Occupy Wall Street Protests Gain Labor and Progressive Support
Crooks and Liars
Posted September 30, 2011
The mainstream media may be ignoring the protests in New York by the Occupy Wall Street group, but they won't be able to ignore it much longer as the support for their mission continues to grow. The latest development is that the Transit Workers Union voted to join the protests, with more than 200,000 members nationally.

Yesterday, Crooks and Liars writer murshedz called on progressive groups to join in support of the protests and it seems that the number of groups that agree with him is growing quickly. Blogger Matt Stoller argues that the occupation of Wall Street is indicative of much more than a simple protest.

Other groups that have expressed their support are the United Federation of Teachers, 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU, Workers United, the Working Families party, the Coalition for the Homeless, MoveOn.org, Make the Road New York, the Coalition for the Homeless, the Alliance for Quality Education, Community Voices Heard, United New York and Strong Economy For All.

Separately, union members from the Air Line Pilots Association protested in the New York streets in favor of fair wages and benefits.

The actions in New York by Occupy Wall Street and other organizations are also spreading to other locations and are related to protests like the Wisconsin rallies against Scott Walker and the Awake the State movement in Florida. They are a sign that the mass of Americans is tired of conservative economic politicians and businessmen who are selling out the people while making themselves rich.
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Huge Crowd Of 5,000 Now At Occupy Wall Street Protests As First Wave Of Union Support Arrives
AlexanderHiggins.com
Posted September 30, 2011
Update: Reports are the protestors have now shut down NYPD headquarters.

Yesterday 4 unions announced their support for the Occupy Wall Street protests, including the massive 200,000 TWU, The Teamster’s Union, SEIU and the IWW. The a collective group with one million members announced their support. Even media mogul Russell Simmons told MSNBC he would be joining the movement vowing to bring hundreds of thousands of people.

Now, NYPD police scanners are estimating a crowd up to 5,000 are occupying liberty square in a scene that is now starting to look more like Egypt’s Tahrir square.

In fact the protests have become so large that Fox News has set up a live stream covering the protests.
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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Backs ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ Says Going To The Streets May Be ‘Only Recourse’ We Have
Think Progress
Posted September 30, 2011
During an appearance at the Brookings Institution yesterday, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka was asked about the ongoing occupation of Wall Street by demonstrators outraged at the financial industry’s behavior. Trumka told the questioner that he “happens to agree” with the protesters and that “being in the streets and calling attention to issues is sometime the only recourse you have.”
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Occupy Seattle!
The Stranger
Posted September 30, 2011
A satellite of the Occupy Wall Street movement is coming to Westlake Center, conveniently titled Occupy Seattle. So who are these people anyway, and why are they coming to our city?

From their website:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.

Part one of the Seattle campaign will be this Saturday from 10:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. at Westlake Center Plaza, outside of LUSH. Organizers urge you to attend despite an anticipated low turnout: "WE NEED PEOPLE LIKE YOU TO JOIN IN SOLIDARITY TO SPREAD THIS MESSAGE AND MAKE THIS EVENT BECOME LARGER OVER TIME." The campaign seems light on specifics at the moment, but frankly, we don't care. It's much better to watch liberals get pissed off and try to do something instead of bitching about how Obama has let everyone down.
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Working Families Stall Ohio Voter Suppression
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted September 30, 2011
Fair Elections Ohio has turned in more than 318,000 signatures to put the state’s new voter suppression law, HB 194, on the ballot for a citizens’ veto–a move that puts the law’s provisions on hold for the 2011 and 2012 election cycles. The signatures collected far exceed the 231,000 required to get the measure on the ballot, according to Leadership Conference on Civil Rights President Wade Henderson.

HB 194 would have restricted early voting, barring counties from sending out unsolicited absentee ballots and limited the days and ways people can vote before Election Day.

Read more about this here and here.
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House Republicans jockey to influence the next budget
The Washington Post
Posted September 30, 2011
Congress has avoided a shutdown over the budget for now. But a small faction of House Republicans is already tussling over how to position the party for the next round. House GOP appropriations leaders have released a draft bill to fund labor, health, and education for the 2012 fiscal year. While it’s still just a piece of the overall budget, it’s already making some battle lines clear. In fact, the bill’s biggest obstacle so far has come from within the House GOP itself.

