the EPA. "I wanted to engage in a policy debate," he says. "But they won't engage."

For most people, an attack from the fourth-richest (and perhaps most politically conniving) men in America would slow them down. But instead Greenwald, who became interested in the powerful duo when he read Jane Mayer's 2010 New Yorker profile, decided to double down, and began work on "The Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition." The update, which is now available free online, is centered on their influence in (and outpouring of money since) the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. While researching and producing it with his small staff at Brave New Films, Greenwald says he was "surprised by not just the sheer numbers, but the extraordinary lengths they go to legally to hide the amounts they're giving."

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Who Is Behind the National Right to Work Committee and its Anti-Union Crusade?: The Koch Brothers and the John Birch Society

The fewer the number of people unionized, the more corporate executives feel free to steal all the profits and prosperity for themselves.

By Jay Riestenberg and Mary Bottari
As the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 session comes to a close, one of the major cases left for a decision is Harris vs. Quinn,which could effect millions of public sector workers in the United States.

The case originates in Illinois, where home health care workers have been successfully organized by public sector unions. Now, a small group of these workers, represented by lawyers from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, have sued and their lawyers contend that the agency fees, or the fair share dues that even non-union members of a bargaining unit are required to pay to unions that bargain for higher wages on their behalf, violate the First Amendment. Agency fees are barred in so-called "right to work" states, which have much less unionization and lower wages and benefits.

Joel Rogers, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Wisconsin, calls it "the most important labor law case the court has considered in decades." This is because when the Supreme Court decided to take on the case, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation dramatically expanded the scope of the case beyond the home health care workers to include all public sector workers, from teachers and firefighters to sanitation workers to librarians. If the court follows National Right to Work's lead, every state in the country would essentially turn into an anti-union "right to work" state, which would be a significant blow to public sector unions' collective bargaining efforts and also complicate thousands of existing contracts between organized workers and municipalities, cities, counties, and states across the country.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF) is the 501(c)(3) arm of the National Right to Work Committee (NRTWC), a 501(c)(4) organization. Additionally, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research is an affiliated anti-union research shop. Founded nearly 60 years ago, the NRTWC has been a national leader in the effort to destroy public and private sector unions. The groups have increased their funding and staffing in recent years. In 2012, the three groups combined reported over $25 million in revenue, making them a powerful instrument of the corporate and ideological interests that want to keep wages low and silence the voice of organized labor in the political arena.

NRTWC's success and the demise of unions in the United States has directly contributed to the erosion of high-paying middle class jobs and to growing inequality, as this chart from the Economic Policy Institute graphically illustrates.

National Right to Work's Deep Connections to the Koch Brothers and the John Birch Society

The NRTWC has deep connections within the national right-wing network led by the Koch brothers. Reed Larson, who led the NRTW groups for over three decades, hails from Wichita, Kansas, the hometown of Charles and David Koch. Larson became an early leader of the radical right-wing John Birch Society in Kansas, which Fred Koch (the father of Charles and David) helped found. Several other founders and early leaders of the NRTWC were members and leaders of the John Birch Society, specifically the Wichita chapter of which Fred Koch was an active member.

The groups remain tied to the Kochs. In 2012, the Kochs' Freedom Partners group funneled $1 million to the National Right to Work Committee, while the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation gave a $15,000 grant to the NRTWLDF, which has also received significant funding from the Koch-connected DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. Today, at least three former Koch associates work as attorneys for the NRTWLDF.

In June 2010, Mark Mix, the current head of the NRTW groups, attended the Kochs' exclusive Aspen strategy meeting to give a presentation on how to mobilize conservatives for the 2010 election, along with representatives from Koch-backed groups such as the Center to Protect Patient Rights (now called American Encore) and Americans for Prosperity.

In addition to the Koch brothers, the NRTWLDF has received significant funding from many big name conservative donors, including the Walton Family Foundation (of Walmart), the Coors family's Castle Rock Foundation, Wisconsin's Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust.

A $33 Million Anti-Worker Lobby Shop with Ties to ALEC, SPN, and More

In order to push their extreme agenda, the NRTWC has launched a massive lobbying effort at both the state and federal level. In the U.S. Congress alone, the NRTWC has spent over $33 million on lobbying between 1999 and 2013. NRTWC has lobbied Congress to pass a national "Right to Work Act," which is sponsored by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). Paul has lent his name to several NRTWC advocacy and fundraising letters and received over $27,000 in campaign contributions from the NRTWC’s federal political action committee. The NRTWC also strongly opposed the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made it easier for workers to organize, while supported legislation that would weaken the regulatory authority of the National Labor Relations Board over employers.

