Not being “concerned about the very poor” isn’t a public relations problem for Republicans–it’s a policy problem.
Here come the candidates! Kathleen Falk (D-WI) officially launches campaign to oust Scott Walker, and Jackie Cilley (D-NH) announces intent to succeed John Lynch.
Working America members, teachers, and unemployed Pennsylvanians on both sides of the state delivered over 1,000 handwritten postcards to Governor Tom Corbett’s regional offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We wanted Corbett to know the drastic, widespread, and ultimately disastrous results of the budget cuts he enacted last year. We wanted him to make good on the rhetoric used in his first year, which called for “shared sacrifice.”
There has been a great deal of sacrifice. But it has not been shared. It has been targeted, acute, and painful. And while the brunt has fallen on students, low-income families, and public workers, 70 percent of Pennsylvania’s businesses pay nothing in income taxes.
“The budget cuts have added to the pool of unemployed workers by contributing to the elimination of 14,000 jobs in education alone,” says Mary Karscig, an unemployed nurse and Working America member who wrote to Corbett. 21,000 Pennsylvanians lost their jobs due to budget cuts alone, many of them due to nearly $900 million slashed from public education. We’ve written about the many school districts in Pennsylvania now facing the fiscal brink, with the bankrupt Chester Upland School District as a sign of things to come. The New York Times reported yesterday that 75 percent of Pennsylvania classrooms now have more kids than they did in 2010.
“I feel worried about the impacts of these cuts on my job search, and I am even more worried about their impacts on my son’s job search,” says Mary.
She adds: “My son will go wherever there is a job, and there is a pretty high chance he’ll have to move out of state.”
We were hoping that this morning’s budget announcement would bring some reprieve to working Pennsylvanians like Mary for the next fiscal year. No such luck. K-12 education did not get the recoup it needed. This time, the biggest ax fell on higher education: a 17 percent cut to public universities, state-related schools like Penn State, and the 14 state-owned universities.
In another devastating move, $30 million was cut from the Welfare Department, eliminating cash assistance for 60,000 of the most vulnerable Pennsylvanians; Philadelphia Senator Vincent Hughes said this was the Governor “putting his foot on the neck of poor people.”
“Last year, Governor Corbett talked a lot about shared sacrifice,” said Kim McMurray, Working America’s Pennsylvania State Director. “While 70 percent of businesses in Pennsylvania aren’t paying any income taxes to the state because of corporate tax loopholes, schools are running out of money and families are losing their homes. Does that look like shared sacrifice to you?”
Despite the time, thought, and concern reflected in the postcards, our Pittsburgh members, staff, and allies were refused entrance into Gov. Corbett’s office. In fact, we were told at the door that the building was private property, and the group was not allowed to enter. So the delegation delivered the 500 postcards, the community letter, and the report card to the building staff at the entrance of the building where the governor has his office. Corbett needs to understand the effects of his far-reaching, short-sighted cuts, and we’re going to keep fighting to make sure he hears us.
Working America members have been watching closely to see if the bankers who caused the financial crisis will be held accountable—or whether they’ll get away with it. In recent days, tens of thousands of Working America members have asked the White House and state Attorneys General to push for a full investigation of fraud and abuse in the mortgage industry—even as news reports suggest that the administration is moving towards a settlement with banks.
Our members have been clear: bankers and mortgage servicers shouldn’t get immunity from prosecution for fraud they committed. We need a full investigation to find out the extent of “robo-signing” and other abuses of homeowners, and we need banks to pay for the damage they’ve done. There have been some encouraging signs—like the appointment of New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermann to head up a national mortgage fraud investigation—but there’s a real danger that we’ll end up with a settlement that’s tiny compared to the problem. The first priorities need to be keeping people in their homes, holding wrongdoers responsible, and fixing the damage mortgage misconduct has done to our economy.
David Dayen, who covers the economy at the blog Firedoglake, has been doing clear, essential reporting on these issues, paying close attention to new developments. He’s been looking at how a potential settlements would affect states whose Attorneys General are investigating and prosecuting fraud, like Massachusetts, Nevada and California. (Today, Dayen reports, Missouri’s Attorney General Chris Koster has filed charges against a bad actor in the foreclosure market: the document-processing company DocX. These charges—which include felony charges—are the kind of consequences that breaking the law should have.)
