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ThinkProgress » ExxonMobil paid no federal income tax in 2009. (Updated) "Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. “Most egregious,” Forbes notes, is General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.” Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS: - Sent using Google Toolbar"

ThinkProgress » Will The Sunday Shows Ignore Labor For The Second Week In A Row? "For the last two weeks, working people have joined with students and sympathetic lawmakers as part of a Main Street Movement to protest efforts in multiple states to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights. While the protests against Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) have garnered the most attention, protests have also taken place in Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Washington, Montana, and Idaho. The protests have caused Republican governors in multiple states to back down from their anti-worker stances. - Sent using Google Toolbar"

ThinkProgress » Priorities? GOP Governors Shift Burden To Poor, Middle Class To Pay For Tax Breaks For Rich, Corporations "State budgets across the country are in disarray as a weak economy, the end of tens of billions in Recovery Act funds, and a GOP-led House that is pushing for deep cuts to many programs that benefit state and local governments set the stage for massive in shortfalls over the next two years. Instead of making the tough choices necessary to help their states weather the current crisis with some semblance of the social safety net and basic government services intact, Republican governors are instead using it as an opportunity to advance several longtime GOP projects: union busting, draconian cuts to social programs, and massive corporate tax breaks. These misplaced priorities mean that the poor and middle class will shoulder the burden of fiscal austerity, even as the rich and corporations are asked to contribute even less. Here’s a detailed look at how the GOP’

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is not an honest broker; what happened to the 200 million dollar surplus that he inherited when he took the job as Governor. He immediatel ­y gave tax breaks to his RICH FRIENDS who helped get elected of nearly 400 million in tax breaks. This is about union busting, to strip workers of political power, and to have a one party system. The Republican ­s want to be in charge of the political process. They want to re-write history, to change all the laws, and to call all the shots. They want to create elite rule system giving the Super Rich all the political might. They want to privatize government services and give the money to Wall Street. Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

ThinkProgress » Wisconsin Gov. Walker Reiterates That The ‘National Guard’ Will Be Used Against A Worker ‘Walk-Off "ThinkProgress has been following both Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) recent “budget repair bill,” which would effectively eliminate state workers’ right to collectively bargain, and his coinciding threat to deploy the National Guard to stop a walkout. Yesterday, the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers criticized Walker, saying that collective bargaining is “fundamental” to the middle class. Approximately 13,000 peaceful protesters flooded the state Capitol yesterday, including nearly 800 Madison East High School students who left school to protest Walker’s bill. Democratic lawmakers listened to testimonies from citizens for more than 20 hours, stretching into the early morning. Many people who hadn’t yet gotten to speak pulled out sleeping bags. Responding to his inappropriate threat to use the National Guard against resisting workers, Walker said last night on Greta V

The Human Cost of Failed Revolutions | Solidarity "appened Ernest Mandel In November/December 1918 and in March 1920, a Germany governed by workers councils was on the agenda. The defeat of both the workers uprising of 1918-19 and of the beginning revolution in 1920, however, was brought about by two factors: 1) the collaboration of the Social Democracy (which represented a majority political party within the working class) with the military and bourgeois elites, and 2) the immature and weak leadership of the revolution itself. The German working class paid a high price for this missed opportunity, as did a large portion of the world’s population. One cannot, of course, substitute an imaginary “What would have happened if” for the real historical process which did occur. But it is possible to empirically demonstrate that alternative outcomes were objectively possible. Revolutionary and counterrevolutionary classes, along with significant layers of these classes and their represen

Union Protest: Wisconsin Teachers Calling in Sick en Masse - Teachers Union - Fox Nation "The protests against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's (R) proposals to roll back public employee unions rights are continuing Wednesday, with schools in the state capital Madison closing as the result of teachers calling in sick en masse. Under Walker's plan, as TPM has previously posted, most state workers would no longer be able to negotiate for better pensions or health benefits or anything other than higher salaries, which couldn't rise at a quicker pace than the Consumer Price Index. Walker and state Republican leaders have said the plan is necessary to deal with the state's budget shortfall. - Sent using Google Toolbar"

