The 'Living Wage' Gambit- A nation-wide union ploy that hurts the working poor ~ WSJ.

As a candidate, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg sold voters on his willingness to defy the city's traditional power brokers, the unions. It hasn't taken long for Big Labor to test his mettle. Last week the City Council held hearings on a "living wage" bill, which in New York translates to an inflation-indexed $10-per-hour minimum-wage requirement for any business having even tangential contact with the city or other public agencies. Union thumbprints are all over the proposal.

Living-wage laws have become a national fad. Proponents claim victories in more than 60 jurisdictions since 1994 and 75 campaigns are currently under way, according on one count. A typical ordinance sets the wage floor at $8 to $10, but some have been more generous. Last year Santa Monica, California, mandated a minimum hourly rate of $12.25 for anyone doing business with the city.

Advocates say the working poor stand to benefit from these laws, and they do -- but only the ones who are lucky enough to keep their jobs. The economic reality is that living-wage requirements raise employer costs, and the first to go are low-skill workers. As the 1990s showed, the working poor benefit most from economic growth and a booming job market that opens more opportunity.

The real living-wage beneficiaries are the labor unions backing the movement, and they're not shy about their motives. An AFL-CIO newsletter tells members that "living-wage campaigns are part of an overall strategy" that will "potentially enhanc[e] union organizing among workers." The game is to fashion the ordinance into an effective recruitment tool, the better to force businesses into collective-bargaining agreements. These laws also limit competition for city contracts; private contractors who can't handle the political pay scales are priced out of the bidding.

The New York proposal has these goals in mind and then some. E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute says there's talk of including a "private right of action" in the bill, which would turn unions into highly selective prosecutors who could threaten a lawsuit if a business didn't agree to their terms. "As opposed to requiring the city to enforce the law, a union could go to court and claim that someone is in violation of the law," says Mr. McMahon.

Dennis Rivera, the powerful head of New York's 200,000 member health-care workers union, lurks in the shadows here. In January his union endorsed Republican Governor George Pataki for re-election in return for a pay raise. For the scheme to work, however, Mr. Bloomberg, who as mayor plays a role in the dispersal of state funds, must be on board. Mr. Rivera wants a living wage just in case the Mayor tries to upset his deal with the Governor. Mr. Rivera didn't put Mr. Bloomberg in City Hall, but many Council members have the union boss to thank for their seat. If he wants a living-wage bill, he'll probably get one.

That's bad news for New York, which is already the most expensive place in the country to own and operate a business. "New York City [has] difficulty enough attracting business," says Kathryn Wylde, who heads the Chamber of Commerce. "Living wage is simply another disincentive."

So far, City Hall has opposed the measure. At last week's hearing, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff noted that New York has lost 136,000 private-sector jobs in the past 14 months and faces a $5 billion budget deficit. The city estimates that a living-wage bill would cost $143 million in 2003 and more in later years. Unemployment is at its highest level since 1971.

We wish Mr. Bloomberg well but realize that the odds are against him. Still, New Yorkers should know who's to blame for the economic damage done by union bigwigs protecting their own.

Global Crossing: Labor's Questionable Windfall

Federal Officials Probe Stock Offer To Union Chiefs by Global Crossing ~ WSJ.

Dennis Rivera SEIU 1199 NY

****DICK MORRIS : The White House: Hillary's Campaign HQ

****WASHINGTON (AP) 11.30.99 A union headed by one of Hillary Rodham

Clinton's top backers made a hefty contribution to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee just before the committee began paying for a television ad boosting the first lady in upstate New York, records showed Tuesday.

Local 1199's Political Action Fund contributed $500,000 to the DSCC on Oct. 19, according to Federal Election Commission records. [entire story below]

***********************************

News/Current Events Opinion (Published)
Source: New York Post.
Published: 1-29-00 Author: DICK MORRIS

In its long and varied tenure as the residence of presidents, the White House has been burned by the British and trashed by Andrew Jackson's inaugural quests.

Woodrow Wilson used it as a romantic lair to court Edith after the death of his wife. James Buchanan used it as a bachelor pad.

Bill Clinton rented it out to raise money. Under Warren Harding and Harry Truman, it accommodated a weekly poker game. For Winston Churchill it was a guest house at the invitation of FDR and Eleanor.

Now, it's a Senate campaign headquarters for Hillary Clinton. Substantively, President Clinton has turned federal policy making into an exercise in advancing his wife's campaign.

Stylistically, the social life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has become an instrument of fund raising for the First Lady's New York Senate race.

Bill Clinton is running the presidency as if it were the governorship of New York. After seven years of neglect, Clinton has allocated new funding for low income housing.

He's pardoned FALN terrorists. He banned live ammunition tests from the Vieques, Puerto Rico, Navy training grounds. Medicare reimbursements to New York teaching hospitals have been expanded after Clinton cut it back in 1996. Homelessness has become a White House pre-occupation for the first time.

New funding is available for capital improvements in New York. Forgetting for a moment that she is not supposed to let people know that she is the President, Hillary muses out loud that if the police are acquitted in the Diallo shooting, she may find a "federal role" in the case.

Presumably after she did so, the Attorney General, having felt the heat, would see the light. Meanwhile, the First Lady has organized the social whirl at the nation's center to accommodate the requisites of campaign fund raising. The millennium celebration in Washington was nothing more and nothing less than a campaign event.

Seated with the First Lady, at her table, was Dennis Rivera, New York chapter president of the Service Employees International Union, a $10,000 campaign donor with 300,000 members in New York.

Also at her table was Bernard Schwartz who heads the Loral Corporation. Schwartz was invited despite the fact that his New York-based company is under Justice Department investigation for sharing satellite technology secrets with the Chinese.

