Hmm. Voters tend to trust their neighbors when their neighbors say that out-of-staters are trying to cut jobs and strangle the economy - and ESPECIALLY when their neighbors are able to support the claim with facts. And news articles. And newspaper editorials. And campaign finance reports. And letters from businesspeople in Colorado testifying to the damages done by TABOR there over 13 years. If you're one of those out-of-staters trying to cut jobs and strangle a state's economy, you have to figure out a way to discredit those pesky data-equipped neighbors. Aha: A multi-million-dollar ad campaign will do it!
It looks like the outside interests were counting on the public employees and their families to be still and take their beating like good little targets. And it looks like the public employees and their families didn't get that memo.
A full-page ad that ran last week in the Lansing State Journal "features a menacing-looking woman glaring with a `Michigan Government Office' sign behind her. ` `Service' Like This Doesn't Come Cheap,'" writes the Journal's Chris Andrews here http://www.lsj.com/....
I don't know about you, but when I see ads of this sort, I wonder how the pictured woman's agent sold her to the agency that produced the ad. Did Morty call up and say he had a really sour-looking actress who would work cheap? And how does that lady's family feel about their mom/wife/sister's face being plastered across a multi-state ad campaign slapping people who have jobs?
On Friday, here http://www.helenair.com/... the editors of the Helena Independent Record said the ads running on television in their state hit workers at the Division of Motor Vehicles. The ad claims the workers are "hostile providers of poor service, and contends they are overpaid because of union contracts."
The ad running on television in Oregon slaps teachers and other school district employees, says Cathryn Stephens of KVAL-TV in Eugene, who quoted its script in her report on Friday here: http://www2.kval.com/... "Education union bosses are bleeding taxpayers, blocking reforms, and spending dues money on politicians." Nice.
Before we ask who would initiate a multi-million-dollar, multi-state onslaught against public service providers in courtrooms, food safety offices, schools, senior centers and everywhere else that public dollars are spent to offer public services, listen to the initial reactions to these ads.
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm's spokeswoman, Liz Boyd, told the Lansing State Journal, "The advertisement is disrespectful to both state employees and to their unions. It is another example of groups coming from outside of Michigan trying to influence public opinion."
Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath told the Helena Independent Record that employees serving his office do "an exemplary job at a wage that is barely livable." McGrath said examiners in field offices make $13.31 an hour on average, with license clerks starting at $8.37. Are they overpaid? To say that is "laughable," he said.
The Independent Record's editors offered their own blistering review of the campaign. "[T]here's nothing particularly funny about insulting a whole class of workers to make a ham-handed anti-government political point. State employees care as much about their jobs --providing vital public services -- as any private-sector employee does. And the vast majority of them certainly don't make more money than their private counterparts," they write.
The Reno News Review went straight to the core of the matter, fingering Washington lobbyist Rick Berman and his Center for Union Facts as just the bagman, a "secretive front group for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist Rick Berman's family of front groups including the Employment Policies Institute."
Uh-oh. Secretive? Individuals and industries? And they've appointed one guy to be their hatchet man? Does this sound familiar? Does anyone know where Howard Rich has been lately?
"The Center for Union Facts was established seven months ago, with directors saying they receive funding from individuals, businesses and foundations, but refuse to be more specific," reports Cathryn Stephens at KVAL-TV in Oregon. Refuse to be more specific, she says.
The editors in Helena know a little something about operatives for out-of-staters being secretive, and it sticks in their craw. "As is the case with backers of Montana's spending-cap ballot measure, the Center for Union Facts refuses to reveal the sources of its money," they write. Refuse to reveal the sources, they say.
So who is Rick Berman? The News Review makes the formal introduction here: http://www.newsreview.com/.... "Berman is a tobacco lobbyist and public relations man who creates organizations with positive-sounding names like `Center for Consumer Freedom' to promote his clients' agendas. He once put up a Web site, http://fishscam.com, to promote the mercury-is-our-friend views espoused by, among others, U.S. Rep. James Gibbons of Nevada (`Eat your mercury,' Jan. 26, 2006)."
Eat mercury? Didn't his teacher tell him about the Mad Hatter? And please, Reno News Review, don't tell me that he's in cahoots with Wal-Mart...
Indeed, "a spokesperson for Wal-Mart has told the Detroit Free Press that while it is not the source of funding for the Center for Union Facts, `it has a relationship in which it exchanges union information with Berman, the group's head'." For the love of God.
Hard-working Americans aren't pleased by the ambush. Sonja Reichwein, who's a member of SEIU in Oregon, told KVAL-TV, "It's horrible and you've got this group from Washington, D.C. coming in and running ads in Oregon papers about Oregon public services and I think that's wrong." Members of the SEIU Local 503 (Go 503!) were riled enough that they held a rally Saturday at Eugene's Campbell Senior Center.
Alan Kilar, spokesman for UAW Local 6000 in Lansing, Michigan, told the Lansing State Journal's Chris Andrews that his members "are outraged," partly because they, too, are taxpayers in Michigan. Just as importantly, though, Kilar said that concessions from public employees brought Michigan's economy back to good health in 2003. "They bailed out the state three years ago," he told Andrews.
