30 billionaires are major donors to a Romney-backing superPAC.

The Republican War on Working Women isn’t in your imagination. Look at the evidence.

Fox News isn’t a problem because of its viewpoint. It’s a problem because of its constant, deliberate dishonesty. (It’s worse than watching no news at all.)

Scholarship funds meant to help needy students are instead being used to siphon dollars away from public schools and into private ones.

Why cutting the Census Department’s American Community Survey is a bad idea.

ALEC says it isn’t a lobbying group. Why are they specifically exempt from lobbying restrictions?

VIDEO: North Carolina legislators get a wake-up call from constituents tired of cuts to education and basic services.

If JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon didn’t already have you steaming, he will now.

Robert Reich wrote The Commencement Address That Won’t Be Given (but maybe it should).

Finally: Well played, The Onion. Well played.

Here’s how they’re doing it. First, in his first two budgets, Governor Tom Corbett and his allies cut almost a billion dollars from public education in Pennsylvania. Like his corporate-backed brethren Scott Walker and John Kasich, Corbett repeated the lie that the cuts were necessary because the state was broke, while ignoring the millions in lost revenue from corporate tax loopholes.

The second step is to use the funding “crisis” – the crisis that they created with their deep and unnecessary cuts – to attack the rights of teachers and other school employees. The Senate Education Committee, chaired by Republican Senator Jeffrey Piccola, is planning to amend House Bill 1307 to allow the state to cancel current collective bargaining agreements in “financially distressed” school districts.

In addition, they want to use a parliamentary maneuver to avoid the lower house:

In an effort to fast-track the legislative process, members of the Senate Education Committee will attempt to amend the financial distressed provisions of SB 1450 into House Bill 1307. This means the bill would not need to be considered by the House Education Committee and would be one step closer to Governor Tom Corbett’s desk.

Remember the Chester Upland School District, where teachers opted to work for free when funding ran out? That would be called a “financially distressed” district under the state’s definition. But these teachers – and thousands others across the state, if asked – would rather work without pay then give up on their students’ education. How on earth would taking away their right to bargain for wages and benefits improve the districts’ financial situation?

It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t at all. But for Gov. Corbett, Sen. Piccola, and their allies, it’s not about saving money, and it’s not about education. It’s about the corporate-backed ideological crusades against public education and workers’ rights.

Senator Piccola is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). We don’t know this because he has been honest with his constituents about it; we know this because in 1991 he used at least $1,375 taxpayer dollars to attend an ALEC conference in Seattle. For decades, ALEC has developed model bills to privatize public education, weaken rights for teachers, and funnel money away from students into the pockets of for-profit corporations.

Governor Corbett, who has led the charge against our children’s future from Harrisburg, does not shy away from his connections to those who want to dismantle public education. He was the keynote speaker at the National Policy Summit of the American Federation for Children (AFC), which is headed up by the ultra-wealthy private education crusader Betsy DeVos. (DeVos is the sister of Blackwater/Xe founder Erik Prince and the wife of Amway heir and right-wing donor Dick DeVos. Think of them as the Koch Brothers, just more focused on destroying public education.)

AFC’s political arm is called Students First, headed up by anti-union former superintendent Michelle Rhee. Students First gave $5.9 million to Pennsylvania candidates and committees, including the one that put Piccola in his chairmanship, and they have already given $25,000 to Governor Corbett this year.

(Another connection: DeVos’ organization AFC is a member of ALEC, and works with ALEC to develop “school choice” and other privatization bills.)

That’s all to say this: Corbett, Piccola, and their political allies aren’t pushing this agenda because they think it’s the right thing for students, teachers, or communities. They aren’t pushing this agenda because their constituents called for it. They are acting on the behalf of ALEC corporations, right-wing think tanks, and billionaire ideologues who fill their campaign war chests and keep them in power. And they’ll keep doing it unless we expose them.

Our Michigan Republican controlled legislature has been passing hundreds of privatization bills, while enjoying little attention from the press. Don’t they want credit for all their “hard work?” Or is there something they don’t want working families to find out?

546 of the bills that passed beginning in 2011, have been additionally “assigned (bill number) with immediate effect.” This means the bills will be implemented immediately and are not required to go through the mandatory minimum 90-day period before the new law can officially begin. Michigan’s constitution states that a two-third majority is required to enact immediate effect. Out of those 546 bills, it is impossible to know if the majority party had the needed two-thirds majority votes because the Leadership would not recognize requests for roll call votes, thus there is no record of who voted and how. What does this mean? A Michigan Court ruled the majority party is breaking the law.

