In Alabama, comparisons to the civil rights battles of the 1960s are hard to avoid. From local press to the New York Times and beyond, reporters and those they interview are connecting the dots, not generally in a way flattering to the state.

The New York Times was blistering in an editorial published Monday, all but calling Alabama and its lawmakers racist.

Alabama is far from alone in passing a law whose express aim is misery and panic. States are expanding their power to hasten racial exclusion and family disintegration, to make a particular ethnic group of poor people disappear. The new laws come cloaked in talk of law and order; the bigotry beneath them is never acknowledged.

But if there is any place where bigotry does not go unrecognized, it is Alabama.

“It is a fear of folks who are not like us,” said Judge U. W. Clemon, a former state senator and Alabama’s first black federal judge, now retired. “Although the Hispanic population of the state is less than 5 percent, the leaders of the state were hell-bent on removing as much of that 4 percent as possible. And I think they’ve been fairly successful in scaring them out of the state of Alabama.”

If it was just the big-city national media piling on, that would be one thing, bu the local press has more than held its own in this regard.

From al.com:

The nation’s harshest immigration law… is creating nothing short of a “humanitarian crisis” that mirrors the fear and racism felt during the Jim Crow era, opponents of the law said Thursday.

During an afternoon news conference about Alabama’s immigration law, lawyers, educators and children’s advocates said the effects of the law mirror the fear and racism felt during the Jim Crow era and have led to thousands of children being kept home from school, pregnant women being afraid to give birth in a hospital and families having their water supply cut off.

When Alabama’s law was enacted, the Southern Poverty Law Center established a hotline to hear people’s concerns and offer guidance. The SPLC, which has taken a leading role in fighting the law, received more than 2000 calls in the first week the line was open.

The Center for American Progress Monday released a number of lists attempting to quantify the effects of the law.

Among the Center’s findings are that if only 10,000 of Alabama’s 120,000 undocumented immigrants quit or were forced out of their jobs, it would cost the state $40 million in lost productivity. If the federal government was to deport all 120,000, the Center says it would cost taxpayers $2.8 billion.

The Center’s study concluded that undocumented immigrants paid $130 million in taxes last year.

It’s well documented that farmers and Alabama’s agriculture sector in general have struggled mightily since the law went into effect. As both undocumented and documented Alabamans of Hispanic descent or appearance have fled the state, leaving farmers with no one to harvest crops.

One tomato farmer told PBS he had lost $300,000 so far. He’s hired new people to do the work, but few of them have lasted, saying either that the work is too hard, or the pay is too low.

Where do all the immigrants fleeing places like Alabama and Arizona go? any head to the small towns of the Midwest. There is nothing new about this migration to the Midwest, apparently. As small towns in Kansas and Nebraska lose residents to more prosperous places, people of Hispanic descent move in, opening businesses and stabilizing local economies. Mostly, they are welcomed, reports The New York Times. In many cases, when Hispanic children grow up in these small towns, they end up staying to raise their own families instead of moving on in the grand American tradition.

From Monday’s New York Times:

For generations, the story of the small rural town of the Great Plains, including the dusty tabletop landscape of western Kansas, has been one of exodus — of businesses closing, classrooms shrinking and, year after year, communities withering as fewer people arrive than leave and as fewer are born than are buried. That flight continues, but another demographic trend has breathed new life into the region.

Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed the decline in the white population in many places. In the process, these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that seemed to be staggering toward the grave.

That demographic shift, seen in the findings of the 2010 census, has not been uniformly welcomed in places where steadiness and tradition are seen as central charms of rural life. Some longtime residents of Ulysses, where the population of 6,161 is now about half Hispanic, grumble over the cultural differences and say they feel like strangers in their hometown. But the alternative, community leaders warn, is unacceptable.

…

There has long been a strong Hispanic presence throughout the region, which is rich with difficult work in meatpacking plants and on farms, feedlots and oil fields. But over the last decade, as their population in the rural Great Plains spiked by 54 percent — a figure comparable to gains in metro areas in the region — Hispanic residents have pushed from hubs like nearby Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal into ever smaller communities, buying property on the cheap, enticed, many say, by the opportunity to live quiet lives in communities more similar to those in which they were raised.

In the sparsely populated western half of Kansas, every county but one experienced a decline in the non-Hispanic white population, two-thirds of them by more than 10 percent.

At the same time, a vast majority experienced double-digit growth in Hispanic population, more than offsetting the declines in seven counties and many smaller cities and towns. Those places with the highest percentage of Hispanic residents tend to have the lowest average ages, the highest birth rates and the most stable school populations.