Authored by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), the bill contains some major spending cuts that would set up a big showdown with Democrats should the GOP as a whole get behind it. It zeroes out funds for Obama’s “Race to the Top” education program and Title X family planning; cuts funds for the National Labor Relations Board by 17 percent; tightens Pell Grant eligibility; and slashes $8.6 billion in an effort to block the implementation of health-care reform. It also brings back recently contentious fights, eliminating all federal funding for NPR and Americorps and trying to reinstate the so-called “Stupak amendment” that nearly derailed the Affordable Care Act.
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Longshoremen criticize Port commissioners
MSNBC
Posted September 30, 2011
Port of Longview commissioners went before a large group of longshoremen, and withstood a barrage of negative testimony over the port’s handling of the union’s labor dispute with Grain Elevator operator EGT.

Members claimed various ways port officials have undermined union interests.

“Every one of you guys have to go home and look yourselves in the mirror and look what you’ve done to our community, because it’s a travesty,” said Local 21 President Dan Coffman.

Meanwhile, the National Labor Relations Board is seeking fines against the ILWU of $293,000.
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Washington state's public pensions are among nation's Best-Funded
The Seattle Times
Posted September 30, 2011
IN a recent guest commentary, a researcher from the other Washington argued that our state pension programs are in trouble because elected officials make promises without paying for them. Andrew G. Biggs reaches this conclusion by ignoring both the way our public pensions are managed and the investment returns achieved from pension funds ["State's pension hole deeper than estimates," Opinion, Sept. 14].

Washington's pension plans are among the best-funded in the nation, with assets sufficient to pay the benefits earned. Thirteen of the state's 15 plans are fully funded. Only two, known as PERS 1 and TRS 1, closed to new employees more than three decades ago, are currently underfunded.
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The Wisconsin GOP's Plan to Block Scott Walker's Recall
Mother Jones
Posted September 30, 2011
Each morning, the Twitter account @RecallWalkerBot announces the number of days until Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker can legally be recalled. As of  today, the count stands at 96 days. But before that countdown hits zero, GOP legislators in Wisconsin are doing their best to give Walker more power over the recall process and make it harder for recall organizers to gather the signatures needed to trigger a recall election.

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, the move by Wisconsin GOPers, who control the state Assembly and Senate, would allow Walker to block a policy by the state's non-partisan Government Accountability Board that allows organizers to collect signatures in a recall effort through online forms as opposed to the usual on-the-ground, in-person mode of signature gathering. Democrats see the effort as a brazen power grab aimed at blunting any effort to unseat Walker once he's recall eligible in January 2012. "You have given the governor control of the chicken coop, so to say," said state Sen. Lena Taylor (D).
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Wall Street Mocks Protesters by Drinking Champaigne
Wonkette
Posted September 30, 2011

We haven’t heard from Riley in 18 hours, and fear for the safety of his Monopoly MacBook battery. While we await Waggaman’s new dispatch from the Occupy Wall Street occupation, here’s the actual video of the Wall Street suits literally drinking champagne and laughing from balconies while thousands of serious and determined protesters march below. The best thing about this video is knowing the cops saw the Wall Streeters do this outrageous Marie Antoinette act. And while some of the cops have been utter assholes, most of the NYPD officers working the protest have been decent and good-humored — and they’re also part of public-sector unions, and they’re also working class people, and they’re also wrestling with collapsing home values and collapsing pensions and an intentionally destroyed infrastructure.

Let’s all drink to the cops remembering the faces of everyone yukking it up and sipping champagne on this balcony.
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House Budget Attacks Job Safety for Rooftop Workers
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted September 30, 2011
This just in from the Center for American Progress:

HOUSE GOP BUDGET LAUNCHES FULL ON CLASS WAR – Dave Jamieson: “In addition to blocking President Obama’s health care law and slashing funding for job training, the budget plan presented by House Republicans for health and labor programs this week would scuttle several worker safety protections put forth by the Department of Labor…The budget also takes aim at an obscure but notable Labor Department rule intended to reduce the death and maiming of construction workers who toil on rooftops. The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had planned to ramp up the enforcement of harness rules for roofers working on residential construction sites. In a move that will likely please the construction lobby, the Republican plan forbids the agency from doing so.”

