bls

union workers make $200 a week more
than non-union

In 2011, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $938, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $729. In addition to coverage by a collective bargaining agreement, earnings differences reflect a variety of influences, including variations in the distributions of union members and nonunion employees by occupation, industry, firm size, or geographic region.

thinkprogress

Half of North Carolina Concealed Carry Permit Holders With Felony Convictions Keep Their Permit


VIDEO: New Iowa Frontrunner Thinks Medicare, Paper Money And Nearly Everything Else Is Unconstitutional


Justice Who Upheld Gov. Walker’s Anti-Union Law Received Over $10k Worth Of Free Services From Walker’s Law Firm


Romney Wants His Billionaire Wall Street Donors To Be Able To Give Him Unlimited Sums Of Money

mediaite

wisconsin

radio times

Politics, Policy & the Debt Ceiling Debate

President Barack Obama discussing the debt ceiling with Congressional leaders at the White House on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Hour 1

As the President and top House and Senate leaders continue to battle over raising the federal debt ceiling, the name-calling and blame game continues.  Despite warnings that a lack of action could have dire consequences for the struggling economy, why is it that lawmakers are unable to compromise to reach an agreement?  Is the answer as simple as politics?  We talk with two folks who have been watching the events on Capitol Hill closely and have different concerns about the process — JOHN AVLON, senior columnist for Newsweek and the Daily Beast, who calls the debate "pathetic" and blames both parties for the delay, and ROBERT KUTTNER, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, who says lawmakers are fighting the wrong battle and instead should be focusing all their attention on job crisis.

eml from media matters

Here [is] today's news [item] from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of [the] story.

Wall Street Journal Spins Fracking Study To Downplay Risks
A Wall Street Journal editorial obscured the fact that a Duke University study strongly suggested methane from a natural gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, contaminated water supplies. Read More

Here are [yesterday's] news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

Neal Boortz Uses Mythology To Say The Bush Tax Cuts "Worked"
Writing in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, syndicated radio host Neal Boortz perpetuated the myth that tax cuts increase revenue to bolster his argument that the Bush tax cuts "worked." Economists have said the Bush tax cuts reduced revenue and had little positive impact on the economy. Read More

Washington Times' History Of Anti-Gay Attacks
The incoming editor of The Washington Times, Ed Kelley, recently suggested he was not familiar with the newspaper's long history of anti-gay attacks, saying the only controversy he had heard on the issue was "a change in whether or not the term either civil unions or gay marriage or something, whether or not there were going to be quotes used around the term or not." In fact,The Washington Times has long history of extreme rhetoric and smears against the LGBT community. Read More

Here [is 6/24's news item] from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of [the] story.

Fox Panel Teams Up To Promote A Bushel Of Misinformation On Health Care Reform
A seven-minute segment on Fox News' America Live featured a deluge of falsehoods and distortions about President Obama's health care reform record, including the false suggestion that PricewaterhouseCoopers found that health care reform is responsible for rising costs. In fact, Pricewaterhouse found that reform is "expected to have minimal impact on [the] medical cost trend in 2012." Read More

Here are [6/23]'s news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

Another "Indoctrination" Freakout: Right-Wing Media Attack MD's Environmental Literacy Education Requirement
Right-wing media have attacked a recent Maryland State Board of Education ruling that requires high school students to be "environmentally literate" before graduating as "indoctrination" and "brainwash[ing]," while using it as an opportunity continue the right-wing's longstanding war on climate science. Read More

Right-Wing Media Strain To Portray Obama's Speech As A "Mission Accomplished" Moment
Following President Obama's speech announcing the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, right-wing media have strained to portray the announcement as a "mission accomplished" moment. However, Obama acknowledged that "huge challenges remain" in Afghanistan and "[w]e'll have to do the hard work of keeping the gains that we've made." Read More

Right-Wing Media Launches Kitchen Sink Attack On Obama's Afghanistan Speech
The right-wing media reacted to President Obama's address on troop withdrawals in Afghanistan by dredging up familiar, petty attacks, such as criticizing the number of times Obama referred to himself, and claiming the address was a "campaign speech" instead of a "war update." This follows a long history of the right-wing media launching frivolous attacks over speeches Obama makes on all manner of issues. Read More