The NRTWC also does extensive lobbying on the state level. In 2012, lobbyists registered with the NRTWC were on the ground in Indiana and Michigan when both states passed anti-union "right to work" bills and are big supporters of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his efforts to crush public sector unions. The NRTWC was an exhibitor at the 2011 annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate bill mill exposed by CMD in 2011. ALEC's "Right to Work Act," which has been in the ALEC library since at least 1980, is one of its most commonly used "model" bills. When Republicans took trifecta control of 26 state houses in November of 2010, it was a top agenda item at the December 2010 ALEC meeting. According to a 2010 email from ALEC to Wisconsin legislators that CMD obtained, ALEC referred to its "Right to Work Act" as a "solution… for your state's most pressing issues." Currently 24 states are so-called "right to work" states. In 2013, 15 states introduced legislation based on ALEC's "Right to Work Act."

The NRTWLDF is also an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN), an $84 million dollar network of 64 state-based "think tanks." The State Policy Network's affiliate in Michigan, the Mackinac Center, was one of the major supporters behind "right to work" when the legislature passed the bill in 2012. Through its board, staff, and other activities, the NRTW groups also have close connections to Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the American Conservative Union, and the Republican National Committee.

Crossing the Line: Whistleblower Alleges New Election Law Violations

From the beginning, the NRTWC had a focus on influencing U.S. elections. The NRTWC has spent millions in dark money electoral ads, including $7 million during the 2012 election. Although a leading group on the right, the NRTWC has also attacked Republicans such as John Boehner and Bob Dole for not adhering to their extreme policy agenda.

The NRTWC's long history of pushing the line in campaign finance and electoral activity as a nonprofit led to an FEC case against it at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982, in which the court ruled against the NRTWC for illegally raising money for electoral activities. The NRTWC continued to engage in controversial campaign-related activities, and evidence suggests that the National Right to Work Committee spent $100,000 on private detectives in 1984 to infiltrate the AFL-CIO, NEA, and Walter Mondale's presidential campaign. By the time that case was brought to court, the statute of limitations had expired.

Today, the NRTWC continues to generate controversy for engaging in campaign related activities. In January 2014, the Center for Responsive Politics detailed whistleblower allegations that the NRTWC was running "a massive off-the-books mass mailing operation" attempting to influence the 2010 election in Iowa and possibly other states. The NRTWC did not disclose that it was participating in political activity that year to the IRS. The whistleblower also alleged that the NRTWC was coordinating its activities with candidates' campaigns during the election. Former IRS official Marcus Owens commented to the news outlet that "people have gone to jail for precisely the facts that you are describing." At the center of the controversy was then-NRTWC Vice President Doug Stafford, who is the former chief of staff for U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).
NRTWC Lawyers Push Their Agenda through the Courts

The legal arm of NRTWC was launched in 1968 to take the anti-worker agenda to the courts. With the Harris v. Quinn case, the NRTWLDF is seeking to re-litigate the Abood vs. Detroit Board of Education Supreme Court case it lost in 1977, which upheld the constitutionality of fair share dues. Over the years, the NRTWLDF has done little to improve wages, benefits, health or safety protections for American workers, but has tried scores of cases against unions and organized labor revealing its political agenda. With a large team of lawyers and millions in funding from national right-wing sources, the NRTWLDF is currently trying cases in Arkansas, Missouri, California, Michigan, Colorado, and Ohio.

NRTWLDF's also recently filed suit to block workers in the Volkswagen Chattanooga plant from voting for union representation and to prevent Volkswagen from voluntarily consenting to any future organizing drives.

Professor Rogers and other labor experts contend that the NRTWC's success in the U.S. Supreme Court "would be a disaster for labor, particularly for the public sector unions that traditionally rely more heavily on agency shop agreements." As Rogers points out, it is technically possible to form a union in a "right to work" state, but when union members are free to stop paying their dues, the union becomes a weak and ineffective organization. The results for American workers are clear. Research shows that "right to work" states have lower wages, less health care and more poverty.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

New Report Documents How Privatization Steals Wages, Harms Communities

By Mary Bottari
All across the country, public services are increasingly outsourced to private contractors in the name of efficiency and cost savings. But a new report from the non-profit research group In the Public Interest (ITPI) shows that outsourcing public services hurts middle and working class communities as well as workers.


The report, "Race to the Bottom: How Outsourcing Public Services Rewards Corporations and Punishes the Middle Class," makes the case that when private contractors make huge profits from taxpayer dollars, money is often sucked out of local communities. Dollars that used to go to employees are sent to shareholders instead, harming communities as local workers have less to spend. Taxpayers take another hit when employees, who used to have access to health care and good wages, now have to rely on food stamps and Medicaid to survive.

“False promises of privatization trigger a race to the bottom. CEOs do well, but middle class jobs are replaced with poverty wages,” says ITPI’s Donald Cohen.

Privatization Fuels a Race to the Bottom

The "Race to the Bottom" report documents how when federal, state, and local governments pay hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to contractors for jobs that pay so little, they leave employees dependent on the social safety net. These costs are not being taken into account by governments. For example, the report cites a 2010 study that showed contracted school cafeteria employees in California received an average of $1,743 in public assistance--in effect, an additional public subsidy for a private contractor's low wages.

