by Richard Eskow | Oct 9, 2013 | Shutdown
The deepening split among Republicans is somehow strangely reminiscent of a recent movie, "Killing Them Softly," based on a George V. Higgins novel and starring Brad Pitt. The publicity materials say it’s about “dumb guys who think they’re smart” and wind up “causing...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Oct 9, 2013 | Blog
President Obama today formally made a right and bold decision to appoint Janet Yellen as chair of the Federal Reserve. The nomination is groundbreaking in that it puts a woman in charge of monetary policy for the first time in the Fed's history. But, more...
by Joshua Holland | Oct 9, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, Shutdown, This Is The GOP
Seven days into a government shutdown, and 9 days away from a potentially catastrophic breach of the nation’s debt limit, and the question everyone is asking is: who will blink first? The White House says that it absolutely will not negotiate over a debt limit hike....
by Dave Johnson | Oct 9, 2013 | Blog
In the middle of the worst economy and job situation in decades Republicans in the House voted to cut $40 billion from food stamps. This will kick 3.8 million people out of the program by 2014, 3 million more each year after. Republicans in Congress have blocked every...
by Bill Scher | Oct 9, 2013 | Conservatism
House Budget Chair Paul Ryan's Wall Street Journal oped "Here's How We Can End This Stalemate" is being treated as an "olive branch" to the President because it doesn't demand any changes to Obamacare and emphasizes the importance of raising the debt limit. The...
by Mary Bottari | Oct 9, 2013 | Blog
Apparently the only thing both Democrats and Republicans can agree on in Washington is that they can't deal with bad press involving Honor Flight vets. This led to absurd images of Republicans – who had shut down the federal government, including all monuments and...
by Dave Johnson | Oct 9, 2013 | Blog
A week ago Republicans shut down the government, saying they would not vote for any budget that funds Obamacare. Then they said they would use the debt-ceiling as leverage to fight Obamacare. But now they say they are doing all this because of "spending." Wait, what...
by Bill Scher | Oct 9, 2013 | Uncategorized
Republican Endgame Nowhere In Sight Obama and Boehner talk past each other, reports National Journal: "Obama said that if Congress were to pass a temporary bill to open government, he’d be willing to negotiate ... But Obama asserted that congressional Republicans...
by Richard Eskow | Oct 8, 2013 | Blog
Journalists are understandably captivated by the government shutdown and the looming confrontation over the debt ceiling. Those are certainly dramatic stories. But another, quieter drama has been playing out for years in homes and communities across the country, as...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Oct 8, 2013 | Conservatism, Shutdown
President Obama talked to the news media for over an hour today, but all you really needed to hear was summed up in two words: Just vote. The president once again challenged House Speaker John Boehner to allow a vote on a continuing resolution that would allow the...
by Jeff Bryant | Oct 8, 2013 | Education
Education "reform" wasn't supposed to turn out like this. In an ironic coda to the No Child Left Behind era last week, Texas officially turned its back on George W. Bush's policy triumph by opting out of his signature mandate for schools to achieve "adequate yearly...
by Thom Hartmann | Oct 8, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, Shutdown
House Republicans continue to point the finger at President Obama for the government shutdown. However, Senate Democrats are moving forward with a plan to prevent economic disaster. According to the New York Times, rather than waiting for the Tea Party to come to...
by Digby | Oct 8, 2013 | Conservatism, Shutdown, This Is The GOP
There is a lot of the usual Democratic loose talk about Republicans finally being vanquished for all time and so let's stage a celebration right this very minute. Seems to be a defining feature of American liberalism to assume victory before it is secure. However,...
by Leo Gerard | Oct 8, 2013 | Blog
Republicans tried and tried, more than 40 times, in fact. Unlike the Little Engine That Could, the GOP couldn’t. They just couldn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act. Last week they switched tracks to exploit a different tactic – extortion. It’s an old style mafia...
by Bill Scher | Oct 8, 2013 | Uncategorized
Republicans Taking a Beating Republicans taking biggest hit in ABC/W. Post poll: "Seventy percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll disapprove of how the Republicans in Congress are handling the budget negotiations, up 7 percentage points from a week ago ......
by Isaiah J. Poole | Oct 8, 2013 | Conservatism, Progressive Vision
Important to understanding why the federal government has been shut down by a group of unyielding, extremist congressional conservatives is to understand the voters who elected them. That was the goal of a series of focus groups conducted this summer by Democracy...
by Dave Johnson | Oct 7, 2013 | Blog
This is the 100th anniversary of Ford's moving assembly line. The Highland Park, Michigan facility opened October 7, 1913 and one week later a Model T rolled off the line. The Model T had been in production for five years, but the cost-savings that came from the...
by Bill Moyers | Oct 7, 2013 | Conservatism, Shutdown
Republicans have now lost three successive elections to control the Senate and they’ve lost the last two presidential elections. Nonetheless, they fought tooth and nail to kill President Obama’s health care initiative. They lost that fight, but with the corporate wing...
by Digby | Oct 7, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, Health, Shutdown, This Is The GOP
This should be interesting. Greg Sargent: Senate Dems will move their own clean debt limit bill, rather than wait for the House GOP to hold its own vote on either a clean CR funding the government (which Senate Dems have already passed with broad bipartisan support)...
