Various workers at Wal-Mart stores and suppliers in over 12 cities have engaged in walkouts and one-day strikes. They’re protesting the chain’s crackdown on their organization OUR Walmart, which, while not being a formal labor union, is still serving as an organizing vehicle for workers to make their grievances known.

One place these grievances aren’t being heard is the courts. Last year, a class action law suit alleging gender discrimination that would’ve allowed 1.5 million female employees to sue Wal-Mart was thrown out by the Supreme Court.

Now, there are a new flurry of suits related to Wal-Mart’s gender discrimination. Here’s the case of one woman who was discriminated against for years:

When a manager told Christina Going in 2000 that she made less money hourly than her male Walmart counterparts because “single moms like you don’t deserve to make as much” because “you should be in a two-income household,” she figured that level of sexism had to be rare.

“I was flabbergasted,” said Going, who now lives in Palm Beach County. “He was basically telling me I should be married, and that women aren’t supposed to support their families. But I figured this guy was just one jerk.”

But, she said, her four-year career at a rural location of the megastore in Hendry County proved to her that this level of discrimination was in fact endemic among Walmart’s management.

Over four years, she saw many men with less experience get promoted over her and no one listened when she demanded she make as much as men doing the same job, she said. She quit in 2003.

Today, the corporation is having its shareholders meeting in Bentonsville, Arkansas. It’s unlikely that the voices of underpaid and discriminated against workers will be heard there. But through …

In less than a month, Massachusetts residents will get a chance to vote on who will be their next U.S. Senator. In an act of desperation, incumbent Senator Scott Brown (R) is desperately trying to portray himself as a friend of the middle class and his opponent Elizabeth Warren as a friend of Big Business — due to some minor consulting work she did with Dow Chemical in the 1990’s.

But if there’s one thing that’s true in American politics, it’s this: you are who funds you. Senators bankrolled by Big Oil give the industries subsidies. Lawmakers backed by health insurers helped kill the public option. And if there’s one thing that’s clear in the race between Warren and Brown, it’s that Corporate America has sided with the latter.

As of October 2012, Elizabeth Warren’s top donors are the grassroots donors of EMILY’s List, employees of Harvard University, and grassroots members of Moveon.org. Scott Brown’s top donors are the financial giant Fidelity Investments, EMC Corporation, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, and Goldman Sachs.

More than half of Scott Brown’s top ten donors are big banks, hedge funds, or other big financial institutions. Meanwhile, there is not a single bank or financial institution among the top twenty donors to Elizabeth Warren. It’s clear who’s on Corporate America’s side — or at least whose side Corporate America is on.

Unsurprisingly, Brown went to bat on behalf of the Big Banks. He helped weaken the Volcker Rule and voted against killing “naked credit default swaps,” a dangerous financial instrument. A week after he helped pass a watered-down financial reform bill, Morgan Stanley’s Political Action Committee gave him a $5,000 check.

So next time you see propaganda from the Brown campaign remember the lesson we …

PCCC plans to make hundreds of thousands of calls for Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts Senate race. Another top priority is Alan Grayson’s House race in Florida. Call Out The Vote will also help Sen. Sherrod Brown’s re-election effort in Ohio and Tammy Baldwin’s Senate campaign in Wisconsin. On the House side, calls will go out for Rob Zerban, who is trying unseat Paul Ryan, Annie Kuster’s campaign in New Hampshire, and several other progressive candidates.

Bold Progressives, a Democratic action organization that’s almost a million members strong, has created a great get out the vote (GOTV) campaign targeting essential election races. It’s called “Call Out The Vote” and you can get involved by helping to make calls to critical voters in key elections.

As corporations and conservative moguls like the Koch Brothers dump millions of dollars into this year’s election season, it’s difficult for progressive candidates to stay afloat. But some may have found a secret, and it’s all about taking it back to volunteer, grassroots efforts. On Tuesday, a campaign titled “ Call Out The Vote ” was launched by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to encourage people to volunteer to make phone calls on behalf of progressive candidates. The Call Out The Vote campaign is in its third and, perhaps, most important year, as it aims to make one million calls to targeted voters on behalf of 20 progressive candidates running for the House and Senate this election season.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI)

One of the reasons Americans have a hard time trusting some politicians is because they say one thing and do another.

