How to grade a foreclosure fraud settlement.

Six things to know about Arizona politicians’ attack on workers.

In the race to be the most union-busting governor in the country, South Carolina’s Nikki Haley is a front-runner.

David is beating Goliath in the Florida prison privatization fight.

“There’s no evidence that right to work laws have any positive impact on employment or bringing back manufacturing jobs.”

Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who bankrolls Gingrich, is a big opponent of unions.

Speaking of political money, the machine being built by the Koch brothers for 2012 will be amply funded–and vicious.

Dark corporate money will be a problem in the presidential election, but even more so in races for Congress.

Judge orders sheriff to evict Occupy Pittsburgh.

Clint Eastwood’s “Halftime in America” ad says Detroit’s comeback is a model.

Related: Political Super Bowl ads elicit, err, strong reactions.

Also related: Why the anti-union Super Bowl ad is wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Also also related: Wisconsin protest signs edited out of Chrysler ad.

Finally, do us a favor and give this anti-union video a “thumbs down” on YouTube.

“Dramatic and difficult.” “Pain.” “Tough times.” “Turn the screws even tighter.”

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.

Days ago, some of those politicians right here in Indiana pushed through the state legislature legislation that is a massive assault on the wages of the state’s working people. The “right to work” for less bill was hustled through the legislative process in a series of dirty tricks in outright contempt for democracy.

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.

Photo from Stand Up for Hoosiers on Facebook

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.

From the Huffington Post:

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.

Was it a great week? Not really. Indiana became the 23rd “right to work” state, even though Hoosier working families vow to fight the measure tooth and nail. If that wasn’t enough, it became clear that Indiana is only the first salvo in a renewed anti-worker push: similar efforts are underway in Ohio, Michigan, and Minnesota.

At the same time, Arizona legislature went medievel on union rights, passing a ban on public employee unions. Turns out that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, fresh off his own union-busting adventure, had a hand in it – predictable, sad, and yet another reason to send him packing.

But it wasn’t all bad – we had some important victories too. In the states, New York moved toward raising their minimum wage, and Sunshine State activists successfully stalled Florida’s ridiculous prison privatization scheme. Nationally, we saw the introduction in the a bill to make the “Buffett Rule” the law of the land, and the monthly Jobs Report saw the unemployment rate drop to 8.3 percent – not to mention a drop of 4 percent in unemployment among OEF/OIF veterans.

That’s not all! After receiving over 5,000 messages from Working America members, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed lawsuits against three big banks for alleged foreclosure fraud – the first step toward justice for homeowners.

Schneiderman wasn’t the only person making us smile this week. Nevada’s AG Catherine Cortez Masto stood up to banks, Pennsylvania Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland eloquently defended Chester Upland students, Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed fought for the unemployed, and three candidates stepped forward to take back the Wisconsin Senate from pro-Walker politicians. And not only did President Obama release a new mortgage refinancing plan, he gave a fist bump to a White House janitor.

Meanwhile, Susan shined a light on the lack of affordable housing, Seth covered the latest developments in extending unemployment benefits, Chase gave a report from the frontlines in Minnesota, and Doug gave you a comprehensive guide to a pro-worker Super Bowl weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, it’s about time it started. Have a great weekend, Working America!

Photo from Stand Up for Hoosiers on Facebook.

Shrinking public-sector employment: still bad for the economy.

The jobs situation in charts.

“It’s cheaper to support a recovery then fight another downturn.”

Gallup poll: A majority of Americans–and a majority of independents–support government action to fight foreclosures.

Getting involved matters: Online activists get a major student loan provider to drop a predatory practice.

There it is again: The zombie lie about public sector workers.

Speaking of stubborn myths: right-to-work isn’t anything like a job creation strategy.

AFSCME fights back against union-busting in Arizona.

Insanely insensitive advice for a sick kid from Rick Santorum.

The Koch brothers convened a strategy meeting for major right-wing and corporate political donors over the weekend…

…and they’re pledging to dump $100 million into the 2012 election.

A Michigan foreclosure mill is stepping back into politics, just as they did in 2008.

Dodgy numbers from the inequality deniers.

More dodgy numbers from Congressmen who don’t understand how math works.

