The Next Hurrah

If TNH had a Drudge-siren, this is where I'd use it

Breaking!!! as the man would say.  From the front page of today's (subscription only) WSJ:

Petty Cash: A Wal-Mart Legend's Trail of Deceit

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Last November, Thomas M. Coughlin, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s vice chairman, approached a lieutenant with an unusual request. He wanted Jared Bowen to approve around $2,000 in expense payments without any receipts.  Mr. Bowen, then a 31-year-old vice president, recalls that Mr. Coughlin briefly mentioned the money had been used for a "union project."

Concerned that the request seemed fishy, Mr. Bowen eventually alerted another executive, helping trigger an internal probe. Mr. Coughlin, who retired as an executive in January, abruptly resigned on March 25 from his board seat after Wal-Mart found what it said was a pattern of expense-account abuses and the use of false invoices to obtain reimbursements. Several other Wal-Mart employees also have been fired. The U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas is investigating the matter.

. . . The tale involves another mystery: the "union project." Mr. Coughlin told several Wal-Mart employees that the money was actually being used for antiunion activities, including paying union staffers to tell him of pro-union workers in stores, according to people familiar with the matter. The fake invoices, Mr. Coughlin told these people, were simply a roundabout way of compensating him for out-of-pocket expenses in his antiunion campaign.

If Mr. Coughlin did pay union staffers for information, it would represent a criminal offense under the federal Taft-Hartley Act and ratchet up debate over the retail giant's labor policies. Wal-Mart has vigorously opposed unions since the time of Mr. Walton, who founded the company in 1962. That stance has roiled the retail industry as competing companies with unionized workers have tried to slash wages and benefits in an attempt to keep up with Wal-Mart's rock-bottom prices.  People familiar with the matter say that Mr. Coughlin is expected to use the "union project" as part of his defense to the charges about misappropriation of funds. These people give an explanation that wouldn't necessarily involve criminal activity: The payments went to former, rather than current, union people who had information about union activities at Wal-Mart. Even such payments, if made, could raise legal questions. According to Fred Feinstein, the former general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, they could violate the National Labor Relations Act and carry civil penalties.

However, it remains unclear whether any payments were made or whether the union project existed. It is possible that Mr. Coughlin's talk of antiunion work was a cover story to conceal misuse of Wal-Mart funds for personal or other purposes.

If Coughlin did in fact pay off union staffers for info on organizing campaigns, it's criminal -- and the union staffers who took those payments need to be hunted down and arrested, along with Coughlin and any other Wal-Mart execs who particpated in the crime.  That said, the UFCW claims it has no knowledge of the issue.  My wild-ass guess, at this point, is that Coughlin is going to fall on his sword, claim that the "union project" was merely a ruse to launder petty cash embezzlement, and save the company.  But we shall see.  There's a dKos diary on the brewing scandal here.

Score One For The Good Guys

by Trapper John

It's a truism at this point that with the aging of the boomers, health care and pension policy are going to become even more critical to the political debate.  We're certainly seeing that with the battle to save Social Security, during which the public has become increasingly engaged and opposed to Bush's privatization scheme.   Lost in the justifiable focus on Bush's plan to end SS, though, has been what is possibly even a more nefarious attack on retirement security -- Arnold Schwarzeneggar's move to privatize CALPERS, the California public employee pension fund.  CALPERS is the largest pension fund in the US, providing stable, defined benefit pensions to hundreds of thousands of California retirees.  It also happens to be the largest institutiuonal investor in American equity markets, and has in recent years taken a leadership role in policing the often rotten corporate governance of American companies.  In other words, it's been a boon to both its beneficiaries and to the public in general.  So it's natural that Schwarzeneggar wants to kill it.  And  the end of CALPERS, hoped his allies at the Club for Growth and in Congress, would be the beginning of the end for all defined benefit plans -- for true retirement security -- in America.

The Gropinator planned to put his measure on the ballot this fall.  He bet a lot of his vaunted personal popularity on the issue.  But the action figure found that Californians, like the rest of the country, don't take kindly to politicians -- however much they pretend to be something else -- mucking around with their retirement security.   Yesterday, the people of California handed Ahnold the first major defeat of his term in office.  The beautiful details are below the fold.

Pharmacists Against Medicine

by Trapper John

This is why Plan B needs to be available over the counter:

Some pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs. . . . An increasing number of clashes are occurring in drugstores across the country. Pharmacists often risk dismissal or other disciplinary action to stand up for their beliefs, while shaken teenage girls and women desperately call their doctors, frequently late at night, after being turned away by sometimes-lecturing men and women in white coats.

"There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."

That is what happened to Kathleen Pulz and her husband, who panicked when the condom they were using broke. Their fear really spiked when the Walgreens pharmacy down the street from their home in Milwaukee refused to fill an emergency prescription for the morning-after pill.   "I couldn't believe it," said Pulz, 44, who with her husband had long ago decided they could not afford a fifth child. "How can they make that decision for us? I was outraged. At the same time, I was sad that we had to do this. But I was scared. I didn't know what we were going to do."