Take Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI). During a debate with his Democratic opponent last night, he said this about oil subsidies:

Letai??i??s look at the oil and gas subsidies, letai??i??s take them away. Letai??i??s let them compete just like everyone else at the same level. We can do that with the tax code to take those special provisions away.

Listen to his remarks:

Upton’s words sound great. Why should taxpayers be giving oil companies $7 billion a year in payouts and preferential tax treatment?

There’s just one problem. When Congress actually had a chance to eliminate these subsidies, every single House Republican voted to keep them in place. Including Upton.

And he isn’t just some freshman back-bencher. He’s the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee. But Big Oil has paid him well to stay in their pockets — his fifth-largest donor is the oil and gas industry, and almost all of his money from the industry comes from Political Action Committees, which are based far away from his district.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Campaign dollars don’t necessarily have to run Congress. Click here to join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign.

One of the most prominent progressive groups in the country is launching a major voter outreach effort on behalf of 20 congressional campaigns, calling it the “crown jewel” of its election functions. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee hopes to place one million phone calls to targeted voters through the effort, named “Call Out The Vote.”

Wal-Mart is America’s biggest employer. It’s also one of its most anti-union, and has worked hard to stop workers from organizing. In 2000, ai???when a small meatcutting department successfully organized a union at a Walmart store in Texas, Wal-Mart responded a week later by announcing the phase-out of its meatcutting departments entirely.ai??? When a branch in Quebec, Canada, voted to unionize, the company immediately shut down the store.

But you can’t keep workers down forever. Josh Eidelson at Salon reports about a huge wave of one-day strikes that have hit Wal-Mart stores and suppliers nationwide:

For the second time in five days ai??i?? and also the second time in Walmartai??i??s five decades ai??i?? workers at multiple US Walmart stores are on strike.Ai??This morning, workers walked off the job in Dallas,Ai??Texas andAi??Laurel, Maryland; Walmart store workers in additional cities are expected to join the strike in the coming hours. No end date has been announced; some plan to remain on strike at least through tomorrow, when theyai??i??ll join other Walmart workers for a demonstration outside the companyai??i??s annual investor meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. Todayai??i??s is the latest in a unprecedented wave of Walmart supply chain strikes: From shrimp workers in Louisiana, to warehouse workers in California and Illinois, to Walmart store employees in three states ai??i?? and counting.

ai???A lot of associates, we have to use somewhat of a buddy system,ai??? Dallas worker Colby Harris said last night. ai???We loan each other money during non-paycheck weeks just to make it through to the next week when we get paid. Because we donai??i??t have enough money after paying bills to even eat lunch.ai??? Harris, whoai??i??s now on strike, said that after three years at Walmart, he makes $8.90 an hour in the produce department, and …

An photograph illustrating Romney’s view that we need to shower corporations with even more tax cuts.

The policies politicians propose and enact represent both priorities and trade-offs. So when Mitt Romney proposes cutting corporate taxes at the cost of $1 trillion over the next ten years, he’s telling us that it’s more important for him to reduce the tax rates paid by Big Business than to have that trillion dollars in the Treasury to fund public priorities.

Here’s one of those priorities. Using data from the National Priorities Project (NPP), I calculated what else we could finance with a trillion dollars. I found that we could fund four-year scholarships for 31million students over the next ten years instead. Each student could go to a “flagship” state school for one year and have their tuition and fees fully subsidized.

Here’s a few other things we could finance for a trillion dollars instead of tax cuts for well-off corporations:

Veterans Administration care for 126 million veterans for one year
Hiring 14.5 million teachers for one year
Hiring 14.1 million police officers for one year

These are just a few alternatives to cutting corporate taxes by a trillion dollars over the next ten years. It’s up to us to choose what’s a better use of our tax dollars.

As poll after poll shows bold progressive Elizabeth Warren leading Scott Brown (R) in the Massachusetts Senate race, he is growing increasingly desperate to distract voters from his pro-corporate record.

He’s attacking Warren for having a small consulting role to Dow Chemical back in 1995. He claims this shows that she’s not on the side of ordinary people.

But if Dow Chemical is so toxic (no pun intended) then why is Brown happy to engage in fundraising with the corporation?

Brown has taken $6,000 from the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC) in the current election cycle. He took $1,000 when he was running in 2010. Warren hasn’t gotten a dime from the company’s PAC.

Corporations don’t just like to give away free money. Dow is likely rewarding Brown for his 2011 vote to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, an issue Dow intensely lobbied on the same year. In fact, he got a $1,000 check from the PAC the month after the vote.