Speaking of bad at math: “Every House Republican voted Thursday to reject the proposition that the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit.”

Thanks to the folks at American Rights at Work for their research and efforts around American and union-made products! See their post on being pro-union and pro-football here.

Super Bowl Sunday is almost upon us, and the New England Patriots and the New York Giants are preparing to battle it out for dominance. But there’s an extra wrinkle in this year’s Super Bowl. Just days ago, down the street from Lucas Oil Field in Indianapolis where the game will be held, Governor Mitch Daniels signed a union-busting “right to work” bill into law. In the other 22 states where these laws are on the books, wages for all workers have gone down, workplaces have become less safe, and the power of unions to advocate for their members has dissipated.

For you at home, there’s somewhat of a dilemma. You want to enjoy the experience of Super Bowl Sunday: the gathering of friends and family, the commercials, the rush of the game, and of course, the food. On the other hand, you don’t want to be just another cog in the enormous corporate machine, the “miasma of Madison Avenue-produced militarism,” the forces that have turned an annual sporting event into a full-on marketing assault on the American public; forces that are tied philosophically and financially to the political war on workers

So along with American Rights At Work, we want to help you throw your own pro-worker Super Bowl. Don’t believe the myths: there are plenty of products out there made in United States by well union workers, despite the best efforts of Walker, Kasich, and Daniels. Let’s get started!

• Snacks. Luckily, you can support American workers with every handful. Chips and other snacks by Doritos, Lays, Kraft, and Wise are American and union made. For something sweet (ideally around fourth quarter, with the Pats up two scores) try some Ghiradelli Chocolates.

• Drinks. Beer and football go together like…come on, nothing goes together better than beer and football. Crack open a brew from Budweiser, Busch, Leinenkugel, Michelob, Miller, Molson, Pabst, or Rolling Rock, and you’ll be enjoying a union-made product. But drink responsibly, guys – this game is Boston versus New York, so there will be enough trouble afterwards without you joining in. How about after third quarter you switch to Coke, Sprite, or juices from Welch’s or Minute Maid.

• Grill. Firing up the grill or the slow cooker? Throw on some hot dogs from Oscar Meyer, Nathan’s Hebrew National, Ball Park, or Hormel. Calm down, Wisconsin, we have you covered – get your brats and sausages from Johnsonville, Armour, or Eckrich. If you’re like me and want some poultry at half time, go for Butterball, Healthy Choice, Smithfield, or Tyson. Top it all off with some Heinz ketchup, French’s or Gulden’s mustard, Open Pit barbecue sauce, or pace salsa, and serve with a Vlasic pickle. Whew!

• Fun. Madonna’s a talented lady, no doubt, but she’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Toss around a Wilson’s football during half time – made by union workers in Ohio. (No passes to John Kasich, he’s lost his football privileges).

• Conversation. Just like Turkey Talk during Thanksgiving, the Super Bowl can bring its own brand of, shall we say, lively debate. Let’s call it “Chili Talk.” When you’re done discussing the Deion Branch–Hakeem Nicks matchup or if Tom Brady’s plays better with a shorter haircut (he does), the topic might turn to workers’ rights. This will especially be the case if the cameras show the protest activity expected for Indianapolis.

Here are some resources to prep for the Chili Talk at your Super Bowl gathering on Sunday:

• Pro-football, pro-union myths and facts from American Rights at Work.
• Turkey Talk Tips from Working America.
• Two great descriptions of how “right to work” laws hurt all workers by Laura Clawson of DailyKos: a shorter one and a longer one.
• “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans such as ‘right-to-work.’ It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works.’ Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining…We demand this this fraud be stopped.” –Martin Luther King in 1961
• What some big NFL players like Rex Grossman and Jay Cutler have to say about “right to work” from the NFL Players Association.
• Great fact sheets from the AFL-CIO: How right to work lowers wages, leads to more workplace injuries and deaths, hurts women and minorities the most, and how unions raise wages for all workers.

Enough information for you? Let us know how your pro-worker Super Bowl party went on Facebook and Twitter. Have a great Sunday!

Photo by deege@fermentarium.com on Flickr, via Creative Commons.

