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We now know that the AR-15, a combat weapon not designed for hunting or personal defense, was the weapon used in the tragic Sandy Hook killings.

What may be surprising to many is that the mega-retailer Wal-Mart has been selling this weapon to its general customer base. Shortly after the shooting, Wal-MartAi??quietly pulledAi??the AR-15 off of its site, leaving the actual purchase page with an error message but customer reviews still standing.

Here’s theAi??review page where customers give the rifle a 94 percent rating:

The Nation’s George Zornick has a lengthy articleAi??in The Nation that lays out how Wal-Mart helped proliferate the AR-15 and make it one of the most popular assault weapons in America. Tellingly, the chain declined to comment on the story.

Click here to sign our pledge to call Congress and the White House once a month until common-sense reforms are passed.

In a rally organized by CREDO Action, hundreds of Americans today converged outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the National Rifle Association, the top gun lobby in the country.

Here are a few pictures from the action, taken by attendees:

You can follow live updates on the protest by browsing the hashtag #StandDownNRA on Twitter. But you can also help make sure the momentum from today’s protest continues by pledging to take action for common sense reforms.

Click here to sign our pledge to call Congress and the White House once a month until common-sense reforms are passed.

(Photo credit: Flickr user Dave_B__)

Christmas is a time most Americans view as an opportunity to take a well-deserved holiday with their families and loved ones. But that’s apparently not how Ronald McDonald sees it.

Ad Age has obtained an internal memo from McDonald’s Chief Operating Officer Jim Johannesen where he advocates for keeping the chain open on Christmas Day. “Our largest holiday opportunity as a system is Christmas Day. Last year, [company-operated] restaurants that opened on Christmas averaged $5,500 in sales,” he writes in the memo.

McDonald’s spokeswoman Heather Oldani told Ad Age that she won’t comment on leaked documents but that “when our company-owned restaurants are open on the holidays, the staff voluntarily sign up to work. There is no regular overtime pay.”

This is, of course, a weak justification. If a store must be open on a holiday, employees will feel pressure to sign up to work. And if they are working on America’s most treasured holiday, they deserve overtime pay. McDonald’s should not treat its workforce this way. We’re not loving it.

In the wake of the horrible mass shooting at Sandy Hook, many Americans are rightly asking their elected officials to begin to debate serious legislation that could help prevent such tragedies in the future. Ranging from a variety of gun control reforms to mental health legislation, these various policy options are entirely reasonable to debate in the wake of a series of mass shootings this year.

But following each shooting this year, Congress failed to truly debate any serious reforms in this area. Why is this? Many point to the power of organizations like the National Rifle Association which typically oppose any reforms whatsoever to gun laws and which downplay gun massacres.

Let’s look at exactly how much power anti-gun control groups have on Capitol Hill. I looked at just one metric — how much money they spent lobbying.

Last year, the NRA spentAi??$2,205,000Ai??lobbying Congress. The pro-gun control Brady Campaign spentAi??$30,000. Michael Bloombergai??i??s pro-gun control Mayors Against Illegal Guns spentAi??$150,000Ai??and the anti-gun control Gun Owners of America spentAi??$1,307,996Ai??.

Altogether, pro-gun control groups spent $180,000 and were outspent 19-to-1 by anti-gun control groups, that spent $3,512,996.

We don’t think that groups with more money should have a bigger voice. That’s why we’re going to counter with people power.

Click here to sign our pledge to call Congress and the White House once a month until common-sense reforms are passed.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) wants to cut your Medicare and Social Security benefits.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) presented his latest offer to President Obama on Friday. Boehner is offering to agree to a tax rate increase on millionaires only if Democrats agree to major cuts in Medicare and Social Security benefits through a possible combination of a benefit-cutting “chained CPI” and hiking the retirement age.

The first thing to note is that Boehner’s proposal is not particularly ground-breaking. For weeks, leading Republicans like Senators Bob Corker (TN) and Saxby Chambliss (GA) have said they would be open to some revenue increases in exchange for cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits.Ai??So this isn’t a “cave” or a compromise on behalf of House Republicans. It’s the position they’ve been bargaining towards for the past month.

Second of all, the plan asks seniors to pay for debt problems they did not cause. Two wars, tax cuts for the richest Americans, and Wall Street’s irresponsibility are responsible for our long-term deficits. It is simply unfair for them to have to pay for debt that they did not cause.

As the New York Times’s Paul Krugman writes, “Why on earth would Obama be selling Medicare away to raise top tax rates when he gets a big rate rise on January 1 just by doing nothing?” Furthermore, these tax increases would include rich Americans earning $250,000 or more, not just millionaires.

We should look instead to Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren for a credible approach to dealing with the deficit over the long term.

Warren has an alternative, truly “balanced approach” to tackling the deficit. During a campaign debate last month, she laid out a popular vision for dealing with the deficit: cut back on wasteful military …

Corporate lobbyists and their allies on Capitol Hill have a terrible new idea: hiking the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. This would save the federal government about $5.7 billion a year, but cost seniors $11.4 billion over the same period.

There are a better ways to cut Medicare costs, and they wouldn’t cost a single penny of anyone’s benefits. Here’s three possible choices for how we can do that:

1. Empower Medicare To Negotiate For Lower Drug Prices:Ai??One policy option that would be very simple to enact and would not require any sort of increased spending or expansion of government would be to simply allow Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate withAi??drug makersAi??for lower prices. The program isAi??currently bannedAi??Ai??from doing so, thanks to the clout of the drug industry. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) estimates that doing this could save as much asAi??$156 billionAi??over 10 years.

