From the Dispatch

This week, conservatives in the United States Senate blocked a $60 billion piece of President Obama’s American Jobs Act from advancing — a package that would have created a national infrastructure bank and funded needed infrastructure projects while putting 450,000 Americans back to work, paid for by a miniscule 0.7 percent surtax on taxpayers making over a million dollars a year. This follows the similar conservative blockage last month of $35 billion in aid to states that would have allowed states to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and first responders. All told, Congress has now blocked three separate jobs bills over the past month (including their original rejection of the entire American Jobs Act), a striking display of intransigence on the part of conservatives who claim to be concerned about job creation. As jobs efforts stall in the nation’s capital due to this right-wing obstruction, state legislators from 48 states and counting are letting D.C. know their states need jobs now, and many are taking the lead on job creation themselves.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement spreads across the nation and occupations promise to continue into the winter months, the physical presence of the protesters and their effective communication of the widely shared concerns of “the 99%” about the consolidation of wealth and political power is already having a significant impact on the public debate. Reeling from Occupy-inspired criticism and watching as hundreds of thousands of their customers move their money to smaller banks and credit unions, big banks like Bank of America this week backtracked on their plans to institute yet another proposed fee for debit card use. With gridlock in Congress continuing, the most significant political impact of the Occupy protests may ultimately be felt in statehouses, where the renewed national focus on the consequences of historic levels of inequality are showing signs of revitalizing prospects for a host of progressive economic policies, including one key demand of the protests: asking the 1% to pay their fair share.

This week, a 3 week-long protest against economic injustice and inequality in the Financial District in New York City gathered momentum as approximately 20,000 people joined a march in solidarity and similar protests against the excesses of Wall Street spread to almost every other state, fueled by a rising sense of urgency on the economy. The “Occupy Wall Street” protest in New York was bolstered by a huge rally on Wednesday organized by labor unions and community groups loudly proclaiming their support for the core group of protesters who have been occupying a plaza a few blocks away from the New York Stock Exchange. As progressive leaders and many elected officials — including state legislators — begin to lend their support to the still-fledgling protest, many are repeating one core message emerging out of the diffuse and leaderless movement: underscoring the increasingly deep economic divide in this country separating the super-wealthy from the 99% of Americans who have borne nearly the entire brunt of the Great Recession and its aftermath.

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis last week announced  a new state-federal program to crack down on a form of payroll fraud that has run rampant over the last decade. Absent stronger enforcement of labor standards, employers are going to great lengths to cash in by defrauding their workers and leaving taxpayers with the bill. Just this week, a NYC construction firm has been accused  of using front companies to dodge union contracts. The unions allege the company used low-wage workers to pocket $7 million in wages and benefits from 2007-2011. A much more common and mundane way for employers to pad their bottom lines is by misclassifying employees as independent contractors. Through misclassification, companies can simultaneously defraud workers of minimum wage and overtime and dodge a variety of state and federal taxes: payroll, income, unemployment insurance, and workers compensation. Prosecuting the practice, and deterring employers from engaging in it, is both a vital way to protect working families’ economic security and an important measure to alleviate state and federal revenue crises.