The Editorial in Wednesday’s Messenger focussed on recent observations that upward mobility is largely nonexistent, no matter where in the world one might live.  

This comes as no real surprise, but it got me to thinking about the price we pay for the myth of upward mobility in America.   It may be the single most paralyzing factor in our failure to reverse growing income inequality.  

The editorial mentioned that inability to rise from one’s birth class is so universal that it exists even in Sweden. But there are notable differences between the U.S. and Sweden, like universal access to quality healthcare, and quality education through University, which make the life of the “unequal” Swede far superior to what it is in the U.S.

Our own Horatio Alger-style fantasy around the lifting potential of “bootstraps” has been endlessly abused to justify an ever-narrowing commitment to social welfare. In the face of this persistent and debilitating myth, it is the instinctive knowledge held by impoverished Americans that they will never escape their miserable existence, which drives so many to make truly desperate choices.

The social safety net that was built over a century ago, was the shrewd concession of American oligarchs who had seen the lengths to which desperate poverty and a callous ruling class had driven Russian peasants.  

Now that same class of oligarchs has forgotten lessons learned and is bound and determined to dismantle what remains of that social safety net.

The editorial correctly opined that income “redistribution” and education are the only real ways to achieve class mobility; but people like the Koch brothers and the (Walmart) Waltons, who truly are the “1%,” are betting their bankrolls on the end of public education.  

As for income redistribution?  So long as the SCOTUS Citizens United decision stands, individuals have only as much representation in Congress as their money can buy.  How likely is it that the poor will be fairly dealt with under those circumstances?

We are told that individual American’s accept this inequity as a strictly “temporary” situation as far as they themselves are concerned.  They don’t raise a louder objection to the rich having it all because they still hope to be numbered among that anointed few.  Once again, the Kochs and Waltons can count on our worst instincts to keep them secure at the top of the pile; because the myth of upward mobility enshrines selfishness as a national value.

That’s where the real work must begin: in disabusing the gormless of the idea that, somehow, they, too, can be super-rich.  

It is far more likely that you could find yourself in the shoes of the poor and homeless.

Dedicating this song to the voters of Crimea who voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia:

Not sure where anyone here stands on the meddling of US & EU in Ukraine or if anyone even agrees we were (we were & are) but I gotta say my chingy (what little there is) is on Russia as well as Ukraine & I stand with Vlad-the-impaler.

Putin may indeed be attempting to revive the former Soviet Union however I don’t see this as anything unusual esp for Russia.

I believe Putin is merely resisting a power grab on his very doorstep for what is considered the heart of the former Soviet Union & even Russia for the Ukraine coming from the EU supported by the US … at the very least. Must be tough times in the EU following the massive bailouts of the EU deadbeats. US wars & the standing-sentry 24/7 over Afghanistan opium poppy fields as well as ACA can’t be cheap.

Guess Obama still a little piqued over a citizen from the “land of the free and the home of the brave” welcomed by & having to take refuge in guess where? Russia! Behind the former & infamous “Iron Curtain” no less — communist dictatorship USSR aka the then Soviet Union, following revelations of the massive known-to-congress covert information dragnet & secret spying operation by our government against “We the (little) People” as well as world leaders under the guise of “terror prevention” conducted by the NSA.

A bit rich given that it was Russia, despite this massive spying program who had to warn the US of terrorists who had been discovered in Russia and had travelled to the US & who did indeed carry out a terrorist plot one short year ago in Boston during the marathon.

What was that murmuring from the back of the room? Commie pinko? No, no “commie pinko” here just spittin it like it is.

America’s Dreamiest Former Senator, Scott Brown, is coyly approaching a candidacy for U.S. Senate from his verrrrrry recently adopted home state, New Hampshire. And, shades of Bruce Lisman, he’s on a statewide Listening Tour. Y’know, trying to learn stuff about the place. Maybe avoid Jack McMullen-style mispronunciations. (Hot tip: it’s BURR-lin, not ber-LIN, New Hampshire. They changed the pronunciation during one of the wars that made Germanic heritage less than palatable.)