Look, there's no question that the problem of the renegade pharmacist who won't fill a lawfully prescribed prescription needs to be addressed.  It's unthinkable and unconscionable that a young woman in a rural area, with access to just one pharmacy, might be unable to obtain medicine that her physician has prescibed, simply because of a whim of the local pharmacist.  Kudos to those states, such as California, which are considering amending their laws to require pharmacists to do their jobs and fill properly prescribed prescriptions.  But one easy way to get around at least some of the bigotry and the nonsense would be for the FDA to allow Plan B to be sold OTC.  Even though the agency isn't formally taking comments at this time, it can't hurt to write them and let them know how you feel.

Navel-Gazers 4 Life

Could anything better sum up the small-minded myopia of the Right?

G.O.P.=V.A.L.U.E.S.

by Trapper John

Yesterday, I heard Jennifer Duffy from Charlie Cook's shop opining that it was hard to tell how the Schiavo case was playing out politically.  Sure, the Dems might have the polls on their side, she said, but they're just so uncomfortable with "values" issues.  Of course.  Yet this morning, the WaPo boldly indicated that it might just be possible to divine the public sentiment, with a story entitled Analysts: GOP May Be Out of Step With Public.  With all this equivocating about the ramifications on the sorry Schiavo saga, you'd think that the nation was closely divided on the issue of whether a husband should have the right to guide his incompetent spouse's medical treatment.  Yet right in the middle of the Post article, it clearly states that:

An ABC News poll released yesterday concluded that "Americans broadly and strongly disapprove of federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, with sizable majorities saying Congress is overstepping its bounds for political gain."  By 63 to 28 percent, Americans support the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, which her husband says would be her wish. Seventy percent of the respondents said it was inappropriate for Congress to get involved as it has. And 67 percent said they believe that elected officials trying to keep Schiavo alive are doing so mainly for political reasons.

Gee, it'd seem to me that the GOP is wildly "out of step with the public" on the Schiavo case, and that the Dems are completely sympatico with that public.  But I suppose that when you've suckered the media into believing that the Republican party is always on the side of middle America on "values" issues, the media just can't accept the idea that the GOP could conceivably completely overstep the grounds of decency.   Kudos, Karl.   That's some good work.

Everyone (Who Counts) Is Just Like Me

by Trapper John

If you live in my corner of Northwest DC (or, I suspect, in any number of zip codes on the island of Manhattan), you've no doubt read, heard, or seen no fewer than two dozen reviews of Judith Warner's Perfect Madness.  Warner, who resides in tony Chevy Chase, is being feted as

the Gloria Steinem of her generation, a voice of reason warning today's mothers that they are poisoning themselves with a "choking cocktail of guilt and anxiety and resentment and regret." That they are driving themselves crazy with "soul-draining perfectionism," obsessing about finding the right art camp and the right piano teacher and the right coach, shuttling from soccer matches to bake sales to school auctions, attending Girl Scout cookie meetings, at 8 o'clock at night . . . In the Judith Warner age you are a mother who buys cookies for a school event or bakes them or bakes them with some degree of irony. You either "interact" with your infant as she watches the "Baby Einstein" video, as the box tells you to, or you pop it in and go take a shower. You either wear overalls and a ponytail proudly or you apologize for dressing like a 6-year-old. You read "The Runaway Bunny" and are either horrified by the oppressive mother bunny or think she's not protecting her little bunny enough. You drive to three different soccer leagues or make your kids play in the yard for once.

I haven't read the book yet, but based on the countless stories I've seen, it appears that Warner makes a number of good points, and that she diagnoses a real problem in American society -- the ludicrous societal pressures placed on upper-class mothers and the relative absence of such pressures on their upper-class husbands/male partners. 

What bugs me about the Warnerpalooza is the manner in which the class issue is either ignored, or glossed over.   (More below the fold.)

Rejoice, for Urban Fetch is Back From the Dead!

by Trapper John

Well, sort of.  Beginning Tuesday, MaxDelivery will begin schlepping DVDs, smokes, booze, sundries, and just about anything else that a stoned bond trader could want delivered to his below-14th Street abode.  In under an hour.  Sound familiar?

Here's a VC who thinks that there's a workable business model out there.  He points out that Kozmo did in fact make money in NYC -- which I seem to remember, and which doesn't surprise me.  Indeed, MaxDelivery seems to be avoiding many of the more glaring errors of its predecessors -- they're starting out with a circumscribed delivery area, they're charging at least a nominal delivery fee for smaller orders (thus discouraging the classic Urban Fetching of a pack of Camels), and they're not open 24 hours.  On the other hand, there are a number of delis that have begun to provide similar, if not net-based, services since the implosion of the dot-coms -- folks may not scamper back to their computers to order what their neighborhood delis have been delivering for the past four years.  And the more realistic approach taken by MaxDelivery just isn't as fun as the halcyon days of Urban Fetch, when you could decide on a whim at 3 AM to order a Play Station and three games, and be playing Crazy Taxi by 4.  But that, it seems, was a lifetime ago, when folks really believed that we could make money from the ether, and when the nation's most pressing concern was whether our incredibly popular president should be censured for getting a blow job.