Fox Uses Oil Reserve Announcement To Demand More Drilling
After President Obama announced that the U.S. will tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Fox News figures falsely suggested that government restrictions are encumbering domestic oil production. In fact, drilling is nearing a twenty-year high, and countless economists have explained that expanded U.S. oil production is not a solution to high oil prices. Read More

Right-Wing Media Attack Vargas With Stereotypical, Anti-Immigrant Vigor
Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, recently revealed that he is an undocumented immigrant. Right-wing media responded with virulent anti-immigrant attacks, with Don Surber of the Charleston Daily Mail writing: "kick the lying, illegal alien Jose Antonio Vargas out." Read More

Here are [6/22]'s news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

Plane Falsehoods: Krauthammer Continues To Misinform About Boeing's Alleged Union-Busting
Previously, Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer misinformed the public on a National Labor Relations Board complaint that Boeing illegally moved jobs away from a unionized facility, claiming that "paying off the unions to [President Obama] is more important than a healthy export economy." Krauthammer spread more falsehoods in a Washington Post column in which he suggested that the NLRB is a political organization "trying to get the [South Carolina] plant declared illegal" because "Democrats need unions." Read More

Beck Guest Falsely Claims Oil And Gas Companies Get "Zero" Government Subsidies
On his Fox News show, Glenn Beck hosted several oil and gas industry executives to attack President Obama's energy policies and tout fossil fuels. During the show, Beck hyped the false claim by one of his guests, the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, that "the oil and natural gas industry gets zero subsidies" from the federal government. Read More

Fox News "Headline" Is A GOP Press Release
Fox News adopted its "headline" for today straight from a press release from the office of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, claiming that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that "government spending as a share of our economy will increase by nearly 70 percent by 2035." In its long-term budget outlook, CBO projected that spending would increase from 24.1 percent of GDP in 2011 to 27.4 percent in 2035. Read More

Fox Protects Investment By Attempting To Spin Lack Of Enthusiasm For GOP Field
Fox News has recently tried to spin GOP voter dissatisfaction with the 2012 presidential field by suggesting it is a manufactured Democratic talking point designed to "handicap" the candidates, when, in fact, polling has consistently shown Republicans are dissatisfied with the GOP field. This spin comes as Fox is investing a significant amount of resources into promoting the GOP presidential candidates. Read More

With Renewed National Focus On Immigration Reform, Fox Revs Up Anti-Immigrant Campaign
As immigration reform has re-entered the public debate, Fox News has spent the past several weeks misleading on the issue and slanting its news coverage to paint immigrants in a negative light. Read More

Jon Stewart Gets It Right About Fox News
Fox News has attacked Daily Show host Jon Stewart for claiming that Fox News viewers are "the most consistently misinformed viewers" of cable news. However, Stewart was correct -- Fox News consistently misinforms its viewers, and its viewers are found among the most likely to hold misinformed beliefs about current events. Read More

Here are [6/21]'s news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

Eric Bolling: Fox News' In-House Corporate Lobbyist
Fox News' Eric Bolling has been promoting what he described as his own stimulus plan, a plan centered on tax breaks for multinational corporations on money currently parked offshore. Bolling's proposal is remarkably similar to a plan reportedly promoted by corporate lobbyists during a Washington, D.C. conference on June 15 - the day before Bolling discussed his plan on Fox News. Read More

Fox Still Misrepresenting NLRB's Case Against Boeing
Fox News has repeatedly suggested that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is engaging in unlawful or "anti-American" activity by filing a complaint against Boeing for deciding to build a new plant in the "right to work" state of South Carolina. But the NLRB complaint alleges that Boeing moved to South Carolina in retaliation for union workers' decision to strike, and experts say that allegations in the case represent an "absolutely standard violation" of federal labor law.Read More

