March 3, 2011- Late on a frigid Wisconsin afternoon, an hour before another of the evening demonstrations that brought thousands, then tens of thousands, then more than 100,000 public employees, teachers, students and their allies to the great square that surrounds the Capitol in Madison, Sarah Roberts was sitting in the Ancora coffee shop warming up. With her blunt-cut blond hair and hip retro glasses, the library sciences grad student looked the picture of urban cool, except perhaps for the decades-old factory ID badge bearing the image of a young man. “A few weeks ago I asked my mom, ‘What made my grandfather such a civic-minded man? Why was he always there to help someone who had lost their job? Take food to someone who couldn’t make ends meet? Serve on the City Council? What made him so incredibly engaged with his community and his state?’ Mom looked at me and she said, ‘Labor.’”

March 3, 2011- The national corporate campaign to destroy America's public sector unions has drawn first blood in Ohio.

But a counter-attack centered on one or more statewide initiatives or constitutional amendments has become highly likely.

While thousands of protestors chanted, spoke and sang inside and outside the statehouse for the past two weeks (SB 5 Rally), the Ohio Senate voted 17-16 on Senate Bill 5, a bill that will slash collective bargaining for state workers by banning strikes and giving local officials the right to settle disputes. The bill, among other things, also eliminates all paid sick days from teachers.

The vote came amid shouts of "shame on you" and widespread booing from the diverse crowd of teachers, police, firefighters, construction workers, state employees and more.

The bill decimates a legal framework in place since 1983. The vote was surprisingly close as six Republicans joined ten Democrats in opposition. The seventeen yes voters were all Republicans.

March 3, 2011- Was Scott Walker asleep at the wheel as chief executive of Milwaukee County when it came to pension reform?

According to a 2007 article in Milwaukee Magazine, the answer is an emphatic yes: "Walker always seems to drag his feet when it comes to cleaning up the county's pension system."

Non-Wisconsin readers should know that Walker was elected in the backlash reaction to a pension scandal in the county in 2002, and has been riding the pension reform issue ever since. But talking pension reform and implementing it in a timely manner are two different things - and Walker is a very good talker.

March 3, 2011- Fighting back against public scrutiny, Koch Industries is relying on a small army of conservative bloggers, reporters, and lobbyists. Chief among them is John Hinderaker, a blogger at the “Powerline Blog.” However, in his now daily defense of the Koch brothers, Hinderaker has failed to disclose that his law firm counts Koch Industries as a major client.

Hinderaker has been on the war path defending Koch. He has tasked himself with sniping at ThinkProgress posts, spending the last few weeks defending forced-abortion lobbyist and Koch operative Tim Phillips, celebrating Koch’s self-interested propaganda against climate change science, and generally making juvenile swipes at yours truly, including posting my picture and calling me a “high school student.” In a bizarre rant defending “what a great company Koch Enterprises is,” Hinkeraker even claims ThinkProgress is being paid “millions of dollars by left-wing billionaires” to report on Koch Industries. But here’s what he didn’t say:

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March 4, 2011- It's no surprise that Wisconsin's new Republican Governor, Scott Walker regularly compares himself to one of the deities of his political party, America's 40th President, Ronald Reagan. But, Walker obviously doesn't know Reagan that well, because his plans to end collective bargaining for most of Wisconsin's public employees, including teachers, is in direct opposition to what Reagan believed.

Walker believes that his efforts to end public employee's right to collective bargaining are akin to Reagan's August 1981 firing of thousands of air traffic controllers who illegally decided to strike. And while it's true that Reagan came down hard on the air traffic controllers, that doesn't mean he believed in completely stripping away worker's rights.

In a campaign speech he gave in Liberty State Park in Liberty, New Jersey on Labor Day 1980, Reagan, who, as an actor was president of his union, the Screen Actors Guild, unequivocally stated his support for unions, and promised that if elected, "that the voice of the American worker will once again be heeded in Washington."

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March 2, 2011- A Special Report from the Center for Media Democracy, part one of a new series. A gaggle of secretly funded DC groups has launched an expensive PR blitz in Wisconsin in support of Scott Walker's controversial efforts to undermine union rights, part of a national assault on worker rights. A few unions have also begun running public education ads, but their sources are not kept hidden from public view; union dues are used for collective bargaining and union members can choose to make a separate donation to a Committee on Public Education fund for advertising. The total amount of anti-union spending in the works by groups funded by corporations or corporate CEOs or their foundations is unknown. What is known is that many such groups hide behind tax provisions that allow them to keep the identities of their major funders secret, insulating from public scrutiny the wealthy financial interests they are fronting and that are largely bankrolling their general operations.

