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Education blogger At the Chalk Face has obtained an internal briefing document from Michelle Rhee’s Students First and makes clear just how extensively Students First collaborated with Michigan Republicans on four education bills targeting teachers, including one limiting collective bargaining. The 30-page PDF is available here.

The crucial take-away is that although Rhee has claimed publicly that eliminating collective bargaining is not her end goal, and although Students First didn’t publicly support Michigan’s bill limiting collective bargaining for teachers, the document leaves no doubt that in fact the organization privately supported the bill, saying:

StudentsFirst did not work directly with the House on the collective bargaining bill and we have not expressed public support for the bill. However, many of the things they included in the bill came from our policy agenda and pave the way for implementing a new eval process, mutual consent and performance based RIFs.

(more…)

By Harold Meyerson
Editor-at-Large of The American Prospect

If you think it is Rep. Paul Ryan’s gutting of Medicare that is pulling the Republicans down, you need to think bigger. The House Budget Committee chairman’s proposal to convert Medicare into a private insurance-voucher plan is indeed a political calamity for the GOP, as the results of last month’s congressional special election in upstate New York showed. But it’s far from the only disaster that the party has visited upon itself.

For even as Republicans have imperiled themselves on the national level, they also seem to be committing political hara-kiri in one statehouse after the next. Republican governors who took office this year or last — the ones as determined as Ryan to do a wholesale rewrite of America’s social contract — have approval ratings that we normally associate with strains of bacteria. What’s more, they’re tanking in many of the swing states that will be key in next year’s presidential election. (more…)

This is how Republicans govern:

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By James P. Hoffa
General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Dave Hansen is one of the 14 Democratic senators from Wisconsin who courageously left their state in a show of solidarity that has captured the attention of the nation. The senators oppose a budget proposal that, if passed, would end collective bargaining for state employees in Wisconsin.

Dave, a former Green Bay Department of Public Works employee and 20-year Teamster, is one of those 14. On the 16th day of the struggle, Hansen took time to talk with a member of the Teamsters Union staff from an undisclosed location in Illinois, where he has hope that America’s middle class will prevail in this 21st century fight between corporate greed and working Americans. I think you’ll be inspired by this interview.

Hoffa: How are you holding up?
Hansen: We’re all holding up pretty well. It’s been a challenge for all 14 of us to stay united. Ultimately, though, we’ve decided that when we go back, we will go back as a unit. It has been tough to be away from home for a couple weeks. I miss seeing my grandkids and being with my family.

Q: Are you in one stationary location or are you moving throughout the state of Illinois?
A: We have had to move. We were at a hotel and we moved to the residence of a Senate family member. Tea Party members tried to make a big deal about our presence there, so we relocated to give that family member privacy. We’re doing our best to stay united in spirit, but have separated somewhat physically so we can get our message out without being descended upon by Tea Party activists. (more…)

By Michael Winship
Former senior writer at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS

“More cheese, less sleaze!”

That was the funniest group chant at Tuesday’s rally of several hundred union and other progressive activists outside the Manhattan headquarters of Fox News.

Several “cheeseheads” were in attendance, their noggins topped by the now familiar wedge-shaped, orange hatwear made popular by Green Bay Packer fans. On Tuesday they were out in the twilight chill expressing their opposition not to lactose intolerance but Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s intolerance of organized labor. (Unadorned by cheddar, I briefly spoke at the gathering as president of an AFL-CIO affiliated union, the Writers Guild of America, East.)

Governor Walker continues his obdurate opposition to the state’s public employee unions’ right to collective bargaining, despite a willingness on their part to concede pension and health givebacks he claims would help close Wisconsin’s alleged deficit. Meanwhile, there has been a decided increase on the sleaze end of the cheese vs. sleaze quotient, as evidenced in part by the prank phone call to the governor in which an online newspaper editor impersonating right wing billionaire David Koch elicited from Walker a proposed scheme to lure back, then double cross Democratic state senators who have prevented a quorum by retreating to Illinois. Further, when asked about planting troublemakers amongst the protesters, Walker told the trickster that he and his team had “thought about that” but decided not to. Apparently, all the really good disrupters are tied up in the Middle East. (more…)

Even as unemployment rates soar in longtime GM-centered communities hit by shutdowns, such as Janesville, Wis. (14.7 percent), and Flint, Mich. (15.3 percent), Obama and his task force pressed GM and Chrysler for more cuts. GM plans to shut down at least 14 factories and discard some 21,000 workers. Chrysler is closing eight U.S. plants, though it claims that somehow its merger with Fiat will result in a new increase of 5,000 jobs. In a telling observation that carried unsettling echoes of Bill Clinton’s push for NAFTA, the New York Times called the job cuts and other worker sacrifices “steps that most analysts thought could never be pushed through by a Democratic president allied with organized labor.”

