Archive
Block Fast Track To Fix Or Stop The Trans-Pacific Partnership Corporate Takeover
You know how big-company lobbyists get some states to pass laws that block cities and counties from doing something about problems like tobacco or guns? Well there is a "trade" treaty called the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the works that sets down international rules...
How The Few Have Chosen Inequality For The Many
The last couple of months in Washington have been punctuated by burst of excitement as policymakers and pundits reacted to what to them was good news for the economy. The stock market is up. Consumer spending is up. Housing is booming again. The era of "uncertainty"...
They Can't Stop Beethoven, Can They? Orchestral Workers Fight For Dignity
For the grasping managers of Corporate America — and the institutions their wealth dominates — no workers deserve dignity, not even the most amazingly accomplished. Locked-out musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra What do bank executives who make $19 million a year do...
Sherrod Brown: "Get Trade Right" For The Middle Class
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, argued that “trade policy needs to adapt to global challenges” and “trade done right creates prosperity for the middle class” during a speech on the “Competitive Agenda for a Global Economy” at the Center for American Progress on Friday....
Struggling Workers Assess The "American Dream": It's Still Economic Winter
Diedre Melson says she had been working from the time she was 13 years old – until the Great Recession hit and she, as a mother with four children, was laid off from her job as a phlebotomist at the Alpha Plasma Center in Oregon, along with 1,500 other people. Today,...
Obama / Xi "Summit" -- Big, Big Issues
President Obama and Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping begin two days of "get to know you" meetings today near Palm Springs. Amidst talk of development of a new relationship, and "re-examining the premises" of our understandings,...
'No Change' Means No Relief From Our Jobs Emergency
The May jobs numbers – with a net growth of 175,000 jobs – shows an economy that is treading water. There is no change in the unemployment rate or number of unemployed, no change in number of long-term unemployed. Worse, there is no change in the employment-population...
Trash-Talking Economists
Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science.” Journalist A. J. Liebling called boxing “the sweet science.” To read the Internet lately you’d think they got the two professions mixed up. Economics is becoming a battle royale, a free-for-all. It’s a melee where...
Tell The Senate To Stop Filibustering Affordable College
The Senate on Thursday, in a real sense, filibustered the future. A Republican minority set themselves up as a roadblock against college students struggling to pay for their education and establish financial stability. A narrow, 51-vote majority in the Senate...
A Grand Exit From The Grand Bargain
The Center for American Progress, the most prominent left-leaning institution supportive of a "grand bargain" deficit reduction agreement that would include reducing Social Security benefits, today released a new report that effectively renounces that position. After...
