Dear Scuba,

For more than three quarters of a century, Social Security has meant a great deal to our country.

If you get hurt and become disabled, Social Security is there for you. If a loved one dies, Social Security is there for your family. And if you work all your life and play by the rules, Social Security is there for you when you retire.

Social Security isn’t a bargaining chip, it’s an earned benefit. Yet right now Republicans in the House are threatening to hold America’s credit rating hostage unless we approve cuts to Social Security.

I’m joining with Sens. Hagan, Merkley, Peters and Mark Udall to make sure Social Security is around for another seventy-eight years. We need you to join us. Click here to add your name and stand with me to protect Social Security.

Thank you for joining us to preserve Social Security for this and future generations.



Sherrod

The nation’s most prominent labor organization plans to throw its political weight most heavily into a half-dozen governors’ races in the 2014 cycle, focusing on states where the outcome of gubernatorial elections will be most “consequential” for union members and working-class voters, the AFL-CIO’s top strategist said Tuesday.

Meeting with a small group of reporters, AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer said that the unrelenting state of gridlock in Washington means that state elections will likely have a greater impact on real people’s lives than federal elections.

He named six Republican governors at the top of the AFL-CIO target list: Rick Scott of Florida, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Paul LePage of Maine, John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania.

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Major labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO, have battled Republican governors in the states ever since the 2010 election swept a huge number of them into office. The AFL-CIO has made no secret of its hope to reverse that result, telling POLITICO last December that gubernatorial elections in the Midwest would be a major focus for the 2014 cycle.

From Diane Ayers on 08/06/13 at 6:44 pm
Re Bill Dunn post, your question: "Why did this never happen in Wisconsin's 165 years of history until Scott Walker became governor?"

Because, Bill, this is the first time in Wisconsin history that the core of state government has been illegitmately seized by corporate-owned political fascists, who do not hesitate to suspend civil liberties and distort or defy the constitutional rights guaranteed to this state's citizens.

Their prime directive is to discredit, divide and destroy all those agencies, civic organizations, labor unions,. . even community groups of individual citizens seeking to communicate their views and concerns.

Their goal? The permanent destruction of democracy in Wisconsin - and eventually throughout the U.S. - replacing it with an institutionalized oligarchy that maintains its control by doing away with public education, worker rights, voting rights, etc, -- creating a powerless underclass that will work to serve and fear to challenge their corporate masters -now and for generations to come.

Why Do They Keep Stripping Away Our Water Protections?


Dear Scuba,

Our waters just can’t seem to catch a break: Once again, rules that protect our shorelands are being attacked.

It was just a few years ago that we got the first major update to NR 115, the state rules that set minimum standards for county shoreland zoning ordinances that protect water quality. The result of a seven-year negotiation among shoreland owners, environmental groups, business interests and others, the updated rules protect our shores while reasonably outlining what property owners can do on their land. These additional protections were a hard-fought but critical win for our waters.

But just four years later, the DNR is bending to political pressure and seeking to undo that compromise.

Submit a comment to the DNR today: Leave NR 115 alone.

Many groups worked long and hard on this compromise, and that bipartisan agreement needs to be honored by DNR. Email your comments to DNR today and ask them to stop watering down our water protections and protect our shores.

Thank you,
Amanda Wegner
Clean Wisconsin

PS: We're currently fighting a number of rollbacks of our water protections. Please make a secure, online donation today to support our ongoing work for clean, safe water in Wisconsin!

Five years ago this month, before Lehman Brothers imploded and the global economy lurched to a halt, Fannie Mae issued a report that encapsulated the financial system’s biggest problem. The mortgage-finance company, which was wobbling on account of rising defaults, tried to reassure investors that it had $47 billion in capital, which was considerably more than the $30 million required by law. At the time, the report’s authors seemed to fear that some investors might think Fannie was too cautious. In any event, a month later, that protection seemed like a joke. Fannie may have conformed to the rules, but the rules didn’t conform to reality. The lender and its brother company, Freddie Mac, were declared insolvent and handed over to the U.S. government.

