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Right-wing education policy has been driven by a focus on student test scores, and one of the most common policies is to tie these scores to teacher pay and retention.

But a group of Tennessee Republicans has decided to go much further. State Sens. Stacey Campbell and Vance Dennis have introduced a bill that would reduce Temporary Aid To Needy Family (TANF) benefits to families where the students fail to meet certain test scores in school.

The bill has cleared committees in the House and Senate, despite protests by many Democrats in the legislature. Although it has been amended to allow families to continue to receive benefits if they sign up for some intervention measure like a “parenting class,” what is particularly crass about the legislation is that it exclusively targets poor families that are receiving TANF benefits. It does nothing to penalize non-poor parents whose students fail to get certain test scores — such as by reducing tax benefits for richer families.

If passed, the bill could affect up to 155,281 people — the individuals who are currently receiving TANF payments in the state. “How does Sen. Campfield expect a child to do his homework when there is no food on the dinner table?” askedAi??Ai??state Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle in outrage.

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April 15th is the deadline for your federal tax return. As you mull over the taxes you paid to the federal government this year, check out this graphic from the National Priorities Project showing where your taxes went in 2012. As you can see, the military got the lion’s share of funding, getting 26 times as much as scientific research and seven times as much as education:

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Rep. Don Young (R-AK)

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) set off a media firestorm for his use of the offensive term “wetbacks” to describe immigrant workers. He has since apologized and said that he supports immigration reform.

But Young’s words aren’t the only thing he should apologize for. Throughout his career in Congress, he has repeatedly taken votes that harm the lives of undocumented immigrants and make it more difficult to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. Here’s a list of some of the worst votes:

He voted YES in August of 1996 to make English the official language of the United States
He voted YES in March of 1996 for an amendment that would’ve denied public education to undocumented workers
He FAILED TO VOTE for HR 3722, which would’ve denied hospitals federal funds for emergency care for undocumented immigrants unless they turned over certain private information on immigrants.
He voted NO on the DREAM Act of 2010 which would’ve provided a path to citizenship for qualified undocumented young people.
He has voted to support E-Verify, the flawed program used by the federal government to monitor the status of undocumented immigrant workers.
He has co-sponsored a bill to deny Social Security benefits to undocumented immigrants who have worked hard and paid into the system.

Congressman Young was right to apologize for his remarks, but if he truly supports comprehensive immigration reform he must back off his previous votes as well and support humane reforms.

Lanny Breuer

LannyAi??Breuer, who was theAi??Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice under President Obama, conceded in a recent PBS documentary that “no Wall Street executives” were prosecuted under his tenure.

Now we know one reason why Breuer may’ve been so soft on the Big Banks. He has just announced that he will be returning to Covington & Burling, a white collar defense law firm that “represented corporations that were investigated by the criminal division” of the Department of Justice.

Ethics law prevents him from “appearing before the DOJ on a clientai??i??s behalf for two years. He can, however, counsel a client on a new matter before the department from behind the scenes.”

Breuer isn’t the only big get for the firm this year. Former Republican Senator Jon Kyl (AZ) and former Democratic Rep. Howard Berman (CA) both joined the firm’s lobbying practice recently. It also happens to be the firm that Attorney General Eric Holder — who notoriously failed to hold banks accountable as well — worked at.

UPDATE: The American Bankers Association was one of the firm’s clients in 2012, giving it $40,000. Wells Fargo was as well, giving it $120,000.

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(Photo credit: @DustinSlaughter)

Despite continuing a program that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to private developers, the city of Chicago is forging ahead on plans to close 54 elementary schools — mostly schools that serve low-income students.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) brought thousands of teachers, students, and their allies into the streets yesterday to protest the school closures. Progress Illinois filmed the march. Watch it:

The demonstrated culminated in an act of civil disobedience where 127 people were cited for sitting down and blocking public streets. “So lemme tell you what youai??i??re gonna do. On the first day of school, you show up at your real school! You show up at your real school! Donai??i??t let these people take your schools!” said CTU president Karen Lewis at the rally, in a sign that there is further civil disobedience to come.

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A child soldier with the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). (Photo credit: Mount Holyoke University)

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the chief gun industry lobby in the United States, doesn’t just want to stop gun reform here — it is also working to keep guns in the hands of warlords and those who deploy child soldiers abroad by attacking the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and making sure the U.S. doesn’t join it.

Watch a recent Al Jazeera English documentary about the Arms Trade Treaty and the effort by 150 countries to regulate the flow of arms into conflict zones:

Last Friday, the Senate voted 53-46 for an amendment by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) to prevent the Obama administration from joining the ATT. Every single Senate Republican voted in favor, and seven Democratic Senators joined them.