They say those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. It seems like Brown just threw a boulder.

Help Warren win her race, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

During his debate with President Obama last week, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said that although he likes Big Bird, he would cut off all federal funding to PBS. (He would, however, advocate for corporate tax cuts that would cost 238 times as much as all federal subsidies for public broadcasting put together.)

This brought understandable outrage from most Americans, who treasure public goods like CBS. During a visit to Detroit today, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was greeted by a cadre of protesters, including Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and a man dressed as Big Bird. Watch a local news report about the protest:

Show your support for public priorities like PBS. Donate today and we’ll send you a “Save Big Bird” bumper sticker!

Tommy Thompson’s has some really odd corporate donors.

As we told you this weekend, Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson is a health care profiteer. While serving as the Bush Administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary, he cut a sweetheart deal with Big Pharma that cost taxpayers $20 billion a year, and then left to go profit off of a variety of health care interests.

One of the — let’s say, creepier — clients that Thompson had was the Verichip Corporation (which is now known as PositiveID). This corporation — which was a subsidiary of Applied Digital, which installed Thompson on its board shortly after he left government — specialized in producing microchips that are implanted into humans for various reasons.

Here’s a 2007 CNBC clip where Thompson went on TV to shill for Verichip and the benefits of implanting human beings with microchips. He even promised to get one himself (to our knowledge, he never followed through):

The makers of these human microchips are paying Thompson back for his propaganda work. Verichip is actually Thompson’s eleventh-biggest single donor.

Thompson’s bold progressive opponent Tammy Baldwin could use your support. Chip in a few dollars to help Baldwin get elected.

Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH)

Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH) is facing off with bold progressive candidate Annie Kuster on the November ballot, and he is desperately trying to avoid losing by trying to repair his image with voters who are steamed at the Republican Party.

At a recent candidate’s forum, he tried to portray himself as being fairly bipartisan:

Calling the election ai???very, very significant,ai??? Bass said Congress needs bipartisan cooperation, and argued heai??i??s been among the congressmen who most frequently reached across the aisle to cooperate with colleagues from the other party.

Bass noted that because of his backing of a failed bipartisan debt-reduction budget, he was one of the few congressmen endorsed jointly by Erskine Bowles, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a two-time Democratic Senate candidate, and Alan Simpson, an ex-Republican U.S. senator from Wyoming.

Bass also noted the he has broken ranks with the GOP on the issues of softening environmental standards and on womenai??i??s health care issues.

The first thing that should be mentioned is that the Simpson-Bowles plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefitsAi??was rejected along a very bipartisan 382-38 vote. Additionally theAi??vast majority of AmericansAi??reject its key proposals — a recenty McClatchy poll found that 80 percent of Americans oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid — as well. Bass is bragging about being on the fringe.

But the other major flaw in what Bass is saying is the idea that he frequently reaches across the aisle. He votes with his own party 83 percent of the time.

Click here to help Annie Kuster air a TV ad shining a light on Charlie Bass’s extreme views.

The industry-funded American Beverage Association is leading the opposition the the Richmond soda tax.

When Big Business wants to get its way on a ballot referendum or voter-approved constitutional amendment, it starts to spend big to influence public opinion and flood the airwaves with propaganda.

Take the case of Richmond, California. There, voters will be asked on their November ballots to approve a levy a sales tax on soda products. The Contra Costa Times reports today that the beverage industry is spending $2.2 million to kill the measure:

In Richmond, campaign finance statements released Friday show the pro-Measure N campaign has spent $25,293, a pittance compared with the No on N campaign’s wave of $2.2 million. The anti-tax figure, which some expect to double by Nov. 6, is aimed at turning out about 15,000 voters, the expected number needed to pass or defeat the measure. That comes out to nearly $150 per voter.

That’s not only $150 per voter, it’s also an 87-to-1 spending advantage over tax proponents. Whatever your position is on the soda tax, it’s fair to say voters are not getting a fair debate when one side can outspend the other by that much.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy Campaign and help kick Big Money out of our politics.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) is in national headlines for remarks he made recently where he labeled evolution a lie from the “pit of hell.”

