by Bill Scher | Nov 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
Obama Reaches Out To Boehner On Immigration Obama signals immigration reform can be done with a series of bills to satisfy House, extends olive branch to Boehner: "...just this past week Speaker Boehner said that he is 'hopeful we can make progress' on immigration...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
Republicans are obstructing and sabotaging everything government does to make our lives better. Their plan is to run for office saying, "Democrats couldn't make government work. So elect Republicans and let us put 'efficient' corporations and billionaires in charge."...
by Thom Hartmann | Nov 25, 2013 | Conservatism, Progressive Vision
On Sunday, major world powers reached an agreement to scale back the Iranian nuclear program. In exchange, our nation and others will slightly lift some of the sanctions against Iran, but embargoes against Iranian banks and oil will remain in place. The interim deal...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 25, 2013 | Economy, Making it in America, Minimum Wage
Show this one at Thanksgiving!! [fve]http://youtu.be/uUAWLqQHeRw[/fve] See What's Walmart's Business Secret? at the AFL-CIO blog. The six Walton heirs own about 50% of the company and have a combined wealth of $142 billion. This means they have more wealth than 42% of...
by Bill Scher | Nov 25, 2013 | Uncategorized
Proof Obamacare Can Work California proves Obamacare can work, says NYT's Paul Krugman: "...California isn’t the only place where Obamacare is looking pretty good ... [But is] is, however, an especially useful test case. First of all, it’s huge: if a system can work...
by Robert Borosage | Nov 25, 2013 | Uncategorized
Bizarrely, Republicans are beginning to strut about sequestering America. Sequestration budget cuts – the automatic, mindless across-the-board annual cuts of roughly $100 billion from military and domestic spending – were designed to be repugnant. Legislators,...
by Sam Pizzigati | Nov 23, 2013 | Uncategorized
America's corporate CEOs feel entitled to pensions that pay out $86,000 monthly. To protect their entitlement, they're attacking ours: Social Security. Deck the halls, this holiday season, with scenes of hunger. Struggling families all across America now have...
by Terrance Heath | Nov 22, 2013 | Budget Talks, Conservatism, Health, This Is The GOP
The GOP is targeting Medicaid in its next attack on health care reform. House Republicans want to take away $20 billion budgeted for the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and use it to cover defense cuts. This is who they are. Politico reported yesterday that a...
by Bill Scher | Nov 22, 2013 | Uncategorized
The air is filled with Republicans claiming Democrats will rue the day they ended the filibuster for lower-level federal judicial appointments. They say once they control the White House and Senate (no earlier than 2017, if then) they will up the ante. They'll end the...
by Richard Eskow | Nov 22, 2013 | Uncategorized
I just had a new piece published in Salon.com about Tyler Cowen, the libertarian economist who's been described as "the next Tom Friedman." Cowen is always an interesting and entertaining read, more so than Friedman, but he shares Friedman's infatuation with...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Nov 22, 2013 | Economy
It seems so basic. Our number one priority should be doing everything we can to ensure that every American who wants a job can get one – in other words, full employment. Yet the very phrase "full employment" is treated as something that would be uttered only by...
by Bill Scher | Nov 22, 2013 | Uncategorized
Filibuster Reform Reinvigorates Second Term W. Post on how it helps Obama: "The most immediate effect will be felt at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ... The court is likely to help decide whether Obama can enact new Environmental...
by Richard Eskow | Nov 21, 2013 | Conservatism, Progressive Vision
Listen to the breath, the unbroken message that creates itself from the silence, it rushes towards you now, from those youthfully dead. – Rainer Maria Rilke, “Duino Elegies” Fifty years. That’s how long it’s been since John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Half a century...
by Emily Foster | Nov 21, 2013 | Progressive Vision
The year that the first Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded, 1963, Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique,” the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law and a young Gloria Steinem was working as a Playboy bunny. That job was actually an early episode in...
by Digby | Nov 21, 2013 | Conservatism, Democracy, This Is The GOP
Kids, don't say Harry Reid never did anything for you. He and the Senate Democrats just ended the use of the filibuster for executive branch appointments and lower court judges. What this means is that the dominance of our judicial system by batshit insane right wing...
by Thom Hartmann | Nov 21, 2013 | Economy, Financial Reform
On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced that JPMorgan has agreed to a $13 billion dollar settlement over the fraudulent sale of mortgage-backed securities. But, that settlement is a fraud in and of itself. Four billion dollars of that figure was actually part...
by Bill Scher | Nov 21, 2013 | Uncategorized
Senate May End Judicial Filibusters Today Reid may move to scrap most judicial filibusters as soon as today, reports Bloomberg: " Reid said Nov. 19 that he wouldn’t accept anything short of having all of the latest D.C. Circuit nominees approved. 'I insist on getting...
by Emily Foster | Nov 21, 2013 | Uncategorized
The National Employment Law Project released a report on Wednesday that emphasized the drastic need to renew federal jobless aid for 2014. The report came out just in time to coincide with the quest by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to reach a...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Nov 21, 2013 | Uncategorized
Looking for an oasis of bipartisan comity? A top-shelf group of public officials, corporate leaders and lobbyists will be attending a "transportation infrastructure summit" today. Though coming from different parties and representing different interests, they will...
by Richard Eskow | Nov 20, 2013 | Uncategorized
Neel Kashkari is a former Goldman Sachs Golden Boy who left that infamous organization to join the Treasury Department, where he was responsible for overseeing $700 billion in bailouts to his former employer and other Wall Street firms. Now he wants to run for...