The most recent version of GM’s recovery plan-closely tailored to the demands of the task force-calls for a stunning 98 percent increase in autos produced in Mexico, China, South Korea and Japan for the U.S. market. In May, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and United Steelworkers launched a 36-city campaign to prevent GM “from importing small cars from China, a move that would have increased GM’s profits while very likely reducing the number of domestic automobile jobs,” the New York Times reported June 2. This last-minute drive was successful, but it’s still unclear exactly what modifications GM will make.

For its part, Chrysler announced May 1 (the day after it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy) the closing of its Kenosha, Wis., engine plant and the transfer of many of the plant’s 850 jobs to Mexico. As recently as the day before, top Obama administration and Chrysler officials had assured Wisconsin legislators that the Kenosha plant would be preserved. Faced with a firestorm of protest for using federal dollars to transfer jobs to Mexico, Chrysler now says that Fiat will consider keeping the plant open.

On top of all that, job losses will balloon with the closing of more than 1,100 GM and 789 Chrysler dealerships, eliminating tens of thousands more jobs.

Although Obama hasn’t ordered auto industry cuts himself, “the revamping of the nation’s largest car company is being guided by the administration’s auto-industry task force, and it follows the president’s calls for a leaner, healthier industry,” DowJones.com reported on May 12. The Obama administration’s downsizing of the auto industry, established as a precondition for approximately $30.5 billion extended thus far in loans to GM and Chrysler (with another $20 billion in the pipeline), sharply contrasts with the lightly-conditioned, larger bailout of Wall Street. Nomi Prins, author of It Takes a Pillage, a forthcoming book on the Wall Street meltdown and its roots in Washington, estimated that Wall Street has received $12.5 trillion-nearly 400 times more-in loans, loan guarantees and taxpayer subsidies for the sale of risky loans.

Contradictory policies

Only three of the Auto Task Force’s members were notably pro-labor, despite protests from labor and auto-state lawmakers. “The Auto Task Force members are basically red-pencil types who looked at saving the auto industry on the cheap without much consideration to social costs, let alone generating green alternative jobs for auto,” says economist and author William K. Tabb. “They have the narrowest business criteria for auto, unlike the banks that got capital and loan guarantees worth trillions. So their focus was to save the auto companies but not the auto workers.” Essentially, Obama and the task force wanted a quick and cheap solution to the Big Three’s ailing finances rather than providing an endless flow of resources, as the government did to the “too-big-to-fail” financial sector.

Bizarrely, the Auto Task Force’s policy direction dramatically undercuts Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus program. “The problem with GM’s new Washington-mandated restructuring plan is that it steps on the gas in the wrong direction,” UC Berkeley professor Harley Shaiken told NPR’s “Marketplace.” “The stimulus package spends $800 billion to create jobs, while billions in loans to GM are conditioned on eliminating them.”

In addition to the factory job and dealership cuts, GM will unload its Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer brands. By contrast, the Italian government provided $1.7 billion in aid to Fiat as long as Italian plants stay open, noted Robert L. Borosage of the progressive coalition Campaign for America’s Future. Also, France loaned $8.5 billion to its big three automakers, in exchange for pledges to keep jobs in France.

Labor advocates fight back

After months of the UAW trying to avoid a fight with Obama, in early May it began openly challenging the use of taxpayer loan money to finance the outsourcing of jobs. “We believe (GM) should have an obligation to build in this country the vehicles it will be selling in the U.S. market, thereby maintaining the maximum number of jobs in the United States,” UAW legislative director Alan Reuther wrote to the Senate.

Former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich blasted the notion of paying billions of taxpayer dollars to keep companies afloat while they cut tens of thousands of jobs and wages. “We’re transferring money from taxpayers to Big Three shareholders for no apparent reason other than the Big Three are headquartered in America,” he said. “Why should taxpayers foot any of this bill unless the Big Three agree to keep their workers employed while they try to turn themselves around?”