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Next Generation of Labor Leaders Gathers in Minnesota
Public News Service
Posted September 30, 2011
More than 700 young people from around the nation are in Minnesota today through Sunday for the second annual Next Up Young Workers Summit, part of the AFL-CIO's efforts to reach out to working people under age 35.

Jessica Hayssen, the AFL-CIO's Minnesota field director, says the goal is educate, empower and mobilize.

"They walk from this having better knowledge on using social media to fight for workers' rights, how to engage people in their workplace to have a larger voice on the job; and then they'll be able to have an opportunity to have networked with over 700 young people. And where there's networking, that's almost just as powerful as a union contract."
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Undocumented Pregnant Women Forced To Give Birth While Shackled In Front Of Police
Think Progress
Posted September 30, 2011
Just when you thought the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants couldn’t get any more brutal, the Huffington Post reports that pregnant women in Arizona and Tennessee were detained and forced to give birth while shackled to their hospital beds because they couldn’t produce identification.

The shackling of female inmates when they go into labor has been a roundly condemned practice in prisons, but local authorities are now extending that humiliation to non-violent immigrant women whose only crime was being stopped by police without a valid license:

“When I was in bed, I was begging the sheriff, ‘Please let me free — at least one hand,’ and he said, no, he didn’t want to,” Juana Villegas said in an interview with a local Nashville television station. She was describing the experience of being shackled to her hospital bed as she went into labor. Villegas gave birth in the sheriff’s custody, after she was stopped by local police while driving without a valid license.[...]

Like Villegas, Alma Chacon, and Miriam Mendiola-Martinez gave birth in the United States shackled to their hospital beds, without their husbands, and in the presence of a prison guard. They also were not violent criminals, but rather, they were all undocumented and charged with an immigration-related offense in Sheriff Arpaio’s jurisdiction of Maricopa County, Arizona.

What’s more, Villegas’s lawyer notes that driving without a license is usually handled with a simple citation, not an arrest, leading them to believe the women were only detained because they looked like immigrants.
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Scandal-Plagued Private Prison Companies Rake In Huge Profits From Privatization Of Immigration Detention Centers
Think Progress
Posted September 30, 2011
As countries around the world attempt to crack down on immigration, they are no longer turning to government workers held accountable by taxpayers and government officials. Instead, they are outsourcing the operations and staffing of immigration detention centers to scandal-plagued private companies that are raking in exorbitant profits from government contracts even as they face terrible inspection reports, lawsuits, and claims of abuse and neglect from detainees.

The practice has become most prevalent in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States as political leaders attempt to prove to voters that they are tough on illegal immigration by detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants. In the United States, private companies control more than half of the nation’s detention beds, while the number of detainees has increased by more than 40 percent since 2005. In Australia and Britain, where privatization has advanced the fastest, companies like G4S continually bring in profitable government contracts even as their costs and human rights abuses have soared.
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Chinese Currency Bill Could Lead to 2+ Million Jobs
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted September 30, 2011
AFL-CIO Now BlogNext week, the U.S. Senate will take up consideration of a bill to address Chinese currency manipulation. The Republican-controlled House is holding up its version of the legislation, even though it passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2010, with 99 Republicans supporting it.

Unlike other currencies, the Chinese yuan does not fluctuate freely against the dollar but is artificially pegged in order to boost China’s exports. Bringing the Chinese yuan to its equilibrium level—a 28.5 percent appreciation—is essential to creating much-needed jobs in this country. The Alliance for American Manufacturing says addressing Chinese currency manipulation would lead to:

•    The creation of up to 2.25 million American jobs.
•    An increase in U.S. GDP of $285.7 billion (1.9 percent).
•    A $190.5 billion reduction in our annual trade deficit.
•    Annual deficit reduction of $71.4 billion, or between $621 to $857 billion over 10 years, if sustained.

