The wealthy right wing have always liked to pick on the working class. And now Wall Street wants to blame Main Street for the financial crisis our country is in. Big bankers taking home large bonuses are blaming the childcare workers and parking-meter collectors in this country, saying that their jobs are the reason we're in a recession.
If you stop to actually look at the people and jobs Wall Street is attacking, you realize that we need to stop the lies. Public-service workers make little money and do the hard jobs necessary to keep our country running.
In 2009, public service worker Joe Wisniowski made $40,000 as an Airport Equipment Operator for an Ohio airport. Meanwhile Wall Street raked in $20.3 BILLION in bonuses during the same year.
As Robert Bonds, a parking meter collections assistant in Detroit, puts it: "What is this teaching my son? You can work hard, go to college to get your degree, and it's all out of your hands; your success is based on somebody sitting in an office somewhere on Wall Street... that's not what I want him to believe."
Public-service workers are coming under attack like never before. Wall Street has the money, the power and the media mouthpiece to spread lies about those who serve our country in necessary jobs. We can't let Wall Street destroy the backbone of America. Join with us to defend public service workers.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Braly's total compensation shot up from $8.7 million to $13.1 million last year. At least three other executives there did just as well, with raises of up to 75 percent. Meanwhile, 800,000 individual policyholders in California are learning of this good news for WellPoint executives a month before their own insurance rates are set to spike by double digits - an unprecedented rate increase initiated on Angela Braly's watch.
WellPoint, of course, is merely doing what it must to pursue the gold standard of excellence in its service to shareholders and customers, according to company spokesman Jon Mills:
"WellPoint wants to attract and retain top talent. In order to be the best, to be innovative, to continue delivering the best service, we do have to retain the best quality." He added: "We are in no way trying to inflate the salaries and compensation figures but trying to maintain a high level of talent at the organization."
It's all just a big misunderstanding, see. The problem is that all of us amateur, casual observers, with our pious concerns about "fairness" and "right and wrong," just don't understand the entirely rational and ultimately equitable dynamics of the free market system for labor compensation. Companies have to find and keep talented leaders, and if it takes $6.2 million in restricted stock, a $1.1 million salary increase, a $1.5 million performance bonus, $4 million in stock options and $292,036 in "other expenses" (including over $150,000 in "security-related improvements" to protect Angela Braly from us, the angry, overcharged, underinsured hordes) to retain a CEO who had the wisdom to force hundreds of thousands of Californians off the company's rolls or into bankruptcy-threatening situations in order to buoy WellPoint stock prices (which rose by close to 40% last year), then that's just how the free market works, which is nobody's fault, really, when you think about it.
Except the reality is, there is no misunderstanding. Ordinary Americans understand exactly how the free market works. In fact, it's precisely this understanding that infuriates everyone from your longtime local union activist to your freshly-minted Tea Party revolutionary. It's the Jon Millses of the world that don't get it. Their explanations illuminate nothing, except insofar as they confirm exactly what everyone suspects: that there are in fact two economic realities in America today - one that Angela Braly occupies along with Wall Street CEOs, corporate lobbyists and corrupt politicians, and the other that the rest of us experience.
In the former, forcing hundreds of thousands of everyday people to spend thousands more on their premiums to pay for the mess you've made of the healthcare system, then pointing to the increased revenue as proof of your leadership and profit-making abilities, is called "taking responsibility" and is rewarded with a $4.4 million raise. It's market meritocracy at work.
In the latter, it really doesn't matter how hard you work or how great of a job you do -- if the executives at the helm steer your company over rocky shoals, you stand a good chance of losing your wage increases, your benefits, or your job altogether. If you're not "top talent," you simply don't need to be "attracted and retained." The world doesn't work that way for you. Or to take another example, if the executives at your insurance carrier decide they didn't make enough money last fiscal quarter, you better cough up thousands of dollars more this year or lose your coverage. Never mind that you had exactly nothing to do with WellPoint's problems with rising medical costs, or its shareholder's demands for 40% increases in their stock values. It really doesn't matter who you are or what you've done or what you haven't done; you don't control your destiny, the "market" does. That's just basic economics. We don't need a WellPoint spokesman to explain that; everyone knows it already. With the economy in turmoil, we're all getting our noses rubbed in it every single day.