He’s begun his tour with the requisite token ride North Of The Notches, where the land is empty and the votes are few. As the campaign heats up, he’ll spend more and more of his time in the southeast, where there are lots of voters (good) who are close enough to Massachusetts to have some awareness of his political record (bad).

A couple days ago, Scotty 2 Hotty and Friends found themselves in tiny Lancaster, just across the Connecticut River from the Northeast Kingdom. Looking for a place where lots of people might gather, his advance team chose a local gift shop.

Which, as it turned out, was closed. Bwahahahahaha.

A candidate tracker from the liberal group American Bridge was on hand, and recorded a short excerpt of Brown and his team standing around a chilly parking lot peering inside the shop and wondering what the hell to do, while the proto-candidate struggled to keep a plastic grin on his face. (Follow the link to view the 57 seconds of cringeworthy hilarity.)

Priceless.  

For purposes of this diary, let’s leave aside the moral and ethical dimensions of providing more Americans with health care security. Let’s omit any consideration of health: preventive as opposed to emergency care, longer lifespans, more productive citizens. Let’s forget about the fact that the current “system” is a complicated, costly failure that puts America embarrassingly low in the rankings on various measures of national health.

Instead, let’s talk about reform as a stout new weapon in the war on poverty.

A couple of experts have conducted a massive review of family financial data in Massachusetts which, in 2006, enacted a reform measure very similar to the Affordable Care Act. They looked at data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel covering the years 1999-2012 in Massachusetts and other New England states. They looked at a bunch of measures of personal financial stress:

…including credit card balances, credit balance past due (over 29 days), fraction of debt past due, third-party collections, credit risk score, and bankruptcy.

And they found that, in Massachusetts…

…the reform significantly improved credit scores, reduced the total amount past due, reduced the fraction of debt past due, and reduced the probability of personal bankruptcy. We find particularly pronounced reductions in the probability of having a large delinquency of over $5,000. These effects tend to be larger among individuals whose credit scores were low at the time of the reform, suggesting that the greatest gains in financial security occurred among those who were already struggling financially. Furthermore, our analysis yields some suggestive evidence that the reform may have also reduced total debt and the amount of third party collections.

The authors point to several ways in which health care reform contributes to financial security:

First and most obviously, coverage expansion directly decreases exposure to the cost of care for the previously uninsured. Second, more generous coverage (e.g., for those previously underinsured) also offers greater protection against health care costs. Finally, these two effects can spillover to others whose coverage didn’t change by reducing the need for them to pitch in when under- or uninsured family members require costly care.

Need further amazement?

Gaze upon the following chart, which shows that the likelihood of personal bankruptcy began to drop immediately after Massachusetts enacted health care reform — and continued to drop through the first two years of the Great Recession!

Health care reform may be a struggle; it wasn’t implemented as well as it should have been; and the way forward is full of obstacles. But here’s one more reason that reform is worth every bit of struggle.

And it’s a big reason we should give Governor Shumlin some credit for pursuing reform, and pushing ahead in spite of all the setbacks. I ding him for his hardline stance on taxes, and for the Dems’ timidity about helping the poor and working poor; but he’s a steadfast advocate for health care reform, and I’m grateful for that.  

Robert Caro tells a story of Lyndon Johnson's first days as President. Kennedy had been assassinated and Johnson met with some of his top advisors to plan his first speech. They were unanimous in advising him to steer clear of civil rights in the speech, because that was just not a winning argument with the majority of the public.

Johnson's now famous reply: “Well, what the hell's a presidency for?” He made civil rights the main focus of his speech and it started the momentum that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

The Democrats in the Vermont House are faced with a similar situation. As Paul Heintz reports in Seven Days, Speaker Shap Smith supports earned sick days for Vermont's workers, but is unlikely to bring the bill to the floor because of concerns that he might not have the votes to pass it.

 He may be right. We know that Smith has been very effective as Speaker, and the ability to count votes is a big part of that effectiveness. On the other hand, the Democrats have super majorities in both the House and the Senate. There are workers in every House and Senate district who are sometimes faced with the choice between going in sick or staying home and missing a day's pay.

