Archive
Sequester Actually Increases Spending. So Repeal It.
Cutting Meals On Wheels doesn't save the government a dime, it costs $489 million a year. Cutting IRS obviously increases the deficit because it lowers tax revenue. Other cuts also increase spending. All obviously hurt the economy. Tell me again, what's the...
The Bite of Apple: Firm Dodges Enough Taxes To Cover Much of Sequester
The scheme that Apple cooked up this week to finance a $55 billion stock buyback for its shareholders was orchestrated to avoid paying $9.2 billion in taxes, Bloomberg reported Friday. That $9.2 billion tax bill that Apple dodged would have been enough to make...
Zero Manufacturing Jobs Added. Zero.
President Obama set a goal of 1 million new manufacturing jobs in his second term. Last month we added zero. Not one. Nada. Zip. We did add low-wage jobs, though. Maybe we can talk about a national manufacturing strategy now? A Million Manufacturing Jobs? In the 2012...
Mushroom Clouds Over Texas, 500 Deaths in Bangladesh -- THAT'S Why We Need Unions
News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed - and a common need for...
Springtime Blues: The April Jobs Report
The April jobs report of the Bureau of Labor Services is sobering. The mediocre jobs number -- 165,000 new jobs or barely enough to cover new entrants into workforce -- is a self-inflicted wound. Government austerity -- tax hikes and spending cuts -- is suffocating...
Sequester Kills Medical Research Because 'Government Spending Is Bad'
Republicans continually drone on about how "government spending" is so bad... Infrastructure, medical research, education, law enforcement... bad ... "out of control" ... "take money out of the economy" ... etc. And so because we have to do something about "out of...
New Report: Fix The Debt CEOs Enjoy Taxpayer-Subsidized Pay
Fix The Debt is a coalition of corporations pushing for a "grand bargain" that would reduce debt by changing Social Security, Medicare and the tax code. Oddly, the coalition spends more time talking about what other people should give up -- namely, Social Security...
Sequestering Mental Health Care Is Insanity
Adam Lanza. James Holmes. Jared Lee Loughner. Seung-Hui Cho. These names instantly bring to mind some of the worse mass shooting massacres of the last decade or so. But they have something else in common. In addition to reviving calls for stronger gun control...
Put A Worker On The Board
President Obama's nomination of Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker to be Commerce secretary gives me the perfect excuse to write about a fascinating conversation I had recently with Cathy Youngblood, a union activist and Hyatt employee who is on a campaign to get her...
March Trade Deficit Better -- Why This Matters More Than Budget Deficit
The trade deficit fell to "only" $38.8 billion in March. This could mean that manufacturing is starting to shift from China (good) -- or it could mean our economy is slowing and we just aren't buying as much as we would have (not so good). It is also because we are...
