Molly Ivins January 7

AUSTIN — Budget deal, shmudget deal, the media are missing the story again. AT&T announced last week that it is laying off 40,000 workers, with profits at an all-time high. Wall Street loved it: AT&T's stock jumped by $2.50 to $67.25. It's the economy, stupid.

Where's Henry Ford now that we need him? Mr. Ford famously paid his workers well on the sensible grounds that he wanted them to be able to afford to buy the cars they built.

But our dim-bulb corporate leaders continue to lay off workers while wages and benefits grew at 2.7 percent last year, their lowest growth rate since 1981. According to an article in The Washington Post, between 1947 and 1973, the median paycheck doubled, and the bottom 20 percent made the biggest gains. Since 1973, median earnings have dropped by 15 percent, with the bottom 20 percent falling farthest behind, while the top 20 percent have seen gains, with more than 40 percent of earnings gains going to the top 1 percent of Americans.

This is ridiculous and cannot continue — at least not without terrible social and economic damage.

Ironically, the downsizing fad is now proving to be unhelpful even to the corporations that have canned their supposedly surplus workers. A slew of new studies show that the downsized corporations enjoy only a temporary bump on the stock market and are not as profitable as their undownsized competitors. And that's just the bottom line: Low worker morale, the destruction of corporate loyalty, increased embezzling and a whole host of "disaffected worker" problems are also plaguing these companies.

Now, none of this is happening in a vacuum. It is not the fault of the "invisible hand" or some eye-glazing phrase like "global markets" or "technological change." Although impersonal market forces obviously do affect the economy, so do tax policy, deregulation, the Federal Reserve, the decline of unions, trade policy and a whole host of man-made, bone-headed decisions.

We started with AT&T, so let's look at the telecommunications "reform" bill now perilously close to passage.

The media have generally abandoned responsibility on this massive piece of deregulation, taking the unhelpful stand that it's all real complicated and nobody knows how the technology is going to work out anyway, so whatthehell.

The first thing wrong with the telecommunications bill is that it's too damn big. The fight between AT&T and the Baby Bells should be split off completely. Let them settle their hash without reference to the broadcaster/cable fight, and for God's sake, get Ralph Nader's people in there to protect consumers.

One person in Washington who seems to have grasped at least part of the problem is Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, who said the other day that he has several problems with the bill, "including the spectrum giveaway to broadcasters." Thank you, Sen. Dole.

William Safire of The New York Times quoted Dole as saying, "This is a big, big corporate welfare project." Try $70 billion worth; that's what the digital spectrum is worth just at today's prices. And if the broadcasters are piggy greed-heads, can you imagine what the cable companies are up to? Remember when the cable greedsters got so bad that Congress actually forced them to roll back their prices in 1992? Well, that's out the window in this new deregulation mania the Republicans brought in.

One player who has been at the table in all this says: "If you think the media merger mania of last summer was something, wait 'til you see what happens when this bill is passed. A handful of people Americans have never heard of, like John Malone, are suddenly going to have huge control in their lives."

More mergers, more layoffs, and none of this is the hand of God or even of Adam Smith. If the media had paid one-tenth as much attention to the telecommunications bill as they did to O.J. Simpson, none of them would now be whining that "it's all too complicated."

President Clinton has threatened to veto this putrid piece of legislation (hang tough, Mr. President), so it's back in negotiation now. This would be good news, except that the whole schmear has been written by lobbyists practically killing one another for financial advantage, instead of by legislators representing the public interest. I wonder if we can sue them for malfeasance?

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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