New data show that 2.8 million American jobs were lost or displaced over the past decade due to the growing U.S. trade deficit with China—fueled by currency manipulation.
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Medicaid’s looming Supreme Court battle
The Washington Post
Posted September 30, 2011
The Supreme Court will open its 2011-2012 term on Monday with a crucial case on Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income Americans. The case, Toby Douglas vs. The Independent Living Center of the United States, will likely determine whether private Medicaid providers, like hospitals and doctors, have a right to challenge payment rate cuts in court. It centers on a 10 percent rate cut that the state of California attempted to enact in 2008. California already has the lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates in the country; Medicaid advocates pushed back in the courts, contending that such a cut would push providers out of the program.
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Here’s How to Make Wall Street Pay for Wrecking the Economy
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted September 30, 2011
Three years into the nation’s brutal recession, America’s workers continue to suffer from massive joblessness, skyrocketing foreclosures and weak buying power. But Wall Street—with corporations sitting on $2 trillion in cash—hasn’t paid for its role in causing the near-collapse of the U.S. economy. 

The European Union (EU) this week moved to change that, with the EU formally adopting plans for a financial speculation tax that would raise 57 billion euros a year. The tax could generate billions in revenue to help our ailing economy, stimulate job growth and discourage the reckless, high-volume/short-term profit, computer-driven Wall Street gambling that led to our current economic crisis.

While the EU proposal still needs unanimous approval from EU states, there has been no legislative movement to do the same in this country. As economist Dean Baker notes, “the intensity with which the country’s leading deficit hawks continue to ignore financial speculation taxes (FST) is getting ever more entertaining.”

While deficit hawks like Wall Street investment banker[s]…never tire of preaching the virtues of shared sacrifice, somehow sacrifice for Wall Street never features as part of this story.

Baker also points out the media’s role in failing to report on Wall Street’s role in relentless pushing to reduce the deficit.

What is most remarkable in this picture is the complete failure of the media to identify Wall Street’s role in pushing this deficit reduction agenda. For example, Erskine Bowles, who was a co-chair of President Obama’s deficit commission, is never identified as a director of Morgan Stanley.

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Health Reform Isn’t Responsible For The 9 Percent Increase In Employer Health Premiums
Think Progress
Posted September 30, 2011
The Kaiser Family Foundation released its annual report on health care premiums moments ago, showing that family premiums for employer-based coverage increased by 9 percent in 2011, the most since 2005 when premiums rose by 9.2 percent :

The average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance in 2011 are $5,429 for single coverage and $15,073 for family coverage. Compared to 2010, premiums for single coverage are 8% higher and premiums for family coverage are 9% higher. The 9% growth rate in family premiums for 2011 is significantly higher than the 3% growth rate in 2010. Since 2001, average premiums for family coverage have increased 113%.

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Bailed-Out, Not Lending, Not Paying Taxes, Rolling in Profits, US Parasitic BofA's New $5 Fee
Crooks and Liars
Posted September 30, 2011
In other words, it's absolutely a given that Bank of America not only retain its current profit margin, it should be able to grow it off the backs of their overburdened customers. Free markets rock!

The nation's beleaguered banking industry, which has been raising fees and doing away with free services, has a new target: debit-card users.

Bank of America Corp. is laying plans to charge millions of customers a $5 monthly fee to use their debit cards, and other big banks are expected to follow suit. The industry says it needs the fees to recoup revenue it will lose because of new government regulations that cap what they can charge merchants for debit-card transactions.

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I've Finally Figured Out the GOP
The Stranger
Posted September 30, 2011
HuffPo:

WASHINGTON — Setting a collision course with Democrats that could drag out for months, House Republicans on Thursday unveiled plans to cut federal money for job training, heating subsidies and grants to better-performing schools.

The draft measure for labor, health and education programs also seeks to block implementation of President Barack Obama's signature health care law, cut off federal funds for National Public Radio and Planned Parenthood, and reduce eligibility for grants for low-income college students.

It does come down to that bake sale thing. Those Republican students who sold cupcakes at different rates for different races. All this did, and all it could ever do, was upset or provoke liberals. The same is true with this budget plan. It lacks any seriousness. It will not cut the deficit, it will not create jobs, it will do nothing but upset or provoke liberals. This is the substance of the GOP. Their politics is a frat prank that never grows old for them.
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