If we can't stretch sometimes to achieve something important for the working people who should be the central concern of the Democratic Party, I have to ask: What the hell's a majority for? 

The Democrats have an opportunity here to stand squarely on the side of Vermont's working people. Wouldn't you like to see them take it? 

Hey, the first campaign finance reporting deadline has come and gone. And the big news — just about the only news of significance — is the size of Governor Shumlin’s war chest.

One… MEEELLLLEEEEOOONNNNN… dollars.

Well, to be precise, one million seven thousand five hundred dollars and sixty-two cents. As proudly displayed on the superfluous cover sheet accompanying his finance report. (Hey, you can see all the reports online at the Secretary of State’s website! Fun times.)

I suspect the purpose of the cover sheet is to get that seven-figure total RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. It’s certainly got to be a daunting sight; and I daresay it’s unprecedented for any state-level candidate at such an early point in the season.

Gotta be giving any potential Republican challenger a serious case of Shumlin Affective Disorder, which inflicts Vermont Republicans with an ominous, all-encompassing sense of dread that Peter Shumlin will be Governor as long as he damn well wants to be.  

This isn’t all new cash; the Gov had nearly $700,000 in his kitty from 2012, when he spent very little while breezing to re-election. He did, however, raise about $320,000 in a time when other candidates are barely getting their acts together. Can you say “perpetual campaign,” boys and girls?

The other thing worth pointing out is that (as VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld pointed out) Shumlin raised the bulk of the new money from out of state: $240,000 from outside Vermont compared to $80,000 from within. That new gig as head of the Democratic Governors Association really helps, doesn’t it?

I’m sure the Republican response will be “Governor Shumlin Is Beholden To Out Of State Interests And Doesn’t Care About Vermonters,” which, pfui. If the Republicans had enough pull to bring in out-of-state money themselves, they’d do it in a Dick Cheney auto-tuned heartbeat. I think the Governor did a smart and, well, in a way, generous thing by going outside Vermont to stuff his vault. After all, he’s leaving the fertile fields of Vermont Democratic fundraising potential to other candidates who can’t go elsewhere and who will actually need the money.

Maybe he’s even telling local donors to spread their money elsewhere — say, for instance, defending the Dems’ legislative majorities and its statewide officeholders. Or even putting a little cash into the Lieutenant Governor’s race. Spread the wealth, spread the victory.  

For those just joining us, I’m in the process of considering various legislative proposals to help the poor and working poor in Vermont. Part 1 explored the obvious political horse-trade by Democratic leaders: minimum wage increase in, paid sick leave out. Only one, apparently, can be allowed to pass.

Now, we turn to three separate bills designed to fix some issues with Vermont’s social safety net. None of them are radical in any way, but each would be a step forward. In a time when the poor, working class and middle class are under stress and opportunity seldom seems to knock, these relatively minor measures will provide some indication of the Democrats’ stomach for facing the bigger issues. Or, to be more precise, if these bills fail, it’s hard to see the Dems tackling any of the really tough battles.

All three cleared the House Human Services Committee last week, but supporters must navigate some choppy waters to steer them to ultimate passage. (At least they’re not up a creek without a paddle.)

House bill 620 would make the state liable for overpayments to 3SquaresVT (food stamp) recipients caused by the state’s own mistakes. As you may recall, Vermont’s food stamp program has had a high error rate which led to federal fines and the requirement to pay back any excess benefits. Imposing that burden on recipients seems awfully harsh since (1) they committed no fraud, and (2) repayment would be a challenge for people on public assistance.

The bill would require $640,000 in state funds. Ann Pugh, chair of the House Human Services Committee, has said she favors the bill but doesn’t know where the money will come from.

Which, c’mon, really? Every year there are unexpected costs and crises are foretold, but somehow the state always seems to find the money. And this would be a one-time expense, not an ongoing commitment. I do know this for a fact: it’d be a lot easier for the state to find $640,000 than for 3Squares clients to collectively do so. And the overpayments were the state’s fault.

