The Daily Change

A Chicago Teachers Union action. (Photo credit: Flickr user JeanPaulHolmes)

At 10 PM central standard time last night, 29,000 Chicago teachers and support staff declared that they are going out on strike (read about their grievances and how you can help them here).

On his blog Teacher X, Chicago Teacher Xian Barret explains one of the most important things to understand about the teacher strike: it’s not just about teachers, it’s also about defending kids. Here’s an excerpt from his blog post, where he responds to Chicago Public Schools administration claiming that a strike hurts kids:

When you make me cram 30-50 kids in my classroom with no air conditioning so that temperatures hit 96 degrees, that hurts our kids.

When you lock down our schools with metal detectors and arrest brothers for play fighting in the halls, that hurts our kids.

When you take 18-25 days out of the school year for high stakes testing that is not even scientifically applicable for many of our students, that hurts our kids.

When you spend millions on your pet programs, but thereai??i??s no money for school level repairs, so the roof leaks on my students at their desks when it rains, that hurts our kids.

When you unilaterally institute a longer school day, insult us by calling it a ai???full school dayai??? and then provide no implementation support, throwing our schools into chaos, that hurts our kids.

When you support Mayor Emanuelai??i??s TIF program in diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of school funds into to the pockets of wealthy developers like billionaire member of your school board, Penny Pritzker so she can build more hotels, that not only hurts kids, but somebody should be going to jail.

If you want to learn more about the …

Ryan is now campaigning for the vice presidency, putting himself first in line to be president, a job he says he didn’t want. (Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)

The vice presidential pick is often viewed as more about politics than substance, but as the Americans who groaned at the choice of Sarah Palin in 2008 know, the vice president is just a heartbeat away from the presidency and must be ready to serve.

Is Paul Ryan ready for the presidency? He certainly didn’t think so in 2010. He even explicitly ruled it out. In an interview with The Weekly Standard, he said he wanted to be a “normal person” and that it would be too taxing to run for and serve as president:

But the 40-year-old congressman hasAi??consistently tried to quashAi??the notion that he might run for president and did so again last night during the $50 per person fundraising cruise on Lake Geneva. “No, no there isnai??i??t,” Ryan replied when asked if there’s any chance he would run for president.

“I want to be a normal person,” Ryan continued. “Other people can run for that thing. Other people canai??i??t do this,” he said, pointing to one of his three young children sipping a kiddie cocktail.

What changed Ryan’s mind? Does he really think he’s ready for the presidency when as little as two years ago he was much more interested in being, as he called it, a “normal person”?

Interestingly, Ryan may not be qualified for the presidency if you look at criteria laid out by his running mate earlier this year. Romney said at a campaign event in May that a “president has to spend at least three years working in business before he can become president of …

During a press conference tonight the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) announced that it will be going on strike, its first action of the sort in 25 years.

Why are these 29,000 teachers and school workers going on strike in the nation’s third-largest public school district?

Because they want what all workers want: fair pay and decent working conditions. They also want what all teachers want — to serve their students to their best of their abilities.

Here’s a few things you need to know about the strike, and why the CTU is right and Mayor Rahm Emanuel — who has failed to fairly bargain with the union — is wrong:

Powerful Outside Interests Worked With Rahm To Cripple CTU’s Ability To Strike (They Failed):Ai??Last year, outside education privatization groups like Stand for Children worked with the city council and mayor to raise the strike threshold limit to 75 percent — meaning that 3/4 of teachers had to vote to strike. Jonah Edelman, who works for the group,Ai??braggedAi??during the Aspen Ideas Festival that they had essentially eliminated teachers’ ability to strike. But in June,Ai??nearly 90 percentAi??of CTU members voted to authorize a strike, easily surpassing the barrier that the city and education privatization groups had placed on them. But outside groups haven’t stopped taking aim at union rights. They’ve even paid protesters to demonstrate against CTU.
Rahm Refuses To Pay Teachers What They Were Promised:Ai??Being a teacher takes hard work, and it’s one of the mostAi??poorly-paid professions relative to the work load.Ai??The leadership of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) had agreed to offer teachers a four percent raise last year, but Mayor Emanuel canceled this agreement. The district has refused to address this raise in negotiations. While gutting teachers’ …

Christopher Fallon

RepublicanAi??MassachusettsAi??Senator Scott Brown is in a tough race against progressive champion Elizabeth Warren. On Friday, Brown rolled out an endorsement by state representative Chris Fallon. “We know where your heart is, and your heart is with the people of Massachusetts – particularly, the people of Malden,” said the state rep. of Brown.

