South Carolina legislators' rig pensions-salary scheme to far exceed normal standards

South Carolina State Senator David Thomas decries excessive government spending except when it comes to his own excessive compensation

By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY

At age 55, South Carolina state Sen. David Thomas began collecting a pension for his legislative service without leaving office.

Most workers must retire from their jobs before getting retirement benefits. But Thomas used a one-sentence law that he and his colleagues passed in 2002 to let legislators receive a taxpayer-funded pension instead of a salary after serving for 30 years.

“Taxes are too high and spending is out of control.” Every candidate for office will say these words, but no one in Congress is willing to take a stand to cut taxes and reduce government spending.  As your next representative in Washington I will work tirelessly to reduce governmental waste, fraud and abuse of your hard earned tax dollars. --- South Carolina David L. Thomas (from his Congressional campaign website)

Thomas' $32,390 annual retirement benefit — paid for the rest of his life — is more than triple the $10,400 salary he gave up. His pension exceeds the salary because of another perk: Lawmakers voted to count their expenses in the salary used to calculate their pensions.

No other South Carolina state workers get those perks.

Since January 2005, Thomas, a Republican, has made $148,435 more than a legislative salary would have paid, his financial-disclosure records show. At least four other South Carolina lawmakers are getting pensions instead of salaries, netting an extra $292,000 since 2005, records show.

Read the rest of the report from USA Today

More about how money twists the actions of South Carolina's Republican politicians
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Money and clout behind the Boeing-NLRB controversy
Nikki Haley's rewards friends while spending for South Carolina's working people
South Carolina 6th worst managed state in the USA
Taxpayers foot the bill for Haley's Parisian "party"

Haley, Bobby Hitt claim controversial European junket will pay off with jobs for South Carolina

South Carolina taxpayers ponied up nearly $1 billion in subsidies in order to get Boeing to invest $1 billion in their new North Charleston assembly plant. 

Haley insists European trip will result in 2 deals
By GINA SMITH - The State

Gov. Nikki Haley insisted Thursday that her recent $127,000 economic development trip to Paris and Munich soon will result in two companies locating in South Carolina.

Haley also disagreed with a media account in which Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt was quoted as saying no deals were struck during the trip.

Haley said she and Hitt agree the two companies will come to the state as result of the trip.
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“He (Hitt) calls them agreements. I call them deals,” Haley said. “Those two (companies) – I talked to them. They are coming, and I am waiting for them to get announced, and we’re going through (the) logistic(al) issues of the announcements. But they’re coming. And I can’t wait until they come so I can say, ‘See.’”

Hitt agreed with Haley’s assessment Thursday.

“The deals, they get done (at events like the Paris Air Show), but there’s still paperwork to get done,” Hitt said. “A variety of processes have to be done before you officially announce.”

Neither Haley nor Hitt would identify the companies. Those identities typically are a secret until a deal is announced. However, South Carolina has been trying to sell the state to companies that do business with the Upstate’s BMW factory and Boeing, which recently opened an aircraft assembly plant in North Charleston.

Read more from the State with coverage of how Haley plans on retraining the unemployed after cutting their benefits earlier this year


Big salary increases for Haley's friends: cuts for the rest of the South Carolina

Senator Demint's web site goes down and stays down after President's debt ceiling speech

Could President Obama's July 25th speech on the debt ceiling debate be the reason why Senator Demint's official Senate web site is currently off line? Perhaps the President's plea to Americans to appeal to their Congressional representatives was more than the South Carolina Senator wanted to hear. After all the hard working families of South Carolina can't provide the kind of support Boeing and the Koch Brothers generously give.

For some inexplicable reason, a number of Congressional web sites went down after President Obama's latest speech on the debt ceiling crisis. They included web sites operated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House John Boehner. As of this morning those sites were back on line. However South Carolina Senator Jim Demint's site remains down. Since we provide a link to the Senator's web page from this blog we thought it worthwhile to report this news.

SENATOR DEMINT'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE BACK ON LINE BY 6PM EST. HUGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE CONTACTING REPRESENTATIVES OVER THE DEBT CEILING CRISIS IS THE ONLY EXPLANATION THAT HAS BEEN OFFERED SO FAR FOR THE POSSIBLE WEB SITE CRASH (CNN July 25, 2011). 

Was it a crash, server problem, hacker or intentional shutdown of the web page by its administrators? We will publish any further explanations that we find on this quirky event.

Demint blames White House for U.S. credit downgrade following tea party driven debacle

South Carolina public schools among worst in US but Nikki Haley rejects spending $105 million of state surplus on education

Govenor Nikki Haley will veto South Carolina budget surplus for education even when the State's public schools perform worse than nearly any other schools in the Nation.

South Carolina public schools are among the worst in America. 

With 75% of students non-proficient and public high school drop out rate of 59% (46th in the Nation) the young people of South Carolina find themselves at a serious competitive disadvantage not just for the jobs of the future but those of the present.

Yet South Carolina Govenor Nikki Haley claims she wants to return the State's current budget surplus to taxpayers rather than invest it in South Carolina's suffering schools that will lay off teachers if they fail to get financial relief.

Haley's economic development strategy: money for corporate subsidies and a cheap, non-union labor force

Apparently, Nikki Haley would rather invest in huge corporate subsidies like the $900 million the State gave Boeing in order to lure its new airplane plant to Charleston rather than in South Carolina's children. The conservative formula is an uneducated work force remains a cheap and compliant workforce.

