New documents reveal that Wal-Mart raised its wages in 2006 as a result of worker protests. (Photo credit: Flickr user Monochrome)

Over the past two weeks, Wal-Mart stores and suppliers have been faced with sporadic one-day strikes all over the country, the first in the company’s 50-year history. Workers are now threatening to walk out on the store’s busiest shopping day of the year: Black Friday.

Many observers are wondering whether these small strikes and walk outs will have an impact on the notoriously anti-labor company. Matt Stoller at Naked Capitalism has the details on how past protests have actually dramatically improved things at Wal-Mart stores.

Stoller points to a document that has a transcript of the remarks of t. Louis Federal Reserve President William Poole where he says a Wal-Mart contact told him there were raises in 700 Wal-Mart stores in 2006 thanks to the “social/political” protests against the company:

Poole offered some very different and shocking news, ai???My Wal-Mart contact also said that ai???Wal-Mart is in the process of raising starting wages in about 700 stores. This is the first time in eight years of talking with him that Iai??i??ve heard any comment like that. He said that some of the raises are part of the Wal-Mart, Iai??i??ll call it ai???Social/politicalai??? agenda because of all the controversy about Wal-Mart.ai???

Recall that 2006 was the year after the premiere of a hard-hitting documentary about the store, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It was also the same year that the chain was facing a massive worker campaign organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) called “Wake Up Walmart.”

While Wal-Mart stores remain absent of unions, this document proves an important point: the store is willing to respond to protests by …

(Photo credit: Flickr user KB35)

Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett (R-PA) has a lot to thank the oil and gas industry for. It gave him $1,277,550 during his 2010 run for governor, and has given him over $150,000 since then.

This week, Corbett gave the industry a gift in return. He signed into law the “Indigenous Mineral Resource Development Act,” which will allow the state to make and execute contracts allowing for the “mining or removal of coal, oil, natural gas, coal bed methane and limestone found in or beneath land owned by the state or state system of higher education.”

Fracking is a new and dangerous method of oil drilling, and Pennsylvania drilling companies have an environmental record that is hardly fit to brag about: “Pennsylvania drilling companies racked up a total of 3,355 violations of environmental law between 2008 and 2011, 2,392 of which posed a direct threat to the environment and safety of communities.”

But for more than a million dollars, you can get a politician to put aside concerns about public safety and the environment. And that’s what Tom Corbett just did when he opened up college campuses to fracking.

Don’t let the oil industry run our politics. Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy Campaign and help kick Big Money out of our politics.

Sen. John McCain is making headlines for comments he made at the University of Oxford that were critical of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that further eliminated restrictions on corporate spending in elections. Here’s an excerpt of his remarks from the Huffington Post:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) continued his harsh criticism of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling this week, calling it the bench’s “worst decision ever.”

ai???They said money is free speech. Since when is money free speech?ai??? McCain asked a crowd at an event put on by the Oxford Union at the University of Oxford, according to the Oxonian Globalist. ai???Money is money.ai???

McCain’s remarks are well and good.Citizens United is a horrible decision and it’s silly to say that the Koch Brothers have a First Amendment right to spend as much money as they want influencing our elections.

But the senator is being plainly hypocritical. He may be criticizing money in politics, but he’s voted against even the most minor bills to fix the problems that the Citizens United case created.

In both 2010 and 2012, McCain voted to filibuster — that means he wouldn’t even allow it to come up for a real vote — the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, which would’ve required numerous outside groups to disclose the donors behind their election spending. While this wouldn’t have solved all of the problems in money in politics, it would’ve at least let us know which billionaires and corporations were bankrolling powerful groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS.

McCain also isn’t a sponsor of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would introduce voluntary public financing of all federal elections.

Yes, McCain once supported substantive campaign finance reform, and worked with then-Sen. Russ …

In order to comment on the Ryan-Biden vice presidential debate last night, Fox News’s Sean Hannity brought on former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. During one curious set of remarks on the debate, Palin criticized Biden for “inciting-type rhetoric”:

HANNITY: When Joe Biden talked about they’re down on America. They bet against America. Holding hostage was another term that he used. Now this is a — he’s working for a president lecturing the country on civility. I wanted to get your take on those particular terms that he used tonight meaning the vice president.

PALIN:Ai??You know that inciting-type rhetoric that did not go over well. I believe with those who are rational American voters just wanting to deal with facts and what the true state of the union is and we know the state of the union is not very good right now because of the failed policies of Obama and Biden.

