Boehner Still in Deep Rough on Jobs Course
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has been slicing deep into the rough when it comes to jobs, found that even at a $10,000 a round golf fundraiser, he can’t keep the gallery quiet.
Yesterday, Boehner and several of his House colleagues got together with dozens of big-time donors at the Wayzata Country Club outside Minneapolis/St Paul. But, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune, some 100 workers and other activists showed up at the campaign cash open to ask Boehner why he wasn’t working as hard on solving the job crisis as he was on his golf game.
With a stretch limo bearing a faux Boehner complete with giant cardboard head and airplane overhead towing a banner reading “Where’s Our Piece of the Pie? Jobs Now,” they marched alongside the road and near the cart paths chanting, “Boehner, you can’t run away, we need jobs today.”
Back Home, Lawmakers Are Asked: ‘Where Are the Jobs?’
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Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) was expecting a friendly crowd—like a pleasant late afternoon tea party—at a town hall meeting last week.
Instead, reports Harris County AFL-CIO President Richard Shaw,
he was greeted with community and labor folks holding signs asking him where the jobs are that the “job creators” (the rich who received the tax breaks) were supposed to have created.
Culberson wasn’t the only Texas lawmaker who faced action from working families for their support of tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations instead of working for an economy that strengthens the middle class and creates jobs.
Hot Dog! Working Families Bring the Heat to Lawmakers
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Head to West Virginia this weekend if you’re looking for a cheap and tasty meal and an opportunity to tell lawmakers to stop protecting tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations and instead focus on fixing the nation’s job crisis.
The West Virginia AFL-CIO and allied groups are holding 10 “Help the Really Rich Hot Dog Sales” around the Mountain State Saturday and Sunday. In honor of the 76th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt’s signing of the Social Security Act, the dogs will go for just 5 cents each—don’t know if chili and slaw are extra.
Larry Matheney, secretary-treasurer of the West Virginia AFL-CIO, says the sales will promote
a tongue-in-cheek solution to raising revenue without asking the really rich or tax-dodging corporations to pay their fair share of taxes… reducing the debt one hot dog a time.
The proceeds will be turned into the “U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt.” Read the rest of this entry »
Treasury Dept. Not Looking After Taxpayer Money
President-elect Barack Obama has a laundry list of Bush disasters to clean up after he gets in office, and he says fixing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is among his first priorities. Good thing, too, because the congressional oversight committee charged with examining how the first $350 billion of our taxpayer money was spent finds the U.S. Treasury Department isn’t exactly looking after our money. The oversight committee released its second report in recent days, and The Washington Post sums up the findings as follows:
The report says the department has not articulated a plan for restoring lending to consumers. It asks again why the Treasury has refused to spend any money on foreclosure prevention programs. And it says the department is sowing confusion in the financial markets, undermining the stated purpose of the rescue program, by failing to require companies to report how they are spending federal investments of taxpayer dollars.
