fresh voices from the front lines of change

Democracy

Health

Climate

Housing

Education

Rural

Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.

Can The Korea Deal Be Fixed?

WH looks to revise and complete trade deal with South Korea, soon. NYT: "...Democrats have said they will not support it unless barriers to American exports of automobiles and beef are further reduced ... [President Obama has] stopped short of calling for the deal to be renegotiated, but called for adjustments in areas like the auto provisions ... President Obama is scheduled to arrive in Seoul on Thursday ... 'Hopefully, by the time he comes we will have an agreement,' [South Korean President] Lee said in an interview..."

W. Post characterizes Korean agreement as step towards closing trade gap with China: "...South Korea indirectly contributes to the United States' yawning overall trade deficit by playing an important supporting role in China's export juggernaut ... South Korea ships half-finished flat-panel televisions and other gadgets to Korean-owned factories in China, where they are assembled by lower-paid Chinese workers ... tariffs are supposed to come down under the free-trade agreement. But building market share for foreign imports will be a separate challenge."

OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson warns that Campaign for America's Future poll found swing voters reject unfair trade deals: "...the Korean agreement was negotiated under President Bush, and came out typically one-sided against American manufacturers and workers ... 59% of swing voters agree with the message “Challenge countries like China that are taking our jobs, end subsidies to corporations that send jobs abroad, stop passing NAFTA-like trade deals and develop a national strategy for making things in America and exporting goods, not jobs – contrasted with 28% agreeing with a message about increasing exports with more trade deals..."

OpenLeft's Mike Lux adds: "The voters who were the swing voters in this electorate, the ones who supported Republicans this time but generally supported Obama and Democrats the last time, are the economically hurting middle class- the ones most worried about their jobs, most stressed about their mortgages being underwater or close to it, and most squeezed by stagnant wages. They blame Wall Street for the financial crisis, they strongly dislike outsourcing and 'NAFTA-like' trade deals, they favor higher taxes on the wealthy and speculative trading, they don't want Social Security or Medicare benefits cut or the retirement age raised, they think infrastructure jobs ought to be created by the government, and they hate corporate special interest lobbying and money."

Austerity Fantasy

NYT's Bob Herbert argues the austerity activists are practicing "fantasyland economics.": "The deficit hawks want to radically cut budgets and shrink the government, which they assure us will not only get the economy moving again but will eventually bring budgets into balance as neatly as some ideal middle-class family balances its checkbook. This will somehow be achieved, we’re told, without raising taxes ... People traveling in the real world understand that the federal budget deficits are sky high because of the Bush-era tax cuts, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the spending that was needed to keep the Great Recession from spiraling into another Great Depression. Even if deficit reduction right now were a good idea — which it is not ... the deficit zealots have no viable plan for getting their misguided mission accomplished."

WH announces finalists for annual "SAVE" award honoring best idea to save taxpayer money. The Hill: "Three of the ideas feature a strong web component; the exception is a suggestion from a food inspector in Michigan who pointed out that food sample containers needn't be returned using express shipping, which costs significantly more. Another popular suggestion was having mine operators and contractors report quarterly coal production and worker hours online, an area receiving more scrutiny since the rescue of trapped Chilean miners last month. A Bureau of Prisons employee in Wisconsin questioned the cost of printing and mailing out the Federal Register to 10,000 recipients everyday when it is available online, while a Department of Homeland Security paralegal argued advertizing seized property online could move goods more quickly while saving money on advertising. Those interested can vote for their favorite suggestion online..."

Bipartisan duo pushes increase in gas tax to support infrastructure and deficit reduction. The Hill: "Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio) have written to the chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform advocating for a 25-cent per gallon tax increase ... The lawmakers suggest that 10 cents of the tax increase should go to deficit reduction and 15 cents should go to funding transportation infrastructure improvements ... Carper and Voinovich argue that taxpayers will have to pay for the transportation improvements either way, because Congress is expected to transfer billions of dollars from the general treasury to the trust fund to fix roads and bridges."

Tim Fernholz reminds us that Republicans don't have a mandate to extend the Bush tax cuts: "...a glance at the exit poll reveals that public opinion isn't behind their plan. Only 39 percent of Americans think the entire package should be extended, 37 percent believe only the middle income tax cuts should remain, and 15 percent think none should be extended. Meanwhile, the voters' highest priority for the next Congress is reducing the deficit; the second highest is spending to create jobs, both of which would be furthered by Obama's position on the tax rates. Only 19 percent of Americans think cutting taxes should be the highest priority."

