Collateral Damage Comes to Texas

One week ago today a six year old boy was shot to death in Schertz. This wasn’t a gang shooting or even a domestic violence incident. The little boy was at home because school had let out early on the last day before Christmas break. He was in his home with family behind a locked door. Kameron Prescott died as a result of gunfire from law enforcement officers.

My heart goes out to the parents and family of the little boy. I can’t imagine how distraught I would have been if that had happened to my daughter but I tear up just contemplating such a horror.

According to news reports Bexar County Sheriff deputies had been chasing the suspect for some time and say she threatened them repeatedly with what she claimed was a gun. When deputies cornered her attempting to get into Kameron Prescott’s home they report she held up what appeared to be a gun and all four deputies fired. At least one bullet missed the suspect, went through the wall of the home hitting the boy in the abdomen and he died shortly afterward. No gun has been found days later.

I grew up understanding that peace officers are supposed to protect lives so I can’t help but wonder if our society hasn’t crossed a line that ought not be crossed if peace officers are willing to shoot at a suspect without due regard for the people behind that suspect. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar says that he believes his deputies followed proper procedure; if so perhaps procedure needs to be reviewed if the rules of engagement allow firing on a suspect when people are behind them.

What sort of training are local police and sheriff’s deputies getting that all four would fire without considering that the house probably had people in it and perhaps shooting wasn’t a good idea? Has our society’s willingness to accept the deaths of innocent civilians referred to as “collateral damage” in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen led us to accept similar disregard for innocents here at home?

If we don’t ask questions like this now we may end up with the same kind of unaccountable and out of control policing as the infamous Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division. This may indeed have been an unavoidable tragedy but not asking questions and demanding a thorough investigation and expecting full transparency in the results of that investigation sends a message that the community will accept whatever law enforcement dishes out.

If we simply accept the death if this innocent child and move on; we’re telling our sheriffs and police chiefs that they don’t have to work hard to do better and be better. I think we should all be asking our local police chiefs and sheriffs to review their use of force policies with an eye toward avoiding a senseless tragedy like the death of Kameron Prescott. I’ll be asking my city councilman and mayor to demand that the police chief review the department’s training and use of force policies in light of this tragedy and I hope you will too.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 29, 2017

Wealth, Political Influence, Tax Breaks

Over the course of my adult life I’ve worked for two companies both of which have been small family owned businesses. The first one grew to about 50 people over the years and the family became comfortably wealthy which they deserved for their hard work, sacrifices and skills. The second is newer and is still growing and I have no doubt the owners will also achieve a comfortable level of wealth. I have never begrudged them their success and have worked hard to help them achieve it as they have also allowed me to share in that success via a good salary and nice bonuses.

The Republican tax plan, which will likely have passed and been signed into law by the time you read this, the entrepreneurs I’ve worked for over the years may benefit a little but 70% of middle and working class families won’t. The bulk of the benefits go to the wealthiest 10% of Americans, the latest in Republican largesse will go to those with massive real estate holdings like Donald Trump and Sen. Bob Corker who suddenly changed his no vote to a yes vote about the same time as the 20% tax break was added to the bill.

Presidents often tout their economic successes by quoting increases in the Dow Jones Industrial Average which now stands at nearly 25,000. The tax plan includes a huge break on corporate taxes especially for international profits that are brought back to the US which are guaranteed to increase stock values which some analysts expect will cause the Dow to hit 27,000. That’s great if you own stocks but nearly half of Americans don’t, in fact over 80% of stock value is owned by the same 10% of Americans who will benefit the most from the Republican tax plan. How nice for them.

Now here’s the problem, the big reason those massive tax benefits go to the ultra-wealthy is that they use a small fraction of their wealth to influence the rules that affect their wealth. Through campaign donations directly to candidates and political action committees (PAC’s) some of which obscure where the money came from, and an army of lobbyists the wealthiest among us pursue further economic advantage over the rest of us.

The McCain-Feingold Act which provided some limits to the amount of money that could be spent by any one individual or corporation on a single politician wasn’t perfect but since the Supreme Court decisions overturning much of those limits, McCutcheon v. FEC and Citizens United v. FEC there has been a tidal wave of money flowing from the ultra-wealthy into campaign coffers of federal and state legislators. It is now ridiculously expensive to run a competitive campaign for any of those offices in nearly every district.

As I said earlier I don’t have a problem with people getting wealthy off of their own efforts, I do have a problem with people getting even wealthier by stacking the deck. It isn’t just tax breaks that enrich these folks either. They also push laws that prohibit competition such as the law in Texas that says no municipality can operate its own internet service provider. The wealthy also push for reductions in regulation that protect the health and safety of workers and consumers alike. One such example is the elimination of rules that coal companies had to abide by regarding polluting streams with runoff from mining waste which can dump high concentrations of toxic arsenic and mercury into drinking water sources.