by Terrance Heath | Nov 20, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy
If Congress is serious about “fiscal responsibility," they should cut corporate America's "free lunch," instead of voting for even more painful cuts to food stamps. It would bring in more revenue than any pseudo-savings from cutting food stamps. Millions of Americans...
by Bill Scher | Nov 20, 2013 | Uncategorized
Senate Republicans have been daring Democrats to do away with the filibuster for judicial nominations. Said Sen. Chuck Grassley, "I say go ahead. There are a lot more Scalias and Thomases out there that we would love to put on the bench." He and his fellow Republicans...
by Bill Scher | Nov 20, 2013 | Uncategorized
Larry Summers, America, Agree: No Social Security Cuts "Voters In Key States Really Don't Want Social Security Cut" reports HuffPost: "A new survey looking at 10 key House and Senate districts found that voters therestrongly oppose cutting Social Security benefits --...
by Jeff Bryant | Nov 20, 2013 | Education
Building on President Obama's “Preschool for All Initiative” proposed earlier this year – that would dramatically expand access to prekindergarten programs for 4-year olds – Democratic leaders in both chambers last week introduced the "Strong Start for America's...
by Robert Borosage | Nov 20, 2013 | Uncategorized
It’s back. Another manufactured budget crisis. Another threatened government shutdown. Another failed negotiation. And, like Freddy Krueger springing from your nightmares to lay waste with his bladed glove, another Nightmare on Elm Street round of sequestration...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 19, 2013 | Uncategorized
The AFL-CIO has made this great video, And Now For Your 1 Minute Of Inspiration — How Change Happens. [fve]http://youtu.be/FSA5VWgp0XI[/fve] The following is from the website where I found this: "Collective action — the art of working together with others to achieve a...
by Joshua Holland | Nov 19, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy
If you want to know why the campaign for a living wage has escalated so dramatically in the past few years, look no further than this story in The Cleveland Plain Dealer… CLEVELAND, Ohio — The storage containers are attractively displayed at the Wal-Mart on Atlantic...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Nov 19, 2013 | Retirement Security
USA Today published an editorial today headlined, "Rein in reckless public pensions." Actually, for the sake of workers and an economy that works for working people, the message should be: Rein in reckless editorial writers, and the one-percenters for whom they are...
by Bill Scher | Nov 19, 2013 | Uncategorized
"Last Thursday, a group of House Republicans filed into Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Capitol office suite and received a blank piece of paper labeled 'Agenda 2014.'" So reported Politico this week. Now, the Republican intention is to fill that blank piece of paper...
by Leo Gerard | Nov 19, 2013 | Uncategorized
Typically, the GOP styles itself as the all-knowing party, the party so God-like that it has the right to control how individual citizens live their lives. GOPers believe, for example, that low-income cancer victims don’t need to live at all, so Republicans in 25...
by Derek Pugh | Nov 19, 2013 | Budget Talks, The Sequester
Americans have endured five long years of hardship, stagnant wages and slow growth in the post-recession economy. Enough is enough. Join Campaign for America’s Future and eight other groups representing millions of Americans in a campaign to get rid of the sequester...
by Bill Scher | Nov 19, 2013 | Uncategorized
Nobody Wants Grand Bargain "Grand bargain" stalled because neither side really wants what it's demanding, concludes NYT: "...many Republicans are no more interested in voting to reduce Medicare and Social Security benefits than Democrats are, lest they threaten their...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 19, 2013 | Conservatism, Democracy
They did it again. Republicans on Monday filibustered to block the Senate from voting on the nomination of Robert Wilkins to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit. This filibuster was one more piece of the Republican campaign to obstruct...
by Richard Eskow | Nov 18, 2013 | Budget Talks, Retirement Security
This week Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts gave an important speech on the floor of the United State Senate. Said Sen. Warren, “the conversation about retirement and Social Security benefits is not just a conversation about math. At its core, this is a...
by Elizabeth Warren | Nov 18, 2013 | Retirement Security
The following remarks on Social Security were made on the floor of the United States Senate on Monday by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. As Warren notes, “the conversation about retirement and Social Security benefits is not just a conversation about math. At its core,...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 18, 2013 | Uncategorized
The Wall Street reform law that passed in 2010 includes a requirement that companies disclose the ratio of CEO pay to median pay. This law is still obstructed from enforcement. Meanwhile voters in Switzerland are considering placing a 12:1 cap on CEO pay -- an idea...
by Bill Scher | Nov 18, 2013 | Uncategorized
Ever since Chris Christie handily won his re-election as governor of blue state New Jersey, he's faced furious pushback from conservatives who claim he's "no more conservative than Harry Reid" and do not want to see him anointed as the frontrunner for the 2016...
by Digby | Nov 18, 2013 | Conservatism, Democracy, Economy
Jesus, just how many of these things are there? Jane Mayer introduces us to the State Policy Network: At the annual meeting, which took place in Oklahoma City this past September 24th through 27th, Sharp explained what she called The IKEA Model. She said that it...
by Sam Pizzigati | Nov 18, 2013 | Uncategorized
Young activists in Switzerland have plutocrats hyperventilating — and spending a fortune to beat back a ballot initiative that would establish a legal limit on the pay gap between top execs and their workers. By Sam Pizzigati Something astounding is happening...
by Bill Scher | Nov 18, 2013 | Uncategorized
Dems Defend Obamacare Dem unity on health care. McClatchy: "Top congressional Democrats on Sunday stood by President Obama and the flawed rollout of the government's health-care website, expressing confidence the problems would be fixed and the issue would not drag...