Fox Hyped McKinsey & Co. Study But Ignored Admission That It's Not A "Predictive Economic Analysis"
After hyping a McKinsey & Company survey that predicted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPAC) would cause millions of employees to lose their employer-basedhealth care coverage, Fox did not cover that McKinsey & Co. admitted that their findings were not meant as "a predictive economic analysis." Fox further failed to note a study reinforcing President Obama's claim that employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) markets would be virtually unchanged by the health care bill. Read More

Here are [6/20]'s news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

Fox News Maligns Scientists With Baseless Accusation Of "Doctoring" Sea Level Data
Following the lead of the Heartland Institute, Fox News trumpeted the utterly baseless claim that scientists at the University of Colorado are "doctoring" sea level data to "exaggerate theeffects of global warming." In reality, the scientists used a standard and transparent procedure performed by other research groups around the world, and even the climate skeptic cited by Fox News objects to the implication that the group engaged in scientific wrongdoing. Read More

Fox Hosts Official From Extremist-Linked Pro-Gun Group To Distort Link Between "Carry Laws" And Crime
Fox & Friends hosted John Velleco, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America (GOA), to argue in favor of concealed weapons laws by dubiously claiming that "crime goes down" when "a state tries to relax concealed carry laws." But according to PolitiFact, crime data shows no "straight-line correlation between states with 'right to carry' laws and crime rates"; moreover, GOA's executive director has been tied to militia groups, white supremacists, and has a history of extremist rhetoric. Read More

more fox lies

following on the dispute between jon stewart and politifact over whether fox viewers are misinformed, check out how many false stories came from fox "news" in just three consecutive days this month and got posted on media matters.

SCOTUS: WallyWorld, dirty air win

socratic gadfly

SCOTUS: WallyWorld, dirty air win

Shock me that 1.5 million Wallmart workers do not constitute a "class action." Shock me that the Supreme Curt ruling on this split on predictable 5-4 lines.

So, as I see it retailers are best self-served by never looking at hiring complaints at individual stores, to thereby "insulate" themselves from legal liability. It's just like Alcoholics Anonymous, a past master at this, never looking at individual AA meetings and "13th stepping" complaints. Or the Southern Baptist Convention.

However, Walmart is neither of those; and that's why this ruling is simply wrong.

Wronger yet in some was, but on a unanimous basis, was the Court's dismissal of a suit by several states against electric utilities relying heavily on coal-fired power.

By the court's logic in this case, in any new area of pollution, the EPA just need announce that it plans to adopt some standards but never do so, and private entites remain precluded from pursuing nuisance suits.

That said, it's "nice" to know that business-kowtowing idiots on the court aren't always just conservatives.

Wrongest of all? Last week, SCOUTS' 5-4 ruling that basically eliminated the possibility of suing mutual funds for fraud. The tea partiers never bitch about the Court except when it comes to abortion, though.

But, contra many semi-liberal pundits, the "fivers" don't care that their actions expand income inequality or even that "originalism" never envisioned massive amounts of capital, and wealth disparities. They don't care.

And, by and large neither major political party cares, at least at the national level. Period.

ap

APNewsBreak:
Rules would speed up union elections

WASHINGTON (AP) — Labor regulators are set to propose sweeping new rules Tuesday that would dramatically speed up the time frame for union elections, a move that could make it easier for struggling unions to organize new members, and cut the time businesses have to mount anti-union campaigns.

A copy of the planned rules, to be announced by the National Labor Relations Board, was obtained by The Associated Press. The proposal is expected to irritate Republicans and business groups who have complained about the board's pro-labor actions.

Most labor elections currently take place within 45-60 days after a union gathers enough signatures to file a petition, a time many companies use to discourage workers from unionizing. The new plan could cut that time by days or even weeks — depending on the case — by simplifying procedures, deferring litigation and setting shorter deadlines for hearings and filings.

But it does not impose a specific deadline for elections, as many labor leaders had hoped for. Canada, for example, requires such elections to take place in as little as 5 to 10 days.

The plan would "better insure that employees' votes may be recorded accurately, efficiently and speedily," said the board's majority, led 3-1 by Democrats.