More on Building a Better Nominee

by Trapper John

I haven't been around a lot lately, so I'm catching up on a bunch of great posts.  I see that DH hit on one of my fave games yesterday -- devising a better primary system.  We, and others, have had this discussion scads of times over at dKos, but I never get sick of it. 

Anyway, I figure that our problem is rooted in the fact that IA and NH are cemented in the popular mind as the be-all and end-all winnowers of the process.  The problem is twofold -- first, IA and NH aren't close to being microcosms of the US, and second, they're only two states.  Now, there's no question that someone at the beginning of the process has to be the winnower.  IA and NH aren't the worst picks for the job, but they certainly aren't completely representative of the Democratic party -- neither is teeming with blacks, Latinos, or union members.  Nor does either state really reflect all of today's America -- no major metropolitan areas, and therefore not a lot of urban, suburban, and exurban voters  So I'd like to see some states that look more like the party, and the country, move up in the process.  But simply moving a state like, say, MI, to the top of the list is still going to result in the other problem inherent in the current schedule -- where the voters of one, or maybe two, states essentially picks our standard-bearer.  Even the most representative state has its own quirks -- MI Dems, for example, are probably less disposed to raising CAFE standards than the national party.  So what I'd like to see is a process that brings in more states from more regions, including states that can better stand in for the nation as a whole.  And I'd like to do it in a way that communicates to the public, and the political media, that this is a new kind of multi-week winnowing process.  My hope is that we can create in the popular imagination the impression that the early primaries are more like a best-of-seven World Series than a winner-take-all Super Bowl.  In so doing, we can change the expectations game, and cut way down on the "when are you going to get out" questions after Week 1.

Here's my plan.  Eight states, from various regions, in a core opening group for 2008.  Two states each week, grouped regionally, for the first four weeks -- all of January.  If it works, we can rotate the eight states in '12.  I don't want to make the early process too much of a budget-buster, but it can't hurt to actually reward candidates who do what it takes -- either by being imposing enough or inspiring enough -- to raise cash.  After all, we need cash to win in November.  By the end of the opening sequence, we should have whittled down the field enough that money won't be a major issue for any remaining candidates, so I wouldn't impose a strict schedule on the balance of the states.  My proposed sked is below the fold.

Tempers Cooling at the Bally-hoo?

by Trapper John

The AFL-CIO meetings at Bally's in Las Vegas continued today, and the soap opera continues to unfold.  Yesterday's events saw the SEIU and its allies -- who are seeking a dramatic reduction in the size of the Fed in favor of more money being returned to affiliates for organizing -- deeply unhappy with the state of affairs.  Rumors flew about the imminent departure of the SEIU from the House of Labor. Today, the Teamster plan for a massive redistribution of money toward organizing, which was the agreed-upon vehicle of the "rebel" caucus (hereafter the "Nu NUP"), won only 40% of the vote at the Executive Committee meeting.  (The Executive Committee is comprised of the largest AFL-CIO affiliates, and operates as an advisory board to the full Executive Council.)  A Sweeney-backed proposal to rebate a lesser amount of money to affiliates for organizing was adopted -- though not as sweeping as the Teamster plan, the successful proposal will still result in significant cutbacks at Fed headquarters.  But as this transcript of a post-meeting presser held by the Teamster plan supporters shows, the mood among the Nu NUP was relatively optimistic compared to yesterday, and there was no talk of defections from the Fed:

Q: If this stays at a 60-40 split will anyone leave?

[Joe] Hansen [President, UFCW]: Our intentions are to build a strong federation and I don’t know anyone who is intending on leaving the AFL-CIO. We couldn’t get them to the 50 percent but it’s far from over.

Hoffa: Could be people coming over to our side. We’re going to try to convince people, people who voted another way today who will change their minds.

It sounds like the Nu NUP will be working toward persuading other unions during the months leading up to the Fed convention this summer, rather than splitting off or giving up.  And it may well be that compromises are possible.  Jonathan Tasini continues to be your man on the scene for the duration.

The Intrigue!

by Trapper John

For those who can't get enough of the Inside Labor stuff, Jonathan Tasini is sorta-liveblogging the AFL-CIO Bally-hoo, from a NUPpie-friendly perspective.   If he's to be believed, proposals to spend more AFL money on organizing are being rejected in favor of proposals to spend more on politics, and there are some unhappy campers in Sin City.

It's 4:30 and there's about to be a sit-down between John Sweeney and Jim Hoffa. Sweeney will try to sway Hoffa but i don't think Hoffa will bite. I don't think Sweeney really understand the depth of frustration with the bureaucracy at 16th Street. Take the Firefighters--they are not part of the rebels but if you read their proposal, they are certainly not happy with the way the money is being spent at the Federation . . .  Tonight, the general presidents of the "rebel" unions will meet to take stock. There is one rumor floating around that SEIU will announce tomorrow or Thursday that it is pulling out of the AFL-CIO. Whether it happens that quickly is not important--if the Federation doesn't appear to make radical changes, SEIU will be out sooner rather than later. And, depending on how things shake out between now and the convention, the Teamsters may follow.

We shall see.