The latest stories from the front lines of the labor fight across the country...

Why don't Republicans want to help the more than 100 children a year who die while working on farms

A judge has halted the new National Labor Relations Board rules for union elections because of a technicality

Take action to stop the assault on teachers and students in Massachusetts

Tell New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to raise the state's minimum wage

Newt Gingrich's sugar daddy is now funding Scott Walker, too

Rep. Darrell Issa is abusing his position as chair of the House Oversight Committee to go after unions and working families

Milwaukee ironworker Randy Bryce is running for the state assembly

Elections officials in Michigan kept secret proof that Emergency Manager repeal petitions were legal

Politicians being targeted for recall in Wisconsin have strong ties to ALEC

Some state legislators are afraid of being targeted like Scott Walker and are backing off their anti-union agenda

Earlier this week, Sen. Scott Brown made a consequential and costly decision for his campaign: to release his recent tax returns and to challenge Elizabeth Warren to do the same.

Talk about a major blunder.

First, it turns out Brown has a haircut problem. The Boston Herald reported that last year, Brown took a deduction of $1401 for hair, make up and grooming. Wow. This is something that will haunt Brown for the remainder of his campaign. Voters don’t much like career politicians who claim to be earnest everymen while spending so much money on their vanity and grooming.

Second, it turns out that Scott Brown and his wife made $2.5 million over the past six years, far more than the Brown campaign and the Massachusetts Republican Party have let on in all their vitriolic and over the top advertisements attacking Warren’s own income. What’s more, Brown’s income has skyrocketed since he entered public service — news that has caught the eye of pretty much every Massachusetts paper.

Earlier this year, Brown claimed his income was “not a heck of a lot. I mean, you know, I don’t make a heck of a lot.” He will have a tough time explaining that given the latest revelations about his income and the fact that he has a healthy place in the top 1 percent of American earners.

Brown’s latest problems were put on display with a new Web ad the Massachusetts Democratic Party posted early this morning, highlighting the enormous, $675 price tag for his famous barn jacket, the six properties he owns, and his newfound “A-list” stature in the Washington social circuit.

Brown is likely to find it difficult to put this toothpaste back in the tube.

So the only thing we have with which we can compare the Affordable Care Act shows that it works to lower the cost of insurance. Kind of a roundabout, convoluted way to provide health care, and nowhere near as cheap as single payer, but at least it does lessen the crushing financial burden of the crazy system we still have:

BOSTON, April 14 (UPI) -- Massachusetts residents who participate in the state's healthcare program are seeing their insurance premiums going down by 5 percent, officials say.

While healthcare insurance premiums have gone up in other states, those participating in the state's Health Connector Commonwealth Care program are enjoying a second year of reduced premium payments courtesy of the healthcare reform act signed into law by then Gov. Mitt Romney, Forbes.com reported.

President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act was patterned under Romney's program in Massachusetts and designed to lower the amount of "free riders," people who don't buy or can't afford healthcare insurance but cannot by law, be turned away at a hospital emergency room if they have a life-threatening illness, by mandating the purchase of healthcare insurance.

Let me point out that the definition of "life-threatening illness" is a narrow one, and varies from hospital to hospital. For instance, if you go to the emergency room with severe pain, they test you and it turns out you have cancer, they don't have to treat your cancer -- unless, for example, a tumor is blocking your lungs and you can't breathe. It doesn't mean they have to remove the tumor, but they might do a tracheotomy. And they only have to treat your life-threatening illness if they diagnose it. (You may have noticed they don't always order the most accurate tests if you don't have insurance.) And they don't really have to "treat" it - they have to stabilize it.

Most importantly, they will send in a social worker to see if they can get you covered under a special federal program for indigent care. This is worth a shot; don't give up. If you're penniless, they can probably help you. (I wasn't poor enough.)

When I made repeated visits to the ER with pancreatitis caused by gallstones, I was sent home -- even though the GI doctor kept telling me my condition was life-threatening. What I learned is that many conditions are only life-threatening if you have insurance that will pay to cover the treatment. And who can blame them when they're trying to keep their doors open? (What a strange, evil system we have.)

Currently, Massachusetts has the highest level of healthcare coverage in the country with more than 98 percent of its residents having healthcare insurance, but ranking as the 48th lowest state in the nation in healthcare expenditures.

The combined saving of last year and this year will save the state approximately $91 million with no benefit reductions or member co-pay increases, the report said.

In Florida, by the way, people who buy their own health insurance are getting rebates. I suspect the more people benefit from Obamacare, the more they're going to like it, because it is an improvement over the previous rape-and-pillage policies:

Floridians who buy health insurance without the help of an employer can expect estimated rebates of $143 to $949 in August because of the federal health care overhaul.

