by Robert Borosage | Sep 16, 2013 | Federal Reserve Chair
Accidents happen all the time in politics. This was not of those times. When the potential nomination of Lawrence Summers to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve surfaced, progressives responded. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown organized a letter in support of vice chair...
by Bill Scher | Sep 16, 2013 | Uncategorized
Summers Is Over Summers withdraws. Momentum for Yellen. AP: "David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Advisors and the author of several books on the Fed, said he saw Yellen's selection as a virtual certainty ... Yellen has long been considered a top candidate for the...
by Robert Borosage | Sep 15, 2013 | Jobs and Growth
As we mark the fifth anniversary since the beginning of one of the worst financial crises in American history, the nation has yet to recover. Over 21 million people are in need of full-time work. Wages are stagnant. The too-big-to-fail banks are bigger and more...
by Digby | Sep 13, 2013 | Conservatism, Democracy, Economy, This Is The GOP
Amy Walter has the bad news for Republicans: As the GOP leadership in the House struggles to unite its fractious members around a deal to avoid a government shutdown or a default on the nation’s debt, polling from Pew out this week shows why that may be harder than...
by Bill Scher | Sep 13, 2013 | Uncategorized
Dems Ponder Response To GOP Budget "Crack Up" "The House GOP Is About to Crack Up" says TNR's Jonathan Cohn: "Conservatives seem determined to provoke a crisis, whether it's over funding the government past September 30 or increasing the Treasury's borrowing limit. If...
by Terrance Heath | Sep 13, 2013 | Conservatism, Economy, Progressive Vision, The Jobs Challenge
Ronald Brownstein, at the National Journal, has crunched numbers and demographic trends to explain why the GOP can't win by pinning all its hopes on white voters. Brownstein's work raises an important question: Can the GOP craft an economic message that keeps white...
by Roger Hickey | Sep 13, 2013 | Economy
Robert Reich, former labor secretary and friend of Campaign for America's Future, is the star of a new film, "Inequality for All." It is an important and very entertaining film. It won the Special Jury Award for Achievement in Filmmaking at Sundance. And it is opening...
by Richard Eskow | Sep 12, 2013 | Conservatism, Shutdown
They're back – and they're more extreme than ever. GOP House leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor are still pushing economic ideas disproved a century ago, peddling deep spending cuts that would inflict more misery on the already-beleaguered majority. But that's not...
by Emily Foster | Sep 12, 2013 | Conservatism, Education
A Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study released Thursday highlights significant cuts in public education spending since the Great Recession. The data in the report also shows a clear pattern: the states that have made the deepest cuts in public education are...
by Dave Johnson | Sep 12, 2013 | Trans-Pacific Partnership
This week’s AFL-CIO convention discussed the problem of these "trade" agreements that have undercut America’s middle class by pitting our country’s working people against exploited people (near-slaves in some cases) elsewhere. The convention passed a resolution vowing...
by Bill Scher | Sep 12, 2013 | Shutdown
Yesterday the House leadership scrapped plans to vote on a bill to keep the government open. It was a conservative plan that would essentially maintain the sequester cuts. But it didn't tie Senate passage to the defunding of ObamaCare, so Tea Party Republicans were...
by Thom Hartmann | Sep 12, 2013 | Economy, Minimum Wage, The Jobs Challenge
It's no longer just an expression – the rich are getting richer, and the rest of us are being shut out of the game. According to a new report from economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, the top ten percent of income earners in our nation took home more than...
by Erica Seifert | Sep 12, 2013 | Economy, The Jobs Challenge
Last week, our friends at Pew released a new report detailing the rise in the number children living with grandparents since the onset of the recession. According to the Pew report, 10 percent of children lived with a grandparent in 2011, and the vast majority of...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Sep 12, 2013 | Jobs and Growth
Washington, D.C. mayor Vincent Gray has vetoed a bill that would require large, billion-dollar retailers like Walmart to pay their workers a living age, defined in the bill as at least $12.50 an hour. It is the latest development in a nationwide battle to end the...
