Headline news, compiled by NationalJournal.com.

A Republican pushes his version of government-run health care; some feds could receive larger annuity payments.

When the educational historians write the story of the first months of 2010, they will record that it was the time when President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan did great harm to America’s neediest students, the young people concentrated in schools that serve poor and working class communities. If we are to finally fulfill the promise of Brown v. Board of Education for a quality education for all, surely we must support and encourage accomplished educators who take on the exceptional challenges of teaching in such schools. Yet in these last few weeks, President Obama and the Secretary Duncan have sent an unmistakable message that one works in such a school only at serious risk to one’s professional life and career. What other conclusion can a teacher draw from President Obama’s open support of the mass firings in Central Falls and his administration’s advocacy of  mass school closings in its plan for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind law? Our careers as educators can be brought to an abrupt end, without regard for our actual classroom performance, simply because we work in a school facing the great educational challenges that come with the deprivation of poverty.

How bitter now is the memory of Obama’s promise, not yet two years old, that instead of blaming and stigmatizing teachers, government would be our partner, providing the supports and the resources necessary to take on the historic tasks of educating all American students. In place of that promise is the full embrace of the corporate agenda for education, following the well-known formula of GE’s ‘Neutron’ Jack Welch: establish a punitive regime of fear by firing 10% of your workforce every year. No wonder that the Business Roundtable cannot contain their glee.

As the German philosopher Hegel once mused, Minerva’s owl flies only at dusk: we do not know the full extent of the damage done by an administration that was once the source of so much hope. But no matter what happens next, an all too real price will be paid America’s neediest students in years to come. If the price of working with America’s neediest students is a game of Russian roulette with one’s professional careers, many teachers will reasonably decide that the price is too high. And the losers will be the schools and the students who need accomplished teachers the most.

The economy is still far too fragile to withstand spending cuts and the best way to reduce the deficit is to go for economic growth, the TUC has told the Chancellor in its Budget Submission published today (Thursday).

Opponents say legislation banning tax delinquents from government service could unfairly target federal employees.

Opponents say legislation banning tax delinquents from government service could unfairly target federal employees.

Dueling labor groups have both filed election petitions; one hit Capitol Hill to push a bill granting transportation security officers bargaining rights.

Plan would allow the commission to retain the fees it collects.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) who this week launched a television ad slamming working families as “outside interests” is continuing her descent into “yet another hypocritical, flip-flopping D.C., politician,” says Arkansas AFL-CIO President Alan Hughes.

Lincoln in recent months has piled up a Senate record opposing working families–including voting to send jobs overseas via bad trade deals, reversing her initial support for the Employee Free Choice Act and opposing health care reform legislation with a public health insurance option. Arkansas unions now have endorsed Lt. Gov. Bill Halter (D.) in the upcoming U.S. Senate primary. Says Hughes:

Lincoln has ignored the interests of working people in Arkansas too many times. It’s easy for her to try to paint opponents as outsiders, but working-class voters in Arkansas can see as well as anybody that she has turned her back on us.

Although she’s attacking working families and their unions today, Lincoln sang quite a different tune in 2004 when she was grateful for the backing of the Arkansas AFL-CIO, along with more than $260,000 in working families’ PAC donations. Said Lincoln at the time:

I’m honored to receive the endorsement today from the Arkansas AFL-CIO for my work in the Senate to improve the lives of Arkansas working families.

Her strong support for Wal-Mart, headquartered in Fayetteville, and her silence about the company’s virulent anti-unionism and labor law violations, has earned her the nickname “the senator from Wal-Mart.”

Lincoln was also just one of two Democrats who voted to block President Obama’s nomination of respected attorney Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Says Hughes:

Only someone who has become a career politician in Washington, D.C., could spend 10 years asking for our support, take hundreds of thousands of dollars from blue-collar workers, then turn around and attack us as outsiders because we wouldn’t help her this time around. Those are not the values people in Arkansas believe in.

The Obama administration recently released its first National Education Technology Plan, with the goal of raising national college completion rates from 40 to 60% in the next ten years. In a recent Education Week article, the Director of the U.S. Office of Educational Technology, Karen Cator, spoke about the Plan. She stressed that it is important [...]

Thanks to NSBA’s advocacy team and state associations, an attempt to renew the pilot DC voucher program for five years and to add new students was defeated on the Senate floor yesterday.  Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) offered the amendemnt to the FAA reauthorization bill being debated. You can see a vote count here to find out what your Senators [...]

The Senate today passed a jobs bill that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls “good start” in helping the nation’s workers climb out of the 11-million-deep jobs hole dug by the Wall Street greed that propelled the economy’s nosedive.

But he says the bill–which is on its way to the White House for President Obama’s signature–must be the first step of a broad and intensive effort to rebuild the economy.

Much more needs to be done. We need to restore the jobs that were lost to the financial debacle, and Wall Street should pay to create them. We must invest in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and in the green jobs of the future. We have to maintain funding for vital services by state and local governments and prevent destructive cuts in education, police and fire protection and more.

We must take the additional steps needed to extend unemployment insurance and health care lifelines to the unemployed. We must increase funding for neglected communities to match people who want to work with jobs that need to be done. And we should move right now to use leftover TARP money to get credit flowing to Main Street.

The $17.6 billion bill includes a one-year extension of the federal highway program, an extension of the Build America Bonds program that helps states finance certain infrastructure projects and tax incentives for employers to hire workers.

The Senate first passed the legislation in February, but minor changes by the House forced a second vote on the legislation.