Also, all these bills have something in common; they are all for-profit privatization and anti-working families. The majority party has acted on behalf of special corporate interests and forgotten their sworn pledge to represent the working families in their districts.  Most recently, their broken promises were found out, when they voted to support K12, Inc. at the expense of Michigan’s children’s. SB 619 or “The Cyber Schools” bill, siphons our hard-earned tax dollars from our children and community schools to expand experimental cyber-school education and increase K12, Inc. profits. Trying to deflect concerns of broken commitments to their constituents, they have argued in favor of isolating our kids, in a room all by themselves, with just the Internet, as a better education than in a classroom with fellow friends and a qualified teacher.

When learning of this, Working America members were outraged, so much so, they made hundreds of calls to their legislators. Here are just a few of our member’s reactions.

Michael Salib, retiree:

This is supposed to be a good idea? What about the fact most households have to have two working parents in order to survive? Which one of the two parents can stay home and make sure junior is attending computer classes each day? How do you learn to throw a football, learn an instrument or give a public speech without attending school with other people?

Michelle Gaw, working mother:

My kids could learn a bunch of facts on a piece of paper easily. But how are they going to learn other important things like working with others, making friends and other social interactions that you can get in a regular school?

After talking to thousands of members in dozens of communities and our members making hundreds of calls to their legislators, requesting they vote for our children and communities and vote no on SB 619, our members were stunned by the broken promises and the passing of SB 619, by a razor-thin 56-54 recorded vote.

The good news, Working America members are now paying attention! Now the people of Michigan know and are paying attention. Our lesson from K12, Inc. and the majority party is to remain engaged and collectively have our voices heard.

With contract negotiations pending, Maine Gov. Paul LePage is still blustering on about how terrible he thinks public employees are.

“The real problem with Romney isn’t what he did at Bain. It’s what he didn’t seem to learn from it.”

Middle-class consumers are the real job creators, says a tech billionaire.

New York calls on Gov. Cuomo to fight for a minimum wage increase.

Right-wing think tanks like Michigan’s Mackinac Center are a major factor in ALEC’s anti-union efforts.

A new blog covering workplace safety.

“Next time, just light your $35 million on fire.”

Comparing presidential jobs records.

“Whose taxpayer-insured money would banks gamble with then?”

Chart: how income inequality creates an education gap.

The following is a post by Isaiah Toney, the Student Labor Action Project coordinator in Washington, D.C., and a senior at the George Washington University. Reposted from the AFL-CIO NOW Blog.

When I finish classes in August of 2012, I will have something like $78,000 in student debt. That’s about three times the national average, which is just over $25,000 in student debt upon graduation.

And I’m not even the least lucky. I have friends who will graduate with six digits in student debt.

Sometimes people try to argue that we are asking for special treatment when we talk about lessening the burden that these loans place on graduates, but this is a red herring.  We are asking that we all take notice of the threat that these unfair debts place upon the millions of college graduates’ economic futures—and the economic future of our country.

Let’s look at my own example. As I pay off my loans over the next (hopefully) 15 years, I’ll be sending my income straight to Sallie Mae, which will send a good
deal of that money straight into the pockets of executives like Sallie Mae CEO Albert Lord, who made $240 million in three years and into its lobbying efforts to make it more expensive to go to college. That’s money that I won’t be spending going to see local performances or donating to local causes that I care about (there is a middle school marching band going down my block as I write this and I want to be able to support them). I won’t be contributing to a local economy at the same time that I will have to reconsider things like becoming a public school teacher for fear that I may end up like one of those student loan borrowers who default on their loans.

And Congress is neglecting the Pell Grant, one of the most powerful tools for getting students into college classrooms by giving students up to $5,550 (Department of Education says that the average was $3,984 in 2011). Thirty years ago, the Pell Grant covered around 70 percent of average tuition, but now that number is only 34 percent.

Put another way, the fact that Congress cut $10 billion from the Pell Grant between this year and last year is not a surprise. But it is a problem.

We need to make college affordable, and soon. It affects students’ ability to attend college, find a job that they can do because they care, stay financially solvent and do things like purchase a home. It affects seemingly small things that when multiplied across a generation of college graduates has an enormous impact on our economy. And we have an opportunity to make those changes.

For starters, we can keep interest rates on loans from rising too high and lower those rates that are already too high. That small change with a big impact is exactly why I am going with the Student Labor Action Project on May 24 to the shareholder meeting of Sallie Mae, the largest student debt lender and trendsetter, to ask for a meeting with Albert Lord. We want to talk, and we want to work.

