The fight is on against voter suppression

Corporate-backed politicians are trying to limit the number of citizens who can vote in order to enact deeply unpopular laws that would empower billionaires, crush unions, eradicate public education and weaken consumer protections.

A group of state lawmakers and civil rights leaders are fighting back against voter suppression. They gathered in Atlanta Wednesday to announce the formation of the American Values First  (AVF) campaign. It will combat voter suppression in states where anti-worker lawmakers have passed laws to make it difficult to vote.

The Washington Post reported:

The new push comes in response to Republican initiatives to rewrite election laws in key states. Republicans in North Carolina and Florida moved to cut the number of days on which a voter can cast a ballot early. Arizona and Florida both imposed new restrictions on groups that sign up voters for absentee ballots. And Republican-led legislatures in states from New Hampshire to Michigan to Florida passed legislation requiring voters to show photo identification before they receive a ballot.

Democrats have criticized the new rules as overly restrictive, making it more difficult for an eligible voter to cast a ballot. Their legislative response: Make it easier for eligible Americans to register to vote and to sign up to receive a ballot by mail.

Michael Sargeant, who is directing the new campaign, said:

Some of these efforts have been ignored for too long, and now people understand that this is not something you can sit back and watch. You have to get involved and stop it.

Citizens are already trying to stop voter suppression in North Carolina, where Gov. Pat McCrory signed a new restrictive law last week. The new voter suppression law is a target of North Carolina’s enormous Moral Monday protests, and it’s being challenged in the courts. Now American Values First is drafting model pro-voter legislation that can be used in North Carolina and across the country.

The voting rights group is a response to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)(need link), which has long financed and influenced state lawmakers.  Friends (and funders) of ALEC like the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers and North Carolina kingmaker Art Pope have played outsized roles in restricting voting, harming unions, eradicating public education and outsourcing government functions for the benefit of billionaires. 

On Wednesday in Atlanta, legislators from Georgia, Iowa and Nevada were among those on hand to praise the AVF effort. Besides crafting legislation, the group will publish guidelines on how voting rights groups can fight these repressive efforts that reduce early voting, thwart registration and limit the ability of their political enemies to participate in our democracy.

Rev. Joseph Lowery, the 91-year-old civil rights leader who was a contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr., said there is a need to renew the civil rights movement:

There must be something to this vote, because they spend so much time and money trying to take it away.

Morehouse College student Spanky Edwards said more people need to become involved in the fight:

It is basically up to us to organize, to work side-by-side with these other organizations, because ultimately they affect us directly. Like I said, we live in this city, we live in this state. So, this is just as much our problem as it is yours.

Campaigns like American Values First have become essential since the Supreme Court made a grievous error in June by rolling back a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act rules. The U.S Justice Department responded by saying that it will step in to challenge voter suppression efforts. But the best resolution is to stop ALEC-backed policies like these before they are implemented.

3 wins for voting rights in Ohio, Texas and Florida

It just got a little harder to steal the presidential election for Mitt Romney.

Courts in three states struck down efforts to prevent Democrats from voting in November. In Florida, a judge permanently removed insane restrictions on voter registration drives. In Texas, the court struck down a law requiring people to show a photo ID to vote. And in Ohio just today, a judge ruled the state cannot stop early voting three days before the election

Vote suppression is usually cleverly disguised as "Voter ID" laws. They try to prevent voting by likely Democrats by requiring identification that's extremely difficult for some people to obtain. But this year voter suppression is taking new shapes, such as an insane law criminalizing voter registration in Florida.

ThinkProgress reports on Florida:

Three months after a federal judge blocked much of Florida’s year-old voter suppression law as an unconstitutional infringement on speech and voting rights, the same judge agreed Tuesday to permanently remove the restrictions on voter registration drives, pending final confirmation that a federal appeals court has dismissed the case. In a settlement, the civil rights groups challenging the law and the state agreed not to appeal the case.

In Texas, the Associated Press tells us:

A three-judge panel in Washington unanimously ruled that the law imposes "strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" and noted that racial minorities in Texas are more likely to live in poverty... 

Republicans are aggressively seeking the requirements in the name of stamping out voter fraud. Democrats, with support from a number of studies, say fraud at the polls is largely non-existent and that Republicans are simply trying to disenfranchise minorities, poor people and college students — all groups that tend to back Democrats.

And in Ohio, we learn from Plunderbund:

A Federal judge rules with Obama that Ohio cannot stop early voting during the 3 days before the election as HB224 attempted. It’s unclear what effect this will have on Secretary of State Jon Husted’s recent directive and firing of two Democrat elections officials who defied said directive. 

Jon Husted, meet the United States Constitution.

In case you have any doubt that these new laws are aimed at stealing elections, please note that Pennsylvania's House Majority leader was caught on tape saying his state's voter suppression law "is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania." Or consider that Democratic voter registration all but stopped in Florida. According to the Florida Times-Union,

Just 11,365 new Democratic voters were registered in Florida in the last year vs. 209,425 four years earlier. 

What could have caused such a sharp dropoff? A lack of voter enthusiasm? Maybe lack of proximity to a major election? 

Those were the weak explanations that a Florida secretary of state official gave to Times-Union reporter Matt Dixon. 

What really happened were registration rules that were so radical that a federal court stepped in and invalidated them. 

At issue is giving third party groups just 48 hours to turn in new registration applications or face criminal charges.

All these efforts to take away the right to vote come from ALEC, the corporate cabal that legally bribes lawmakers to help it destroy the middle class. Jerry Kremer, a former New York state lawmaker, writes in The Huffington Post that ALEC champions voter ID laws. And Kremer points out:

In the 2011 and 2012 sessions lawmakers introduced 62 photo ID bills in 37 states and 10 states have passed photo ID laws since 2008. The legislators who propose these bills claim that they will stop voter fraud but no state that has such a law has been able to prove that there had been any fraud.

Andrew Cohen, writing in The Atlantic, remarked on the reaction stories about voter suppression always get:

Whenever I write about this topic, the reader reaction is always: "I have to show my identification every day. What's the big deal?" But that's not what these laws are about. No one, in South Carolina or elsewhere, votes without first establishing their ID. The central question instead is how far these states may go to force registered voters, who have voted without incident for years, to obtain new forms of identification. Why don't poor people have driver's licenses? Because they can't afford cars. There is a constitutional right to vote -- men and women have died over it. There is no such right to drive.

