Since the $25 billion foreclosure fraud settlement was forged between most of the nation’s attorneys general and the biggest banks, several states have taken a portion of the money they were allotted — which was intended to go towards housing relief — and used it for other items in their budgets.

Arizona recently became the latest state to pull such shenanigans, diverting $50 million of its share of the settlement to balance its state budget:

At issue is the decision of the Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer to tap $50 million from the $97.7 million the state received as part of its settlement with five mortgage-lending firms. They said they needed the money from the national mortgage settlement to balance the state budget. Initially, the intent was to use the money for prison construction. [...]

The money comes from a settlement [Arizona Attorney General Tom] Horne’s office negotiated in February with five lenders, and it is intended to provide relief to people affected by the foreclosure crisis as well as to prevent poor lending practices.

“There’s a lot of pressure on the budget,” said Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin to justify the move. But as Mark Ladov and Meghna Philip of the Brennan Center for Justice noted, that money could do a lot of good in a state that has been pounded by the housing crisis:

The final state budget sweeps $50 million from the foreclosure settlement into the state’s general fund. This is despite the fact that Arizona posted the highest foreclosure rate in the nation in March, with an astonishing one out of every 300 housing units receiving a foreclosure notice…The Arizona Housing Alliance estimates that $50 million could provide 75,000 troubled homeowners with housing counseling and 10,000 homeowners with legal assistance. That investment would more than pay for itself by strengthening communities, boosting property values and helping to restore the state’s economic health.

Instead, Arizona, like several other states, will simply siphon the money elsewhere, leaving homeowners to continue struggling on their own.

Austerity measures adopted by the Conservative government have helped push Great Britain back into a recession. Today, hundred of thousands of public sector workers took to the streets of London to protest austerity, including 20,000 off-duty police officers.

Of course, austerity hasn’t just hurt the UK. Across Europe, austerity is not having the effect that conservatives said it would. Instead, it’s simply prolonging the continent’s economic pain. (HT: Reuters)

The ability of American workers to be upwardly mobile in the economy depends heavily on where they live, according to a state-by-state analysis from Pew Charitable Trusts. The study, the first of its kind, found that workers in a group of states largely clustered in the Northeast and Midwest are more likely to achieve upward mobility, while workers in southern states are far less likely.

For the most part, the states in each group differ on one major characteristic: the states where upward mobility is more likely are almost all union states, while the states where mobility is less likely almost all are not. Of the eight states that outperform the national average for upward economic mobility, seven are union states, with Utah the lone exception. Eight of the nine that underperform the national average, however, are so-called “right to work” states, with Kentucky the only exception:

When relative mobility is considered, union states look even better. Every state but one (Utah) that outperforms the national average on relative mobility, defined as the percentage of residents starting in the bottom half of the national distribution who move up 10 or more percentiles in a 10-year period, is a union state. Meanwhile, 14 of the 15 states that come in below the national average are right-to-work states, with Missouri the only exception:

Though the study didn’t find (or attempt to find) a direct correlation between union representation and mobility, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Michigan told USA Today that higher mobility there is likely linked to higher wages in manufacturing and public sector jobs, both of which tend to be more heavily organized. Those ties also exist in the other union states, which rely more on manufacturing than the right-to-work states.

As ThinkProgress has previously noted, unions played a significant role in the construction of the American middle class, boosting the mobility of lower-income workers. The decline in union representation, meanwhile, correlates closely with a sharp rise in income inequality over the last 40 years. Other studies have shown that workers who join unions earn higher wages and are more likely to have health and retirement benefits, and that union membership increases the likelihood of upward economic mobility.

Presumptive 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has released an economic plan that would spend trillions of dollars on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. These tax cuts would dwarf the Bush tax cuts, and Romney has in no way indicated how he will prevent the cuts from blowing a huge hole in the federal budget.

On CNBC today, former GOP Governor Christine Todd Whitman (NJ) criticized Romney’s tax plan, “you can’t do just tax cuts”:

I believe in cutting taxes. I cut taxes as a governor over and over again. But you can’t do just tax cuts. There are going to be times when you are going to have to close loopholes or raise some taxes. And unfortunately, as a candidate, and this is the problem with our primary system, it forces candidates to the right and to the left, Mitt Romney signed the no-new-taxes pledge.

Watch it:

While Romney has indeed pledged fealty to Grover Norquist and the Americans for Tax Reform anti-tax pledge, more and more Republicans have been breaking from that pledge, acknowledging that revenue needs to be a part of the nation’s budget solution. Rep. Timothy Johnson (R-IL) even blasted the pledge as “disingenuous and irresponsible.”

The Republican Party’s nominee for Indiana’s U.S. Senate seat recently compared the fight over tax rates and reform to former president Abraham Lincoln’s concern over slavery, alluding to Lincoln’s famous “House Divided” speech ahead of the Civil War.

State treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) rehashed a favorite GOP talking point — that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay income taxes — at the town hall in Columbus City, Indiana, comparing those 47 percent to the Confederate states that seceded from the Union in an attempt to protect and expand slavery. Referencing Lincoln’s speech, Mourdock said that as long as nearly half of Americans don’t pay taxes, “we are a house divided” that is presumably on the point to another fight, this time between the rich and the poor:

MOURDOCK: What he meant by that was that slavery was either going to be totally eliminated from the United States or it was no longer just going to be restricted to the Southern states, it was going to go everywhere. I am here to suggest to you that we are in a house divided. You know this past April, when our federal taxes were paid, 47 percent — 47 percent — of all American households paid no income tax. In fact, half of that 47 percent almost, actually got tax money back from the government that they never paid -– because a few years ago we revised the welfare program to make it part of the tax code. When 47 percent are paying no income taxes — they do pay Social Security — but they are not paying income taxes, and 53 percent are carrying the load, we are a house divided.

Watch it:

Mourdock’s ridiculous allusion to a speech referencing the spread of slavery aside, the facts he presented to town hall attendees aren’t telling the whole story. It’s true that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, but they do pay state income taxes, payroll taxes (which Mourdock referenced), and a host of other taxes. Many of those 47 percent don’t pay income taxes because they don’t have income on which to pay taxes — they are students or seniors without taxable income, or they don’t make enough money to qualify for the bottom tax bracket.

Republicans have opposed tax increases of various kinds to help pay down the deficit, largely because so many are beholden to a radical no-taxes pledge authored by Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist. Mourdock, who has signed the pledge, seems no different than many Republicans in Congress — he’s willing to ignore the pledge, as long as the only tax increases that pass are on the poorest Americans.