The bill passed Pugh’s committee on a lopsided vote, but if it fails because lawmakers can’t find the cash, this would be a big FAIL on their ledger.

After the jump: easing “benefits cliffs” in temporary shelter and Reach Up.

House bill 699 would eliminate a requirement that homeless Vermonters eligible for “temporary shelter” pay half their income towards housing costs in order to receive continued shelter. This is a good example of the “benefits cliff” phenomenon, in which a program effectively punishes someone for finding work.

As Chris Curtis of Vermont Legal Aid points out, “This is a bad policy that ‘traps’ people in the motels, leaves them with little or no income to get out …It makes more sense to allow homeless Vermonters to save every dime they get and use it to save up for longer term (hopefully permanent and affordable) housing options.”

H. 699 as passed by Pugh’s committee would reduce the 50% requirement to “no more than 30%.” Which is better than the status quo. But we’ll see how it fares in the full House and Senate.

Finally, H.790 addresses the “benefits cliff” in the Reach Up program which, again, discourages employment. The bill would do two things: double the asset limit for Reach Up recipients, and increase the “earned income disregard.” For those unschooled in the language of social services:

The asset test requires recipients to have no more than $2,000 in assets. H.790 would increase that to $5,000. According to Curtis, very few recipients actually exceed the asset limit. “Illinois eliminated its asset test last year and discovered in all the tens of thousands of cases they have only 8 were over the asset threshold.” That state had been spending far more on staff time to check up on clients’ assets than it saved by enforcing the limit.

As for the “earned income disregard,” Reach Up recipients begin to lose benefits as their incomes rise. Currently, the disregarded income is the first $200 of earnings plus 25% of earnings. Recipients lose very little in entry-level jobs, but when they make a move up the ladder they see their benefits drop. Often, the lost benefits are worth more than the additional income. That’s what you call a disincentive to work.

The original H.790 would have provided a 100% disregard for the first six months, with stepdowns to 75% for three months and 50% thereafter. If the aim of Reach Up is to get people back on their feet and into career paths — and we now have lifetime caps on Reach Up benefits —  the higher disregards would go a long way to helping folks permanently escape poverty.

A House committee reduced H.790; the current bill creates a disregard of $300 plus 50%, which is a significant step in the right direction.

But there’s a worm in the apple. The Committee chose to fund the bill by effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul. VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld:

The House bill raises the funds by instituting an across-the-board reduction in welfare benefits for all of the approximately 4,700 families on the program. Spread out over such a large number, the cut isn’t huge.

It would be, in fact, about $16 for the average Reach Up family. As Curtis told VPR, it “may not sound like much to some people, but for many low income families, that may be diapers and milk for the week.” Curtis and other poverty advocates are trying to find other ways to pay for the program — but given lawmakers’ extreme disinclination to add items to the budget, the advocates have an uphill battle.

Lawmakers who support the current iteration of H.790 say that recipients wouldn’t have to work much to gain back in the disregard what they’d lose in the across-the-board benefit cut. Which is easy for them to say, and harder for recipients to accomplish. Again, we’ll see whather this or any other version of H.790 makes it across the finish line.

Conclusion. These are three good ideas for improving the functionality of our social safety net without significant additional cost. As I wrote above, this is something of a test for the Democratic majority: if they can’t find the courage (and the money) to enact these rather moderate and common-sense ideas, it’s hard to be optimistic about real efforts to improve the lot of the poor and working poor.

We shall wait and see.  

There’s been a lot of activity in the Legislature on efforts to help the working poor and fine-tune social services programs. Some of it’s positive; some of it is dismayingly timid. And some of it is — surprise, surprise! — more political than programmatic.

The most obvious two-step (or three-card monte, if you prefer) has come on raising Vermont’s minimum wage and establishing mandatory paid sick leave. That’s the subject of this diary; in Part 2, I’ll get to a trio of bills aimed at improving the state’s response to poverty.

