The economy is terrible. Jobs are nowhere to be found. Wall Street bonuses are through the roof. But mainstream business journalism is still praising the con-men who created this mess, yet attacking anybody who takes real solutions—like government spending to create jobs—seriously.

By Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger

Now that health care reform has finally been enacted, a host of critical economic issues are taking center stage, including financial reform, unemployment and deeply rooted economic inequality. But it’s important to note that with its health care vote, the U.S. House of Representatives actually approved a very important, and often overlooked financial reform: Student lending.

No fight in politics or culture is ever completely finished. Even the idea that no human should hold another in chattel slavery is still playing out in our society today. This idea of forever struggling for progress should be the core of anyone’s thinking if they want to label themselves progressive. Sadly, the Organized Labor movement and members seems to have lost this idea, if indeed they ever had it.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

It is easy to see how it happened. Labor and Trade Unions were formed first to combat the abuses of the industrialists. This was a fight for their actual lives as working conditions were so horrific we can hardly imagine them today. When that first fight, to be recognized as more than the machines who ran the machines was won, Labor went on to the second fight, wages and benefits.

This fight was won too. The Ozzie and Harriet middle class of the 1950’s and ‘60’s was created, in large part, by the wages and benefits Labor negotiated out with management. This is where the problem started. As these workers raised families they bought into the American dream, they wanted to better for their children. This is no shock, but what the materialistic, possession focused American dream leads to was bad for Labor.

The workers sent their children to college. They did not want them to work in the factories, they wanted them to be professionals, they wanted them to be managers and owners themselves. This is not true of all of workers, but a great many followed this path and taught it to their children.

Long term this lead to where we are today; Labor is depleted and struggling for relevance. The once pervasive unions are now mere shadows of themselves, with their ability to look out for the worker and bolster the middle class vastly diminished. To me, all of this comes from a failure of our generation to understand what Labor has meant for the workers of America and a failure to renew the best bastion of protection from abuse by management and owners.

This must end. We see it in the bail out of the financial system. The bankers who took unreasonable risks are allowed to keep their bonus structures, they are not held to account for the damage their recklessness has caused and the ones who suffer the most are the workers of America, the ones who make things, who actually generate real profits from real products. Why do these folks suffer? It is because we have allowed the balancing power of Labor to wane.

More than 5,000 people are packing the streets of downtown Chicago this morning, chanting, marching and rallying against Big Bankers and financial institutions that have taken taxpayer money and are using it to give big bonuses to CEOs and to lobby against financial reforms that would ensure they don’t go back on the public dole.

Bailout pay czar Ken Feinberg raised a ruckus last week when he announced plans to slash cash payouts to executives at seven companies that have received massive levels of taxpayer support. While better oversight of the bailout barons is helpful, the best way to change Wall Street pay practices is to adopt a set of tough, comprehensive regulations that cover everything from the executive suite to the loan department. As is, many of the executives Feinberg cracked down on will still make millions this year from stocks and other perks, while the very banks that depend the most on bailout money are spending like mad to lobby against reform.

This week’s Audit tackles executive malfeasance on Wall Street and its consequences for ordinary citizens.

or years, AFSCME has been leading the fight to rein in the grotesque and excessive paychecks that unaccountable boards of directors have been giving too many of America’s CEOs. We’ve fought shareholder battles and taken our case to the media, arguing that directors who approve exorbitant salaries for executives cheat shareholders and workers. We created a network of institutional and individual investors that fights to get shareowners a voice on executive compensation packages and in the boardrooms of major corporations. But the CEOs want their sky-high pay guaranteed even when they fail, so they’ve fought us every step of the way, building thick walls of resistance to pay reform.