But Broun’s loony antics aren’t limited to what he said about evolution. Here’s five other things — in no particular order, but feel free to order them yourselves! — he said that will have you scratching your head:

Funding NPR and Planned Parenthood is “Unconstitutional”: Broun once offered a truly astounding critique of federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and Planned Parenthood, saying that it’s simply unconstitutional to give them money. [4/6/2011]
Federal Employees Don’t Have Real Jobs: During an appearance on a radio job, he shrugged off the firing of 250,000 public employees that would’ve resulted from failing to hike the debt ceiling. He said they should get a “real job.” Does Broun not realize he is one? [6/7/2011]
The Civil War Was A “War Of Yankee Aggression,” Which Is Just Like Health Reform:This one just has to be seen to be believed. [3/18/2010]
We Should Repeal The 16th And 17th Amendments To Stop The “Socializing” Of America: Putting aside the fact that “socializing” simply means gathering with others and communicating, Broun was under the impression that allowing Americans to freely elect their Senators and allowing those Senators to levy an income tax will have us heading down the road to the Soviet Union. [7/2010]
The Federal Government Will Be Calling You Every Day To Make Sure You Eat Your Vegetables: Apparently this was supposed to be one of the effects of Obama’s health care overhauls. And no, Broun was not kidding. [9/2010]

What’s your favorite Broun crazy quip?

If you want elect some progressives to be the antidote to Paul Broun in Congress, …

A just-released Western New England University poll finds that bold progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren leads Sen. Scott Brown (R) among likely voters:

Warren leads Brown 50 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in a Western New England University pollAi??conducted for the Springfield Republican newspaper and Masslive.com.Ai??The Democratai??i??s lead is mostly unchanged from an early September poll showing her leading Brown 50 percent to 44 percent. Other recent polls have mostly shown Warren with a single-digit lead over Brown.

Warren maintaining her lead is likely at least partially explained by the fact that voters are beginning to wake up to Brown’s extreme pro-corporate positions. As one example, in his most recent debate with Warren, Brown admitted that his “model” Supreme Court Justice is the far-right figure Antonin Scalia — who has all but embraced the corporate dominance of American democracy as a matter of “free speech.”

The right is growing increasingly desperate, and that’s why super lobbyist Grover Norquist just dropped $162,000 into the race to help Brown. Help Warren win her race, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

Tommy Thompson personally cost taxpayers $20 billion a year.

Wisconsin’s Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson has been in hot water since video surfacedof him admitting that he wants to “do away with Medicare” and Medicaid. This shocking clip has gone viral, but what is less known about Thompson is how he helped Big Pharma rip off Medicare and how he later tried to help insurers get a piece of Medicaid, too.

In 2003, the Bush administration aggressively pushed for the creation of Medicare Part D, a subsidized drug benefit. Thompson was the “point man” for the administration during these negotations, serving as Bush’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary.

While helping seniors afford prescription drugs was a laudable goal, the Bush administration, via Thompson, pushed for a specialAi??carve-outAi??for the pharmaceutical industry. The part D bill specifically barred Medicare from negotiating drug prices with Big Pharma, meaning that it essentially told the government it can’t even ask for a good deal.

This made the new law wildly more expensive than it should be, and most Democrats in the House voted against it. After the benefit was passed, Big Pharma rewarded its most fervent congressional supporter, Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, with a $2 million-a-year lobbying job.

But while Tauzin was getting a payoff, taxpayers were losing out. Authoritative studies on the issue estimate that drug negotiation could save as much as $20 billion a year for Medicare.

Thompson, having negotiated this great deal for the industry, soon left his role in the Bush administration. He became a partner atAi??Ai??Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a leading lobbying firm, where the firm’s clients included leading bio-tech and pharmaceutical companies. He even went on television to shill for one company that was …

A screenshot of the Fix the Debt campaign’s logo.

The so-called Ai??”Campaign To Fix The Debt” is being run by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and is designed to pressure Congress to enact an austerity plan that cuts Social Security and guts investments in Main Street America while lowering corporate taxes.

To pass this unpopular plan, Simpson and Bowles have amassed a massive $25 million war chest. As the Huffington Post just reported, it is likely that the group is being funded by the right-wing billionaire Pete Peterson; its steering committee includes billionaire CEOs like Honeywell’s Dave Cote.

If you sign up as a volunteer for the group, you’ll be e-mailed a “toolkit” that you’re supposed to use to engage in pro-austerity activism on behalf of the billionaires who run the group.