Federal judge on voter suppression: Oops, these ARE bad laws

Former federal judge Richard Posner wrote a new book saying laws that suppress voting are a really bad idea.

Well that’s pretty obvious. But six years ago Posner didn’t think so. He wrote the majority opinion in a case defending voter suppression laws that use unattainable ID requirements to disenfranchise working-class voters. Posner’s arguments in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board unleashed a wave of strict voter suppression laws in states all over the country.

Now Posner, a Reagan appointee, says he was very wrong:

In a new book, “Reflections on Judging,” Judge Posner, a prolific author who also teaches at the University of Chicago Law School, said, “I plead guilty to having written the majority opinion” in the case. He noted that the Indiana law in the Crawford case is “a type of law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.”

In an interview last week, Posner was asked more bluntly if he had gotten the ruling wrong:

“Yes. Absolutely.” Back in 2007, he said, “there hadn’t been that much activity in the way of voter identification,” and “we weren’t really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disenfranchise people entitled to vote.”

In other words, Posner said he didn’t realize how dangerous voter suppression laws could be. But plenty of other people did, including dissenting Judge Terrance Evans:

The dissent by Judge Evans, who died in 2011, began, “Let’s not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”

There were many others making the same point. John Nichols at The Nation writes:

Judge Posner should have paid closer attention to the detailed amicus brief filed in 2006 by the Brennan Center for Justice, which explained how the Indiana law threatened to “exclude many eligible voters from participating in our democratic process.”

Because voter ID requirements have been widely criticized as weighing more heavily of specific classes of voters—people of color, students, low-income voters, the elderly—legitimate concerns have been raised about equal protection and a host of other constitutional concerns.

The Crawford case was a gift to Republican extremists and groups like ALEC that have been trying to block likely Democratic voters from the polls for years. 

On the heels of the Supreme Court gutting key parts of the Voting Rights Act, extremist lawmakers have aggressively pushed voter suppression laws in states like Texas and North Carolina, citing the Crawford case to justify their schemes. While they claim the laws are aimed at stopping voter fraud, they can barely conceal their real agenda, which is to use poll-tax-like restrictions to rig elections they can’t actually win.

As Salon reports:

In Texas, according to the DoJ’s analysis of the state’s own data supplied to them, “Hispanic registered voters are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic registered voters to lack such identification.” In South Carolina, where the DoJ blocked a similar law there last year under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, they found that — again, according to the state’s own data — “minority registered voters were nearly 20 percent more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised” by the state’s new Photo ID restriction law.

Even though the judge who authored the Crawford decision has now changed his mind, anti-worker radicals who support voter suppression certainly haven’t changed theirs. So the fight for voting rights continues.

Anti-worker agenda advances in North Carolina

Extremists in North Carolina, ignoring the turmoil caused by their anti-worker agenda, pushed forward yesterday with bills to empower corporations and savage the middle class. The House and Senate approved a budget that raises taxes on middle-class families and slashes public education funding, while the Senate approved a voter suppression bill that targets minorities, low-income residents, senior citizens and the disabled.


Protesters gather in Speaker Tillis' office.
 

The Legislature is set to adjourn today with its anti-worker agenda likely to pass. The voter suppression bill and the budget will head to Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk, and he is expected to sign both.

They are fulfilling the anti-worker agenda pushed by greedy billionaire Art Pope, an ALEC disciple and Benedict Arnold Koch brothers buddy who got himself appointed state budget director after financing a number of radical politicians’ campaigns.

The Legislature’s ALEC-inspired attacks on workers inspired a popular uprising that takes the form of weekly Moral Monday protests at the Statehouse. The demonstrations have resulted in 925 arrests for civil disobedience over the last 12 weeks. Organizers of the Moral Monday rallies are already promising to make their voices heard on Monday, during the next planned protest of the Legislature’s extreme anti-worker agenda.

The budget bill cuts $260 million from North Carolina’s public education budget, hampering teachers who are already among the nation’s lowest paid. It also ends tenure and will lead to more crowded classrooms.  The Raleigh News-Observer took the GOP to task for the cuts in an editorial, saying its own leaders don’t even understand the implications:

Take Phil Berger, Republican senator from Eden and that chamber’s president pro-tem. When pressed for the reasons he has crusaded for ending teacher tenure in North Carolina’s public schools, Berger just says he heard about a lot of incompetent teachers hanging on thanks to tenure.

… Teachers are the heart of the most noble thing this state and this nation do: provide an education to all. And yet Berger and other Republicans speak of public schools as if they were more a nuisance than a monument to enlightenment. They also seem to believe they can continue to make teachers a target of petty criticism, pay them poorly, offer them few benefits and still maintain a quality school system.

Six opponents of a voter suppression bill were arrested after entering the office of House Speaker Thom Tillis last night. They refused to leave until they spoke with him and he agreed to halt the legislation. They may have hope: The U.S. Justice Department could challenge North Carolina’s voter law, as it announced today it will take new restrictive state measures to court. 

ALEC loses another member; this time, it's Entergy

Entergy is the latest corporation to dump ALEC, the front group that wines, dines and bribes writes helpful legislation for lawmakers. It is the second biggest operator of nuclear power plants in the U.S.

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, Entergy is the 33rd corporation and nonprofit groups have cut ties to ALEC. A campaign to expose ALEC (aka "the American Legislative Exchange Council") has inspired public revulsion over the group's agenda of union-busting, deregulation, voter suppression and privatization.

The revelation that Entergy dumped ALEC came about after 41 investors and advocates sent letters to 49 companies that are members of ALEC and asked them why they belonged. (Props to AFSCME and Walden Asset Management for doing the lifting on this.) Entergy sent a letter to Timothy Smith, a senior vice president at Walden, explaining that it is no longer a member of ALEC.

Meanwhile, all kinds of other dirt is surfacing about ALEC. In Ohio, a report about ALEC's influence on lawmakers was released today. According to Progress Ohio, seven of ALEC's sins include,

• The Director of Scheduling for the Ohio House speaker was asked to rearrange the 2012 session dates around ALEC events. 
• Senior staff from ALEC advised a legislator handling requests from the press that, "Actually, it would help ALEC out a lot on this issue if they said that they didn't use ALEC model legislation." 
• Hundreds  of  Statehouse emails were sent  during work  hours  solely  to schedule  legislators  for  free dinners from lobbyists at ALEC events. The lobbyist battles to take certain lawmakers out to dinner are so intense that a legislative staffer resorted to lying. 
• Despite ALEC's claims of non-partisanship, legislative staff circulated a membership recruitment letter to Republicans only. 
• ALEC's co-chair was incredulous that a corporation received 3 tickets to an ALEC event at a baseball game for "a lousy $1,000."

