U.S. Supreme Court

GOP: Lack of Insurance Revokes Sanctity of Life

Leo Gerard — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 09:14:03 -0400

In the case of fetuses and rich people, Republicans insist on the sanctity of life. But in the case of destitute people, infants who imprudently choose working-poor parents and struggling young adults – basically all riffraff unable to afford health insurance – the GOP says there’s nothing sacred about their stinking lives.

Let ’em die. The uninsured should be left to rot. To the GOP, lack of insurance revokes sanctity of life. A GOP audience at a Republican presidential candidate debate clapped and cheered that morality. More recently, GOP leaders said insuring all Americans should not be the nation’s objective.

Instead, the Republican goal is guaranteeing Americans retain the freedom to forgo health insurance.

To the GOP, “freedom” to be uninsured is more important than public health, which could be endangered by an untreated, uninsured, modern-day Typhoid Mary. To Republicans, the “freedom” to be uninsured is more important than the horror of family members watching helplessly as a loved one who foolishly failed to get insurance slowly dies in agony from untreated bone cancer.

One percenters who are members of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s elite club of quarter billionaires can afford the risk of being uninsured. If they fall off a dancing horse, they can pay the medical bills out of pocket. But the non-rich can’t afford a trip to the emergency room. For them, being uninsured isn’t a freedom. It’s bankruptcy. It’s death.

No sane non-rich American wants the liberty to be uninsured.

Despite that, the GOP has repeatedly declared its intention to force the freedom to be uninsured down the throats of unwilling non-rich Americans. Last month, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives voted for the 33^rd time to repeal or defund ObamaCare. Republicans have tried incessantly in the past two years to kill the law that will soon increase the percentage of Americans covered by health insurance from 84 to 93. If the Republicans could just get Democrats in the Senate to approve that repeal – and President Obama to sign it – 30 million Americans would continue to be “free” to choose being uninsured.

The GOP may get that opportunity early next year. Their presidential nominee Mitt Romney has vowed that his top priority “day one, job one” in the White House will be repealing ObamaCare. No matter that it’s based on RomneyCare, which Romney signed while governor of Massachusetts; no matter that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of ObamaCare; no matter that Republicans have no plan to cover the 30 million Americans who would lose the opportunity to be insured; no matter how many uninsured people would die as a result, repeal is Romney’s top national priority.

Let ’em die, Romney says. Sanctity-Schmanctity.

Similarly, six Republican governors – Rick Scott (Fla.); Rick Perry (Texas); Phil Bryant (Miss.); Nikki Haley (S.C.); Bobby Jindal (La.); and Terry Branstad (Iowa) – have announced they will refuse the ObamaCare Medicaid money that’s intended to extend insurance to the working poor – those who earn slightly too much to be covered by Medicaid now. The governors’ rejection of Medicaid expansion is expected to give at least 3 million Americans the “freedom” to continue being uninsured.

The governors said they would rebuff the money even though for the first three years, states don’t have to contribute a cent to the program. They’ll snub the money even though studies have shown expansion of Medicaid improves health and significantly reduces death.

Let ’em die, the GOP governors say. Sanctity-Schmanctity.

Last week, insurance companies that overcharged under the terms of ObamaCare returned $1.1 billion to policy holders and employers who buy coverage. ObamaCare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, requires insurers, depending on their size, to spend between 80 and 85 percent of premium dollars on actual medical care. Insurers that pay too much for fancy penthouse offices and CEO perks must rebate policyholders. This is what Republicans want to deny Americans in exchange for the “freedom” to be uninsured.

The rebate checks went into the mail just one week after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported – again – that ObamaCare will lower the nation’s budget deficit. That’s lower, as in reduce, diminish, decrease the deficit. In fact, the CBO reported that if Republicans had succeeded in getting the law repealed, that would have increased the deficit by $109 billion over nine years. Republicans want to give Americans higher deficits in exchange for the “freedom” to be uninsured.