One of the instructions in the tool kit is to “bird dog” campaign events and town halls that feature Members of Congress. Here’s the sample questions that the campaign is asking people to dog lawmakers with. Notice that they are designed to pressure legislators to agree to cuts to Social Security and enact other devastating spending cuts:

The took kit also instructs activists to “get to the event early to hold signs or pass outAi??literature about the debt,” and to “have somebody ready to record the answer with video, if possible.” Finally, it reminds you to “raise your hand as quickly as possible when theAi??candidate takes questions, speak clearly andAi??confidently!”

This bird-dogging isn’t too different from what a lot of grassroots activists do. The difference, however, is that this group is run by billionaire CEOs who are trying to cut Social Security. They …

Photo credit: Flickr user juggernautco

As cities across the country grapple with tough budget decisions thanks to the economic crisis caused by Wall Street, progressives continue to demand a balanced approach that does not rely solely on cuts.

But Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is disregarding any sense of balance in grappling with the city’s $300 million budget deficit. “No new taxes, fines and fees,” he told the Chicago Tribune recently.

His comment shocked some budget analysts. ai???Absent some reform of the benefits that are paid out, a tax increase is just simple math — it has to occur,ai??? said Shawn Oai??i??Leary, who is a senior research analyst in Chicago at Nuveen Asset Management. ai???You canai??i??t cut your way to that kind of balance.ai???

If Rahm rules out tax increases, it’s likely that the only savings to be found would be through harsh cuts to the city budget, and perhaps rollbacks in pensions for public workers. That’s the cost of taking the Grover Norquist approach to budgeting, and it’s one that Chicago residents should demand that Emanuel back down from.

Disclosures released today from the Federal Election Commission show that Grover Norquists’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) just droppedAi??$162,418.26 on direct mail pieces to attack bold progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. Here’s a screengrab from the disclosure:

When Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) pledges not to raise taxes on the wealthy, ATR is the reason why. It is a powerful lobby that is funded largely by corporations and billionaires.

When the right corporations pay off Norquist, he’ll even violate his own supposed free market conservative principles.Ai??Earlier this year, I confronted him about why ATR opposes letting Americans buy cheaper drugs from Canada — a free market idea. When I mentioned that his organization has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Pharma, he struggled to maintain his composure. Then, when my colleague and I asked him why he lobbied for Fannie Mae in the past even though he attacks it now, he quit the interview altogether.

Norquist is a powerful lobbyist and his organization is seeking to sink Warren because she’s dedicated to holding corporate America accountable. Help defend Warren from Norquists’s attack, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign.

A new piece by Alec MacGillis in The New Republic looks at Republican mega-donorAi??Robert Murray, who runs the Murray Energy Corporation.

Within the piece is a stunning nugget. MacGillis talks to several workers who say that they were pressured to donate to the company’s Political Action Committee and to the Republican Party. If they resisted, they were made to feel that their jobs were at stake:

The accounts of two sources who have worked in managerial positions at the firm, and a review of letters and memos to Murray employees, suggest that coercion may also explain Murray staffersai??i?? financial support for Romney. Murray, it turns out, has for years pressured salaried employees to give to the Murray Energy political action committee (PAC) and to Republican candidates chosen by the company. Internal documents show that company officials track who is and is not giving. The sources say that those who do not give are at risk of being demoted or missing out on bonuses, claims Murray denies.

The Murray sources, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, came forward separately. But they painted similar pictures of the fund-raising operation. ai???Thereai??i??s a lot of coercion,ai??? says one of them. ai???I just wanted to work, but you feel this constant pressure that, if you donai??i??t contribute, your jobai??i??s at stake. Youai??i??re compelled to do this whether you want to or not.ai??? Says the second: ai???They will give you a call if youai??i??re not giving. .ai??i??.ai??i??. Itai??i??s expected you give Mr. Murray what he asks for.ai???

The energy corporation’s PAC gave 100 percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans this cycle, and its employees have given 4 times as much money as the PAC, almost all of it to …

Former senator George Allen always is a long-time foe of net neutrality — the rules by which Internet-providing telecom companies can’t discriminate against access to certain websites. He voted to virtually eliminate net neutrality in 2006, and got $113,000 from big telecom companies like AT&T during his last election cycle.

But corruption’s the gift that keeps on giving. Allen is once again running for a Senate seat, and he will be hosted by numerous Verizon lobbyists tonight for a huge fundraiser.

