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.
The UK Holds Its Corporations Accountable. Can We?
OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "In the UK the News-Of-The-World/News Corp/Murdoch scandal seems to be reawakening democracy. A big, powerful corporation has been found to be engaged in criminal activity, manipulating news, paying off police and politicians, and generally getting its way. The people, press and politicians are rising up, holding the company and its executives legally accountable and are taking back control of their system. Could this happen in the US? ... Here is one test that will tell us if accountability is still possible here. What follow-up will we see from the Justice Department in response to the revelation that members of the Financial Crisis panel illegally leaked inside information, including plans to investigate foreign banks, to lobbyists?"
Conservative Posturing Threatens Debt Limit Deal
House Republicans prepare budget vote that undercuts Speaker's ability to compromise. Politico: "...Republican congressional leaders still want a 10-year, $1.8 trillion cut from nondefense appropriations and have added a balanced-budget constitutional amendment that so restricts future tax legislation that even President Ronald Reagan might have opposed it in the 1980s ... the House bill represents a major political escalation that risks undermining Boehner’s standing. And going into 2012, congressional Republicans seem focused on driving their conservative base, displaying little confidence that one of their presidential candidates will oust Obama ...
The new House escalation is all the more striking because Senate Democrats have begun to offer concessions, going beyond the administration’s position in some cases, on appropriations cuts for 2012 and 2013 ..."
Senate leaders working on bipartisan compromise to raise debt limit. Bloomberg: "Reid of Nevada and McConnell are amending a proposal to give Obama the power to raise the debt limit in response to complaints the plan does little to reduce the deficit. They are considering having House Republicans attach spending cuts to the legislation, according to a congressional aide, as well as provisions creating a committee of lawmakers charged with finding additional savings later. "
Bipartisan deal may include spending cuts but no revenue increases. W. Post: "If that [debt limit increase plan] clears the Senate, the House is expected to revise the measure, adding a proposal to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years — savings that will come through cuts to domestic programs but not new tax revenue. The plan would also create a new congressional panel that would, by the end of the year, seek to come up with a way of reducing the deficit potentially by trillions more through cuts in entitlements and other new tax revenue."
GOP budget cutting legislation lacks actual plan to cut budget. Bloomberg: "It’s politically popular to line up behind [a constitutional amendment; laying out specific cuts is less appealing ... Almost none [of its supporters] say how they’d slash Medicare, eliminate federal programs or shrink education, law enforcement or national defense."
GOP Sen. Tom Coburn proposes massive cuts to the elderly and the military. The Hill: "Coburn plans to unveil a $9 trillion deficit-reduction package Monday that would give lawmakers a menu of policy options to reduce the deficit. Coburn has suggested $1 trillion in savings could come from eliminating special tax breaks, such as the tax subsidy for ethanol ... Coburn has also proposed cutting $1 trillion from the Defense Department budget over the next decade and more than $500 billion from other government agencies ... Coburn favors saving $1 trillion in federal interest payments over the next nine years by curbing the projected growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."
Cordray Tapped To Head CFPB
Warren deputy gets nomination to CFPB. W. Post: "President Obama will nominate former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sidestepping Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren ... [Cordray] is already at the agency as director of enforcement ... A person familiar with Warren’s thinking said she plans to return to Harvard in the fall and has not ruled out a run for Senate ... Forty-four senators led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), ranking Republican on the banking committee, have vowed to turn away anyone named for the job unless significant changes are made to the agency’s structure and funding ... Some Democrats expressed disappointment over the choice but indicated they would fight for Cordray as well."
PCCC embraces Cordray. LAT: "Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which collected more than 350,000 signatures for an online petition supporting Warren's nomination, said her group would support Cordray. 'With her track record of standing up to Wall Street and fighting for consumers, Elizabeth Warren was the best qualified to lead this bureau that she conceived -- and we imagine Richard Cordray would agree,' Taylor said. 'That said, Rich Cordray has been a strong ally of Elizabeth Warren's and we hope he will continue her legacy of holding Wall Street accountable.'"
Krugman laments: "What’s going to happen ... is no director for the CFPB in any case. But meanwhile Obama has passed up a chance to symbolically align himself with the public and against the banksters. Sad. Really sad."
NYT's Paul Krugman argues against rushing a foreclosure fraud settlement that goes easy on the banks: "The claim that removing the legal cloud over foreclosure would help the housing market — in particular, that it would help support housing prices — leaves me scratching my head. It would just accelerate foreclosures, and if more families were evicted from their homes, that would mean more homes offered for sale — an increase in supply. An increase in the supply of a good usually pushes that good’s price down, not up. Why should the effect on housing go the opposite way?"
High-frequency stock traders step up their lobbying to stave off regulation. NYT: "Critics say traders with access to the fastest machines win at the expense of ordinary investors by seizing on the best deals and turning fast profits before other traders. They also say the lightning-fast trading strategies may be making financial markets less stable because the speed and volume of trades distort prices. The traders say they have brought greater competition to the markets and have substantially cut trading fees for even the smallest investors."
Carbon Capture Setback
Major carbon capture project scrapped thanks to lack of cap-and-trade climate policy. Time's Tara Thean: "[American Electric Power] had set aside $668 million to build its full-scale CCS [carbon capture and sequestration] plant. That kind of outlay would have required the company to raise the price it charges for electricity, but part of the point of cap and trade is to make carbon more expensive across the market, encouraging conservation and the development of clean alternatives. AEP's price hike thus would eventually have been consistent with the industry's as a whole. With no climate plan in place, however, that egalitarian system falls apart. The result: the new plant was canceled, CCS technology stalls and the world gets warmer."
