Does the government know who the boss...

In Washington state, workers are allowed to organize and form unions so they can win good wages and benefits. In “right-to-work” states like South Carolina, though, the government sides with big companies against their workers.(They used to have even harsher anti-worker laws there but the North stopped rounding up the escapees … ).

Boeing workers in Washington go on strike, so Boeing sets up an assembly line in anti-union South Carolina and tells the Washington workers to take what they offer and like it. This is a standard move from companies these days, telling workers, “Take the cuts or we’ll close the plant and move your jobs somewhere where workers can’t do anything about it.

Starving out the workers

I admit sometimes I look at the GOP majority in the House and wonder where these people came from (Their districts, I know).

Defending the Defense of Marriage Act? Hearings on Muslim Americans? Emergency meetings to defund NPR?

All this while unemployment is at 10.2% (according to Gallup), 14 million Americans are unemployed, there are 8 unemployed workers for every job job opening, unemployment adds 9 million Americans to the uninsured, so many people have been unemployed for so long that we’ve changed how we measure long-term unemployment, 1.4 million have been out of work for 99 weeks or more, and 3.9 million long-term unemployed ran out of unemployment benefits in 2010?

99 and Counting: On, Wisconsin!

As a progressive, sometimes I almost feel that I should say “Thank you” to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Not for what he’s trying to do to Wisconsin, but for energizing the progressive movement, and motivating the Democrat’s base in a way that many of us have been trying to do or waiting for Democrats to do.

Walker’s shenanigans in Wisconsin have made him a rising star in the GOP, but it’s done much more than than. It’s basically disappeared the Republican “enthusiasm gap,” and sparked a movement to recall 8 Republican senators that’s piling up signatures, compared to an anemic GOP effort to recall Democratic senators,