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.
WH Seeks To Defuse "Anti-Business" Charge, But Sharpens Attack on Conservatism
WH tries to soothe cranky corporate CEOs. Politico: "The White House has launched a coordinated campaign to push back against the perception taking hold in corporate America and on Wall Street that President Barack Obama is promoting an anti-business agenda ... Obama’s aides believe confidence in the general direction of White House policy has an effect on the willingness of corporations to hire ... the White House has launched a campaign ... highlighted by Obama’s remarks on Wednesday stressing his commitment to lifting trade barriers ... Rahm Emanuel argued that rather than recoiling against Obama, business leaders should be grateful for his support on at least a half-dozen counts..."
NYT's Paul Krugman rips corporate lobbyists for baseless claim that the political climate is "anti-business": "...first-quarter corporate profits were up 44 percent from a year earlier ... the Dow, which was below 8,000 on the day President Obama was inaugurated, is now over 10,000 ... Ask the Obama-is-scaring-business crowd for some actual evidence ... and they’ll tell you that business spending on plant and equipment is at its lowest level ... in 40 years. What they don’t mention is the fact that business investment always falls sharply when the economy is depressed ... But the Obama’s-socialist-policies-are-wrecking-the-economy chorus isn’t coming from businesses; it’s coming from business lobbyists, which isn’t at all the same thing."
President sharpens attack on conservative failure at MO rally. WSJ quotes: "It’s a choice between the policies that led us into this mess and the policies that are leading us out of this mess ... You’ve got the Bartons and the Boehners and the Blunts. They’ve got that `no’ philosophy, that `you’re on your own’ philosophy, the status quo philosophy."
GOP leaders meeting with corporate lobbyists to develop "governing agenda." TPMDC: "Roll Call obtained a letter from Boehner's office to leaders and lobbyists for the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and about two dozen other business groups inviting them to a forum on the Hill to discuss 'ways the business community can be an important part of the discussion on America Speaking Out as House Republicans listen and then form a governing agenda.' Democrats are, of course, having a field day with the news, calling on Boehner to broadcast the meeting..."
Treasury Formally Refuses To Deem China A Currency Manipulator
Treasury report refuses to label China a currency manipulator. Bloomberg: "The U.S. pledged to monitor China’s 'undervalued' yuan in the next three months for signs that Asia’s fastest-growing market is living up to its commitments to help rebalance the global economy. China took a 'significant step' last month when it ended its peg to the dollar ... the Treasury Department said yesterday. The report, initially due April 15, concluded that no major U.S. trading partner manipulated its currency and said it’s not yet clear whether China’s policy shift will correct the yuan’s undervaluation. The Treasury promised another review in October."
Sen. Chuck Schumer renews call for legislation to crack down on China. Reuters quotes: "It's clear it will take an act of Congress to do the obvious and call China out for its currency manipulation."
Leading GOPers join call: "'Everyone knows China manipulates its currency,' continued [Sen. Chuck] Grassley. 'If the President continues to avoid acknowledging China’s currency manipulation and fails to address it in a meaningful way, Congress will have to act.' ... 'I’d say this report is laughable if the consequences weren’t so dire,' [Sen. Orrin] Hatch said."
OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson mocks: "After Saying China Manipulates Currency Treasury Dept. Declines To Say China Manipulates Currency"
Alliance for American Manufacturing warns without crackdown, exports goals will not be reached: "Congress must pass strong legislation to address China’s currency manipulation so that America’s workers and businesses can compete on a level playing field. We will never double exports unless we stop China’s cheating."
60 Not Yet In Hand For Wall St. Reform
Previous GOP "yes" vote on Wall St. reform still not committed to supporting final bill. WSJ: "Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley is 'very concerned' about a provision in the financial overhaul bill designed to pay for the legislation ... Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) has said she's 'inclined' to support the bill ... Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts ... have said they are using the July recess to study the bill ... If [the late Sen. Robert Byrd's seat] isn't filled quickly, and if Mr. Grassley balks, Democrats must secure the support of all three northeastern Republicans to ensure passage."
