Organizers of the event feel Romney represents the wealthiest 1% of Americans and his fundraiser at the Great American Tower is further evidence that he is not concerned about the very poor.

On the campaign trail, Romney has boasted about being able to fire people, stood against labor unions, and even said he’s not concerned about the very poor.

Cincinnati residents protested Romney’s fundraiser to show they reject his message.  While many Ohioans and people around the United States continue to struggle in their daily lives, Romney shows he is out of touch with ordinary people.

How rich is Mitt Romney?  Combine the wealth of the last eight presidents then double it.  Now you’re in Mitt Romney territory.

Mitt Romney, the protector of the 1%, is out of touch with ordinary Ohioans.  As many of us struggle in our daily lives, Romney says he’s not concerned about the very poor.  Now he wants to be president.

On Monday, February 20, Romney will be at the Great American Tower, 301 East Fourth Street in Cincinnati, meeting with wealthy donors to raise money for his presidential campaign.  We plan to be there at 4:30 PM to let him know that Ohioans need a leader who will help the 99% rather than protect greedy corporate interests.

It’s no secret where Mitt Romney stands.  He boasts about being able to fire people, stands against unions and is not concerned about the poor.  Join us on Monday, February 20 and let Mitt Romney know we need leaders who will fight for us, not against us.

“At the end of the month, taxes are set to go up on 160 millions working Americans,” said Obama.  “If congress refuses to act, middle class taxes will go up. It’s that simple.”

For a family earning $50,000 a year, the tax cut amounts to about $1,000 a year or nearly $40 per paycheck.

“To a student or senior who’s trying to stretch the budget a little bit further.  To a parent who’s filling up the tank and looking at rising gas prices.  To them, $40 can make all the difference in the world,” said Obama.

A press release issued by the White House says, this is not the time for a self-inflicted wound on the recovery or placing an added burden on middle class families.

Obama is urging Americans to pick up the phone, send a tweet, write an email, and tell their representatives to extend the payroll tax cut before it’s too late.

By: John Russo, Center for Working-Class Studies

As a professor, I am always interested in teachable moments. When it became apparent in late 2010 that Ohio Governor John Kasich planned to introduce legislation depriving public sector workers of basic bargaining rights, I told reporters that it was a teachable moment about the role of public sector workers. After all, they were the ones who made all other work possible.

Both organized labor and community groups quickly embraced the idea that Ohio Senate Bill 5 could be a teachable moment.  They launched a hugely successful campaign to put a referendum on the bill, Issue 2, on the November ballot, and then led the fight to persuade voters to oppose the issue and overturn the bill.  Kasich’s attack and the forceful response to it may make it possible for Obama to win Ohio in 2012, despite economic conditions and 2010 election results that would seem to prime the state to swing to the right this time.

Another teachable moment has arrived now that Republicans have introduced Right-to-Work legislation in New Hampshire and passed it in Indiana.  Similar legislation may be on the way in Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio. Such moves may well undermine the historic white working-class support of Republicans, and that could bode well for Obama’s re-election.

RTW legislation differs from past Republican attacks on unions. As labor historian Joseph McCartin has recently chronicled, while courting union endorsements and union voters, Republicans have pursued strategies that, over the last 30 years, have quietly undermined administrative agencies and government policies that facilitated the formation of unions.  The result has been the erosion and marginalization of organized labor and its ability to raise wages, improve workplace safety and health, and advance representative democracy not only in the workplace but in the body politic.

The current RTW legislation is a direct attack on organized labor and its ability to represent the economic and political interests of both the rank and file and those non-union workers whose wages and benefits are enhanced by employers to avoid unionization. No doubt, the role of unions in building and rebuilding economic security and the middle class, advancing workplace rights, and promoting political democracy will be a central part of the curriculum for this teachable moment.

All the current Republican candidates have refused opportunities to speak to union leaders.  Instead, they have signed on to the anti-labor agenda, including RTW legislation, proposed by conservative corporations, business groups, and donors.  Together with their other economic proposals, they have established a Republican brand that embraces and even celebrates a distorted sense of morality and inequality of income, wealth, and power.

But as Governors Kasich and Walker have found out, “as you sow so shall you reap.”  The fight against RTW proposals and their supporters will be particularly fierce in the battleground states, especially the Rust Belt swing states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Minnesota.  Political analysts Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin consider those states crucial to Democratic chances in 2012. In addition, RTW initiatives have now put projected GOP states with relatively small labor movements, such as New Hampshire and Indiana, into play for 2012.

