Crossposted from the AFL-CIO Now blog. Working people have plenty to be angry with Wall Street about. A $700 billion bailout. Toxic assets and loan guarantees to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. A financial crisis and credit crunch. Billions of dollars in six- and seven-figure bonuses to the Wall Street executives who got us into this mess . Unemployment reaching 10 percent . A mortgage crisis extending far beyond subprime loans. Abusive... 

Amanda Marcotte is even more cynical than I am about Bank of America’s motivations in dropping overdraft fees on debit cards. And, as a former bank branch manager, she is far more specific in her cynicism: I was immediately instructed to put most of my time and effort into converting paycheck cashers into account holders. I resisted. As I saw it, these people weren’t f**king stupid. If they wanted a free checking account, they could have one.... 

A new House bill to directly fund up to one million local jobs is gaining support less than twenty-four hours after it was announced by Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller. The Local Jobs for America Act , the largest job-creation plan yet proposed in Congress this year, would provide $100 billion to fund wages and benefits for a million workers who would otherwise be unemployed. …  Read More →

The Senate yesterday approved a measure that includes a continuation of current unemployment benefit extensions and COBRA insurance subsidies through the end of the year. The bill, which also includes a six month extension of increased reimbursements to states for Medicaid and additional state fiscal relief, passed by a vote of 62 to 36. It now goes to the House, which may pass it as is or seek to work through any differences with the Senate version... 

A plan to support the creation of up to one million jobs was announced today by a group of House Democrats led by Education and Labor Committee chairman Rep. George Miller (D-CA) . The Local Jobs for America Act would support public and private jobs the next two years in local communities across the country. It is the largest direct job-creation plan offered in Congress so far this year. With the burden of high unemployment, persistent joblessness... 

Today’s the kind of day I wish I were in D.C. Thousands of health care reform supporters, progressives, workers and union activists rallied in Washington to conduct a “citizens arrest” of the big insurance companies. The rally, organized by Health Care for America NOW! (HCAN) , began this morning at Dupont Circle followed by a march to the Ritz-Carlton hotel. That’s where the giant health insurance lobby group AHIP is... 

Having beaten the Republican obstruction spearheaded by Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) of a 30-day continuation of extended unemployment benefits last week, the Senate returns today to a larger measure that would continue those programs through 2010. The New York Times reported yesterday : The tax measure on the Senate floor would extend added unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for those out of work through December while also renewing... 

”Unemployed people are just lazy and don’t deserve benefits” seems to be a bona fide Republican talking point by now. Yesterday, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay : “You know,” DeLay said, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions of these unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs.” When CNN’s Candy Crowley described his argument as “a hard sell” to the public,... 

Tennessee Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander are opposed to reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration because there’s a chance the bill doing so will make it easier for FedEx employees to unionize. That’s right. The Federal Aviation Administration – the ones who make sure planes stay in the sky – is being held up in Congress to benefit a single corporation. (A corporation headquartered in Tennessee, not all that surprisingly.)... 

We saw what happened when Colorado Springs ran out of money: More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled. The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their…  Read More →

Here’s the shorter official jobs report for February: not much change in an abysmal situation. The official unemployment rate remained at 9.7%. Employers surveyed reported a net loss of another 36,000 jobs last month, a number in line with the 34,000 increase in the number of unemployed in the household survey. While the rate of job losses the last several months has been moderate relative to the massive losses earlier in the recession, we... 

Well, here’s one way to solve the problem of the depressing numbers of US jobs that are lost to overseas competitors. Close down the office that tracks the statistics: President Obama’s budget would eliminate the International Labor Comparisons office and transfer its 16 economists to expand the bureau’s work tracking inflation and occupational trends. The White House says the cut, estimated to save $2 million, is one of many... 

The constant, mind-numbing drone of deficit fears emanating from Republicans and the Wall Street media continues in the wake of Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-KY) irrational week-long obstruction of an emergency jobless benefit extension. But as Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz explained yesterday on CNNMoney.com’s Strategy Sessions a fixation now on the deficit threatens to undermine prospects for economic recovery. Mike Lillis at the... 

Unemployed Working America and union members met for a Table Talk this week and told their stories to Congressman Gary Peters and Michigan AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams. In response to the powerful stories told by the jobless workers, Congressman Peters said, “Providing unemployment to folks now is an emergency situation. It’s like when a hurricane hits, we ask questions about paying for it and other things after we get the help to... 

A piece of the health care reform issue we don’t hear much about is the very serious shortage of primary care physicians : The annual number of American medical students who go into primary care has dropped by more than half since 1997. It’s hard to get an appointment with the doctors who remain. In some surveys, as many as half of primary-care providers have stopped taking new patients. The other half are increasingly overworked and...