Working Life

…Or else maybe Nike’s off-shore shell game has changed. In any case, there’s something fishy in Bermuda.

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One person who is a bit of a hero, I think, in this whole post-financial-crisis-the-bankers-got-away-with-it scam is Jed Rakoff, who sits in the Federal District Court of Manhattan. A few years ago, I wrote that Rakoff understood that the government, our government, and, in particular, the Securities and Exchange Commission, is not serious about holding people accountable for the robbery and greed and incompetence that led to the financial collapse, costing millions of people their jobs and obliterating trillions of dollars in wealth. As Rakoff said, it’s all a show. But, at least, when he can, Rakoff is trying to make it hurt–and, now, to the tune of a $1.9 billion fine against Bank of America.

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Yipee, it’s up, the economy is “rebounding”, smile, celebrate…uh, well, not so fast.

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Under the heading of “this is not surprising”, I’d put this news: bank CEOs are playing a central role in moving companies overseas–or, actually, just reincorporating them to dodge taxes. And all for the usual reason: nice fat bank fees that help underwrite the pay packages of Jamie Dimon and his gang–the same gang that wrecked the economy, but still have their jobs.

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The tender landscape of art can often obscure labor nastiness, and stupidity, that rivals anything you’d find in the corporate world, with stupidity and greed part of the mix (take Arianna Huffington, grand narcissist, who is happy to leach off writers and make tens of millions along the way). Welcome to the New York Metropolitan Opera, folks, which, true to form, is trying to lay blame on its workers and threatening a lock-out, when mismanagement has been the order of the day.

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Sunday there will be yet another ceremony at the National Baseball Hall of Fame–and it will be, without anyone saying so, a ceremony that continues the despicable behavior towards the one man who did more to change baseball outside the lines than perhaps any single individual: Marvin Miller. Despicable because, simply because Marvin Miller built the players’ union into a serious union, the owners have refused to vote him into the Hall of Fame. It’s even more despicable because, after Miller died at age 95 in November 2012, you would think that people would have an ounce of decency, a bit of humanity, to tamp down the animosity enough to be big and do the right thing. But, they have not.

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I detect a president who thinks he’s found a very potent political argument. Having gone soft on the bankers, letting all the big fish skate after wrecking the economy, the president has figured out that people just won’t stand for a tax system that leaves regular people holding the tab while CEOs figure out how to screw the public, day after day. And, so, he’s now personally calling for an end to so-called tax “inversions”

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Tick, tick, tick, tick…every minute that goes by is another minute workers are being robbed–in particular, those people forced to work for the slave-like minimum wage. And if you looked back just five years, there’s a price tag to that robbery: over $300 billion.

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In the debate over tax inversions–that little corporate maneuver to reincorporate abroad to avoid U.S. taxes–there’s a little fight going on about a small but significant issue: if legislation passes to stop this scam, should it be retroactive? Of course it should.

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This is simply a tale of having a gun put to your head: vote “yes” or we screw you even harder.

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