But Fallon and Brown’s hearts have been in very different places, when it comes to an issue the people of the state should be very concerned about: union rights.

Last year, there was a rollback of labor rights in the state, as some municipal employees faced cutbacks in their right to collectively bargain over health care. Although the majority of Democrats and Republicans in the state house voted to support this rollback of rights, Fallon was one of a minority of Democrats who opposed the changes and proudly stood with organized labor.

Meanwhile, Scott Brown has proved antagonistic to labor unions. He backed Scott Walker’s budget that decimated public employee collective bargaining in Wisconsin, calling it the “will of the people.” At the height of the battle over bargaining rights in the state, he appeared on MSNBC and actually praised Scott Walker. Watch it:

Brown started his anti-union record very early after being elected. He even demanded to be seating as soon as possible to stop the nomination of pro-union Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

With the endorsement of Brown, Fallon is turning his back on an important constituency that he stood with in the past. It’s important forAi??MassachusettsAi??voters to not let Fallon’s endorsement whitewash Brown’s record (and it’s important for Fallon’s district to remember this next time he’s up for re-election).

(For the record, Brown actually lost much more high-profile support over his …

The Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) is out with a new report that finds that more and more Americans are in “bad jobs” — that is, jobs that offer weak pay and benefits.

Here are a couple of the report’s findings that are particularly shocking:

– Less Jobs Offer Health Coverage:Ai??The report notes that “46.7 percent of jobs did not haveAi??health insurance in 2010, up from 30.2 percent in 1979.” Here’s a graph from the report illustrating this:

– Less Jobs Offer Retirement Plans: CEPR writes that byAi??”2010, the share of workers not participating in Ai??a retirement plan at work stood at 54.5 percent, up from 48.3 percent in 1979.” Here’s a graph from the report illustrating that statistic:Ai??

The report also finds that overall pay has actually increased for most workers, but only by tiny margins: “In 2010, 52.8 percent of workers were in jobs that paid less than $37,000 per year,Ai??down from 59.4 percent in 1979.”

Cumulatively, these numbers paint a picture of America that is failing to live up to the promise of hard work. It’s important to remember that even as benefits are declining for workers, labor productivity has continued to grow over time. This means that Americans are producing just as much or more, but getting less for it. It’s going to take one heck of a progressive movement to turn this sad situation around.

An image of Vanzant from Occupy Our Homes

The Reverend Michael Robert Vanzant is the outreach pastor for Faith Temple in Washington, D.C. He was actuallyAi??thrown out of his original church due to the fact that he was a gay man. So that’s why he started Faith Temple, which is inclusive to everyone.

Two years ago, he had to leave his job as a Metro employee because of a disability. Bank of America had been refusing to work with him to modify his mortgage and he is being threatened with eviction. To make matters worse, Vanzant just suffered a minor stroke and is currently being hospitalized. Things looked dire.

That is, until Occupy protesters got involved. Yesterday, dozens of protesters marched on the U Street location of a Bank of America. “Success today would be if Bank of America calls him and gives him his home back,” said Occupy organizer Mike Haack. “More realistically, this will put Mr. Vanzant on Bank of Americaai??i??s radar.”

Late Thursday afternoon, following the rally, Occupy protesters announced that “Bank of America had reached out to Vanzant after the rally to schedule an appointment to discuss the pastorai??i??s mortgage.”

While this isn’t a guarantee that Vanzant will be able to keep his home, it does mean that the Occupy movement is succeeding in getting Bank of America to the negotiating temple. You can help by calling the Bank of America Home Loan Office atAi??202-797-4940 or the Loan Modification Office atAi??800-669-6607 and asking them to work with Vanzant so that he can keep his home.

A community? Or a Washington, D.C. PR firm?

In November, voters in two cash-strapped California towns — El Monte and Richmond — will go to the polls and decide the fate of a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks. The tax would have two benefits: raising money for the cities and reducing the consumption of unhealthy sodas.

But residents of Richmond have been met with a barrage ofAi??propagandaAi??against the tax. Here’s a billboard that a group calling itself the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes is running. It features a “Richmond resident” warning that the tax would hit the “poor and working people hardest.”