That’s right. Republicans have voted 33 times to enlarge the deficit and take from Americans ObamaCare benefits they love – like coverage for young adults under their parents’ plans until age 26; payments to senior citizens to close the Medicare prescription donut hole; and prohibitions against insurers denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions and against dropping policyholders when they get sick.

As Americans realize benefits from ObamaCare, the law increases in popularity. Despite the GOP’s massive two-year campaign to kill it, support for ObamaCare has grown steadily, so that now, nearly half the nation backs it.

Still, Americans don’t yet love ObamaCare the way citizens of Great Britain adore their National Health Service (NHS). In Great Britain, the half-century-old NHS is so treasured that it received a tribute in the opening ceremony to the Olympics in London. The NHS, like health care in other Western European countries, covers everyone.

That’s exactly what Republicans don’t want – a system that insures all Americans. Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, put it this way when asked how to extend coverage to the nation’s uninsured:

“Let me tell you what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a Western European system.”

Nope. He’d rather let Americans die. Sanctity-Schmanctity.

ObamaCare Pays Off – in Real Cash

Leo Gerard — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:54:32 -0400

In a famous “Laugh In” sketch, Lily Tomlin, playing arrogant operator Ernestine, telephones a customer to demand payment of $23.64 for three calls to Topeka and threatens to send a burly serviceman to the customer’s house to rip his phone out of the wall if he doesn't pay.

Ernestine was the face of smug and uncaring Bell Telephone. Today, she’d be the mug of cocky and cold-hearted health insurers.

In the 1960s skit, when the telephone customer complains about Ernestine having access to his confidential financial and tax records, she says of the telephone company:

“We are not subject to city, state or federal regulations. We are omnipotent.”

Back in the days of “Laugh In,” the customer who Ernestine wrongly accused of owing $23.64 had no recourse. Today, however, because of ObamaCare, the client could call Ernestine and demand a refund. Nearly 16 million health insurance consumers will get rebates totaling an estimated $1.3 billion beginning Aug. 1 because ObamaCare limits the profits that insurance companies can make off of illness, injury and pain.

Take that, Ernestine!

Under ObamaCare, more formally known as the Affordable Care Act, insurers must send refunds to customers if the companies skim off excessive portions of premium payments for administrative costs and profits. For big group plans, the law says insurers must spend 85 percent of premiums on patient care. For smaller group plans and individual coverage, it is 80 percent.

This rule took effect in 2011, so insurance companies that spent too little last year on patient care must send rebates to customers this year. One New Jersey company reported it already has returned $19 million to customers.

Here is how the numbers break down, according to calculations by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization that provides facts and analysis on health care issues.

Thirty-one percent of Americans who buy individual health insurance plans will get refunds or discounts on future bills. That’s 3.4 million customers. Each will receive an average of $127. The insurance companies – 215 of them – must pay a total of $426 million.

Nineteen percent of workers covered by large group plans will benefit. That’s 7.5 million customers. They’ll receive an average benefit of $72. (The money will be sent to the employers that pay the premiums and is expected to be shared with the workers who bear part of the cost.) The insurance companies – 125 of them – must pay a total of $541 million.

Twenty-eight percent of workers covered by small group plans will benefit. That’s 4.9 million customers. They’ll receive an average benefit of $76. (This money also will be sent to employers.) The insurance companies – 146 of them – must pay a total of $377 million.

That’s a lot of customers getting a lot of money, Ernestine. And it’s not even everything. It doesn’t include California, for which Kaiser did not have statistics. And it doesn’t include the value of premium hikes ObamaCare prevented.

The Kaiser report noted that it’s impossible to calculate the entire savings consumers realize as a result of the ObamaCare rebate mandate because many insurers kept premiums low to avoid paying refunds. The report explains:

“This ‘sentinel’ effect on premiums has likely produced more savings for consumers and employers than the rebates themselves.”

It wouldn’t be happening without ObamaCare.

