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: GOP Debate: Seven Dwarfs, Too Small For America
OurFuture.org's Isaiah Poole: "Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate was often more caffeinated than usual ... All of the Republican candidates have one thing in common: They want to make America a more brutal place ... There was Herman Cain, doubling down on his scorn of the Occupy Wall Street protesters ... Mitt Romney, doubling down on his assertion that if millions of homeowners are being foreclosed, we should just let it happen ... One commenter on Twitter suggested during the debate that President Obama simply buy an hour of television time close to the 2012 election and re-air this debate."
President Keeps Pressure On For Jobs Bill
President stresses middle class tax cuts in jobs bill push. McClatchy: "'Don't be bamboozled,' Obama told a boisterous crowd at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., noting that he caught an anti-jobs act ad on TV Monday night while watching a football game. 'Don't fall for this notion that somehow the jobs act is proposing to raise your taxes. It's just not true. I want to be clear. The vast majority of Americans would see a tax cut under this jobs bill,' he said."
Conservative debate crowd cheers when Herman Cain blames the unemployed. HuffPost: "Herman Cain recently criticized the Occupy Wall Street protesters, saying, 'Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself.' At Tuesday night's CNN debate, Cain stood by his comments -- to loud cheers from the audience. 'I still stand by my statement,' he said."
President predicts close election because "the economy is not where it wants to be" in ABC interview.
The Hill's Sam Youngman argues the President's jobs strategy is working: "...this is what winning campaigns look like when a candidate is running against strong economic headwinds ... , it is now Republicans in Congress who are clamoring for bipartisan cooperation. And if we learned anything from Obama this summer, it’s that appeals for bipartisanship are the clarion call of the party that’s back-pedaling ... [WH officials] are eager to see the roll-call vote when the $35 billion for teachers and first responders comes up Friday ... what will Republican Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) and others do?"
"Conservatives want to end support for America’s fastest growing industry": solar. Grist's David Roberts: "In these grim economic times, one U.S. industry has defied gravity ... It now employs 100,000 Americans at 5,000 mostly small businesses spread across all 50 states. Unlike in so many others, in this industry the U.S. has a positive trade balance with China; it is a net exporter of high-tech manufactured products ... At a time when jobs are at the top of every politician's mind, surely a bit of low-cost economic stimulus that doesn't increase the deficit and leverages tons of private capital and creates tens of thousands of jobs can serve as the rare locus of bipartisan cooperation. Right?"
Top investors urge global climate treaty. AP: "A group of 285 investors representing more than $20 trillion in assets say only legally enforceable carbon limits can spur the level of investment needed to keep temperatures from rising further."
Romney Says Let Foreclosures "Hit The Bottom"
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney says we should nothing to deal with the foreclosure crisis. ThinkProgress quotes: "...don’t try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom..."
Foreclosure fraud settlement proposal seeks to help underwater homeowners, entice CA AG. LAT: "A proposal to allow some creditworthy homeowners to refinance underwater mortgages has become part of settlement talks between government officials and major banks over botched foreclosure paperwork. California would be a major beneficiary of such a plan because it leads the nation with 2.1 million mortgages in which the homeowner owes more than the value of the home ... The new proposal would apply to people who are underwater on their homes but making mortgage payments on time."
State attorneys general press Senate Republicans to end filibuster of Richard Cordray to lead Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. W. Post: "The National Association of Attorneys General on Tuesday sent a letter to Senate leaders calling nominee Richard Cordray 'brilliant and balanced.' ... 'We understand the political nature of this,' said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a Republican who still has reservations about the bureau. But, he said, 'if there’s gonna be a director, we can’t think of anybody who would be better.'"
Super Committee Sputtering
Nowhere close to a deal. NYT: "...party leaders may need to step in if they want to ensure agreement, say people involved in the panel’s work. The 12-member committee is just over halfway through the 76-day interval from its first meeting to the date its final report is due on Nov. 23, but has not gained much traction. The lawmakers have not agreed on basic elements like a benchmark against which savings will be measured."
"Gang Of Six" group of bipartisan deficit hysterics to meet with Super Committee today. Roll Call: "...the exact purpose of Wednesday’s meeting was unclear. Sources close to the panel indicated that there had been some early discussion of holding a public hearing with the gang of six but that it had fallen to the wayside."
New Deportation Data Stokes Debate
New data stokes renewed debate over President Obama's immigration strategy. NYT: "The report [from two law schools] found that about a third of around 226,000 immigrants who have been deported under the program, known as Secure Communities, had spouses or children who were United States citizens, suggesting a broad impact from those removals on Americans in Latino communities ... [Obama administration] officials said that 55 percent of the immigrants deported were criminal convicts ... The results were an 89 percent increase in deportations of criminals since the beginning of the Obama administration, the officials said. Of the remaining illegal immigrants deported, the great majority were arrested soon after they crossed the border illegally or had returned illegally after being deported..."
The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf slams GOP candidates for anti-immigrant attacks: "... we've got Mitt Romney and Rick Perry using the issue like demagogues appealing to the worst impulses of the Republican electorate, Herman Cain showing there's a shockingly ugly side beneath his likable veneer, and the border governor who has never demonized illegal immigrants shut out of the debate by CNN. I interacted with a fair number of illegal immigrants growing up in Southern California and reporting in the Inland Empire. It's true that they broke the law to enter the country. But the vast majority of them behaved with a lot more integrity and personal dignity than the majority of candidates on the Republican debate stage last night."
