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Article Artículo

Haiti

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Dominican Republic Spending Big Bucks on DC Lobbyist to Pushback on Criticism of Expulsions

In September 2013 the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court ruled that those born to undocumented foreigners would not be able to maintain citizenship, mainly impacting Dominicans of Haitian descent. The deadline to formalize one’s legal status passed in June, with many thousands left unable to do so because of a lack of documentation. Already nearly 40,000 have “voluntarily” self-deported to Haiti, fearing a looming crackdown in the country many of them have never left. At a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) Wednesday, Haitian foreign minister Lener Renauld accused the Dominicans of leaving Haitians at the border “like dogs.”

But just three months after the court’s ruling, before the world’s attention turned to the island of Hispaniola and the humanitarian crisis on the border, the Dominican Republic hired a D.C.-based lobbying firm to assist with “consolidating and strengthening the image of the Dominican State in the eyes of the [sic] international public opinion,” according to documents filed as part of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The documents show that the Dominican Republic paid the lobbying firm Steptoe & Johnson over $820,000 between January and August of 2014. The relationship appears to be ongoing however, and it is likely that those costs have only increased with the spotlight now firmly on the Dominican Republic and the firm bringing in hourly rates of around $1,000.

DR Lobby 1

Image: Talking points distributed by Steptoe & Johnson to congressional and executive offices

Lobbyists for Steptoe & Johnson distributed copies of talking points (image above) to congressional and executive offices, describing the migration policy as “modern and transparent” and as a means of protecting the “fundamental rights” of everyone living in the Dominican Republic. Between January and May 2014, the lobbyists met with the offices of at least 24 members of congress, including key players on the foreign affairs committee. In addition to interactions with congress, the contract between the Dominican Republic and Steptoe & Johnson describes a number of other actions, including placement of “interviews, features, opinion pieces in U.S. mainstream media.”

Jake Johnston / July 10, 2015

Article Artículo

Affordable Care Act

Health and Social Programs

United States

Workers

The ACA and Part-Time Work

Last week CEPR Co-Director Dean Baker commented on one of the more positive aspects of June’s jobs report:

“One clear positive is that the number of people voluntarily working part-time rose sharply even as the number of people involuntarily working part-time fell...This is undoubtedly due in large part to the ACA which freed workers from the need to get insurance through their employer.”

There’s good reason to think the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could be leading to greater voluntary part-time employment. To explain: if an employee is working part-time and would like to work full-time, his or her status as part-time is a negative; that employee would like to work more, but hasn’t been given the opportunity to do so. However, if an employee is voluntarily working part-time, it means that he or she is making an active decision to pursue part-time employment. Since health insurance was linked to a worker’s status as a full-time employee before the ACA went into effect, many Americans worked full-time simply to receive health insurance benefits; this was true even for workers who otherwise would have preferred to work part-time. Thanks to the ACA, workers no longer have to work full-time in order to receive insurance, meaning they can work fewer hours if they want to, assuming they can still pay the bills.

CEPR and Nicolas Buffie / July 09, 2015

Article Artículo

Honduras

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Newly Released Clinton Emails Reveal State Department’s Celebration Over Honduras’ Flawed Elections Following Military Coup

Newly released emails reaffirm that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked to help Honduras’ 2009 military coup succeed. Lee Fang writes for The Intercept:

The Hillary Clinton emails released last week include some telling exchanges about the June 2009 military coup that toppled democratically elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was seen as a threat by the Honduran establishment and U.S. business interests.

One of the most damning new emails, cited by Fang, is penned by veteran diplomat Thomas Shannon, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the time (and now Counselor of the Department). Shannon’s email makes clear something also detailed in the scores of State Department cables made available by WikiLeaks that we examined and analyzed for the forthcoming book, “The WikiLeaks Files”: Although the U.S. State Department claims to be a neutral observer of elections around the world, the U.S. government invariably has candidates and parties that it wants to win, often – if not routinely – channeling support to these candidates and parties, whether the support be political, material or otherwise.

Here’s then State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack in 2006, just prior to Nicaragua’s presidential elections, in a cable we cite in the book:

We do not … we are not trying to shade opinion or to try to take a position. This is a democratic election. If you look around the globe, we do not take positions. We do not try to influence these elections.

Here’s then Assistant Secretary Shannon in an email [PDF] to Clinton just after the results of Honduras’ November 2009 election were announced:

The turnout (probably a record) and the clear rejection of the Liberal Party shows our approach was the right one, and puts Brazil and others who would not recognize the election in an impossible position. As we think about what to say, I would strongly recommend that we not be shy. We should congratulate the Honduran people, we should connect today's vote to the deep democratic vocation of the Honduran people, and we should call on the community of democratic nations (and especially those of the Americas) to recognize, respect, and respond to this accomplishment of the Honduran people.

Finally, this Administration, which worked so hard to manage and resolve this crisis, should be the one who defines the results and perceptions of today's vote, and not our critics on the Hill (who had no clear pathway to elections) or our adversaries in the region (who never wanted this day to happen).

CEPR / July 07, 2015

Article Artículo

Quick Thoughts on Wage Stagnation

Steve Rose has a new piece on wage growth being published by the Urban Institute which was previewed in a blog post in the Wall Street Journal. It shows a considerably better picture than most of us are used to seeing. Whereas my friends at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) show the real median wage for men has fallen by 7.4 percent between 1979 and 2011, Rose finds that real annual compensation for men has risen by 13.4 percent. EPI’s data show that the median hourly wage for women has risen by 24.2 percent. Rose finds a gain of 73.0 percent.

There are three issues that explain the differences. The main difference for women is the increase in average annual hours worked. Women are far more likely to be full-time full year workers in 2013 than they were in 1979. This is largely due to a breakdown of the barriers that excluded women from most types of better paying jobs and social norms that tended to confine women to working in the home. While the increased opportunities for women is clearly a positive development, we would expect pay to rise accordingly. People expect to be paid more for working forty hours a week than for working 30 hours a week. Therefore if we find that people having higher earnings because they are working more hours rather than getting higher hourly pay, it doesn’t really change the wage stagnation story.

The second issue is that Rose is looking at total compensation rather than just hourly pay. This includes payments that employers make for Social Security taxes, health care insurance and defined contribution pensions. This matters more for the 1980s, when there were substantial increases in Social Security and Medicare taxes than in the last two decades.

Looking at compensation in principle is reasonable if we want to know what workers are paid for their work, but it does raise some issues. The most important is that Rose’s measure only counts payments to defined contribution pensions, not payments to defined benefit pensions. This means that a switch from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution pensions would show up as an increase in compensation in Rose’s measure, even if no more money is being paid by the employer. This switch only explains a small part of the difference in wage growth, but it is certainly peculiar.[1]

Dean Baker / July 07, 2015