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: After Trade Deals, China Currency Bill Critical
OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "Congress just passed three more NAFTA-like trade deals, so our country's trade deficit is going to get even worse. And pressure on working people to accept pay and benefit cuts and longer and harder working hours is going to get even worse. And the rewards to the top 1%, at the expense of the rest of us, are going to get even greater. But we can still win the fight over China's manipulation of its currency."
NYC Backs Down, Occupation Continues
After nationwide grassroots campaign, NYC backs off clearing out Occupy Wall Street. NYT: "'Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park – Brookfield Properties – that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation,' Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said in a statement."
Slate's Eliot Spitzer argues "Occupy Wall Street Has Already Won": " It has already altered our political debate, changed the agenda, shifted the discussion in newspapers, on cable TV, and even around the water cooler. And that is wonderful. Suddenly, the issues of equity, fairness, justice, income distribution, and accountability for the economic cataclysm–issues all but ignored for a generation—are front and center."
"Dems Press Eric Holder To Investigate Banks For Colluding Over ATM Fees" reports TPM.
Jeff Madrick and Frank Partnoy rip book by NYT reporters blaming affording housing push for financial crisis: "...the authors blame the crisis on the goals set by the Clinton administration in the early 1990s to make lending 'affordable' to more middle- and low-income home buyers ... This bold claim, however, is not substantiated by persuasive analysis or by any hard evidence in the book. The GSEs did generate large losses, but their bad investments in housing loans followed rather than led the crisis; most of those investments involved purchases or guarantees made well after the subprime and housing bubbles had been expanded by private loans and were almost about to burst."
11-year sentence for hedge fund CEO Raj Rajaratnam. NYT: "... the longest prison sentence ever for insider trading ... may help deter the illegal use of confidential information on Wall Street."
TPM's Brian Beutler explains who are the 47 percent that currently do not pay net federal income taxes: "Right now about one-third of the 47 percent are people who are too old to work, full time students, disability beneficiaries, long-term unemployed and other such despicable freeloaders ... it includes people who have part time jobs and low paying jobs, Social Security and unemployment beneficiaries. The rest were people whose jobs paid little enough that, on net, they owed no income taxes. These people may have benefited from the stimulus' Making-Work-Pay tax credit, or saw their incomes drop enough during the recession to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit ... attacking the 47 percent for gaming the system is an implicit call for taxing Social Security income, taxing disability benefits, further taxing unemployment benefits..."
President To Salute Auto Turnaround In Michigan
President to tout auto industry comeback in Michigan today. NYT: "The president’s path to a second term is built around winning a wide swath of states, including many with close ties to the auto industry ... Mitt Romney, who was born in Michigan and chose the birthplace of the American automobile to announce his presidential bid at the Henry Ford Museum four years ago, has denounced the rescue of the industry ... Monica Shepard, who has worked at General Motors for three decades as an electrician, remembers the day that Mr. Reagan visited. She conceded that Mr. Obama may not be as popular, but she said many people here were grateful ... 'Every small businessman that I know, they’re all glad the president bailed out General Motors because without that, the whole area would be obliterated,' said Ms. Shepard, 54 ..."
Senate GOP "jobs" plan not only fails to explain where the jobs would come, but also fails to detail how to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy. W. Post's Suzy Khimm: "Individual income taxes would be at a maximum of 25 percent, with two marginal rates. The top corporate rate would be reduced to 'no more than 25 percent,' ... Senate Republicans promise that such reductions will be revenue neutral — or close to it. But they leave it to a Congressional committee to make the tough decisions necessary..."
House GOP passes anti-abortion measure instead of working jobs reports AP.
Speaker Boehner may try to pass six-year transportation bill. Politico: "Speaker John Boehner is starting with the mother of all public works bills — directing top aides to work with the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on a six-year highway bill to rebuild the nation’s transportation infrastructure ... The Ohio Republican is looking to pay for the legislation by expanding domestic energy production, according to a GOP insider. Logistically, that could be a tricky way to pay for the bill. Boehner will move forward as soon as the pay-for is figured out, sources said."
Romney Hit For China Flip-Flop
Obama campaign charges Mitt Romney with flip-flopping on China policy. AP: "Romney said if elected president he would immediately label China as a currency manipulator. He also wants American trade authorities to consider China's currency policies as a subsidy on Chinese goods, which would allow the U.S. to put a countervailing subsidy on Chinese imports. ... 'A year ago, Romney hit Obama in (Romney's) book for being too tough on China. Now Mitt's a trade warrior? Should he have called his book No Shame!' top Obama adviser David Axelrod wrote on Twitter on Thursday."
Herman Cain might like the Fed too much for conservatives, suggests The Hill: "...his backing of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and opposition to auditing the Federal Reserve could hurt him..."
ThinkProgress' Daniel Weiss previews today's oil drilling policy speech from Gov. Rick Perry: "Despite the increase in drilling already underway, Perry would 'immediately authorize[e] the release of some federal lands and waters for energy development.' ... this new production could occur without the new safeguards the administration established for offshore oil drilling necessitated by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster ... Perry relies on oil industry statistics to make the case that more drilling means millions of more jobs. The Washington Post recently reviewed the American Petroleum Institute’s job claims, and found them wanting."
GOP suffers a party-wide failure to accept facts after Great Recession, finds NYT's Paul Krugman: "The Great Recession should have been a huge wake-up call. Nothing like this was supposed to be possible in the modern world. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should be engaged in serious soul-searching, asking how much of what he or she thought was true actually isn’t. But the G.O.P. has responded to the crisis not by rethinking its dogma but by adopting an even cruder version of that dogma, becoming a caricature of itself."
Breakfast Sides
China targeting American clean energy with "$15.5B war chest" reports Bloomberg: "Armed with at least $15.5 billion in state-backed credit, China’s biggest windmill makers Sinovel Wind Group Co. and Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. won their first major foreign orders in the past year. They plan to set up plants abroad, including China’s first in the U.S., easing entry into markets for delivering machines that can weigh 750 tons each."
House Dems make case to Super Committee for increased revenue. The Hill: " The proposals challenge the panel to make more than the $1.2 trillion in required cuts [to the deficit], and includes calls to raise taxes and end subsidies for oil companies."
Three law professors debunk GOP myths about NLRB's case against Boeing, in NYT oped: "Myth No. 1: The general counsel has invoked an unprecedented legal rule ... Myth No. 2: The Boeing complaint means that the government can dictate the location of businesses ... Myth No. 3: The general counsel has discretion to drop the case in the name of economic policy."
