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: The Consensus For Fixing The Economy
OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "...the AFL-CIO offers their analysis, Fixing What Is Wrong With Our Economy. Here are a few excerpts - but if you have been paying attention you have heard all of this again and again from all directions ... restore democracy's (the 99%'s) controls over corporations (the 1%) and especially re-regulate the financial sector, reverse the taxation policies that led to budget deficits and extreme inequality, fix the trade deals and other policies that led to trade deficits and allow the wealthy to pit working people against each other, and invest heavily in our country and people again. That's a start, anyway ..."
House GOP Prepares Another Radical Budget
House GOP ready to gut Medicare again in new budget proposal. Politico: "Despite getting hammered by Democrats last year, the GOP is gambling that going big and bold on their fiscal blueprint — think major changes to Medicare and Medicaid — will convince voters the GOP is the nation’s responsible party ... The plan will be unveiled Tuesday in a speech by [House Budget Cmte Chair Paul] Ryan ... Republicans believe they can avoid a repeat of last year’s debacle [by incorporating Democratic] Sen. Ron Wyden’s Medicare premium support plan ... the budget would lower spending levels to $1.028 trillion — well below the caps put in place by the debt ceiling deal last year ... Republicans are likely to use the reconciliation process to incorporate a plan to avoid automatic Pentagon cuts with $110 billion in reductions elsewhere..."
But some conservatives may complain it's not radical enough. W. Post: "...Ryan may this year face a new headache: tea party conservatives in his party eager to slash spending more quickly than his proposal will advocate ... The Club for Growth fired a warning shot Friday, arguing in a news release that any budget that fails to eliminate deficits within a decade would be 'simply an exercise in futility.' Ryan’s budget last year would have taken nearly 30 years to eliminate the deficit."
Progressives Pressure AARP On Social Security
Progressive coalition challenges AARP after reports of secret meetings with Social Security opponents. HuffPost: "The campaigns follow a report by HuffPost that the influential senior citizens lobby will soon be holding a private, principals-only 'salon-style conversation' with a host of advocates of entitlement cuts ... One AARP volunteer who attended a two-day training last week wrote HuffPost to say that the listening tour appeared to be aimed at shifting AARP policy in favor of cuts to benefits."
Click here to tell AARP, "Be a leader. Defend Social Security, Don't Hobnob With Its Enemies."
GOP Split Between Far Right-Wing And Completely Insane Right-Wing
Halfway through the GOP primary process, a party split. W. Post: "If you are a Republican voter who prizes beating Obama over all other issues, Romney has been, is and will be your guy ... And yet, for all the emphasis on electability, Romney’s inability to engender passion — or anything resembling it — among the the party’s ideological and religious base has led to a protracted search for an alternative that appears to have settled on former senator Rick Santorum..."
Brokered convention seen as increasingly likely among party insiders. NYT: "...campaign and party lawyers are dusting off their party rule books, running through decades-old procedural arcana and studying the most recent convention-floor fight, between Ronald Reagan and President Gerald R. Ford in 1976. Republican officials also are bracing for the possibility of a prenomination clash between the party’s establishment and members of the Tea Party movement, many of whom may be attending their first national convention."
Public Not Panicked Over Gas Prices
High gas prices not altering consumer behavior. Time's Brad Tuttle: "...recent sales figures, however, show that there isn’t much scaling back occurring lately. Retail sales in February were up 1.1% from January, and restaurant sales were up 8.2% compared to the year before ... consumers may be adapting to higher gas prices in a few ways, such as purchasing more fuel-efficient cars and perhaps driving a bit less..."
Obama campaign slams "snake oil" promises to lower gas prices. The Hill: "[David] Axelrod told CBS News’s Bob Schieffer that, 'the notion that we can simply drill our way out of this or that somehow that, if we -- if we say that, that the gas prices will go down magically now -- Newt Gingrich's $2.50 a gallon and so on, that's not oil talk, that's snake oil talk.'"
GOP launches "preemptive strike" on possible release from petroleum reserve. The Hill: "Releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a 696-million-barrel stockpile stored on the Gulf Coast, is a ploy to score political points amid gas prices that are nearing a national average of $4 per gallon, Republicans argued ... Some Democrats and liberal groups have been pushing Obama for weeks to tap the SPR, pointing to Iran’s threats to cut off oil exports and block a key oil shipping route."
National Bike Summit plans push for bike paths to mitigate fuel costs. USA Today: "During debate over a long-awaited federal transportation funding bill, passed last week by the Senate ... some members of Congress sought to strip from the bill matching funds for projects such as biking trails ... Bicyclists and recreation advocates around the nation rallied, writing, calling and e-mailing their senators and representatives. The funding, which makes up about 1.5% of the total appropriation, remained in the Senate version. Now, cyclists and recreation advocates are working to keep it in the bill being considered in the House."
US Mortgage Crisis May Have Contributed To Afghan Massacre
Mortgage problems that beset accused Afghan massacre killer plague soldiers' families. Bloomberg: "For soldiers who have been deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, such financial pain may compound battlefield trauma ... The Obama administration has said it is cracking down on mortgage companies, banks and other financial institutions that have broken U.S. laws aimed at protecting military personnel from predatory lending and foreclosure proceedings while they are deployed."
Former Goldman Sachs partners demands response to Greg Smith oped. Bloomberg: "'These are very serious accusations from a credible person in my view and I hope it does indeed provide a "wake-up" call to the board of directors,' wrote [Jacki] Zehner, who was the first female trader promoted to partner and is married to a former partner."
Breakfast Sides
Broadcasters fighting FCC proposal to disclose funders of campaign ads. Bloomberg: "FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, the agency’s sole Republican, said in a Feb. 10 speech that the proposal is 'likely to be a jobs destroyer' because stations will devote resources to complying ... Because stations’ practices vary, placing the files online 'would ultimately lead to a Soviet-style standardization of the way advertising should be sold as determined by the government,' Jerald Fritz, senior vice president of Allbritton Communications, which owns ABC-affiliated stations in six markets..."
Robert Kuttner calls China policy "muddled.": "Last week, speaking at the White House, President Obama announced that he was joining the European Union in filing a major trade complaint against China, for its export controls on so-called 'rare earth' minerals ... Despite this get-tough stance, however, the administration's main trade initiative towards Asia is a little known pending agreement, the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership. This deal, which the White House hopes to conclude by year's end, would sidestep the mercantilism of China and other Asian nations that is displacing U.S. manufacturing; it would do nothing to raise labor or social standards, and would make the outsourcing problem worse."
