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: For SOTU, Stand Up For Social Security
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: " The President can go a lot further toward winning over voters who are disappointed, doubtful, or just unenthusiastic, if he chooses an issue that's vitally important to them and offers a clear, strong and unequivocal defense. Social Security is the ideal issue. It's one of many, according to polls, where both parties are out of step with voters. After seeing their savings, pension plans, and housing values destroyed, people are frightened about their retirement security. They don't hear anybody in Washington offering to protect their benefits."
President's Election Year Agenda To Be Set in SOTU
President prepares to lay out re-election themes in tomorrow's SOTU. W. Post: "Advisers say he will use the State of the Union to echo and expand on the economic themes he raised last month in Osawatomie, Kan., where he offered a populist defense of imperiled middle class ambitions."
And box in Republicans. The Hill: "He’s looking forward to a slew of television shots showing grim-faced GOP lawmakers reacting with stony silence to policy pitches he hopes will resonate with middle-class voters in an election year ... This will give Obama an opportunity — with the lights and attention on him — to show that he’s the adult in the room, and as Democratic consultant Karen Finney put it, to show that 'Republicans have been childish.'"
Foreclosure Fraud Settlement Meeting Today
Proposed bank settlement goes down wrong path, argues Simon Johnson in Politico: "The meeting in Chicago on Monday of state attorneys general is being touted as representing a key moment on the road to a real mortgage settlement. It’s not. In fact, most of the AGs from key states are unlikely to show up. Yet this week, and the coming weeks, are crucial because the Obama administration urgently needs to shift toward agreeing with Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, and others who insist that there must be a combined state-federal investigation of all mortgage practices ... The Obama administration has continued to press for a small-scale settlement of the alleged abuses around mortgage practices, repeating and compounding the mistake. The White House has routinely overlooked voters’ dismay at its favoring 'too big to fail' banks. But given how its electoral base is now reacting, this time may be different — because a lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters in swing states could cost President Barack Obama reelection."
"Obama Must Choose on Housing: A Sweetheart Deal for the 1% or a Fair Deal for the 99%," argues Van Jones and George Goehl: "If President Obama is serious about solving this crisis, he must ensure three things: First: The banks must pay a minimum $300 billion in principal reduction for homeowners with underwater mortgages and/or restitution for foreclosed-on families ... Second: There must be a full-fledged, full-blown investigation into Wall Street financial fraud by the Department of Justice ... Third: There should be no civil or criminal immunity for the banks from future lawsuits."
New "Gilded Age" Roils Globe
New "gilded age" raising "global tensions" suggests NYT: "...we are living through slightly different gilded ages that are unfolding simultaneously. The West is experiencing a second gilded age, while the emerging markets ... are experiencing their first gilded age. The resulting economic transformation is even more dramatic than that in the Gilded Age. Now, billions of people are taking part across much of the globe, not just the inhabitants of the West ... this time around, the whole world no longer has the escape valve which, at least for a time, released some of the pressures of the Industrial Revolution: Europe’s huddled masses could emigrate to the New World. Even with that option, it is worth remembering, the conflicts and inequities created by industrialization and urbanization were ultimately resolved in the West only after a half century of revolution and war."
British rebel over executive pay. NYT: "Over the last two months, two of the country’s biggest investors stepped forward to declare their general disapproval with the level of executive pay, and to call for investors to be given more say over the packages. Prime Minister David Cameron backed their calls on Thursday after saying that large pay packages, during times when many households have to tighten their belts, understandably 'made people’s blood boil.'"
NYT explores why iPhones are not manufactured in the US: "When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. 'This is in case you give us the contract,' the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day. The Chinese plant got the job ... The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day."
What debt crisis? Interest payments on debt near record low. Bloomberg: "Interest payments will cost the government 3.1 percent of gross domestic product this year ... That’s down from 4.8 percent in 1991, the highest in the past 50 years, during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Since 1980, the only incumbent with a lower ratio than Barack Obama was George W. Bush in 2004."
Bernanke approach being "validated" according to Bloomberg: "Bernanke pursued new stimulus last year to create jobs, defying critics who said his record accommodation would spark inflation. Now, with U.S. growth accelerating and the euro area on the brink of a second recession in three years, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi are showing they also are willing to spur their economies while inflation exceeds their goals."
NYT's Paul Krugman sees a glimmer of hope in the economy: "...there are reasons to think that we’re finally on the (slow) road to better times. And we wouldn’t be on that road if Mr. Obama had given in to Republican demands that he slash spending, or the Federal Reserve had given in to Republican demands that it tighten money."
GOP paid price by failing to address jobs. Politico: "In a polling presentation to the [House GOP] conference on Friday in Baltimore, [David] Winston showed that President Barack Obama’s disapproval ratings surged when Republicans stuck to a job-centric message. When Congress tangled with Obama over the payroll tax holiday and debt ceiling, his approval ratings jumped while theirs slumped ... GOP talking points over the past year have been largely useless. A recent poll that he presented in a slideshow indicated that when considering the 2012 election, 58 percent of the country thinks the phrase 'Where are the jobs?' is more important than what the size and role of government should be, which registers at 37 percent."
The New Yorker's James Surowiecki explores how private equity firms like Bain really profit: "The real reason that we should be concerned about private equity’s expanding power lies in the way these firms have become increasingly adept at using financial gimmicks to line their pockets, deriving enormous wealth not from management or investing skills but, rather, from the way the U.S. tax system works. Indeed, for an industry that’s often held up as an exemplar of free-market capitalism, private equity is surprisingly dependent on government subsidies for its profits."
House GOP tries to regain leverage in the payroll tax debate. Politico: "...the [Democratic' millionaires’ tax and [GOP demands for the Keystone] oil pipeline are all about getting the base fired up again as negotiators look for a middle-of-the-road compromise ... But it doesn’t sound as though Republicans are ready to take down the entire package over Keystone, and they’re being cautious about drawing a line in the sand on the issue."
Lockouts, not strikes, now at a "record percentage of the nation’s work stoppages." NYT: "With many private-sector labor unions growing smaller and weaker, and with public-sector unions under attack in numerous states, some employers think the time is ideal to use lockouts, a forceful approach they were once reluctant to use."
Push for anti-union law roils Indiana. NYT: "The standoff, three weeks old, is over whether Indiana should become the first state in the Midwest manufacturing belt to adopt legislation banning union contracts from requiring nonunion members to pay fees for representation ... At times in recent days, the chants of protesters ... have echoed through the rotunda: 'Occupy the Super Bowl!'"
