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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: Five Outrages Over Latest Settlement With Citigroup

OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "1. Once again, nobody had to confess ... 2. Once again the criminals won't pay for their crimes - you will ... 3. Criminals who aren't punished commit more crimes ... 4. Bank CEOs keep getting rich while misdeeds happen on their watch - and are still treated like respectable people. ... 5. Citigroup was "conceived in sin" through by government officials - some of whom got very rich there afterwards."

GOP Filibusters Another Jobs Bill

Senate Republicans filibuster another jobs bill. NYT: "This time, the bill was narrowed to provide $35 billion to state and local governments to prevent layoffs of teachers, police officers and firefighters. To offset the cost, the bill would impose a surtax of 0.5 percent, starting in 2013, on income in excess of $1 million ... The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, derided the Democrats’ proposal as 'a government jobs bill.'"

Democrats will continue to push. W. Post: "Democrats plan to hold votes on other elements of the American Jobs Act in coming weeks, including money for building roads and schools, tax credits for businesses that hire veterans and the long-term unemployed, an extension of benefits for unemployed workers and an extension of a payroll tax holiday."

OMB Director draws lines in brewing standoff over keeping the government's doors open after Nov. 18. Roll Call: "In his five-page letter, [Jacob] Lew insisted that the appropriations bills should adhere to the discretionary spending levels agreed to in the August deal to raise the debt ceiling. Some Republicans believe that with the historically high deficit, spending should be lower than the amount agreed to in the bipartisan deal ... The letter also called for adequate funding for the agencies involved in implementing the health care overhaul law and for agencies charged with ramping up initiatives under the financial services overhaul law ... The White House called for the EPA to receive at least as much as it did last fiscal year..."

Why USA Loves OWS

W. Post's Harold Meyerson explains why America loves OWS: "...most Americans don’t particularly care what the demonstrators in downtown New York and other cities look like or believe in. They’re not interested in the demonstrators’ attempt to build a movement prefigurative of a radically consensual society (which could end up just as gridlocked as the U.S. Senate). What they care about is that the demonstrators are confronting unmerited power and unearned wealth. They are taking on the banks."

Wealthy NYC landlords push to change law to ban 24-hour encampments in privately owned public spaces. Daily Kos' Chris Bowers: "...who could possibly be harmed by changing the law in this way? Maybe it's the massive protest movement that has set up a permanent encampment in a privately owned public space..."

"Mortgage Cramdown Bill Is Still the Best Bet to Save the Economy" argues The Nation's Alex Ulam: "If the cram-down legislation had passed and BoA had failed as a result then so be it. Millions of Americans facing foreclosure would have had a much better shot at saving their homes and that would have been a much bigger boon to the overall economy than bailing out the banks."

Former WH economist Jared Bernstein knocks housing regulators for preventing solution to foreclosure crisis, in TNR: "The most effective intervention to help these homeowners is to reduce their loan principal and bring what they owe more in line with what their home is now worth ... The regulator’s mandate is to protect the taxpayer from further losses and, as it sees it, any loan forgiveness is a direct hit on taxpayers ... I understand and respect their rationale, but I think they’re wrong. Without shaving off principal from a number of these loans, they will default, and who foots the bill when that happens? That’s right—Fannie and Freddie themselves, because they either own or insure the loans."

CA Goes Cap-And-Trade

CA regulators approve cap-and-trade system. NYT: "...the board’s chairwoman, Mary D. Nichols, invoked the state’s history of national environmental leadership, suggesting that if California acted first, the rest of the country would eventually come around. 'We are staking out new ground in the battle against global warming,' she said. 'And we are doing it in difficult times and doing it in a way we believe others will want to follow.'"

NYT's Paul Krugman derides GOP for proposing to increase pollution and call it a jobs plan: "Both Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have ... put weakened environmental protection at the core of their economic proposals, as have Senate Republicans. Mr. Perry has put out a specific number — 1.2 million jobs — that appears to be based on a study released by the American Petroleum Institute ... even if you take the study’s claims at face value, it offers little reason to believe that dirtier air and water can solve our current employment crisis."

Media Matters rips ABC for bogus scandal story on federal loan guarantee to clean car company: "ABC News has published a lengthy article on its website that misleadingly suggests taxpayers are being ripped off because a car company that got a federal loan guarantee is assembling its vehicles in Finland ... In fact, the article reports that the company, Fisker Automotive, has created 100 auto-plant jobs in Delaware in addition to 500 manufacturing jobs in Finland. Fisker's founder also told ABC that his company has spent the federal money it has received on marketing, engineering, and design work done in the United States, not on the Finnish jobs."

Republican Presidential Sideshow Rumbles On

Republican NV Gov. chides presidential candidate Mitt Romney for proposing we do nothing to stop foreclosures. ThinkProgress quotes: "I think he didn’t fully understand what was going on in the state of Nevada in this process that we have."

Paul Krugman shreds Gov. Rick Perry's flat tax idea on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show: "...a big tax increase for the poor and the middle increase."

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