James Galbraith argues what needs to be done beyond the Wall St. reform bill is "investigations," in TNR: "...a rigorous audit of the banks and of the Federal Reserve. This means investigations ... How will this help the economy? The first step toward health is realism. We must first stop pretending that bad assets can be made good, that bad loans will someday be repaid, and that bad people can run good banks."
Rich Want Higher Taxes On Poor
WSJ edit board member calls for higher taxes on poor, lower taxes on rich, reports Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo: "...on CNBC, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore [said] '... I’d raise the ten percent tax rate to fifteen percent and lower the [top] rates…Let’s bring the [corporate] rate down.' ...he explicitly advocated raising the lowest tax bracket while simultaneously cutting the highest ... Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has [also] crafted a budget plan that raises taxes on 90 percent of Americans while cutting them for the richest 10 percent."
The income gap between rich and poor Americans tripled between 1979 and 2009. Booman Tribune calls for more progressive taxation": "The conditions now resemble the conditions just prior to the Great Depression, so it may not be a coincidence that we've fallen into a Great Recession. ... Today, the top [income tax] rate is 35% and Obama wants to let it go back to thirty-nine. Not only is this a low rate in historic terms, but our government is running large deficits. And when you see people like Stephen Moore saying he'd like to see the bottom rate raised so that the top rate can be lowered, you know our elites are not even apologetic about looting our treasury on the backs of everyone else."
Rich ditching mortgages more than middle-class. NYT: "More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent ... About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent ... the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment."
Unemployed Want Jobs
"Kentucky Union Members Take Fight for Jobs, Jobless Aid to McConnell’s Doorstep" reports AFL-CIO's Mike Hall: "...250,000 workers this week and 1.7 million since June 1 have lost their [unemployment insurance] lifeline. Yesterday in Louisville, union activists led by the Kentucky State AFL-CIO marched and rallied outside McConnell’s office demanding McConnell lift the blockade..."
TNR's James Downie warns WH victories for youth not enough if they don't have jobs: "Obama's term has given his young supporters several important victories, including the new health care law, and major improvements in the federal student loan system ... Yet those victories are of little help to the millions of young unemployed ... I'm particularly partial to Robert Reich's suggestion of creating a Civilian Conservation Corps-like program to help clean up the oil spill..." OurFuture.org's Eric Lotke: "This coalition of blacks, Hispanics, youth and women worked to elect Democrats a few years ago ... Right now they’re sitting at home, out of work and low on hope."
Tim Geithner, Barack Obama, and other Democrats do themselves no favors by reapeating the conservative "government can't create jobs" line. Tapped's Tim Fernholz: "If voters (and members of Congress) are being told that they need to prevent layoffs of government employees at the state and local level at the same time they're being told that government can't create jobs, they're bound to be confused and skeptical. If the votes aren't there for fiscal support — even smart ideas like this to help states at low cost — the folks in the White House shouldn't be surprised."
Friction between WH and House Dems after veto threat over education reform cuts to pay for saving teacher jobs, reports LAT: "'The White House needs to be more engaged with the House's agenda,' said Rep. Steve Cohen, an antiwar Democrat from Tennessee. 'The House is where its friends are.' As Obama turns to these friends in the weeks ahead, he may find it increasingly difficult to persuade them to yield to his remaining legislative priorities. 'I don't give a rip about the administration,' said [Blue Dog] Rep. Dennis Cardoza ... 'The administration can decide to be with us or not. I'm all about jobs for my district.'"
Deficit Hysterics Also Hypocrites
Paul Krugman offers an item from the "Fake Deficit Hawkery" files: "One of the prime arguments of the austerity now now now people has been that you can’t do the sensible thing — run deficits while the economy is depressed, then turn to budget-balancing once recovery is well in place — because that will lack credibility. [But] some of these same people just love Paul Ryan’s budget plan — a plan that calls for a huge increase in public debt over the near term, offset by hypothetical spending cuts four decades from now."
Before we talk about raising the retirement age, we should cut the more obvious fat, argues W. Post's Ezra Klein: "Letting people retire at 65 rather than 70 costs money, but it at least serves a distinct purpose. Spending twice as much as other countries for health care without getting better results doesn't, and bearing half the world's defense spending on our shoulders is a questionable priority, as well. I'd be a lot more open to raising the Social Security age if there wasn't so much obvious fat to cut first."
