Archive
Sequestering Hope: Washington's Mad Hatter Budget Debate
To force unpopular and wrong-headed cuts in Social Security and Medicare, the Republican House caucus used their retreat to line up new rounds of fiscal hostage-taking. First up on March 1 is the sequester – deep, indiscriminate and immediate cuts of about 8 percent of military spending and 5 percent of domestic services in the remaining seven months of the fiscal year. Then comes the threat to shut down the government with the expiration of the continuing budget resolution and then another threat to default on the nation’s obligations with a debt ceiling crisis beginning in mid-May.
Why the Government's Lawsuit Against Standard & Poor's Matters
We gave these "agencies" all this power, along with a huge financial incentive to rate garbage as if it were roses. Then we, in the form of government regulators, looked the other way. And now we're shocked - shocked! - that these for-profit companies were behaving ... well, like for-profit companies.
Repealing The Sequester Is The Real Balanced Approach
After President Obama called on Congress today to postpone the deep across-the-board federal spending cuts set to kick in on March 1 in the so-called sequester, Campaign for America’s Future co-director Robert Borosage responded by declaring that the sequester "should...
Reporters: Ask About The TRADE Deficit
Government spending is We, the People doing things to make our lives better. Trade deficits are caused by billionaires and their giant corporations pitting America's working people against exploited people who have no say, so they can drive down our wages and pocket the difference. Have you noticed that the people who are making the most noise about the budget deficit tend to be the same crowd that's benefiting from the ruinous trade deficit?
Budget vs trade deficit... You can learn a lot about how our country's media and policy apparatus works by taking a good look at the way the two are handled. One -- pushed by the billionaires and their giant corporations -- gets all the attention. The other -- the cause of the destruction of our middle class -- gets none.
Reporters and others: you should ask policymakers what they plan to do about the trade deficit -- that's the one that really is hurting the country.
Immigration Reform Prevents Employer Abuse
Oscar came to the United States at the age of 16 to work. There were no jobs for him in his native Guatemala, and he felt obligated to help support his parents. He was lured across borders by the promise of work. He believed, as so many immigrants do, that there would...
Progressive Breakfast
MORNING MESSAGE: Help The Progressive Caucus Disarm The Austerity Bomb OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "The sequester is an 'austerity bomb' of budget cuts that will hit the economy so hard that a recession is nearly guaranteed ... Today the Progressive Caucus co-chairs...
Progressive Breakfast
MORNING MESSAGE: Help The Progressive Caucus Disarm The Austerity Bomb OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "The sequester is an 'austerity bomb' of budget cuts that will hit the economy so hard that a recession is nearly guaranteed ... Today the Progressive Caucus co-chairs...
Progressive Breakfast
MORNING MESSAGE: Help The Progressive Caucus Disarm The Austerity Bomb OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "The sequester is an 'austerity bomb' of budget cuts that will hit the economy so hard that a recession is nearly guaranteed ... Today the Progressive Caucus co-chairs...
Help The Progressive Caucus Disarm The Austerity Bomb
It seemed like the threats and hostage-taking going on in DC had taken a breather. After a couple of years of crisis-to-crisis hostage-taking Republicans backed off their latest "debt-ceiling" threat to ruin the country's credit and destroy the economy.
As Public Makes "Hard Choices" On Social Security, Alan Simpson Ducks His "Moment of Truth"
Alan Simpson’s the lead pitchman for a billionaire- and corporate-funded initiative to slash Social Security that has subjected the public to years of nonstop haranguing and lecturing. The lecturing’s gotten crude, too, as when Simpson insisted that anyone who disagrees with him is shoveling “bullsh*t” That’s tough talk, but it’s a funny thing: When the public makes tough decisions, as it did in a new National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) survey, the tough-talking Mr. Simpson is nowhere to be found.