Let’s not forget, though, that while an upward climb is welcome, there’s still more climbing to do. The recession of the past few years put in a huge hole—by late 2008, the economy was dumping hundreds of thousands of jobs every month, and it took major, determined effort to get the economy to start adding jobs again. We’re still trying to recover from that recession and we haven’t gotten back to pre-recession levels yet. And the effort to recover is being actively undermined by job cuts at the state and local level.

One bright spot is that things are looking up for veterans. Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan had an unacceptably high unemployment rate of 13%. That rate has fallen to 9% in the latest report—still high, but a huge improvement for people who have served our country overseas. The only portion of President Obama’s American Jobs Act that Congress was able to pass was a set of incentives to help businesses hire veterans. Imagine if two other key portions of the AJA—a bill to help states keep teachers, firefighters and police on the payroll, and a bill to invest in infrastructure and construction—had passed instead of being blocked by Republicans in Congress.

The economic recovery is still fragile enough, and unemployment still high enough, that we need to keep supporting those out of work by extending unemployment insurance. Pulling away that lifeline would be a real hit to families and to the economy as a whole. We should also renew the payroll tax holiday that helps put extra money in the pockets of 160 million working people.

Over 5,000 of you sent emails, tweeted, and wrote on AG Schneiderman’s Facebook page encouraging him to investigate the banks, stand strong against pressure from financial institutions and Administration officials, and use his authority to hold lawbreakers accountable.

Today, it’s clear: Schneiderman heard you. And he isn’t wasting any time:

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today filed a lawsuit against several of the nation’s largest banks charging that the creation and use of a private national mortgage electronic registry system known as MERS has resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in New York state and federal courts, harming homeowners and undermining the integrity of the judicial foreclosure process.

This lawsuit doesn’t target some small players. Schneiderman is already tangling with the big boys:

The lawsuit asserts that employees and agents of Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, acting as “MERS certifying officers,” have repeatedly submitted court documents containing false and misleading information that made it appear that the foreclosing party had the authority to bring a case when in fact it may not have. The lawsuit names JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Bank of America, N.A., Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., as well as Virginia-based MERSCORP, Inc. and its subsidiary, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.

What’s more? This is in addition to Schneiderman’s role as co-chair of the “financial crimes unit” that President Obama announced at the State of the Union. As Dave Dayen points out, the latter role is dealing with “pre-bubble” conduct, activities that lead to the 2008 economic crisis. This lawsuit is dealing with the “post-bubble” world, where banks allegedly took actions to stick it to homeowners just the sky was falling.

Schneiderman, along with fellow Justice Democrats Kamala Harris, Martha Coakley, Beau Biden, and Catherine Cortez Masto, is showing what public service is all about. Thanks for listening to us, Eric – as long as you’re holding banks accountable and fighting for homeowners, our members stand with you.

SuperPACs: How a small number of rich people can finally make their voices heard.

How big money and attacks on voting are making elections less democratic.

Whoops. Florida state legislator forgets to take ALEC mission statement out of an ALEC-authored bill she submitted.

Scott Walker hearts union-busting in Arizona.

Can the new mortgage fraud task force get tough?

“Occupy Our Homes” is making a difference.

“What’s happening is that the entire argument that governments should engage in austerity appears to be collapsing.”

When Rick Snyder thinks you’re being divisive, maybe you should cool it.

Letter: Their lips say “Obama,” but Mitt, Newt, and Mitch are running against FDR.

Indiana pastor takes on “right to work” from a Biblical stance.

Floridians protest “Pink Slip Mitt.”

Jon Stewart weighs in on Romney and “the very poor.”

The Affordable Care Act has saved nearly 3.6 million people enrolled in Medicare $2.1 billion on their prescription drugs in 2011, finds a new report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the health care reform law signed by President Obama in 2010:

is already saving money for millions of Americans with Medicare. As we move forward, we will close the donut hole completely and save even more money for everyone with Medicare.

The Affordable Care Act—which Republican lawmakers are fighting to repeal—provides a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and, beginning this year, a 14 percent discount on generics. Last year, it provided a 7 percent discount on covered generic medications for people who hit the prescription drug coverage gap known as the donut hole, with more than 2.8 million beneficiaries receiving $32.1 million in savings on generics.

