Connecticut First State In The Nation To Mandate Paid Sick Days |
Connecticut became the first state in the U.S. to mandate paid sick leave for workers today, with the state House approving a bill requiring service workers to earn one hour of paid sick leave for every forty hours worked. Gov. Dan Malloy (D-CT) intends to sign the bill, saying, “without paid sick leave, frontline service workers — people who serve us food, who care for our children, and who work in hospitals, for example — are forced to go to work sick to keep their jobs. That’s not a choice I’m comfortable having people make under my tenure.” Currently, only the cities of Washington D.C. and San Francisco require workers to receive paid sick leave. The U.S. loses $180 billion in productivity annually due to sick employees attending work and infecting others.
Across the country, the biggest banks have been responsible for abuses against homeowners, often foreclosing on them in abusive ways and disregarding the human casualties of their policies.
Yet in one case in Collier County, Florida, a pair of sheriff’s deputies turned the tables on the mega-bank and struck a blow for beleaguered homeowners everywhere.
A Bank of America branch there had improperly been involved in a foreclosure lawsuit against a local couple, yet the bank was refusing to pay the couple’s legal fees when it was found to be in the wrong.
So two sherrif’s deputies and an attorney showed up at a Bank of America branch with some help — a local William C. Hoff moving crew. The deputies and attorney offered Bank of America a choice: Either the mega-bank pay the couple’s $2,534 legal fees, or they would foreclose on the branch and and seize all of its assets. Bank of America decided to pay. Watch a local news station’s report on the incident:
It should be noted that not only has Bank of America been involved in abusive practices against homeowners, but that it also is a major tax dodger that actually got away with paying nothing in corporate income taxes in 2009.
As part of both the GOP budget authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the “jobs plan” the House GOP released last week, the top income tax rate would be cut from 35 percent to 25 percent. But Ryan has been claiming that what looks like a massive tax cut for the rich is not, in fact, a tax cut for the rich, because the GOP will remove enough credits, deductions, and loopholes to make it all a wash.
This is a very dubious assertion, as cutting the rate by so much would require significant cutting of tax deductions as well. We’ve noted that the GOP plan is likely to result in a tax cut for the rich alongside a massive tax hike on the middle class. House Ways and Means Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) is thinking along similar lines, as he explained in a speech yesterday:
The approach advocated by House Republicans has been to simply announce that tax reform should achieve a top rate of 25 percent for both individuals and corporations, with no discussion whatsoever of what we would need to change and give up to achieve those rates. This is the equivalent of putting a blindfold on, spinning around three times, and picking a number. It’s time to take the blindfold off. It’s time to understand what that would mean for working families…To reduce the top marginal rate for the wealthiest people in this country to 25 percent, Republicans would need to eliminate many provisions that benefit — and indeed, helped build — the middle class of this country.
As Levin said in an interview with ThinkProgress, the GOP plan was simply to choose a new top rate and then take rule any additional revenue out of bounds, necessitating their middle-class tax increase:
It really isn’t a tax reform plan. There’s a number. Combined with this number is the statement “taxes are off the table.” So that means the high-income tax cut, according to the Republicans, will continue. The implication of that is a major loss of income [for the government]. And how’s it going to be made up? So they don’t really have a plan. They have a number and a firm position: ‘don’t talk revenues.’
Across the country, the biggest banks have been responsible for abuses against homeowners, often foreclosing on them in abusive ways and disregarding the human casualties of their policies.