Get the facts: neglect of South Carolina Schools means low wages
Senator Demint and South Carolina Congressman Clyburn clash over money for education
Is poor sex education responsible for high rates of teen pregnancies, HIV and STDs in South Carolina?

Senator Jim Demint: collective bargaining for public employees "just doesn't make any sense."

Despite the fact that most unionized Federal public employees are not permitted by Federal law to bargain over wages and benefits which are set by the U.S. Congress, Senator Demint believes they should also not be permitted to bargain over working conditions.

Who owns Jim Demint? Do big corporate donations to his campaigns and PAC explain his anti-labor stance?
Demint cries foul in NLRB-Boeing dispute while company outspends union for lobbying and political contributions
Demint's anti-union stance trumps his concern for airport security
Hear Senator Demint lie about non-existent Federal laws that allegedly force workers to join unions

DEMINT DECODED: Follow the money in the Boeing-NLRB dispute

Toledo Autolite strike of 1934. A year later Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act. Today, Jim Demint and anti-NLRB conservatives want to return to the days when labor  conflicts were often fought out on the streets and union and non-union workers had no legal protections.

South Carolina Senator Jim Demint has requested documents from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to see if a pay for play scandal lurks beneath the Agency's recent finding in favor of the Machinist's Union. In their ruling, the Agency found that Boeing broke federal labor law by punishing its workers for engaging in legal strike activity over the years.

As we shall show in a forthcoming post, the NLRB was just doing its job and Jim Demint is swiftboating the NLRB to justify destroying the rights and protections the law currently gives both union and non-union American  workers through the NLRA

Here's what Senator Demint said in his request:

“The public facts surrounding the complaint raise serious questions about the interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act upon which it is based, to say nothing of the troubling appearance of partisan, special interest politics at its heart,” Source: 

CONGRESSIONAL  CLOUT COMPARISON: LABOR VS. MANAGEMENT
In Congress money = influence. And Boeing with 10 times the lobbying expenditures beats the Machinist's Union hands down.

Machinist's Union:    $1.79 million

Boeing:                      $17.9 million

Let's compare Congressional campaign contributions for 2010

Machinist's Union:  $2,206,500   Total 2010 revenue: $420 million*
Boeing:                  $2,648,661   Total 2010 revenue:   $64.3 billion

Now that seems pretty even but when you look at those figures as a percentage of annual revenue you can see its much easier for Boeing to make those contributions.

BOEING MONEY TO SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICIANS = $900 MILLION GIFT FROM S.C. TAXPAYERS TO SUBSIDIZE THE NEW SOUTH CAROLINA BOEING ASSEMBLY PLANT


Big surprise! The South Carolina Congressional delegation got its fair share of Boeing money. In fact Demint leads both the delegation and all Senate Republicans having received $10,701 from the aerospace giant during the 2010 election cycle.Source: http://www.opensecrets.org

POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS AND SUBSIDIES: THE REAL SMOKING GUN DEMINT DOESN'T TALK ABOUT

Could Boeing's contributions be the real smoking gun behind this story or the more than $900 million in subsidies the company has received from South Carolina taxpayers?

Anti-union politics and low wages the dastardly duo of South Carolina's economic reality
List: Senator Jim Demint's campaign and PAC contributors
Where Senator Jim Demint stands on public employee unions and collective bargaining

*Estimate based on average hourly wage for an IAM member is $24.29. Union dues = 2 hrs. per month. Source: http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/why/uniondifference/uniondiff17.cfm

NLRB challenges Boeing in planned South Carolina jobs move. The Board claims retaliation against Company's union employees

Boeing Assembly Plant in Everett Washington. Will the National Labor Relations Board and the Courts permit moving  1,000 union jobs to "right to work" South Carolina?  Photo: Getty Images-Stephen Brashear

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is calling Boeing's planned move of 1,000 union aircraft assembly jobs from Seattle to South Carolina illegal. The claim the company is retaliating against its Puget Sound, unionized employees for exercising their legal right to strike. The issue has become a Republican cause celebre and is expected to become a major issue in the upcoming 2012 Presidential elections.

The matter is going to court but in the meantime, South Carolina's Senators Jim Demint and Lindsey Graham, Governor Nikki Haley and others have not only weighed in on the case but have used it to propose defunding the NLRB which would effectively turn back the clock in US labor relations nearly 80 years. Demint contends that so called right to work states outperform union shop states economically.

In upcoming posts, we will look at the evidence. We will ask if "right to work" has helped or hurt South Carolina and we will look at some of the ulterior motives of Senator Demint and the anti-union right as well as the history of the National Labor Relations Act and what this has meant for American workers and their standard of living.

Pleas check back with us for more news on the Boeing-Machinist's Union dispute and in the meantime we offer you these related articles.

Boeing outguns Machinist's Union on lobbying provides big money to South Carolina politicians

Machinist's Union (IAM) statement with link to the actual NLRB complaint

GOP-Darrell Issa led House panel to hold Boeing hearings in South Carolina-MSNBC

Senator Demint wants access to NLRB documents in the Boeing-South Carolina case

Check the record: Jim Demint put anti-unionism ahead of air passenger security.

Who owns Jim Demint? Big corporate money and Koch Brothers are major contributors to campaign and Demint PAC