When the Koch brothers tell you to "Rally for Jobs"...

...you can pretty much bet that's the last thing they want. Think Progress tells us about the latest "up is down" campaign from the polluting billionaire brothers. Look for the "Rallies for Jobs" in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, and Ohio. They're not really about jobs, of course; they're about gutting environmental laws.

Money quotes:

...the Koch brothers and various Koch-funded organizations have also been actively trying to roll back existing clean air and clean energy laws — both at the state and national levels.

...and...

Just yesterday, the Center for American Progress released a report showing that a concerted national energy efficiency program (i.e using less energy, not more) could create 625,000 sustained jobs over ten years, spark $500 billion in investment, and save ratepayers $64 billion that they could then use more productively.

Not to mention it would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and all the problems that entails...

Links 09/02/10

Factory Growth Buoys Markets Wall Street Journal ...Growth in manufacturing activity accelerated last month in both the U.S. and China.

Parsing an Ascendant GOP's Economic Prescriptions Wall Street Journal ...The closest Republicans come to a public economic agenda are speeches by their House leader, John Boehner, who promises more detail later.

The Real Say on Pay (editorial) New York Times ...the new financial reform law ... requires companies to disclose the ratio between a chief executive’s pay package and that of a typical employee.

Schwarzenegger, union argue furlough case next week The State Worker ...the California Supreme Court will hear debate next week over whether the governor has illegally forced state workers to take unpaid days off from work.

Unions Spurn Democrats Seen as Turncoats on Health, Organizing Bloomberg News ...organized labor helped Democrats win ... two years ago, only to find some candidates they supported didn’t return the favor.

More people living paycheck to paycheck Kansas City Star ...A survey ... this summer, found that nearly eight out of ten workers said they are living paycheck to paycheck.

American Workers Believe Economic Conditions Will be Same or Worse Next Year Industry Week ...American workers are deeply pessimistic about prospects for economic recovery...

Hey, here's someone who gets it

Mother Jones' David Corn interviews Tom Perriello, a freshman Democrat who's running for re-election to Congress from a Republican district in Virginia.

Here's the money quote from Perriello:

"I don't see the dividing line as liberal versus conservative. It's populist versus corporatist. If we're not standing up to the most powerful interests, where is the Democratic Party?"

...and...

"We're not producing anything anymore. The elites in both parties are too close to Wall Street. If jobs are created in India, that's fine with them."

This is a guy who told his party leaders they should introduce a new jobs bill every week to force Republicans to take a stand. He says it's embarrassing that Congress took a six-week vacation. He believe Washington has no idea how serious the jobs crisis is.

Read the whole thing here.

The latest outrage from Alan Simpson

Fresh off apologizing for calling Social Security "a milk cow with 310 million tits," former senator Alan Simpson has done it again.

He actually said that the military veterans who saved this country "are ... not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess."

Apparently Simpson, who co-chairs President Obama's deficit commission (aka the "Catfood Commission"), was commenting on a report that diabetes is the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans.

This is rich

Koch Industries, the Wichita, Kans.-based energy conglomerate, wants money from the health insurance reform that it opposed, according to Think Progress.

The company is owned by the billionaires David and Charles Koch, who are bankrolling the Tea Party (remember those demonstrations against health care reform last year??) and a giant network of right-wing organizations.

If you haven't read Jane Mayer's piece in the New Yorker about the Kochs, you must.

Mayer reports:

As their fortunes grew, Charles and David Koch became the primary underwriters of hard-line libertarian politics in America. Charles’s goal ... was to tear the government “out at the root.”

Only the Kochs know how much they've spend on right-wing organizations, but it's a lot. Mayer says

After the 1980 election, Charles and David Koch ... poured more than a hundred million dollars into dozens of seemingly independent organizations.
...

Ari Rabin-Havt, a vice-president at the Democratic-leaning Web site Media Matters, said that the Kochs’ effort is unusual, in its marshalling of corporate and personal funds: “Their role, in terms of financial commitments, is staggering.”

They started off with think tanks like the Cato Institute, which advocate deregulation, and then branched out into phony grassroots organizations.

Citizens for a Sound Economy, seemed like a grassroots movement, but according to the Center for Public Integrity it was sponsored principally by the Kochs, who provided $7.9 million between 1986 and 1993.

The brothers aren't exactly squeaky clean, Mayer reports:

In 1989, the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs investigated their business and released a scathing report accusing Koch Oil of “a widespread and sophisticated scheme to steal crude oil from Indians and others through fraudulent mismeasuring.” The Kochs admitted that they had improperly taken thirty-one million dollars’ worth of crude oil, but said that it had been accidental.

They've been investigated for evading campaign finance laws. They've settled cases in which they've been charged with causing more than 300 oil spills and coveringup the discharge of 91 tons of benzene. They were found guilty of negligence and malice when two teen-agers died from an explosion of a leaky butane pipeline.

Yet their influence is insidious. Americans for Prosperity, one of their front groups, is featured on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh without being identified as the tool of a big polluter. Says Mayer

Phil Kerpen, the vice-president for policy at Americans for Prosperity, is a contributor to the Fox News Web site. Another officer at Americans for Prosperity, Walter Williams, often guest-hosts for Limbaugh.

Priceless.

There's a shock

The big banks spent $16 million lobbying against financial reform in the first half of 2010, more than 16 times as much as our side, according to The Huffington Post.

We must have missed it when Fox News reported that financial reform was another thank-you to Big Labor.

Links 09/01/10

A deserted feeling in working-class America Washington Post ...the Great Recession has made labor's task decidedly more difficult this year.

Nafta, Mexican trucks, retaliatory tariffs and safety (Letter to the editor) Wall Street Journal ...the reason U.S. firms are being hit with raised tariffs is the fault of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), not the Teamsters union or Congress.

New job means lower wages for many New York Times ...comparatively little attention has been paid to the quality of the jobs being created.

Coca-Cola workers end strike in Bellevue, Western Washington Bellevue Reporter ...Coca-Cola employees in Bellevue and Western Washington returned to work Tuesday.

CEOs lay off thousands, rake in millions msnbc.com ...chief executives of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 took home 42 percent more pay in 2009 than their peers at other large U.S. companies.

Workers Rebuilding New Orleans Face Rampant Wage Theft The Washington Independent ...The Congress of Day Laborers last year found that 80 percent of the workers it represents had been victims of wage theft in the past year.

Business groups plan Labor Day blitz against Senate Dems, candidates The Hill ...Business groups plan to go on offense against vulnerable Senate Democrats in their backyards to mark Monday's Labor Day holiday.