Helena Independent Record reader Eric Feaver shot back at Berman's broadside against teachers here http://www.helenair.com/.... "Unfortunately, this badly focused ad campaign will not likely be the last that state, county, and school employees and their unions suffer. Out-of-state mystery megabucks see Montana as ripe for the picking. They are wrong, but they will try hard to do so."
Well, you can imagine what happened when news of this development made it to the blogosphere. Facts that hadn't seen the light of day in years have been unearthed. People who had never heard of Rick Berman now know that he attacked Mothers Against Drunk Driving on behalf of the alcohol industry and tried to get pregnant mothers to eat more tuna despite mercury warnings.
What? That can't be true. No one would accuse a man of attacking Mothers Against Drunk Driving unless there was clear, incontrovertible evidence that he... http://blog.aflcio.org/.... oh, well, okay, so maybe he did that, but surely he didn't try to get pregnant women to eat tuna with merc.... http://blog.aflcio.org/.... Hmm. Okay, I see that he did.
Former Montana State Senator Steve Doherty takes particular offense to Berman's delivery of "inflammatory, misleading advertisements" that take "cheap potshots at hardworking Montanans."
"Make no mistake. In denying his connections with the shadowy out-of-state groups that are currently facing numerous complaints regarding violation of Montana law, Berman avoided reality. Berman, Howard Rich of Americans for Limited Government, and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform are peas in a pod--rich East Coasters who think they can run a puppet show out here in Montana. They are in short grass with bad camouflage," Doherty says. Short grass with bad camouflage.
Hey, there's our old buddy Howard Rich, right there in the middle between Berman and Grover Norquist!
Tom Chamberlain at Blue Oregon has Berman's rap sheet here http://www.blueoregon.com/... but here is ONE highlight: "The American Prospect wrote an excellent expose which quotes Berman as saying, `Our offensive strategy is to shoot the messenger. We've got to attack [advocates'] credibility as spokespersons'." Hmm. That sounds a lot like what I said at the beginning of today's post.
Okay, ONE more highlight - but really, there are so many of these that you NEED to go to this link for yourself: "Berman's Center for Consumer Freedom has attacked Mothers Against Drunk Driving, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control on behalf of alcohol, fast food, and tobacco lobbies. His American Beverage Institute was set up to fight laws aimed at increasing safety regarding alcohol and drinking/diving laws. His Employment Policies Institute fights minimum wage increases, especially in low-wage, labor-intensive sectors such as the restaurant industry. His FishScam.com web site encourages pregnant women to disregard federal mercury guidelines and eat more albacore tuna."
As for denying the link between the anti-worker ads and the TABOR campaigns ("yeah, it's just a coincidence," say the editors in Helena), the AFL-CIO posts this interesting fact on their own weblog here http://blog.aflcio.org/... "Berman denied the ads were tied to the ballot initiatives. But the Associated Press reported Aug. 21 that Berman attended a weekend conference of the group Americans for Limited Government and made a presentation about the anti-union ads. The group is backing the Montana measure and those in the other states. According to a July report by the Salem, Ore., Statesman Journal the group has funneled some $561,000 to back an Oregon TABOR-like ballot and more than $1 million for efforts in Maine, Oklahoma, Arizona and Nevada." Hmm. That would be called evidence of a link.
Meanwhile, the good folks at the Progressive States Network check the usual suspects to answer the "who's funding it" question. "Two sources that were the target of early speculation -- Wal-Mart and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- have both denied funding the organization," PSN writes here http://www.progressivestates.org/....
Yet unable to see the money changing hands, PSN wonders who has an interest in slamming hardworking Americans, and what outcomes represent the real goal.
Motive one: Privatization of services, which benefits big industry. "While specific funding sources are unclear, one motivation may be less in doubt. Attacks on public employees historically have served as a rallying point for the disastrous privatization movement. Promoting the notion of a more efficient private sector better able to handle government services in a cost-effective way is a key component in selling the idea of contracts to the public. Once those contracts are inked, a different story emerges: privatization fails to improve services or lower costs, instead serving mainly to open the door to corruption. Given that Berman's shady backers are willing to anonymously slander hard-working Americans, we do not think that preventing corruption is their primary concern."
Motive two: Spending caps, which benefits big industry. "Astute students of the 2006 election may have noticed something interesting about the four states targeted by the ads: all four states are also being targeted by Howard Rich and his libertarian network with ballot measures modeled on Colorado's disastrous TABOR spending cap law. Again, by playing up the notion of government waste, these ads encourage voters to support spending caps as a means of punishing state employees. While the connection between the initiatives and the ad placement was noticed by more than a few labor leaders and journalists, Rick Berman actually had the moxie to deny the association to a reporter with the Associated Press -- telling them that there was no relation whatsoever. That was a tough line to maintain given that Berman's organization has been working publicly with Howard Rich's Americans for Limited Government recently. And on the same day that Berman was denying connections to one reporter in Montana, he was admitting the connections to The Register Guard in Oregon. Needless to say, the man got caught in his double-speak."
This is headache-inducing stuff, but maybe there's hope, in that Berman and his gang can't feasibly bring this slash-and-burn crap to every state, right?
THIS just in from Cathryn Stephens, KVAL-TV reporter in Eugene, Oregon: "Organizers of `Union Facts' have said they plan a `state-by-state push' against public employee unions, with the focus on state and local employment."
Stay tuned.
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