Workers

President Barack Obama’s weekly address Saturday should remind us that privatizing Social Security remains a priority, if not a dream, for some members of the Republican Party.

Obama used the 75th anniversary of Social Security to promise “to protect it from Republican leaders in Congress who have made privatization a key part of their agenda.”

On one level, it might seem amazing the recent Wall Street meltdown that required government financial intervention has not stopped some Republicans from dreaming about handing over Social Security money to investment bankers. But it has to be viewed in this context: Overall, ideological Republicans want to destroy Social Security, and the best way to do it would be to hand it over to the greed and incompetence of Wall Street. The entire program, under the selfish auspices of unscrupulous investment bankers, would be insolvent in a generation or less.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, has proposed “the personal accounts” scam again in which younger workers can invest Social Security money. Ryan, who is the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, argues falsely that Social Security is going broke. This is a GOP talking point that’s been around for quite some time. The system, as predicted now, is funded fully through 2037. Even then, the system would be funded at 75 percent. That’s hardly going broke. There’s plenty of time to fix the funding shortfall.

Essentially we have 27 years to pass a sensible measure slightly raising taxes on the country’s wealthiest citizens and corporations to assure a decent retirement for workers. If current trends continue, the growing wealth disparity between the nation’s richest people and everyone else should at some point become a huge wake-up call for voters in the next 27 years.

Virtually every adult in this country knows or has known someone relying on Social Security. Along with Medicare, it remains one of the most popular government programs in the nation. When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, it’s unlikely he hoped that one glorious day in the future investment bankers would use the money to skim off millions of dollars in profits. Handing Social Security over to bankers would be wrong and irresponsible. It would be a grave, historical mistake.

“This is great news not just for Stillwater and Payne County, but for the state of Oklahoma as a whole. Clearly, Mercury Marine has had a significant and profitable presence in Stillwater for years, but their decision to bring more jobs to Oklahoma is real and tangible evidence that the Right to Work law passed earlier this decade and the lawsuit reform law that is about to go into effect are good for business and good for our state.”—State Sen. Glenn Coffee on Facebook

State Sen. Glenn Coffee, a Republican and leader of the Oklahoma Senate, probably wishes he could take back the above quote lauding Mercury Marine, which recently threatened to relocate its entire operation to Stillwater as it pushed to get concessions from a Wisconsin union.

After some 800 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin eventually voted to accept the concessions, Mercury Marine announced that, in fact, it will start phasing out its Stillwater operation altogether, which will mean a loss of about 400 jobs for the area. Consequently, Coffee’s comments became meaningless.

Initially, the union had voted against accepting the concessions, but once the company announced it was moving all its work to Stillwater, the union was allowed to take another vote. This time the union voted in favor of the wage and benefit concessions.

In his defense, Coffee, pictured right, made the pronouncement after Mercury Marine announced it was moving to Stillwater so he was obviously later blindsided, but his ideological rhetoric now rings hollow. One might even argue that right-to-work actually hurt the state in this instance because it allowed the company to use Oklahoma only as a bargaining tool. The truthful argument, though, is that right-to-work and so-called tort reform had absolutely nothing to do with Mercury Marine’s initial decision or its subsequent reversal of that decision.

Coffee added more:

I thank the management at Mercury Marine for the confidence they’ve shown in this decision, and I can assure them they’ll be delighted with the results. This sends a great message to employers across the nation that Oklahoma is the place to grow their business.

Actually, the opposite became true. The final decision by Mercury Marine shows the nation that businesses can use the threat of relocating to right-to-work, cheap-labor Oklahoma and similar states to get concessions from its workers in other states. This hurts our image on a national level and sends out a bad message.

Mercury Marine, according to media reports, has indicated it plans to pay back investment tax credits granted the company by the state legislature, but the real issue is the loss of jobs here. This is more than an economic impact issue in Stillwater and the state. It’s about real disruption in people’s lives.

The bottom line is the bottom line. Corporations have no fealty to geography. They exist to make money. Meanwhile, the Republican pro-business, anti-union ideology espoused by Coffee remains as intangible as ever here.