Chinese-Tea Party Coalition Against Fed

China, Germany, and US conservatives criticize Fed move to stimulate US economy. W. Post: "Nations such as China, Germany and Brazil are criticizing the Fed's action in harsh terms, suggesting it amounts to currency manipulation because it will result in a lower value for the dollar ... more Republicans, particularly those aligned with the more-populist tea party, are casting a critical eye on the Fed's latest actions. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who has attacked the Fed's decision, invited Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig, who dissented from the action at the central bank's policy meeting last week, to address the House Republican Conference ... 'We shouldn't be playing around with inflation,' [Sarah] Palin said..."

Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn, at TruthOut, say that Obama should create jobs by executive order: "Remember when the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which created the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was passed, one of the purposes was to preserve homeownership and promote jobs and economic growth. Much of the TARP money has been repaid ... If one assumes an average cost of one job is $50,000, six million jobs could be immediately created for $300 billion. Twelve million jobs could be created for $600 billion. Because this is already appropriated money, Congressional Republicans could not block it. This direct job creation would be bold. It would also be highly stimulative. It would not add to the deficit because it is already appropriated money. Furthermore, one-third of it would come back immediately in taxes, and more importantly, the growth in demand from this number of added jobs would expand private sector job growth and grow the overall economy."

Green Jobs Push Continues

VP Biden to announce new program to make home energy improvements easier. McClatchy: "The three-step program, called Recovery Through Retrofit, will offer new software for contractors to easily show people how much they can save, offer low-cost financing to help people pay for home improvements, and set new guidelines for contractors to assure the public the work is done right ... To help people pay for the work, the administration will unveil the PowerSaver loan program. Offered through the Federal Housing Administration under a two-year pilot program, it will offer low-rate loans that could be repaid over periods as long as 20 years."

WH seeks to improve clean energy loan program. Earth2Tech: "The White House officials (Carol Browner, Larry Summers and Ron Klain) in [an October] memo write that they have been concerned about the DOE loan guarantee program because of three risks: the potential loss of non-obligated funds, fear of criticism of slow implementation of the program, and the risk of making commitments to projects that would have happened anyway ... the OMB wouldn’t go into many details of how the program will be streamlined going forward, the spokesperson said that the White House and DOE are looking to make the program run 'more smoothly,' 'take less time,' but also 'protect tax payer interest.'"

Tax incentives strengthening US solar market. Earth2Tech: "Wells Fargo on Monday said it will fund 'over $100 million' worth of projects to be developed by GCL Solar Energy, a [San Francisco] subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based GCL-Poly Energy Holdings ... Wells Fargo has been an active financier of solar power projects in order to reap tax benefits in recent years, and seemed to have funded mostly American project developers ... Solar companies and analysts have pegged the U.S. as the next big market. Europe remains the largest thanks to the generous government incentives, but these incentives are set to decline, sometimes sooner than expected."

EPA chief schools GOP leader, look at benefits as well as costs. The Hill: "EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) Monday that his attacks on the costs of Clean Air Act rules are way off base ... She notes that his claims, and a chart he included with his letter, fail to consider benefits that far outweigh costs. 'Those benefits projections can be found in the same documents from which [your] cost projections were drawn.'"

Pressure on G-20 to move on reducing fossil fuel subsidies. The Hill: "White House officials say they’re looking to the Nov. 11-12 Group of 20 summit in Seoul to make progress on eliminating subsidies as a way to slow greenhouse gas emissions. But a report Monday from Oil Change International and Earth Track claims the G-20 efforts — announced at a Pittsburgh summit last year — haven’t gotten off the ground and lack transparency."

Breakfast Sides

Wonk Room's Igor Volsky spotlights how insurers are trying to weaken the implementation of health care reform: "Like insurers in California who unsuccessfully lobbied Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to adopt an industry-friendly less regulated Exchange structure, [Blue Cross/Blue Shield] will be pushing [Virginia] to adopt a model that, as the company’s president put it, 'enables competition and promotes consumer choice instead of limiting consumer choice.' That’s spin for a loosely regulated flea market in which the exchange authority is not able to weed out inefficient issuers or use its bargaining power to secure better deals for beneficiaries."

Washington Independent's Jesse Zwick investigates how the campaign finance reform DISCLOSE Act has failed to win bipartisan support: "Both sides realized [in Sept.] that the current bill was a nonstarter, but there was no time in the packed legislative schedule to take the multiple days required to introduce a new, stripped-down version. Instead, Democrats urged Snowe and Collins to vote for cloture on the bill as it stood, on the assurance that the Democratic leadership would scrap whatever the senators didn’t like when it came time for debate and amendments. But such a deal would have require the confidence of all parties ... Now, facing a lame-duck session with a host of pressing items on the agenda — from the START Treaty to an unemployment extension to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts — Senate Democratic leaders are skeptical that a disclose-only bill can earn Republican support. On the one hand, it would address the bulk of Republicans’ complaints about the current bill, but on the other hand, trust is so frayed that neither side is able to receive assurances as to the other’s thinking on the issue."

Pin It on Pinterest

Spread The Word!

Share this post with your networks.