At the beginning of the 2014 session, there was a lot of support for sick leave, but little or no visible momentum behind a minimum wage hike.

Fast forward to last week — Crossover Week for legislation to earn passage in the House or Senate, and a convenient kill date for any unwanted bills — and there was Governor Shumlin giving a hearty endorsement to raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour over the next three years. (While taking back part of the increase by eliminating inflation adjustments for the three-year period.) Awfully late to be pushing a top priority, and a surprising turnaround for a guy who, in December, gave minimum-wage the official Shumlin Kiss Of Death in a meeting with Senate Democrats:

“I’m willing to enter into any conversation about ways to ensure we have an equitable minimum wage,” he told the senators. Then came the predictable: “Obviously with everything we do, the devil is always in the details.”

Which is what he always says when he means, “I’m against it and will do what I can to kill it.” Indeed, “willing to enter into conversation” and “the devil is in the details” are two phrases in my Peter Shumlin News Conference Drinking Game, along with pet phrases like “grow jobs and economic prosperity for Vermonters” and “hardworking Vermonters” and “I don’t hear any Vermonters pleading with me to raise their taxes.” It’d be a fun game, and it’d result in much shorter pressers, since all the reporters would be completely hammered by the 15-minute mark. Next time, bring your flasks, fellas!

But I digress, surely I do.

The genesis of this Seismic Shummy Shift was outlined in last week’s Seven Days by Alicia Freese, subbing for Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz and — maybe, possibly — becoming the first woman to write the paper’s weekly political column? Freese chronicled Shumlin’s apparent falling in line behind President Obama’s call for an increase in the federal minimum wage — perhaps a political necessity for the head of the Democratic Governors Association.

Shumlin’s endorsement of the wage hike – followed by his declaration that Vermont would go it alone even if other states back down – blindsided many back home.

… “The governor hasn’t expressed that desire to me,” said Sen. Kevin Mullin (R-Rutland), referring to the minimum wage proposal.

… “We knew it was out there, but the focus and attention and debate and vote counting by leadership has all been on paid sick leave up to this point,” said Jim Harrison, president of the Vermont Grocers’ Association, a group that opposes both pieces of legislation.

Harrison’s expression of surprise is a tad disingenuous, since he and his allies had gotten a heads-up on minimum wage on February 27. As reported by the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck on March 3,

A group of store owners gathered Thursday in the Statehouse, where they heard from the state’s top power brokers. They had an audience, one after the other, with Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, Gov. Peter Shumlin, House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell.

The store owners were worried about three items: sick leave, minimum wage, and a bill to establish a tax on single-use shopping bags.

What they got in response, in between some of the usual fluff, was some pretty good intel about what to expect from the Legislature this year. Namely: The bag tax is a long shot, paid sick leave is pretty much dead, but raising the minimum wage is for real.

Hallenbeck quoted Shumlin as saying “I know you’re not going to agree with me… but I do want a higher minimum wage.” She also got a dismayed reaction quote from Jim Harrison. So he knew about the minimum-wage push long before he reacted with fresh dismay on March 10. As did, I have to imagine, Kevin Mullin and everyone else under the Dome.

But my larger point about all this is: it’s an obvious effort by top Dems to placate the business community by whacking paid sick leave in favor of a minimum wage increase.

(This is why I had such a strong reaction to Speaker Smith’s assertions that “the landscape [isn’t] right at the moment” to pass the sick-leave bill. Earlier in the session, there were strong indications that the bill had broad support; now the Speaker claims he can’t carry it across the goal line. Which comes conveniently after he and his fellow leaders gave assurances to store owners that the sick-leave bill was “pretty much dead.” I smell a backroom deal.)

My question is, why not both? It’s not like the Dems will face an electoral challenge anytime soon.

One of my pet peeves about Vermont’s political leadership is their temporizing and moderating and apparent timidity, even as they enjoy the closest thing to political dominance this side of Vladimir Putin. When I look at what conservative Republicans are doing in states where they have majorities — even much slimmer majorities — it makes me wish for a liberal Democrat to take the same approach as a Scott Walker or Rick Snyder or Bobby Jindal: leveraging political power to move the state significantly to the left, instead of being all incremental all the time.