Earlier this week in Michigan, Progress Michigan reported that ALEC wrote bills to suppress the vote and to help corporate bottom lines at the expense of middle-class families. The Detroit News reported,

Progress Michigan, a left-leaning political action group, said they've determined at least 20 bills echo legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council, including some that appear to have been cut and pasted from "model bills" provided by the group of state lawmakers, businesses and corporate lobbyists. 

The group said residents have a right to know who's writing the bills the Legislature passes. Progress Michigan cited recently passed bills that unions say weaken collective bargaining.

Chalk it up to another bad week for ALEC. (So sad.)

Breaking: Penn. voter suppression law overturned!

Just learned that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the state's repressive voter suppression law.

The law was clearly aimed at stealing the election for Mitt Romney. They even admitted it. Pennsylvania's House Majority leader was caught on tape saying his state's voter suppression law "is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."

The law was inspired by the insidious American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a dating service for corporations and anti-worker state lawmakers.

Here's more from the Center for Media and Democracy:

As many as 800,000 people in the state do not have the forms of ID required under the law, and only 7,200 have obtained the free voter ID cards since the law was passed. With the 2012 elections just six weeks away, "there is too little time, too many people, and nothing in the statute that guarantees people will be able to get the ID they need," (plaintiffs' attorney David) Gersch said... 

The bill passed on party lines and was signed into law in March under a cloud of partisanship. Like most of the 37 states that have introduced strict voter ID bills since 2011, Pennsylvania's law was introduced by an ALEC member and reflects elements of the ALEC model Voter ID Act. In June, Rep. Mike Turzai (R), an ALEC member, declared that voter ID “is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” 

Courts in Wisconsin, Ohio and Texas recently struck down laws aimed at preventing likely Democrats from voting. A judge also tossed out Florida's law making it nearly impossible to conduct voter registration drives.

ALEC: Public Enemy No. 1

You know all that crap they're pulling in Ohio and Indiana and Florida and all the other states with the Governors Gone Wild? The privatization, destruction of collective bargaining rights, huge cuts to education, voter suppression and giveaways to corporations?

Well, it's coming to your state. Sooner or later, you will be fighting against higher taxes, fewer government services and a declining standard of living (if you're middle class or poor, that is). That's because of a vast, coordinated conspiracy cooked up by a corporate-funded group called ALEC. One-third of all state lawmakers belong to. And yes, of course it gets money from the Koch brothers.

If the middle class had a choice of one enemy to wipe out, it would have to be ALEC, the American Legislative  Exchange Council. It exists to find ways to destroy public purpose and to turn government into a tool of large corporations.

Today a new website is being launched that exposes this hideous organization.

It's http://www.alecexposed.org/, and you can expect to see it appear frequently on this blog.

The Center for Media and Democracy is responsible for ALEC Exposed. Here's what CMD has to say:

In April 2011, some of the biggest corporations in the U.S. met behind closed doors in Cincinnati about their wish lists for changing state laws.''' This exchange was part of a series of corporate meetings nurtured and fueled by the Koch Industries family fortune and other corporate funding.

At an extravagant hotel gilded just before the Great Depression, corporate executives from the tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, State Farm Insurance, and other corporations were joined by their "task force" co-chairs -- all Republican state legislators -- to approve “model” legislation. They jointly head task forces of what is called the “American Legislative Exchange Council” (ALEC).

There, as the Center for Media and Democracy has learned, these corporate-politician committees secretly voted on bills to rewrite numerous state laws. According to the documents we have posted to ALEC Exposed, corporations vote as equals with elected politicians on these bills. These task forces target legal rules that reach into almost every area of American life: worker and consumer rights, education, the rights of Americans injured or killed by corporations, taxes, health care, immigration, and the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Here are some especially heinous examples:

Altria/Philip Morris USA benefits from ALEC’s newest tobacco legislation -- an extremely narrow tax break for moist tobacco that would make fruit flavored tobacco products cheaper and more attractive to youngsters.

Health insurance companies such as Humana and Golden Rule Insurance (United Healthcare), benefit directly from ALEC model bills, such as the Health Savings Account bill that just passed in Wisconsin.

Connections Academy, a large online education corporation and co-chair of the Education Task Force, benefits from ALEC measures to privatize public education and promote private on-line schools.

Stay tuned to the site. And stay vigilant.

Power and money of ALEC exposed

The corporations behind ALEC spent at least $370 million influencing state elections over the past decade. They've gotten a good return for their money: public schools are starved, unions are busted, prisons are privatized and voting is suppressed. The corporations, of course, get big tax breaks.

The good folks at Common Cause revealed all that today in a report released in tandem with the newser in New Orleans during ALEC's annual meeting. (In case you haven't been following, ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council -- is a secretive corporate-backed lobbying group that writes model legislation for state lawmakers. We call it a legislative roach motel.)

Pro Publica has also jumped on the Expose ALEC bandwagon. They've printed a handy guide to the amounts ALEC corporations dumped into each state lawmaker's campaign here.
Common Cause notes that two of ALEC's biggest successes in 2011 were in Wisconsin and Ohio,

...where newly-elected Republican governors and legislators attacked budget shortfalls with legislation that sharply restricts the bargaining power of public worker unions. The bills were passed just a few months after companies in ALEC’s leadership put more than $304,000 into the campaigns of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin state legislators, and spent more than $563,000 on Ohio Gov. John Kasich and lawmakers in the Buckeye State. Both Walker and Kasich are ALEC alumni.

Nicole Schulte from Wisconsin spoke at the news conference. She's a Wisconsin mom who took her 19-year-old son to the DMV to get his free voter ID. You'll recall the video where her son showed the clerk his bank book as proof of residence. The clerk said he didn't have enough bank activity to get an ID. (They found some activity and he got his card.)

ALEC got such a dandy voter-suppression law in Wisconsin that people have to ask for a free voter ID, Schulte said. If they don't think to ask, they have to pay $28. For some people, that would be enough to discourage them from getting the ID (and voting) -- or if they do pay it, it's a poll tax.

Heckuva job, ALEC.

Sallie Mae becomes 50th corporation to drop ALEC

The right-wing legislative machine lost another corporate ally today when student loan giant Sallie Mae became the 50th corporation to leave ALEC.

The decision follows months of pressure by student groups outraged that the company's profits from student debt were supporting ALEC's anti-student and anti-worker agenda.

