In just about any small town that has lost a big factory, you'll hear it was the union's fault. I live in Mayfield, Ky., population about 10,000. A big Continental General Tire plant was our factory. It’s been gone for a half-dozen years.

If you have an iPhone, make sure you take a minute to download the new free app, BizVizz. BizVizz people track taxes, government subsidies and political campaign donations of major corporations. Once you download the app, simply enter a company’s name or snap a picture of its logo and then the company information pops up. Future developments include creating an Android version of the app and expanding the catalog of corporate information. 

States are engaged in economic warfare on each other and it's costing taxpayers billions of dollars. That's the message of a new report from Good Jobs First titled The Job-Creation Shell Game.

Mike Hummell says the men and women who made the iconic baked goods at Hostess Brands’ Lenexa, Kan., plant turned out quality products and “it was something everyone who worked there had a lot of pride in.”

That was until years of mismanagement coupled with unprecedented corporate greed bankrupted the company, stole the workers’ pensions and closed dozens of bakery plants’ doors in November. In this video, Hummell, a 14-year veteran of Hostess, and other members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 218, say they want to set the record straight.    

This is a cross-post from the Alliance for Justice’s Justice Watch blog.   

In a series of 5 to 4 rulings, a majority on the United States Supreme Court effectively has rewritten the law to favor big business at the expense of the American people, according to a new documentary, "Unequal Justice: The Relentless Rise of the 1% Court," produced by Alliance for Justice (AFJ), which was released online Monday. “Today, as the Supreme Court begins a new term, the court will be ‘open for business,'” said AFJ President Nan Aron. 

The term is already packed with cases with the potential to restrict corporate accountability and limit everyday Americans’ civil rights and access to justice  The court’s decisions this term could have harmful consequences for the ability of consumers, victims of discrimination and others to get a fair day in court.

David Groves of The Stand, a project of the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) and its affiliated unions, sends us "‘Small’ NFIB Gets GOP Funders’ Big Bucks."

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) promotes itself as a “non-profit, non-partisan organization” that is “the leading small business association representing small and independent business.”

For a business group so focused on “small” it says it twice, the NFIB reportedly gets a lot of its funding from the biggest names in Republican politics, including Karl Rove and the Koch brothers. As for the “independent” part, the NFIB’s political and legislative agendas at both the national and Washington state levels align closely with the Republican Party and big—not small—corporate interests.

This is a cross-post from the Alliance for Justice blog, Justice Watch. 

We all know how big business has eroded the American dream by getting Congress and the executive branch to change the rules to favor corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. But it hasn’t stopped with two branches of government. Corporate special interests have spent decades working to put their thumb on the scales of justice. The campaign finance decision in Citizens United is only the most prominent example. 

It’s darn hard to find an area where we and Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan agree. But there is at least one. Ryan says he is a big fan of the band Rage Against the Machine. Who knew Ryan—the Ayn Rand disciple and worshipper of unfettered corporate power—could find common ground with Rage, which has made a career out of singing and fighting for progressive causes and against corporate greed?

We’ve been talking a lot lately about the current financial state of play in electoral politics. Despite the mega-finances poured into the current election cycle, working families have more power than they think—power at the polls.

It’s not just the presidential race that’s being flooded with money. Every political race—from your local sheriff to state and local judges to your state governors and legislators—is receiving more donations from an ever greedier financial elite.

“There is simply a better payoff by courting seven-figure donors,” said Matt Schlapp, a former White House political director for George W. Bush, in a Politico story Tuesday.

The story, “Election 2012: The Myth of the Small Donor,” details the meteoric rise of the mega-donor. Multimillion-dollar donations from people like Sheldon Adelson, Frank VanderSloot and the Koch brothers are “quickly diminishing one of the few avenues—outside of voting—for average folks to shape elections, help determine candidates’ viability and affect the course of the country.”