If this new Republican idea weren’t so scary, we would be laughing…hysterically.

As reported by the Washington Post 2chambers blog yesterday, Rep. Jeffrey Landry (R-La.) is proposing that working Americans—already battered bloody by the recession—be forced to give up some of their Social Security benefits if they “opt in” to receive a payroll tax cut. (So much for the Republican mantra that tax cuts pay for themselves.)

Terry Maile’s supervisor called her into a conference room with all of her co-workers to hear the news: It was their last day of employment at Level 3 Communications in Pittsburgh.

More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.

Alabama’s new anti-immigrant law instantly intimidated the nine Latino employees of Max’s Delicatessen, owned by Steve Dubrinsky, who says: 

They are good solid people, and I don’t like how they feel right now.

As Greece teeters toward collapse because of austerity measures imposed upon it by international lenders, the current doctrine of cutting public employment and programs in the midst of an economic crisis perhaps deserves a reassessment.

In “The State of Young America: The Databook,” the economic experts at Demos demonstrate that by virtually every measure, the fortunes of America’s young people are falling under a deluge of debt, shrinking opportunity, rising costs of living and lack of access to health care.

UAW members at Ford Motor Co. have voted to approve a new four-year agreement with the automaker. In September, UAW members ratified a four-year contract with General Motors. Workers at Chrysler now are voting on a tentative deal reached earlier this month.

Following a huge and rapid public outcry that included hundreds of thousands of online petition signatures and phone calls to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, a threatened clean-up/eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters was postponed early this morning.

Tune in tonight (7-8:30 p.m. EDT) to join a live webcast of the AFL-CIO National Teach-In on jobs and the economy. Click here for the live webcast. The Teach-In is part of the AFL-CIO’s National Week of Action demanding Congress promote a real jobs agenda.

Mike Matthews, president of the Kanawha Valley (W.Va.) Labor Council, knows why more and more people are taking to the streets and speaking out against Big Banks, Wall Street and congressional Republicans who are standing in the way of job creation.

When reckless trading on Wall Street crashed the global economy, American taxpayers bailed out the Big Banks to the tune of $4.7 trillion. That is trillion with a “T”.