|
September 7, 2002
Dear Union Brothers and Sisters,
The state Attorney General's job is to enforce state laws.
Theoretically, this means enforcing those laws equitably so there is no
difference in how the laws are applied to rich and poor, whites and people
of color, and so on.
Unfortunately, for years the Delaware Attorney General's
office has used its power more to reinforce existing inequities within the
state than to correct those inequities. This has been true whether
Republicans or Democrats held the office. The end result is that
Delaware, known nationally as the "Corporate State" because of its
pro-business and pro-banking laws, helps to set trends in which, as author
Holly Sklar has said, "While average workers are still digging their way
out of years of falling real wages, CEOs are soaring to heights once
reserved for a handful of robber barons."
Sklar is not exaggerating. In 1980, the average CEO
made 42 times what the average factory worker made. By 1990, the average
CEO made 85 times as much. Today the gap is even worse, and almost
unimaginable: the average CEO receives 475 times more than
workers in salary, bonus and stock options.
Yet these same CEO's -- and their boards of directors--
whose profits mount because of the labor expended by their employees,
often don't do anything to return the favor to those employees. Instead
-- and Delaware is living proof of this -- management cuts jobs, fights
unions, disinvests in communities, frequently keeps faulty books and in
some cases, as in the recent Enron scandal (Enron has 685 subsidiaries on
Delaware), defraud their employees in ways that push those employees to
the edge of financial ruin.
And as you well know, the scare of financial ruin isn't
just a problem for Enron employees. Just recently, it was revealed
that the workers' pensions at the Metachem chemical company in Delaware
City are in jeopardy because of the firm's bankruptcy filing. Not
only is the company leaving these workers in potential ruin, but it has
also contributed to the ruination of the local environment by leaving
behind millions of tons of by-product materials and chemical waste. Too
often such companies are respecters of neither their workers, the
environment, nor community rights.. As a result, job security is
gone, replaced by increased stress for working families. Just look
at the number of jobs lost over recent years at "strong" local companies
like DuPont and G.M.
And what kinds of jobs are those lost ones being replaced
by in the local economy? The answer: primarily lower-paying service
jobs that push down family incomes. But even those manufacturing jobs
which remain in the state don't help the economy as much as they once did,
since those that remain are for the most part lower-paying ones; this has
dragged the state's current average manufacturing wage down to $11.79 per
hour. So, whether in the service or manufacturing sectors, people are
employed, but increasingly at lower-paying jobs. No wonder that the
recent census numbers show that from the late 1970s until now the income
gap between the wealthiest 20% of Delaware's families and the poorest 20%
has grown by a staggering 39%. This is horrible news for the poor
and horrible news for working people in general.
You'd think that with Delaware's economy characterized by
such inequity, the Attorney General's office would take special care to
insure that there is no similar inequity within the criminal justice
system. But whether under the control of Republicans or
Democrats, the Attorney General's office has mostly turned its head the
other way when problems related to the unfair application of the law have
arisen.
For instance, although
Delawareans must live with the 4th highest cancer rate in the country and
one of the nation's worst pollution records, the Attorney General's office
has refused to investigate DNREC's failure to properly prosecute companies
that break environmental laws. Equally problematic is the Attorney General
office's refusal to investigate whether or not companies that receive tax
breaks, land grants and other incentives for job creation in the state
adhere to the agreements which gave rise to the incentives. When a
company downsizes or relocates, workers lose their jobs, period, but the
companies, on the other hand, often find ways to circumvent their
job-creation promises. This is inequity in action.
Other issues the Attorney
General's office should deal with include:
-
A Living Wage. From
1990-2000 the number of Delaware families living in poverty increased
23%. A programmatic effort must be made to reverse this trend.
As state Attorney General I will support the replacement
of the state's prevailing wage law with a living wage law with more
teeth in it. The same workers covered by current prevailing
wage legislation would still be covered by the new law, but the new
law would be broader in scope than the prevailing wage legislation and
include higher wages and greater benefits for a far wider spectrum of
workers.
-
Education. In 2000,
when parents and teachers expressed concern about public educational
"reforms" that might hurt rather than help students, The
News Journal lashed out at them by stating that public education was
being undermined by certain special interest groups (e.g., teachers
unions) and ignorant parents who didn't appreciate how "the business
community initiated the reform movement and . . . nurtured it
faithfully over the years." Why was The News Journal so
upset? Answer: because it believed that local
corporations' business needs should shape school curricula and testing
methods. I believe differently; I believe that although
education should foster knowledge of how economies operate, it is
ultimately student needs and educator analyses that should shape
curricula and testing methods.
-
Getting Tough on
Law-Breaking Companies. If a worker commits a felony, she or
he is jailed. Yet the state routinely makes companies, whose
environmental violations contribute to Delaware's high cancer rate,
pay only token fines. As Attorney General, I will possess
the toughness to cancel a company's corporate charter if the company
either commits a gross violation of its charter or repeatedly violates
state regulations.
-
Racial Equity in the
Criminal Justice System. As in other parts of the country,
one of the most problematic aspects of Delaware's criminal justice
system is the degree to which blacks and other minorities are
disproportionately arrested and incarcerated. For every
white person incarcerated in Delaware, 9.4 African-Americans are
placed in jail. This ranks Delaware number 19 among the states in its
ratio of black to white incarcerations. As Attorney
General, I will eliminate Delaware's arrest and sentencing biases and
make the law's application race-neutral.
-
Health Care. Delaware ranks number 7 in
the nation in per capita income but only 32nd in the quality of health
care. As Delaware Attorney General, I will scrutinize
insurance companies' behavior and vigorously prosecute any individual
company or group of companies that illegally deny customers
health care procedures, medications or office visits that the
customers' health warrants. Also, I will use my position
to advocate for a system of justice that includes a vision of health
care as a basic human right that should be taken out of the hands of
for-profit insurance companies and overseen instead by a single-payer
system. In this regard I support House Bill 552,
The Delaware Health Security Act.
Politics today is almost entirely corporate driven. Let's
change this. Let's work in coalition to put more justice into the
criminal justice system. Please support my campaign which is
unflinching in its commitment to equity under the law and the right of
working people to earn a decent living. If you have any
further questions, contact me at 658-0518 (work) or 652-0670 (home) or by
email: agcampaign@vivianhoughton.com.
In solidarity,
Vivian A. Houghton
Attorney General Candidate
Green Party
|