The full answer to that question remains unanswered at this moment, as the two corporations’ plans for future outsourcing are unavailable. But significantly, the Auto Task Force didn’t explicitly require that federal assistance be directed to renewing production in the United States. Furthermore, following conventional management wisdom, “the Obama administration structured the GM and Chrysler plans to lessen the union’s voice in management,” the New York Times stated.

But so far, the mainstream media hasn’t much noticed or criticized the contradictions between Obama’s plans to simultaneously stimulate job growth and shrink GM and Chrysler. With all the attention on unwarranted Wall Street bonuses, major media lump Wall Street brokers’ compensation and CEO pay with autoworkers wages as part of the same culture of “excess.” Reports that autoworkers were paid as much as $73 an hour quickly spread through the media.

Actually, the typical wage is $26 to $28 an hour, plus an additional $10 or so in benefits, according to the Center for Automotive Research. UAW’s agreement to accept a new starting wage of $14.20 an hour with vastly reduced benefits received little attention. Neither did the fact that UAW-represented plants ranked “very favorably” on quality and productivity compared to Japanese “transplants” in the United States, according to independent industry assessments.

Shielded by a lack of accurate and coherent media analysis, the Auto Task Force used a narrow and conventional single-firm turnaraound framework to create a strategy for GM and Chrysler. “A hedge fund wants to make money fast for its client-in this case, the taxpayer-without regard to social cost,” Shaiken says. “Unlike most clients, however, the taxpayer picks up the social cost. Longer unemployment lines and more foreclosures are devastating for the victims, not cheap for the rest of us.”

But the Auto Task Force seemed largely oblivious to the human costs of eliminating thousands of U.S. auto jobs. Obama and his task force withheld billions of dollars in new loans requested by GM until after the company came up with a more aggressive program of job cuts, plant closing and outsourcing. The Auto Task Force rapidly divorced the reinvigoration of GM and Chrysler from a longer-term shift to a fuel-efficient economy and production not just of high-mileage cars, but also of mass-transit equipment for buses and high-speed rail.

Ironically, GM’s ruthless downsizing of its U.S. workforce and outsourcing of jobs over the last 25 years diminished its leverage with the Obama team. GM has discarded 85 percent of its domestic production since 1990-and that was before it hit the current recession and the resultant nosedive in sales. It was no longer “too big to fail.”

So Obama and the Auto Task Force felt free to promote a recovery strategy for the two ailing auto firms that stands in appalling contrast to the generosity shown Wall Street. GM and Chrysler headquarters will remain intact, but thousands of U.S. workers will be vaporized, retiree health benefits could be put on the chopping block (especially at Chrysler) and numerous industrial communities will suffer permanent damage. And the Obama team has forfeited the opportunity to recast the current crisis into a fuel-efficient re-industrialization of America-right when the country needs the stimulus of  high-wage green jobs the most.

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• First published in In These Times. To subscribe, click here.

***

Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and progressive publicity consultant whose work has appeared in numerous national publications and websites.

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

John McCain should not be traveling in a bus called the Straight Talk Express.
No, that equivocating multimillionaire who kowtows constantly to the wealthy should be riding in one of those private, gilded railroad cars.
That would be symbolically appropriate as well since he is trying to railroad the middle class on taxes.
He is actually proposing a brand new tax on the middle class.
This has gotten so little attention it is astounding. And frightening, frankly, as television reporters and commentators focus instead on inane incidents like the lipstick-on-pigs remark.
McCain intends to tax workers for the value of health insurance that they receive from their employers.
Really.
Although it’s not included in the description of his plan on his web site. It is, however, on the site of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that specializes in health policy.
I understand McCain neglecting to mention this new tax on the middle class. If I were proposing this shocking tax increase, one that will cost the average American worker an additional $110 a month in taxes out of the blue, I would conceal it as best I could too.

Taxing health insurance

So let me provide you with some clarity. This comes from the Kaiser Foundation evaluation of the McCain and Barack Obama health plans. It says McCain would “reform the tax code to eliminate the exclusion of the value of health insurance plans offered by employers from workers’ taxable income.”
The value of the typical plan provided by an employer to a family is $12,106, of which the employer pays $8,824, and the worker pays the remaining $3,282. The median household income is $44,389, which places most American families in the 15 percent income tax bracket.