He and his wife have donated $40,000 in soft money to Hillary Clinton's campaign. If Wen Ho Lee had been similarly generous, one wonders if he might not have gotten an invitation, too.

At least seven of Hillary's other contributors attended the millennium bash, but many more may have been in attendance. The First Lady and the National Park Service Foundation, under her thumb, has only seen fit to tell us the names of 288 of the guests at the ten events in the capital. Many thousands more reportedly attended.

The First Lady even refuses to release the names of more than 600 people invited for dancing at the White House. So much for it being the "people's house."

Mrs. Clinton's campaign aide, the president, also hosted donors at his table, including Sugar Daddy Terry McAuliffe (who initially guaranteed the Clintons' mortgage) and Walter Shorenstein, one of the Democratic Party's top 50 soft money patrons according to the recently published book The Buying of the President, 2000.

Shorenstein's son, Robert Schrum, heads Gore's consulting team. Among the president's other special guests were Daniel Abraham, who was listed in Mother Jones Magazine as one of America's top ten political donors.

Niranjan Shah also sat at the president's table. Shah, a $3,000 Hillary donor, may also have contributed between $100,000 and $250,000 to the millennium event, according to the Washington Times.

The millennium celebration should have been a nonpolitical, national event. It should have featured leading Americans of every political persuasion and loyalty.

As the French watched their Eiffel Tower explode with celebratory lights, they did not have to wonder whether the event sponsors were donors of President Jacques Chirac. But in the Hillary Clinton Senate campaign, every seat at every White House event is for sale.

According to US News and World Report magazine, President Clinton asked the President of the European Community on Oct. 27 to permit the landing of American aircraft in Europe equipped with "hush kits" to abate noise.

One leading manufacturer of these kits is ABS Partnership, whose principals, Sandra Wagenfeld and Francine Goldstein, both of Westport, Conn., contributed $160,000 to a campaign fund for Hillary shortly before the president pleaded their case.

Wagenfeld and Goldstein, who had also donated $301,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1999, were guests at a June 1999 White House State Dinner for Arpad Goncz, the President of Hungary.

Hillary's White House HQ also provides her with glitzy and convenient transportation. Her 35 trips to New York in 1999 were aboard military jets.

Hillary's campaign reimburses the government for these trips but only at a very low rate reflecting commercial airfares despite the fact that these military aircraft are at her beck and call.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. What a nice address for a campaign headquarters. Even one in New York.

****************************

Hefty Union Contribution Came Just Before Mrs. Clinton Ads

WASHINGTON (AP) A union headed by one of Hillary Rodham Clinton's top backers made a hefty contribution to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee just before the committee began paying for a television ad boosting the first lady in upstate New York, records showed Tuesday.

Local 1199's Political Action Fund contributed $500,000 to the DSCC on Oct. 19, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The TV ad promoting Mrs. Clinton began running in New York three weeks later. The spot was funded almost entirely by about $250,000 the DSCC provided to the state Democratic Party, which arranged for the advertising, officials said.

Republicans have been highly critical of Mrs. Clinton for allowing the unlimited ``soft-money contributions'' to be used on the advertising.

Local 1199's president is Dennis Rivera, one of the highest profile labor leaders in the state and a major backer of Mrs. Clinton's expected Senate run. She is expected to face New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the race.

The New York City-based Local 1199 represents 200,000 blue-collar hospital workers. Already one of the most powerful unions in the state, Local 1199 is seeking to expand into upstate New York.

Officials with the DSCC and Local 1199 both denied the ad and the donation were connected.

``There's no connection whatsoever except in the very indirect sense that Local 1199 is interested in electing Democrats to the United States Senate,'' DSCC Political Director Jim Jordan said Tuesday.

Jennifer Cunningham, a spokeswoman for Local 1199, said the contribution was made after a conversation union officials had over the summer with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat. A fund-raiser was held in early October for the DSCC in New York City which President Clinton attended.

The DSCC-financed ad features the first lady talking with upstate New Yorkers and shaking hands. An announcer ends by saying:

``Call Hillary. Tell her to keep fighting for children, for families, for our future.'' The telephone number for the New York state Democratic Party then appears on screen.

The ad has been running for about three weeks across upstate New York, an answer to ads being run and paid for by Giuliani's campaign that are also running in upstate New York.

While the Clinton camp has admitted to coordination with the Democrats over the pro-Hillary Clinton ad, aides to the first lady insist everything they did was legal. Giuliani has said the FEC should investigate the financing and coordination.

There is no limit on so-called soft money contributions that can be made to fund issue-oriented ads that do not specifically advocate voting for a candidate. Critics of the soft money-funded issue ads say they allow candidates to skirt campaign contribution limits. The soft money issue ads became popular during the 1996 presidential campaign between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.

The New York ads were the DSCC's first for the 2000 election cycle.

A phone call placed to Mrs. Clinton's campaign was not immediately returned Tuesday.

Local 1199 has been quite visible lately. They have joined in recent weeks with the Greater New York Hospital Association in an ad campaigns calling for New York to use money from the multibillion dollar settlement with tobacco companies to help more lower-income New Yorkers afford health insurance. The two groups also launched another ad campaign pushing state officials to keep the hospital subsidies in place in the state's Health Care Reform Act set to expire at the end of December.

Local 1199 has also been pushing the Clinton administration and Congress to restore money to New York hospitals that was cut under the 1997 Balanced Budget Act.

Rivera used his Local's money and phone bank for the Carey Campaign - then 'forgave' the loans.

Rivera was one of the first of the 'A' list to arrive at the White House New Years Eve bash.

The head of his parent union SEIU's, Andy Stern, is up to his eyeballs in the cash-swaps/embezzlements.

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