Watch it (the relevant section takes place at around 02:30):

Apparently Sarah Palin has no sense of irony. This is, after all, the far-right icon who created a congressional race map with crosshairs over the districts of House Democrats:

Palin also accused President Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” and told Americans that health reform would put mentally disabled Americans to death with “death panels.”

Before Palin accuses others of incitement, she should take a good, hard look in the mirror.

Will Obama and Romney be asked about any of these issues? (Photo credit: Flickr user DonkeyHotey)

Last night’s vice presidential debate marked the second debate between the Romney-Ryan ticket and the Obama-Biden campaign. There are two presidential debates left to go, and both will be between Obama and Romney.

These debates are supposed to serve to educate Americans about the differences between the candidates. But we’ve done a review of the questions asked at the debates and we’ve found five important issues that have yet to come up at all. Here’s the list, in no particular order:

Labor Unions: In the three hours of debate so far between the two campaigns, labor unions have not come up once. In a question related to education, Romney didn’t even resort to his normal teacher-bashing by attacking teachers unions. The absence of unions from the debate is stunning, given that research shows that the decline of unions in America has corresponded with the decline of the middle class.
Economic Inequality: The word “inequality” didn’t arise once during the two debates. The moderators did not ask about the growing class divide in America nor the candidates’ solution to the problem.
Climate Change: There hasn’t been a single question asked about global warming. This is at a time when scientists are predicting that entire island nations like the Maldives will disappear thanks to rising sea levels.
The Drug War: The drug war is one of America’s greatest failings, and it’s estimated that half of our prison population is nonviolent drug offenders. But the issue simply didn’t arise during the debates.
LGBT Equality: President Obama was the first sitting president ever to endorse marriage equality, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the debates. The Obama-Biden ticket was …

Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH)

Lowering taxes on the wealthy does little to nothing to spur economic growth. We know this because we have a great example: the Bush tax cuts. Bush’s presidency saw a dismal lack of job growth, and growth has actually been more robust under presidents with higher taxes.

Don’t tell that to Republican congressman Charlie Bass (NH). In an interview with a local television host this week, Bass explained that he thinks that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are actually too small. He advocates for dropping tax rates to between 20 and 30 percent:

BASS: We can raise some taxes, lower some taxes, simplify, get the tax rate in the 20 to 30 percent range across the board, and obviously for lower-income americans around 10 to 15 percent which is what they pay today, the result would be a lot more economic activity.

Watch it:

It’s difficult to understand which taxes Bass thinks should be raised if he is wanting taxes to be leveled out between 20 and 30 percent. The top tax rate right now is 35 percent, which means dropping the bracket to at most 30 percent would amount to a gargantuan tax cut for the richest Americans (remember that Bush dropped the rate from 39 to 35 percent, which is actually a smaller cut than Bass is proposing). If Bass supported dropping the rate to 28 percent, like his party’s presidential nominee Mitt Romney, it would amount to an average tax cut of $250,535 for Americans who make a million dollars or more per year.

Americans know that the rich don’t need an even bigger tax cut. Chip in $3 to his bold progressive opponent, Annie Kuster.

Ryan is flat out lying about Social Security and Medicare. (Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)

Last night, during the vice presidential debate with Joe Biden, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan lied to the American people. He said, “Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.”

Watch it:

This statement was a bald-faced lie. Neither program is going bankrupt any time soon. Here’s our quick explainer why:

Social Security: It’s currently projected to beAi??fully solventAi??until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which basically equals full benefits, once inflation isAi??accounted for. There is no threat of the program running out of money any time soon.Ai??Ai??We could make it solvent far into the future if we simply raised the payroll tax cap — meaning that income above $106,000 would be taxed just like income below that amount is. Lifting the cap would require the wealthy to pay a tiny bit more so that the program would be safe and secure. Even a majority of self-identified Tea Partiers find this to be a good idea versus cutting Social Security by raising the retirement age.
Medicare: According to the Medicare Trustees’ annual report that was released in April 2012, “the Hospital Insurance (Part A) Trust Fund has sufficient reserves to pay out the full amount of Medicare Part A benefits until 2024 ai??i?? the same projection made in last year’s report.Ai?? Should nothing else change, and the Trust Fund reserves be depleted in 2024, the Trust Fund would still receive sufficient income from the payroll taxes and other revenue through which it is funded to pay 87% of anticipated Part A expenses.” And all of …

Elizabeth Warren’s blockbuster debate performance this week successfully exposed Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) as a shill for Wall Street and as someone who perpetually sides with Republican extremists like Grover Norquist — who once said he wouldn’t even be open to raising taxes during a war or huge natural disaster.