Whatever the merits of this argument, it’s interesting to look into whether it’s actually poor or working people that put up this billboard. The website listed on the board features arguments against the soda tax and urges Richmond residents to vote it down. The website notes that it is partially funded by the American Beverage Association — soda companies — but also claims to represent “thousands of Richmond residents, labor and businesses against unfair taxes.”

But let’s take a look at who really built this website and the public relations campaign designed to take down this soda tax. We did a domain search forAi??http://www.norichmondbeveragetax.com/. It’s registered as a GoDaddy address. The domain is registered byAi??Goddard Claussen Public Affairs — a public relations firm based in Washington, D.C — far away from the town of Richmond, California.

Goddard Claussen recently became Goddard Gunster. Its founding partner is Ben Goddard, who famously crafted the 1993-1994 “Harry and Louise” ad campaign that killed health care reform efforts under the Clinton Administration.

It is perhaps fitting that the same folks who helped kill a program to make Americans healthier are …

ThinkProgress points to a recent speech by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) where he assailed new nutritional standards in schools. King complains that there are parents coming up to him telling him their kids are starving:

He said parents have approached him and have said things like ai???My kids are starving in school.Ai??My kids are being rationed on calories.”

Whatever one’s opinion is about the nutritional standards, it’s hard to take King’s words about child food safety seriously. In July, the congressman moved along with many of his Republican colleagues aggressively to cut food stamps. These cuts would’ve withheld as much as aid for 2 million Americans. He tried to justify these cuts with the following fear mongering:

ai???I know there are people that can’t do anything about it in the short term, but we also know that there are many more that are gaming the system, and we know that these EBT cards are being sold at a discount and traded off for alcohol and tobacco and illegal drugs.”

So if King is willing to push for huge cuts to food stamps, he’s probably not concerned about child hunger. So why all the fighting against nutritional standards? It could be that two of his top ten donors are the crop and agricultural services industries, which specialize in pumping high-fructose corn syrup and other unhealthy products into Americans’ diets.

Health care in America is really expensive, so expensive that it’s out of reach for millions of people. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Insurance middlemen and other for-profit parts of the system drive up the cost with waste that has nothing to do with providing health care.

A new report by the influential Institute of Medicine finds that the U.S. wastes as much as $750 billion every year — about one-third of every dollar — in its health care system. This waste — resulting from needless spending on overhead and administration — has deadly results. The committee estimates that “almost 75,000 needless Ai??deaths could have been averted in 2005 if every Ai??state had delivered care on par with the best performing state health.”

The report lays out a number of broadAi??recommendationsAi??for eliminating this waste, including centering care more closely around patients and bringing a lot of the paperwork involved in health care into the Digital Age.

But there’s one very simple solution for eliminating this waste. If the U.S. had a single health insurance program like Medicare covering everyone, we could eliminate 30 percent of our health care costs that go into the administration, profit, and other costs that result from having thousands of different private insurers acting as middle-men. Covering everyone and saving money in the process. Now that’s progressive.

Contribute to PCCC’s Medicare for All campaign.

Membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — Ai??a powerful corporate front group that writes and passes bills in state legislatures on behalf of Big Business — is a gift that keeps on giving.

The Center for Media and Democracy’s Brendan Fischer notes today that the American Chemistry Council (ACC) — a group of chemical lobbyists who are members of ALEC — is spending big on behalf of Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson, who was an ALEC member as a legislator in the 70’s and 80’s.

So far, ACC has spent $648,600 to promote Thompson. Watch the following ad they’re airing in support of his candidacy. Note that it doesn’t mention any issues that ACC actually deals with in its lobbying and advocacy efforts:

Remember that Thompson said the following during a 2002 ALEC conference: “I always loved going to [ALEC] meetings because I always found new ideas. Then I’d take them back to Wisconsin, disguise them a little bit, and declare that it’s mine.”

ACC has bitterly fought against regulating the plastic additiveAi??bisphenol A (BPA), whichAi??independentAi??studies show can prove a real health risk to children. It’s likely that if Thompson is elected, he will be paying ACC back by helping it avoid regulation of dangerous chemicals like BPA.