We wish Harrison Ford was here to deal with the ALEC corporations who have taken Wisconsin hostage.

Related: Does anyone have a thinner skin than the Koch Brothers?

Also related: New documents show the political operations that got $55 million in previously-undisclosed Koch money.

Holla! Working America canvassers are featured in this awesome TNR piece on Ohio.

“There’s not one person in my department who said, ‘I want to start off as a sheriff’s deputy making eleven dollars an hour in one of the most dangerous cities in America, because that’s my path to being a millionaire.’ We don’t get into this to be rich.”

ALEC’s latest quest: pushing to limit state Attorneys General who are trying to enforce state law.

The TED Talk that the TED Conference wouldn’t show: a critique of income inequality.

Ugh. The war on voting continues in Florida as thousands are purged from voter rolls.

It’s true: the FBI is investigating Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Obama’s real opponent: the combined fortunes of a small number of big right-wing donors.

Finally: Justice for the widow of a New York firefighter who perished in the 2007 Deutsche Bank fire.

Photo by antwerpenR on Flickr, via Creative Commons

What Romney’s budget proposals would mean.

Romney’s budget speech yesterday “resides outside of, and completely at odds with” reality.

“I don’t think Mitt Romney is stupid. I do think Romney is operating from the assumption that voters are stupid.”

Karl Rove’s dark-money group puts another $25 million into buying the 2012 elections.

5 mind-blowing facts about student debt.

Too often, a new baby means big debt for parents who don’t get paid leave.

Related: A great map shows how family-friendly your state is.

Scott Walker isn’t thrilled with the jobs numbers in Wisconsin. So he’s going to make up his own.

A Kansas City man is suing JP Morgan for breaking into his house and stealing his stuff. Seriously.

Graph of the day: how the filibuster has grown from a rarity to a default.

Meet Pete Peterson, the man who has made it a personal crusade to roll back decades of retirement security and induce panic about deficits and debt in Washington politicians. And when we say “made it a personal crusade,” we mean he’s invested in it to the tune of close to half a billion dollars, a new Huffington Post story reports.

According to a review of tax documents from 2007 through 2011, Peterson has personally contributed at least $458 million to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to cast Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government spending as in a state of crisis, in desperate need of dramatic cuts. Peterson’s millions have done next to nothing to change public opinion: In survey after survey, Americans reject the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare.

Like the Koch brothers and other billionaires, Peterson has invested big in order to shape the political debate and push his ideological agenda. In addition to his own institute, Peterson—who served as Secretary of Commerce under Nixon—endows scholars at other think tanks, supports curricula at colleges, and even funds a newspaper, the Fiscal Times, that has partnered with the Washington Post. At least in elite Washington circles, Peterson’s influence is far-reaching, as evidenced by the appearance of former President Clinton, the Treasury Secretary, the Speaker of the House and Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan at yesterday’s event. Peterson-style policy preferences are the unspoken ideology of Washington conventional wisdom, including much of the press. These ideas dominate the conversation among the “serious” pundits and think-tankers who help set national policies.

Let’s step away from the catered lunches and carpeted conference rooms for a moment, though, and talk about what the rest of the country has to say. Social Security and Medicare are a big part of what allows seniors to have dignity and peace of mind in retirement, especially as private-sector pensions have eroded. Nearly 2/5 of all the income earned by seniors comes from Social Security; for a majority of seniors, Social Security represents 50% or more of their income. For a quarter of elderly couples and half of elderly single people, Social Security makes up 90% or more of their income—literally all that stands between them and severe poverty. Most Americans pay into these systems, and they’re the only guarantee of security and health care we have after we retire. And contrary to the talking points of Peterson-promoted, paid-for panic, Social Security and Medicare aren’t facing an imminent crisis.

Peterson—a billionaire—never has to worry about dignity in retirement, about choosing between food and medicine, about having to work even when your health won’t allow it. Nor do members of Congress with their taxpayer-funded pensions, or well-paid TV hosts, lobbyists and think-tank presidents. They also feel the pressure of paying into the system much less than the majority of working people, since they only pay Social Security tax on the first $110,100 of their income.

So here’s a modest proposal for Peterson and the networks that advance his message. You can raise the retirement age to whatever you want—as long as, at age 65, every think-tanker, pundit and politician who pushes the fake crisis gets to swap places with a 65-year-old nurse, truck driver, hotel housekeeper or drill-press operator. Sound good?

The conservative judicial activism of the Roberts Supreme Court.

Inconvenient truths about the national debt.

Investing in kids early pays off in the long run.

Food stamps–under attack by House Republicans–are extremely effective.