(Read about Frederick Douglass and building strong children this week in DocHoc's commentary in Oklahoma City's finest alternative publication, the Oklahoma Gazette. Please vote Oct. 9 in favor of the bond issue to improve Oklahoma City schools.)

Imagine an Oklahoma City grocery store named “Dumb Okies." Its windows are filled with signs and advertisements calling Oklahomans “hicks” and “rubes.” The store’s employees—underpaid and without health insurance—berate its customers by calling them names and making fun of them. The store’s prices are exorbitantly high. It is a scene right out of The Grapes of Wrath.

Beyond the novelty of such a place for masochists, what would be the only reason to shop there? The answer is, of course, you would shop there if it was the only place to buy food in town. You would shop there because you were hungry. You would shop there if you had to shop there to survive.

The description above describes the entrenched Oklahoma corporate power structure, which has enormous political influence in the state. This includes corporate media outlets and energy companies, such as the Oklahoma Publishing Company, Devon Energy Corporation, and Chesapeake Energy Corporation. It also includes the local cable and telephone companies.

These monopoly companies and others in the state have no human connection to the people who live here. The Oklahoman sells its ads at some of the highest rates in the country because it has no competition. Whether you are poor or rich, you are going to have to pay high rates for natural gas to heat your home. You do not get to choose your company. Even if you are poor, you still pay the same amount as rich people for a gallon of gasoline. How many cable companies can you choose from in Oklahoma City?

This lack of connection to people is precisely why the state has a soaring poverty rate. What is in it for these big corporations to help improve living conditions here? Nothing. You have to use their products because they are the only game in town. The Oklahoman actually consistently harasses thousands upon thousands of Oklahomans—teachers and state workers—on its editorial pages by begrudging them health insurance and decent wages. Yet these people make up a substantial part of its potential customer base. The newspaper is a perfect example of the “Dumb Okies” grocery store that berates and overcharges its customers.

All this comes to mind because of The Oklahoman’s recent unsigned editorial on the state’s skyrocketing poverty rate. The editorial (“Our challenge: Easing poverty a second century goal,” September 2, 2007) argues: “To say the state doesn't care about its poor or its uninsured is hogwash. The state cares a lot and it spends a lot.”

But no one really argues “the state” does not care about its poor citizens. People argue the ideology that creates and sustains monopoly companies and right-wing initiatives, such as tax cuts for rich people, hurt the poor and is, indeed, uncaring. The editorial is disingenuous and only gives perfunctory lip service to an important structural problem in the state. Does The Oklahoman really care about soaring poverty here? Yeah, right.

Oklahoma’s poverty rate in 2005-2006 stands at 15.5 percent up from 13.2 percent in 2004-2005 and 11.8 percent in 2003-2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. An average of 537,000 Oklahomans have lived in poverty the last two years. Oklahoma County has the highest rate in the state with a staggering 22.2 percent of its residents falling below the poverty line. The U.S. Census Bureau's poverty line is around $20,000 or lower for a family of four.

Certainly, OPUBCO has been the source of money for donations to get the Gaylord’s family name on state landmarks. (The Gaylord family owns the company.) Thus, we have Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.

As I wrote in previous post, “Do you want to go see the Oklahoma Sooners play football? Well, you have to go to The Gaylord Family Stadium. Cowboys fan? How about your Boone Pickens Stadium? Want to take in a RedHawks game, then buy a ticket into SBC Bricktown Ballpark. Want to go see a $100 concert? See you at the Ford Center or the Cox Convention Center? Or, hey, shall we go workout at the Devon Fitness Center at the Edward L. Gaylord Downtown YMCA. It goes on and on. It is suffocating.”

Unlike small businesses, monopoly companies have no or very little interest in promoting true economic growth in Oklahoma. They simply sell their products in other states that have more people. There are a finite number of people who do or who will live here. Everyone knows that, and everyone knows there is nothing intrinsic in the profit motive for OPUBCO or Chesapeake to improve living conditions for the working poor here. OPUBCO just starts another company in Tennessee or wherever. Chesapeake sells natural gas wherever it can. Unfortunately, these companies exert a huge amount of power on the political process here. They want tax cuts for rich people and corporate immunity from lawsuits. But, do not fool yourself, the very last thing they care about is poor people or the uninsured.