Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney just can’t stop proving how out of touch he is with the 99%.

The latest example: In a conference call Wednesday with Wisconsin voters, he related what he called “the most humorous” story about his connections to the state. Romney’s father, as president of American Motors, shut down a Michigan auto factory, shipping production to a Wisconsin facility. The really funny part, in Romney’s eyes, was his father’s antics in hoping Michiganders wouldn’t remember the shutdown when he ran for governor there. (Read more here and here.)

Hey—what could be funnier than wiping out jobs by closing a factory?

House Republicans are playing chicken again with our economy, says AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Edward Wytkind on The Huffington Post.

Instead of moving a highway and transit bill that will put Americans to work—a move the Senate was able to pull off by a vote of 74 to 26—House leaders want to punt with another short-term extension.

There is an easy solution to this problem—the House can take up the Senate's bipartisan bill (MAP-21) and put millions to work and improve our surface transportation system. President Obama will sign that bill tomorrow.

Carrying signs that say “Don’t Shoot Me,” activists from civil and human rights groups, unions, community organizations and faith groups, inlcuding AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler, will protest at noon tomorrow at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The activists will demand that ALEC, the corporate-sponsored author of model state legislation, including Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” or “Kill at Will” law being used to justify the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, disclose funding it receives from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and stop promoting this legislation in other states.

Let’s say you’re earning the $7.25-an-hour minimum wage. How many hours would you have to work to equal what a year of college costs? How about a year of family health insurance premiums?

The Center for Economic and Policy Research has crunched the numbers and they’re not pretty.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the report of the National Labor Relations Board’s inspector general into allegations of improper conduct by NLRB member Terence Flynn “confirms a pattern of ethical violations that are nothing less than shocking.” Flynn should resign immediately and possibly face criminal charges, he said. The report also indicates an adviser to presidential candidate Mitt Romney used his connections to Flynn to obtain information to fuel attacks on the NLRB.

Kaiser Permanente health care workers are launching a “strike” at public health problems, including obesity and chronic disease. Today, more than 500 will kick off the campaign by taking over a major Hollywood tourist mecca, Hollywood and Highland.

Jim Galloway at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution blog takes a good look at Georgia's proposed law to criminalize picketing by unions and similar groups—in some select places:

Your state legislature is poised to protect the right of certain people to enjoy the peace and tranquility of their homes.

Probably not your home. Definitely not mine. But the homes of “certain” people—that’s the exact word used in the legislation. By which lawmakers mean the homes belonging to business executives, mostly. And only a few of those.

Read the story here.

Guess who's behind Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law that's been spotlighted since the Feb. 26 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., by a neighborhood watch volunteer?

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), at the behest of the National Rifle Association. ALEC is the corporate-funded boiler room churning out model legislation attacking collective bargaining rights, voting rights and more that's being adopted by states with Republican-led legislatures.

Ryan J. Reilly at Talking Points Memo has the story.

As Karoli at Crooks & Liars highlights, presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) said Sunday on Fox News Sunday that the main federal role in education should be "to push back against the federal teachers' unions."

"Those federal teachers' unions have too much power," he said. "In some cases, they overwhelm the states, they overwhelm the local school districts."

An urgent e-mail from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is urging activists to tell their U.S. senators to oppose the cynically named JOBS Act, which some members are rushing through to deregulate Wall Street. Trumka says senators instead should support amendments that would make the bill less harmful to working families.

The bill, which could pass as early as Monday, encourages speculation and will destroy jobs by reducing investor confidence in small companies, Trumka says. The amendments to the bill in the INVEST in America Act of 2012, sponsored by Sens. Jack Reed, Mary Landrieu and Carl Levin, would reduce the JOBS Act’s damage to investors, pension funds and the U.S. economy.  It’s time for Congress to set aside the politics of the 1%, the old game of special favors for Wall Street, and turn to the business of real job creation, Trumka says.
Please urge your senators to oppose the JOBS Act and support the amendments in the INVEST in America Act. Click here now.