The New Mexico Department of Corrections is fining GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison operator, $1.1 million for understaffing one of its prisons.GEO manages three of the four private prisons in the state, including Lea County Correctional Facility, where from September of 2010 to March of 2011 one out of every four jobs were vacant.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports:

GEO will pay the $1.1 million over several months, the corrections secretary said. In addition, GEO has agreed to spend $200,000 over the next calendar year to recruit new correctional officers for the Hobbs facility.

By contract, New Mexico can penalize The GEO Group and Corrections Corp. of America, the two firms that operate the private facilities, when staffing vacancies are at 10 percent or more for 30 consecutive days.

The settlement represents the first time in years — possibly ever — that New Mexico has penalized the out-of-state, for-profit companies for not adequately staffing the facilities they operate.

GEO is the second largest private prison company in the country, after Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and it operates over 60 facilities in 15 states. The company reported $1.2 billion in earnings and $58.8 million in profit during the first nine months of this year.

The Corrections Department has faced criticism in the past for failing to penalize GEO and CCA for understaffing their facilities in the state. Much of that criticism occurred under a previous corrections secretary, Joe Williams, who called the private prisons “outstanding” despite their high number of vacancies. As the New Mexico Independent reported at the time, Williams had also been hired by GEO as a warden at Lea County Correctional, the very facility for which the company is now being fined.

Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says Michigan’s economic woes are rooted in socialist policies, and she blames labor unions, taxes and regulations for the tough economic climate in the state.

Bachmann made the comments on the Steve Deace Show in Iowa before the Nov. 9 debate in the Wolverine State. Deace had asked Bachmann about the “pro-active, positive solution that is the alternative to socialism” in Michigan.

“It’s the fruition of all of the policies of the left which really have their origin in socialism,” Bachmann said of Michigan’s struggling economy. “If there’s anything we should have learned by now it’s that socialism doesn’t work and it’s principles don’t work.”

She also attacked other GOP presidential candidates for supporting the auto bailout, calling it the latest example of socialism in the state and saying “you won’t find any surprises with me.”

“You will find in me a core conviction,” she said, providing a nod to the title of her new book. “I’ve been the only consistent conservative in this race.”

The solution to Michigan’s unemployment problem is reducing union influence by making it a right to work state, which would allow companies to cut back on wages and benefits and be more competitive, she said.

She praised Iowa, which has a law prohibiting union membership or payment of union dues as a condition of employment. About half the states in the U.S. have a similar law; Michigan does not.

“When you have a right to work state then you can have companies adjust wages so they can open up shops to more and more hires and more employees,” Bachmann said.

She said then as more companies opened up, shop wages would eventually increase as businesses work to attract the best talent, especially if taxes and regulations are slashed at the same time.

“If we can have the tax burden lower and if we can have the regulatory burden lower then employers can afford to pay more to bid up wages and bid up benefits and then everybody succeeds,” she said.

The actual wage disparities between right to work states and those that aren’t has been a hotly contested topic for decades — or at least since most of the nation’s 22 right to work states passed their laws in the 1940s and 1950s following the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which was enacted as a response to (and amended) the Wagner Act of 1935. The latter lays out the rights of workers to unionize, while the former addressed what was then described as too much power by the unions.

Right to work essentially allows all workers at a business where a union has organized to be represented by the union, bound by the union-negotiated contract and use the union as a bargaining agent without ever having to pay union due or join the union.

In 2001 by Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute found that “the most important aspect of right-to-work law is its effect on wages.”

… On average, men in RTW states earn 7.8 percent less than their counterparts in non-RTW states; women in RTW states earn 6.8 percent less. … [W]e find that, even after controlling for regional costs of living, workers in right-to-work states earn less per hour. Particularly interesting is the affect on workers living in cities that are stretch across state line, placing it in both a right-to-work state and a non-RTW state. Seventeen out of 433 metropolitan areas in our sample (nearly 4 percent) spill over from a right-to-work state to a non-RTW state. Our analysis indicates that, in areas where a pure RTW state effect exists (i.e., no spill-over effect), the right-to-work penalty is larger. In fact, we find that living near a non-RTW state helps raise workers’ wages. …

But instead of focusing on individual wages, those that support right-to-work laws often point to a state’s overall economic situation — a similar argument to the one Bachmann made. For instance, the conservative Public Institute at Iowa Wesleyan College (now known as the Public Interest Institute), in a 2000 paper defending Iowa’s right-to-work law, noted a 1998 study that “Iowa outperformed most of its neighboring closed-shop states.”

