By Doug Porter
Sources close to Raise Up San Diego are telling us the company collecting signatures for the Slave Wage Jobs Coalition will be National Petition Management(NPM).
Today we’ll take a look at what they’ve accomplished in recent years, and why you might want to wash your hands after engaging one of their ‘contract employees’ asking for signatures to overturn San Diego’s minimum wage and paid sick days ordinance.
NPM and their likely local affiliate, Victory Consultants, Inc will start deploying signature gatherers at suburban malls shortly after the city council over rides Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s veto later this month. They’ll have 30 days to collect 34,000 or so signatures. Meeting that threshold will suspend the new minimum wage and earned sick days ordinance until after the June 2016 election.
The company brags on its website that it has “an unparalleled track record of 100%” of qualifying initiatives. And as we said yesterday, the Chamber of Commerce has been busy raising money for a referendum.
And that’s true, if you accept the qualifier “qualifying.”
Carl DeMaio: You Guys Are Dead Men Walking
Let’s look at an example where they didn’t succeed; former LA Mayor Richard Riordan’s attempt at pension reform back in 2012.
Six weeks and $800,000 into a petition gathering drive he pulled the plug, blaming union opposition and a lack of financial support from local millionaires.
From the LA Weekly:
To gather his signatures, Riordan hired National Petition Management, which brags on its website that clients turn to the company “when failure is not an option.” The website says the firm has “a near perfect record in the worst of conditions and shortest time frames…”
…As the Dec. 28 deadline approached, Riordan increased the spending per signature in hopes of speeding up the process. His budget ballooned, but the raise had little effect.
Riordan fired his consultant and hired one who had worked on the San Diego campaign. But by mid-November it became clear that it was too late. In a conference call with Riordan and his team, [Carl] DeMaio was blunt, he tells the Weekly.
“You guys are dead men walking,” DeMaio told them. “You do not have time. You’re going to throw good money after bad.”
From the Folks Who Said the Navy is Leaving Town…
National Petition Management was the company used by San Diego’s shipbuilders and the Chamber of Commerce is qualifying Propositions B&C for this past June’s ballot.
From Dorian Hargrove at the Reader:
They hired local lobbying firm,Southwest Strategies which in turn hired National Petition Management to begin hunting down the 50,000 plus signatures needed to put the item on the June ballot.
Weeks later, signature gatherers were posted outside big-box retailers and grocery stores telling residents to sign the petition or be faced with a mass exodus from the maritime industry.
Among their selling points, gatherers said the Navy would likely set sail from San Diego as it had in Long Beach and San Francisco decades prior. Shipbuilders too would ship out in search for cheaper ports. In all they claimed, 46,000 jobs could be at jeopardy and $14 billion in revenue could be flushed down the toilet.
Superior Court Judge Randa Trapp ruled that, despite the lies and misrepresentations being told by NPM’s ‘contract employees,’ there simply wasn’t a clear legal path to disqualifying the petitions.
Which means we can expect a steady diet of lies, lies and more lies, coming soon to a shopping mall near you. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always muscle– which can take many forms.
Signature Gathering is Big Business
The San Francisco Bay Guardian published a report back in 2010 on an effort by the non-profit Repair California, who launched an initiative campaign without help from the major companies that do this sort of work.
Repair California was asking voters to support getting a couple of measures on the ballot aimed at calling a limited constitutional convention to reform state government. By carefully crafting the language in their proposals, they avoided several hot button issues (Prop 13 and same sex marriage) and put together a business coalition and $3.6 million in funding.
The signature gathering industry didn’t like the idea of including reforms changing the way initiative campaigns were conducted.
From the Guardian:
Paid signature gatherers were shouted down in the streets, threatened with the prospect of never working in the industry again, and spied on by informants from signature-gathering firms that then placed them on blacklists, according to Grubb. The nonprofit also alleges that representatives from these firms were seen throwing stacks of signed constitutional convention petitions into the trash.
There are six major signature-gathering firms in California that contract with political campaigns to circulate petitions for ballot initiatives. Through a network of regional coordinators, they hire independent contractors who are paid by the signature to stand on the street with clipboards soliciting voters’ support.