State Attorneys General have a responsibility to the people they serve. Some, like Delaware’s Beau Biden and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, are showing that they take that job seriously—while others, like Pam Bondi from hard-hit Florida, are siding with the banks that defrauded their constituents.
We’ll keep watching the progress of settlement talks and encouraging Schneidermann to stay strong on investigations.
A new report released today by People For the American Way Foundation, Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy and Progress Ohio reveals the deep ties between the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Ohio state lawmakers.
ALEC in Ohio: The Corporate Special Interests that Help Write Ohio’s Laws, demonstrates ALEC’s policymaking influence with an in-depth analysis of the organization’s ties to key Ohio lawmakers, as well as a side-by-side comparison of nine ALEC “model” bills and actual Ohio legislation, including:
Attacks on workers by severely limiting collective bargaining, eliminating public employment through outsourcing and privatizing government functions;
Diminishing public education through private school voucher programs and private scholarship tax credits;
Encouraging the privatization of state prisons to benefit the private prison industry;
Voter suppression bills designed to disenfranchise thousands of eligible Americans;
Draconian anti-immigrant measures that criminalize undocumented workers and penalize their employers;
Creation of barriers for consumers and injured parties in seeking justice from corporations in a court of law;
Measures to prevent implementation of health care reform.
At a press conference releasing the report, Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga explained ALEC’s influence over many legislative initiatives, including SB 5, which repealed collective bargaining rights for Ohio public employees (and which Ohio voters overwhelmingly overturned in a 2011 ballot intiative). “When Ohioans overwhelmingly rejected SB 5 last year, they sent a clear message that they will not tolerate attacks on Ohio’s middle class,” said Burga.
They rejected the idea that our economic problems are the result of the workers’ rights to collectively bargain. They fully rejected that extreme political agenda and opted instead to support governance with basic fairness.
Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, noted Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s ties to ALEC.
Ohio is led by ALEC alum John Kasich, who has long advanced the agenda of ALEC corporations to the detriment of American citizens during his time in Congress and now in the statehouse in the Buckeye state.
Burga called for legislators to cut their ties with ALEC and align themselves more closely with the interests of those they were elected to represent.
What is needed is an agenda that focuses on doing the most good for the most Ohioans rather than legislating for the narrow benefit of so few.
That’s just a sampling of the language being used to describe Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s proposed budget, which will be unveiled tomorrow early afternoon.
Last year, Corbett cut almost $900 million from the state education budget, a decision that caused well-publicized pain for the Chester Upland School District. The unionized teachers of that district, which relies on state aid for 70 percent of its budget, made the decision to work without pay, until finally a judge ordered the state to fund the Chester schools through February 23.
The silver lining is that the Chester Upland fiasco shone a bright light on the way schools were getting funded in Pennsylvania. Sarah Ferguson, one of the district’s elementary school teachers, sat with Michelle Obama at the State of the Union earlier this month. Last week, Ferguson was a guest on the Ellen Degeneres Show, where she received a check for $100,000 for the Chester Upland School District from JC Penney.
But all of that exposure means nothing if Governor Corbett doesn’t restore any funding to struggling schools. And from all the signals he’s sending, it appears that Corbett will stay the course and continue his efforts to defund public education in Pennsylvania, while keeping the oil drillers and others from feeling any pain.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t a problem with one school district. Chester, where the median household income is about $26,000, was just the canary in the coal mine. Six other school districts will be in similarly dire straits within the year if the slashes remain. School districts in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Allentown, Duquese, York City, Reading, and even the relatively wealthy Poconos are reported to have similar budget predicaments.
Corbett’s belt-tightening act may work wonders with the Tea Party crowd, but they have real, disastrous consequences for Pennsylvania’s future. 70 percent of all state school districts have increased class sizes, according the PSEA President Mike Crossey. All the programs that have been proven to raise student achievement: tutoring, art, music, full-day kindergarten, and after-school programs all “took the biggest hit” with last year’s budget.
The New York Times quoted Chester Upland’s acting deputy superintendent as saying: “Poor schools in this state are underfunded…Poor kids aren’t going to get the same shot as wealthy kids. That’s the society we are in now.”