About 157,000 individuals and families qualify. In addition, an estimated $65 million in health insurance rebates are in line to be split among workers covered at 352,000 small businesses, the Sun Sentinel found by analyzing reports filed this month by 15 of the largest insurers in Florida.

Don't expect cash back if you get health coverage from an employer of more than 50 workers. Few of their insurers will owe rebates, and many companies are self-insured and not affected by the health law, insurance experts said.

"This is important for consumers," said Richard Polangin, health care policy coordinator with the advocacy organization Florida Public Interest Research Group. "They already pay extremely high prices for health insurance."

The polls are not going Elizabeth Warren's way in Massachusetts right now, and Chris Christie just weighed in with an endorsement for Scott Brown in an effort to tip the scales toward Brown.

Via Boston.com:

Today, [Christie] officially endorsed Brown, saying in a statement that the men “share a commitment to taking on today’s most difficult challenges by reforming government, balancing budgets and making tough choices.”

“He is battling to bring the same kind of fiscal discipline to Washington that I am fighting for in New Jersey. Scott cuts through the baloney and calls the issues like he sees them, and I am proud to endorse his campaign,” he continued.

Meanwhile, the polls are not being kind to Elizabeth Warren, which should be of concern to Democrats around the country. This is the third poll showing Brown ahead of Warren by a significant margin there, with the first taken in mid-February, a second one last week, and now this one. Real Clear Politics has Brown leading by 3.5 points right now in the averages.

Via Washington Post:

“We'll let the political pundits debate the polls and watch them go up and down over the course of the campaign,” said Warren press secretary Alethea Harney. “Elizabeth will keep working her heart out.”

Boston-based Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh said Warren still needed to make her case to independents and increase her overall visibility: “The quieter the campaign, the better advantage for him and not for her, because it’s the status quo.”

Democrats also argued that Brown’s cross-party popularity in the Western New England survey was a sign of how volatile polling was, not of danger for Warren.

Elizabeth Warren is a Blue America-supported candidate. Please consider donating to her campaign or helping in any way you can to make some noise and send Scott Brown home in November forever.

State: Alaska

Type of election: Caucus

How it works: 24 delegates are at stake and are awarded proportionately.

Official election results: Alaska Division of Elections

Republican candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum (all others have dropped out or are polling at less than 1 percent)

Democratic candidates: There is no Democratic presidential caucus.

Previous performance: In 2008, Romney won the caucus with 36 percent of the vote. Paul finished third with 15.5 percent. Obama won the Democratic caucus with 75 percent of the vote.

Newspapers: Anchorage Daily News, Anchorage Press, full list

Television stations: Full list

Progressive blogs: Mudflats

Latest polling: Basically no polling has been done on the caucus.

Nate Silver says the state will split relatively equally between Romney and Paul, with Santorum coming in third,

Bottom line: This looks to be the one place where Paul has a shot at a victory. It won't really matter, though, in the big picture.

State: Georgia

Type of election: Primary

How it works: 76 delegates are at stake. 31 are awarded statewide proportionately to candidates who get at least 20 percent of the vote. The remaining are awarded three per congressional district, where a majority candidate gets all three or if there is no majority, the delegates are given to the top two candidates 2-1.

Official election results: Georgia Secretary of State

Republican candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum (all others have dropped out or are polling at less than 1 percent)

Democratic candidates: Barack Obama and minor candidates.

Previous performance: In 2008, Romney finished third to Mike Huckabee with 30 percent of the vote. Paul finished fourth with just under 3 percent. Obama won the primary with 66 percent.

Newspapers: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, full list

Television stations: Full list

Progressive blogs: Blog for Democracy

Latest polling: New York Times:

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Part of being a Democrat is acting like you’re losing even when you’re winning. Part of being a Republican is acting like you’re winning even when you’re losing. The phrase “silent majority,” that brilliant bit of Nixonian rhetoric, is a way to augment Republican numbers and voices. “Nearly all people agree with me and they’re not only in my imagination … you just can’t hear them.”

Senator Jim DeMint (SC-R) has an odd obsession with ill-fitting metaphors. He famously proclaimed his only reason to kill the Affordable Care Act was to annihilate the president politically. "If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,” said the tea-touting Senator. DeMint has a pre-existing condition; he thinks an enemy’s high casualty mêlée is comparable to the inability to pass a sensible, relatively mild, reform bill. Well, at least when he’s talking about Democrats. As the kick-off speaker at this year’s CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) DeMint used a somewhat softer analogy: football. Specifically these two teams DeMint sees have different goals. “We don’t have shared goals with the Democrats…Compromise works well in this world when you have shared goals."

