by Joshua Holland | Nov 15, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, Progressive Vision
Rip-off: High Out-of-Pocket Social Costs are a Stealth Tax on the Middle Class and the Poor (via Moyers & Company) Editor’s note: This is the third piece in a series looking at the fact that while Americans enjoy a lower overall tax burden than that of the...
by Robert Borosage | Nov 15, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, Financial Reform
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold – William Butler Yeats Washington is frozen even before winter, with the fierce Tea Party resistance to President Obama’s re-election producing...
by Thom Hartmann | Nov 14, 2013 | Economy, Making it in America
You wouldn't know it by looking at your bank account, but our GDP growth rate was 2.8% in the third quarter of 2013. That's much higher than the long-term rate of 2%, but average Americans won't see any benefit from better growth. The latest figures from the Bureau of...
by Digby | Nov 14, 2013 | Economy, Making it in America, Rick Perlstein, Trans-Pacific Partnership
Sometimes gridlock is just what the doctor ordered: Tea party Republicans insist they’re in favor of free trade. They just don’t want to place a key trade negotiating power in President Barack Obama’s hands. The deep suspicion of giving the president authority to...
by Mary Bottari | Nov 14, 2013 | Budget Talks, Economy, Retirement Security
Say it ain’t so Jon. Our friend Jon Romano, press secretary for the inside-the-beltway PR campaign “Fix the Debt” and its pet youth group, The Can Kicks Back, have been caught writing op-eds for college students and placing the identical op-eds in papers across the...
by Terrance Heath | Nov 13, 2013 | Budget Talks, Conservatism, Economy, Retirement Security, The Jobs Challenge, The Sequester
The budget conference committee meets this week to hammer out a plan to avoid another government shutdown. So far, not so good. Committee co-chairs Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wisc.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D, Wash.) are “struggling” to define the “parameters” of a “bipartisan...