A new poll out by Public Policy Polling shows that Brown’s approval rating is plummeting while more and more voters are viewing him as a typical partisan Republican rather than an independent voice:

Warren leads Scott Brown 50-44. The big change over the last month is that Brown’s image is finally starting to take a hit. His approval rating is now a +7 spread at 49/42, down a net 14 points from mid-September when he was at 55/34. There’s an increasing sense that he’s been more a partisan voice for the national Republican Party (45%) than an independent voice for Massachusetts (44%). That’s a 10 point shift from our last poll when voters thought 49/40 that he’d been more of an independent voice.

Click here to sign up to make calls to help bold progressive Elizabeth Warren win.

Judd Gregg was once a U.S. Senator, but then decided to go work for Goldman Sachs.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have launched a new campaign — called “Fix The Debt” — to get Members of Congress to support their austerity plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefitsAi?? while lowering corporate tax rates. They’re even taking aim at bold progressive congressional candidates like Annie Kuster who oppose their plan.

They have a steep hill to climb, because their plan is very unpopular among the public and was already defeated in a 382-38 vote in Congress.

In an article published yesterday in Bloomberg News, former Senator Judd Gregg, who is campaigning with Bowles and Simpson, promised “financial support” to lawmakers who back their Social Security-cutting plan:

ai???Weai??i??re trying to develop a plan that can be used by members of Congress, called ai???Simpson-Bowles plus,ai??i?? if you will,ai??? Gregg said. ai???We want to combine that with grassroots help and financial support to be there for members of Congress who need political support when they make these tough decisions.ai???

First of all, there is no “grassroots” demand to cut Social Security and Medicare. As we revealed to you last week, Bowles and Simpson have enlisted funding from billionaires to try to create the impression of one by flooding town halls with questions about austerity. They’ve already raised $30 million.

But the second part of what Gregg said is more interesting. He is openly saying that his group will provide “financial support” for lawmakers who want to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. That’s a monetary incentive to Members of Congress.

And who is Gregg, exactly? Bloomberg correctly identifies him as a former senator, but doesn’t note his day job. Gregg was named an “international advisor” to Goldman Sachs …

In his most famous role as Jack McCoy in Law & Order, actor Sam Waterston took on all sorts of corrupt criminals. Now he’s tackling corruption in politics by backing the campaign for public financing of campaigns in New York.

Watch a video of Waterston explaining the problem of money in politics and urging New Yorkers to get involved to pass public financing:

Join the fight for Fair Elections in New York. Sign up for PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign.

Tonight, Vice President Joe Biden will be facing off with Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). But while Ryan is willing to debate with Biden tonight, there is another man he’s been running from.

See, Ryan has an unusually strong congressional challenger this year named Rob Zerban. Zerban is a successful and socially-conscious businessman who also has been involved in the community and local activism for years. He’s well-liked, and polling shows that Zerban is within single-digits of Ryan.

Their policy differences couldn’t be more stark, especially on one of the most important issues: protecting Medicare. Ryan is the author of the “Medicare For None” plan that would turn the entire program over to private insurers, while Zerban is campaigning for Medicare For All.Ai?? In his recent television ad, Zerban criticizes RyanAi?? for spearheading this plan to end Medicare, and he promises that he will “never cut Medicare benefits. Ever.” Watch it:

But Ryan has refused to attend a single debate with Zerban. From his perspective, if he just ignores Zerban, voters won’t be able to learn about the alternative. The Republican congressman has committed, however, $2 million to a huge ad buy to defend his congressional seat.

We’re not willing to stand by and let Paul Ryan dodge his responsibility to give voters a fair choice. Chip in $3 to Zerban’s campaign and help him educate voters about the fact that they have a great alternative to Ryan in November.

Wal-Mart is one corporation that pays its workers the worst. (Photo credit: Flickr user Monochrome)

Fed up with being retaliated against for organizing for their rights, Wal-Mart workers in over a dozen cities took part in one-day strikes against the company. These workers now have a new ultimatum. If the company does not stop with its crackdowns on organizing workers, they will walk out on the busiest day of the year: Black Friday.

