middle class

Huge Cuts: Coming Soon, to Social Security Benefits Near You

December 6, 2010

At the Strengthen Social Security campaign we made two graphs demonstrating how the Fiscal Commission's final proposal would affect typical earners at all ends of the spectrum. The results are devastating. If you are not shocked, you are not looking closely enough. Check it out below, or click here for the graphs, explanatory note and underlying data all in one file.

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GOP's "Pledge" to Rob the Middle Class: No Jobs, No Health Care, No Security

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

September 23, 2010

Congressional Republicans released their "Pledge for America" today with a press event at a Virginia hardware store, and a hardware store was definitely the right choice: If these policies ever take effect you're going to get screwed.

It was slightly amusing to see these wealthy tribunes in their pricey business-casual clothing, dressed to look the way they must imagine "real people" do. But other than providing some revenue for Dockers pants and Johnston & Murphy shoes, what were the economic implications of the GOP's Pledge?

Once you strip away the rhetoric, the answer is simple: Off the top, their plan is a trillion-dollar giveaway to the rich - at everybody else's expense. Their "pledge" would slash needed spending, kill jobs and end any hope of growing the economy. It declares open season on the public's health and safety with a deregulation agenda that would unleash BP, Goldman Sachs, and every other corporation whose risky behavior endangers us. It would lead to even more financial crashes and environmental disasters. Firefighters, cops,and teachers would be laid off in droves. The deficit would soar. We'd face a permanently stagnating economy. The middle class would wither away. more »

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There Are Zero Good Reasons To Block Elizabeth Warren

By Zach Carter

July 27, 2010

No reformers question whether Elizabeth Warren is the best candidate to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She's a lauded scholar, an inspiring advocate who will draw talented and dedicated reformers to the new agency and she came up with the whole idea for creating the CFPB in the first place. more »

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Greed Explains the Disasters and the Lying Afterwards

By Leo Gerard

June 14, 2010

(This post is by Leo W. Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers and by Cecil Roberts, international president of the United Mine Workers of America)

As oil mucked the Gulf of Mexico and families mourned 11 dead rig workers, BP officials proclaimed that the corporation’s priority always was safety. more »

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Danger: Falling Middle Class

By Tula Connell

February 5, 2010

Jack Cafferty at CNN this week more »

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Voters have specific bad actors in mind. “It’s about big business, not the little guy,” said one member of that Greenberg focus group. 40% of Americans believe big business get whatever they want in Washington; 38% believe leaders have forgotten the middle class; 35% believe America is doing nothing about problems at home. more »

Source

Democracy Corps, “Finding their voice as Agents of change.”

How Conservatives Are Stealing Our Future

Minneapolis bridge collapse. Photo by Poppyseed Bandits via Flickr. (cc)

In Part II of her series, "Stealing the Future," guest blogger Sara Robinson examines how conservative ideology, far from promoting optimism, has actually robbed the nation — especially the middle class — of its hope for the future by diminishing government's role in preparing for the future. She calls the conservatives' 30-year "war on big government" a war on "the very heart of democracy itself" that has put our republic "in mortal danger."

Read her latest post | Read Part I