Last night, Paul Ryan lived up to the Mitt Romney campaign pledge that it would not be “dictated by fact-checkers” when he blamed President Obama for the closure of a General Motors plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wis.  As any fact-checker or Janesville worker who lost a job knows, the plant closed during the Bush administration.

The AFL-CIO will be offering live responses to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday and Thursday nights, as Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney offer their "vision" for America. Paul Ryan will be speaking tonight at 10 p.m., and Mitt Romney, Thursday night at 10 p.m.

You can follow the action on our Twitter account, @AFLCIO or on the Web at www.twitter.com/aflcio.   

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, in the same breath as praising the “greatest generation” who built factories, farms and taught our nation's children, attacked those workers’ right to join together to improve their workplaces and those they serve, during his Republican National Convention (RNC) speech last night.

Christie decided to bash teachers’ unions and public sector workers, instead of offering positive solutions to strengthen the U.S. economy.

A sobering analysis at freepress.net dissects the four-pronged effort by the Ohio Republican Party to steal the 2012 presidential election.
Authors Bob Fitrakis and Bob Wasserman conclude that because Ohio is a pivotal state in deciding the winner,

if they get away with it, the Ohio GOP could make it virtually impossible for Barack Obama to carry Ohio this November.

Given what we noted about America’s workers living paycheck to paycheck, the new data, released yesterday by Pew Research Center, are no surprise (click on chart to enlarge):

Since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth and shed some—but by no means all—of its characteristic faith in the future.

Surprising, no. Horrifying? You betcha.

Are you financially better off when the president is a Republican or Democrat?

According to a new book, Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box: How the Performance of Our Presidents Has Impacted Your Wallet, the answer is not what is widely believed.

In an analysis spanning 80 years and 13 presidents—from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush—authors Lew Goldfarb and Bob Deitrick show, in their words,

the GOP theory of Republican economic dominance is no more than a myth. Period.

Ian Ruskin, the director of The Harry Bridges Project and of The Life of Thomas Paine, sends us this.   

Thomas Paine was a man of the enlightenment who saw “virtue” as a cornerstone of this new vision to “begin the world over again.” By virtue he meant rising above your own self-interests to do public good. He also said “the greatest offence of all to the great Father is when we seek to torment and render each other miserable.” Not, by the way, the words of an atheist. So should not our presidents be men and women who seek to be virtuous, who, to quote the Statue of Liberty, seek to turn the misery and torment of “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” into happiness?

Unlike nearly every other presidential candidate, Republican Mitt Romney refuses to make public more than two years of tax returns. Today, the multimillionaire said he has paid a tax rate of at least 13 percent on his income in each of the past 10 years—but he still won't release his returns. Meanwhile, President Obama's returns have long been public and show he pays a 20 percent tax rate.

At a measly 13 percent, Romney, who is worth a quarter of a billion dollars, is paying significantly less in taxes than other high-income earners who pay 35 percent. Through the use of offshore tax shelters and other means, Romney pays a smaller tax rate than average taxpayers like nurses, firefighters and construction workers.

In more than three decades, no other nominees for either party—except Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)— have released fewer than five years’ worth of returns. Romney’s own father released a dozen years’ worth when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968.

Republican presidential candidate and outsourcer-in-chief Mitt Romney has doubled down on his pro-1%, anti-working-family drive by selecting Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says Romney's choice of Ryan shows "just how bad his decision making is for working people."  

Ryan is the author of the House budget proposal that would end Medicare as we know it and turn it into a cash cow for private insurance companies, kill jobs and cut Social Security—all to give tax breaks to the wealthy.

U.S. military veterans severely criticized Mitt Romney today for supporting laws limiting the right of residents to vote in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Republican-controlled legislatures recently enacted new voting laws. In a press conference this morning, the veterans also took Romney to task for accusing President Obama of suppressing the vote of military veterans because the Obama campaign filed a lawsuit seeking to block an Ohio law that restricts a successful early voting program.