For decades health insurance consumers fumed. Each year, insurance companies jacked up premiums while providing even more arrogant and brutish service. Each year, regional monopolies increased.

Consumers watched helplessly as insurers rescinded coverage from neighbors after tests determined cancer, as insurers declared spina bifida a pre-existing condition in order to deny coverage to newborns, as insured relatives went bankrupt because of co-pays and uncovered costs.

Like Ernestine, insurers snorted at unhappy customers – because the companies knew customers had no recourse.

But then, ObamaCare gave consumers just a little measure of power in their relationship with insurance companies. The law forbids insurers from dropping customers who get sick. It forbids insurers from refusing to cover children because of pre-existing conditions. And it requires insurers to spend a large percent of premiums on actual medical services instead of bloated CEO pay and profits.

This is what Republicans in Congress and in state capitals across the country are trying to take away from health insurance consumers – that leverage ObamaCare gave customers to deal with massive, faceless, bureaucratic insurance companies.

Republicans have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare ObamaCare unconstitutional. They want to return to the days when insurers could mistreat customers like Ernestine did. They want to go back to the time when customers couldn’t do a thing about it.

The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding right now whether insurers are not subject to city, state or federal regulations, whether they are, as Ernestine said, “omnipotent.”

Killing Democracy One Vote at a Time

Leo Gerard — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:10:19 -0400

Corporations, 1 percenters and Republicans want to take America back. And by that they mean all the way to the 1780s when wealthy white men controlled the nation.

Because only they could vote.

In the intervening 230 or so years, America became increasingly democratic, eventually awarding the vote to white landless males; Quakers, Jews and Catholics; black men; women; Native Americans, and 18-year-olds.

The wealthy are nostalgic for the power they enjoyed when most states limited voting to landed gentry. Republicans are helping them return America to those plutocratic days by passing voter identification laws constraining suffrage by the 99 percent. Country club conservatives are converting voting from a universal right of citizenship to a privilege exclusive to select society members.

Voter identification laws require citizens to provide specific documents before exercising their franchise. Depending on the state, these include a photo driver’s license, a passport or a permit to carry a concealed handgun. The Brennan Center for Justice and others have calculated that 11 percent of eligible voters do not have government-issued photo identification. That’s 21 million citizens.

A survey by the Brennan Center showed that many Americans, primarily women, do not have proof of citizenship under their current name and certain groups, primarily the poor, elderly and minorities are less likely to possess the documents the new voter ID laws require.

The U.S. Department of Justice barred implementation of voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina after determining that the restrictions would disproportionately limit minority citizens’ access to the polls. Texas and South Carolina are among 16 states with records of discrimination, including voter intimidation and poll taxes. As a result, they are required by the 1965 Voting Rights Act to secure federal approval before changing voting laws.

In March, a court in Wisconsin declared the Badger State’s voter ID law unconstitutional. And the American Civil Liberties Union plans to ask a Pennsylvania court this week to do the same in the Keystone State.

But not all such suits are successful. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s restrictive voter ID law in 2008. And last year a nearly unanimous Georgia Supreme Court endorsed its voter limitations. Every judge except the first African American to sit on the Georgia Supreme Court bench approved restricting access to the polls. Thirty states will require voters to show identification in November, unless their laws are overturned.

Limiting voter access to the polls is a Republican cause. In 2011 and so far in 2012, nine states passed new or stiffened old voter ID laws. Republican governors preside over all nine states. And in all but one, Republicans completely control the legislatures. Five other states with Republican-controlled legislatures passed voter ID bills last year. These will not take effect, however, because five Democratic governors vetoed them.

Behind every voter-restricting Republican is corporate-sponsored ALEC. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing group that sends conservative lawmakers on all-expenses-paid junkets where they are wined and dined on ALEC corporate sponsors’ dime while they develop “model” legislation, like the kill-at-will laws that the slaying of Trayvon Martin made infamous.

ALEC gives corporations veto power over proposed “model” legislation, a fact that clearly illustrates who is in charge – the corporations that provide 98 percent of ALEC’s $7 million annual budget.

