Petition To Stop Summers Gains Steam
Sign the the joint Campaign for America's Future-Daily Kos petition to stop Summers: "Over a hundred thousand people have already sent a message to the President rejecting his nomination."
Women's groups rally behind Yellen. Politico: "...the groups have had representatives and donors voice concerns with the offices of at least 9 Democratic senators ... More visits are planned when Congress returns in September and the National Organization for Women will launch a grass-roots campaign to activate their more than 500,000 members nationwide through emails and phone calls."
The Dream Marches On
Obama says economic opportunity is where we have "fallen most short" since the March. Roll Cal quotes: "We can continue down our current path in which the gears of this great democracy grind to a halt and our children accept a life of lower expectations, where politics is a zero-sum game, where few do very well, while struggling families of every race fight over a shrinking economic pie. That’s one path. Or we can have the courage to change. The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history; that we are masters of our fate."
But Obama's address amounted to a missed opportunity, argues OurFuture.org's Isaiah J. Poole: "Once again, Obama gave a speech that hit many of the right themes but failed to light a fire because its chemistry was not up to the demands of the moment. He correctly acknowledged that we are far from the goals of economic justice and equality that King set forth. But the call to arms against the forces responsible for such realities as the gap between blacks and whites on employment and wealth needed a sharper edge to cut through Washington’s coagulated politics."
MLK wanted a guaranteed middle-class income for all, reminds The Atlantic's Jordan Weissman: "Washington's previous efforts to fight poverty, he concluded, had been 'piecemeal and pygmy.' ... 'the programs of the past all have another common failing -- they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.' ... King argued that the guaranteed income be 'pegged to the median of society,' and rise automatically along with the U.S. standard of living ... Was it feasible? Maybe. He noted an estimate by John Kenneth Galbraith that the government could create a generous guaranteed income with $20 billion, which, as the economist put it, 'not much more than we will spend the next fiscal year to rescue freedom and democracy and religious liberty as these are defined by "experts" in Vietnam.'"
Spirit of March continues in today's nationwide fast-food strikes. The Nation's Allison Kikenny: "Organizing against low-paying jobs at fast food restaurants began last November in New York when hundreds of workers went on strike in a one-day protest. By the summer, the movement expanded to include thousands of workers across the country in cities like Detroit, Chicago and Kansas City. This time around, workers in places like Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Memphis and Raleigh plan on getting involved with backing from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)."
WH Meets With GOP On Budget
Bipartisan deficit deal talks resume. NYT: "...a group of Republican senators will resume talks on Thursday with senior presidential advisers at the White House after a lapse that has lasted weeks ... Neither side expressed optimism in interviews, with talks snagged on the same issues that killed past bipartisan efforts: Republicans’ demands for deeper Medicare cuts and President Obama’s insistence that they, in return, agree to higher taxes on the wealthy and some corporations."
"Nearly 20 Percent Of Scientists Contemplate Moving Overseas Due In Part To Sequestration" reports HuffPost.
"States find new ways to resist health law" reports W. Post: "Several Republican-led states at the forefront of the campaign to undermine President Obama’s health-care law have come up with new ways to try to thwart it, refusing to enforce consumer protections, for example, and restricting federally funded workers hired to help people enroll in coverage. And in at least one state, Missouri, local officials have been barred from doing anything to help put the law into place ... much of the activity involves 'navigators,' a workforce of tens of thousands of people who will be deployed by the administration to provide in-person or over-the-phone assistance ... More than a dozen states have imposed licensing rules and limits on these helpers, with the encouragement of professional insurance agents and brokers, who lobbied heavily for the restrictions."
Breakfast Sides
Regulators unveil proposed to implement Dodd-Frank rules on mortgage lenders. Reuters: "Six federal regulatory agencies released a reworked proposal on Wednesday that would require lenders to maintain a stake in the loans they bundle and sell as securities, part of efforts to limit the type of underwriting practices that fed the housing bubble ... The regulators’ plan would exempt more loans than earlier proposals by eliminating a requirement that so-called qualified residential mortgages include a large down payment. Housing industry and consumer groups have lobbied for more than two years against that requirement, which they said would harm the housing market recovery ... Instead, they said on Wednesday that mortgages that met a minimum standard already adopted by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be exempt."
US, Swiss reach offshore tax agreement. Bloomberg: "The accord divides Swiss banks into four tiers: 14 banks under criminal investigation; those allowed to avoid prosecution by disclosing wrongdoing; those without wrongdoing to disclose; and those complying with U.S. anti-tax evasion law ... Total penalties by banks making voluntary disclosures could exceed $1 billion ..."
Conservative judges remain an obstacle to Obama's agenda. The Hill: "With most of Obama’s agenda going nowhere in a gridlocked Congress, the president hopes to enact many of his second-term goals on the environment, workplace protections, healthcare and financial reform through regulations ... That gives the nation’s federal court system, which has been routinely at odds with the White House, enormous sway ... Eighty-nine active lawsuits have been brought by roughly two-dozen GOP state attorneys general against federal agencies ..."