In football the teams are never expected to go in the same direction with the best interests of the fans in mind. Also in football, no team threatens to shut down the country as a strategy to win the game.

But maybe DeMint is correct: It’s really tough to compromise with a group that’s solitary goal is destroying you. Apparently taking the same oath to uphold the same Constitution, in the same country, drawing the same paycheck, in the same office building, in the same city and being of the same religion, sharing the same language and being mostly (85 percent) male, white and wealthy isn’t enough common ground for Republicans to even entertain working with those alien Democrats. It’s even tougher to compromise with a group who you could totally agree with but they retroactively become against their own ideas once you propose them. Like say, the individual mandate every GOP candidate was for before he was against it. (Yes, except Ron Paul, keep your emails.)

Enter the “severely conservative.” This was the description Mitt Romney bestowed upon himself at this year’s CPAC. “I was a severely conservative Republican governor,” said the oft-frontrunner. “Severe” is a word normally associated with pain or really bad weather. With today’s GOP, not only do Republicans refuse to have the same goals – they deny all similarities to their enemy. “The President is not like us.” This is severely conservative.

In the same speech Romney promised to repeal ObamaCare even though it’s nearly identical to the plan Romney signed into law in Massachusetts, dubbed RomneyCare.

Let’s put it this way: If Romney “repealed and replaced” the “job-killing ObamaCare” with RomneyCare, no one would notice. If there were a taste test and you covered the labels – no one could tell the difference. You’d have a 50/50 chance of guessing which reform you were actually enjoying.

But to be a true severe conservative demands suspending disbelief. What must you be willing to accept? The economy buckling while a Republican was in the White House never happened. Bush never bailed out the banks or the auto industry. Deficits suddenly matter. Clint Eastwood is a hippie. And if the country continues to struggle it’ll be great for the GOP.

It reminds me of King Pyrrhus’ quote which sums up the term Pyrrhic victory: "If we are victorious in one more battle, we shall be utterly ruined."

And well, these severe conservatives are acting like they’re winning.

That should tell us something.

That viral Youtube may be the most famous American cri de coeur of the new century --- a shot heard round the political world announcing that Elizabeth Warren was not just running for the Senate in Massachusetts, but that she was going to do it by redefining the political framework that's governed this nation for the past 30 years. Warren's message put fear in the hearts of the big money boyz and the political establishment and they reacted. Strongly. This is not a person they want in the Senate and they are going to do whatever they can to ensure she isn't elected.

As someone who has been fighting for the middle class for many years as a researcher and advocate, Warren is a rare politician who has knowledge of the way Washington works while not being of Washington. As her recent battles setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau showed, the wall of resistance to her ideas is formidable and a lesser person would have done her work and gone back to her secure and happy life as a professor and lecturer. But those battles only made her more determined.

She's going to be the next Senator from Massachusetts if we have anything to do with it --- and if her track record is any indication that ossified institution isn't going to know what hit it.

Elizabeth Warren is staking her race on a commitment to resist the lures of big money and special interests. Wall Street, for obvious reasons, has her in their crosshairs and will pour unlimited amounts of cash into the race to defeat her and the GOP establishment is desperate that they do so --- after all, her win could keep the Senate in the hands of the Democrats.

But despite all that, it's not impossible for her to win this, not by a long shot. There's a limit to what money can buy and Elizabeth's message is resonating strongly as she crosses the state meeting people. She's consistently running ahead of her opponent Scott Brown in the polls, but she needs our help to stay competitive.

This week her campaign is running a money bomb collecting donations from like-minded individuals all over the country who understand that Elizabeth Warren doesn't just represent the people of Massachusetts, although she does. She represents all of us who want to see the American dream restored and the middle class strong and thriving again in this country.

Howie, John and I were thrilled to have Blue America be among the very first to endorse her campaign and we couldn't be more excited that she's found a few minutes to join us here today.

Please give as generously as you can--- and please welcome her to Crooks and Liars!

In the midst of everything going on, this story has fallen by the wayside, but it's an important one, especially if you think Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination for 2012. At the end of Romney's term as governor, Romney's staffers destroyed emails, sold publicly-owned hard drives to staffers, and made sure no digital tracks were left behind. This action flies in the face of public records laws in Massachusetts, which require that electronic records be preserved for state archives. (Bush administration, anyone?)

Via ThinkProgress:

Asked why he purchased his hard drive for $65 just two weeks before leaving office, Romney’s chief legal counsel, Mark Nielsen, couldn’t explain, saying only that he followed the law:

“I’m confident that we complied with the letter and the spirit of the law,’’ he added. When asked why he would want to purchase his hard drive, he said, “Employees were given that option and it was my understanding that it was a longstanding practice in the governor’s office.’’When asked about replacing the remaining computers and wiping the server clean, he said, “All I can tell you is we fully complied with the law and complied with longstanding executive branch practice. Nothing unusual was done.’’

