What Happens When A Boss Gets Bossy About Democracy?

 Last week we saw how West Virginia's most notoriously reactionary coal baron, Bob Murray, was illegally pressuring employees to write checks for his pet congressman, anti-environment fanatic David McKinley. He has been forcing-- by way of threats to employment and bonus considerations-- his staff to contribute 1% of their pay to back right-wing candidates.

Campaign finance watchdogs in West Virginia say the charges against Murray are particularly important because of his history. Julie Archer is project manager for the West Virginia Citizen Action Group. She says Murray uses his donations to build political connections, which he in turn uses to fight enforcement of federal environmental and mine-safety laws. She alleges that Murray has threatened Mine Safety and Health Administration officials who were investigating his mines.

But Murray's behavior is hardly unique among right-wing business executives. In fact, the Republican Party-- from the very top (Mitt Romney) to the dregs of the Tea Party (Joe Walsh) have been demanding that CEOs aggressively pursue the same policies as Murray already does with no prodding. The illegal trashing of Democratic voter registration forms by Republican Party operatives can't be traced directly back to Romney but the policy of revving up CEOs to pressure employees can be.

In a June 6, 2012 conference call posted on the anti-union National Federation of Independent Business’s website, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney instructed employers to tell their employees how to vote in the upcoming election.

Romney was addressing  a group of self-described "small-business owners." Twenty-six minutes into the call, after making a lengthy case that President Obama's first term has been bad for business, Romney said: "I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, I hope you pass those along to your employees."

The call raises the question of whether the Romney campaign is complicit in the corporate attempts to influence employees' votes that have been recently making headlines. On Sunday, In These Times broke the news that Koch Industries mailed at least 45,000 employees a voter information packet that included a flyer endorsing Romney and a letter warning, “Many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences [of a bad election result], including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.” Last week, Gawker obtained an email in which the CEO of Westgate Resorts, Florida billionaire David Siegel [who brags in a recent movie that he helped steal the 2000 election for George Bush with unpunished, illegal activities in Florida], informed his 7,000 employees that an Obama victory would likely lead to layoffs at his company. This week, MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes unveiled an email by ASG Software Solutions CEO Arthur Allen in which he, too, warned employees that an Obama second term would spell layoffs.

Romney carefully stayed within the letter of the law in his exhortations. Deranged teabagger Joe Walsh hardly bothered. That's him in the Chicago Sun-Times video up top. When Walsh, now known nation ally as a raging bigot and a sleazy deadbeat dad, first ran for Congress in 1996 he "positioned himself as a socially liberal Republican who favored abortion rights and gun control measures-- sharp contrasts to the staunchly conservative stances he now holds. "I think I'm the kind of Republican who can win because I'm open and tolerant," Walsh told the Tribune at the time. "I'm not some right-wing conservative." In 2010 he won because he ran against a hated corporate Democrat and Chamber of Commerce shill, Melissa Bean, a victim of that years' Great Blue Dog Apocalypse." Having taken expensive acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in both NYC and L.A., he decided to play the role of teabagger next. Here he is in that newer role last week:

"If you run, manage or own a company tell your employees! What was the CEO this week that said, if Obama is reelected, I may have to let all of you go next year? If Obama's reelected, if the Democrats take Congress, I may not be able to cover your health insurance next year," Walsh told a crowd. "If there's ever a year where people who run, manage, or own their companies are going to energize their employees, it better be this year. We're up against it."

Walsh has since moved on-- to insisting that there's no need for an exception for the life of the mother in his plans to ban all abortions under any circumstances. Democratic politicians can be pretty putrid from time to time but can you name any currently even nearly as bad as Joe Walsh, Michele Bachmann, Steve King, Louie Gomert, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Buck McKeon, Paul Ryan, Todd Akin, Eric Cantor or, for that matter, Mitt Romney. It's time to get serious about electing reform minded, independent progressives to Congress to clean this mess up. As Jamelle Bouie summed it up in the Washington Post coverage of the latest anti-democracy moves by Romney:

Romney complains that he’s been caricatured as a heartless plutocrat, but he seems intent on proving it. In fundraisers, he expresses his disdain for the less fortunate. On the trail, he pushes policies that would shift an ever greater share of national income to the wealthiest Americans. And when speaking to like-minded business owners, he shows his contempt for the autonomy of ordinary workers. Mitt Romney is exactly who we think he is, and if he’s elected president, those are the values we should expect.

Mark Ames' point that the U.S. condemned Putin for same election tactics Romney and his reactionary allies use (i.e., pressuring employees to vote) has some very disturbing implications. Ames, who was expelled from Russia four years ago, got back and was disturbed to see some of the worst characteristics of he new Russian system alive and well on the American right: "oligarchy, inequality, a two-tier justice system depending on your wealth."

Now that Romney and his financial backers are openly pressuring company employees to vote for Romney, add “Putin-style elections” to the list of Russian traits America is acquiring.

...The Kochs and other employers can do this thanks to Citizens United, which has done more to speed up the Putin-ization of America than Putin himself could have dreamed of in his darkest fantasies. From the time of the New Deal labor laws until the Citizens United decision in 2010, employers were barred from pressuring their employees on how to vote in elections, for the obvious simple reason that employers have an enormous amount of leverage over employees.

...Note that, unlike in America, in Russia it is at least technically illegal for employers to pressure employees on how to vote. So in that sense, we’ve already regressed further from democracy than Putin’s Russia. America’s elections, by the standards of the same elections monitors we fund over in Russia, are looking increasingly as rigged and undemocratic as Russia’s. ...Mitt Romney has adopted the same anti-democratic electioneering tactics of the same villain that Romney has promised to start a new Cold War with once he becomes president, having already designated Russia as “our Number One geopolitical foe.”

In the comedy version of this story, Putin and Romney finally meet in a showdown, wherein Putin tells Romney, “You and I, we’re alike Mr. President-- is that why you hate me so?”

In the real-life version, we get none of the irony and comedy, and all of the corruption authoritarianism, and oligarchy.