Reminder: the stimulus really did work.

How earned sick days help moms.

Ally Bank’s mortgage unit is going bankrupt – what does that mean for the housing settlement?

It’s time to hold Wall Street accountable for real.

“Between 1840 and 1900, there were 16 filibusters. Between 2009 and 2010, there were more than 130.”

Remember the debt ceiling fight? Speaker Boehner promises we’ll have another.

Think-tank president throws a tantrum over the campaign against ALEC’s takeover of our state legislatures.

Former Tennessee Congressman Lincoln Davis was denied the right to vote thanks to the new voter suppression law. Now he’s fighting back.

Source: epi.org via Working America on Pinterest

Reposted from the AFL-CIO NOW Blog

There’s always a lot of noise on campaign trails about cutting taxes. But as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out, the real question is: Whose taxes?

A new report by EPI finds that since 1995, the wealthiest of the wealthy in this country have gotten far more tax breaks than those in the middle- and lower-income brackets, with the average effective federal tax rates falling more than 9 percentage points for the top 0.01 percent of households and more than 6 percentage points for the remaining households in the top 1 percent. Effective tax rates also have fallen for households between the 20th and 99th percentile, but by less than 3 percentage points.

As EPI economist Josh Bivens writes:

With the Bush tax cuts scheduled to expire on Jan. 1, 2013, tax fairness is likely to be a prominent topic throughout the Presidential campaign.

The best explanation of the complicated way that JP Morgan lost billions comes from Heidi Moore, the New York bureau chief for Marketplace. In short, the trader Bruno Iskil, operating with the support of JP Morgan management, made a very risky bet involving corporate bonds—and lost.

This bungled effort by JP Morgan is especially embarrassing because it comes only a few years after the collapse of risky bets in the housing market helped send the economy into free fall and set big banks rushing to taxpayers for bailouts.

Now the U.S. Senate is set to hold hearings into JP Morgan’s loss, and critics like Sheila Bair have asked if JP Morgan has become “too big to regulate.” Meanwhile, CEO Jamie Dimon continues to insist, as he has for years, that we don’t need rules to rein in Wall Street’s actions.

In a great interview, Moore explains why the JP Morgan story isn’t just about one big loss from one set of trades.

…What this tells us is that a lot of banks still haven’t learned how to measure and control the financial risks they’re taking when they make these bets and what’s dangerous about that is that now they’re doing that with our deposits — the deposits in the actual bank…

They take these big risks because they want the big revenues, they want Wall Street back the way that it was, but the way that it was is the wrong place to be. And there’s no acknowledgment of that yet.

Short-term profits and executive compensation were prioritized over stability before the 2008 crash, we now know; it seems as though Wall Street—which is even more consolidated into big institutions now—hasn’t learned anything from the consequences of its irresponsibility then.

There’s nothing wrong with having a healthy financial industry; indeed, at its best the industry serves a lot of important functions in the economy and helps people save for retirement, start businesses and buy homes. The problem comes in when, instead of serving the rest of the economy, the financial sector overtakes it. An under-regulated banking industry that puts itself at the center of the economy exposes the rest of us to the risks it takes. And when this industry takes up a disproportionate share of the economy, it also ends up with an outsized voice in the political process, making it harder and harder to rein in.

Unfortunately, the culture of Wall Street doesn’t just promote big risks and low accountability. It also promotes the idea that the financial sector should be the center of economic and political life—and, as numerous news stories have shown, top executives are almost childishly sensitive about the suggestion that their privilege is outsized.

The banking industry saw the last decade—a decade of light regulation, big profits, high compensation, and the increasing financialization of the economy—as a golden age. The big banks are spending a lot in the political arena to try and keep it that way. The JP Morgan losses are a hint that we shouldn’t let an unsustainable banking industry continue to run our economy.

As Moore notes:

…This isn’t just another blip in the news cycle. This is not the way pundits entertain themselves. This is a warning. It tells us that the machinery of finance isn’t quite working right.

At Bain Capital, Romney discovered a new source of profit: breaking the deal between companies and their employees.

Our new Gilded Age is good for the 1%, but it’s even better for the 0.1%.

Krugman tells us how the JP Morgan loss explains why we need banking regulation.

A Facebook millionaire unfriends America. Here’s why he’s wrong.

Republican governors and legislators are stalling on creating the health insurance marketplaces the Affordable Care Act calls for.

The New York Times looks at how student debt is weighing down a generation.

Austerity is hurting the economy, but it’s still being devotedly pushed by political elites.

Related: that point in cartoon form.

Song for the day: the Dropkick Murphys.

