It's budget season and talk show hosts and media pundits are gleefully predicting a "Grand Bargain" between Republicans and Democrats that would cut lifelines like Social Security and Medicare in the name of reducing the deficit. Salon writer Alex Pareene points out the faulty logic here:

Debates over Social Security and Medicare reform cannot continue inside the Washington, D.C., vacuum without "adequate consideration to facts," writes Thomas B. Edsall in a recent New York Times op-ed. Yet that's exactly what is happening—not to mention "reform" inside the beltway means "cut" for policymakers trying to forge grand budget bargains. 

The most striking feature of the U.S. economy over the last three decades has been the upward redistribution of income. The top 1.0 percent of households has managed to pocket the vast majority of gains over this period. That is a sharp contrast with the three decades immediately following World War II when the benefits of much more rapid growth were broadly shared.

A coalition of immigrant rights activists, including the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the AFL-CIO and AFSCME, submitted a letter to Congress and President Obama asking that lifelines and public services that meet basic human needs be included in commonsense immigration reform.

Randi Weingarten, president of AFT, was arrested Thursday for blocking access to a school closure hearing in Philadelphia. AFT spokesman Marcus Mrowka told The Huffington Post that Weingarten was arrested with 18 other community activists for blocking the entrance to the meeting. Weingarten said afterward she knew her actions would lead to arrest, but it was a last-resort attempt to stop the Philadelphia School Reform Commission from closing some of the city's public schools, which she argues would detrimentally affect students, particularly African American and Latino students.

This afternoon, President Obama signed into law the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). 

Costco CEO Craig Jelinek has joined the push to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by saying he supports the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which would not only raise the current wage from $7.25, but would index the wage to inflation and raise wages for tipped employees, too. Costco already pays its starting employees a wage of $11.50 per hour while maintaining a higher sales volume than competitors such as the WalMart-owned Sam's Club and ranking in the top 25 of the Fortune 500 in terms of revenue.

A new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) shows that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is engaged in a widespread campaign to suppress the wages of already low-wage workers. ALEC has created model legislation that is designed to weaken or repeal state minimum wage laws, reduce minimum wages for young workers and tipped workers, weaken overtime compensation rules and stop local governments from passing living wage ordinances.

Today, labor is one of the key forces pushing for comprehensive immigration reform in Washington, D.C. To learn more about the movement's advocacy and more about how unions transformed themselves into outspoken champions of immigrant rights, I spoke with Maria Elena Durazo. A daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers, Durazo rose to become the leader of the hotel and restaurant workers union in Los Angeles, the dynamic UNITE HERE Local 11. And, as chair of the national AFL-CIO’s Immigration Committee, Durazo is now a leading point person in the national immigration debate.

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama joined a growing chorus of voices demanding that the national minimum wage be raised.  Tuesday, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative George Miller (D-Calif.) announced they will introduce the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013.