Archive
A Democracy in Deep Disrepair
In contemporary American political life, only the rich can afford to be politically impatient. The big question: How long will the rest of us tolerate such a starkly unrepresentative status quo? By Sam Pizzigati Four score years ago, amid the tumult of the Great...
With Washington Stalled, China and Others Race Past Us
Bob Herbert has a column today, Watching China Run, asking our country's leaders to get moving on the country's problems, Our esteemed leaders in Washington can’t figure out how to do anything more difficult than line up for a group photo. Put Americans back to work?...
Goldman Accused of Rigging "Robin Hood Tax" Vote
It's really unbelievable. The way that Goldman Sachs keeps sticking its foot in it is simply unbelievable. Let's not review their gross profits and bonuses or their many failed PR schemes to gloss over unseemly profits (a practice we have dubbed "greedwashing"). Let's...
Is The Answer To The Jobs Crisis In Cleveland?
The Nation published this week a fascinating report of a new model of worker cooperative that could attack the jobs crisis and the climate crisis, called "The Cleveland Model." Cleveland's "Evergreen" network of large-scale co-ops, backed with a multi-million dollar...
Union Values and the Test of Time
I was in DC a few weeks ago, and stopped by the AFL-CIO building. While I was there I bought a hat with AFL-CIO on it. Inside the hat is a label, "Union Made in the USA." I was looking at this yesterday and thinking about how unions wouldn't buy cheap hats made in...
Message From NYT/CBS Poll: Public Wants Government That Delivers
The ideologically conflicted American people is starkly depicted in the latest NYT/CBS poll. While conservatives can cling to the 56% of the public that says they want "smaller government providing fewer services" in theory, liberals can point to reluctance to put...
Progressive Breakfast - 2/12/2010
Baucus-Grassley Tiny Jobs Bill Scrapped For Reid Tiny Jobs Bill Reid dumps Baucus-Grassley deal as bloated. Bloomberg: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced yesterday he was dropping scores of provisions from a $85 billion compromise jobs plan ... Reid said...
The Real Uncertainty For Business: Where's The Credit?
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor today reiterated the claim that "uncertainty" created by the work Democratic congressional leaders are doing to clean up the mess left by conservative economic policies is responsible for the anemic state of the economic recovery and...
In the Gritty World of Campaign Fundraising, The Power of Positive Progressivism
Let's have a frank talk about an uncomfortable subject: Progressives need to raise campaign money in order to get elected and stay in office. Sometimes that money has to come from places that progressives aren't comfortable talking about. This gritty reality has too...
Behold The Results Of Bipartisanship: Baucus-Grassley Produce Tiny Jobs Bill
Sens. Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley announced a bipartisan agreement for a "jobs" bill, tracking the earlier draft versions which Sen. Jon Kyl accurately described as not really a jobs bill but an exercise in "extending a bunch of tax policy and related items that we...