This is a drastic move, and would be potentially game-changing when it comes to the relationship between Wal-Mart and its employees. That relationship has traditionally been one where the company recruits workers, crushes their unions, and pays them as little as possible.

Here’s one illustration of that. Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke received compensation worth $18.1 million in 2011. Meanwhile, the average sales associate at the company was paid $8.81 an hour and a $15,000 annual salary (a full time work week at the company is 34 hours), according to independent market research group IBISWorld.

That means that the Duke earns 1,167 times as much as the average worker in his company. And even in times of so much inequality, that’s actually a CEO-to-worker pay ratio that’s way out of sync with the market average. The average CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 209.4-to-1 in 2011, meaning that Wal-Mart isn’t only a very unequal corporation, but that it’s actually almost six times as unequal as the rest of America’s corporations. (By the way, the ratio in 1965 was 18.3-to-1!)

As the brave Wal-Mart workers who are organizing for their rights continue to speak out in the coming days, we should take these numbers into account and stand with them.

Are OSHA’s pitiful fines undermining worker safety?

It’s a meme among the right that the there are too many regulations on the free market and that businesses are being smothered by the overbearing hand of the government.

But sometimes, the opposite is true.

Take this case of a worker death during the construction of the new Mississippi River bridge in north St. Louis. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) did an investigation of the working conditions at the site where the worker died. After finding four possible safety violations, OSHA is reccomending that the three companies involved –Ai?? Massman Construction, Traylor Bros., and Alberici — be fined a paltry $15,300.

With such a low fine attached to safety violations, it’s no wonder that businesses often routinely ignore the law when it comes to the well-being of their workers. This case is a stark reminder that under-regulation can be just as destructive as the “over-regulation” the right complains about.

A photograph of Alicia Preston from her firm’s website.

This past January, Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren made a historic pact to call on third-party groups — like Super PACs — not to air television, web, or radio ads in their race.

But a mysterious new campaign organization may be violating the spirit of this agreement and is casting a light on the ultra-thin walls between Super PACs and candidate campaigns.

This week, a new Super PAC calling itself America 360 began spending money in the Massachusetts race to boost Brown and attack Warren. It released a very poorly-produced web video warning that “outside groups” were supporting Warren, amusingly listing web boards like Democratic Underground as these independent entities.

It dropped $197,340 on the race, funds which it told the Associated Press would be used “on social media, website videos and mailers.”

While all of this may not violate the letter of the Brown-Warren pact, one detail about the Super PAC possibly violates its spirit.

America 360 is as of yet staying hush on its donors and staff. Super PACs are required to reveal their donors, but this particular organization set itself up over the summer and didn’t spend anything until very recently — probably to avoid disclosure dates. There is a single $1,000 donation listed in its disclosures, from a company in Florida, which means that less than .5% of the group’s donors are public. America 360 can, of course, voluntarily disclose its donors early, but it has not taken this step.

One thing that we do know about America 360 is the identity of its spokeswoman, Alicia Preston. Preston is a public relations flack at “The Preston Group,” which does “strategic communications” for …

Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) is clueless about the Department of Education

Bold progressive congressional candidate Carol Shea is facing off with Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH), the incumbent congressman.

Here’s a flashback about Guinta’s extremism. In 2010, Guinta doubled down on his extreme call to eliminate the Department of Education, saying that it “hasn’t done anything” for the district:

MODERATOR: You’ve actually called for the elimination of the federal Department of Education. The question is, how does that improve Manchester’s schools, which it is fair to say were struggling during your tenure [referring to Guinta’s time as mayor]?

GUINTA: Well I think education is an extremely important issue here in New Hampshire and across the country […] The fact of the matter is when the Department of Ed. was created, it hasn’t done anything substantively to help Manchester.

Watch it:

There’s at least one group that would probably disagree with Guinta — America’s college students. The Department of Education overseas all federal student lending, meaning that it is the chief clearing house for the education funding for millions of American students. Without it, education financing for student loans would have to be pushed down to states and cities, whose limited credit lines would mean they probably would not be able to offer enough loans to meet Americans’ needs. That is assuming, of course, that Guinta wants to continue government lending to students at all.

By calling for abolishing the Department of Education, Guinta is reviving an old extreme Republican idea that was bandied about for a short while in the 1990’s. At the time, polling found that just 17 percent of Americans agreed with that plan.

Don’t help Guinta abolish the Department of Education. Chip in a few dollars to support bold progressive Carol Shea Porter.

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 …

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.

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.