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

MORNING MESSAGE: Top Pol Breaks Ranks On Taxing Rich

OurFuture.org's Sam Pizzigati: "A tax-the-rich bombshell has dropped in the presidential race. The French presidential race. But this bombshell’s blast will almost certainly reverberate elsewhere. Maybe even in the United States ... the candidate that public opinion polls have leading the French presidential race called for a 75 percent super tax on all individual income over $1 million euros, the equivalent of about $1.33 million ... Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, would like to see Hollande go beyond a 'supplementary tax' and attempt an even more 'daring' overhaul ... But Piketty — a close colleague of the top U.S. tax-the-rich expert, Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez — considers Hollande’s call for a 75 percent top rate 'an important step' that 'goes in the right direction.' 'Many countries,' Piketty noted last week, 'are bound to follow this voice.'"

Republicans Beating Up Themselves

Public recoils watching GOP primary, finds latest NBC/WSJ poll: "Four in 10 of all adults say the GOP nominating process has given them a less favorable impression of the Republican Party, versus just slightly more than one in 10 with a more favorable opinion ... Romney’s image right now is worse than almost all other recent candidates who went on to win their party’s presidential nomination ... [Obama] leads Romney by six points, 50 to 44 percent, winning independents (46-39 percent), women (55-37 percent) and those in the Midwest (52-42 percent)."

2009 Romney oped shows he wanted MA health care plan to be implemented federally. HuffPost's Ryan Grim: "The problem for Romney is that the federal-state distinction was the only real way he had of differentiating what he did from what the president has done. His own op-ed suggesting a bipartisan federal health care approach undermines any attempt to make that distinction between now and November."

1993 debate transcript shows Santorum wanted more government in health care. Mother Jones: "...Santorum said it would be a mistake to allow the delivery of health care services to be determined only by the market. He asserted that Republicans were 'wrong' to let the 'marketplace' decide how health care works. He instead argued that government should play a 'proactive' role in shaping the health care marketplace 'to make it work better.' ... these days Santorum denounces government and maintains that it is not government's job to help those who are suffering (because suffering has its positive consequences, he contends)."

State and Local Government Cuts Restraining Economy

Cuts in state and local government holding economy back, notes NYT's Paul Krugman: "By this stage in the Reagan recovery, government employment had risen by 3.1 percent; this time around, it’s down by 2.7 percent ... by this stage of the Reagan recovery, [government] purchases had risen by 11.6 percent; this time, they’re down by 2.6 percent ... If government employment under Mr. Obama had grown at Reagan-era rates, 1.3 million more Americans would be working..."

Gridlock on transportation bill threatens jobs. Politico: "...what if the presumably simple task of passing a stopgap becomes another partisan fight and Congress fails? ... The construction industry will ... take a big hit, just as the spring construction season starts. That means decaying roads, unfilled potholes and barren construction sites, as well as continuing economic hardship for industry workers.

Apple tries to claim it indirectly creates American jobs. NYT: "On Friday, the company published the results of a study it commissioned saying that it had 'created or supported' 514,000 American jobs. The study is an effort to show that Apple’s benefit to the American job market goes far beyond the 47,000 people it directly employs here ... [Apple] has created more jobs overseas, approximately 700,000 ... The accuracy of the Apple jobs calculation in the United States may well be debated among economists for years..."

Secretive bipartisan group trying to forge "grand bargain" deficit reduction agreement that "cuts entitlements and raises new revenue." The Hill: "Sources said that the task of actually writing the bills is well underway, but core participants in the regular meetings do not yet know when the bills can be unveiled. The core House group of roughly 10 negotiators is derived from a larger Gang of 100 lawmakers led by Reps. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Health Shuler (D-N.C.), who urged the debt supercommittee to strike a grand bargain last year."

The 1% recovering faster than the 99%. TNR's Timothy Noah: "In the first year of the recovery, 93 percent of all income gains went to the top one percent. As of 2010, recovery was a luxury item."

Deepwater Drilling Is Back

Deepwater drilling production recovers from moratorium. NYT: "After a yearlong drilling moratorium, BP and other oil companies are intensifying their exploration and production in the gulf, which will soon surpass the levels attained before the [BP] accident ... President Obama, while in New Hampshire last Thursday, countered Republican charges that he was to blame for the rising pain at the pump. 'We’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and approved more than 400 drilling permits since we put in place new safety standards in the wake of the gulf oil spill,' Mr. Obama said ... Yet Republicans argue, loudly, that Mr. Obama is not doing nearly enough ... the House has passed legislation to speed lease sales on public lands while pressing to open the Atlantic and Pacific coasts..."

And it won't do anything to lower gas prices, reminds Dean Baker: "The additional oil that might come from offshore drilling is a drop in the bucket in a world oil market of almost 90 million barrels a day."

Dem Sen. Bob Casey presses financial regulators to crack down on oil speculators under new Wall Street reform law. The Hill: "In a letter sent to CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler on Sunday, Casey called on the agency to implement a rule that would limit speculation in the oil market and is two years in the making ... The Dodd-Frank law gives the CFTC the authority to limit the ability of speculators on Wall Street to inflate the price of oil by putting in place position limits. The position limits set the maximum amount of the oil market that a single speculator could control."

Companies Ditch Rush

Seven companies stop advertising on Rush Limbaugh. NYT: "For now, the ad boycott is uncomfortable but not crippling for Mr. Limbaugh ... Mr. Limbaugh’s critics dismissed his apology as having been forced by the advertiser pressure ... Eric Boehlert of the liberal media monitoring group Media Matters for America predicted on Sunday that the apology would not 'stop the pressure that’s being applied to his advertisers.'"

Conservatives apparently don't understand how contraception works. TNR's Jonathan Cohn: "...the dosage of birth control is not the only misconception floating around on the right. Another is that just about everybody can already get effective contraception at low prices. John McCormack of the Weekly Standard figured that out by visiting the local Target and discovering that generic birth control is available for as little as $9 a month ... But, as doctors and pharmacists will tell you, not every drug works for every woman ... For some women, finding the right contraceptive is a matter of finding the right pill. For others, it’s a matter of finding a whole other birth control method – like implants, inter-uterine devices, or surgical sterilization. Most of these alternatives cost more than $9 a month and some of them cost a lot more than $9 a month."

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