• The charge that unions killed Hostess is as fake as the “creme” center of a Twinkie.
• Why haven’t any new mine safety regulations come out of the Upper Big Branch disaster?
• Marie Hald wins College Photographer of the Year for her photo essay on the daily life of Bonnie Cleo Anderson, a Danish sex worker who plies her trade legally to support her family. 
• Ashlyn Blocker is a 12-year-old girl with congenital insensitivity to pain, that might sound convenient, but as Justin Heckert reports, without pain as a guide, even the simplest task becomes a high-stakes obstacle course.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

Walmart workers and their allies are making history with their highly assymetrical fight for justice and dignity at work. A nationwide strike planned for Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, may be their most audacious action yet. Kathleen Miles of Huffington Post reports on this highly unorthodox, totally 21st Century campaign:

Labor organizers are working with social action nonprofit Engage Network as well as corporate watchdog nonprofit Corporate Action Network to pull off what they are calling a “viral” – meaning national and spreading online – strike.

Walmart workers interested in joining the day of action are directed to this website, either to find a store near them with an organized strike or to “adopt an event” at a store near them.

Brian Young, cofounder of the Corporate Action Network, said on a conference call coordinated by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union Thursday, that organizers cannot cover the roughly 4,000 Walmarts across the country, but enabling self-appointed leaders online has widened and decentralized the campaign. 

The organizers have even set up a web page where supporters can pledge to “sponsor” striking workers. They’ve already raised over $20,000 to offset the lost wages of Black Friday strikers with grocery gift cards. 

[Photo credit: Black Friday 2009 at Walmart; laurieofindy, Creative Commons.]

On election night, unions won key ballot measure battles, Matthew Cunningham-Cook reports for the Nation:

• California voters approved Prop 30, a measure to raise $6 billion for education. The passage of Prop 30 is a repudiation of Prop 13, the notorious 1978 ballot measure that starved the California school system for decades.
• Californians rejected Prop 32, which would have limited the ability of unions to participate in politics.
• Idaho voters rejected a series of ballot measures that would have eliminated teacher tenure, established “merit pay,” and required all Idaho secondary students to take two for-profit online courses in order to graduate.
• In Oregon, unions mobilized to help defeat a ballot measure that would have eliminated the inheritance tax.
• Alabamians defeated a proposed constitutional amendment that could have eliminated the state’s guarantee of a free public education for all students.

[Photo credit: quinn.anya, Creative Commons.

Mitt Romney reduced his tax bill using a loophole called the Charitable Remainder Unitrust (CRUT), Jesse Drucker of Bloomberg revealed last week. Congress cracked down on the CRUT in 1997, but those who had already created these structures were allowed to keep using them. Romney set his up in 1996 and used the shady trust to defer taxes for over 15 years:

“The main benefit from a charitable remainder trust is the renting from your favorite charity of its exemption from taxation,” Blattmachr said. Despite the name, giving a gift or getting a charitable deduction “is just a throwaway,” he said. “I used to structure them so the value dedicated to charity was as close to zero as possible without being zero.”

When individuals fund a charitable remainder unitrust, or “CRUT,” they defer capital gains taxes on any profit from the sale of the assets, and receive a small upfront charitable deduction and a stream of yearly cash payments. Like an individual retirement account, the trust allows money to grow tax deferred, while like an annuity it also pays Romney a steady income. After the funder’s death, the trust’s remaining assets go to a designated charity. 

As Drucker explains, the tax-free payouts from the trust account for only a small percentage of Romney’s $250 million net worth. 

The Mormon Church benefits little from this arrangement. As money from the trust has been paid out to the Romneys, the amount available for donation upon their deaths has already declined from $750,000 in 2001 to $421,203 at the end of 2011. Usually, there isn’t much left over by the time the trust holder spends his last tax-sheltered buck. 

[Photo credit: Austen Hufford, Creative Commons.]