Remarkably, five years after the crisis, the health of the financial industry is just as hard to determine. A major bank or financial institution could meet every single regulatory requirement yet still be at risk of collapse, and few of us would even know it. Despite endless calls for change, many of the economists I’ve spoken with have lamented that the reports that banks issue about their finances remain all but useless. The sprawling Dodd-Frank Act, which rewrote banking regulation in 2010, didn’t resolve things so much as inaugurate a process of endless rules-writing by regulators. Meanwhile, the European Union is in the early stages of figuring out how it will change the way it regulates banks; and the gargantuan issue of coordinating regulations across borders has only barely begun. All of these regulatory decisions are complicated, in part, by a vast army of financial-industry lobbyists that overwhelms the relatively few consumer advocates.

Economists have also been locked in their own long-running arguments about how to make the banking industry safer. These disagreements, which are generally split between the left and the right, can have the certainty and anger of religious wars: the right accuses the left of hobbling banks and undermining prosperity; the left counters that the relatively lax regulation advocated by the right will lead to a corrupt oligarchy. But there actually is consensus on one of the most important issues. Paul Schultz, director of the Center for the Study of Financial Regulation at the University of Notre Dame, led a project that brought together scholars of financial regulation from the left, the right and the center to figure out what caused the financial crisis and how to prevent a sequel. They couldn’t agree on anything, he told me. But a great majority favored higher equity requirements, which is bankerspeak for the notion that banks shouldn’t be allowed to borrow so much.

I conducted my own Schultz test by talking to Anat Admati and Charles Calomiris, prominent finance professors at Stanford and Columbia, respectively, who roughly define the opposite ends of the argument over bank regulation. Admati is a Democrat, Calomiris a Republican. In her recent book, “The Bankers’ New Clothes,” for example, Admati has argued that bankers misrepresent their finances. Calomiris, who used to be a banker, is generally seen as friendly to the field. As I spoke to them both, they also disagreed on everything until the conversation turned to borrowing. At which point, they independently explained that banks borrow too much, that the government rules are too confusing and that the public has been misled.

WASHINGTON — Older members of Congress and those who smoke, like Speaker John A. Boehner, could be facing much higher health insurance premiums under a new official interpretation of President Obama’s health care law.

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Federal workers, including lawmakers, now generally get coverage through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the nation’s largest employer-sponsored health insurance program. Under some of the most popular health plans, the government contributes $5,000 a year for individual coverage and $11,000 for family coverage.

The 2010 health care law generally requires members of Congress and employees in their “official offices” to get coverage through the exchanges. The purpose was to make sure lawmakers understood the benefits and burdens of the law, as experienced by many of their constituents.

In the federal employee program, people in the same health plan generally pay the same premiums, regardless of their age or place of residence. However, for health plans sold on the exchanges, premiums can vary, based on a person’s age, tobacco use and place of residence. A person like Mr. Boehner, who turns 64 in November, might be charged three times as much as a 23-year-old. And as a smoker, he could be charged up to 50 percent more than a nonsmoker of the same age.

One statewide area that has also been hit extremely hard by Act 10 is the Department of Corrections. There has been a spike in assaults and injuries to correction officers. This led to a cover up and might eventually lead to Walker trying to privatize the system. But the corrections officers aren't sitting back and just taking it. They are fighting back in the only way left to them - the courts. And it looks like it will cost the taxpayers plenty (emphasis mine):

According to the lawsuit, the state Department of Corrections issued a policy on Jan. 29, 2012, stating that employees are considered “on duty when they are present at their assigned post/work location prepared to assume their duties at their designated start time.” But the guards allege it means they aren’t paid for pre-shift work that serves DOC’s interests, such as passing a security screening, participating in roll calls and fitness for duty checks, checking out and receiving equipment and traveling through prisons to their assigned posts, all while being ready to respond to emergency calls. They also alleged they are not paid for post-shift work that includes communicating with relief officers, checking in work equipment and passing a security screening, again while being available for emergency calls.

The DOC’s failure to pay guards for that time is “willful and in bad faith,” the lawsuit states.

A class action lawsuit was filed because Act 10, signed by Gov. Scott Walker in March 2011, removed collective bargaining as a means to resolve disputes like this one, the lawsuit states. Individuals lack the means to file separate lawsuits, which would also be expensive to the state, the lawsuit states. “Wisconsin 2011 Act 10 prohibits members of the class from collectively negotiating with the DOC to seek redress over issues of wages, hours and working conditions,” the lawsuit states. “This leaves a class action complaint as a sole means to seek redress from a neutral decision-maker.”