Teamsters rock IN Statehouse
Time Magazine
Posted January 18, 2012
Chants of "Occupy the Superbowl" and "Labor's in the house" are ringing through the Indiana Statehouse now as a large crowd grows inside the building.

House Republicans denied anti-RTW Democrats meeting space, so they caucused in the Rotunda. Workers surrounded the Democrats in a huddle reminiscent of that will happen at Lucas Oil Stadium next month.

Teamsters from all corners of Indiana and beyond headed to the Statehouse early this morning to lobby against the right-to-work-for-less bill that the Republican leadership is trying to move like shit through a goose quickly.
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1 Million Recall Signatures vs. 1 Partisan Judge
The Brad Blog
Posted January 18, 2012
Fed up with the hard-right's oligarchic, union busting agenda, on Tuesday, opponents of Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker (R) delivered a Recall petition to the state's Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.) containing more than one million signatures --- approximately 459,792 more than the 540,208 valid signatures required to trigger a statewide gubernatorial recall under WI law.

Those one million signatures are about to run into an attempted roadblock, however, courtesy of two questionable rulings by Republican Waukesha Circuit Judge J. Mac Davis in the Friends of Scott Walker vs. Brennan case.

The Judge's first questionable ruling was to deny the state Democratic Party's motion to intervene as defendants in the case. The second ruling, issued orally, also found in favor of the GOP, aspiring to force a significant delay in the process of validating signatures (and, therefore, the recall election itself) by shifting the statutory burden for challenging the validity of signatures from Walker to the G.A.B. That second ruling is in direct contradiction to decades of recall history in the Badger State and upends existing law --- a law that went unchallenged by Republicans previously, and worked rather well, even as recently as last year's recall elections of 6 GOP state Senators and 3 from the Democratic Party.

Both rulings, currently the subject of an appellate challenge by the Democrats, may border upon judicial misconduct by a partisan jurist with disturbing ties to a previous statewide scandal...
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Gingrich: I ‘Don’t See’ Why Calling ‘Food Stamps’ An African-American Issue Is Insulting
Think Progress
Posted January 18, 2012
Earlier this month, former Speaker Newt Gingrich made the offensive claim that his policies should appeal to African-Americans because he will “talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps” — as if receiving federal food assistance was a universal component of the black experience in the United States. When confronted with these remarks at last night’s GOP debate, however, Gingrich was utterly dismissive of the mere suggestion that they might be insulting:

JUAN WILLIAMS: Speaker Gingrich, you recently said black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps. You also said poor kids lack a strong work ethic, and proposed having them work as janitors in their schools. Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?

GINGRICH: No, I don’t see that.

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Romney: Out of Touch with Mainstream America
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted January 18, 2012
First, multimillionaire Mitt Romney told a group of jobless workers he’s also “unemployed.”

Next, Romney thought there was no problem in stating publicly that he likes to “fire people.”

Now, the Republican presidential wannabee proved yet again how out of touch he is with mainstream Americans by showing the extent to which he’s a member of the elite 1 percent. In South Carolina yesterday, Romney admitted he pays “around” a 15 percent tax rate, while earning $364,000 a year in speaker’s fees alone—an income he described as “not very much.”

While estimates vary on what income or earnings qualifies someone to be part of the elite 1 percent, there’s agreement that the minimal annual income for that aristocratic group is $350,000 a year. Meaning Romney’s speaking fees alone put him in the 1 percent.

Meanwhile, Romney’s low tax rate—people making more than $35,000 a year pay a 25 percent tax rate, while personal tax rates go up from there to 35 percent—is based on investment income, rather than—his words—”ordinary income.” You know, the kind of “ordinary” hourly pay and annual salaries the vast majority of us “ordinary” wage workers depend upon for survival.

Working Americans, whose median annual income is $49,445, would have to work more than seven years to make what Romeny said he raked in via speaker’s fees alone in one year. But 1 percenter Romney sees that sum as chump change.
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Showdown looms in Longview
NW Labor Press
Posted January 18, 2012
A showdown is coming in Longview, Washington. Some time in late January or early February, the first ship will come down the Columbia River to be loaded at a brand-new grain terminal — and will be confronted by union members, families, supporters, and Occupy Wall Street activists from Longview, Seattle, Portland, and Oakland.