Mary Sparrow was a housekeeper for the Milwaukee County Courthouse when it was privatized under then-Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker in 2010. She was offered a new job by the new contractor, but her wages would have dropped from $14.29 with benefits to $8 without benefits. She searched for a better job, but in the meantime her unemployment benefits went to maintaining her healthcare benefits through COBRA and she had to dip into her son’s college savings account.

“Privatizing has had a devastating effect on our community. It is not just what we get paid, but what we spend in our communities. Privatizers get ahead, but not the front line workers,” said Sparrow.

The personal toll is high. "I still get calls from friends who want to give up,” says Sparrow, choking up. “This has been awful for us and I hope that any community or any state would think twice before privatizing.”

Governments are Helping to Create Inequailty with Growth in Contracting and Subcontracting

Decades ago, the public sector offered stable jobs with family-supporting wages and important benefits like health insurance, sick leave, and pensions.

“Government historically created a ladder of opportunity by paying family-supporting wages and providing important benefits,” said Shar Habibi, author of the report. “This is especially true for women and African-Americans, allowing millions of them to reach the middle class." Outsourcing "turns middle class careers into poverty-level jobs, and taxpayers inadvertently support the dismantling of our once-robust middle class."

Habibi noted that there was a growing body of evidence that outsourcing leads to a downward spiral as that ladder of opportunity disappears. Reduced wages and benefits not only make it harder for working people to enter the middle class, they also hurt local economies as those workers have less to spend, reducing the stability of working and middle class communities.

As the report notes, government is becoming a major source of low-wage jobs. Rather than helping to raise living standards for all, privatization and subcontracting is becoming a force in growing inequality. By 2013, according to a study by Demos, the number of contracted employees working on behalf of the federal government who earned less than $12/hour had already reached 2 million--more than the number of low-paid workers at Walmart and McDonald's combined.

Poor Jobs Lead to Poor Quality

Many cases detailed in the report reveal how low pay hurts both workers and the people they care for. For example in 2011, the state of Michigan was considering a plan to outsource staffing for all nursing assistants in a state-run home for veterans located in Grand Rapids. At the time, the home was staffed by a combination of directly employed nursing assistants and contracted positions. It was something of a case study in the hidden costs of privatization.

Even though the contractor billed $14.99 per hour for each nursing assistant it hired, it paid out as little as $8.50, with no health or pension benefits. Low pay left nursing assistants like Ginny Townsend earning half as much as public employees for doing the same work. In Townsend's case, that wasn't nearly enough to support her four grandchildren, leaving her to rely on $300 in food stamp benefits each month to survive.

This low pay turns out to have a high cost when it comes to the quality of nursing care. Compared to state-employed nursing assistants, contracted positions have a high turnover rate. Contracted staff are more likely to lift patients improperly, risking injury to patients.

"You get what you pay for," said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.He explained that the quality of work often "falls steeply" when pay is reduced.

And with low-paid contract workers often newly dependent on social services, "savings in one budget column end up as costs in a different budget column," Bernstein said.

Despite clear evidence that state employees provided a better level of care for patients, the Republican leadership of the state decided to go through with the plan to outsource all nursing assistant positions.

CEO Gains and Community Losses

Outsourcing definitely has at least one beneficiary: CEOs of the companies that win public contracts. The report cites the case of Aramark, which provides school lunches. The CEO of Aramark, Eric Foss, took home over $18 million in total compensation in 2013. Just two years earlier, Aramark had halved wages for custodial employees when it took the contract for the Chelmsford, Massachusetts school district. The company seemingly couldn't afford to pay more than $8.75/hour to workers like Rick Thorne, who had worked his way up to $20/hour after 22 years in the district.

In New Orleans, Carol Sanders had raised a family and paid a mortgage on her income as a cook for the local school system, earning $15/hour after 28 years on the job. After the work was outsourced to Aramark, Sanders saw her pay cut and her hours scaled back, leaving her without medical insurance and newly reliant on food stamps.

Recommendations

In too many cases, outsourcing gives an illusion of savings at the cost of increased income inequality, increased spending on public assistance programs, measurable decline in the quality and safety of important public services, and the disappearance of an important "ladder of opportunity" for millions of hard-working Americans.

The report's authors recommend that governments begin to:

• Require contractors to show that cost savings derive from increased efficiencies and innovation, not a decrease in compensation.
• Require contractors to pay a living wage and provide health and other important benefits.
• Require transparency measures, such as tracking how much state and local governments are spending on private contracts, how many workers are employed by those contracts, and worker wage rates.
• Require governments to conduct a social and economic impact analysis before outsourcing.

The report concludes that these policies could help "rebuild those ladders to the middle class" by ensuring that taxpayer dollars support "solid family-supporting jobs."

ITPI's report is available here.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.