Photo credit: Flickr user dbking

Tonight, millions of Americans will watch President Obama address the nation at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

While you’re waiting, here’s a few other speeches from Democratic conventions in the past that are worth watching (listing is chronological order):

Hubert Humphrey, 1954:Ai??In this speech, Humphrey implored the Democratic Party to finally support civil rights, causing 35 delegates from Alabama and Mississippi to walk out. “My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on statesai??i?? rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!” he thundered. Listen to it:
Ai??Bobby Kennedy, 1964:Ai??”If we do our duty, if we meet our responsibilities and our obligations, not just as Democrats, but as American citizens in our local cities and towns and farms and our states and in the country as a whole, then this country is going to be the best generation in the history of mankind,” Kennedy told delegates. Watch it:
Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964: In Mississippi in the 1960’s, a group of civil rights activists formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the state’s Democratic Party, which was dominated at that time by anti-civil rights lawmakers. She gave the following speechAi??to the Credentials Committee of the DNC in a bid to unseat theAi??MississippiAi??delegation or to be seated alongside them. She told of her struggle to register to vote. “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where …

Tonight, progressive icon andAi??MassachusettsAi??Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention. All around the country, PCCC members will be hosting watch parties to view and discuss Warren’s address. (Click here to find a watch party event near you.)

For those of you who will be online during the speech, it will be livestreamed on YouTube at approximately 9:45 PM Eastern Time. You can use the embedded player below to watch:

Use the comment section alone to share your thoughts on the speech and discuss Warren’s message with other PCCC members.

UPDATE: Here’s Warren’s full speech

Donate to Elizabeth Warren.

Pledge to call for Elizabeth Warren in October.

Schumer at the convention.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is able to advance a powerful corporate agenda Ai??in state legislatures because it is bankrolled almost exclusively by big business. Following the outrage over its support for voter suppression and Stand Your Ground laws, businesses have been fleeing the group.

The Energy Action Coalition decided to confront Senator Chuck Schumer (NY) — the second-most powerful Democrat in the Senate — over Duke Energy’s support for ALEC. When asked about the company’s ALEC membership, Schumer replied that he would urge it to “get out of ALEC ASAP.” Watch it:

Schumer’s words are important given Duke Energy’s close ties to Democrats. The company has actually extended a $10 million line of credit for the Democratic convention, and its CEO is a major donor to the event as well.

A protester against “free trade” in El Paso, Texas. (Photo credit: Flickr user BorderExplorer)

One of the key planks of the Democratic Party’s attack on Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s record has been his ties to the outsourcing of American jobs. Here’s a TV ad the Obama campaign has run against Romney. It attacks Romney for his former company Bain’s outsourcing practices:

But if that’s true, then why is the official 2012 Democratic Party platform boasting of the party’s support for “free trade” agreements? Here’s the relevant section:

We have also sought to promote free and fair trade. Because of the economicAi??dynamism of the Asia-Pacific region, which is already home to more than half the global economy,Ai??expanding trade with that region is critical to creating jobs and opportunities for the American people.Ai??Building on the free trade agreement with South Korea that President Obama signed, we are workingAi??with our partners in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum to create a seamless regionalAi??economy, promote green growth, and coordinate regulatory reform. Alongside Australia, BruneiAi??Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam, we are on track to finalize theAi??Trans-Pacific Partnership, a historic high-standard agreement that will address new and emerging tradeAi??issues, lower barriers to the free flow of trade and investment, increase exports, and create moreAi??American jobs.

Exploring opportunities to shape the multilateral trading system to reflect the role andAi??responsibility of major emerging markets in the global economy is a critical part of the Presidentai??i??s tradeAi??agenda. Ai??We will work to expand free and fair trade in the Americas as well. We already export more than threeAi??times as much to Latin America as we do to China, and we will pursue additional opportunities toAi??expand commerce and promote shared prosperity. Last year the President signed free trade …

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R)

One of the ways that special interests get their way is by getting their own people into offices of the government. Last August, Joe Costello, a lobbyist for corporate clients, joined the office of Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) as his director of legislative affairs. Costello actually lobbied for HCA Healthcare, where Scott was famously an executive when the hospital chain was responsible for some of the largest Medicare fraud in history.

Now, having spent a year in Scott’s office, Costello is returning to the exact same lobbying firm,Ai??Rutledge, Ecenia and Purnell — meaning he passed through the revolving door from one side, to the next, only to return to where started.

The Costello example is just one instance of where corporate lobbyists achieved positions of power in Scott’s administration. The governor even appointed a former beer lobbyist unfamiliar with federal voting laws at the state’s secretary of state.

(Photo credit: Flickr user KB35)

Over at The Nation, Lee Fang has a great piece about how foreign money is finding its way into our elections.

