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: Higher "Productivity" Is Not The American Dream
OurFuture.org's Sam Pizzigati: "Between 1973 and 2011, that productivity most certainly did rise substantially, by 80.4 percent. That increase, EPI's Larry Mishel notes, would have easily been 'enough to generate large advances in living standards and wages if productivity gains were broadly shared.' But those gains would not be shared. Average hourly compensation in the United States increased by just 39.2 percent between 1973 and 2011, less than half the increase in productivity ... Median U.S. workers — the nation's most typical workers — didn’t come close to that 39.2 percent. Their pay increased only 10.7 percent from 1973 to 2011 ... [This] reflects 'an overall shift in how much of the income in the economy is received in wages by workers and how much is received by owners of capital.'"
Austerity Destroying Youth
Larry Summers slams European austerity in FT oped: "...Spain and Ireland stood out for their low ratios of debt to gross domestic product five years ago with ratios well below Germany. Italy had a high debt ratio but a very favourable deficit position. Europe’s problem countries are in trouble because the financial crisis under way since 2008 has damaged their financial systems and led to a collapse in growth ... Treating symptoms rather than causes is usually a good way to make a patient worse. So it is in Europe ... the IMF and the international community should make further support conditional not merely on the actions of individual states, but on a common European commitment to growth."
NYT's Paul Krugman notes austerity is destroying the next generation: "...there’s also a war on the young ... [Romney said], 'Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.' ... pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that ... What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard."
No Growth Plan From GOP
TNR's Jon Cohn finds the "blind spot" in Romney's economic program: "...the real story is what’s not here: Proposals designed specifically to boost growth in the short run, despite still-high unemployment."
Declines in public sector employment hampering President's economic strategy. W. Post: "...Obama asked his advisers in August to assemble another plan to boost the economy. Independent economists and officials at the Federal Reserve agreed that local and state job cuts were holding back the recovery. But Obama’s team did not plan to include a proposal to address the problem ... his advisers answered that Congress would never agree to more aid. But Obama instructed them to insert a $35 billion aid plan into the proposal anyway ... Then he went on a bus tour to promote the plan. It went nowhere in Congress."
Obama "Green Team" Steps Up
Obama's enviro team "comes out swinging" reports The Hill: "Four speeches over four days by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s signal a political all-hands-on-deck approach to defending the White House’s economic record ahead of the 2012 elections."
GOP still trying to make Solyndra a scandal. Politico: "Republicans are hoping to keep Solyndra alive this summer with a series of hearings and legislation to reform the Energy Department loan guarantee program."
World not getting far on meeting climate goals, notes W. Post's Brad Plumer: "The IEA has recommended that countries around the world need to have at least 38 coal plants that capture and store the carbon up and running by 2020 in order to stay on pace to meet that 2°C climate target. Currently, there are no such plants operating ... The IEA estimates that fuel economy needs to improve by an average of 2.7 percent per year by 2030 in order to keep the share of emissions from transportation under control. We’re not on pace there ... with a few exceptions, most countries have been slow to adopt stricter building codes, to promote solar thermal systems to heat buildings, and to speed along the adoption of energy-efficient appliances."
Breakfast Sides
Politico looks at what is in the preventative care fund that Republicans are attacking as a "slush fund": "$83 million was allocated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to target health messages for areas with high tobacco use ... $10 million to support programs such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline ... $226 million toward local projects promoting healthy lifestyles that help combat heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes ... infrastructure and operations to bump up vaccination rates ... $12 million to the CDC to help state health departments reduce infections that arise from treatment in a hospital or health care facility."
Obama campaign tries to overcome GOP effort to restrict voting rights. NYT: "Many of the laws in question — including the ones in Florida and Wisconsin — are the subject of legal challenges by Democratic groups ... 'We have to assume that these laws will be in effect in November,' Jeremy Bird, the field director for the campaign, said ... Senior advisers to Mr. Obama’s campaign say many of the new laws put a heavy burden on the registration process, making it more difficult to recruit first-time voters. Other laws shorten the early-voting period in states that had tried to expand the voting window..."
