The coming federal battle over the right of workers
to organize (Employee Free Choice Act)
and the Fair Elections Now Act

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority. This story, revealed by the Huffington Post of January 27th reveals a high-powered lobbying campaign by the captains of industry, to scuttle the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in Congress.

This, at a time when billions in taxpayer dollars have bailed out Wall Street, banks (including Bank of America), hedge funds, and the insurance underwriters (think A.I.G.) who guarantee profits for Wall Street investors regardless of the rise or fall of portfolio holdings.

Take a few moments to listen to short excerpts of the actual conference call (links are embedded within the Huffington Post article). You can hear Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, and Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts, exhort their fellow CEOs and investors to contribute millions to "endangered" federal legislators and to a nationwide lobbying effort to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. They use tough street language and don't mince words.

It is revealing. And outrageous! And yet, a somewhat rare glimpse into the actual exercise of political muscle that accompanies great wealth in America.

Where's OUR power?

This is the reason why public financing of federal election campaigns - such as the Fair Elections Now Act - must be a top priority for citizen action and lobbying, if ever we are to see progress on the issues and kitchen table concerns that affect ordinary households across the land.

For example, can we expect real progress on affordable, universal health care - when insurance industry moguls and Big Pharma are twisting arms in Congress, pointing out the need for campaign cash and the political damage that might await lawmakers who don't play along? What about food and farm policy? Energy policy? Banking and finance regulation? All will be subject to intensive lobbying pressure - and lobbyists with bags of corporate cash have great influence.

Indeed, government policy-making has been auctioned to the highest bidders, usually corporate. To reverse this trend, we need to change the source of the campaign cash - so that elected officials are beholden to voters and ordinary Americans, not to Wall Street financiers.

For a moment, consider what's really going on. Notice the connection between wealth, income, the economic meltdown, and staying on top of the economic haystack using special-interest political influence.

Immense wealth, and growing disparity

The Wall Street Journal reports, "The really rich keep getting richer"

The data published in the Wall Street Journal article come from an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) study of wealthy US taxpayers in 2005, an update of a report conducted five years earlier. The study reveals that the 400 super-rich-who represent approximately .0003 percent of the nation's 134 million taxpayers-reported total income of $85.6 billion in 2005, an average of $213.9 million each.

Data about the distribution of wealth in America is not commonly reported. A survey in 1983 sponsored by the Federal Reserve Board, reported by faculty at Fairfield College, showed how wealth was concentrated in the hands of a small number of families, even then. The wealthiest 1 percent of families owned over 34 percent of the nation's net worth, the top 10% of families owned over 71%. The bottom 40 percent of the population, four out of ten, owned way less than 1 percent!

And consider the trends. Author and political economist Kevin Phillips writes, "between 1979 and 1989, the portion of the nation's wealth held by the top 1 percent nearly doubled from 22 percent to 39 percent." (Wealth and Democracy, pg xiii, Kevin Phillips, 2002).

He continues, "In 1999 the New York Times reported that within the most prosperous fifth of U.S. households, national income growth was shared so unevenly that some 90 percent of that fifth's gain went to the top 1 percent! No one, then, should regard the $90,000-a-year accountant or $125,000-a-year lawyer - members of the top 5 or 10 percent - as fellow riders on the same glittering escalator as the investment banker making $1.5 million or the corporate CEO collecting $40 million in annual compensation." (Ibid. Emphasis original)

A study by the Congressional Budget Office shows that between 1979 and 1997, the average after-tax income of the richest one percent of Americans grew by $414,000, after adjusting for inflation, while average after-tax income fell $100 for the poorest 20 percent of Americans. (Read report by the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities.)

And an analysis by two economists, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, reported by the New York Times reveals that the top 1 percent of earners in the United States took in 19 percent of all income in 2005, up from 8 percent in 1975,

Where's the money? Where's my retirement?

As the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal on Wall Street came to light, with media reports that $50 billion disappeared, many want to know: Where did the money go?

Paul Krugman suggests one answer in his December, 2008, column, "The Madoff Economy". We can paraphrase his point: It went into the millions of dollars in commissions and fees, for trades on investments (shuffling paper and electrons on banking computers) that turned out to be worthless - yet the commissions were paid anyway, before the meltdown was revealed, and these fortunes were spent on yachts, lavish vacations and other luxury items commonly enjoyed by the ultra-rich.

In other words, there's been a massive shift of wealth from the ordinary 401(k)'s and retirement funds of millions of hardworking Americans, into the bank accounts and lavish lifestyles of the already-wealthy.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd also comments on this emerging economic landscape in a recent column, "Wall Street's Socialist Jet-Setters".

This casino-like atmosphere of Wall Street - quite legal, if also immoral - and the growing wealth disparity between the super-rich and ordinary Americans, is not the end of the story. Indeed, we need to recognize how it's killing the American Dream - opportunity for all.

Democracy corrupted:

What needs to be more widely reported and recognized for the true scandal that it is, is the story of democracy corrupted, skewing government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" and killing the promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for the many.

It's the story of how the corporate CEO's and owners will exercise economic and political power to maintain their riches in the face of a growing economic meltdown for so many that is causing loss of jobs, loss of homes, loss of health care, loss of educational opportunity for the nation's youth - and growing poverty across this land of great plenty.

That is the real significance of the Huffington Post revelation - and the attempts by Bank of America and conservative business "leaders" to purchase laws and public policy in their own greedy interest, in the Congress.

It reveals an economic and political bullying of Main Street by captains of great wealth - using their power over lawmakers through the influence of lavish campaign and lobbying contributions.

It reveals precisely why the Employee Free Choice Act needs to become the law of the land - to preserve the democratic right of workers to get a leg up - to decide whether they want to create and join a union that can fight for living wages and worker safety - without job site influence by employers who tilt the scale by threatening workers with plant closures, layoffs, immigration raids, or even firings.

Perhaps importantly, this story reveals why we need a conversation about economic class and political power in America - and about what's really needed to restore and preserve our democracy - in the face of poverty in the land of plenty, and alarming and growing disparity between rich and poor.

The Fair Elections Now Act:

It reveals why we must enact public financing of federal election campaigns - for the U.S. Senate and Congress, as well as repair of the broken presidential public financing system. To be candid, the Fair Elections Now Act will not by itself create morality in elected lawmakers. It will not stop lobbying by special interests. It will not end arm-twisting and the use of pressure-tactics, seeking to influence public policy and legislation.

But public financing of campaigns will allow good public servants - people who enjoy community support and believe in the promise of America - to have the funds to run for office, and win. It will allow them to do the people's business without fear of being "taken out" at the next election by greed and extraordinary spending by the corporate money men of Wall Street. It's how we'll buy back our democracy - and truly enable the American dream for ordinary Americans.

Let's not be silent! As Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has said: The arc of history may be long, but it bends toward justice.

Perhaps the arc will bend sooner toward justice as people of good faith speak up and organize for the world we wish to see!

~Craig Salins
Salins is Executive Director of Washington Public Campaigns, working for public financing of campaigns at every level. www.washclean.org