Union Leader: Governor's Budget is "An Attack on Labor" - WBAY-TV Green Bay-Fox Cities-Northeast Wisconsin News "Local unions representing public employees are speaking out against Governor Scott Walker's budget repair proposal, saying it undermines all the rights of a union. The bill would strip unions of all collective bargaining power except wages, ending more than 50 years of municipal employee bargaining rights. 'Employees will not have justice. They will not have a say in the workplace. That's anti-American,' Danny McGowan, business representative of Teamsters Local 662, said. Local union leaders are up in arms over the proposal. 'It's nothing more than an attack on labor,' McGowan said. 'We can't fix the states budget woes off the backs of public employees. It's not fair, because it's not their fault.' The president of Local 662, which represents about 9,500 public employees, says he believes the move is about co

Middle East unrest: Middle Eastern nations scramble to contain unrest - latimes.com "Reporting from Amman, Jordan — To track the growing political movements gaining strength from the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia across North Africa and the Middle East, one would be well advised to get a planner. There were Saturday's clashes between demonstrators and police in Algeria, now referred to as #feb12 on Twitter, much as Egypt's uprising shall forever be known as #jan25. New popular protests are scheduled Monday in Bahrain (#feb14) and Iran (#25Bahman). Libya comes next on #feb17, followed by Algeria again on #feb19, Morocco #feb20, Cameroon #feb23 and Kuwait #mar8. - Sent using Google Toolbar"

Democracy Under Attack "Egypt has always been a strong ally of the United States. The country is now in a situation of near anarchy. Doing nothing is not an option, but improper intervention by the US could be destructive with extremely negative long-term consequences to its position in the Middle East, the proliferation of Radical Islam, and the stability of the entire region. Wise and well calculated decisions and actions are essential to the solution of the current disaster in Egypt. The US has several options that can help to diffuse the situation in Egypt. These include: - Sent using Google Toolbar"

Democracy under attack - by the U.S.A. | Examiner Editorial | Editorials | Washington Examiner Editorials Democracy under attack - by the U.S.A. * TAGS: * washington examiner Comments (0) 'BookmarkShare PrintPrint By: Examiner Editorial 09/10/09 11:00 PM America might refuse to honor the upcoming election results of another democratic nation. But our State Department has taken this hostile posture not toward Venezuela or Iran -- where dictatorships thrive through doubtful and fraudulent elections -- but toward Honduras, which removed a usurping president this summer in an action supported by the letter of its own constitution. Nothing has changed about the upcoming election in Honduras. The candidates are the same ones who were running before President Manuel Zelaya was ousted, with the approval of the nation's Congress and Supreme Court. The only difference now is the United States is demanding that the rapacious Zelaya be returned to power. This would punish self-govern

Federal Eye - 2011 Budget: Spending cuts and reductions "President Obama's 2011 budget proposes more than 120 cuts totaling roughly $20 billion in savings. Here's a look at some of the more interesting proposed cuts and spending reductions. Leave your thoughts on the budget in the comments section below: - Sent using Google Toolbar"

Who Lost Egypt: Not Obama for Sure - By Aaron David Miller | Foreign Policy "If we're lucky this time around, we'll avoid the who-lost-Egypt debate. Mubarak's decision to step down has pre-empted a catastrophic crisis for Egypt and for American interests. We may not be adept at manipulating Middle Eastern politics; but we're sure experts at beating ourselves up. Commentators and analysts have argued forcefully that Barack Obama's administration failed to anticipate the current crisis, blew an opportunity by failing to push President Hosni Mubarak to make significant reforms during the early days of the upheaval, and risks being on the wrong side of history by not being assertive in trying to force Mubarak's removal. But the administration was smart to keep its distance from this crisis. - Sent using Google Toolbar"

As Long-Term Unemployment Deepens, 99ers Look for Answers | The Washington Independent "For 23 years, 58-year-old Cindy Paoletti of Salina, N.Y., worked in the corporate accounting division of J.P. Morgan Chase, balancing payroll accounts in an upstate office of the Wall Street bank. In December 2007, Paoletti was let go in a wave of layoffs that eventually shuttered the entire Syracuse operations center. “My job went to India,” she sighs. [Economy1] Soon after, she started collecting unemployment benefits and severance while searching for a job in earnest. “I apply for everything out there,” she says, estimating she has applied to hundreds of positions over the past 30 months. “But 95 percent of the time, the company you send your resume to does not even acknowledge that they’ve received it. The majority of the time, if you do get an interview, they tell you that you are overqualified. It seems like as soon as they find out your age, everything goes down after there. The age disc