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[h/t ThinkProgress]

Over the past few weeks we've seen a lot of employers telling their employees they need to vote for Mitt Romney if they expect to keep their jobs. The most recent stories come via Koch Industries, ASG Software, and Westgate Resorts.

It turns out they may have been listeners on this conversation, which took place on June 7, 2012. The NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) held a conference call with Mitt Romney and members. At the end of the call, Mitt concluded his remarks with this:

I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.

He just squeaked through with that tossed off reference to agreeing with him or President Obama, but the implication was pretty clear, wasn't it?

Make your employees vote like their jobs depend on it.

Kind of sounds like the iconic threat: "We have ways of making you talk."

NFIB is not exactly a neutral player in the whole electoral landscape. You can find out more about them at NFIBexposed, but they're basically a US Chamber of Commerce for privately held companies, large and small. I'd give long odds that every listener on that call was a Romney campaign contributor.

Many thanks to In These Times for being patient enough to discover this. Everyone should share this with people so they understand how far the right is willing to go to intimidate people into electing Mitt Romney.

From GoLefttv: Papantonio: The Republican Assault on Labor Reaches New Lows:

Working America labors under the weakest protections from abusive management in the developed world, by far. We take it as a given that our bosses can fire us for any reason (with a few exceptions like discrimination on the basis of race or gender), or no reason at all -- a notion that would shock and appall working people in most advanced economies. But corporate America doesn't want the very modest protections that do exist in this country to be enforced. Even as companies lay claim to many of the Constitutional rights of citizenship, they want to be held above the rule of law when it comes to their employees.

Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio and AlterNet's Joshua Holland discussed Holland's article from this past June while Pap was filling in on the Ed Schultz radio show this week -- Conservatives Fight to Let Corporate Bosses Break Laws Protecting Their Workers:

Working America labors under the weakest protections from abusive management in the developed world, by far. We take it as a given that our bosses can fire us for any reason (with a few exceptions like discrimination on the basis of race or gender), or no reason at all – a notion that would shock and appall working people in most advanced economies.

But corporate America doesn't want the very modest protections that do exist in this country to be enforced. Even as companies lay claim to many of the Constitutional rights of citizenship, they want to be held above the rule of law when it comes to their employees.

This desire lays at the heart of a recent barrage of assaults on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a New Deal agency that for over 75 years has been tasked with enforcing the very modest protections for organized workers afforded by the National Labor Relations Act. The agency, according to former NLRB general counsel Fred Feinstein, “has the stated purpose of encouraging private-sector collective bargaining, protecting employees’ right to form a union to improve working conditions and preventing retaliation for exercising these rights.” He adds that passage of the law “helped the U.S. climb out of the Great Depression and encouraged the growth of a vibrant middle class for much of the last century.”

The primary focus of conservative outrage at the NLRB of late has been its complaint against Boeing for locating a new plant in South Carolina as an explicit act of retaliation against its unionized Washington state workers for going on strike – for exercising a right guaranteed by the law. Read on...

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Apparently Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder is doing his best not only to trash his state's economy, but also to inflict as much pain as humanly possible on the poor and unemployed there while he's at it.

Michigan whacks unemployment benefits, other states seek same 'devil take the hindmost' approach:

With the official jobless rate still hovering around 9 percent and the real damage a good deal higher than that, states have been spending a lot of money—borrowed federal money to the tune of $45.9 billion—on unemployment compensation benefits. Having implied or stated outright that these government payments make laid-off workers lazy, several Republican governors and Republican-led legislatures want to avoid or at least reduce their obligations to pay such benefits. Michigan leads the pack. Governor Rick Snyder signed into law Monday a cut in future benefits from the nationwide standard of 26 weeks to 20 weeks beginning in January 2012. [...]

Representative Sander M. Levin (MI-12) called the law a reckless move that could harm hundreds of thousands of workers. “It turns the clock back 50 years at a time when unemployment is at historic highs since the Depression," he said. "I think that Michigan should not be to unemployment insurance what Wisconsin has become to collective bargaining.”

Snyder claims he wants to focus on jobs instead of joblessness. A clever bit of propaganda that will no doubt have a lot of tax-cutting involved. In fact, besides putting the screws to those alleged bon bon-eating, cable-watching layabouts, the key impetus behind the new law is that it would reduce in the future how much employers pay into the state's unemployment fund.

And as Rachel Maddow discussed with CEPR's Dean Baker, a conservative think tank, Mackinac Center For Public Policy has also targeted her with some of their over-the-top FOIA requests. Conservative Think Tank Seeks Michigan Profs' Emails About Wisconsin Union Battle ... And Maddow:

Continue reading »

Like every election year, right-wing media are undermining confidence in the election process through baseless voter fraud fear mongering.

From our friends at Media Matters -- The voter fraud & intimidation stories you won't hear about on Fox:

For the past several months, Fox News has hyped GOP accusations of voter fraud, no matter how little evidence exists to support them, and Bret Baier has promised that Fox will cover voter fraud allegations "in every show." But Fox has failed to report on, or has dismissed and distorted, numerous accusations of voter fraud or intimidation carried out by individuals linked to right-wing groups and politicians.

Much more there, so go read the rest.