This chart puts the class war in simple, visual terms. On the left you have the "shared sacrifices" and "painful cuts" that the Republicans claim we must make to get our fiscal house in order. On the right, you can plainly see WHY these cuts are "necessary."
Following suit, Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) has proposed ending his state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, cutting a $600 per child tax credit, and reducing credits for seniors, while also cutting funding for school districts by eight to ten percent. At the same time, as the Michigan League for Human Services found, the state’s business taxes would be reduced by nearly $2 billion, or 86 percent, under Snyder’s plan:
Business taxes would be cut by 86 percent from an estimated $2.1 billion in FY 2011 to $292.7 million in FY 2013, the first full year of the proposed tax changes…Taxes on individuals from the state income tax would rise by $1.7 billion or nearly 31 percent, from an estimated $5.75 billion in FY 2011 to $7.5 billion in FY 2013, the first full year of the tax changes.
As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found, the practical upshot of Snyder’s tax increases is to place even more of a burden on Michigan’s poorest residents, who will see a bigger hike than those at the upper end of the income scale:
Michigan already has a regressive tax system, which Snyder’s proposal will only make worse. Currently, someone in the poorest 20 percent of Michigan taxpayers pays a tax rate of 8.9 percent, while someone in the richest one percent pays 5.3 percent.
In addition to trying to make an unfair tax system even more problematic for Michigan’s low-income residents, Snyder has also asked that the state be given the power to dismiss local government and appoint emergency “town managers” who could break contracts and “strip powers from elected officials.”
Smith, an alderman in Chicago, presented posters at a city council meeting showing that Walmart CEO Michael Duke's $35 million salary, when converted to an hourly wage, worked out to $16,826.92. By comparison, at a Walmart store planned for the Windy City's Pullman neighborhood, new employees to be paid $8.75 an hour would gross $13,650 a year.
Smith's numbers could be a bit off. Equilar, an executive compensation research firm, calculates that Duke earned just south of $20 million in 2009 and $28 million in 2008, not counting millions of dollars in potential performance awards. But the alderman argued that there's still a "sad" contrast between Duke's compensation and the wages of his employees.
"How can you go to bed at night and sleep knowing you make this kind of money and the people working for you can hardly buy a package of beans and rice?" he asked in an interview with ABCNews.com.
Walmart, meanwhile, said that its wages across the country are competitive in local markets and that on average, hourly employee pay -- which includes more experienced workers but not managers -- ranges from $10 to more than $12.
The retail giant made no apologies for Duke's salary.
"I don't think Mike Duke needs, as the CEO of a Fortune 1 company, needs me to defend his compensation package," said Walmart director of community affairs Steven Restivo, referring to Walmart's status as the largest company on the planet.
The debate over Walmart wages has been a thorny local issue in Chicago, where city aldermen on Wednesday reluctantly approved plans for a new Walmart store. It also speaks to continued concerns nationwide over the pay gap between top executives and their rank-and-file employees.
A study last fall by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal Washington D.C. research group, found that CEOs in the country's S&P 500 companies make, on average, 319 times more than the average American worker.
IPS associate fellow Sam Pizzigati said that in the 1970s, that ratio was 30 to 1.
"We've seen, over the past three decades, a tenfold-plus increase in the gap between top executives and average American workers," Pizzigati said. "That Chicago alderman is putting his finger on a very real problem in American economic life."
Pizzigati said the reasons for the yawning gap are two-fold. Declining top-bracket tax rates over the last half-century, he said, took away a strong disincentive for company boards to keep a lid on CEO pay.
The top marginal tax rate, he said, dropped from 91 percent in the 1960s to 28 percent in 1980s. It stands at 35 percent today.
"If you look at historical record, executive pay really started exploding in early 1980s," he said. "That's when the top rate started precipitously falling."
On the worker side, Pizzigati said, wages have been hurt by the declining power of U.S. organized labor. When it represented more than one-third of the American workforce, unions could influence wages -- and force them higher -- throughout the labor market. With just seven percent of Americans represented by unions today, Pizzigati said, that's no longer the case.
Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate at the executive compensation watchdog group The Corporate Library, attributed the gap to another factor: the use of stock awards in CEO pay. Notwithstanding the recent financial crisis, stocks have seen tremendous gains since the 1980s and that, he said, has been reflected in CEO compensation.