The firms take in millions of dollars from each campaign, but for circulators who carry half a dozen petitions at once, the work comes in temporary bursts and moves from state to state. Paid signature gatherers who spoke with the Guardian said that being blacklisted could spell disaster — a hefty pay cut or being frozen out of a job completely.
Attorney Steven Miller, who works with the firm Hanson Bridgett and is representing Repair California, sent a cease and desist letter to at least three of the six major firms Feb. 2, a first step toward possible litigation. Miller told the Guardian that the firms’ activities constitute an illegal boycott and a violation of antitrust laws. Their tactics also interfere with rights guaranteed in the California Constitution to circulate petitions and place initiatives on the ballot. “Nothing surprises me anymore, but this really surprised me,” he said.
While Miller didn’t say exactly which firms he sent letters to, the three names that came up in various off-record conversations on this matter were Kimball Petition Management, run by Fred Kimball; National Petition Management, run by Lee Albright; and Arno Political Consultants, run by Michael Arno.
The Companies They Keep: Anti-Gay, Anti-Environment, Pro-Exploitation
NPM is above all, a mercenary enterprise. They get paid to collect signatures (and sometimes raise money). Mostly they work for rightwing political efforts, with a few politically neutral causes thrown in to pay the bills.
Al though the company has offices in Michigan and California, they have run campaigns throughout the nation.
When the National Organization for Marriage’s affiliate in Maine needed help overturning same sex marriage laws passed by the legislature, National Petition Management was there.
When WalMart opponents in five different cities tried to tame the mega-retailer’s expansionist ways, National Petition Management was there,. And it just so happens that one of those cities was San Diego, where the city council revoked an ordinance requiring an economic impact study rather than face the wrath of the Waltons.
When Mercury Insurance wanted to qualify one of its frequent attempts at manipulating consumers through the ballot box, National Petition Management was there.
When polluters wanted to sabotage California’s AB 32 environmental legislation back in 2010, National Petition Management was there, collecting signatures for the “California Jobs Statutory Initiative”
Like I said yesterday, the onslaught on the City Council’s minimum wage / earned sick days ordinance is going to be ugly. And the bad guys hare bringing in the pros to do their dirty work.
We’re Number 4!
An article at The Intercept about the US government’s widely shared database of “known or suspected terrorists” says San Diego ranks fourth nationally when it comes to its populace qualifying for this dubious distinction.
The other cities are New York; Dearborn, Mich.; Houston; and Chicago. All have large populations of Muslims and peoples of Arab descent.
But…
Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept….
…In 2006, CBS News obtained a copy of the no fly list and reported that it included 44,000 names, including Bolivian President Evo Morales and the head of Lebanon’s parliament. Faced with a widespread public backlash, the government cut the list down to just 4,000 names by late 2009.
The next year, after the so-called “underwear bomber” tried to bring down a commercial airliner bound for Detroit, Obama loosened the criteria for adding people to the no fly list. The impact was immediate. Since 2010, the classified documents note, the National Counterterrorism Center has “created more than 430,000 terrorism-related person records” while deleting only 50,000 people “whose nexus to terrorism was refuted or did not meet current watchlisting criteria.” The documents reveal that more than 240 TIDE “nominations” are now processed each day.
“You might as well have a blue wand and just pretend there’s magic in it, because that’s what we’re doing with this—pretending that it works,” says former FBI agent Michael German, now a fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “These agencies see terrorism as a winning card for them. They get more resources. They know that they can wave that card around and the American public will be very afraid and Congress and the courts will allow them to get away with whatever they’re doing under the national security umbrella.”
“Oh Please!” Cries Dougie, “Can We Have Our Stadium?”
UT-San Diego has posted its second editorial in the past five days, following a court ruling Friday that the taxation plan for expanding the Convention Center was unconstitutional.
Here ya go:
Never let a big problem go to waste. It could be turned into a big opportunity.