If RTW legislation inspires union members to support Obama in November, their family members are likely to follow suit. In New Hampshire & Indiana, about 10% of voters belong to unions, but union households make up about 20% of voters. This is smaller than in the Rust Belt battlegrounds, where 26% to 34% of voters belong to union households, but that 20% may still make a difference. Further, the effect of the anti-union push could also cross state borders by galvanizing labor and community activists from safe Democratic States into neighboring states in the 2012 election.  Supporters in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and even Washington State organized phone banks to support the fight against the Indiana RTW bill.

Republicans also forget that their attacks on unions can turn off long-time Republican voters.  In Ohio, the demonization of teachers as part of Issue 2 moved many Republican educators toward the Democrats.  Educators are now the single most unionized group of workers in the U.S., and many continue to react strongly to conservative attacks, both in states where they are being targeted and across the country.

Further, while conservatives may hope to undermine union political influence with RTW initiatives, they don’t understand the continuing power of unions to mobilize workers.  Kasich’s attack on public sector workers was overturned last year not because so many dollars flowed from unions into the Issue 2 campaign, though enough money was raised that We Are Ohio, the union-based organization that led the fight, is still spending the millions it has left.  What really mattered was the person-to-person, door-to-door effort.  Organizing, it turns out, still works.

All of this has not gone unnoticed by moderate Republicans, and many now believe that the party should not have taken this route.  Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have argued that the Republicans missed multiple opportunities to garner greater working-class and union support by crafting policies that, while socially conservative, would embrace “limited government pragmatism” that met the needs and aspirations of working people. They see many Republicans as having confused being “pro-market with being pro-business,” and failing to make a distinction between policies that “foster dependency and those that foster independence and upward mobility.”  Rather than directly attacking the very existence of union, they encourage the development of new forms of unionism that are better suited for the new economy and enhance employment opportunities and economic advancement.

Importantly, the Republicans seem to have confused anti-labor policy with real economic policy. Rather than pursue the kinds of moderate revisions suggested by Douthat and Salam, Republican leaders, cheered on by conservative corporate donors and lobbyists, have launched an attack on labor unions that may well lead to the reelection of President Obama and further weaken an already divided Republican Party.  Consequently Republicans, especially Michigan Governor Rick Synder and Governor Kasich, are not publically supporting initiatives by conservative groups, such as the effort by Ohioans for Workplace Freedom to put a RTW referendum on ballots this November. In the current conservative political environment, their silence is deafening.

Since taking office last year, the Kasich administration has attempted to bust unions, privatize public services, and create tax breaks for the wealthy, while turning his back on the 99%.  Today, Ohioans made their voices heard and demanded Kasich stand up for all Ohioans, not just the wealthy.

Kasich broke nearly 100 years of tradition by moving the State of the State speech from the statehouse in Columbus to a location on the West Virginia border, nearly 150 miles from the capital.

Reverend Jackie Jackson traveled from Cincinnati to make his voice heard.

“He doesn’t seem to be for the average working man and woman in the state,” says Jackson.  “I believe he’s trying to make it easier for those who have and not doing much for those who don’t have.”

As Kasich touted his successes and claimed that Ohio is turning around during his state of the state speech, Ohio Democratic Chairman, Chris Redfern says, “It doesn’t take courage to accept all of the credit. It takes courage to take some of the blame.”

Redfern says a lot of the credit for the improvements Ohio has experienced should go to President Obama and former Governor Ted Strickland.

The Lordstown, Ohio GM plant, which helps produce the Chevy Cruze, is operating at full capacity.

A report from Ceres, a nonprofit group that studies sustainability issues, finds that new fuel-economy standards mandated by the Obama administration could create more than 23,000 jobs in Ohio over the next decade.

According to the Dayton Daily News, advocates say improved fuel economy standards will increase hiring at auto plants and suppliers of fuel-saving technologies.

Ceres also estimates the new standards will save automobile owners an average of $4,000 a year.

As automakers have begun to market smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles, automobile manufacturing jobs have started coming back to Ohio.

In 2010, the Lordstown, Ohio GM plan hired back all the workers it had laid off in the previous two years and brought in workers from closed GM plants to build the Chevy Cruze.

Additionally, Honda recently announced it would add 150 workers in Ohio to build and assemble transmissions that lead to higher fuel economy.

Alan Baum, who has produced an automotive forecast since 1990, says demand for fuel-efficient cars shows no sign of waning.