Other pending jobs legislation includes a December-passed House bill that is a more extensive jobs bill with an emphasis on jobs-creating infrastructure projects. The next step for the bill is uncertain–Senate leaders have promised to move further jobs-related legislation, but no time table has been set.  Also this month, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) introduced the Local Jobs for America Act which would create or save up to 1 million public- and private-sector jobs. Jobs saved would include those such as firefighters, police and teachers and others whose jobs are in jeopardy because of local government budget cuts.

Three recent IG reports have found major deficiencies in the system for preventing unethical contractors from getting on the government payroll.

      

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was found guilty yesterday of conspiracy to wreck the economy, destroy jobs and the immoral use of taxpayer bank bailout money for millions in Wall Street bonuses.

The courtroom was on a Madison Wis., street in front a JP Morgan Chase bank branch and the jury included dozens of union and community activists. The street theater was part of the AFL-CIO union movement’s two weeks of action across the country to Make Wall Street pay to create jobs and fix they economy they ravaged.

Jim Cavanaugh, president of the South Central Federation of Labor which organized the curbside drama says:

We bailed out Wall Street now its time for Wall Street to bail out Main Street.

More than 200 “Good Jobs Now, Make Wall Street Pay” actions are planned through March 25. The rallies and marches will demand that the Big Six Wall Street banks–Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia-Wells Fargo–take the following actions:

• Pay their fair share to restore the jobs their actions destroyed.
• Stop their multi-million dollar lobbying blitz to kill financial reform.
• Start lending to communities, small businesses and others starved for credit.

Also yesterday, union members distributed leaflets in front of JP Morgan Chase branch in Baton Rouge, La., and rallied at a Bank of America office in Charleston, S.C. Today union activists in Butte, Mont., will march in the town’s St. Patrick’s Day parade carrying “Make Wall Street Pay” signs and banners. This afternoon, the West Virginia AFL-CIO, along with community allies, staged a rally in front a Wells Fargo/Wachovia Bank in Charleston.

Find out about events in your area here. If you take part in an event, be sure to send us your photo or video here.

You also can tell Wall Street executives to pony up and create good jobs by sending a letter urging them to do the right thing. Just click here.

Ross Hyman, a research analyst for the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research, sends us info on this latest support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

“Wool workers and dyers have the right to say: ‘We will all be partners in any business that comes to the city.’ Bakers have the right to arrange their shifts.”

Quoting the above passage from the Tosefta, a rabbinic text written some 1,800 years ago, the rabbis of the Reconstructionist Rabbinic Association passed a resolution March 16 at their annual convention that reaffirms Judaism’s long tradition of support for workers’ rights, union organizing and collective bargaining. Reconstructionism is a denomination of Judaism and is among many faith groups to formally support the Employee Free Choice Act.

The resolution calls on its member rabbis to support legislation, beginning with the Employee Free Choice Act, which strengthens the freedom of workers to bargain collectively, support workers who are struggling with management for their rights.

The Reconstuctionist rabbis join several other Jewish organizations that recently have passed resolutions or endorsements in support of the Employee Free Choice Act and workers’ rights. These include the Jewish Labor Committee, The Progressive Jewish Alliance, The Jewish Council for Urban Affairs, The Jewish Social Policy Action Network, Jews United for Justice, Rabbis for Workers’ Choice, The Shalom Center, Tikkun/The Network of Spiritual Progressives, and Uri L’Tzedek.

In addition, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism in 2008 set the following as the official halakhic (Jewish law) position of the Conservative movement:

Jewish employers should allow their employees to make their own independent decisions about whether to unionize, and may not interfere in any way with organizing drives by firing or otherwise punishing involved workers, by refusing workers the option for voluntary recognition of their union, or by otherwise threatening workers who wish to unionize.

Rabbis can sign a petition in support of Employee Free Choice and workers rights here.

The text of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association resolution is available at Rabbi Brant Rosen’s blog.

     

The nearly 60,000 rescue and recovery workers and community members whose health is at serious risk from their exposure to the contaminated and toxic rubble at the 2001 Ground Zero World Trade Center attacks are a step closer to receiving long-term medical care.

Yesterday the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health subcommittee approved by an overwhelming and bipartisan 25-8 vote the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act (H.R. 847). The bill would establish a medical monitoring and treatment program for the Sept. 11 first responders and the community members at the site of the attacks.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y) one of the bill’s chief sponsors, along with Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y), says that while progress has been “painfully slow,”

today we are one important step closer to providing the brave responders and survivors of 9/11’s toxic aftermath the health care and compensation they need and deserve.

The Ground Zero rubble piles were a toxic mix of chemicals, jet fuel, asbestos, lead, glass fragments and other debris. The rescue workers who worked night and day to pull survivors and bodies from the rubble. those who spent months removing the debris as well as community residents, all were exposed and are now suffering the health consequences. Says Maloney:

We have a moral responsibility to care for those who lost their health because of the attacks on America–it’s simply the least this great nation can do.

Denis Hughes, president of the New York State AFL-CIO, praised the committee’s action.

After eight-and-a-half years, our heroes can finally see the light an end of the tunnel. Today we are one step closer to realizing our goal. We will not step until the debt we owe our heroes has been paid back in full.

A vote by the full House will come later this year.

Earlier this week, a proposed settlement was reached for the more than 10,000 lawsuits by the rescue and recovery workers suffering serious illnesses caused by their Ground Zero exposure.

Commenting on the news today (Wednesday) that Catholic Care, a Leeds-based adoption agency, has won a high court appeal allowing it to ignore sexual orientation regulations and so exclude same-sex partners who wish to adopt, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

Plan would require OMB to determine how many similar earmarks there are governmentwide.

Harding will have three levels of recusals for dealing with the contracting business he founded in 2003 and the clients and partners of that business.

Secretary cites cost overruns and missed deadlines as reasons to move $50 million in Recovery Act funding for the first phase of SBInet to pay for proven technologies.