2. Allow Drug Re-importation From Canada:Ai??One of the major costs in the U.S. health care system that drives up the costs not only in the private sector but also among Medicare are the costs of prescription drugs. One very easy was to greatly relieve this cost is to eliminate protectionist barriers and allow the free importation of prescription drugs from our neighbors like Canada. A failed measure proposed by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John McCain (R-AZ) to do exactly that in 2009 estimated that doing so would save consumersAi??$80 billionAi??over ten years.

3. Globalize Medicare:Ai??Another protectionist barrier and detriment to free trade in the U.S. health care system is that seniors currently arenai??i??t allowed to use their Medicare insurance system outside of the United States. An alternative to this would be to drop these trade barriers and allow seniors on Medicare to …

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

There have been rumors that President Obama may agree to a Republican demand to hike the Medicare age. In an interview with Barbara Walters, Obama suggested that this move is on the table.

Progressive Democratic senators are revolting against this unpopular idea. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that we should be “lowering” the Medicare age, “not raising it”:

ai???I do a lot of town halls,ai??? Merkley said. ai???I canai??i??t tell you how many times someone will come up to me and say, ai???Hereai??i??s the thing. Iai??i??m 61, and I have these major health problems. I donai??i??t have insurance. Iai??i??m praying I make it to 65.ai??i?? The idea that weai??i??re going to take all these folks with diseases setting in as they get older, and move them two years later? Absolutely unacceptable.ai???

ai???We should be lowering the age, not raising it,ai??? Merkley said. Speaking of the president, Merkley added: ai???I hope he hears long and loud from us who are connected to the real lives of working people.ai???

Merkley is absolutely right. Hiking the Medicare age from 65 to 67 would cost seniors at least $11 billion every year. Meanwhile, expanding public health insurance would save American beneficiaries and the Treasury money. The Congressional Budget Office estimates, for example, that offering a public option based on Medicare rates in the Affordable Care Act would save about $15 billion every year.

(Photo credit: Flickr user Steve Rhodes)

In a radio interview with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green argued that Democrats should go on offense and use smart leverage in fiscal talks. Schultz agreed, and then proposed that Democrats ask for higher than Clinton tax rates on the rich. He then tweeted out the idea:

On Schultz’s radio show, Green elaborated — saying such a plan to raise taxes on the super-wealthy exists in the House, and should be talked about more more in fiscal talks.Ai??Progressive Rep. Jan Schakowksy (D-IL) has proposed a “millionaire’s tax” that creates special tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires that range between 45 and 49 percent. According to economist Dean Baker, using numbers from Citizens for Tax Justice, this tax plan would raise as much as $1 trillion over a decade. Here’s a how much the plan would raise in billions of dollars each year (the presumed starting year when this study was performed was 2011):

The public supports a higher tax rate on the rich. We polled voters in Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Montana, and Minnesota on the question of whether they would support Schakowsky’s millionaire tax idea. Here are the results, which show that voters are overwhelmingly supportive of this idea:

QUESTION: Would you support or oppose a proposal that said personal income above $1,000,000 would be taxed at 45%, income above $20,000,000 dollars would be taxed at 47%, and income above $1,000,000,000 would be taxed at 49%?

Ohio
62% support
29% oppose

Missouri
56% support
30% oppose

Montana
56% support
33% oppose

Minnesota
61% support
29% oppose

Virginia
60% support
27% oppose

Illinois
67% support
23% oppose

As Schultz pointed out, yesterday the president said, “[We’ve got to] …

As we reported last month, CNBC has become the unofficial channel of the top one percent. Over the month of November, it mentioned the “Simpson-Bowles” plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits three times as often as it did poverty. Even Fox News talked about poverty more.

CNBC hostAi??Tyler Mathisen demonstrated this callousness to the concerns of ordinary Americans again today. In an interview with Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder (KS), Mathisen suggested that we shouldn’t be “so afraid” of cutting Medicare benefits because, after all, Big Business has been cutting workers’ health care benefits for Ai??years:

MATHISEN: How specifically would you address the spending in Medicare? I — it seems to me that Americans are very accustomed to seeing their health care benefits cut. Just ask anyone who works for a major corporation over the past twenty years, and you would see that the portion of your medical care that you pay for has risen as the portion that your medical care that the company pays for has declined. Why are we so afraid of that?

Watch it (the relevant section starts at 2:51):

Yoder went on to reply that House Republicans already passed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare plan –which effectively privatizes the program.

It almost going without being said that Mathisen’s logic is widely off the mark. Corporations exist to serve their bottom line and make money. The government exists to serve the needs of those who elect it. Just because corporations are shafting workers, that doesn’t mean the government should short-change seniors.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)

A few Democrats and many Republicans have proposed that we make major cuts to Medicare benefits as a part of an upcoming fiscal deal. This is a bad idea for many reasons, foremost of which that American seniors shouldn’t have to pay for debt caused by two wars, tax cuts for the richest Americans, and Wall Street’s recession.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) rejected this call for cuts in Medicare benefits in a recent interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Ai??”I don’t support any cuts to beneficiaries or benefits,” he told the newspaper.

When politicians do the right thing, we should let them know that we have their back. Click here to give Johnson’s office a call and thank him for taking this stand.Ai??