Think Progress reports:

...given ALEC’s work in favor of privatizing K-12 and higher education, thousands of students signed an online petition encouraging Sallie Mae -- which manages or services more than $200 billion in education loans -- urging the company to drop its support of the group.

Student organizer Chris Hicks told PR Watch that the news is a big victory in the fight against student debt. But he said there is still a long way to go:

It’s no accident that Sallie Mae has decided to leave ALEC -- from the shareholder meeting in May and the meeting students and graduates had with CEO Jack Remondi in June to the nearly 15,000 petition signatures gathered in August, students have shown Sallie Mae they are serious about their demands and are not going away.

There is much more work to be done, but this is definitely a first step to hold Sallie Mae accountable for their business practices.

ALEC remains a leading force in the war against working families, crafting model legislation in states throughout the country designed to cripple unions, dismantle workers' rights, disenfranchise middle class voters and destroy public education. ALEC has been behind just about every effort to pass anti-worker laws like right to work for less and voter suppression bills in state legislatures nationwide.

But over the years activists and labor groups have put the spotlight on ALEC, shaming dozens of its corporate members into exiting the shadowy syndicate of right-wing business interests.

Sallie Mae's departure is especially welcome given its role in holding students hostage with high-interest student loans while ALEC promotes the privatization of education. The corporate-backed campaign to privatize our schools -- from kindergarten to college -- is all about turning higher profits for companies like Sallie Mae while sinking the children of American workers deeper into poverty.

Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa recently wrote:

Working people struggle and fight to form unions so their children can have better lives than they do. Higher education has long been the stepping stone to a better life.  But that stone is being swept away by a tide of student debt.

The numbers tell a frightening story: As many as 30 percent of borrowers may be delinquent on their student loan debt. More students are borrowing than ever before, and they’re borrowing more – the average loan has increased by 49 percent, to $24,803, since 2005. Today, the average student in this country graduates with $26,600 in loan debt.

That’s hardly a way to get started in life when good jobs are scarcer than ever for recent college graduates.  

With Sallie Mae out of ALEC, students and workers have won another victory for education and against the right-wing corporate agenda. 

ALEC gets a whitewash from the political press

You can draw a straight line from the Wisconsin uprising of 2011 through the No Rights At Work fight in Michigan to the Moral Monday protests now raging in North Carolina.  You can throw in the SB 5 fight in Ohio, the Prop. 32 battle in California, and skirmishes over voter suppression, privatization, regressive taxation and corporate empowerment in the 23 Republican-controlled legislatures in the country.

What you have is a national reaction to a single well-funded campaign to let billionaires take even more money from poor, middle- and working-class Americans.

The massive protests, the arrests, the Statehouse turmoil, the costly campaigns -- they're all convulsions over  the same thing: ALEC's attempt to dismantle America's public institutions and turn our government over to corporations.

And yet the political press treats each skirmish as an isolated outbreak.

One reporter who gets it is the Esquire blogger Charles Pierce. He nails it in a recent post:

...the elite political press is missing the real political action in this country because, for the most part, it concentrates either on what's going on in Washington, or in the horse race aspects of whatever election is next. But the real action -- and all the real damage -- is being done out in the states, especially in those states in which the 2010 elections brought in majority Republican legislatures and majority Republican governors. This is part of what we play for laughs every Thursday when we survey what's goin' down in The Laboratories Of Democracy. But what's goin' down is highly organized, tightly disciplined, and very sharply directed. By now, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and what it's about, is an open secret. Everybody covering politics knows about it. Everybody covering politics knows where the money for its activities comes from. Everybody in politics knows what its political aims are. And yet, when we have retrograde laws and policies pop up in state after state -- most notably in recent days, in the newly insane state of North Carolina -- it is always treated as a kind of localized outbreak.

How badly the press gets it wrong would be hilarious if it weren't so dangerous. A typical mistake is to describe the attempted corporate takeover of government as some sort of disagreement between "liberals" and "conservatives."

There's nothing conservative about a group that seeks to pervert democracy, eradicate public schools, destroy First Amendment rights, loot working people, plunder the public treasury and sell off every piece of public property for corporate profit-making opportunities.

And yet the Associated Press recently characterized ALEC as "a conservative think tank" -- in a story about how it's violating Wisconsin's Open Records law.

In a story about Georgia state lawmakers "staying informed," a gullible reporter for the Forsyth News notes that they intend to travel to "gather information" or "participate in panels" at ALEC's annual meeting. No mention of the lavish (and well-documented) resort settings or the bacchanals with deep-pocketed campaign donors.

Worst of all are the credulous accounts of ALEC's clownish reports on state economic outlooks, something no self-respecting economists would associate themselves with. You just know there's something wrong with ALEC's "Rich States, Poor States" analysis when it cites  job-killer Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for his success in creating jobs.

Unions are fighting the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers purchase of the newspaper chain that owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. (You can sign a petition here.) The brothers are key players in the billionaire empowerment movement and strong supporters of ALEC. But judging by the press coverage we've gotten so far, the Kochification of American newspapers is already well underway.

They already write some of them. 

NC lawmakers attack voting rights

The corporate-owned North Carolina Legislature is up to its dirty tricks again. This time, it is trying to take the vote away from its working-class political opponents.

Senate Republicans unveiled a voter suppression bill yesterday that would cut hundreds of thousands of citizens from the rolls. And -- wait for it -- a sizable majority of them are registered Democrats. The legislation would not allow student, county or municipal government identification to be used for verification purposes. Nor would public assistance photo IDs or public employee IDs be acceptable either.

Why are such changes necessary? Could it be the two voter impersonation prosecutions between 2000 and 2010? No? The answer is all in the state's numbers:

316,000 registered voters don’t have state-issued ID; 34 percent are African-American and 55 percent are registered Democrats. Of the 138,000 voters without ID who cast a ballot in the 2012 election, 36 percent were African-American and 59 registered percent Democrats. The new draft of the bill does not allow student IDs for voting, and would charge $10 to obtain an ID unless a voter signs a form saying they cannot afford it under penalty of perjury, making it among the most restrictive laws in the country.

Taking away the voting rights of the 99 percent who challenge corporate power has long been part of the master plan at American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC, the escort service connecting politicians and corporation,has a friend in Art Pope, North Carolina's budget director. Pope helped bankroll the campaign of Gov. Pat McCrory and many Republican legislators behind the voter suppression effort.