Corporations embrace voter ID because democracy is downright annoying to them. The Supreme Court has deemed corporations to be people, which allows them to secretly spend unlimited money on political campaigns. But that doesn’t assure victory for candidates that corporations choose because corporations don’t have the right to actually make the choice – to vote.

The best corporations can do is limit balloting by those likely to vote against corporate-sponsored candidates. That would be voters who historically have favored Democrats.

Voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise those voters – the poor, minorities and those who actually recall the progressive, popular and successful administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republican backers of voter ID are completely unconcerned that the laws subjugate these citizens.

Too bad, they say, for grandma, who has voted in every election for the past 65 years but doesn’t have a driver’s license anymore and because she was born at home does not have a birth certificate necessary to get a government-issued photo ID.

Too bad, Republicans say, for the student whose driver’s license address differs from his university address and whose college photo ID does not have an expiration date.

Too bad, the GOP says, for the urban single mother who does not have a driver’s license or the time or money to apply for a birth certificate with a raised seal required to apply at another office for a state identification card.

Voter ID restrictions work for the rich. They’ve got birth certificates and photo driver’s licenses and passports. Or they can send a servant or secretary to apply for the documents. And the more rabble removed from the polls, the more weighty the votes of the wealthy.

In the Halcyon Days of democracy, the unwashed masses were actually urged to vote with slogans like: “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”

Now corporations, 1 percenters and Republicans are working to ensure you don’t vote because they honestly believe you don’t count.

Making America the Best Place on Earth to Work

Leo Gerard — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:37:33 -0500

Not the wars. Not greenhouse gasses. Not even the deficit. The issue most important to Americans is jobs.

Despite that, jobs failed to make an appearance in the State of the Union address.

The talk was all about business. Business was doing better. Business needed taxpayers to help pay for research and innovation. Business will get government help to eliminate pesky regulations. Business must have lower taxes.

The most telling statement was this:

“We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business.”

Especially because it wasn’t matched by a companion:

“We have to make America the best place on Earth to work.”

The speech expressed a policy in which business is the focus of government, taking precedence over workers. The American colonists created a government for their own benefit; they did not constitute an agent to serve business. A policy giving corporations primacy is risky for American workers.

The state of the union noted that happy days are here again for corporations and banks:

“Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.”

Never mentioned, however, were the 14.5 million unemployed Americans, the sustained record rate of foreclosure, and the increasing poverty and food bank reliance among citizens of the richest nation in the world.

The state of the union outlined a plan under which the government will coddle corporations, essentially proving companies government welfare using American workers’ tax dollars. If businesses create jobs for workers as a result, fine. If they don’t, there’s no plan to exact a penalty.

For example, under the policy described in the speech, American workers will fork over tax dollars to pay for research and development for businesses that are sitting on a record $1.8 trillion in cash reserves -- hoarding it rather than creating jobs.

The president said:

“Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven't seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We'll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology -- an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”

Maybe it will create new jobs. Hopefully. But no guarantees were offered. Mentioned as a business success story in the speech was a Michigan company, Luma Resources, which began manufacturing solar shingles with the help of a $500,000 government grant. It created 20 jobs, $25,000 a job. American taxpayers might think that’s a little pricey, but what’s worse is the potential for Luma Resources to go the way of Evergreen Solar, squandering the corporate welfare.

Evergreen, the third largest maker of solar panels in the U.S. and recipient of at least $43 million in corporate welfare, announced earlier this month it would close its main American factory in Massachusetts and move manufacturing to China. Eight hundred Americans will lose their Evergreen jobs by April.

Evergreen officials said China will give the company even higher amounts of corporate welfare, which, of course, makes sense since China is not a capitalist country. Its economy is government controlled. And that government routinely violates international trade regulations – by providing banned subsidies to industries and by deliberately devaluing its currency.