These Senators all offered their own arguments and reasons for voting against the ATT, but the money they received from the NRA speaks for itself. Ai??The Senators who voted against the treaty received $69,499 from the NRA. When you add in funding from the further-right “Gun Owners Of America,” that number jumps up to $78,543. Ai??But that just includes direct contributions to campaigns. If you add in the amounts the gun lobby spent on independent expenditures — outside ad-buys in support of one of these Senators — the number jumps up to a whopping $225,377 this election cycle alone.

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Click here to sign on in support of the White Houseai??i??s bold plan to stop gun killings.

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Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), one of the most extreme House Republicans, is running for his party’s Senate nomination in Georgia. In an interview with a local radio host last week, Broun went through a list of agencies he wants to abolish, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education, which administers federal student loans:

BROUN: I have proposed totally closing down the Department of Education […] Why don’t we shut down the EPA? I’d like to see that happen, also. […] The Department of Energy should be closed, and the Department of Labor, the Department of Commerce, all these things should be closed.

Listen to it (relevant section at 3:09):

Later in the interview, Broun says he wants to “permanently lower corporate taxes and capital gains taxes to zero” — meaning that while at the same time he is calling for the government to stop helping students get through school, and protect our environment and workforce, he wants to give corporations and the rich the largest tax cut ever in history.

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Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) is one of his party’s few remaining advocates for serious campaign finance reform. Every year he co-authors a bill that would create a system of public financing for Congressional elections, which would allow lawmakers to run for office without having to court corporate special interests.

In a live chat with Blue America readers this afternoon, blogger Heather Parton (Digby) asked Jones about why he supports this overhaul. He replied by explaining how the leader of his party kicked him off of Ai??a committee for failing to raise enough money for the party:

I believe one the problems in Congress is that both parties are responsible for raising money for the next election. As I have said many times, I am part of the problem, but I work across party lines to be part of the solution. Recently, I was one of four Republicans taken off a committee, Financial Services, which deals with banking, insurance and securities. An aide to the Speaker of the House spoke to the press and acknowledged that one reason, among two reasons, is because I did not raise money for the party. Members in both parties will tell you that this is a problem in Washington. I am a cosponsor of legislation, that will probably not move forward, that will help resolve this problem.

Click here to join our Take Back Democracy campaign to help stop the influence of money in our politics.

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An historical photo of the factory where the fire occurred. (Source: University of Illinois)

102 years ago today, there was a tragic fire at a Triangle Waist Company factory in New York City. Because the factory lacked adequate escape routes and other safety measures, 146 people perished in the fire, almost a third of the employees.

In the aftermath of the fire, the company’s two owners were brought up on manslaughter charges but acquitted. However, they did later face a civil suit where they were eventually forced to pay out $75 per deceased victim.

The larger social consequence of the fire was a renewed focus on worker safety, led primarily by the labor movement. The New York State Legislature created Factory Investigating Commission to investigate working conditions and factories and to author reports that helped stir lawmakers to pass a spree of labor and worker safety reforms.

The labor movement and later the public interest community continued to make worker safety a priority, and, in 1970, the federal government created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to oversee the working conditions.

While OSHA and various other reform measures greatly improved conditions for workers, your right to be safe on the job is still far from ensured. In 2011, 4,609 workers died on the job; OSHA is so understaffed that its 2,200 inspectors are expected to oversee workplaces where 130 million Americans go to work.

And one way American-based corporations continue to deny their workers safe conditions is by shuttering factories here and moving overseas. For example, Wal-Mart was one major contractor at a garment factory in Bangladesh where a fire killed 112 people late last year. The company “reportedly decided against aiding factory upgrades that could have stopped fires like last month’s blaze at …

After President Obama’s call to raise the minimum wage in January, polls showed that Americans backed an increase, with even 50 percent of self-identified Republicans doing so.

Yet congressional Republicans, cribbing talking points from corporate lobbyists opposed to an increase, balked at Obama’s proposal, claiming it will harm the economy.

But these wild claims of economic destruction resulting from a minimum wage hike are not new. They are the very same sorts of scare tactics used to oppose the 2007 minimum wage hike that most Republicans also opposed. Here’s what Republicans and leading right-wing pundits said at the time:

Right-wing pundit John Stossell: A wage hike would be “sticking it to low-skilled workers” and lead to higher unemployment. [January 2007]
Republican Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY): Raising the wage will “put mom and pop businesses and their employees out of business” if not accompanied with another huge tax cut for the rich. [January 2007]
Republican President George W. Bush: Simply raising the wage would “punish the millions of small businesses that are creating most of the new jobs in our country.” [January 2007]
The Heritage Foundation: This leading right-wing think tank claimed “raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour would cost at least 8 percent of affected workers their jobs.” [January 2007]
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): Kingston said the minimum wage is just an “arbitrary number” but that raising it would “decrease the number of jobs, thus hurting those whom we are supposed to be helping.” [January 2007]
Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE): Terry said that raising the wage would be “nothing more than a Band-Aid on a broken little toe. While their intentions may be good, and I believe they are, their philosophical approach is economically and socially flawed. In reality, this plan will create …