One-time gifts from Ellen Degeneres and JC Penney are great, but they are not policy. Corbett seems to think that Pennsylvania can have a bright future with crowded classrooms, fewer teachers, fewer extracurricular programs, and the lightest possibly tax burden for oil drillers and the already-super-wealthy. But that’s just simply not the case. Corbett needs to reverse course with this new budget, before it’s too late.
Over the weekend, all eyes were on the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, where tens of thousands traveled to see the event and hundreds of thousands more watched it on television. But while the spotlight was on the game, workers across the city took to the streets to protest the outrages happening to working people.
In one such event, we rallied at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis, where hardworking hotel housekeepers are fighting to keep their jobs and boost their poverty-level pay at a hotel where rates can be more than $1,000 a night for a Super Bowl week room. Twenty longtime hotel workers may be out of jobs in a few days when the hotel ends a subcontract with Hospitality Staffing Solutions.
The hotel workers are not in this fight alone. In the midst of what is undoubtedly the busiest few days for football players, DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and NFL players joined Hyatt housekeepers at the rally to demand Hyatt end its abuse of subcontracted workers and hire outsourced workers directly. Smith said NFL players would continue a year-old boycott of Hyatt over its treatment of workers and told the crowd:
I love people who stand together to fight for what’s right.
Just blocks from the Super Bowl, these football players, together with construction workers, office staff and steelworkers, stood side by side with hotel housekeepers, joined in common cause by the struggles that unite all working people—all of the 99 percent in this country who are fighting against corporate greed and challenging politicians who seek to take away our rights as citizens of this great country.
What’s happening in Indiana is just one part of the massive assault on working families across the country. Yet over the past year, we saw again and again the strength of collective action, of public protest in state after state as the rights of workers came under attack. We re-learned that we are not alone, and we have seen that when we stand together with those who share our values, victory is ours.
Hours after Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) signed Indiana’s contemptuous bill, tens of thousands of Hoosier workers came together in solidarity to march from the statehouse to Super Bowl village. Construction workers and teachers, grocery clerks and truck drivers chanted “Remember November,” vowing to take back the state door by door, neighborhood by neighborhood.
This year, as in Indiana, we will stand together for jobs and for economic freedom across the nation. We’ll congregate in the public square. And on Election Day, we’ll march to the ballot box to cast our votes for economic, social and political justice.
This past fall in San Antonio, Texas truck drivers working for Oak Farms Dairy plant took the leap in fighting to form a union at their workplace. Their goal: for all workers to be able to negotiate for better wages, better hours, safety conditions, health care, and to have a democratic method of collectively bargaining with their employer. The response: months of captive audience meetings, intimidation tactics by employers, and the hiring of professional union busters to intimidate Oak Farms drivers from voting to form a union. One driver was pushed out of his position early in the organizing drive, but his dedication and passion led him to continue to take an active role in engaging his coworkers to continue fighting, even during his time of intense economic struggle.
The drivers fought long and hard for months, but when the vote finally came, intimidated employees backed down from voting for the union in fear of losing their jobs. At the end of the day, Oak Farms‘ big pockets and crackdown on workers’ rights had won…for now.
Feeling deflated after the vote, workers and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union came together to decide how to continue the drive, channeling the passion that so many of the dedicated drivers of Oak Farms still held to fight for democracy in their workplace. This was no time to quit and they knew that the workers united can truly never be defeated. They decided to come together to recruit fellow workers to become members of Working America, which will let them share a few of the benefits and some of the shared voice that union membership provides. In a joint training with Working America, they learned about the benefits of Working America membership and developed an outreach strategy to connect their co-workers with these benefits.
These dedicated drivers have come together to stay engaged in fighting for democracy in their work place, and to fight for the broader issues affecting working families including the attacks on education, health care, voting rights, and corporate accountability. By reaching out to others and welcoming them into the movement, these community leaders have joined a network of over 3 million Working America members nationwide to fight for good jobs and democracy across the country, starting with their local San Antonio community.
From Oak Farms to corporate greed, these empowered drivers will continue to build the community power to fight back against the attacks on working families at home and abroad.