The U-T believes that both the Chargers and the convention center are assets that benefit the entire region. Financing responsibilities should also be shared countywide. We believe the bulk of the financing could come from a 1 percentage-point increase in the hotel-room tax countywide. Such a tax hike would require the approval of two-thirds of voters in a countywide election. We believe such a campaign could be won.
If they expect to get a two-thirds vote for a stadium deal after cheer-leading a campaign screwing over minimum wage workers in San Diego, they’re crazy. But then again, they thought the country would suffer economic collapse shortly after Obama was re-elected.
Tweet of the Day: Jerry Brown & Tom Waits
So, Arcade Fire is playing “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” by Tom Waits, wearing Jerry Brown masks. It’s awesome.
— Andrew Keatts (@andy_keatts) August 6, 2014
PS- It was an epic concert. Maybe you saw me there in my horse head costume…
On This Day: 1965 – The Voting Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. 1987 – The Beastie Boys sued the city of Jacksonville, FL for including the phrase “mature audience” on their concert tickets and ads. 2011- Some 45,000 CWA and IBEW-represented workers at Verizon begin what is to be a two-week strike, refusing to accept more than 100 concession demands by the telecommunications giant
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Ok, now I will feign shock and surprise…
Can we recruit volunteers to stand next to the clipboard carrying sig gatherers and hold signs that read “why stop at $8.75? Bring back slavery!” Etc? Just to get people thinking similar to the people I’ve seen on FB carrying funny signs to anti marriage = or anti choice rallies.
all in good time…. watch this space for details.
Right; extremes on either side make no sense. We DO need a sensible minimum wage however, and $15 probably is about right.
“$15 probably is about right.”
Michael, neither I, Kevin Faulconer, Janet Yellen, nor you have the awesome knowledge required to determine the value which millions of free people, acting voluntarily, set as a price. To try to fix a price to anything, be it green beans, labor, or credit is motivated by one of three things:
1- arrogance
2- political vote buying
3- protectionism
I think you are am earnest and principled man (as I think of most people in the SDFP community). I can’t think you’re that arrogant to know exactly which price should be ascribed to millions of people. Think through what you just said.
Last time I worked for minimum wage, it was mid 1960s and the wage was $2/hr. I lived in NYC and it was just enough to get by (remember, I was very young and it was “the 60s, man”.
Many economists have calculated that the current equivalent would be just about $15/hr.
Simple, Brian; no arrogance neccesary.
One of the petition signing locations used by NPM is the Sprouts in Hillcrest/University Heights, where the broader population is mostly Lib-Hip. It’s a tribute to the diligence of the right that it can field often young, often ethnic and apparently adept gatherers whose raps are nevertheless outrageous. I now and then can’t resist engaging them and arguing. It gives people an opportunity to slip away without making eye contact with the petitioneers.
Sign me up, Lori Saldana. I’ll do a couple of hours with a funny cardboard sign.
Thank you Bob. Humor is the antidote to fear and these sig gatherers will be doing their best to scare San Diegans into signing. Expect talking points declaring “___ will leave town!” and “prices will rise!” Etc.
All the same nonsense used with Bartio Logan, and ultimately their blitzkrieg of falsehoods will be proven lies- but only well after the election.
I promise to go into this issue even more, I already went into the deep side of the pool.
:-)
Reading all those economic reports is a sure cure for insomnia though.
Hey, Brian, how much money would it take to convince you to make sense?
Poor Bob. Lacking the ability to make an argument, he resorts to ad hominem fallacies. Please watch our colleague Michael-Leonard– he sees the value of intellectual exchange within the framework of logic.
No, really, how much money would it take to employ you full time to sell the idea of a $15 per hour minimum wage?
where’s that font for sarcasm when we need it.
Did you get that from a GOP talking point or did the ghost of Ayn Rand tell you while you were sleeping?
If businesses can’t afford to pay their workers a decent wage then they shouldn’t be in business.
“If businesses can’t afford to pay their workers a decent wage then they shouldn’t be in business.”
Define decent wage
Here’s Franklin D. Roosevelt:
“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” (1933)
By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” (1933)
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/f-d-r-makes-the-case-for-the-minimum-wage/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
That’s a better approach Doug. Thank you.
