If there’s one constant in the elite national discourse of the moment, it is the claim that America was founded as a capitalist country and that socialism is a dangerous foreign import that, despite our unwarranted faith in free trade, must be barred at the border. This most conventional “wisdom”—increasingly accepted at least until the recent grassroots mobilizations in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Maine—has held that everything public is inferior to everything private, that corporations are always good and unions always bad, that progressive taxation is inherently evil and that the best economic model is the one that allows the wealthy to gobble up as much of the Republic as they choose before anything trickles down to the great mass of Americans. Rush Limbaugh informs us regularly that proposals to tax people as rich as he is for the purpose of providing healthcare for kids and jobs for the unemployed are “antithetical” to the nation’s original intent and that Barack Obama’s reforms are “destroying this country as it was founded.”

Donald Trump says he will "probably" run for president as an independent if he doesn't win the Republican nomination. More Seeds :: JCAtom

We are rolling out actions for people to show support for embattled state and local workers. We'll have more in coming days. Please join in and pass these along.

Wisconsin State AFL-CIO

Indiana State AFL-CIO

South Carolina AFL-CIO

The week of February 21st, workers, community, faith, and students will come together to rally in support of workers under attack in Wisconsin and across the country. Below is a list of actions we know are planned so far. More details are coming in all the time, so check back for updates. Please post in the comments if you're planning something or email us & we'll add it to the list.

http://www.jwjblog.org/2011/02/worker-solidarity-rallies-planned/

Show your support for Wisconsin workers: Find a rally in your state!

State Battles

Solidarity in the States

Republicans sure have interesting priorities. Even though they got elected on a fiscal agenda and arrived in legislatures and congress with a budget crisis and a nation staring down unemployment, they've decided to put policing women's bodies on the top of their agenda.

No worries. The election officials in Stark County, OH say the Diebold touch-screen vote-flipping, as captured on iPhone video by voter and University of Akron freshman Ian Sanderson on Election Day last week, was just "an isolated incident"...

For the second time in a month, Republican congressional candidate Tom Ganley, running in Ohio's 13th district, has been accused of sexual harassment.

In late September, a married mother of four filed a civil suit against Ganley, in which she accused him of attempted rape and sexual assault. Ganley's attorney called the charges "baseless allegations."

Now, a woman named Dianne Hill has filed a report with the Cleveland police, over an alleged incident that occurred in 2005, at Ganley's Chevy dealership in Cleveland.

"Eric W. Deaton -- the Ohio Constitution Party candidate for U.S. Senate who was indicted on Tuesday for unlawful sexual conduct with a minor -- met the victim at a church where he was an elder, a police official told TPMMuckraker."

Cleveland Plain Dealer: "A local nonprofit development group racing to erect the first offshore wind turbine in the Great Lakes has reached an agreement with General Electric Co. to supply five turbines for a $100 million demonstration project in Lake Erie.