Last week, while many of us were focusing on Indiana’s “right to work” fight and the Super Bowl, the Arizona legislature introduced four virulently anti-worker bills. They are as follows:
SB 1484 would require public employees to “obtain authorization for any third party payroll deductions.”
SB 1485 would prohibit any public sector collective bargaining. This goes much farther than Scott Walker’s law in Wisconsin. This means no bargaining at all for teachers, nurses, firefighters, or police officers. It also preempts any local laws allowing for collective bargaining.
SB 1486 also outlaws public sector collective bargaining and prohibits a public employer from compensating an employee for “third party or union activities.”
SB 1487 again outlaws payroll deduction for all public sector union dues.
Translation: the Arizona legislature wants to make sure that all public workers are stripped of anything remotely resembling union representation. Arizona is already a “right-to-work” state, but these four bills make all pertinent union functions illegal. Filing a grievance would become nearly impossible. Contract negotiations would be completely one-sided.
Just like the case of Issue 2 in Ohio, this bill would keep public safety workers from bargaining for the parts of their jobs that keep them alive. Nurses couldn’t bargain for adequate staffing levels. Firefighters couldn’t bargain for the right equipment.
And if the legislature decides that the good bullet proof vests cost too much, and that they’d rather spring for the bargain basement bullet proof vests, because hey, times are tight, Arizona’s police officers would just have to accept that.
This is what these bills do. They take the decisions of the workers themselves and put them in the hands of politicians. In other states, the professionals that make up the public sector unions can band together and say “when it comes to keeping ourselves alive, we know best.” But with these Arizona bills, that voice is gone – made completely illegal.
These four bills do nothing to create jobs in Arizona. These four bills do nothing to address the homeowners on the brink of foreclosure. These four bills do nothing to invest in Arizona’s students, its children, or its future.
Our friends at AFSCME have launched a new website, “Razing Arizona,” to tell Arizona lawmakers to reject these bills. Please sign, share, and help spread the word. This is warfare against the middle class, and we can’t let them win.
This winter has been especially austere. As part of the drive to cut spending, the Obama administration and Congress have trimmed the energy-assistance program that helps the poor — 65,000 households in Maine alone — to pay their heating bills. Eligibility is harder now, and the average amount given here is $483, down from $804 last year, all at a time when the price of oil has risen more than 40 cents in a year, to $3.71 a gallon.
and
As a result, Community Concepts, a community-action program serving western Maine, receives dozens of calls a day from people seeking warmth. But Dana Stevens, its director of energy and housing, says that he has distributed so much of the money reserved for emergencies that he fears running out. This means that sometimes the agency’s hot line purposely goes unanswered.
So Mainers try to make do. They warm up in idling cars, then dash inside and dive under the covers. They pour a few gallons of kerosene into their oil tank and hope it lasts.
In cold climates, people with outside oil tanks burn kerosene, because regular heating oil turns into a gel when it freezes, and clogs up the pipes. Kerosene doesn’t freeze. It’s also even more expensive than regular heating oil.
For older Mainers who live in drafty houses, that $483 isn’t going to go very far. It’s not even enough to fill up the tank once. A standard oil tank holds 275 gallons. Right now in Maine the cost of oil is approximately $4.00 a gallon.
How the cuts affect low income households varies by state. In Vermont, the effect will be minimal: State lawmakers are dipping into reserves to make up the shortfall from Washington’s cuts.
No such luck in Maine, which saw its allotment drop from $56 million to $38.5 million. Last year 64,000 Maine households received LIHEAP assistance, with an average benefit of $804. The quasi-state agency that manages LIHEAP will make sure no fewer people receive assistance, partially by shifting funds and partially by slashing the average benefit to $483.
John and Joan McAdams, a Maine couple in their 70′s, are doing this:
“At night we leave it down to 50 and during the day right now we run it at 60 degrees,” he said. “This is ludicrous. The wealthy can handle it. We haven’t got any money. I go to the food bank. All I get is outdated cans and a lot of spaghetti. There’s a rich versus poor situation in this country. It’s bad.”
He’s right. This is bad. This is the end result of the austerity we heard mentioned so proudly: older people freezing in their homes in what is considered the wealthiest country in the world.