by Dave Johnson | Oct 7, 2013 | Blog
Remember how Republicans "won" the 2000 election? Remember how they tricked the country into going to war in Iraq? They used non-democratic means to get what they couldn't get legitimately, and it worked, so they did it more. They got used to getting their way using...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Oct 7, 2013 | Retirement Security
David Sirota, the author of the Institute for America's Future report on "The Plot Against Pensions" that detailed the right-wing collaboration to dismantle public pension programs around the country, is now reporting in Salon that "the Enron billionaire whose former...
by Richard Eskow | Oct 7, 2013 | Blog
(Originally published in Alternet) Of course they shut the Federal government down. Tea Party Republicans long for the days when there were no government authorities to enforce laws and restrain the power of unchecked wealth, the days when there was no Justice...
by Bill Scher | Oct 7, 2013 | Uncategorized
GOP Paying Price For Shutdown "Shutdown Hurting Republicans in Battleground Districts" reports National Journal: "The new PPP polls were conducted on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week, with sample sizes of between 600-700 registered voters in each of the 24...
by Richard Eskow | Oct 6, 2013 | Shutdown
Picture a lone Republican running through the darkened hallways of power, paraphrasing Soylent Green’s climactic line as he shouts the news to his peers: “It’s people! The Federal government is people!” That insight seemed to strike Hill Republicans last week, if only...
by Sam Pizzigati | Oct 5, 2013 | Blog
Executives at private companies with federal contracts are getting rich off our tax dollars — at the expense of their low-wage workers. But we can turn the tables. Here's how. The debate over America’s federal budget is getting stale — and getting us nowhere, as the...
by Damon Silvers | Oct 4, 2013 | Retirement Security, Shutdown
The heads of the country’s largest banks and stock brokers came to Washington, D.C., Thursday to meet with President Barack Obama. Washington is the center of our national hostage drama—to use an old phrase, D.C. is the kidnap house. But we have seen this part of the...
by Dave Johnson | Oct 4, 2013 | Blog
A key fact about this shutdown is that a majority of the House would vote to end it if they were allowed to vote. There are enough Republicans that could combine with Democrats to get the government back up and running, but Republican leadership – backed by...
by Joshua Holland | Oct 4, 2013 | Conservatism, Current Issues, Economy, Minimum Wage, Shutdown
Forget About the Tourists, Worry About the Workers (via Moyers & Company) The government shutdown is revealing how easily distracted we are by shiny objects. An enormous amount of ink has been devoted to the closure of the World War II Memorial. Tourist sites –...
by Dave Johnson | Oct 4, 2013 | Blog
Today is MFG Day! From the website: MFG DAY addresses common misperceptions about manufacturing by giving manufacturers an opportunity to open their doors and show, in a coordinated effort, what manufacturing is — and what it isn’t. By working together during and...
by admin | Oct 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
Shutdown: Day Four Restless House Republicans look to Speaker Boehner for direction. The Hill: "House Republicans are gathering Friday to debate what their ask will be in the merging fights over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. ... They also admit they...
by Roger Hickey | Oct 3, 2013 | Blog
On the first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the unemployment numbers -- but not this month. US economy is weak and in danger of foundering. The government shutdown is harming the still-fragile recovery. And now we are flying blind --...
by Richard Eskow | Oct 3, 2013 | Blog
White House messaging on the shutdown (and debt ceiling threats) has been nearly pitch-perfect. Republicans, on the other hand, have stumbled and struggled and are paying for it in the polls. Now the GOP’s trying to solve the problem it has created for itself by...
by Emily Foster | Oct 3, 2013 | Chained CPI, Retirement Security
Activists joined with members of Congress to form a human chain at the Capitol on Thursday to rebuke the Republicans’ latest “entitlement reform” scheme, the “chained CPI.” Twenty members of Congress, including members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and other...
by Dave Johnson | Oct 3, 2013 | Trans-Pacific Partnership
Even as the government is shut down, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) corporate-dominance treaty rolls on. President Obama is supposed to meet with leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next week in Bali, Indonesia. He will discuss TPP. The...
by Digby | Oct 3, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, Shutdown, This Is The GOP
Remember when we all assumed that sequestration could never hold and they'd just have to pull the plug and negotiate a reasonable budget when the going got tough? Yeah, that's worked out for us. I'm going to suggest that we all (myself included) stop assuming that...
by Emily Foster | Oct 3, 2013 | Blog
The shutdown of the federal government affects all Americans in some way, but for one group the consequences are especially dire: low-income women, children and infants. They are in danger of being cut off from vital nutritional assistance programs because...
by Terrance Heath | Oct 3, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, Making it in America
Calling the GOP's antics childish is an insult to children. Their budget shenanigans surpass the worst childish behavior, and are far more damaging. The Republican-engineered government shutdown is doing real harm to real people, and endangering an already fragile...
by Bill Scher | Oct 3, 2013 | Uncategorized
Republicans Have No Endgame House Republicans continue gimmick bills. AP: "On Thursday, Republicans planned to continue pursuing their latest strategy: muscling bills through the House that would restart some popular programs. Votes were on tap for restoring funds for...
by Richard Eskow | Oct 3, 2013 | Blog
Forty million dollars an hour. A third of a billion every day. $1.6 billion every week. That’s a conservative estimate of the money Republicans are wasting by keeping the federal government closed down. And if pundits like Sean Hannity have their way, they’ll run up...
by Dave Johnson | Oct 2, 2013 | Blog
Republicans are pointing to "glitches" in the new Obamacare websites as justification for shutting down the government. (PS looks like those "glitches" may have had some help.) I'm writing this at a coffee shop. I parked on the street and went to the device that you...