11 Moral Monday protests, 800 arrests.

With Pope pulling the strings, North Carolina is turning into an ALEC paradise as lawmakers pass bills to punish the unemployed, eradicate public education, oppress women, raise taxes on the poor and working class and eliminate environmental protections. A huge backlash is building with weekly Moral Monday protests that attract thousands of North Carolinians and massive arrests for civil disobedience. More than 800 citizens have taken arrests to protest the assault on working people. 

Look for North Carolina's lawmakers to suppress voting rights in other ways -- by slashing early voting, ending same-day voter registration and penalizing the parents of students who vote where they go to college. And look for more arrests.

2 Minn. Teamsters reach thousands in fight against voter suppression

Andy Galaway and Grant Fayen, Local 638 freedom fighters in the War on Workers

Two UPS Teamsters have reached thousands of Minnesota citizens since taking up the fight against a proposed constitutional amendment to suppress voting rights.

The so-called Voter Amendment is on the November ballot. It originated with ALEC, the corporate-funded group responsible for state laws that privatize government services, suppress votes, grant monopoly powers to special interests and destroy collective bargaining rights.

Brother Andy Galaway and Brother Grant Fayen both have full-time combo jobs at UPS and are members of Local 638 in Minneapolis. They realized they needed to get involved during last year's fight against right-to-work-for-less in Minnesota. (The good guys won that one.) Said Fayen,

I first got involved when they were trying to push "right to work" through. I could no longer stand by and do nothing while the establishment attacked my livelihood.

Since taking up the cause for free, fair and accessible voting, Galaway and Fayen reached thousands of people. They spread the word to everyone they meet from their brothers and sisters on the shop floor and in the local to the pizza delivery guy and the barber. Sister Diane Ersbo, a member of Local 638, tells us:

Andy and Grant present the educational training at the (members') meeting and even more Teamsters will be voting NO! Andy and Grant did a great job!... It took bravery and courage to present this as there are quite a few Republicans in the room (wink-wink) .... Andy and Grant truly get that to really stop the war on workers, you have to get involved and fight back! I am so glad to have them as my brothers!

Galaway invites members to his house for lunch and informational training. The issue is personal to him. He explains that his 102-year-old grandmother couldn't vote if the amendment passes.

She lives independently in a senior high rise. Her only source of income is social security. She has mobility issue in the two recent falls she broke her hip and her wrist. Elisabeth has not driven in 30 years so if she has an old driver’s license it wouldn’t be valid. That means Elisabeth needs to collect two documents to prove her identity to obtain a valid voter ID. The first is a certified copy of her birth certificate (cost $26) and the second is a certified copy of her marriage certificate (cost $9). So Elisabeth is out $35 for a free ID. This assumes that a birth certificate was issued 102 years ago and that the court house that holds it didn’t suffer a fire, flood or tornado that wiped out records or misplaced it. (There are) other cost more hidden than the fees of $35. Someone is going to have to take a day off of work to pick up Elisabeth, drive her to the DMV and stand in line with her. Elisabeth is just one example of a person who will be negatively impacted by photo ID. If it passes we will make sure she can continue to vote as we are family. What happens to all those like Elisabeth whose families have moved away, don’t have time, can’t get off of work or don’t consider voting a priority?

Fayen found he wasn't alone:

I had no idea there were so many Teamsters that were so passionately involved as I was, and that so many people knew very little about the "Voter ID" bill. Making sure this voter ID bill does not pass is so important to me because it is a direct violation of our constitutional rights. 

It is important to me because I believe everyone has the right to vote, and this is going to exclude eligible voters. That to me is scary.

We're glad to have them as our brothers, too!

More on the election: Ballot questions

When it comes to reporting on ballot questions, we've barely scratched the surface. Yes, Michigan rejected the Protect Working Families question, and yes, California rejected Prop 32, but there were 186 other initiatives. Close to $1 billion was spent on them (including that $11 million the Koch brothers laundered to support Prop 32). 

Our friends at the Center for Media and Democracy provided a terrific summary of some of the most important questions -- including legalizing marijuana for recreational use in Washington and Colorado!

There was some good news in Michigan, after all: Voters rejected the Emergency Manager Law:

Michigan's controversial Emergency Manager Law, 2011 Public Act 4, allowed the governor to appoint emergency managers to take over local municipalities like Benton Harbor in place of officials elected by residents. Volunteers collected over 200,000 signatures to get a referendum -- Proposal 1 -- on yesterday's ballot to overturn the law. 

The measure to keep the law in place failed, with 48 percent voting for and 52 percent against, successfully overturning the law.

Michigan voters also defeated a proposal to require a supermajority to increase state taxes. It was sponsored by the corporate front group ALEC.

CMD tells us Colorado and Montana voted against Citizens United:

Colorado's Amendment 65 and Montana's Initiative 166 are ballot propositions designed to challenge the Supreme Court decision on Citizens United v. FEC that lifted bans on corporate political spending (see CMD's reporting for more on Citizens United). 

Colorado's measure passed with 73.7 percent voting for and 26.3 percent against, while Montana's passed with 74.9 percent voting for and 25.1 percent against.

Voters in five states cast ballots for and against banning parts of Obamacare, another ALEC initiative. CMD reported the proposal succeeded in four states:

Voters in Alabama, Florida, Missouri, Montana, and Wyoming weighed in on propositions to block aspects of 2010 federal health care legislation, the Affordable Care Act or "ObamaCare."  ALEC has been pushing similar laws nationwide. 

The measures fared as follows:it failed 52 percent to 48 percent in Florida, but passed 59 percent to 41 percent in Alabama, passed 61.8 percent to 38.2 percent in Missouri, passed 66 percent to 34 percent in Montana, and passed 77 percent to 23 percent in Wyoming.

Gay marriage was approved in Maryland, Maine and Washington, while Minnesota voters defeated a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Minnesota voters also rejected a voter suppression amendment.

New for-profit corporate schools were approved in Georgia and Washington:

Georgia voters weighed in on a proposal to give the state legislature the right to create public charter schools, another part of the ALEC wish list. The measure passed, with 58.5 percent voting for and 41.5 percent voting against. 

Washington State voted on a proposition to allow the creation of 40 charter schools in the next five years. It has been called the "billionaires initiative" because its signature drive was primarily funded by Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and the parents of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. The measure passed, with 51.24 percent voting for and 48.76 percent against.

Teachers lost in South Dakota but won in Idaho:

In another loss for labor, voters in South Dakota failed to pass a referendum repealing 2011 House Bill 1234, which provides bonuses for high performing teachers but bans teacher tenure, with 32.77 percent voting for and 67.23 percent voting against. 