Although most of the nation’s attention has been focused on the rise of Super PACs, Fang looks at how another group is impacting the nation’s elections: trade associations. The author finds that one trade association in particular, the American PetroleumAi??InstituteAi??(API), has been spending money in our elections, and this money isn’t necessarily American.

Fang lays out how API is partly funded by the U.S. subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, which also stands to benefit from the Keystone XL pipeline the organization has committed itself to pushing. Additionally,Ai??Tofiq Al-Gabsani, an executive at the company, sits on API’s board. He also happens to be a registered lobbyist for the Saudi government.

The author reminds us that API ads were critical in defeating Joe Sestak in his bid for U.S. Senate, and that they’re now targeting Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and others on behalf of anti-environment candidates. This is an important detail because while U.S. law still prohibits foreign corporations from donating to political action committees, they are still free to back trade associations, including ones like API that intervene in elections.

We encourage you to read Fang’s full piece here. It’s really great.

If you think all of this is as wrong as we do, you can do something about it. Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy Campaign.

Democratic candidate for Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA)

By now, it’s common knowledge that Washington super lobbyist Grover Norquist has successfully intimidated Republicans into not backing any new taxes on the rich and corporations to pay to sustain the America we all love.

But why are Democrats suddenly jumping into Norquists’s camp?

During a recent gubernatorial debate in Washington, both the Republican and Democratic candidates refused to back any sort of tax increase:

But no lip-reading will be required for the Washington state gubernatorial campaign between Republican Rob McKenna and Democrat Jay Inslee.

The two candidates were very clear ai??i?? they forcefully said they would not propose new taxes if elected governor.

ai???I am not proposing and I will not propose tax-rate increases,ai??? McKenna said last week in a debate with Inslee in Vancouver.

Inslee responded by saying, ai???No, I am not going to propose taxes. I do not believe theyai??i??re right for the state of Washington.ai???

This is remarkable, in the light of the sort of budget troubles the state has been in. One-third of the state parks’ department’s full-time positions have been eliminatedAi??and funding for state universities has been cut 50 percent in the past four years, now at a level it hasn’t been since 1991. If anything, voters shouldn’t take any candidate seriously who doesn’t want to promote some sort of way to raise revenues, especially from those who can most afford it. A 2011 Tax Foundation report even finds that taxes across the state put Washington 29th nationally — meaning the state already pays less than most.

Both Inslee and McKenna are simply failing the state with this no new taxes pledge.

Tony Podesta, one of Democratic Washington’s most powerful corporate lobbyists, is in Charlotte this week to cozy up to politicians.

Last week’s Republican National Convention was a no-holds-barred party for lobbyists for Big Business. From free espresso from fracking lobbyists to nightly parties with Coca Cola and weapons lobbyists, Big Money had a great time at the convention last week.

But these corporations aren’t exactly sitting on the sidelines at the Democratic convention this week.

It’s true that the host committee for the convention took an historic and important step of for the first time ever refusing to take any donations from lobbyists or corporations.

But that isn’t stopping Big Business. Here’s a few ways it has found to influence the convention, anyway:

Hosting Watch Events Outside The Convention: The America Petroleum Institute, American Gas Association, Credit Union National Association, Pfizer, and others will be hosting watch parties around a mile away from Bank of America stadium.
Sponsorships: The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney shows off a swag bag that the host committee is giving to journalists. Inside the bag are all sorts of goodies that sponsors of the convention are giving away. These include a pedometer from United Health Group and water bottles from Piedmont Natural Gas. Carney notes that corporations like Wells Fargo and Florida Crystals Corporation (which is a major force of the sugar lobby) are on the sponsor list as well. Duke Energy, notorious for battling any effort to curb climate change, extended a $10 million line of credit for the party to hold the convention, and its CEO has given $100,000 to the host committee.
Parties, Parties, And More Parties: Elite lobbyists have been setting up all sorts of events for lawmakers to …

State Senator Jean Schodorf

The Republican Party has changed. Its leadership is completely obedient to America’s economic elite, and the days where it defended labor unions and government investment in the country’s great middle class are over.

Recognizing this,Ai??Kansas Republican State Sen. Jean Schodorf — who recently lost a bruising primary to a conservative insurgent allied to Governor Sam Brownback — has announced that she will be changing her party affiliation to Democrat or independent:

ai???My family has been Republican since Lincoln – since the party started,ai??? said Schodorf, who was defeated last month by Wichita City Council member Michael O’Donnell. ai???My parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents were all Republicans. But it’s changed. There’s no room for people who actually think in moderation.ai???