Besides, if the business groups weren’t so short-sighted, they’d be okay with a minimum wage increase. Each of them takes a tiny hit, to be sure; but they all benefit from the fact that the working poor actually have more money in their pockets. They won’t be socking that money away in their Cayman Islands accounts; they’ll be spending it — whad’ya know — at their local grocery stores!

Recent economic research has also found that a higher minimum wage — whad’ya know — reduces workforce turnover, which means lower expenses on training and recruitment.

But no, our esteemed Wise Men of Business can’t see beyond their next payroll day.

But I digress, again. My point is, it’s nice to see the sudden support for a long-overdue hike in the minimum wage, but it’s depressing to see the sick-leave tradeoff. We’re facing big structural problems, and this incremental approach (while more politically palatable in the short run) is not going to cut it.

Next time, in part 2 of The Anti-Poverty Hokey Pokey, I’ll look at the uncertain prospects for some legislation aimed at solving some problems in our social safety net.  

A short follow-up to my comment to Katrinka’s “Green Mountain Coffee Rackets” on 3/11/14 concerning H756 (aka Green Mountain Coffee K-cup exemption), back in March 2012, and its possible unintended consequences.

In case you haven’t seen the FreePress this morning:

Keurig [Green Mountain] and Peet’s plan to launch a selection of Peet’s K-Cup packs by the end of the summer. Keurig said Peet’s will continue to roast the beans for its K-Cup packs at its facility in Alameda, Calif., and the roasted beans will be transported to Keurig for grinding and packaging in K-Cup packs.

I don’t think this is quite what the Lege had in mind, do you? That a transnational holding company (Coca-Cola) might one day acquire Green Mountain Coffee and turn what was meant as a limited exemption for a valued local business into a nationally-expanding business plan, on Vermont’s dime. (Starbucks was admitted to the K-Cup club just hours before the announcement was made about Peet’s.)

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

Just wait until Coca-Cola starts pressing for an exemption for on-site retail water bottling…

Following a routine audit, the Federal Election Commission has issued a “finding” against the Vermont Democratic Party, over technical violations of federal rules. The finding was distributed and explained at Saturday’s meeting of the state party committee.  

The audit covered the 2009-10 election cycle. From the FEC report:

…the Audit staff determined that VDP did not maintain any monthly logs, as required, to document the percentage of time each employee spent on federal election activity. For 2009 and 2010, the Audit staff identified payments to VDP employees totaling $203,472, for which monthly payroll logs were not maintained.

… In response to the Interim Audit Report recommendation, VDP submitted a plan to pay all employees with 100 percent federal funds. Further, VDP said it would maintain monthly timesheets for all employees paid with federal/non-federal allocated funds, in order to track the percentage of time each employee spends on federal election activity.

The VDP’s plan was accepted by the FEC; no penalties were assessed.

The Republicans may try to make hay of this, but there really isn’t any scandal here. “There was no malfeasance, just inadequate bookkeeping,” said newly-installed VDP Treasurer Tim Briglin.  

The VDP was not singled out for scrutiny. Each election cycle, the FEC does a number of audits of randomly-selected state party organizations. The Vermont Dems’ number happened to come up in 2009-10.  

More detail on the rules violation (warning: Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery While Reading This Paragraph): Party committees must keep monthly logs of the time each employee spends on federal election activity. Those who “spend more than 25% of their time on federal election activities must be paid only from a federal account,” while those who spend no time on federal activities may be paid with funds that comply with state law. Between zero and 25 percent, “employees… must be paid either from the federal account or be allocated as administrative costs.” During the audit period, the VDP failed to keep those logs.

Still awake?

Since 2010, the party’s internal structure has been beefed up significantly. Compliance with campaign law is now being overseen by Selene Hofer-Shall, who has over a decade of experience with campaign finances dating back to Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign of 2003-04. On her watch, any further “inadequate bookkeeping” seems highly unlikely.