Walmart staves off unionization attempts in its stores by telling workers who ask about forming a union that they may lose benefits and vacation time, a potential violation of American labor law that could further inflame relations between the company and workers who picketed its stores on Black Friday and have been attempting to organize.

Walmart workers and labor advocates held protests outside the chain’s stores throughout Thanksgiving weekend, protesting the low wages it pays its workers. The company, which paid its chief executive $18.1 million and made $15 billion in profits last year, has fought off union attempts before, and now it tells its workers that unionization could lead to the loss of bonuses and vacation time, a spokesperson told Bloomberg Businessweek:

Walmart has been opposed to unions since Sam Walton opened his first store in Rogers, Ark., in 1962. These days, “we have human resources teams all over the country who are available to talk to associates, and we will get questions about joining a union,” says David Tovar, a spokesman for the company. “We would say: ‘Let us remind you of all that Walmart offers, and of what might go away. Quarterly bonuses might go away, vacation time might go away.’ ”

Such tactics may not be illegal by themselves because they can be seen as predicting outcomes rather than threatening them, The Nation’s Josh Eidelson reported today. But the implication of such a “prediction” — that joining a union could be followed by actions resembling retaliation — is quite clear. Walmart’s anti-labor practices aren’t new: in 2008, the store’s workers spoke out about anti-union meetings they were forced to attend.

Though Walmart has long fought organization efforts in the United States, it sometimes lets workers in other countries unionize — particularly when unionization is contingent on Walmart getting to enter a new country. In the U.S. though, it has responded to unionization efforts by shutting down departments, fighting legislative improvements to labor law, and now, telling workers that joining a union may cost them their bonus.

Gun control is not the only topic that’s been catapulted to the forefront of the national conversation by the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The tragedy has also brought renewed attention to what aid and support the United States provides to the mentally ill. On the second matter as well as the first, the record is not good.

According to a report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, flagged by The Washington Post, states cumulatively cut over $1.8 billion from their mental health services from 2009 to 2011. Another report by the the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors put the number as high as $4.35 billion from 2009 to 2012, according to Huffington Post. (The first report did not include Medicaid budgets, though it’s not clear if the second report did.) With a 35 percent cut to its overall state mental health budget, Alaska has seen the worst of it. South Carolina and Arizona both saw cuts of 23 percent, and plenty of other states have seen significant cut backs as well:

It’s the largest reduction in state mental health services seen since the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 sought to officially de-institutionalize mental health treatment by moving towards prescription medication, outpatient services, and other approaches that allow patients to remain in their communities.

Unfortunately, there’s evidence that funding for these other services never quite caught up with the needs of patients who used to be confined to institutions. As a result, the prison system has in many ways become the de facto safety net for the mentally ill: A study by the Justice Department in 2006 found that 56 percent of state prisoners, 45 percent of federal prisoners, and 64 percent of local jail inmates suffered from some form of mental health problem. More broadly, more than 60 percent of adults with a diagnosable mental disorder and 70 percent of children were not receiving the mental health services they needed, according to a 2011 report by the Kaiser Foundation.

If Congress doesn’t act, two million workers will see their unemployment benefits disappear at the end of the year due to the expiration of emergency measures put in place during the Great Recession. The expiration will be the first time Congress has ended federal benefits with unemployment so high.

But Congress is not the only entity standing between workers and the social safety net. According to a report by the Morning Call, online retail giant Amazon — via the contractors it employs to hire short-term workers — is preventing unemployed workers from accessing their benefits in an effort to drive down costs:

The pressure to keep costs down means many who take temporary jobs at an Amazon warehouse hoping it will result in long-term stability and independence instead find themselves jobless and fighting for a public benefit that represents their last financial resort.

The Morning Call attended 23 unemployment compensation hearings this year involving temporary Amazon warehouse workers hired by Integrity Staffing Solutions, including hearings for several employees who lost their jobs following illness or injury. Most workers were fighting for benefits of between $100 and $200 a week.

Advocates for the working poor say the company’s aggressive stance on unemployment compensation exploits low-wage earners who need the benefit for food, housing and other necessities while they search for other jobs. The workers are often outmatched in the unemployment process.

Unemployment insurance kept 2.3 million Americans out of poverty last year, and has the potential to create 300,000 jobs next year by pumping money into a weak economy. Unemployment benefits also discourage the long-term unemployed from dropping out of the labor force.

Club For Growth, a conservative advocacy group, is urging Republicans to vote against the $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package that the Senate plans to take up this week, according to a statement on its web site.

The group, which scores congressional votes to document lawmakers’ conservative stances, issued a “Key Vote Alert” this afternoon telling Republicans it would hold a vote in favor of the relief package against them. The statement also calls on lawmakers to offset any money spent for disaster relief with spending cuts:

The Club for Growth urges all Senators to vote “NO” on the Hurricane Sandy relief bill (HR 1) scheduled for consideration in the upper chamber this week. The vote on final passage, and perhaps procedural votes, will be included in the Club’s 2012 Congressional Scorecard.