The fundraiser will be held at the home of Tom Tauke, who is himself a former congressmen who walked through the revolving door to become the Executive Vice President, Public Affairs, Policy and Communications for Verizon — one of the company’s top government affairs (lobbying) positions.

Also attending will be Peter Davidson, the former General Counsel to the House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who now works for Verizon as the Senior VP for Federal Government Relations.

Each host will be donating $2,000 on behalf of a Political Action Committee (PAC) and/or $1,000 individually. Additionally attendees are invited to attend if they donate $1,000 as a PAC or $500 as an individual.

It should be noted that Verizon isn’t just a stark opponent of net neutrality. It has also moved in recent years to put down unions such as the Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. It’s likely that if Allen is elected on the back of Verizon cash, he will be hostile to both Internet freedom and organized labor.

Don’t let Big Money and lobbyists run our country. Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign.

Don’t co-host a debate Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) doesn’t like. Or else.

Local media stations make big bucks off of campaign dollars. So it’s particularly revolting when a Member of Congress uses the allure of campaign funding to try to intimidate the media.

The story just broke that Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) apparently threatened to stop advertising on a local radio station because it was co-hosting a debate he had chosen not to participate in:

U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna, a Republican, told WUTR-TV in Utica he would not run ads with the station unless it dropped plans to co-host a debate in which Hanna refused to participate, according to an email written by the stationai??i??s general manager.

WUTRai??i??s Stephen Merren said Thursday he accidentally sent the email recounting the conversation to the spokesman for Democratic candidate Dan Lamb, reports Brian Tumulty of Gannettai??i??s Washington bureau. […] Ai??ai???He (Hanna) indicated to me that we would not be considered for his ad dollars and our level of cooperation in the future could be affected,ai??? Merren said in his email.

ai???Congressman Richard Hanna should be ashamed of himself for using his money to influence the journalistic decisions of a local news station,ai??? said Hannah’s Democratic Party opponent Dan Lamb said in a press statement. ai???If this isnai??i??t a violation of FCC rules, it should be. What Hanna did is the moral equivalent of bribing a cop. If the news media can be bought off, our entire democracy is at risk.ai???

Does Josh Mandel support the auto rescue? He’ll get back to you on that.

Out of any of the federal interventions into the economy over the past four years, one of the most successful was the auto rescue, which is so popular that a RomneyAi??adviserAi??even ludicrously tried to claim that it was Mitt Romney’s idea (remember that the candidate wrote an op-ed titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt“).

It’s notable that Ohio Republican Josh Mandel — who is trying to defeat bold progressive incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown (D) — can’t even take a position on it.

The Vindicator newspaper (Youngstown, Ohio) asked Mandel six times whether he would’ve supported the auto rescue, and each time he dodged the question:

Asked a half dozen times using different scenarios, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, wouldnai??i??t give a yes-or-no answer as to whether he supports the $82 billion federal government bailout of the American auto industry.

During a Wednesday editorial board meeting with The Vindicator, Mandel was repeatedly asked the question.

Each time, Mandel either said it was wrong for the bailout to not help Delphi salaried retirees ai??i?? who lost their health and life insurance and had their pensions cut by 30 percent to 70 percent ai??i?? or dismissed various scenarios offered by the editorial boardai??i??s members as not being legitimate questions.

It’s kind of a given that a U.S. Senator should be able to tell you whether or not they would’ve supported a major policy like the auto rescue.
UPDATE: Here’s the video of Mandel dodging the question for five minutes:

Pitch in a few bucks to help out bold progressive candidate Sherrod Brown by clicking here.

Alan Simpson

Earlier this week, former senator and corporate lobbyist Alan Simpson and banking mogul Erskine Bowles, the authors of a plan to cut Social Security and gut programs for the poorest Americans, took out an ad attacking bold progressive congressional candidate Annie Kuster.

Last night, we got a look into the mind of Simpson during a forum held at Harvard University. During the panel, Simpson went off on the critics of his plan to cut Social Security:

SIMPSON: I get so damn sick and tired of listening to the little guy, the vulnerable, the veteran — I am a veteran, and the seniors and this and this and this and the meanwhile this country is headed for second-class status while everybody just babblesAi??into the vapor.

Watch Simpson’s rant:

Simpson might be sick of listening to “the little guy,” veterans, and the vulnerable, but Annie Kuster is not. Click here to chip in a few dollars to defend her from Simpson’s attacks.