The Hightower Report
BY JIM HIGHTOWER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEDERALLY SUBSIDIZED POVERTY
Here's a novel concept: If you work full time and do a good job, you shouldn't be paid so poorly that you live in poverty.
Try to tell that to the federal government, though. An independent study released by ACORN, the grassroots advocate for the working poor, finds that corporations enjoying fat, tax-paid contracts from the feds are paying poverty wages to the people actually doing the contract work. The same federal government that sets precise standards for, say, the tensile strength of screws that it buys, sets no standards for the fair pay of people working under its contracts.
The study, conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, revealed that 11% of federal contract employees receive less than a "living wage," which is to say their paychecks are too low to lift them and their families above the poverty level. In this period of economic prosperity and federal surpluses, in this period when Congress annually raises its own pay, in this period when federal contracts routinely cover the million-dollar paychecks of the corporate CEOs getting the contracts, it's absurd that our tax dollars would be used to subsidize subpoverty pay.
Ironically, while the companies profit on the backs of these workers, many of the workers themselves have to turn to food stamps, housing assistance, and other federal poverty programs just to make ends meet. This means that we taxpayers are hit with a double whammy: First, we're subsidizing low-wage companies, then we have to provide services to assuage the poverty of their workers.
Better that the contractors themselves be required to pay fair wages from the start, which is why the Living Wage Responsibility Act has been introduced in Congress, sponsored by Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois. It requires big businesses that get federal contracts to pay their employees a wage no less than the federal poverty level. For more information, contact ACORN: 202/547-2500.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STOPPING COMPUTERIZED VOTING FRAUD
There's bad news and good news on the electronic voting-machine front.
Let's get the bad news out of the way first: Yet another study has found that these touch-screen machines are loaded with security flaws that open our elections to fraudulent manipulation, either by the owners and programmers of the machines, or by partisan hackers. The state of Ohio commissioned a study of the vote-tallying computers of the four biggest corporations in this new and rapidly expanding industry, and the researchers found not two or three problems -- but 57!
Among the little hiccups was the discovery that the computers could be tricked to count the votes of any particular machine many times over, thus perverting the election. Another found that outsiders could hack into the system on election day and close down selected machines -- people would still be voting on these machines but their votes would not get counted.
Ready for a little good news now? Let's hear it for California's secretary of state, Kevin Shelley. Based on the findings of a public task force, he has now decided that all electronic voting machines used in his state must print out a paper receipt, verifying the ballot of every voter and creating a paper trail that election officials can review if a recount is called. Instead of having to trust the manipulative world of corporate-owned cyberspace, Californians will have their votes counted in real space.
The only hickey on Shelley's decision is that he postpones implementation to the 2006 election. Why not '04, when we're electing a president? The paper technology already exists, so let's do it now! Still, his move is a huge step toward voting integrity, and other states will likely follow suit.
Meanwhile, the national bill to require a paper trail by next year's election, HR 2239, now has 82 co-sponsors, including three top Republicans. To help pass it, contact this Web site: www.verifiedvoting.org. |