NYT edit board slams British austerity plan: "No reputable economic theory justifies this bleeding ... The coalition budget reflects Conservative Party ideology, which asserts that as the government withdraws money from the economy, private businesses and consumers will step in to replace it. That won’t happen if Britons see only hard times ahead."
Drilling Moratorium Struck Down Again By Conservative Judges
Reagan-appointed appeals court judges refuse to reinstate drilling moratorium while case proceeds. LAT: "Prior to arguments, a White House spokesman suggested the administration would recraft a moratorium, something [Interior Sec.] Salazar has promised as well." Revised moratorium could happen today reports NYT.
Rand Paul renews criticism of President for being too mean to BP. AP quotes: "Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul said Thursday that harsh criticism of BP by President Barack Obama's administration could contribute to the oil giant's demise ... 'I don't want them to go out of business when they can't pay for the mess, and that's what that kind of rhetoric could do.'"
Bush's former oil drilling regulator claims no problems on her watch. Wonk Room's Brad Johnson: "Johnnie Burton, the director of Bush’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) from 2002 to 2007, has no regrets about her tenure, saying in an interview that she found no problems within the agency, now disbanded in disgrace..."
Attorney General Eric Holder promises a wide criminal probe into oil spill. Politico: "'There are a variety of entities and a variety of people who are the subjects of that investigation,' Holder told CBS' Bob Schieffer at the Aspen Ideas Festival. 'For people to conclude that BP is the focus of this investigation might not be correct.' ... he 'wouldn't put a timetable' on when any indictments might come down."
For BP, millions in fines amount to a day's worth of profit. ProPublica: "In the first three months of 2010, for instance, BP reported a profit of more than $6 billion — that’s $2.8 million an hour. A quick calculation shows that OSHA’s $87 million fine for safety violations at BP’s Texas City refinery would take the company a little more than a day—31 hours, to be exact—to pay off. Still, BP hasn’t paid that fine yet [and] OSHA penalties have a pattern of shrinking significantly —often by more than half—during negotiations."
BP is slated to claim over $600 million in ethanol tax credits this year, notes Climate Progress' Pat Garofalo: "...BP is the fourth-largest U.S. ethanol blender, behind Valero Energy, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil, and it’s worth asking whether the movement toward a green economy is at all aided by sending free money to oil companies for mixing some ethanol into their blend."
President will propose an additional $5B in energy manufacturing tax credits today. W. Post: "[A WH] official said in a background document e-mailed to reporters, 'The President believes that if an American company wants to create jobs and grow, we should be there to help them do it. Providing an additional $5 billion in Manufacturing Tax Credits will not only help leverage an additional $12 billion in private capital investment in ready projects, but also create tens of thousands of additional clean energy manufacturing jobs across the country.'"
Where's The Front-Page "ClimateGate Debunked" Coverage?
Joe Conason notes "Climategate" stories were front-pagers, "Climategate Debunked" stories, not so much: "...the reports would dispel doubt, if only the mainstream media showed sufficient interest in correcting the record ... Newspapers, magazines and newscasts ought to be informing the public, fairly and dispassionately, about the series of events that cast fresh doubt on the doubter lobby."
TNR's Brad Plumer, The Way Things Break and Climate Progress all rebut claim that fighting carbon pollution is too expensive. Plumer: "taxes and regulations can always be modified if they turn out to be unduly harmful. But we don't have nearly as good an understanding of what natural disasters await as we run this massive greenhouse experiment, and if things go horribly wrong, there's no going back."
The Green Grok's Tim Profeta pessimistic on climate bill without leadership from Obama and Reid: "In the absence of the committee process, now run aground, some other forum must be assembled to develop legislation. The leadership to deputize a new process really lies in the office of Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV), but thus far has not been forthcoming ... Deferring to the legislative branch has been the president’s tendency but is unlikely to succeed in this instance, as the Senate’s ability to assemble a compromise has foundered."
Hot enough for you? Too bad, it's going to get worse. NYT's Andrew Revkin: "[Social scientists] say the situation is worse than the old fable of the frog sitting oblivious in a heating pot ... climate scientists and meteorologists [say] heat waves — and new record highs — are ever more likely ... Such a trend has already been measured over the 48 contiguous states."