As a result, he said, "CEO pay has been growing exponentially while everyone else's wages have been growing arithmetically."
Companies that shell out blockbuster salaries and benefits maintain that high compensation is necessary to attract the best talent to top positions.
In Chicago, in recent years the compensation issue has centered largely on so-called big box stores like Walmart. In 2006, the city's mayor vetoed a resolution by the city council to raise minimum hourly pay by giant retailers in the city to $10 plus $3 worth of benefits.
Heeding a call by Firefighters Local 311 President Joe Conway to 'Move your money,' union members withdrew over $100,000 from the bank, with some reports stating that number is as high as $192,000. Either way, it was a hefty enough chunk of change that M&I shut its doors and closed for the day at 3PM.
This is a very simple, very peaceful way to inflict some serious damage on the money-grubbers; super kudos to the Firefighters Union.
Anecdoctally -- 'M&I Bank received $1.7 billion in bailout money via President George W. Bush's Troubled Assets Relief Program. The bank was acquired by the Bank of Montreal in December of 2010 for $4.1 billion in stock,' reports Dane101.
UPDATE: Stranded Wind over at DailyKos has photos of the protest outside M&I, and says the ante has been upped to $600,000! 'What these pictures show are six hundred ordinary citizens descending on the M&I branch near the Wisconsin Capitol after learning of their purchase of the gubernatorial election last November. Two firefighters with old school ideas about saving had over $600,000 between the two of them and they demanded cashier's checks on the spot.'
An estimated 100,000 union supporters turned out yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin to welcome back the Democratic state senators who decamped to Illinois to prevent a vote on Gov. Scott Walker's union busting bill. The day's festivities included a parade of tractors around the state Capitol:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/you-cant-keep-cheesehead-down-again-wThe day after Scott Walker's ceremonial signing of a bill stripping collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin's public employees, tens of thousands of protestors once again filled the Capitol Square Saturday. "Kill the bill" was no longer heard, but a new chant rose to take its place: "What's the word? Kloppenburg!"
Although they lost a battle in the legislature, pro-union protestors have pledged to win the middle class war. Their newest slogans centered around this goal, urging protesters to recall the eight eligible Senate Republicans, and to vote JoAnne Kloppenburg to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
To that end, clipboard-wielding activists commandeered a Carroll Street bus shelter, urging protestors parading past to sign (if they hadn't already) their senator's recall petition. "Vote for Kloppenburg" signs suddenly became a ubiquitous fixture of the protest landscape.
Overall, the rally looked to be the biggest yet, with Madison police estimating a crowd size of 85,000-100,000.
The day began with a morning "Farmer Labor Tractorcade" that circled the Square with antique tractors and farmers who led the chants (and, of course, honks) of "Show me what democracy looks like!" and “Recall Walker!".
[...] Of course, the highlight of the day was unquestionably the return of the 14 Senate Democrats. An overflow crowd that packed the Square and several State Street blocks greeted the returning senators like celebrities, chanting: "Thank you! Thank you!" and "Welcome home!"
After the senators had their turn at the mic and their share of the applause, the Reverend Jesse Jackson took the stage to drive home the message of the day. A chorus of voices ricocheted off the Capitol and down State Street, taking up the reverend's cry: "April 5, come alive!"
In Washington, DC on Sunday, demonstrators rallied in front of the White House in protest of repressive governments around the world.
Included in the protests were those opposed to extending the USA PATRIOT Act, which gives law enforcement authorities sweeping surveillance powers that have been criticized for endangering innocent American's civil liberties.
"The American citizenry has been giving up their rights over the last eleven years," Tighe Barry of CODEPINK told Press TV [1] at the protest. "It's a shame that someone like George Bush, who came into power, thought he could just tear up parts of our constitution."
Congress passed a bill in February that extended three controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act [2] until May 27.
The three provisions allow authorities to conduct surveillance without identifying the person or location to be wiretapped, permits surveillance of "non-US" persons who are not affiliated with a terrorist group, and allows law enforcement to gain access to "any tangible thing" during investigations.
"It creates a very 'Big Brother' atmosphere where the government can monitor everything," Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said.
The protesters called for a repeal of the PATRIOT Act, claiming it gave the government too much power to conduct surveillance of Americans.