Passage would be a victory for labor unions that have long complained about employers using procedural delays and litigation to hold up elections and intimidate workers. Some employers hire so-called "union busting" consulting firms to produce videotapes, draft talking points or create brochures to deter unionizing.

eml from media matters

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

Continuing Attack On Tucson Ethnic Studies Class, Beck Ignores Report That Contradicts His Fearmongering
Glenn Beck said that "the top education official" in Arizona ruled that an ethnic studies program, which Beck claimed "called for the overthrow of the United States government," was in violation of state law. But Beck didn't note that a study commissioned by that same Arizona official found no violation of the law. Read More

Fox's "Doctor" Ablow Dismisses Threat From Coal Plants
Fox News contributor and psychiatrist Keith Ablow misinformed viewers by dismissing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's statement that limits on air pollution from coal-fired power plants benefit those who suffer from asthma. Indeed, it is widely accepted among public health professionals that pollution from these plants exacerbates asthma symptoms. Read More

Varney Revives False Claim That Cutting Taxes Increases Revenue
On Fox & Friends, Fox Business host Stuart Varney revived the false claim that "history shows that you get more money to the Treasury by lowering tax rates than by raising tax rates." In fact, virtually no economist believes the evidence supports the claim that tax cuts result in increased federal revenues. Read More

Here are [yesterday's] news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

Forgot To Google It? Right-Wing Media Hype False Report That Google Gave "Special Deal" To Obama Campaign

The Drudge Report and Fox News both recently seized on discredited allegations that Google may have given a "special deal" to the Obama campaign in giving the campaign select access to a new advertising product. In fact, both Google and the Obama campaign denied the report; moreover, a Google spokesman pointed out that the ad that sparked the controversy was not a Google ad at all. Read More

Right-Wing Media Attack Wasserman Schultz For Economic Recovery Remarks
Several right-wing media figures and outlets have attacked Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for accurately saying that President Obama "began to turn the economy around." Read More

Fox Continues To Misinform About WI Anti-Union Legislation
Fox & Friends hosted Glenn Grothman, a Republican state senator from Wisconsin, to promote Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union bill and to misleadingly suggest that the legal challenges to the bill simply involved state employees' contributions to their pensions. In fact, the controversy surrounding the bill was its intention to strip most public workers of collective bargaining rights; the unions have consistently agreed to higher pension and health care contributions. Read More

In WSJ Column, Rove Advances Dubious Health Care Reform Claims
In a Wall Street Journal column, Karl Rove advanced the misleading claim that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) "added $115 billion to administer" the health care reform law, which "reduced ... claimed savings to $28 billion." Rove also hyped a dubious study that he claimed found that "78 million Americans would lose their current health coverage" because of the health care reform law. Read More

Fox Wildly Misrepresents Allegation That Boeing Engaged In Unlawful Union Busting
Fox repeatedly spread misinformation about a case brought by the National Labor Relations Board's office of general counsel alleging that Boeing retaliated against workers in Washington state who had previously gone on strike by moving work to South Carolina. One Fox News personality went so far as to call the case "the end of freedom in America." Read More

and here are wednesday's items:

Right-Wing Media Attack Obama For Accurate Remarks On Business' Investment In Automated Machines
Right-wing media have seized on recent comments by President Obama to claim that Obama "blame[d] ATMs for high unemployment." But Obama's full comments show that he was suggesting that businesses are investing more heavily in automated machines than in hiring new employees, a view shared by economists. Read More

Right-Wing Media Use Benign Comment About Regulatory Reform To Call Millions Of Jobs A Waste Of Money
Media conservatives have found yet another excuse to push the myth that President Obama's economic policies have failed to increase employment, this time pointing to Obama's unremarkable observation that eliminating unnecessary regulations might speed up business activity and help create jobs. Economists have said that Obama's economic policies have boosted employment and raised gross domestic product. Read More

Fox Hypes Bogus Theory That ATF Operation Meant To Lay Groundwork For Stricter Gun Laws
Continuing its pattern of hyping ridiculous conspiracy theories to attack the Obama administration, Fox News baselessly suggested that the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious was deliberately designed to go badly in order to justify stricter U.S. gun laws. In fact, even a report prepared for House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Chuck Grassley(R-IA) refutes this theory. Read More