The ship will be escorted by the U.S. Coast Guard. That intervention by the U.S. military in a domestic labor dispute drew a strongly worded resolution of condemnation Jan. 9 from the San Francisco Labor Council. Meanwhile, at the terminal, Port of Longview Berth 9, it’s expected that local police from multiple jurisdictions will stand guard.

Officially, the employer in the dispute is EGT, which is registered in Oregon as a limited liability corporation with offices at 101 SW Main St, Suite 1800, Portland. But EGT (Export Grain Terminal) is a stand-in for Bunge [Pronounced BUN-gee with a hard "g"], an agribusiness giant with operations in 40 countries. Bunge, valued at $8.5 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, has a 51 percent controlling interest in EGT, alongside two co-investors: ITOCHU Corporation of Japan and STX Pan Ocean Co. of South Korea.
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Trumka Dissents from Jobs Council Report
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted January 18, 2012
The 72-page report, issued yesterday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, makes many solid suggestions for how to address our nation’s jobs crisis, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. But Trumka says the fundamental focus is so flawed that, as a member of the council, he issued a dissent to the report. In sum, Trumka writes:

I believe the report downplays the need for a proactive role for the U.S. government in many of these areas; fails to address the significant additional revenues needed to address the challenges identified on an appropriate scale; and in many cases erroneously identifies the root causes of the underlying structural problems.

While agreeing with the report’s support for a vibrant and growing manufacturing sector, Trumka says the report does not address the fact that “our government’s own policies with respect to trade, taxes, and currency have created enormous competitive disadvantages for American-based producers.”
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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stuck hearing that 'Dr. King would have been on the side of workers'
Daily Kos
Posted January 18, 2012
The day before the delivery of more than enough signatures to force a recall election against him, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was present as the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. was given a particularly powerful tribute by University of Maryland law professor and civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill.

"Many people want to own Dr. King's memory and claim him for their own," Ifill said:

I admit that I too wonder on occasion how Dr. King would respond to the great challenges of our day. Of course, we can never really know, but we have some clues and it would be an insult to the 12 hard years of extraordinary work that constitutes Dr. King's legacy to this country to pretend that we don't know what he stood for.

Those clues? Ifill summoned King's own words and actions on war, housing and mortgage discrimination, mass incarceration, and then, with Scott Walker sitting just feet from her, she said, "We know that Dr. King would have been on the side of workers struggling to receive a fair wage and decent working conditions. We know this ... we know this ... we know this ..."—and here, Ifill's repetition is not because she lost her way but because she could not be heard above the sustained roar of the crowd in the Wisconsin Capitol, with Scott Walker smirking away behind her. "We know this not because Dr. King was partisan," she finally continued. "Dr. King famously said 'both political parties have betrayed the cause of justice.' We know this because Dr. King died in Memphis, Tennessee where he had come to march in solidarity with the city's striking black sanitation workers."
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New AFL-CIO Campaign Highlights How ‘Work Connects Us All’
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted January 18, 2012
iewers in Austin, Texas, and Pittsburgh are getting the first public look at a new AFL-CIO television spot, “Work Connects Us All: America’s Unions.”

The evocative ad features members of many unions, from virtually every industry, and is part of a broad campaign that aims to “fly above the tactics and controversies of the day” and connects with people around the values associated with work, according to AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler.

Rounding out the campaign’s features are social media and online ads, and a dynamic, interactive website, www.WorkConnectsUsAll.org.
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GOP plan on unemployment insurance just one in party's string of efforts to punish working people
Daily Kos
Posted January 18, 2012
ver since the FDR administration initiated the federal-state partnership that forms the nation's unemployment insurance program, Republicans have sought ways to weaken it. Protection for troubled corporations is one thing; protection of out-of-work individuals, you know, real people, is another thing altogether in the GOP mindset. The party has been hard at work during the Obama administration to make life tougher for Americans covered by the program. They're at it again.

Destroying the program is impossible, even for a Republican Party in the thrall of tea partiers and the Koch brothers—pardon me for being redundant. But diluting the program, making it serve fewer people, reducing how much they get and giving the states even more say in how it operates, has been their m.o. for the past two-and-a-half years. The latest attempt can be found in the House version of the bill to extend the payroll-tax cut for a full year. At the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Hannah Shaw and Chad Stone have shredded the proposal.