Senators push for reform of PATRIOT Act
Congress is expected to pass a longer extension of the PATRIOT Act, but some senators have vowed to amend the legislation to ensure American's civil liberties are protected.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) has proposed an amendment to the bill that would require the government to describe the target of a roving wiretap "with particularity."
"Roving wiretaps, which do not require the government to specify the place to be bugged, are designed to allow law enforcement to track targets who evade surveillance by frequently changing phones," he explained. "Before the PATRIOT Act, roving wiretaps were only permitted for criminal investigations."
"Unfortunately, the PATRIOT Act did not include sufficient checks to protect innocent Americans from unwarranted government surveillance," Sen. Durbin continued. "Under current law, the FBI is not required to ascertain the presence of the target of the wiretap at the place being wiretapped, as it is for criminal wiretaps."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also introduced legislation in February to narrow the PATRIOT Act's section 215 provision [3], which allows law enforcement to obtain "any tangible thing," including library and bookstore records.
"Government agents should not be able to collect this sort of information on law abiding American citizens without showing that they have at least some connection to terrorism or other nefarious activities," he said.
Wyden's bill would force law enforcement to demonstrate that the records were in some way connected to terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities before gathering the information.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has also recently sought to reform the PATRIOT Act by increasing judicial oversight of government surveillance powers.
URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/13/protesters-demonstrate-against-the-patriot-act-in-dc/
URLs in this post:
[1] Press TV: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/169686.html
[2] passed a bill in February that extended three controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/15/senate-votes-for-short-term-extension-of-patriot-act-provisions/
[3] introduced legislation in February to narrow the PATRIOT Act's section 215 provision: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/23/senator-vows-to-reform-patriot-act/
The International Commission for Labor Rights (ICLR) sent a notice to the Wisconsin Legislature, explaining that its attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers is illegal.
Anyone who has watched the events unfolding in Wisconsin and other states that are trying to remove collective bargaining rights from public workers has heard people protesting the loss of their "rights." (For more on the record turnout, see this story.) The ICLR explained to the legislature exactly what these rights are and why trying to take them away is illegal.
The ICLR is a New York-based nongovernmental organization that coordinates a pro bono network of labor lawyers and experts throughout the world. It investigates labor rights violations and issues reports and amicus briefs on issues of labor law.
The ICLR identified the right of "freedom of association" as a fundamental right and affirmed that the right to collective bargaining is an essential element of freedom of association. These rights, which have been recognized worldwide, provide a brake on unchecked corporate or state power.
In 1935, when Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the NLRA, or the Wagner Act), it recognized the direct relationship between the inequality of bargaining power of workers and corporations and the recurrent business depressions. That is, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners, the economy fell into depression. The law therefore recognized as policy of the United States the encouragement of collective bargaining.
While the NLRA covered US employees in private employment, the law protecting collective bargaining in both the public and private sectors has developed since 1935 to cover all workers "without distinction."
The opening paragraph of the ICLR statement reads:
As workers in the thousands and hundreds of thousands in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio and around the country demonstrate to protect the right of public sector workers to collective bargaining, the political battle has overshadowed any reference to the legal rights to collective bargaining. The political battle to prevent the loss of collective bargaining is reinforced by the fact that stripping any collective bargaining rights is blatantly illegal. Courts and agencies around the world have uniformly held the right of collective bargaining in the public sector is an essential element of the right of Freedom of Association, which is a fundamental right under both International law and the United States Constitution.
The ICLR statement summarizes the development of this law from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the International Labor Organization's (ILO) conventions on freedom of association (that is, the right to form and join unions) and collective bargaining. It cites court cases from the United States and around the world. All embrace freedom of association as a fundamental right and recognize the right to collective bargaining as an essential element of freedom of association.
Some anti-union voices argue that since federal employees presently do not have the right to bargain collectively, neither should state workers. In fact, the argument should go the other way. The law cited in the ICLR statement means that denying federal employees collective bargaining rights - which they have had over the years when presidents have recognized them by executive order - is just as illegal as denying collective bargaining rights to state public employees. President Obama should take this opportunity to reinstate the rights of federal employees to collective bargaining.
Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/assault-collective-bargaining-illegal-says-international-labor-rights-group68423
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