America’s Future: Making the Contract for the American Dream a Reality
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Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.
The Take Back the American Dream conference opened Tuesday with a discussion on the “Contract for the American Dream.” Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change began by saying that there is a movement in America today and it’s not the tea party—it’s the American Dream Movement. People are working to build a huge movement that can meet this huge moment.
Our political system captured by powerful interests and angry voices. The American Dream movement is an effort to knit together the grassroots organizing that is already going on around the country and spark and inspire more. Reaching out to thousands of people through house parties and other events.
Justin Rubin of MoveOn described how the Contract for the American Dream was created by millions of Americans. First, dozens of organizations such as MoveOn and the Center for Community Change asked people what should be in a Contract for the American Dream.
Join a Noon Action to Stop Cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Reopen FAA
Tomorrow at noon, activists with a number of organizations, including our friends at MoveOn.org, are planning visits to congressional district offices all across the country to demand that there be no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and that Congress stop the partial shutdown of the FAA.
Click here to find information and join in a demonstration at your representative’s office.
Tell Corporate Tax Dodgers: Pay Up!
As part of the Tax Day: Make Them Pay mobilization, the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America is urging people to tell Congress to close the corporate tax loopholes that allow companies like ExxonMobil to rake in $19 billion in profits in 2009 and yet pay no federal income taxes—and instead, get a $156 million rebate from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). You can tell these corporate tax scofflaws to pay up—click here.
Exxon Mobil is one of the top five tax avoiders. The others are:
Join a ‘Tax Day Make Them Pay’ Event April 18
April 18 is the day this year we do our civic duty and pay taxes. But while you and I pay our fair share, some billion-dollar corporations do not.
Case in point: Exxon Mobil, with earnings of more than $45 billion, is the world’s most profitable corporation. Between 1998 and 2008, it spent $5.7 million in campaign contributions and $138 million in lobbying expenditures, as reported by Think Progress. Yet in 2009, it was not liable for any taxes. Even worse: Exxon Mobil, in 2009, received a $156 million tax rebate.
On April 18, thousands of union members, MoveOn members and other allies will gather all over the country outside the offices of corporations not paying their fair share. We’ll deliver tax bills to the biggest corporate tax-dodgers and demand that our elected leaders make them pay. Click here to find a Tax Day: Make Them Pay event near you.
Join Us Today for the K Street Showdown
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Congress is poised to vote on Wall Street reform—the most important to our financial system in decades. We are taking our message “Good Jobs Now! Make Wall Street Pay” to K Street, the power corridor in Washington, D.C., where Big Bank lobbyists plot to kill real financial reform and peddle corporate influence on Capitol Hill.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler will lead a large contingent of working families and union staff today, May 17, as we join with our partners from National People’s Action, Move On, SEIU and others to rally and call out the lobbyists for the Big Banks.
The rally kicks off at 11:45 a.m., in McPherson Square at the intersection of K Street and Vermont Ave., N.W.. If you can’t be there in person, join us as we live webstream the rally at www.aflcio.org. Also at www.aflcio.org, you can join in the discussion and leave your comments. Follow the action on Twitter via #bankshowdown and check back here, where we’ll be tweeting the event live. And there’s still time to invite your friends to join us online via Facebook.
Join Us at the K Street Showdown May 17
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We’re getting set for the Showdown on K Street, the Washington, D.C., power corridor where Big Bank and corporate lobbyists scheme and scam to kill Wall Street reform and peddle corporate influence on Capitol Hill.
On May 17, at 11:45 a.m., ET, working families will bring their influence to the nation’s capital. The AFL-CIO, National People’s Action, Move On, SEIU and others will rally to call out the lobbyists who do Wall Street’s dirty work. Click here to sign up to be there in person or join us online.
We’re especially targeting the lobbyists for Wall Street’s Big Six Banks: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo/Wachovia.
From last year to today, Big Banks are spending some $1.4 million a day in lobbying and political expenses to fight legislation that would reform the financial industry and help prevent another economic meltodown. There are four Big Bank lobbyists for every member of Congress.
Join Today’s Virtual March on Congress for Health Care Now
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Today, you can join in a million-person march for health care in Washington, D.C., without traipsing through our leftover snow banks. Our friends at MoveOn, Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) and other groups are staging a virtual march on the nation’s capital to tell Congress it’s time to stop stalling and pass real health care reform.
The virtual march coincides with a real life Capitol Hill rally and the arrival in Washington—after an eight-day, 135-mile march from Philadelphia—of a group of health care activists honoring the memory of Melanie Shouse. The St. Louis, Mo., health care activist recently lost her battle with breast cancer after her insurance company refused to pay for treatment her doctors said she needed. She was 41 years old.
The virtual and real rallies—the day before the televised White House health care summit—are designed to tell lawmakers they have had plenty of time to discuss and debate health care reform over the past year, and now it’s their job to make it happen.
Click here to join the virtual march and here, here and here for reports, photos and videos from Melanie’s March.
Rally Today Against Insurance Company Greed, and Other Health Care News
Today, health insurance industry bigwigs are meeting in Washington, D.C., to plot out their strategy to defeat health care reform. We’ll be rallying to show them that we won’t accept anything less than affordable, high-quality coverage for everyone.
Here’s what else is happening in the fight for health care:
- Health insurance companies, drug companies and their front groups have been breaking records in their fight to keep control over our health care, spending millions this summer on TV and lobbying in D.C.
- Senators are looking to rein in the insurance industry by ending the industry’s exception from anti-trust laws.