Working America organizers and canvassers were part of the ground game that put Dayton over the top, and boy, are we glad we did.

Over the last 18 months, the radical anti-worker legislature in Minnesota have passed bill after bill, none of them having to do with the promises of jobs from the 2010 campaign. Gov. Dayton’s veto pen was the only thing keeping many harmful policies at bay: ending Minnesota’s status as a right-to-bargain state, voter suppression, limiting consumers’ rights to class-action suits, a Florida-style “Stand Your Ground” gun bill, and even a bill that would protect asbestos companies from liability.

In all, Gov. Dayton vetoed 10 bills passed by the Republican-controlled Minnesota legislature that are modeled after ALEC legislation. Check out the list.

To get around the veto, GOP legislators voted to put the voter suppression bill to a referendum in November as a Constitutional Amendment. However, as the legislative session ended last week, they decided not to similarly put a harmful bargaining rights bill on the November ballot.

Why? There are lots of reasons, but a significant number of GOP legislators did not want to want the situation over the border in Wisconsin to come to them; enormous protests, national labor support coming into the state, and a complete political standstill.

GOP state Rep. Tony Cornish cited the prospect of “millions of dollars coming in from other states, and thousands of people. Buses emptying out, banners, people camping.” In other words: the fear of becoming the next Wisconsin…Sen. Benson says that the threat of union payback at the ballot box “was enough to divide our caucus.” She attributes her colleagues’ reticence to their “justified concern that the unions, with their massive coffers, will come after people in swing districts.”

They also expressed that they didn’t want a repeat of last year’s Ohio referendum, where a high-profile
“Citizen Veto” of Gov. Kasich’s union-busting law continues to reverberate. Josh Eidelson of Salon calls them the “Cold Feet Caucus.”

As the session came to a close, some Republicans instead opted to reach across the aisle, working with Dayton to approve the construction of a new Vikings stadium. “Thanks to strong leadership from Governor Mark Dayton, Legislative DFLers, and several Republicans on job creation, the 2012 session was redeemed,” said Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson in a statement, “Between a jobs & infrastructure bill and a new stadium in downtown Minneapolis, tens of thousands of Minnesotans will soon be going back to work in good-paying, family sustaining jobs.”

That’s not to say Minnesotans can rest easy. In addition to holding anti-worker legislators accountable, the battle to defeat the voter suppression constitutional amendment is just beginning.

However, if that close election in 2010 had gone the other way, Minnesota working families would be in a much more perilous position: those 10 ALEC bills are just a sampling of what these radical legislature could have passed. From their rights to collectively bargain to their access to the courts, Minnesotans have a lot of reasons to be thankful for Gov. Dayton’s veto pen.

Unions Rock: Letter Carriers doing their part to “stamp out hunger.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka talks about JP Morgan Chase’s huge losses.

Romney campaigns with negligent West Virginia coal mine owner Bob Murray.

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin finds a despicable way to avoid taxes.

#RickScottFail #43: Florida governor’s chief of staff resigns amid corruption investigation.

Meanwhile, Florida AG Pam Bondi will decide how to use foreclosure settlement funds this week.

Seeing Wisconsin’s reaction, Republicans in other states back off anti-worker agenda.

For Ohio, Issue 2 fight was a dry-run for a well-honed November ground game.

ALEC’s influence in Indiana runs deep, from Mitch Daniels on down.

“What ALEC does is create an environment where legislators are going to be more receptive to corporate influence.”

Finally: Wisconsin workers have a new ally in the fight for rights – the incredible Boston rock group The Dropkick Murphys.

Photo by dyobmit on Flickr via Creative Commons

In case you missed it, Scott Walker said some things that could cost him his office.

Most workers live in fear of losing their pensions. Ex-Congressmen who become lobbyists, though, are safe and secure.

When “repeal and replace” becomes “repeal and, like, whatever.”

#RickScottFail #42: Florida governor’s “jobs czar” disconnected from reality.

A great explanation of how J.P. Morgan lost $2 billion (yes, billion) on bad bets.

J.P. Morgan’s disaster is a new argument for Wall Street reform.

Reminder: Romney prefers *fewer* rules for Wall Street firms.

The attack on unions has mobilized people to get involved in 2012.

The end of extended unemployment insurance means that hundreds of thousands of long-term unemployed are losing benefits.

Heart-wrenching: “Hey Bank of America: How many times to have to tell you my husband is dead?”

Almost 10 percent of foreclosure settlement funds have gone…not to victims of foreclosure.

Finally: The perfect gift for Mother’s Day. (via @MomsRising)