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)

The following is a guest post by Sylvia Bly, a Cleveland Working America member.

Recently, I went to a U.S. Senate field hearing in Cleveland about House Bill 194.  I heard arguments for and against HB 194, a bill that’s a real stinker to me. Its main objectives are to make it much harder to cast your vote, count fewer votes and remove local control for each county.

The courtroom was pretty formidable, but once the hearing started, I was transfixed on the due process I was witnessing.  This hearing went to the heart of the issue: HB 194 would impede voters from exercising their rights.  Listening to Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), our own Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Congresswoman Marcia Fudge (D-OH) was inspiring, but it also dredged up some memories of a time of great turmoil in our nation.

I remember when I was a young girl and Jim Crow laws were in place in the Southern states. Jim Crow laws, which existed until 1965, were all about a “separate but equal” status for African-Americans.  During the ‘60’s our nation was embroiled with civil unrest between those who wanted to keep minorities “in their place” with all the economic, educational and social inadequacies, while others fought to right these wrongs. I think about how my own mother was born a mere nine years after women won the right to vote. So now in Ohio and across the nation, we’re witnessing new legislation to turn back the clock and erase so much of the progress that’s been made to empower all of us to fully participate in our elections.

HB 194 was supposedly introduced to address voter fraud. But how come, when asked, none of the panelists in support of HB 194 could present a single documented case of such fraud?  That reinforced my suspicion that the real reason for HB 194 is voter suppression. If I had my say, any legislator who wants to introduce a bill that restricts my opportunities to vote should have to prove the need for these changes.  Otherwise whatever party is in office could finagle legislation in favor of their own party’s agenda.  That’s not democracy, people.

Abraham Lincoln said it best in the Gettysburg Address when he wrote that our government is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Every provision in HB 194 is a huge step backward and undermines the very foundation of our Republic. I’m having such a difficult time comprehending how any legislator who takes an oath of office to ensure their constituents’ inalienable rights would work to get around not just the letter of the law, but more importantly, the spirit of the law. We pay their salaries with our tax dollars; these legislators are supposed to be working for us.

After Ohioans worked hard to gather over 300,000 signatures to put this bill to a vote, House Republicans voted to repeal HB 194. Not only did they prevent the people of our state from having their say, but the GOP also left in place provisions that eliminated voting the weekend before the election. Now it seems to me that if a bill is going to be repealed, it should be repealed in total.  I mean, wouldn’t it be nice to buy a CD, burn your favorite songs and return it?  That’s why return policies were written and are enforced. Meanwhile, our referendum is null and void. It’s amazing to me how our legislators have decided they have no rules and don’t have to answer to their own constituents.

I guess my fellow Working America members and I need to work even harder to make sure our elected officials in Columbus are listening to working families across the state. Join me and become a super activist in Ohio.

Can a former coal miner win an election against a millionaire? Just ask Clyde McKnight.

A retired coal miner from southern West Virginia, he worked for more than 30 years in the mines and currently serves as the South Central AFL-CIO president. McKnight defeated millionaire and former gubernatorial candidate Melvin Kessler in the Democratic primary by a razor-thin margin of 52 votes this past Tuesday, a win in large part to the grassroots efforts of working people.

A former coal miner beating out a millionaire for a state representative seat was just one of the success stories in West Virginia’s primary election. More than one-third of the 100 candidates that the West Virginia AFL-CIOendorsed this year were union members. And they’re enjoying a high success rate –of the 34 union members who ran in the state primary on Tuesday, 30 won their races.

Many of these candidates see elected office as an extension of the work they are already doing within their unions to give back to their communities.

Drawing on his experience in the mines, McKnight campaigned on a platform of investing in affordable energy and bringing back American manufacturing. “As a coal miner, I understand the unique struggles we have in West Virginia,” McKnight said.

American manufacturing was built on affordable energy, on coal. We can’t afford gas prices at almost $4 per gallon.

Yesterday, House Republicans pushed through (by a 218-199 vote) a bill to override the “sequester” in the debt ceiling deal and instead cut around $240 billion from domestic programs, with big impacts for the most vulnerable. Meant to replace the (smaller) defense cuts mandated by the debt ceiling deal, this bill really shows the House GOP’s priorities: they are 100% unwilling to ask anyone for any more tax revenue and deeply uninterested in maintaining programs that help keep families afloat and healthy.

Question: Are the House Republicans pursuing this ideological crusade in defiance of public opinion? Answer: Do you even have to ask? As Jonathan Bernstein notes, either they don’t believe what the polls say about what their constituents want, or they don’t care.

Instead, let’s talk about the things that would be cut under this bill:

• The American Community Survey, a part of the census which gives the largest-scale picture available of the what and where of poverty, housing and income.
• The Community Services Block Grant, a fund that support programs for children and seniors like foster care and Meals on Wheels.
• Food stamps, which would see 2 million lose their benefits entirely.
• Affordable Care Act subsidies, resulting in some 350,000 people losing coverage.
• Free and reduced-price school lunches.

We’ve said all along that there’s no reason for us to be here, except that congressional Republicans turned the routine debt-ceiling vote into a manufactured crisis. Now the House Republicans are trying to take advantage of that crisis to cripple our ability to help working-class people, retirees and kids. It’s appalling, but not surprising. We hope the Senate will refuse to join in with these devastating cuts.