March 3, 2011- Fighting back against public scrutiny, Koch Industries is relying on a small army of conservative bloggers, reporters, and lobbyists. Chief among them is John Hinderaker, a blogger at the “Powerline Blog.” However, in his now daily defense of the Koch brothers, Hinderaker has failed to disclose that his law firm counts Koch Industries as a major client.

Hinderaker has been on the war path defending Koch. He has tasked himself with sniping at ThinkProgress posts, spending the last few weeks defending forced-abortion lobbyist and Koch operative Tim Phillips, celebrating Koch’s self-interested propaganda against climate change science, and generally making juvenile swipes at yours truly, including posting my picture and calling me a “high school student.” In a bizarre rant defending “what a great company Koch Enterprises is,” Hinkeraker even claims ThinkProgress is being paid “millions of dollars by left-wing billionaires” to report on Koch Industries. But here’s what he didn’t say:

February 28, 2011- “Foamed polystyrene” is a miraculous invention that manages to be completely awful through every step of its near-eternal “life cycle” — it is manufactured with petroleum that must be imported from Middle East dictatorships, toxic “styrene oligomers” migrate into the food it holds, it’s highly flammable and produces black poisonous smoke, and most of the 25 billion polystyrene cups tossed every year will take more than half a millennium to degrade. And that’s why the Republican-led House of Representatives made it an immediate priority to cancel the House cafeteria’s four years of biodegradable food and beverage packaging. It’s part of the GOP leadership’s “return to the mid-1990s” program. Nancy Pelosi sure was a yucky woman trying to do some sane environmentally-minded things, wasn’t she? Thank the American Jesus that woman is no longer in charge of anything. A disgusted House staffer has shared the following eyewitness report with your Wonkette.

March 3, 2011- Over the last three years at ThinkProgress, we’ve made the Koch brothers and their far-right agenda famous. Now we’ve got their attention. A senior Koch executive recently complained to the National Review that ThinkProgress is leading an “orchestrated campaign” against Koch and vowed to fight back against us.

So, a few days ago we launched a fundraising campaign with a goal of raising $10,000 in five days. We blew through that goal in less than four hours.

In response, the Koch-funded machine lashed out at ThinkProgress, using its vast corporate and political communication networks to promote insulting, ad hominem attacks. John Hinderaker of the far-right PowerLine blog called ThinkProgress “helpless wretches,” “ignorant kids” and “driven entirely by prejudice.” His writings were then broadcast by the official Koch Industries Twitter feed.

What neither Koch nor Hinderaker reveal is that Hinderaker’s law firm, Faegre & Benson, represents Koch Industries.

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March 3, 2011- Absent senate Democrats in Wisconsin are talking with the majority Republicans about possible compromises aimed at ending a stalemate over a bill to strip public sector unions of bargaining rights.

In a telephone interview with his hometown Green Bay Press-Gazette, Democratic Senator Dave Hansen said negotiations on a compromise to bring the senators back for a vote may involve preserving some union bargaining rights.

One area under discussion would allow unions to continue to negotiate on workplace safety issues and another might extend the interval between union recertification votes to two years from every year, Hansen told the newspaper.

"I'm disappointed they wouldn't give us that one (the safety issue) out of hand. It makes as much sense as anything. But we continue to discuss it and hopefully soon we'll come to an agreement," Hansen told the Press-Gazette.

"I know we won't get all that we want, but we're trying to get as much as we can."

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March 2, 2011- Attacks on public employees, in Wisconsin and other budget-crunched states, may not sound like they’re specifically targeting female workers—but they’ll end up doing just that. Governor Scott Walker wants to strip collective bargaining from unions that disproportionately represent women—the only public employees he’s exempting are police officers, firefighters and state troopers, the majority of whom are men. In fact, jobs disproportionately held by women are those most at risk in any state considering budget cuts.

This isn't what we're used to hearing: during the “mancession,” female workers, concentrated in non-construction jobs, were less affected by the downturn than their male counterparts. But you might say we’re now entering a “hecovery.”