Schodorf has held the seat since 2001 and served 12 years on the Wichita school board. But O’Donnell had the backing of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and benefited from independent advertising by the anti-tax, small-government group Americans for Prosperity.

Schodorf was called a ai???taxing queenai??? in one campaign mailer, while her 27-year-old challenger was portrayed in a mailing as ai???Mikeyai??? the baby.

ai???I kept thinking, `We’re in the same party. Why are we crucifying ourselves?’ ai??? said Schodorf, who is looking into starting a blog aimed at moderate Kansans.

Terese Johnson, the Sedgwick County Democratic Party chairwoman, said she hopes Schodorf becomes a Democrat.

Schodorf ran for Congress last year but was defeated by now-Rep. Mike Pompeo — who has been labeled as theAi??congressman from Koch IndustriesAi??due to all the support the billionaire industrialists provided him — Ai??in the Republican primary.

UPDATE: Here’s a couple areas where Schodorf broke from the Republican orthodoxy in the state. She is deeply concerned about cuts to the mental health and education budgets …

A union worker at a conference in DC (Photo credit: Flickr user Medill DC)

Today is Labor Day, a federally recognized holiday designated to celebrate the American worker. But while millions of Americans are enjoying the day off, it’s important to remember where this holiday came from.

InAi??1887Ai??Oregon began the first formal ai???Labor Dayai??? and by 1897 President Glover ClevelandAi??made it a federal holiday, reacting to pressure from unions following the contentious Pullman Strike.

But it wasn’t just this day off that unions gave Americans. Here’s some other things we can thank unionized workers for:

The Weekend:Ai??The ultra-right Mises Institute notes that in the relatively labor union-free year of 1870, the average workweek for most Americans wasAi??61 hoursAi??ai??i?? almost double what most Americans work now. In response to this, in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged inAi??massive strikesAi??in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. ByAi??1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for workers to spend time with their families and engage in other leisurely activities.
Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage:Ai??As unions grew in numbers in the 1930s and 40s, there was a rapid expansion of employers offering their employees health care. As Health Affairs notes, “In industries dominated by a few giant firms, unions used their ai???countervailing powerai??? to make the firms share some of their potential profits with workers in the form of high wages and generous health insurance benefits. “
Ending Child Labor:Ai??Ai??The first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national …

Deal signing cuts to HOPE last year.

Last year, the Republican Governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal — aided and abetted by his party in the state legislature and a faction of appeasing Democrats –Ai??enacted huge cuts to the HelpingAi??OutstandingAi??Pupils Educationally (HOPE) scholarship. These cuts ended HOPE’s status as a full tuition program for most students; the worst brunt of the cuts fell on minority students.

This weekend, Deal attended a football game at the University of Georgia. As he sat in an elite skybox surrounded by 100,000 football fans, many of them students, a plane flew overhead carrying a banner that read: “GovernorAi??DealAi??broke HOPE, txt fixit to 30644.” Watch local news station 11 Alive’s report about the flyover:

The group that paid for the banner to be flown over was Better Georgia, a progressive advocacy organization based in the state. Rather than address the concerns of students whose debt is exploding thanks to Deal and the legislature, the governor’s spokesman chose a very immature response:

“This is paid for by a leftist organization that believes there’s no end to other people’sAi??money,” Brian Robinson said of the banner.

Deal sure knows a lot about other people’s money — specifically, giving more of it to the rich at the expense of the rest of us. Last year, he proposed a tax plan that would’ve granted tax cuts for the richest Georgians while actually increasing taxes on working-class Georgians. Thankfully, his plan was defeated. Hopefully the good people of Georgia will force him to renege on his unfair cuts to HOPE as well.

A screen grab of the deceptive logo and slogan for this front group for for-profit education companies.

This November, Georgia voters will go to the polls and be asked to approve or disapprove a constitutional amendment (Amendment 6) that would allow for the state to go over the heads of local school boards to create charter schools.

Opponents of this amendment, led by local schools boards and progressive leaders, point out that this would drain money from public schools and remove local control from communities.Ai??Even Georgia’s Republican Schools Superintendent John Barge agrees with this argument and opposes the amendment.

But proponents of rapidly expanding, privately-managed charter schools have always countered that these schools are indeed part of the public system.