However, in a win for labor, voters in Idaho rejected two referenda to uphold 2011 education laws that had limited collective bargaining for teachers. Proposition 1 to limit teacher contracts failed, with 43 percent voting for and 57 percent against. Proposition 2 also failed, with 42 percent voting for and 58 percent against. 

Over at BISC, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, we learn a little more about public services spending. Justine Sarver, executive director, wrote:

...voters supported critical revenue for public services - preventing devastating education cuts and tuition hikes in California, closing a corporate loophole in Oregon and rejecting the crippling and arbitrary spending limit known as TABOR in Florida.

Read about the state-by-state results here.

ALEC exposed tomorrow in NM (VIDEO)

ProgressNow New Mexico tomorrow will expose ALEC, the corporate dating service for state lawmakers funded by the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers. 

The group will hold a free screening in Santa Fe of "The United States of ALEC," a documentary about the shady group.

Their invitation reads, in part: 

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. We've identified more than $1,000,000 ALEC companies spent on New Mexico politicians in just two years! 

This Saturday, ProgressNow New Mexico Education – along  with State Rep. Brian Egolf, Common Cause NM, AFSCME, and the NEA – will hold a free screening of “The United States of ALEC” at the Santa Fe Women's Center in Santa Fe. The short film – produced by Bill Moyers and the Schumann Media Center – is a scathing exposé about “the most influential corporate-funded political force most of American has never heard of.” 

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) brings together nearly 2,000 state legislators with hundreds of corporate leaders and lobbyists from the world’s most powerful corporations to secretly draft model legislation that benefits the corporate bottom-line. 

...they are also behind recent “Right to Work For Less” laws in Wisconsin and Michigan, private prisons and voter suppression laws in New Mexico and across the country.
ALEC is alive and well in New Mexico and we’re turning up the heat on legislators and companies to get out.

NC claims voter suppression championship, faces lawsuits

North Carolina is No. 1 -- in voter suppression. Gov. Pat McCrory ensured that yesterday when he signed into law legislation that makes it harder for the poor, minorities, young people, seniors and the disabled to vote.



It's back to the future for voting rights in North Carolina.

Two separate lawsuits were filed in federal court just hours after the governor signed the measure, and a third is expected to be filed in state court today. Meanwhile, Rep. G.K. Butterfield is asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to weigh in to protect voting rights in North Carolina.

Following the lead of a repressive Legislature that also gutted unemployment benefits, Medicaid and education spending this year, McCrory inked a measure that supposedly cracks down on illegal voting in the state. Problem is North Carolina has only had two such cases between 2000 and 2010, as Ari Berman points out in The Nation.

The facts, however, are irrelevant to those behind the effort. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pushed the entire corporate-empowerment agenda approved by state lawmakers this year.  The Legislature’s attacks on working people in North Carolina sparked a backlash as thousands have joined weekly Moral Monday demonstrations. More than 900 protesters have been arrested since April for acts of civil disobedience. The governor and his cronies -- such as state budget director and campaign money-man Art Pope -- have succeeded in disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of state voters who noticeably tilt against the political party that instituted the changes:

316,000 registered voters don’t have state-issued ID; 34 percent are African-American and 55 percent are registered Democrats. Of the 138,000 voters without ID who cast a ballot in the 2012 election, 36 percent were African-American and 59 registered percent Democrats. The new [law] does not allow student IDs for voting, and would charge $10 to obtain an ID unless a voter signs a form saying they cannot afford it under penalty of perjury, making it among the most restrictive laws in the country.

Already, there are signs that the suppression of voting in the state is being implemented at the local level. The Wataugh County Board of Elections jammed through changes yesterday that closed a polling place on the Appalachian State University campus, even though the move creates a super-precinct that is more than double the size of the next largest one.

The decision brought shouts and boos from the 60 people in attendance and disgust from one board member, Kathleen Campbell. She opposed the move and said she was not told of the plan beforehand.

You can’t just come in here like gangbusters. You guys are really out of line.

Well said.

Whoa! Big setbacks for ALEC

The corporate front group ALEC is losing even more corporate members, a prominent Northeastern ALEC leader lost his primary and they're even moving out of their DC headquarters.

So sad.

ALEC, if you're new to TeamsterNation, is behind most of the anti-worker legislation we've been fighting in the states, including privatization, voter suppression and destruction of collective bargaining rights. It's a dating service that links big corporations with state lawmakers. The corporations get their bills filed in state legislatures, while lawmakers get posh, all-expenses-paid vacations and introductions to deep-pocketed political donors. Nice racket, right?

Over the past year, ALEC's nefarious influence on democracy has been exposed, and major corporations have been dropping out of the group like flies.

Now, another company is leaving ALEC: pharmaceutical giant Merck.

Reports NJ.com:

Global pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co. announced today that it is leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council next year because of "budget constraints and policy priorities..." 

"Merck reviews its memberships every fall to decide which will be retained for the upcoming calendar year based on budget constraints and policy priorities," Merck spokeswoman Kelley Dougherty said today. "As a result of this review, the company will not be renewing its membership for several organizations. ALEC is one of these groups."

In Rhode Island's primary on Tuesday, an ALEC board member lost his election to a firefighter (woo-hoo!). Here's RIFuture.org:

Woonsocket’s Jon Brien, an ALEC board member and one of the most conservative members of the General Assembly, fell to local firefighter Stephen Casey. While Casey could prove to be a good progressive, Brien was a sworn enemy of left and the legislature gets demonstrably more liberal with his absence.

Finally, Roll Call reported that the "embattled" ALEC's headquarters on K Street are on the market.

Can you hear the world's smallest violin playing?

Today's Teamster News 07.24.15

Teamsters
Teamsters Canada: Stand Firm on Supply Management  Teamster.org  ...In advance of the final stages of Trans Pacific Partnership Negotiations (TPP), Teamsters Canada President Francois Laporte sent a letter today to International Trade Minister Ed Fast urging him to defend Canada’s Dairy Industry and to “make clear, as Canadian governments have done for many years in many trade talks, that our dairy supply management is ‘off the table’”...
Contractor/Employee Debate Heating up at Ports  Truckinginfo   ...Are drivers who handle the drayage of intermodal containers into and out of the nation's ports employees or independent contractors? The controversy was visible this week at ports on both coasts. The Teamsters union has been active in trying to get independent contractors at the ports declared employees...
Teamsters' bi-coastal drayage 'misclassification" protests heat up  JOC.com  ...The Teamsters are deploying a bi-coastal strategy to challenge what the union charges is misclassification of drayage truck drivers as independent contractors, an indication of how the issue has expanded far beyond the San Pedro Bay area. In Los Angeles-Long Beach, the Teamsters launched their sixth strike against Pac 9 Transportation, while in Savannah the union was supporting drivers who attended a public hearing by the Georgia Senate on employee misclassification...