FDR was smart but not even he was smart enough to set the “magical price” for millions of people’s voluntary transactions. One would have hoped he learned that lesson from the failed Republican, Herbert Hoover
Full time workers receiving the current minimum wage live in poverty. That cannot be justified in 1) a democracy and 2) an economy that continues to shovel record profits to CEO’s, shareholders and the top 1%.
Why $15 dollars/hr instead of a $1,000? Because it would take $15/hr here in San Diego (and other metropolitan areas) to raise workers out of poverty. And the minimum wage needs to be tied to CPI and adjusted accordingly instead of to Beltway politics.
Since I have been doing work on this, I recomend you read what the Center for Polucy Initiatives has to say in the matter. On how raising the minimum wage actually grows the economy. I might add, “when Mandates Work” or a slew of studies over the last 25 years that show a growing economy. Start with San José, the latest city to raise it after predictions of doom and gloom.
There is plenty of literature on the subject. The business argument that businesses will close has yet to happen. And yes, you can find the one or two who were going to close anyway as example. One or two, compared to orders of at least 100:1 opening and doing well are just that, anecdotes.
Ford figured this out 100 years ago. Innequality is really bad for business.
Thanks Nadin. I’ve read articles which reference the work CPI has done on this issue.
There is a fatal flaw between how Henry Ford did business (voluntarily)and higher wages, dictated by fiat==the the threat of force.
I want to be clear; I”m not “pro-business”, I’m pro-freedom. Plenty of pro-business folks use minimum wage legislation as corporate welfare while plenty simply use higher wages to hire better workers (naturally, I”m in favor of the latter).
The simple fact is this–no one person is smart enough to set the price on what is a market of millions of people, doing billions of transactions each day.
But all the economic studies done over the last 25 years show that a higher wage that is closer to a living wage leads to higher consumption. Even Wall Street is now speaking of this, as they expect a slowdown in the economy because workers cannot afford shoes.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/07/wall-street-analysts-high-inequality-makes-us-vulnerable-to-crashes/
Yea, I know, Bill Moyers the confirmed liberal, but trust me, that is what WS is now starting to discuss. Why? Trickle down does not work. You want consumers? You need to pay your consumers enough where they can well, consume.
Nadin,
The Keynesian school of economics have been debunked been by men and women far smarter than I am. Rather than debate Hayek v Keynes, I simply look at policy through a moral lens with a special eye towards the Seventh Commandment.
If the idea were such a good one, why does it need to initiate force? In Henry Ford’s case, it didn’t.
I read Holland’s piece on BillMoyers.com. He suggests that since Wall Street says it’s okay, we should use force. I’m not particularly fond of the gangsters on Wall Street– they are hardly capitalists.
I’m for keeping the threat of violence in society to a minimum. The endorsement from a group of thugs, permitting another group of thugs, to initiate force on behalf of others, is not my idea of minimizing violence.
I appreciate the nice conversation.
Yet all economic lit I have read on the issue points to better economies and growing economies… and I will leave it at that.
How about a debate Friedman v Keynes? Milton Friedman’s trickle down, monetarist, free market, anti-regulation policies have been thoroughly trounced. Recently. I believe we are still picking up the pieces.
And to say that the gangsters on Wall Street are hardly capitalists provided my daily laff.
Via Miriam-Webster:
de·cent adjective \ˈdē-sənt\
: polite, moral, and honest
: showing kindness : seeming to care about the feelings or problems of other people
: good enough but not the best : adequate or acceptable
I used it in the context of the third definition. Where it’s at ain’t good enough and where it’s going won’t be the best. The current wage is neither adequate or acceptable.
You do realize I was expressing sarcasm?
Have you seen the signs I refer to, poking fun at protesters in other settings?
Perhaps you are being sarcastic as well.
If so, pardon the interruption and carry on.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a different font for sarcasm?
Regarding the use of force to get a wage increase, isn’t that what the unions used to do – demand a wage increase without overanalyzing whether it was the
“correct” amount or not?
Hot off the presses, 63% support this… and the Mayor will lose more support if he vetoes it (as expected)