Leading off, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities addresses the GOP's Super Congress tax proposals, and if the graph at right isn't an illustration of the war on workers, I don't know what is. A little explanation:
The first component — the large reductions in tax rates — would cut taxes disproportionately for high-income people; the second component would raise taxes disproportionately on lower- and middle-income people (that would be the effect of the basic Feldstein proposal, as Feldstein has acknowledged). The combined result of such a package would be tax increases for lower- and middle-income people to finance further tax cuts (beyond those that the Bush tax cuts already provide) for wealthy people, with a small contribution to deficit reduction.
Moreover, by locking in tax rates that are lower than the Bush rates and using most of the revenue from tax expenditure reform to pay for those rate reductions, the plan would effectively take both tax reform and the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts off the table for the future rounds of deficit reduction that policymakers will need to make.
- This is a really cool story from Jake Blumgart at In These Times. A union and a community group get together to help workers at a grocery store paying far less than minimum wage. The strategy:
After negotiations with the employer broke down, they filed a lawsuit against the company in May. But instead of merely securing the stolen wages, they used the employer’s illegal actions and the staggering sums stolen as leverage. The amount owed to the workers was enough to bankrupt the business, but the workers agreed to settle for well below the total amount in exchange for continued employment under a union contract.
“There wasn’t much the employers could do because we were hitting them from both sides,” says Lucas Sanchez, an organizer with NYCC. “We had the workers organized in the union and we had the workers organized as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The employer tried to retaliate by cutting some hours, but we responded immediately. We had rallies, the support of local elected officials, and press coverage. There wasn’t much he could do except try to negotiate the best settlement possible.”
- Privatization nightmare: Five public services that should never be handed over to greedy corporations
- New York City school bus drivers may strike.
- The Public Action Campaign Fund wants to know about perks members of Congress may be getting from Delta airlines, which was widely cited as a force in last summer's FAA shutdown. The group:
[S]ent letters Tuesday to 20 lawmakers, including the three most senior Republicans in Congress, demanding that they reveal any “corporate benefits” they have received from the airline, including access to its “VIP hotline” or “special elite status.”
- Diane Ravitch introduces few more of the billionaires trying to remake America's public schools.
- AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has four lessons from Ohio after the state's strong rejection of Issue 2.
- New York Times: Bad economy -> high unemployment and low wages among young adults -> young adults live with their parents -> less demand for housing, less money spent on setting up households -> contributes to bad economy.
- In New York, AFSCME is making it clear that even Democratic governors who go after unions will face pushback.
- The UAW is supporting the new light-duty vehicle fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions standards being proposed by the Department of Transportation and the EPA.