Global Labor & Trade
U.S. diplomat pushes Canada for dairy, poultry access as TPP talks intensify  Globe & Mail  ...The top U.S. diplomat in Canada is wading into the debate over whether Ottawa is negotiating in good faith at major Pacific Rim trade talks, saying this country must come to the table as soon as possible with concrete proposals to offer foreign farmers more access to its heavily protected dairy and poultry sector...
IMF: Unionization, Higher Wages Reduce Income Inequality  Solidarity Center  ...he notion that unionization and higher wages decrease income inequality is a fundamental premise of the Solidarity Center and our allies. But now a surprising source has reached the same conclusion: the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “The decline in unionization is related to the rise of top income shares and less redistribution, while the erosion of minimum wages is correlated with considerable increases in overall inequality”...
Obama Administration Hype About a TPP Vote in 2015 Does Not Comport with Fast Track Timelines Public Citizen  ...TPP proponents are eager for Congress to vote on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal in late 2015. But to do so, given Fast Track’s statutorily-required timeframe of notice periods and pre-vote reports, TPP negotiations – and the TPP text itself – must be completed by the end of July. If notice to Congress of intent to sign the TPP were sent by August 1, a final TPP vote could be held the last week Congress is in session in December...
'Shrewd' Canada playing long game as TPP trade talks begin in Maui   CBC News  ...As Canada's lead negotiator Kirsten Hillman and the rest of her Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiating team sit down with their counterparts in Maui, Hawaii this weekend, they may sense pounding from more than just the nearby surf. The game has changed since trade negotiators from 12 Pacific Rim countries met in Guam last April. The Americans, who'd been busily deal-fixing without a mandate to back it up, are now armed with fast-track negotiating authority...
Anonymous hacks US Census Bureau over TTIP agreement, leaking employee details online  International Business Timess   ...The reason for the cyber-attack is the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), both of which are top priorities for the Obama administration and promise a radical reform of the global politico-economic system, with integration and convergence of major Atlantic and Pacific nations...
Putting Business First: How TTIP Changes the Rules of the Game  (opinion) TeleSUR  ...TTIP would cut tariffs and lower regulatory barriers to make trade easier between the two countries. According to The Telegraph, it would be the biggest trade agreement of its kind, affecting one quarter of global trade. And yet despite this, no one is totally sure of what TTIP will actually do for the EU, because it is such an unusual trade agreement. Not only are the two parties involved exceptionally large, but the nature of the agreement is – according to the CEPS, “more like a wide-ranging regulatory agreement, with some elements of classical trade agreements as well”...
Administration Desperate to Announce Deal on Trans-Pacific Partnership: There May Be an Announcement, But a Real Deal? One Congress Would Approve?  (opinion) Public Citizen  ...Unless the Obama administration can not only announce a final Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal by the start of August, but also by then complete a TPP text and give notice to Congress of intent to sign it, a U.S. congressional vote on TPP almost certainly will be pushed into the politically perilous 2016 presidential election year...
Do not undermine efforts to combat human trafficking  (opinion) The Hill  ...both the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress could be poised to take a terrible step backwards in the struggle against the global scourge of human trafficking by weakening a key amendment to the Fast Track trade authority bill.  Even more shocking are reports that the State Department is set to compromise its own Trafficking in Persons report to “upgrade” Malaysia without merit for narrow economic interests...
Many Greeks blame their economic plight on austerity-minded Germans  USA Today  ...As this economically distressed nation faces even more austerity measures, many citizens are taking their frustration out on hard-nosed Germany. The hashtag #BoycottGermany has been trending in the country since Germany took the lead in demanding tough bailout terms that have hiked taxes and slashed pensions. Tourist agencies report vacation cancellations that include many Germans...
Myanmar Officially Recognizes Trade Union Confederation  Solidarity Center  ...The government has officially recognized the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar (CTUM), and registered the federation as representing “all Myanmar.” In a ceremony today, CTUM President Maung Maung and other union leaders received the registration papers, with Maung Maung thanking “everyone who made this vision of ours come true”...
Strikes, Labor Slowdowns Add up to Summer of Woe in Italy  ABC News  ...Italy's summer of woe is getting worse — as tourists face record-high temperatures, labor slowdowns, one strike at the Pompeii archaeological site and another at Alitalia that forced the cancellation of dozens of flights. Alitalia cancelled 15 percent of its flights Friday because of a walkout by pilots and flight attendants. Further south, hundreds of tourists lined up for hours in the sun Friday outside the gates of Pompeii, near Naples, after unions called a wildcat strike...

State & Living Wage Battles
The rapid success of Fight for $15: 'This is a trend that cannot be stopped'  The Guardian  ...When 200 New York restaurant workers walked out in the nation’s first-ever fast-food strike in late 2012, they were widely mocked for demanding minimum pay of $15 an hour, with some critics saying their demand was absurdly out of reach, akin to visiting Mars. But this week a New York state panel appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo recommended establishing a $15 minimum wage for the state’s 180,000 fast-food workers...
Regional petition drive kicks off to repeal prevailing wage law  Midland Daily News  ...The debate over Michigan’s prevailing wage law has been somewhat contentious and that spilled over at the Associated Builders and Contractors Greater Michigan Chapter office on Thursday. Kicking off a regional petition drive to repeal Michigan’s prevailing wage law, Rep. Gary Glenn, R-Midland, Jimmy Greene, president/CEO ABC Greater Michigan Chapter and ABC-Michigan CEO Chris Fisher held a press conference promoting the regional petition drive to repeal the prevailing wage law...
Facing Lawsuits, North Carolina Relaxes Voter ID Rules  Care2.com  ...North Carolina passed one of the most comprehensive and toughest voter suppression laws in the country. The law targeted every demographic that had made the state one of the most progressive in the nation. At the time of passage, Republicans held all branches of government for the first time since reconstruction and were determined to reverse any progress made since then. The aggressive assault on voters led to several lawsuits against the state...
Virginia Odds and Ends  Public Policy Polling  ...There is even more overwhelming support from Virginians on another pair of pieces of progressive legislation. 64% in the state think all workers should get a minimum number of paid sick days, with only 19% opposed to that concept. And an equal 64% think borrowers should be able to deduct their student loan payments on their state income taxes, to just 20% against that...
Hillary Clinton to Back $15 Fast-Food Minimum Wage in New York  New York Times  ...Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday will use a speech focused on growing the economy to endorse a $15-an-hour minimum wage proposal for fast-food workers recommended by a New York panel, a person briefed on her plans said. The remarks from Mrs. Clinton will come in the city where the fast-food workers’ labor effort first started several years ago. A panel created by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Wednesday recommended the change...
Meet ALEC’s Little Brother, ACCE  The Nation   ...So how has the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful lobby serving right-wing interests at the state level, responded to this resurgence of local democracy? With a systematic effort to destroy it. ALEC task force director Cara Sullivan recently explained to a room full of local officials that when it comes to citizen movements supporting job creation and higher wages, “perhaps the biggest threat comes from the local level”...
'Dark Cloud' of ALEC Converges at Annual Corporate-Political Lovefest  Common Dreams  ...Fighting to protect dark money. Attacking federal efforts to rein in carbon pollution. Undermining local democracy. These are just some of the "hot topics" on the agenda this week as conservative lawmakers, corporate lobbyists, and top GOP candidates from around the country gather in San Diego for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)'s annual meeting...

