by Digby | Dec 19, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, The Jobs Challenge
AEI (yes, AEI) offers up some evidence that austerity policies are bunk. Not kidding: Earlier this year, as The New York Times reported, the North Carolina legislature cut unemployment benefits, reducing (a) the maximum payout by a third and (b) the number of weeks...
by Digby | Dec 18, 2013 | Economy, Financial Reform, Progressive Vision, The Jobs Challenge
... introduces a very useful piece of legislation: Much of America – hard-working, bill-paying America – has a damaged credit rating. There are a lot of different reasons, but a lot of people just caught a bad break. They got sick. Their husband left or their wife...
by Dave Johnson | Dec 18, 2013 | Minimum Wage
The fight over raising the minimum wage will be one of the defining battles for the 2014 elections. As the floor – the minimum wage – falls out from under Americans, big majorities of voters in both parties want the minimum wage raised. President Obama and...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Dec 13, 2013 | Budget Talks, Economy, Unemployment Benefits
On Thursday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi reportedly told her fellow Democrats to embrace the suck" and vote for a federal budget deal that, in the name of bipartisan compromise, compromised away financial support for more than a million of the long-term...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Dec 12, 2013 | Budget Talks, Unemployment Benefits
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today said that continuing extended unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed will be the first order of business in the Senate when it returns after Congress' Christmas vacation. Good, but not good enough for the 1.3 million...
by Bill Moyers | Dec 12, 2013 | Budget Talks, Economy, Minimum Wage, Progressive Vision, The Jobs Challenge
I met Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1987 when I was creating a series for public television called In Search of the Constitution, celebrating the bicentennial of our founding document. By then, he had served on the court longer than any of his colleagues...