We’ve returned to the era of the “Robber Barons”, are you comfortable with that?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 22, 2017

Tax Cuts and Republican Economic Mythology

Republican propaganda surrounding their partisan tax plan pushes the notion that when rich people have more money they’ll invest and create more jobs, going so far as to call the bill the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. If you own or manage a business you know that’s just not true. Generally greater profits end up mostly if not completely in the hands of the company owners. Some few forward thinking folks will do some form of profit sharing so that their employees will get a little of the extra profit but that’s a small minority. No business creates jobs just because they have more profit, they only create more jobs if there is more demand.

Only demand for goods and services create jobs, if there is no one with both the desire for your product and the money to pay for it no business owner in their right mind adds to their payroll. So, if Republicans really wanted to create jobs using tax cuts they’d make sure that those cuts went to the folks most likely to spend those extra dollars which actually increase demand and create jobs which in turn generates more taxes. Instead 60% of the tax cuts will go to the top 10% of earners who rather than spending it will most likely invest it in the stock market which is nice for your 401k or Mutual Fund IRA if you’re among those fortunate enough to have one but it won’t put money in your pocket right now.

In case you think there is no proof, just look at Reagan and the first Bush, after Reagan’s tax cuts early in his term then when the economy didn’t take off he had to repeatedly raise taxes in order to avoid increasing the deficit. What’s worse is while his tax cuts largely benefitted the very wealthy his tax increases were felt mostly by the middle class.

This is all Economics 101 and either congressional Republicans know that and are willfully lying or they’re stupid. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is more likely.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa pushed back when questioned about the merits of  eliminating the tax on estates valued at more than $5 million stating “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” I don’t know about you but I find that offensive coming from a guy who last worked a job like average Americans hold in 1959 when an assembly line job like he held paid well enough to buy a house, a car and raise a family.

Today that assembly line job barely pays enough for a family of four to cover rent, food and medical care. Even when both adults work full time most families just don’t earn enough to save millions of dollars as Grassley seems to think. Throw in a few recessions and a health crisis or two over the course of 30 years and a lot of us can’t manage to pay for our children’s college education without student loans.

As economist John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out long ago, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

It’s not too late to call Senators Cruz and Cornyn to let them know they’re tax plan is bad for most Americans and you’re not happy about it.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 15, 2017

Wage Theft a Bigger Problem Than Armed Robbery

In the United States when we think of crimes most of us will immediately think of the perpetrator as someone of disreputable appearance, perhaps a gang member, someone from the wrong side of the tracks. We’ll picture a drug user or a biker, often someone of different ethnicity. We rarely think that someone like us, someone who owns or manages a business, someone who lives in our neighborhood or volunteers at our church.

Yet much of what we imagine is a fairy tale just like Little Red Riding Hood. On the whole Americans will suffer more than twice as much in financial losses from their employers than from armed robbers. According the crime statistics collected by the F.B.I. in 2012 American individuals and businesses combined suffered $414 million in losses. In that same year the US Department of Labor, various state departments of labor and their attorneys general as well as private attorneys reported recovering $933 million in back wages and other stolen compensation according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The data collected by the Economic Policy Institute doesn’t include dollar amounts from Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana, and Vermont from which such information was unavailable. While armed robberies are almost always reported wage theft often is not; either because the employee doesn’t know to whom to report the crime or they fear that they’ll lose the job that provides for their families, so the total is likely much higher.

Here are just a two examples starting with an upscale Manhattan restaurant, reached a settlement in March 2012 with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office over its illegal theft of wages from 25 employees. The restaurant paid employees less than the minimum wage, failed to compensate them for overtime work, and cheated them out of tips.

Two busboys were paid no wages at all for their work and had to subsist solely on their share of pooled tips. Then, once a manager began to oversee tip distribution, their meager earnings shrank further. After checking with waitresses, they realized the manager was illegally taking a share for himself. At this point, Jacal and Suarez got in touch with an advocacy group and subsequently the attorney general’s office.

After he was sued, restaurant owner retaliated against the two known whistleblowers — first cutting their hours and then firing them. The case settlement required the restaurant to pay restitution of $25,000 to each of the two busboys and $150,000 to the other 23 workers.

In 2012, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) dealt with repeated wage theft offenses by contractor Affordable Safe and Professional Flagging, LLC. The company routinely paid less than the prevailing wage and failed to pay overtime to employees who conducted traffic control on public construction projects. The company was forced to pay a total of $107,010.24 in back wages and disqualified from holding further state contracts for 5 years. The firm was allowed to finish its work on the current contract, which led to yet more instances of stolen wages as employees’ paychecks bounced on several occasions and most received no pay for an entire month.  In 2013, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries obtained another settlement of $113,000 in back wages for 36 employees.

The Oregon example is evidence that state and federal law don’t provide sufficient penalties to dissuade repeat wage theft offenses. Unlike armed robbery stealing from your employees doesn’t incur jail time, perhaps it should.

If you or someone you know has suffered wage theft contact the Texas Workforce Commission at 800-832-9243 to file a claim.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 1, 2017