U.S. Labor
Ford, UAW start optimistic contract talks  Michigan Radio  ...The United Auto Workers and Ford Motor Company are officially in talks for their next four-year contract. This time, the kickoff ceremony was held off Ford and UAW premises. The event at Ford follows last week's contract kickoff at General Motors and Fiat Chrysler. Analysts believe the talks with Fiat Chrysler could be the most problematic. The automaker has the highest number of workers being paid the "tier two" wage...
Verizon, CWA union lock horns over pension benefits  Fierce Telecom  ...Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union continue to be at odds over how to structure pension benefits for a new labor contract. The current contract expires on Aug. 1. In a new update post on the union negotiations, the CWA said that Verizon's pension proposals are not acceptable. "After listening to 5 minutes worth of their retrogressive and insulting pension presentation/proposal, the Union made it clear to the Company that we are looking for improvements to the Pension Plans"...
AFSCME: Governor trying to force work stoppage  Rock River Times  ...The state’s largest employees’ union says Gov. Bruce Rauner wants to try and force a strike or lockout while the union works to enact legislation to block a work stoppage and bring in a third party arbitrator. That’s according to an AFSCME Council 31 bargaining update posted to the Capitol Fax blog as a contract extension nears an end with no agreement in sight...
NLRB considering union's latest complaint against ACMH Hospital in East Franklin  TribLive  ...A discrimination charge filed against ACMH Hospital in East Franklin last month could be joining an earlier union complaint at a trial in front of a federal judge in Pittsburgh in September. An August trial on the earlier charge alleging hospital officials acted illegally by taking self-scheduling duties away from workers has been moved to Sept. 2. The complaints were filed by technicians and licensed practical nurses who formed a union at the hospital about a year ago...
In Indiana, Employers Can Fire Workers for Being Gay or Trans—and They Do, All the Time  The Nation  ...Decades worth of national and local surveys have found that gay and lesbian workers report widespread job bias. In a 2013 Pew Research Center survey of more than 1,000 LGBT adults, 21 percent believed they’d been treated unfairly by an employer because of their identity, and 23 percent said they’d received poor service at a restaurant, hotel, or place of business. Transgender people seem to have it the worst: In a landmark 2011 nationwide survey of 6,450 transgender and gender-nonconforming folks, 90 percent said they had been mistreated at work; 47 percent said they’d been fired, not hired or not promoted...
Applications for unemployment aid plunge to 42-year low  USA Today  ...The number of Americans filing initial applications for unemployment benefits fell to a 42-year low last week in the latest sign the labor market is poised for further gains. Even so, there are some signs of ongoing weakness in the job market. The unemployment rate fell in June mostly because many of the unemployed stopped looking for work, rather than found jobs. The proportion of Americans working or looking for work fell to a 38-year low...
Company To Pay Record-Breaking Damages For Telling Pregnant Woman She Couldn’t Do Her Job Anymore  Think Progress  ...This week, the auto parts retailer AutoZone dropped its challenge to a verdict ordering it to pay a record-breaking $185 million in damages to a former employee who claimed she was demoted and fired for being pregnant. Rosario Juarez was hired by AutoZone in 2000 and was eventually promoted to store manager in 2004. But when she became pregnant in September of 2005, she says her manager told her, “Congratulations…I guess,” adding, “I feel sorry for you”...

Social Justice & Other News
U.S. House bars funding for 'sanctuary' cities for immigrants  Reuters  ...The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to deny funding to cities that do not report undocumented immigrants to federal authorities, setting off outcry from the White House and immigration advocates. The bill, approved by a vote of 241 to 179 largely along party lines, was largely a Republican response to the recent killing of a San Francisco woman, allegedly at the hands of an immigrant man...
Robert Reich: It Would Be a Mistake For Progressives to Split Along 'Black Lives Matter' & 'Economic Justice' Lines  Alternet  ...Racial inequalities are baked into our political and economic system. Police brutality against black men and women, mass incarceration disproportionately of blacks and Latinos, housing discrimination that has resulted in racial apartheid across the nation, and voter suppression all reveal deep structures of discrimination that undermine economic inequality. Our only hope for genuine change is if poor, working class, middle class, black, Latino, and white come together in a powerful movement to take back our economy and democracy...
How Did ‘Driving While Black’ Turn Deadly for Sandra Bland?  The Nation  ...If the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson was, as The New York Times put it, “simply the spark that ignited years of pent-up tension and animosity in the area,” then Bland’s response upon being stopped came from a similar place of pent-up tension. She didn’t bow and scrape and defer to the increasingly aggressive officer, as some are suggesting she should have. Sometimes a person or a people have just had enough...
Holder's Legacy: Mass Incarceration and Protection of Killer Cops, Part II  (opinion) Truthout  ...Eric Holder has been praised as a "civil rights"-oriented attorney general, but the only rights he has championed are those of the bankers, white vigilantes and killer cops. Holder refused to press charges against millionaire banking executives who, he assured Wall Street, 'were too big to jail.' Blacks have to make do with their Miranda warning rights - if they are lucky enough to survive an encounter with the police...