… Four closed shop states border Iowa: Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. From 1947-1992, Iowa’s rate of manufacturing growth was equal to that of Missouri, slightly ahead of Wisconsin, 1.5 times higher than Minnesota, and over 5.5 times higher than Illinois. This is strong evidence that Iowa has done much better economically since enacting its right-to-work law. …

The complaint about the sandwich shop stems from a March incident where six supporters of the International Workers of the World (IWW) were fired after protesting the company’s lack of paid sick leave.

Among the findings against Jimmy John’s in the complaint: “Disparaging and threatening pro-union employees on Facebook, removing union postings from stores, interrogating employees about their union activities, and threatening mass firings for union organizing.”

Micah Buckley-Farlee of the Twin Cities branch of the IWW is one of the six fired workers.

“We’re looking forward to continue fighting for paid sick days, which is the starting point that led to the whole thing they fired us for,” Buckley-Farlee told the Minnesota Independent. “So I’m looking forward to getting back to my job and organizing around paid sick days.”

Unless there is a settlement between the company and the union, an administrative judge will hear the case in mid-January 2012.

Union supporters said they’re willing to consider a settlement if Jimmy John’s reinstates workers and pays back pay. The Minneapolis franchises, which are owned by MikLin Enterprises and headed by Michael Mulligan, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, haven’t returned a request for comment (this post will be updated if we find out more).

This isn’t the company’s first brush with labor law violations. In January 2011, the National Labor Relations Board overturned the previous union election, which the union lost by two votes, due to unfair labor practices by the company. At the time, the company and union reached an agreement that Jimmy John’s would not take action against workers supporting the union.

Buckley-Farlee said the union is keeping the possibility of an election on the table, but that the union is currently more dedicated to grassroots organizing.

Members of Occupy Grand Rapids are planning to spend Friday protesting state plans to privatize careworker positions at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans.

In a Facebook post the group says that it will gather from 4:00 – 7:00 pm at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans on 3000 Monroe Avenue Northeast.

Lets stand up on Veterans Day. Lets stand up for our vets who deserve the best care we can offer. Lets stand up and say we will not be held hostage by these profits before people policies. Tell Snyder that we will not stand for experienced, hard working, public health care employees being replaced by inexperienced and underpaid workers. Caring for our vets is such an important job that it should be compensated with benefits and a fair living wage.

The Grand Rapids Press reports the state is trying to privatize 170 unionized caregiver postions at the facility, which is one of only two in the state for veterans.

A five-year contract worth nearly $6.6 million has been awarded to Grand Rapids-based J2S Group HealthForce. State officials have argued the move will save more than $4.2 million, an estimate union leaders dispute because of turnover, training and other costs.

A resident of the Grand Rapids home has sued to stop the privatization and an Ingham County judge issued a temporary restraining order against the shift. State leaders are challenging that court ruling.

In May, Emergency Manager Michael Stampfler signed an $8 million a year, five-year contract with United Water, a New Jersey-based subsidiary of the French water giant Suez Environement, for maintenance and management of the city’s water and sewer utilities.

According to a press release put out by the company in July, the deal is expected to save the city of Pontiac approximately $2.8 million from its current annual operating budget.

The water distribution system provides an average of 7.8 million gallons per day to 21,000 homes and businesses while the city’s two wastewater treatment plants have the capability of treating 26 million gallons per day. United Water will also provide meter reading, billing and collections, and customer service for the 70,000 residents and businesses of the city.

Under Michigan’s recently-enacted Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act. state-appointed Emergency Managers have broad new powers that include the ability to cancel labor contracts and overrule elected officials.

Pontiac Council member Kermit Williams said he learned that water operations had been privatized after the fact when Stampfler sent a memo to city officials.

“I didn’t see any bid go out,” he said, “and they usually advertise in the Oakland Press.”

Williams said that he believes that the state does not require Emergency Managers to go through a bidding process when contracting for professional services.

(According to the terms of the contract for Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts, contracts for professional services worth more than $100,000 require 24 hour notice to the Treasury Dept.)

United Water spokesman Eugene Anderson said that he does not know whether the company’s selection involved a competitive bid process.

The lack of public oversight of the deal over the city’s water system has some local residents upset.

Shortly after the deal was announced, residents raised questions about United Water’s indictment on multiple felony charges related to tampering with environmental sampling at the Gary, Indiana wastewater treatment plant. Just months before the Pontiac deal federal prosecutors had charged United Water with violating the Clean Water Act by boosting disinfectant levels in the water just before sampling for E. coli.

