This election has mostly been about the candidates talking at you, so wouldn't you like an opportunity to talk back? Join AFL-CIO economic policy experts during the presidential debate Wednesday evening from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. EDT on the AFL-CIO NOW blog for an interactive discussion. 

While President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney debate, our policy team will provide analysis and commentary on important things to look for. You also can submit your own questions and comments directly into the live blog. Please remember, all comments will be moderated before they're posted to the live blog, so please refrain from profanity, personal attacks and commentary that detract from the discussion. 

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If Mitt Romney has his way, even more public service workers will be out of jobs because he says, “It’s time for us to cut back” on police officers, teachers, social workers and sanitation workers like San Diego County’s Joan Raymond, who says, “I actually did pick up trash on Mitt Romney’s street.”

This second video from AFSCME features a worker whose job it is to keep exclusive neighborhoods pristine, including Romney’s in La Jolla, Calif., where his $12 million mansion is perched on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean.

Raymond says:

In addition to a live, interactive discussion with AFL-CIO policy experts during Wednesday night's presidential debate we'll host on the AFL-CIO Now blog (details to come later today), we're encouraging young workers to tune into our live Twitter chat Oct. 3 from 9 p.m.-10:30 p.m. to join the conversation. AFL-CIO's NextUp Twitter account will moderate the discussion on jobs, student loans and investing in America's future. 

We know that Mitt Romney holds the 47% of us who are low-income workers, students, retirees, military families and others in pretty low regard. He even said, “[M]y job is not to worry about those people.” And when Romney talks about workers with good middle-class public service jobs, he mocks firefighters, teachers and other public employees and says, “It’s time for us to cut back” on those jobs.  

The San Diego County sanitation worker who picks the trash from Romney's $12 million oceanfront mansion has something to say about that.

 

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan may be spending a lot of time on bus tours between now and Election Day, but their proposals for the nation’s transit systems would leave millions waiting for a ride. A new website RomneyWrecksTheBus.com from the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) outlines just how ugly a wreck Romney’s proposed 46% cut in federal transit funding would cause.  

What’s the difference between corporations and teachers’ unions, according to Mitt Romney? Apparently corporations are “people”—at least in the Citizens United definition—and should be allowed to give unlimited campaign contributions and other political donations, while teachers' unions are evil influence peddlers who buy politicians’ favor and shouldn’t be allowed to give campaign contributions.

That’s what you’ve got to infer from his comments Tuesday to an education forum sponsored by NBC, where he told moderator Brian Williams:

Damon Silvers is the policy director and special counsel of the AFL-CIO. 

Mitt Romney’s 2011 tax return is an education in injustice, just like his 2010 return was.  The peculiar letter he released from his tax accountant Pricewaterhouse Coopers concerning his taxes before 2010, simply adds to the mystery—why won’t he follow his father’s and President Obama’s example and release ten years of tax returns?

When the American automobile industry was on the verge of collapse in 2009, Mitt Romney said he’d let it go bankrupt. President Obama engineered a recovery program that put this vital industry back on its feet and saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just at the auto plants, but up and down the supply chain and throughout American manufacturing. This new video from the United Steelworkers (USW) tells that story through the eyes of the men and women of USW Local 903 at the Gary, Ind., Dana Holding Corp. axle plant. 

Watch USW's new video and share it on Facebook, Twitter and all your social networks. 

Ohio coal miners at a Murray Energy mine (a nonunion mine) lost a day's pay when they were forced to attend a mandatory Mitt Romney campaign rally in Beallsville last month. 

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported:

Because the company's mine had to be shut down for "safety and security" reasons during Romney's visit, [Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob] Moore confirmed workers were not paid that day. He said miners also lose pay when weather or power outages shut down the mine and noted that federal election law doesn't let companies pay workers to attend political events.

Now, the Romney campaign is featuring these coal miners in its new attack ad claiming President Obama is "anti-coal."

We all have regrets in our lives, even Mitt Romney, who told a group of high-roller donors that he regrets federal workers are protected by union contracts, so that if he wins the election, he won’t be able to fire as many workers as he’d like to.