Misreading Elections

Politicians these days represent narrow interests and are deliberately misrepresenting recent election results as support for policies not presented to the general electorate during their campaigns. Some of this agenda may have been possibly inkled to their extremists supporters through code words but from the looks of polls, most of it appears to have come as a complete surprise to their electorate.  This is probably because people generally don’t pay attention to primaries and the types of candidates supported by the most vocal and most extreme partisans.

No where is this disconnect more clear than in Wisconsin where poll-after-poll shows buyer’s remorse for their right wing extremist governor, Scott Walker. The latest Rasmussen Poll shows support for Budget Cuts but not state usurpation of collective bargaining rights for state workers.

Most Wisconsin voters oppose efforts to weaken collective bargaining rights for union workers but a plurality are supportive of significant pay cuts for state workers. Governor Scott Walker is struggling in the court of public opinion, but how badly he is struggling depends upon how the issue is presented.  There is also an interesting gap between the views of private and public sector union families.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Wisconsin voters shows that just 39% favor weakening collective bargaining rights and 52% are opposed. At the same time, 44% support a 10% pay cut for all state workers. Thirty-eight percent (38%) are opposed. That’s partly because 27% of Wisconsin voters believe state workers are paid too much and 16% believe they are paid too little. Forty-nine percent (49%) believe the pay of state workers is about right. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Strong support for collective bargaining rights showed up in a WSJ/NBC Poll yesterday where only 33% supported limited collective bargaining rights.  This result supported an early poll done by US Today who found the same 33% level of support. Yet, we continue to see bills advance that would erode these rights.  Ohio state senators barely advanced a bill with drastic limitations.  I’m getting qualified in a few months as a professor in one of the few high demand, high paying areas. That would be finance. I’m one of very few white, American women to do so also.  This implies I have two additional job skills that are very difficult to find these days in people with technical doctorates.  I speak and write in coherent American English.  Many of my peers struggle to do their lectures and research in cogent English.  You can only imagine what this does to students.  I don’t have to imagine.  I hear the complaints all the time.  This is a problem for candidates coming from top tier schools.  Ask me if I’m interested in any place in Wisconsin or Ohio at the moment.  The answer is a big fat no. I’m looking outside Louisiana for similar reasons.  I’m not going to be drastically underpaid in cash without some compensating benefits.  I can’t imagine that similarly qualified folks in engineering, accounting, medical fields, and computer sciences aren’t having the same thoughts. I pity the poor administration that’s going to try to find qualified people in those areas under these circumstances.

Why do politicians find people like me so terrible and unprofessional that they seek to deny us a place in determining our working conditions and remuneration?

Ohio state senators narrowly approved a bill that would prohibit public-employee unions representing 400,000 state and local workers from bargaining over health benefits and pensions, while also eliminating the right to strike. I’ve never particularly felt the need to strike except in the private sector where I basically just have voted with my feet after finding another job.  The private sector is filled with capricious and overtly-political bad managers.  It’s why most corporations can’t compete unless they scramble to find extreme cost cutting measures. They don’t want to be bothered with the higher callings of research and development, customer service, or any other type of innovation that would actually benefit employees and customers.  This now appears to be the model that many of these folks want transferred to the public sector where you still had a chance of being paid and promoted on how well you do your job instead of whose ass you’re willing to frequently kiss. The problem now is that there is so much market in the hands of so few businesses and some jobs are only available through the public sector.  The power to abuse is very much in their favor.  This brings me back to the 2/3rds of the electorate that appreciate checks and balances.  Union power checks the power of huge oligopoly and monopoly employers.

This brings me to a story of excess and the  Northern Mariana Islands and Jack Abramoff.  This also includes notorious B I G  Felon, The Hammer, Republican Tom Delay (H/T to Bostonboomer for reminding me about this.).  It’s a story of sex trade, Republicans, a deregulation haven, and the type of things that Republicans would like to see hoisted on the US and American workers.  I have to admit to having to do some reading up on this since most of the story broke in 2006 and I was busy recovering from a little thing called Katrina at the time.  You may recall we were a ‘petri dish’ of privatization and no bid contracts at the time and still are the guinea pigs of US privatization scams.  What they did to us pales in comparison to the treatment of people in the US Territories of the Marianas Islands.

The Marianas Islands situation serves as a cautionary tale that would be worth remembering today because the same people who took jaunts to this paradise of no regulation and slavery are the same people stripping US citizens of rights our grandparents fought for during the gilded age.  Here’s NPR describing work compounds that delighted and tingled the legs of visiting Republican politicians.  JOHN YDSTIE is the NPR host.  He introduced his guest as “Wendy Doromol was a schoolteacher there in the 1980s and ’90s, but became a human rights activist fighting sweatshops after guest workers on the islands came to her with tales of abuse“.  Now remember, this is the work environment that Republican politicians like Scott Walker and John Kasich admire.

Ms. DOROMOL: The barbed wire around the factories face inward so that the mostly women couldn’t get out. They had quotas that were impossible for these people to reach and if they didn’t reach them, they’d have to stay until they finished the quota and they wouldn’t be paid for that work. They were hot, the barracks were horrible. A lot of the females were told you work during the day in the garment factory and then at night you can go and work in a club and they’d force them into prostitution at night.

YDSTIE: And they also experienced things like coerced abortion?

Ms. DOROMOL: Yes, if some female got pregnant, they either had to go back to China to give birth or have a forced abortion.

YDSTIE: Guest workers were lured to the Marianas by recruiters in countries like China, the Philippines and Bangladesh, who told them they were going to the United States. The recruiters charged workers around $5,000 for the trip. Nashir Jahidi(ph) is one of the workers Wendy Doromol befriended. He came to Saipan, one of the Northern Mariana Islands from Bangladesh by way of the Philippines. He says when he got on the plane, he thought he was going to America.

Mr. NASHIR JAHIDI (Ex-Worker): And not only me, there was some people that recruiter exactly told him that he can be going to Los Angeles by train from Saipan. So when I hear that the plane, you know, the host or somebody’s saying they were about to land in Saipan and I when I looked out the window and I saw it’s like blue water everywhere and small island and I was like, how?

YDSTIE: So you thought that you were going to be going to California or somewhere on the U.S. mainland?

Mr. JAHIDI: Not only me, most of the worker. They were surprised when they see the United States flag and the local island flag and we used the U.S. dollar, we used the U.S. stamp and everything, then people understand that this is only a small island. There is no way that you have the opportunity like what’s in the United States.

YDSTIE: Garment manufacturers were attracted to the Marianas, which had become a U.S. commonwealth in 1976, because clothes made there could be labeled made in the U.S.A. and didn’t face import quotas or duties. But despite flying the U.S. flag, the islands were exempt from many U.S. labor and immigration standards. As the abuses that Wendy Doromol helped uncover came to light, garment manufacturers there were sanctioned by the U.S. Labor Department. Then in the mid-1990s when it looked like Congress might force the Marianas to adopt U.S. Labor and Immigration laws, the island’s government took action. It hired lobbyist Jack Abramoff to protect its special status. Abramoff was paid millions for his work.

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