What's incredible is that even after witnessing the public's reactions to the taxpayer-financed AIG bonuses, the auto company CEOs flying on private jets to DC to beg Congress for bailouts, and Goldman Sachs' record profits a year after benefiting from $62 billion in publicly-financed AIG pass-throughs, corporate executives like Braly and their PR handlers still can't comprehend the outrage. But then, that points to something else we already know: that from a mansion on a hill, the riot below can sound like a distant and dull roar, or like nothing at all.
ACORN members know what that does to a family and to a community. So today, 300 ACORN members took over the Mitchell Courthouse in Baltimore, Maryland singing and chanting as they overwhelmed the 20 or so sheriff's deputies assigned to "protect" auctioneers from selling off foreclosed properties.
Brave New Foundation (disclaimer: my employer)just launched episode 2 of This Brave Nation, a documentary series born out of a collaboration between BNF and The Nation magazine. In this episode, two legendary Californians, Dolores Huerta and Bonnie Raitt, are featured in conversation with one another. (Episode 1 also features two Californians: Van Jones and Carl Pope. Really serves to remind you just how outsized a role our state has played in building the progressive movement in the U.S.)
Future episodes will include Anthony Romero and Ava Lowery, Majora Carter and Pete Seeger, and Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein. At a moment when progressives are healing the wounds of a divisive presidential primary, this series reminds us of the solidarity of our movement.
Brave New Foundation (disclaimer: my employer) just released this new video featuring students who grew up in the U.S., worked their way through high school and earned the merits to attend college, but now face legal and financial barriers to enrolling due solely to their immigration status. The DREAM Act, which died in Congress in 2006 along with immigration reform as a whole, would have removed the federal provision that prevents states from allowing undocumented students who grew up here in America to qualify for in-state tuition, and would have provided a path to legal status for these future doctors, teachers, scientists and engineers. The California DREAM Act, vetoed last year by the Governor, would have allowed undocumented students who grew up here in California to be treated like any other student when they applied for financial aid for college.
These bills aimed to rationalize our nation's hamstrung immigration policies and to help bolster an eroding pool of skilled and educated workers in America. Their demise spelled a huge missed opportunity for California and for the country.
Big thanks to Senator Cedillo for taking a stand on this critical issue, and for a career of fighting for more humane and sensible immigration policies. Let's hope to see the DREAM Act reintroduced in Sacramento and in Washington in the near future.
We just had an exciting last-minute addition to our Brave New Films/The Young Turks Super Tuesday live online video election coverage: Senator Boxer will join us at 6:30pm PT as a call-in guest.
That completes an outstanding guest list of progressive thinkers and doers for tonight. You're guaranteed better election coverage with us than on cable or network news, so turn off your TV and check in online -- starting in just a few minutes. (List over the flip)
Lots of posts in the California blogs in the last 24 hours, almost all of them on Bush commuting Scooter Libby's sentence (it's good to be the king -- or his friend). Actual California stuff I found below the fold. As always, if I missed something, post it in comments.
Incidentally, I noticed that for some reason the links sometimes appear as plain text in the RSS feed. They do seem to show up as hyperlinks in the emailed roundup. I'll see what I can do about that. Until then, just click through for hyperlinking.
We have gained an amazing new partner in the fight for a fair contract for the grocery workers. Brave New Films, of "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Living" fame has created a new online campaign to help tell the story of the grocery workers and collect pledges from customers not to shop at the Vons, Raphs or Albertsons if they force a lockout or a strike. Here is the first video:
On Oct 4 West LA Dem Club screens Robert Greenwald's new film - Iraq for Sale - The War Profiteers. Portion of the proceeds (after we pay for venue, etc) will go to Dem candidates including Debra Bowen, Charlie Brown and Jerry McNerney.