Possible environmental crimes were not the only red flag.

At the time of the indictment Gary, Indiana had already ended its relationship with United Water after deciding that the system could be publicly run at half the cost.

According to research complied by the group Food and Water Watch, United Water cut staff in Gary and sewer lines collapsed due to lack of maintenance.

This type of service problem was not unique to Gary. Over the last decade the cities of Houston, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Camden, NJ all ended deals with United Water amid cost overruns, and maintenance and environmental problems.

The situation in Camden has special resonance for Pontiac because the contract with United Water was made not by elected officials, but by a state-appointed Chief Operating Officer with broad powers to rearrange the finances of the economically-troubled city.

In 2009 an audit by the New Jersey state comptroller found that Camden did not have an effective system of internal control over contract-related activities, that United Water had cost the city millions more than planned and that city-owned assets had been “left to rot.”

“Lack of water production monitoring by UW has caused the city to have an unaccounted for water loss percentage comparable to that of developing countries,” the comptroller’s office found. “Specifically, we found that water loss in the City averaged approximately 45 percent for the years 2004-2008.”

After this audit came out, Camden stopped payments to United Water and sued for $29 million but ultimately settled with the company and was forced to pay them $4 million for ending the contract early.

New Jersey Comptroller Matthew Boxer said that Camden’s experience with water privatization should be a lesson for all municipalities.

“If a municipality decides to outsource a basic service such as providing water, it needs to understand that its responsibilities do not end with the awarding of the contract,” Boxer said. “The city of Camden had an obligation to safeguard the public’s tax dollars and it failed to do so.”

Pontiac’s third Emergency Manager, Lou Schimmel, did not respond to requests for information about the city’s involvement with United Water.

This week Schimmel announced that a United Water employee has been given a contract to run the city’s entire public works department.

In June, a group of 28 plaintiffs from across the state filed suit against Snyder and Treasurer Andy Dillon over the new law that gives state-appointed Emergency Managers virtually complete control over financially-troubled local governments.

The plaintiffs argue that the law violates the state constitution’s “home rule” provisions and the Headlee amendment, which bans the state from enacting unfunded mandates (towns must pay the expenses of Emergency Managers assigned them).

They also say the the law violates the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches and tramples on voting rights.

The governor petitioned the Michigan Supreme Court to rule directly on these legal questions rather than waiting for the lower courts to rule on it first.

In an order issued this week the court said that it is still considering his request and asked Snyder to more fully explain why they should move the case from the trial court.

The court also asked both parties to file briefs on the questions raised in the case by Dec. 14.

John Philo, legal director for the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice, which is representing the plaintiffs, said the high court should reject Snyder’s request to bypass the trial court and make an immediate decision in the case.

“Initial fact-finding and critical evidence occurs at the circuit court level,” said Philo. “This is why we have an established judicial system and for the governor to want to skip that process is troubling.”

About 1,300 union workers have been locked out of their jobs by American Crystal Sugar since Aug. 1. Since the lockout started, the union and company have only met twice, both times at the urging of a federal mediator. Following the rejection of Monday’s offer, there are no plans to meet again.

Sen. Al Franken said “it’s imperative that both sides continue to work to come to an agreement that will end this lockout and get workers back on the job,” pointing out that all sides play a role in the sugar industry’s success.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Collin Peterson released a joint statement highlighting the impact of the lockout on communities across the Red River Valley: “We continue to urge both Crystal Sugar management and workers to come together at the negotiating table to work out an agreement that allows workers to return to their jobs as soon as possible. American Crystal and these jobs are very important to the region.”

Locked out workers in Minnesota are receiving unemployment benefits, but those who live in North Dakota are denied them under state law. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said in a statement that the “lock-out is taking a serious toll on families in North Dakota and Minnesota and the economic and social impact can be felt up and down the Red River Valley.”

In an interview with the Grand Forks Herald, Conrad admitted that the dispute could harm the chances of a farm bill. Franken has warned in the past that American Crystal Sugar’s tactics of locking out workers could alienate pro-worker members of Congress who have previously supported protections for the sugar industry.

Conrad told the Grand Forks Herald that the “company needs to think long and hard about the consequences, about the implications of their strategy.”

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which has ties to former White House deputy chief Karl Rove, has ads scheduled to run through Nov. 7 at both KCCI and WHO in Des Moines. KCCI – the local CBS affiliate – and WHO – the local NBC affiliate – are the two biggest networks in Iowa’s capitol and largest city.

