Bob Ehrlich took home $2.2 million while the workers at his firm took a pay cut. Now they have less money to spend for goods and services that keep other people employed and in business.
Bob Ehrlich’s fortune
One of the most noteworthy revelations of Maryland’s gubernatorial campaign this year was that Bob Ehrlich collected $2.2 million for his role on his law firm’s “government affairs team.” It’s a good thing Bob Ehrlich was on leave from his law firm when he gave reporters a glimpse at his tax returns, because the news that he vacuumed up all that money couldn’t have won him any popularity contests at Womble’s many offices. While Bob Ehrlich was serving himself a ravenous slice of the Womble Carlyle pie, the firm’s paralegals, associates, and other employees were handed a permanent ten percent pay cut.
That’s better than a pink slip, but how many struggling hard working employees and their families could have been spared the pain if the Bob Ehrlichs of the firm restrained their greed instead of dealing themselves outsized portions in the middle of a crippling recession? Bob Ehrlich loses his cool when discussion turns to income disparity, sputtering about class warfare like a verbal gryphon guarding his patrons’ treasure—and now his own loot too—Warren Buffet says there is such a war, and his class is winning.
President Clinton’s former labor secretary Robert Reich is touring the country promoting his new book about the impact of that income disparity and diminished middle class spending power on our present economic mess and his prescription for broad and lasting prosperity. In 1979, Mr. Reich says, the wealthiest one percent of Americans took home nine percent of the country’s total income; by 2007, the wealthiest one percent took home 23.5 percent of the country’s total income.
Apologists like Bob Ehrlich claim the country’s total income rose high enough to compensate, but the truth is middle and lower class noncredit purchasing power has fallen, not risen, over the Bush-GOP decade, and hard. Republicans hurl the socialist charge at Mr. Reich, but it never sticks because he was President Clinton’s key economic advisor through one of the greatest business and wealth expansions in history, which was also the last time the federal budget was balanced. The grand economic feast of Bill Clinton’s expansion made Ronald Reagan’s the decade before look like a happy meal. Republicans would have us believe the Clinton expansion was President Reagan’s doing, never mind Mr. Reagan had been out of office four years when Mr. Clinton’s first term began—on the heels of a recession—or that the Clinton expansion reached full throttle eight years after Mr. Reagan’s departure. Just watch conservatives credit President Reagan, who left office 22 years ago, when the present GOP induced miasma yields to prosperity.
Obscene salaries like Bob Ehrlich’s are choking our economy
Mr. Reich says unrestrained greed at the top is fueled by dollars taken from middle and lower income employees, and their diminished purchasing power stifles economic growth. Businesses in Maryland and everywhere are having a tough time emerging from the recession because their customers are still short on cash. No one blames Bob Ehrlich alone, but together with his cohorts in the economic elite he joined, he is breaking the gentleman’s agreement at the core of our national strength and prosperity, and we’re all suffering the consequences. Henry Ford famously made sure his workers earned enough money to buy his cars, but as soon as Bob Ehrlich got his chance, he did the opposite, taking too much for himself and not leaving enough for his workers to afford Mr. Ford’s cars.
Workers at Womble and elsewhere quietly swallowed recession pay cuts because they were desperate and frightened, but now we know the firm wasn’t short on cash; instead the money withheld from their employees went to elites like Bob Ehrlich. Compare Mr. Ehrlich’s greed to Baltimore’s entrepreneurial hero, Kevin Plank, the Under Armour founder, who responded to the Republican economic disaster by cutting his annual salary to $26,000. Maybe Bob Ehrlich’s misbehavior was the reason Mr. Plank’s donation to the Ehrlich campaign was refunded.
The real victims of Bob Ehrlich’s pay grab
Let me summarize Bob Ehrlich’s re-election campaign in one sentence: He’s taking half the state out to lunch in small groups every afternoon to convince them that the global economic disaster that brought the nation to the brink of another Great Depression was caused by Gov. O’Malley adding a penny to the sales tax.
I’m sure the restaurant owners appreciate the business, especially since Bob Ehrlich’s campaign donors are paying for it, but I’m also sure they know they’re seeing fewer customers because people have lost income, not because the sales tax has gone up a penny. If you disagree, look at the numbers: The penny increase in the sales tax raised the cost of a $23 dinner by 23 cents, and the cost of a $48 dinner by 48 cents; a $100 dinner went up one whole dollar.
If you think people are skipping $48 dinners because they can’t pay an extra 48 cents, and they’re not splurging on $100 dinners because they can’t throw in an extra buck, you should vote for Bob Ehrlich. If, on the other hand, you recognize that restaurants and all businesses are suffering because many people have scaled back spending because their salaries were cut ten percent under the pretext of the recession while the truth is that portion of their income was taken from them to pay obscene salaries to upper management, don’t vote for Bob Ehrlich. If you want to reverse this prosperity sapping income disparity, make sure you don’t vote for any Republican candidate. - Steve Lebowitz, Annapolis
PS: Bob Ehrlich’s hypocrisy continues
The day he attacked Gov. O’Malley for furloughing state employees, Mr. Ehrlich went to Virginia to be feted at a fundraiser by Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell.....who had just furloughed his state’s employees! Gov. O’Malley and Gov. McDonnell were two of at least 30 governors choosing temporary furloughs to avoid massive layoffs in the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The week before, Mr. Ehrlich endorsed Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold, who adopted a furlough plan for county workers identical to Gov. O’Malley’s state plan. Those contradictions are telling, but Mr. Ehrlich’s furlough hypocrisy didn’t end there.
While Maryland’s furloughs amounted to a two percent temporary pay cut for modest income workers and five percent for top earners, Bob Ehrlich’s law firm permanently slashed its workers’ pay ten percent. That’s right; Bob Ehrlich slammed Gov. O’Malley for temporarily cutting state workers’ pay two to five percent while his own firm cut its workers’ pay ten percent. And remember Gov. O’Malley cut his own pay, while Bob Ehrlich took the raise of a lifetime.
Set your DVR for Maryland Public Television's State Cirlce 7:30pm tonight to watch Republican blogger Mark Newgent and me square off once again with host Jeff Salkin.
follow justdafacts and fakeBobEhrlich and the new fakeRazzPolls on twitter