No matter how better educated American workers get. No matter how much more innovative. No matter how much more productive. No matter how many tax dollars the government spends on research and development, if the corporations that benefit move manufacturing overseas, the American workers who paid for it will suffer.

In fact, it’s more than suffering; it’s betrayal by their government that provided tax benefits to companies for off-shoring jobs. It is betrayal by their government that fails to stop violations of trade laws by countries like China that lure away firms like Evergreen.

At the end of the State of the Union speech, the president said:

“From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream.”

An ordinary American dreams of a family-supporting job, owning a home, saving enough to pay for a child’s college education, helping to build a safe community. Corporations aren’t Americans, no matter how often the U.S. Supreme Court grants them rights that the U.S. Constitution guarantees to human beings. Businesses aren’t citizens. Their allegiance isn’t to America. It’s to profits. They dream only of dollars. They concede no responsibility to family, community or country.

They were not included when the president said:

“Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater -- something more consequential than party or political preference. We are part of the American family.”

The top priority of the American government must be making America the best place on Earth for Americans. If that’s good for corporations, great. The government must never place American citizens second.

Corporate Rewards: Controlling U.S. Trade Policy

Leo Gerard — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:50:44 -0500

Real men, real human beings, with feelings and families, fought and died at Gettysburg to preserve the Union, to ensure, as their president, Abraham Lincoln, would say later, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Perversely, afterwards, non-humans commandeered the constitutional amendment intended to protect the rights of former slaves. Corporations wrested from the U.S. Supreme Court a decision based on the 14^th Amendment asserting that corporations are people with rights to be upheld by the government – but with no counterbalancing human responsibilities to the republic. No duty to fight or die in war, for example. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court expanded those rights – ruling that corporations have a First Amendment free speech right to surreptitiously spend unlimited money on political campaigns.

Today, Lincoln would have to say America’s got a government of the people by the corporations, for the corporations.

The proposed trade agreement with South Korea illustrates corporate control of government for profit. It’s the same with efforts to revive the moribund trade schemes former President George W. Bush also negotiated with Panama and Colombia, the world’s most dangerous country by far for trade unionists, with 2,700 assassinated with impunity in the past two decades, 38 slain so far this year.

Nobody likes these trade deals – except corporations. They’re all modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), both of which killed American jobs while giving corporations new authority to sue governments (read: taxpayers) for regulations – like environmental standards – that corporations contend interfere with their right to make money.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the South Korea so-called Free Trade Agreement (FTA) would cost America 159,000 jobs and enlarge its trade deficit by $16.7 billion in its first seven years.

Americans, now suffering though corporate-caused 9.6 percent unemployment, know a deal when they see one – and the South Korea FTA is not one. In a September poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 53 percent of Americans said so-called free trade agreements have injured the country. Only 17 percent said those trade schemes benefited the United States. Disgust with these deals spans party lines, including Tea Partiers, 61 percent of whom said they’re bad for America.

Many politicians, particularly Democrats, abhor the schemes as well. In July, just after President Obama announced that he would try to get the South Korea pact passed, 110 House Democrats described their disdain for the deal:

“We oppose specific provisions of the agreement in the financial services, investment, and labor chapters, because they benefit multi-national corporations at the expense of small businesses and workers.”

In addition, during this fall’s midterm election campaign, 205 candidates, Republican and Democrat, ran on platforms condemning job off-shoring and unfair trade, and house Democrats who ran on fair trade were three times as likely to survive the GOP “shellacking” as Democrats who supported so-called free trade schemes.

Significantly, the South Korean public and some South Korean politicians also oppose the trade proposal. In the week leading up to the G-20 meetings in Seoul, trade unionists, farmers, peasants and students filled the streets in marches and candle light vigils to express outrage with the proposed agreement, including its provisions giving U.S. corporations the right to challenge South Korean laws in private tribunals.

In October, 35 South Korean lawmakers joined 20 U.S. Representatives in writing President Obama and Korean President Lee Myunk-bak to protest the proposal.