What House Republicans seek to do is authorize the Secretary of Labor to let up to 10 states use UI funds for doing things other than paying benefits to jobless workers. This will provide what they say is needed flexibility. Given that several GOP-dominated states have already used long-standing flexibility to whack their UI programs, there's little doubt 10 states could be found to do what the House Republicans want, if they can just get a Secretary of Labor who is nothing like Hilda Solis.
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Leave child-labor laws alone
Washington Monthly
Posted January 18, 2012
Support for child-labor laws was taken as a given for much of the 20th century. The fact that this seems to be changing is getting kind of creepy.

Marie Diamond flags a new example: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) trying to connect child-labor laws to childhood obesity.
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HOUSE OF CARDS: In Addition to Walker, Five More Top GOP Legislators in Wisconsin Will Be Facing Recall Elections This Year
We Party Patriots
Posted January 18, 2012
While the media’s attention has mostly been on whether or not Wisconsin voters can be the third state to repeal a governor (California repealed Gray Davis in 2003 and North Dakota recalled Lynn Frazier in 1921) there are five other Wisconsin Republicans who will have to fight for their jobs this year as well. Many are new faces to the state legislature who have wholeheartedly supported the Scott Walker administration’s unpopular, anti-worker agenda. They are: Walker’s Lieutenant Governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, Senate Majority leader Scott Fitzgerald, State Senator Pam Galloway, State Senator Van Wanggaard and State Senator Terry Moulton
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CWA Targets Duffy and Cravaack Over FAA Reauthorization Fight
Crooks and Liars
Posted January 18, 2012
Listen to the radio spots here

The Communications Workers of America launched new ads targeting vulnerable Republican incumbents Sean Duffy (WI) and Chip Cravaack (MN) in an attempt to get them to vote in favor of an extension of the Federal Aviation Administration. As previously reported, Republicans refuse to extend the authorization for the FAA on a long-term basis unless Democrats cave and allow a provision in the extension that would effectively prevent airline employees from forming unions. The FAA previously shut down because of Republican stalling tactics and another shutdown could be on the way if an extension isn't passed in the next few weeks.
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Rich Ahearn, NLRB regional director, retires
NW Labor Press
Posted January 18, 2012
Rich Ahearn — northwest regional director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — retired Dec. 30 after 37 years with the agency.

NLRB attorney Anne Pomerantz will serve as acting regional director until Ronald Hooks replaces Ahearn in April. Hooks, a 40-year NLRB employee, currently directs the Memphis, Tennessee, regional office.
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New polls: Economy still Bush's fault, GOP responsible for gridlock
Daily Kos
Posted January 18, 2012
What seems obvious to us is news to Washington pundits:

A majority of Americans believe that former President George W. Bush is more responsible than President Obama for the current economic problems in the country, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Fifty-four percent of respondents said that Bush was more to blame while 29 percent put the blame on Obama; 9 percent said both men deserved blame while 6 percent said neither did. Among registered voters, the numbers are almost identical; 54 percent blame Bush, while 30 percent blame Obama.

Independents, widely considered the most critical voting bloc this fall, continue to blame Bush far more than Obama for the economic troubles. Fifty-seven percent of unaffiliated voters put the blame on the former Republican president, while 25 percent believe the blame rests more with Obama.

Heck, even one in five Republicans say Bush is more responsible than Obama for the state of the economy!

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#J21: Occupy the Corporations
Crooks and Liars
Posted January 18, 2012
On Saturday, January 21, activists across the country working with Public Citizen will “Occupy the Corporations” in a series of demonstrations planned throughout the country, designed to expose the fraud that is corporate personhood.

The demonstrations will target corporations like Bank of America and Chevron, calling them out on "the hijacking of our democracy."

In addition to the “Occupy the Corporations” demonstrations, Public Citizen will be hosting rallies in California, Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont with state law makers and other allied organizations to highlight the push for resolutions in those states legislatures to overturn Citizens United.

“The groundswell of national grassroots activity in support of a constitutional amendment we’re seeing is tremendous,” said Mark Hays, campaign coordinator for Public Citizen’s Democracy is for People Campaign. “With this sort of momentum, we’re ready to write the next chapter of our campaign to ensure that democracy is for people, not corporations.”

For more information about the “Occupy the Corporations” movement, including how you can get involved, click here.
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