I worry that progressives are becoming worn out by all the scandals involving George Bush and his fellow conservatives. While it's clear that we can't compete with the republicans in the
Scam and Scandal Hall of Shame, progressives also have moments that demonstrate our darker nature.
George Bush and his fellow conservatives have raised the bar on government corruption to heights paralleled only ny the budget deficit. The invasion of Iraq, Abramoff bribery, illegal NSA wiretaps, Niger yellow cake and the Plame affair, Downing Street Memos, Tom Delay's indictment, FEMA's Katrina failures, Coingate, Gannon/Guckert, WMDs, Cronyism and recess appointments, Swift Boating, Rush's oxycontin, Abu Ghraib torture, Pat Robertson's big mouth, Halliburton, deficient and defective body armor, Terri Schivo, Cheney's Energy Task Force and the Scalia duck hunt, Falafel Bill O'Reilly, Enron, Medicare intimidation and bribery scandals, secret CIA prisons, Bill Bennett on aborting black babies, white phosphorus, Koran desecration, Harriet Myers SCOTUS nomination, Cindy Sheehan, Frist's stock deals, paying for propaganda, Able Danger, procurement scandals, and, oh yeah, did I mention Iraq? All these scandals are making some of us numb and others hyperactive. I long for those halcyon days when the top news was about our Nation's leader getting a blow job. So while it's clear that we can't compete with the republicans in the Hall of Shame, we progressives do have occasional moments that demonstrate our darker nature. This might be one off them.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents workers in health care, cleaning, security; and government, has been running a contest since October 2005, to find original and practical ideas to:
- Grow the economy
- Create good-paying jobs that allow people to raise a family, afford health insurance, pay for their children's college education, get additional training and save for retirement
- Encourage existing companies to expand and entrepreneurs to start new ones.
I've written about trends in the
ideas that were submitted including
one idea I submitted myself.
The idea-submission phase of the contest ended in December and the 21 finalist ideas were announced on Monday January 9th. Since then, there has been a virtual firestorm of comments, from both liberals and conservatives alike, which are running approximately 99.9999% negative. Skids has also written about the bitchfest.
So what's the scandal? Well, SEIU promised to pick creative new ideas that had a good chance of being implemented. They enlisted former Senator Bill Bradley and other eminent persons to act as judges. Then they picked 21 ideas from over 22,000 ideas that were submitted. But bloggers on the site have characterized the selected ideas as stale and impractical at best. Bloggers contend that SEIU didn't follow the rules and picked ideas that were duplicates of ideas that were submitted by others earlier in the contest. Decide for yourself. Are these ideas new and innovative with a good chance of being implemented?
- Standardization of Health Care Data -- Standardize data and forms so that all health providers and insurance companies would use the same codes for drugs and procedures.
- Do Not Tie Healthcare to Employment -- fund national healthcare insurance with a sales tax.
- Steps to Universal Health Care -- provide full national health care in thirty years by converting to digital records and starting a single-payer system, similar to Medicare, for everyone under the age of 35.
- Medicare as Single Payer - Pilot - Allow 10-20 of the nation's largest employers to use Medicare as their company's health insurance for 5 years, paying premiums just like they would with a private insurer, to see if it would be a viable system of national health insurance.
- Blanket The US With Wireless Access -- provide free wireless broadband internet access to all US citizens
- Tie Minimum Wage to Cost of Living.
- Sustainable Resource Industries -- impose a "resource tax" on pollution, development, and fossil fuel to pay for development of renewable energy and environmental restoration.
- ProdiMae Efficent Access to Capital -- Create an agency FannieMae/FreddieMac's mission, but for small and minority businesses.
- Farm Produce Distribution Network -- use funds from farm subsidies to help small farmers market their produce.
- Massive Public Works Projects -- initiate public works projects to employ Americans and improve the country's infrastructure.
- Create Civil Works Corps -- create a 50,000-person agency under the Department of Defense, similar to the New Deal era's Civilian Conservation Corps, in which enlistees would serve for 2-4 years and earn benefits similar to the GI Bill.
- National Service Scholarship Program -- establish a government-wide program that would offer two and four-year scholarship opportunities with post-graduation service obligations.
- Public Education Reform -- redirect local property taxes to a general state fund that is equitably distributed among all schools, control tuition at public universities, and increase teacher salaries.
- No Tax on College Education Expense -- exempt full-time college students from income tax and allow parents to deduct the educational expenses they pay.
- Pride of Skilled Working Hands -- Encourage children to consider careers in specialized skilled trades.
- Personal Money Management -- teach personal money management in all schools, starting with 1st grade and continuing through high school.
- The Home Ownership Plan for You -- establish tax-exempt savings accounts for first-time home buyers.
- Retool the EITC to Promote Savings -- make it easier for beneficiaries of the Earned Income Tax Credit to channel a portion of their benefits into savings accounts.
- Mortgage Program- Abandoned Houses -- Provide low-interest mortgages to buyers who will repair dilapidated and abandoned houses.
- A Flat Tax to Save Social Security -- lift the $90,000 income cap on the Social Security payroll tax.
- Ownership of Retirement Assets -- require companies to allocate their retirement funding dollars into approved individual retirement accounts.
Surely, SEIU never planned for the contest to turn out like this. Instead of getting good publicity, they are being roasted by their formerly most enthusiastic supporters. The question is whether SEIU was blindsided by their judges or whether they planned to focus on these issues and did not anticipate the negative response. Here's are a few hypothetical scenarios to illustrate what I mean.
- Scenario 1: SEIU honestly wanted a good contest and contracted with two sets of judges so that there would be no apparent conflict-of-interest. The first set of judges consisted of a couple of academics who probably planned on using students to read the ideas. The only problem was that there were a hundred times more ideas than they expected. So they gave a half-assed review and selected ideas based on convenience.
- Scenario 2: SEIU honestly wanted a good contest and contracted with two sets of judges so that there would be no apparent conflict-of-interest. The first set of judges came up with 70 ideas that spanned SEIU's primary issues (i.e., jobs, government, etc). The second set of judges, however, being mostly long-time Washington insiders, picked only those ideas that they were more familiar with, namely the old recycled ones.
- Scenario 3: SEIU wanted to explore new ideas for services, policies, and strategies they could use to benefit their members and attract new members. Instead of hiring a marketing or business-consulting firm for $1 million or more, they decided to sponsor the contest. From the 22,000 ideas, they probably got a thousand or more ideas worth developing further, at a fraction of the cost per idea from a consultant, and they also own the ideas. They helped the judges pick the 21 finalist ideas so that they would still have control of the original ideas.
- Scenario 4: SEIU didn't really want to explore new ideas, but did want some positive PR to increase their public name recognition. They lead the judges to select ideas that have already been debated so that they would not have to blaze new trails in public opinion.
- Scenario 5: SEIU and the judges are all clueless.
Now compared to the scandals perpetrated by conservative republicans, the results of SEIU's contest might be considered to be trivial. But to the hundreds of people who invested a lot of time trying to formulate ideas for improving the country, it was a scam that affected them personally. To them, SEIU is no different than FEMA is to the citizens of New Orleans.