Despite all that opposition, when Obama and Lee emerged from talks without an agreement, the American press, pundits and “analysts on both sides of the aisle,” described the situation as a major diplomacy failure, “a serious setback for the president.”

They were wrong. It wasn’t a setback for Obama. It was the president refusing to sign a bad deal for American workers.

It was, however, a humiliation for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which just spent at least $50 million from secret corporate donors to elect Republicans who will do its bidding. The South Korea deal is a priority for the Chamber. Here’s what Chamber senior vice president for international affairs Myron Brilliant told the New York Times after the South Korean negotiations broke down and Obama pledged to attempt to complete the deal over the following six weeks:

“This will be an early test for this president with the new Congress, particularly the House leadership.”

The “Brilliant” test is whether the president of the United States will comply with Chamber demands to complete trade deals that kill jobs and that Americans despise.

When Obama went to Seoul, Chamber President Thomas J. Donohue was there to, as he put it, help win the trade deal. He also was among 120 executives given exclusive access to international leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev in a conference before the G-20 meeting.

The international organizers didn’t invite to the trade talks or the conference the students, farmers, environmental groups, organized labor and untold millions of individuals who oppose the so-called free trade deals. The human beings who will be hurt most by the trade deals didn’t get a seat at the table. The corporate-people who stand to gain everything did.

Brilliant’s comments express the corporate sense of entitlement. They spent tens of millions to get what they wanted from politicians to increase profits. Now they expect it to be delivered. It’s their recompense, their corporate reward.

If fatter profits mean fewer American jobs and wider trade deficits, that’s simply not a problem for corporations. That’s among the perks corporations got when the Supreme Court awarded them the privileges of personhood in America but none of the pesky personal and patriotic responsibilities of actual people in American society.

Republicans Don’t Trust Americans

Leo Gerard — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:24:16 -0400

Republican fund-raisers are treating Americans like little children, as if the GOP knows best and must shelter the youngsters from the truth.

It’s like when a kindergartner asks his father if mommy is coming home soon, and the widower replies that she’s on a long business trip. The parent is attempting to shield the child from the cruel truth, afraid the little one can’t handle it.

That’s what Republican campaign fund-raising groups are doing by concealing their donors from the public. The GOP does not trust Americans to handle the information. Republican operatives want to shield voters from knowing who is actually paying for GOP attack ads. The GOP fears the consequences if Americans know the truth – exactly which giant corporations and Wall Street banksters are funding vicious screeds against Democrats because those covert donors believe Republicans will deliver for big business.

The secret GOP benefactors are right about one thing: A Republican majority will work for the rich. In a study of income growth post WWII, Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels determined that earnings rose faster at all income levels under Democratic administrations, but especially for the middle class and the poor. Under Republican presidents, the wealthiest benefited the most, increasing income inequality.

After the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down decades of precedent in January in its Citizens United ruling, defining corporations as “persons” and permitting them to pour unlimited cash into political advertising, Democrats offered legislation to temper that newly-granted corporate power. Called the DISCLOSE Act – for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections -- it would have required revelation of corporate donations.

Republicans wanted concealment of their corporate sources, however, and scuttled the DISCLOSE Act. This freed private political fund-raising groups to take as much money as they can from corporations while providing a cloak of anonymity.

The Republican and Democratic parties still must disclose donors, and unions like the United Steelworkers (USW), which get their political action committee contributions from American members, must provide detailed information on how much they spend, which candidates they support, and the names of people who supply in-kind services as well as the value of the services.

The story of health insurers’ disclosed contributions to political parties reveals why Republicans prefer to keep Americans in the dark about gifts to GOP private fund-raising groups.

Public reports show that last year, the health insurance industry split its donations between the two parties, but this year, after passage of health insurance reform, the contributions are running three to one for Republicans. The insurance corporations have made their demands clear to Republican beneficiaries. They want Republicans to retain in the law the financial windfalls for insurance corporations – that would be mandates that uninsured Americans get coverage and fines for those who don’t. And they want Republicans to delete aspects that will cost insurance companies – that would be benefits for Americans like requirements that insurers cover sick children and injunctions against dropping policy holders when they get sick.

Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna Corp., one of the nation’s largest health insurance corporations, told Noam N. Levey of the Chicago Tribune:

“The industry would love to have a Republican Congress. They were very, very successful during the years of Republican domination in Washington.”

Voters need to know that insurance corporations overwhelmingly favor Republicans and what the industry expects to get from the GOP. But Americans will not know how much money insurers and other corporations give to shadowy Republican fund-raising groups and what those donors demand.

A New York Times investigation provided some insight into one GOP shadow group, the American Future Fund. It has spent $6 million so far on ads attacking Democrats in 13 states. The Times discovered that Bruce Rastetter, CEO of Hawkeye Energy Holdings, one of the nation’s largest corn-based ethanol companies, provided the seed money for American Future Fund. The Times determined that American Future Fund money is funding ads to defeat Democrats who sit on legislative committees that directly affect the ethanol industry and agricultural subsidies.

Two other secretive Republican groups, American Crossroads GPS and the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce, plan to spend $145 million to crush Democrats while concealing their funding sources from Americans.

American Crossroads GPS, brainchild of Republican operative Karl Rove, plans to spend $70 million. Mel Sembler, a shopping mall magnate, told the New York Times that wealthy donors have given the GPS group six and seven-figure checks, and Republicans said one donor, who they refused to name, gave several million dollars. Sembler told the Times why clandestine giving is so attractive to corporations:

“They want to be able to be helpful but not be seen by the public as taking sides.”

What they don’t want to be seen doing is lining their pockets by buying Republican politicians. Neither do the Republican beneficiaries.

Like GPS, the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an elephant-sized player in the secretive Republican support game. It has spent $25 million on more than 8,000 ads slamming Democrats and backing corporate Republican candidates. It plans to spend $50 million more.

Oddly, the commerce group calls itself the U.S. Chamber while admitting foreign firms and soliciting funds from corporations in places like Bahrain, India and Singapore whose interests may conflict with those of American companies and American citizens. An investigation by Think Progress, a project of the non-partisan Center for American Progress Action Fund, revealed that the so-called U.S. Chamber has accepted at least $885,000 from 84 foreign firms, money that it placed in the same account from which it draws funds to sponsor ads attacking Democratic candidates.

The so-called U.S. Chamber denied that it illegally co-mingles money it gets from foreign corporations with funds it uses to attack Democrats. When Think Progress and others asked the so-called U.S. Chamber to divulge the account’s firewall to the public, the so-called U.S. Chamber responded by repeating its assurance that it does nothing wrong and asserting, “We are not obligated to discuss our internal procedures.”

Basically, the so-called U.S. Chamber is saying, “trust us,” to the American public. On the other hand, the “U.S. Chamber” and groups like American Crossroads GPS don’t trust the American public to know their donor lists. What they don’t trust is that Americans will do what the GOP wants on Nov. 2 if Republicans’ corporate donors are exposed.

The USW challenges the “U.S. Chamber” and GOP funding groups like American Crossroads GPS to show their trust in the American people by disclosing their donors.

Hey, Union-Busters: We’ll Give You Supermajority

Leo Gerard — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:43:53 -0400

Corporate CEOs, union-busting lawyers, and conservative politicians who pander to the rich condemned a National Mediation Board (NMB) Ruling this week.

They complained that the NMB gave railway and airline workers the ability to obtain collective bargaining rights through majority-rule elections. That’s the type of balloting that occurs under universal democratic rules. Everyone qualified to vote is invited to participate, and the outcome is determined by the majority of those who cast ballots.

The anti-worker-rights groups wanted the NMB to retain a different kind of election – one that requires the winner to receive votes from the majority of all of those qualified to participate -- essentially, a supermajority.