Overall, the 3.6 million Americans who hit the donut hole saved an average of $604 on the cost of their prescription drugs. The Affordable Care Act closes the donut hole completely by 2020.

Click here for a state-by-state look at donut hole savings figures for today’s donut and herefor a fact sheet.

Unfortunately, anti-worker forces in other states are looking to follow Indiana’s lead.

In Ohio:

An Ohio group has been cleared to continue its effort to push a ballot initiative that would keep workers covered by labor contracts from having to join a union or pay dues.

Attorney General Mike DeWine on Wednesday said Ohioans for Workplace Freedom has provided a “fair and truthful” summary of its proposed right-to-work amendment.

In Minnesota:

A bill to put the right-to-work issue on the November ballot is being authored by state Republicans Sen. Dave Thompson from Lakeville and Rep. Steve Drazkowski from Mazeppa.

And in Michigan:

Some Michigan Republicans have been pressuring Governor Snyder to get behind a right to work bill in Michigan but he wants nothing to do with it, reiterating during congressional testimony yesterday that it would just bring everything to a grinding halt in Lansing.

The political situations in all of these states are different, but fortunately they are all tougher terrain for union-busting bills than Indiana.

Ohio’s Gov. John Kasich has not expressed interest in making “right-to-work” a priority, especially after his similarly anti-worker Senate Bill 5 got overwhelmingly spanked last year at the polls. “If people in this state feel that you need right-to-work, I don’t think people even know what that is,” Kasich said. That’s politician code for “please, leave me out of this.”

Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder is trying to position himself as the moderate of the freshman bunch. Talking about the backlashes in Wisconsin and Ohio, Snyder indicated he doesn’t want a similar situation in Lansing. “If you want to draw it as a contrast, you look at now that they’ve had those things happen, do they have a productive environment to solve problems? Not necessarily,” he told the Huffington Post, “They’re still overcoming the divisiveness, the hard feelings from all of that.”

And thanks in part to Working America pounding the pavement in 2010, Minnesota working families have an ally in Governor Mark Dayton, who opposes right to work. However, he doesn’t have the power to veto constitutional amendments proposed by the majority of the legislature. The current effort by Republican legislators is to put the issue on the November ballot.

All these efforts pale in comparison to Arizona’s blitzkrieg against public unions that caught workers by surprise this week. A series of bills were introduced late at night on Monday and passed out of committee just 48 hours later – including a Wisconsin-style bill that would ban unions from representing any state, county, or municipal employee.

A high profile New York Times piece talked about Republican governors moderating their agendas in 2012. We’ll believe it when we see it. For now, all we’re seeing is a continuation of 2011’s all-out war on workers, and a complete nationwide negligence of the jobs and unemployment crisis.

Today President Obama proposed welcome new assistance to homeowners who cannot refinance their mortgages because the bursting of Wall Street‘s real estate bubble has led to the precipitous decline of their homes’ value.  These underwater mortgages are hampering America’s economic recovery by preventing homeowners who are current on their mortgage payments from taking advantage of today’s low interest rates.

Without a path to refinance their underwater mortgages, millions of working families are trapped paying inflated mortgage payments.  We need to ensure that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy of maintaining low interest rates helps all Americans, not just the big banks.  That’s why today’s announced plan is so important to getting our economy working again.

The jobs crisis and the foreclosure crisis are two sides of the same coin – we need to tackle both to repair our economy.  We applaud the President’s leadership in offering jobless homeowners at least 12 months of forbearance on their mortgage payments to get back on their feet.  And Congress must act now and enact President Obama’s Project Rebuild to invest $15 billion in construction jobs to renovate homes and businesses in communities where foreclosures are most concentrated.

As proposed by the President, a Homeowner Bill of Rights will protect working families from abusive mortgage servicing practices.  Principal reduction will offer genuine help to homeowners who are struggling with their mortgage payments.  The big banks that caused the financial crisis now need to pay their fair share to help homeowners refinance their underwater mortgages.  We strongly support the President’s commitment to hold the banks accountable by partnering with state Attorneys General to investigate wrongdoing in the creation of mortgage backed securities.