The problem with that statement is that no one can find any precedent for selling hard drives at the end of a term. The Romney campaign notes that they turned over 700 cubic feet of information to the archives, but those are paper records and trying to find anything in them is akin to searching for the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack.

Which brings us to the interview at the top, where Romney has yet another reason for keeping his hard drives.

Via ThinkProgress:

Romney and his campaign have so far denied this, with the candidate saying this weekend in New Hampshire that his staff took the highly unusual step of purchasing their work hard drives because they might contain “confidential and private” information. Meanwhile, he’s made calls for greater White House transparency a part of his campaign message.But in a fairly stunning admission today during an interview with the editorial board of the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire, Romney suggested that his administration deleted emails because they didn’t want “opposition research teams” to have access to them:

ROMNEY: Well, I think in government we should follow the law. And there has never been an administration that has provided to the opposition research team, or to the public, electronic communications. So ours would have been the first.

That's a new one. An elected official who used equipment paid for by the public he served choosing to withhold information from that same public in order to thwart opposition research?

Just a little bit of what one could expect from a President Romney, who clearly takes his cues from the Karl Rove School of (Non)Transparency.

Need some good news today? Here you go. Elizabeth Warren has jumped into the lead in the Massachusetts Senate race over Scott Brown. Granted, it's very early in the race, but initial polls had her down 9 points over Brown, and now she leads 46-44.

Via PPP:

Warren's gone from 38% name recognition to 62% over the last three months and she's made a good first impression on pretty much everyone who's developed an opinion about her during that period of time. What was a 21/17 favorability rating in June is now 40/22- in other words she's increased the voters with a positive opinion of her by 19% while her negatives have risen only 5%.

The surprising movement toward Warren has a lot to do with her but it also has a lot to do with Scott Brown. We now find a slight plurality of voters in the state disapproving of him- 45%, compared to only 44% approving. We have seen a steady decline in Brown's numbers over the last 9 months. In early December his approval was a +24 spread at 53/29. By June it had declined to a +12 spread at a 48/36. And now it's continued that fall to its current place.

Brown's position has always been a little tenuous as a Republican in a strongly Democratic state, making him very dependent on the support of Obama voters to stay above ground. In June he was at 72/17 with McCain voters and now he's at 74/18, pretty much the same. But with Obama voters he's gone from 35/48 to 27/62, accounting for the entire drop in his overall approval numbers. It's a similar story when you look at the horse race numbers. Last time Brown led Warren 87-6 with McCain voters and now it's 87-9. But with Obama voters Warren's turned what was only a 47-24 lead into a 68-20 one.

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One of the conservative baloney machine's greatest triumphs has been to convince a sizable portion of the country that states such as Massachusetts (which I proudly call home) are decrepit urine-soaked wastelands whose streets are overflowing with junkies and hookers living inside million-dollar public housing units that are paid for on the backs of the few hard-working Real Americans who haven't fled for the greener pastures of Rick Perry's free market paradise down South. You've probably heard quite a bit about the "Texas Miracle" in the press a lot and I'm sure you'll be surprised to know that it's a longhorn-sized pile of poop.

First, let's just consider that the unemployment rate in the free-market paradise of Texas stands at a freedom-y 8.4 percent. For contrast, the unemployment rate in my socialist hellhole of Massachusetts stands at communist-like 7.6 percent. Poverty rates are also intriguing, since 10 percent of Massachusetts residents live below the poverty line while 15.8 percent of Texas residents live below the poverty line.

But that's not all! My evil job-killing state has the lowest rate of uninsured people in the country, at 5.3 percent. Texas, on the other hand, has left a whopping 27.1 percent of its population uninsured. I'm not sure what's quite so miraculous about not having access to health care but then again I'm just a commie pinko. What the hell do I know?

And there are other things too. Like, education. In Massachusetts, 85 percent of eighth graders scored at or above basic in the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam, while 52 percent scored at or above proficient. Texas' eighth graders scored 78 percent at basic, 36 percent at proficient. You see a similar trend for reading: 83 percent of Massachusetts eighth graders scored at basic in reading, with 43 percent at proficient. In Texas, 73 percent of eighth graders scored at basic in reading while 27 percent scored at proficient.

"OK, OK," you say. "So Massachusetts has a better economy, education and health care than Texas. But all those big government programs are surely sapping Massholes of their precious moral values and leading to crime running rampant in the streets and a breakdown in family values! DON'T YOU READ DAVID BROOKS!?!!?!"

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