At the center of the firestorm is Governor Scott Walker, who earned the ire of Wisconsin voters for his relentless drive to restrict collective bargaining rights for 350,000 state workers, as well as his negligence toward Wisconsin’s job crisis. But before he became a household name, Walker served in the State Assembly from 1993-2002, where he was an ALEC member from 1995-1998.

During that time, Walker worked with fellow ALEC politician Governor Tommy Thompson to pass a model “Truth in Sentencing Bill,” which was developed by ALEC’s now-shuttered Public Safety and Elections Task Force. The bill required all criminal defendants to serve “no less than 85 percent” of the sentence imposed. For those convicted of violent crime, the bill called for them to serve 100 percent of the sentence imposed by the court; no parole, and no chance for early release.

This bill was developed specifically to benefit an ALEC member corporation, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which for many years housed overflow Wisconsin inmates in other states. CCA was on ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force at the time.

Walker’s Lieutenant Governor, former TV anchor Rebecca Kleefisch, has not previously held office, and therefore has not officially been an ALEC member. However, the three Senators targeted for recall on June 5th are all members of ALEC task forces, as was Sen. Pam Galloway, who was targeted for recall before she resigned in March.

• Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), like Gov. Walker was a member of the ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force, which helped develop model Stand Your Ground and voter suppression bills. He also served as ALEC State Chairman.
• Sen. Terry Moulton (R-Chippewa Falls) was a member of ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, which developed model bills that cut state worker pensions and gave tax handouts to corporations.
• Sen. Van Wanggard (R-Racine) was also a member of ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force.

ALEC’s influence over Wisconsin legislators also extends to taxpayer pocketbooks. Fitzgerald, Moulton, and Wanggard are three of 12 Republican State Senators who used taxpayer funds to help pay for their ALEC membership fees.

When we talk about the uprising in Wisconsin, we frequently talk about the way Walker and his allies have attacked workers’ rights, or ignored the jobs crisis. But folks are also upset by the idea that these politicians just don’t have their best interests in mind, in matters ranging from voting rights and public safety to the regulation of drinking water.

As the records show, Walker, Fitzgerald, Wanggard, and Moulton are affiliated with an organization that seeks to impose with narrow, corporate, profit-oriented goals into the laws that govern our communities. All of them have sat down at a table where corporations and legislators are equals and developed pieces of model legislation, many of which have become the law of the land in Wisconsin.

They are all subject to recall on June 5th in part because the people of Wisconsin want true legislators, true public servants; not just human delivery systems for ALEC’s cookie-cutter, corporate-backed agenda.

A big win for nurses at 10 Florida hospitals, who won their first collectively-bargained contract.

States with strong unions have better economic mobility.

“You can basically throw a dart off of a building and hit someone with a foreclosure horror story.”

The new poor: Florida families struggling as Gov. Scott cuts services.

Protesters turn Bank of America shareholders meeting into “Bank vs. America.”

What happened inside the Bank of America shareholders meeting yesterday.

AFL-CIO President Trumka says we need to revive manufacturing.

Un-shocking news of the day: the changes in tax policy over the past decade mostly benefited the wealthiest.

Bruce Springsteen’s album and tour: a surprisingly relevant, broadly appealing take on what’s happening to our politics and our economy.

Video of the day: civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis shuts down a voter-suppression amendment.

The Census was good enough for Thomas Jefferson. But apparently not so for today’s House Republicans. Yesterday, they passed, by 232 to 190, a measure to cut the American Community Survey, conducted annually as part of the U.S. Census.

Republicans “attacked the survey as an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, according to Michael McAuliff at The Huffington Post. McAuliff notes that none other than left-leaning, government-loving George W. Bush in 2005 expanded the Census survey from every 10 years to an annual survey of 250,000 households, “making the survey more manageable, cheaper and more timely.”

As McAuliff reports: “Rep. Chaka Fattah, who ran the floor debate for Democrats, seemed especially vexed.”

“We’ve been doing surveys in the long form since 1790 as a nation,” Fattah said, referring to the time when Thomas Jefferson oversaw the census. “It’s critically important. The idea that we’re going to leave the greatest country in the world with less information about the condition of communities and of our families—and that we’re going to do that appropriately—defies logic.”

The good news is that the Democratically controlled Senate is too smart to pass such a dumb bill.

But House Republicans weren’t done. David Waldman at Daily Kos sums up the other stellar moves yesterday by House Republicans (our letter of opposition to this bill that we sent to House members is here.):

The House snuck in a few suspension bills early on, before diving back into the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill. It was another marathon session, and by late last night they debated some 20-plus proposed amendments. Oh, let’s see…there was one prohibiting the use of funds for defending court challenges to the Affordable Care Act. And one to prohibit the use of funds to litigate against any of state on behalf of the National Labor Relations Board pertaining to secret ballot union elections. And one to prohibit the use of funds by the Department of Justice to bring any action against any state for implementation of a state law requiring voter identification. And of course, one to prohibit the use of funds to implement a section of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which allows miniature horses to be used as service animals. Gotta have that.

Meanwhile, America’s unemployed workers struggle to find jobs in an economy in which there are more than three jobless workers for every one job, yet these are the issues congressional Republicans are occupying themselves with.

What do you think? Should House Republicans focus on miniature horses and Census surveys?