This is an exciting new development. Up until now CEOs, union-busters, and particularly conservative Republicans, have actively opposed the Employee Free Choice Act, mainly because of a provision they call “card check.” But card check provides exactly what they now say that they want – a determination made by the majority of all of those qualified to participate. So, clearly, since they’re so upset by the end of supermajority rule for airline and railroad workers, they’d be happy if Congress intervened and instituted it for all workers by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

For a little over 70 years, the NMB, which governs collective bargaining by airline and railroad workers, mandated supermajorities. When a group of workers, let’s say Delta Airline Flight Attendants, sought the right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions, the NMB conducted an election in which it counted those who voted yes as supporting the proposal; those who voted no as opposing, and all those who didn’t vote as opposing.

The NMB arbitrarily placed the non-voters in the “no” ballot box. To win an election, the NMB required collective bargaining supporters to receive votes from a majority of all those eligible – those who voted combined with those whose ballots the NMB inexplicably stuffed in the “no” box after they did not vote.

Compounding that supermajority obstacle was the NMB practice of permitting employers to determine who was eligible to vote, then excusing them from providing that list to workers seeking collective bargaining. This created an incentive for employers to “accidently” include the names of workers who’d quit or retired -- ineligible voters whose inability to cast ballots created automatic “no” votes. Writing about losing an election in 2008, Delta flight attendant Linda Sorenson said airline officials released its list after the balloting. Among other problems, it included the name of a deceased worker. Sorenson wrote:

“The company acknowledged her death, but the NMB – whose . . . chair had been a Northwest (airline) lobbyist – refused to remove her. She became a vote against representation.”

Airline and railroad workers found the supermajority rule confounding in what is supposed to be a democratic system. Writing the NMB to request the rule change, Jamin B. Raskin, a law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1937 that a supermajority is not required, partly because established democratic practice is:

“Those who do not participate ‘are presumed to assent to the expressed will of the majority of those voting.’”

The NMB ignored the Supreme Court and continued requiring a supermajority – until Monday. Then it joined the National Labor Relations Board, which complied with the Supreme Court decision and allowed majority-rule elections for the vast majority of U.S. workers whose collective bargaining rights it governs.

The minute the NMB proposed the change to majority-rule elections last fall, anti-worker-rights groups started pitching a fit. Union-busting law firm Winston & Strawn wrote, for example, that the NMB should not change a rule that had been in effect for nearly 75 years. It contended that elections for workers should be different from elections for political candidates and referendums:

“The change would enable unions to obtain representation simply by winning a majority of votes cast, as opposed to a majority of all employees eligible to vote on the issue . . . Under the proposed new rule, a minority of workers could effectively select a union representative on behalf of a much larger potential bargaining unit.”

Conservative Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia agreed, protesting in a news release that Monday’s decision gave workers the same rights as all others in a democratic system:

“The final rule change, which was issued today, would affect companies under the jurisdiction of the Railway Labor Act by allowing union elections to be decided by only a majority of workers who cast ballots, reducing the number of votes it takes for a union to win.”

The solution to Isakson’s complaint is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. That legislation would require consent of a majority of eligible workers for the awarding of collective bargaining rights.

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers seeking collective bargaining rights would collect signatures among their co-workers. If more than half of all eligible workers signed cards in support, the NLRB or NMB would recognize the workers as having the right to collectively bargain with the employer for the benefit of all of the workers.

This process would guarantee that a majority of all eligible workers supported collective bargaining before it could occur. It is a process that was routinely used to secure collective bargaining rights in the early days of union organizing in this country. It gives anti-worker-rights groups such as Winston & Strawn exactly what they’re demanding – a supermajority.

The process is not an election. But with secret balloting, requiring a supermajority is undemocratic. No one can be compelled to vote in a democratic system. And counting those who don’t vote as supporters of collective bargaining is just as logical as tallying them as unanimously opposed.

The solution provided in the Employee Free Choice Act is elegant and historically valid. It’s great that Isakson and his fellow conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate now back the supermajority concept that the Employee Free Choice Act achieves through “card check.”