benefits

If Scott Walker is allowed to gut public employees' right to collective bargaining, Sheila Cochran of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council points out, it will lower the floor for all Wisconsinites' wages and benefits. ; The unions in the state have long helped keep wages high and benefits, including health care, good for all of the state's workers, even as factories have closed and jobs gone overseas.The public sector remains the last bastion of union workers around the country, and Sheila joins Laura in Madison along with Diane Palmer of SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin to discuss the impact the cuts will have on working families in Wisconsin and around the U.S.

Welcome to our first special one-hour episode from Madison, Wisconsin! Thanks to our friends at The Uptake , Free Speech TV , and WORT FM in Madison for making this collaboration happen."Unions realize that this is a threat to their very existence," says Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive , of Scott Walker's attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers. And some of the usual suspects are behind Walker's attack--from the Koch brothers to Republican ideologues. "These corporations want to get these people off the playing field," says John Nichols, of The Nation . Matt and John discuss the history behind this week's historic labor protests.If Scott Walker is allowed to gut public employees' right to collective bargaining, Sheila Cochran of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council points out, it will lower the floor for all Wisconsinites' wages and benefits. ; The unions in the state have long helped keep wages high and benefits, including health care, good for all of the state's workers, even as factories have closed and jobs gone overseas.The public sector remains the last bastion of union workers around the country, and Sheila and Diane Palmer of SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin discuss the impact the cuts will have on working families in Wisconsin and around the U.S."People understand this is a national struggle," says Mary Bottari of the situation in Wisconsin right now, and Mark Pocan, Wisconsin State Assemblyman from the 78th District, says "This has to be the spot where we stop it nationally."

"People are still looking at and facing too much pain," says Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who joined Bernie Sanders for part of his eight and a half hour speech against giving tax breaks to millionaires. Brown notes that while the compromise which eventually passed gives some short-term help to American workers, but that the economy will not begin to really recover until Washington turns its focus to jobs--and not just any jobs, but reinvigorated manufacturing jobs.Senator Brown joins us from Washington via Skype to discuss what he sees as the most important priorities for a shrunken Democratic majority in the Senate in the next session of Congress, and particularly why a focus on our trade policy is ; long overdue."The American people were pioneers again, not by going west but by going into debt," says economist Rick Wolff of the last 30 years of our economy. While wages stayed low and infrastructure, education and energy investments bottomed out, Americans leveraged everything on credit cards and loans to keep afloat. And now, despite record Wall Street bonuses and holiday shopping, the economy is still built on fundamental flaws.Rick Wolff and Jeff Madrick join us in studio for a year-end conversation about the economy--looking forward to 2011, what can we expect? And more importantly, what will it take to really change the shaky foundations on which our economy rests?And finally, John Fugelsang just wants to take a moment to wish ‘happy holidays’ to all our friends angry about the ‘war on Christmas.’

Members of Congress talking about shutting the government down until they can extend tax cuts for the wealthy are "in denial, blinded by their greed," says Constance Kaplan, "They're not concerned with us." Connie is a law librarian who's worked for JP Morgan Chase, among other companies, and is a '99er' -- she's been unemployed for over 99 weeks and has thus lost all government unemployment benefits.Connie joins us in studio to discuss the government's inattention to job creation, and Edrie Irvine joins us via Skype--a legal secretary, she is also unemployed and is nearing the expiration on her own benefits. They fill us in on what it's like on the job hunt after over a year, and what unemployed workers are doing to get organized."I guess I missed the part of the book of Genesis where Moses says 'Let my people make $250,000 a year or more,'" jokes Chris Lehmann, author of the new book Rich People Things (from OR Books, also publisher of At The Tea Party). And Harper's columnist Thomas Frank notes, "It's expensive to be a populist these days!"Thomas and Chris join us in studio for a chat about Rich People Things--why it is that the same political rhetoric that used to be used in service of the people, the poor and working classes, is now being used to defend the rights of millionaires not to pay taxes. When the social contract's been shredded, right-wingers talk of "forces of darkness" with straight faces, and Republicans are vowing not to vote on anything until they get to cut taxes for the rich, what can we do?And just in case that wasn't enough to convince you that our government has the wrong interests at heart, just-released Fed documents show money floated not just to too-big-to-fail banks, but too-big-to-fail--phone companies? Foreign banks? Motorcycle companies? Laura has some thoughts on the big float.