Dave Johnson Posts

On Feb. 26, UPS fired a Maspeth, N.Y. UPS worker known for being a union activist. In a “wildcat” protest, 250 other UPS drivers from Teamsters local 804 walked off the job. Now, it appears that UPS has fired them, too.

Big companies have discovered a loophole that lets them avoid paying their taxes. These tax-dodgers are holding $2 trillion-plus of taxable profits outside of the U.S., on which they could owe as much as $700 billion in taxes. What could our country do with this $700 billion it is owed? These companies discovered that they can move jobs, factories, labs, call centers and profit centers out of the country and by doing that they can avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes.

Buy America policies let We the People use our taxpayer dollars to help American workers and American companies, especially when our economy needs a boost. During the 2009 Recovery Act “stimulus,” for example, we needed to focus taxpayer funds on stimulating the American economy, not China’s.

A crowd in excess of 80,000 people showed up in Raleigh to protest conservative policies that have roiled and divided the state. The march was an extension of the 'Moral Monday' movement taking NC's right-wing politicians to task. The size of the crowd and their grievances were newsworthy – so why didn't we hear anything about it?

Senate Republicans have been using the filibuster to block the extension of long-term unemployment benefits. There are rumors of a “deal” that gives Republicans a payoff to stop obstructing the extension. The price this time is “pension smoothing,” which means letting big companies skip paying into their employee pension plans.

Republicans filibustered the extension of unemployment benefits on the Senate floor Tuesday. Why? Because they can get away with it. If the public doesn’t know that filibusters are occurring, how can democracy hold Republicans accountable for doing it?

Guess who is one of the biggest employers of minimum-wage employees? Your own federal government. The government now contracts out a lot of work to companies that pay really, really low wages for jobs that used to provide good pay and benefits. And this means that between nearly 2 million people have to live in poverty. Now, there are reports that President Obama is considering doing something about that.

Republicans are engaged in yet more hostage-taking obstruction. The newest operation: a filibuster of the effort to extend unemployment insurance, using it as a hostage to try to get even more cuts to the things government does to make our lives better. Their “pay-for” demand is really a demand for Democrats to agree to even more economic sabotage.

Republicans are engaged in yet more hostage-taking obstruction. (Whatever gave them the idea that hostage-taking can work?) They are engaged in a filibuster of the effort to extend unemployment insurance, using it as a hostage to try to get even more cuts to the things government does to make our lives better. Their “pay-for” demand is really a demand for Democrats to agree to even more economic sabotage.

Federal unemployment assistance for 1.3 million people who have been unemployed longer than 26 weeks expired last Saturday, after Republicans blocked efforts to extend them. 3.6 million more people will lose these benefits over this year. Restoring these benefits is a moral, economic and political imperative.

NAFTA was not just a “trade” agreement. Trade agreements focus on cutting tariffs and easing quotas and barriers to goods moving across borders. The report points out that NAFTA was much more, giving corporations special rights, incentivizing offshoring and limiting regulation.

The stories have come fast and furious over the past few months, all hinting at (or yelling about) the looming healthcare deadline. That deadline has since passed, but people can still get insurance. It just won't start on January 1st.

Did the “stimulus” work? Republicans claim it was a failure, a waste of money, and was the reason the deficit soared. However, an updated version of familiar graph clearly shows the benefits of the much-derided stimulus package.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, if ratified, would decimate the already struggling US manufacturing sector said labor leaders in a conference call Thursday. The track record of these trade agreements, from NAFTA to AUSFTA, have proven every time a new one happens, US manufacturing jobs pour out of the country.

Congress is again fighting over the budget, as Republicans are now demanding cuts in federal employee benefits. Is this really about the budget? Or is it about destroying government? Meanwhile hundreds of billions of taxes owed by corporations remain uncollected.

Senate Republicans are using the unprecedented strategy of filibustering absolutely anything the Democratic majority hopes to accomplish - from circuit court judges to major legislation. The time has come for major reform - either Reid's nuclear option, or something that takes us back to the old days when senators had to actually talk on the floor to filibuster.

The Wall Street reform law that passed in 2010 includes a requirement that companies disclose the ratio of CEO pay to median pay. This law is still obstructed from enforcement. Meanwhile voters in Switzerland are considering placing a 12:1 cap on CEO pay — an idea that is spreading across Europe.

We the People finally get to read one chapter of the 29-chapter Trans-Pacific Partnership “trade” agreement. If this agreement becomes law it will fundamentally alter the relationship between our government, other governments and giant multinational corporations, so you’d think America’s citizens would want to have a say in the negotiations. But the only reason We the People get to even read it at all is because it was leaked to Wikileaks.

Discussions of Social Security and Medicare tend to focus on the “cost” of the programs without considering the bigger picture: the many ways these programs help people and boost the larger economy. What would happen if we were to expand these valuable programs instead of cutting them?

Republicans believe that a bad economy works for them at election time. The thinking is that the public will turn on Democrats for not making things better. So they do what they can to make the economy bad. Maybe they went too far this time. This hostage-taking episode has done real, serious, lasting damage to the economy on top of the ongoing damage Republicans have been doing. Will the public still blame Democrats, or will they finally see what is going on here?