Yet a look at the finances of those campaigning for the approval of Amendment 6 shows that their push is being bankrolled largely by out of state for-profit corporations.

The deceptively named pro-charter group “Families for Better Public Schools” (FBPS) filed its financial disclosures with the state ethics commission on Thursday. Here’s a rundown of the corporations who are financing the group:

Edison Learning Inc.: This for-profit education management corporation based in Tennessee gave $2,000 to the group.
National Heritage Academies:Ai??This Michigan-basedAi??for-profit company that manages charter schools gave $25,000 to FPBS. Its chief executive J.C. Huizenga gave another $25,000.
Charter Schools USA: Based in Florida, Charter Schools USA, which bills itself as “oldest, largest and fastest-growingAi??education management companies” in America, gave $50,000 to FPBS.
K12 Inc.:Ai??K12 Inc. is a massive online education company. It donated $100,000 to FPBS.

The single biggest donation came from Alice Walton, a Wal-Mart heir. She gave a quarter million dollars to FPBS.

As Georgia voters prepare to go …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation fights for a free and fair Internet. But it will barely get a chance to weigh in on a new trade agreement.

“Free trade” deals have traded away the jobs and rights of American workers for decades. The newest one being cooked up by politicians of both parties is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which some labor advocates are calling the “NAFTA Of The Pacific.”

Obama’s U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) office is responsible for negotiating this new trade deal. Although powerful corporations have gotten to weigh in on it for months, public interest groups are finally getting a chance to air their grievances to negotiators. A very, very small chance.

Techdirt reports that the Electronic Frontier Foundation — a leading Internet freedom group — will get just eight minutes to present its view on the agreement to USTR negotiators during a “Direct Stakeholder Engagement” meeting in Virginia next month. This is particularly disturbing in light of the revelation that TPP may include new intellectual property powers that may curb Internet rights.

That’s the role that public interest groups get when money dictates our politics. From trade, to health care, to consumer safety — Americans will always take a back seat to Big Money unless we reform the way our political system works.

Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign.

One Wisconsin protester’s sign against the Kochs. (Photo credit: Flickr user Sue Peacock)

Yesterday, billionaire industrialist David Koch, who along with his brother Charles has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into right-wing infrastructure and causes, claimed to the press that he actually doesn’t believe in much that the Republican Party promotes.

While attending the Republican National Convention, Koch said that he backs same-sex marriage, thinks the defense budget should be cut and that the U.S. should consider withdrawing from the middle east, and that “maybe itai??i??s going to require some tax increases” to address the budget deficit

This produced the following headline in Politico: “David Koch breaks from GOP on gay marriage, taxes, defense cuts.”

Soon after, numerous other media outlets picked up the Politico story, each also proclaiming that Koch had broken from the Republican Party line.

But all of this begs the question — why should we take Koch at his word? Isn’t it possible that he is simply trying to repair his image in the face of criticism? After all, if Koch really believes these things, then why is he putting up countless millions of dollars to promote causes and organizations that believe the opposite?

Here’s a rundown of a small sample of the organizations that David Koch and his brother have funded:

Americans for Tax Reform:Ai??The goal of this group led by Grover Norquist is ostensibly to battle any form of tax increase. It even asks lawmakers to sign a pledge to never vote for any tax increase ever. It has received at least $40,000 in Koch foundation money from 2005 to 2010.

The Heritage Foundation: This organization, which is against marriage equality, tax increases, and reducing defense spending, has received …

Earlier this week, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) announced that he will not be complying with the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid. “I do not have any intentions of expanding Medicaid,” Deal told a reporter at the Republican National Convention. “I think that is something our state cannot afford.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported yesterday that an estimated 650,000 Georgians are expected to receive care thanks to the Medicaid expansion, which means that Deal’s obstruction would leave an enormous number of people without access to health care (one out of every five Georgians is currently uninsured). Additionally, the state’s hospitals are in uproar over Deal’s decision, with one official saying that he is “certainly putting hospitals at risk” by not allowing the flow of federal dollars that allows for them to care for patients.

As US News & World Reports notes, the “federal government would pick up the tab for most of the Medicaid expansion when it is implemented in 2014, but states would be required to pay for 10 percent of it by 2020.”

That’s a relatively small price to pay for securing the health andAi??well-beingAi??of most of the people in your state. But Deal doesn’t want to pay, and Georgians may suffer as a result.