When a natural disaster occurs, there is a textbook response by Congress – they cobble together an overpriced bill that isn’t paid for, there’s no accountability or oversight, and it’s filled with pork. This proposal is no different.

If lawmakers are interested in improving the bill, they should release the funds in installments to make sure the resources are spent wisely. They should also strip out all immaterial line items, and fully offset all expenditures with spending cuts elsewhere. Serious reform would also include a way for the states to take over the responsibility for future disaster relief funding so that accountability is more localized.

Republicans have made a habit of holding disaster relief hostage to spending cuts in the aftermath of recent natural disasters, like the tornadoes that devastated Joplin, Missouri last spring and Hurricane Irene, which pummeled the East Coast last fall. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) also threatened to hold disaster relief hostage to spending cuts after an earthquake struck his home state, and Republicans reneged on their support of a deal to fund disaster relief last year.

Multiple Republicans have already indicated that they would not support the relief package without equal spending cuts from other programs.

The school shooting that took the lives of 27 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut last week has revived a debate over our nation’s gun laws, sparking a promise from President Obama to take “meaningful action” to prevent future mass shootings and outbreaks of gun violence. More than 19,000 Americans are killed annually in crimes involving guns, meaning at an average daily pace, another 250 people have lost their lives to gun violence in the three days since the Sandy Hook massacre.

And while such violence has obvious human costs, it also comes with a substantial economic cost. A Center for American Progress study of violent crime in eight American cities found that three types of violent crime — homicide, robbery, and aggravated assault — cost taxpayers $3.7 billion each year in higher medical costs, spending on police and courts, and lost productivity from crime victims and criminals. The yearly cost of violent crime in these eight cities averages $320 per taxpayer, the report found:

America’s violent crime rate has been dropping steadily over the last decade, but the share of those crimes in which a firearm was used has remained constant, the report found. And while it measured the cost of violent crime irrespective of the presence or use of a firearm, guns are involved in a substantial amount of assaults and robberies and in two-thirds of homicides:

The report also found that reducing gun-related homicides in individual cities and neighborhoods would lead to substantial increases in home prices, thus leading to increased property tax revenues for cities. A 10 percent reduction in homicides in Boston, for instance, would increase home prices in the city by about $4.4 billion, the report found.

In 2010, the nation’s biggest banks were caught systematically forging foreclosure documents in order to speed the foreclosure process along and unlawfully oust homeowners. The resulting scandal led to a $25 billion settlement between the federal government, state attorneys general, and the five biggest banks.

Nevada — arguably the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis — enacted a law (signed by its Republican governor) that forces banks to prove ownership of a home before a foreclosure, punishable with criminal penalties. Now, the state’s banks want to roll back that requirement:

Foreclosures in Nevada could spike next year if lawmakers and banks roll back a bill passed in 2011 that played a large role in stymieing banks’ attempts to retake homes from Nevadans, according to the state’s banking association president and housing analysts. [...]

At issue is Assembly Bill 284, a measure passed by the Nevada Legislature in 2011 and signed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval that forces banks to prove they have the legal right to foreclose on a particular home before they take action. Most important, the law requires bank workers to sign an affidavit that they have personal knowledge of a property’s document history, or they will face criminal or civil penalties.

One Democratic state senator responded to the proposal by saying “if banks can’t foreclose, it’s their own fault for losing track of the paperwork.” “If it comes down to a homeowner who had a mortgage, or a bank — who has the right to be there? I’ll go with the homeowner,” said State Sen. Tick Segerblom. “I’m not worried about the banks. They made their beds. They can sleep in it.”

At the federal level, big banks have been gaming the foreclosure fraud settlement, while many states have siphoned off settlement funds meant to aid homeowners to use for other purposes.

Over the weekend, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) reportedly offered to allow tax rates to increase on income in excess of $1 million as part of negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff.” For several reasons, Boehner’s offer is little more than a joke.

Boehner also reportedly offered to raise the debt ceiling for a year as part of the deal. However, according to Boehner spokesman Michael Steele, “Any debt limit increase would require cuts and reforms of a greater amount”:

Boehner’s offer signals that he expects a big deal with sufficient savings to meet his demand that any debt limit increase be paired dollar for dollar with spending cuts. That would permit him to keep a key vow to his party — and head off a potentially nasty debt-limit fight — at least until the end of next year.

“Our position has not changed,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Sunday. “Any debt limit increase would require cuts and reforms of a greater amount.”

Once again, Boehner is threatening to take the creditworthiness of the U.S. — and thus the whole U.S. economy — hostage to spending cuts (even as he fundamentally misunderstands what the debt ceiling does). And he promises not to do it again for an entire year if he gets his way!

The last debt ceiling standoff initiated by the House GOP will wind up costing the U.S. more than $18 billion in elevated interest payments on its debt and one million jobs. The White House quickly rejected Boehner’s offer. As part of its opening bid in the fiscal cliff negotiations, the administration proposed changing the process for raising the debt limit in order to end the now-perpetual standoffs between the White House and Congress.