Crossroads has so far spent $186,556 at the two stations, with ads running since late June. The spot being run targets U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, (D-Des Moines), and President Obama.

Boswell and the Iowa Democratic Party responded to the ads last week, with Boswell’s campaign asking for donations to combat the ads and the IDP saying Crossroads is trying to support Boswell’s 2012 challenger and U.S. Rep. Tom Latham (R-Ames).

Crossroads then lashed back at Boswell, saying the statements from his campaign and the IDP don’t explain why he voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

According to OpenSecrets.org, the 501(c)(4) “outside spending” group spent $15.1 million against Democrats in the 2009-10 cycle and $479,619 for Republicans. It spent another $1.1 million on electioneering communications. The group doesn’t disclose its donors.

American Crossroads, a related “super PAC,” raised $26.5 million in 2010 and spent $21.5 million. It raised and spent the most out of any independent expenditure-only committees in 2010.

The super PAC, which must disclose its donors, has raised $6.6 million so far this cycle.

Crossroads GPS focuses on seven issues, according to its website: lower taxes, less government spending, building the private sector, reducing government worker pay, shutting down the borders, reworking health care reform, pushing for American energy development.

“Donating to a campaign should not disqualify an individual from serving in this important capacity,” Tim Albrecht said.

Branstad on Monday announced 11 appointees to the Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress board and seven to the Iowa Innovation Corporation board. The boards are part of the state’s new economic development efforts, a public-private partnership approved by legislators earlier this year.

The appointments are not subject to approval from the Iowa Senate, and include top executives at MidAmerican Energy, Principal Financial Group, Pioneer Hi-Bred and Rockwell Collins, among others.

Jeff Danielson

State Sen. Jeff Danielson (D-Cedar Falls) said “unfortunately it’s par for the course” for Branstad to appoint major contributors to state positions.

For instance, Brent and Bruce Rastetter contributed a combined $181,000 to the governor’s campaign. Branstad appointed Bruce to the state board of regents and Brent to the state Environmental Protection Commission.

“Knowing that it would be difficult to make it against the law, I don’t think we can get that passed, then I believe the next step is full disclosure and transparency,” said Danielson, chairman of the Senate State Government Committee. “And as these two boards make decisions on how to spend taxpayers’ money there ought to be close scrutiny of any of the business relationships.”

Danielson said there’s no question the appointees have valuable experience as business leaders in the state. But he would have liked the opportunity for the Iowa Senate to confirm the appointments and question the nominees.

“Putting them in charge of the public money that would then be used to attract other businesses could create the potential for conflict of interests,” Danielson said. “We’ll have to judge their behavior as it unfolds.”

Sam Roecker, a spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party, said he’s hopeful the boards will approach all ideas with an open mind. He noted Branstad has opposed economic development proposals from President Obama and Senate Democrats, such as tax cuts for small businesses.

“Democrats fought to ensure that the Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress will be held accountable to taxpayers in the state,” Roecker said. “The board members are Governor Branstad’s choice, but he will need to put partisanship aside if he wants to create jobs.”

The appointee that gave the most to Branstad is Toby Shine, the president of Shine Brothers Corporation, who shelled out $60,000 to the campaign. Close behind is John Smith, chairman of the board at CRST International, Inc., who gave $50,000.

Mary Andringa, president and CEO of Vermeer Corporation, gave $40,000. She was also the chairwoman of the governor’s campaign. And Roger Underwood, co-founder of Becker-Underwood, gave $25,000.

The MidAmerican Energy Company Effective Government Committee gave $20,000; the Master Builders of Iowa PAC gave $20,000; and the Wells Fargo and Company Employee PAC gave $15,000.

Bill Fehrman, president and CEO of MidAmerican, is on the IPEP board; Scott Norvell, President and CEO of Master Builders of Iowa, is on the IIC board; and Cara Heiden, formerly of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, is on the IIC board as well.

Branstad raised about $10 million from 20,000 donors during his campaign, or roughly $500 per donor. The $216,000 from the 18 appointees and their companies works out to $12,000 per donor, or 24 times the average.

Here are the members of the IPEP board, and how much they gave to Branstad:

• Bill Fehrman, President and CEO, MidAmerican Energy Company: noneThe MidAmerican Energy Company Effective Government Committee: $20,000
• Paul Schickler III, President, Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont business: $100DuPont Good Government Fund: $1,500
• Larry Zimpleman, CEO, Principal Financial Group: nonePrincipal Life Insurance Company PAC: $5,000
• John Smith, Chairman of the Board, CRST International Inc.: $50,000