McCain wants to add the employer’s cost — an additional $8,824 — to that middle class family’s income, then tax it. The hit to the average family is 15 percent of the McCain-added income — $1,323 more in income taxes.
This new tax would affect the 158 million Americans who are insured through their employer.
Right now you should be yelling, “What?” And demanding to know why you haven’t heard about this before. That is because the media keeps focusing on McCain’s proposed health care tax credits — $5,000 for families and $2,500 for individuals.

McCain certainly wants the attention to stay on those credits. It sounds so much better to be giving families tax credits than tax increases. But what you need to know about those tax credits is that they don’t go to you – they’re to be sent to the insurance companies. You never get actual money in your pocket. McCain says it right on his web site: “the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider.”
So if you choose to remain with your employer-based insurance, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever see any benefit from that $5,000 payment. In addition, giving young healthy workers $2,500 to buy insurance on their own, where it won’t be taxed, will encourage them to leave employer-based plans, quickly raising the costs for everyone remaining and thus eliminating benefits of the tax credits. Finally, the tax credits rise only at the rate of inflation, not the vastly faster rate of medical costs, so, again, their value will quickly erode, according to several studies, including one released last week by health economists from Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan and published in the journal “Health Affairs.”
New tax

Still, somehow, no one mentions the new tax part of McCain’s plan!
Even the credits don’t sound so great after you hear the whole story.
John McCain wants to kill employer-provided health insurance. He wants every American to go out on his or her own and try to buy insurance. He says that on his site if you read between the doubletalk. He says, for example, “The key to health care reform is to restore control to the patients themselves.. . .Health care. . . should not be limited by where you work.”
Here’s the way the New York Times put it in an April 30 story, in which there was only straight talk: “Mr. McCain’s health care plan would shift the emphasis from insurance provided by employers to insurance bought by individuals.”
Since 2000, the percentage of employers offering health insurance has declined from 69 percent to 60 percent. Many more companies would dump their plans as soon as the federal government offered tax credits to individuals who bought their own. Corporations would disingenuously justify this abandonment the same way McCain does — by saying workers would get the advantage of carrying their individual plans from job to job as they move around the country.
They won’t mention the cost, however. To buy plans comparable to what workers now receive from employers, families are going to have to shell out a lot more money from their own pockets.
The math is simple. To buy the $12,106 plan with the $5,000 family tax credit, a worker is going to have to cough up an additional $3,824. (That is the $8,824 the employer previously paid toward the plan minus the $5,000 credit.)
That is, assuming, of course, that you can get coverage. Insurance companies are notorious for rejecting anyone with pre-existing conditions, including acne, being overweight and diabetes.

McCain wouldn’t qualify

John McCain himself would likely be unable to find an insurer on the private market since he’s had the most serious form of skin cancer, melanoma, more than once.
But he doesn’t have to worry because, as a U.S. senator, he’s covered by a government plan. And he’s certainly not proposing eliminating that!
McCain could resolve the exclusion problem by requiring insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing conditions. But he doesn’t. Instead, he suggests setting up a system in which states would become responsible making sure those people get insurance. He says he won’t shift the costs to the states, but what’s the chance of that? He’s establishing a pool of all of those rejected by insurance companies – thus those with the highest risk. And he’s telling the states to deal with the problem that creates.
Meanwhile, insurance companies would be left to profit big time by providing insurance for the young, the healthy and everyone who doesn’t have anything at all wrong with them. What a deal!
He claims this plan will increase competition and drive down prices – as if an individual worker, on his own, without any real knowledge of the system, has the negotiating power of a major corporation with full-time experts on its staff whose only function is to buy insurance for a pool of hundreds or thousands of workers.
While McCain is planning to increase your taxes if you’ve got insurance at work or to force you into the insurance market at a huge financial loss, he intends, at the same time, to cut taxes on corporations — you know, like those giant oil companies that just raked in the largest quarterly profits of any firm ever in the history of mankind. And he plans to permanently retain those income tax cuts his friend George W. Bush gave to the rich, because, of course, the wealthiest Americans, like McCain and Bush, need a break today.

Lying to American workers

In the meantime, McCain is traveling to states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, hard hit by the economic devastation caused by eight years of Bush administration fiscal policy failures. At each stop, McCain is sucking up the middle class – as if his administration wouldn’t cost workers dearly.
He needs to stop lying to America’s workers.
In fact, maybe Mr. Straight-Talk-Express needs to slap on some lipstick. Because sometimes the truth is a bitch.