by Bill Scher | Sep 12, 2013 | Uncategorized
Shutdown Fears Reignite As House Dysfunction Reigns House GOP, facing mutiny, pulls bill to keep government open and maintain sequester. NYT: "Democrats are uniting in opposition to the bill, not only because of the resolution to starve the Affordable Care Act, but...
by Richard Eskow | Sep 11, 2013 | Jobs and Growth
Five years after the financial crisis, it’s become increasingly apparent that the government didn’t rescue “the economy.” It rescued the wealthy, while doing far too little for everyone else. That didn’t happen by accident. Our government’s response was largely...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Sep 11, 2013 | Shutdown
With Congress now poised to focus on a high-stakes debate on federal spending, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Cay Johnston advised a group of progressive leaders today that it's time to take the gloves off. "We need to stop beating around the bush...
by Derek Pugh | Sep 11, 2013 | Economy, Student Debt Relief
Don’t be fooled by the U.S. News & World Report’s annual college rankings. The Internet is already abuzz over which college trampled the other for the race to the top of the list, released this morning. With the usual suspects taking the lead, like Harvard and...
by Bill Scher | Sep 11, 2013 | Uncategorized
Obama Address Takes Diplomatic Path ... For Now Mixed reaction to speech in Congress. National Journal: "...many Democrats [said] they heard a message of strength from the president while Republicans were largely unconvinced that the administration has a firm handle...
by Dave Johnson | Sep 11, 2013 | Blog
"A world of radical inequality doesn’t work." — United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard While the nation discusses how to respond to the use of chemical weapons by Syria, America's economic woes continue. The middle class and below is squeezed by wage stagnation;...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Sep 10, 2013 | Trans-Pacific Partnership
An analysis released today of the effects of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement concludes that "most workers are likely to lose" as a result of the agreement, and that what the economy will gain as a whole "amounts to a rounding error." The study,...
by Dave Johnson | Sep 10, 2013 | Blog
At the AFL-CIO's national convention in Los Angeles Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a rousing and fully progressive speech Sunday. [fve]http://youtu.be/aJS6TV6F3As[/fve] I'm at the convention, and after the speech I heard several people comment that this...
by Michael Winship | Sep 10, 2013 | Minimum Wage, Progressive Vision, The Jobs Challenge
In Los Angeles, Labor Redefines Itself (via Moyers & Company) “It’s time to turn America right side up!” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka exhorted those in attendance at the labor alliance’s quadrennial convention in Los Angeles on Monday. Time, he said in his keynote...
by Jeff Bryant | Sep 10, 2013 | Education
Last week brought the spectacle of one of America's more prominent conservative Republican governors haranguing the nation's first black president for setting "the fight for civil rights back for decades." Then, one of the conservative movement's leading opinion...
by Leo Gerard | Sep 10, 2013 | Blog
The Washington Post and federal investigators are hounding Robert F. McDonnell, the Republican governor of Virginia, for taking more than $150,000 in cash and gifts from the CEO of Star Scientific, Jonnie R. Williams Sr. Gov. McDonnell, a former businessman himself,...
by Bill Scher | Sep 10, 2013 | Uncategorized
Syria Moves To Avert Strike President Obama considers Russian proposal for international control of chemical weapons stockpile. NYT: "'It’s possible,' Mr. Obama said on CNN of the Russian proposal, 'if it’s real.' ... The effort to police such a proposal, even if...
by Richard Eskow | Sep 10, 2013 | Blog
We’re in the midst of the worst employment crisis in modern memory. Lackluster jobs reports like last week’s should remind us that the crisis will last a long, long time unless we act. It would be tragic if superficial "improvements" created by discouraged workers...
by Bill Scher | Sep 9, 2013 | Blog
It is not hyperbole to note that the Syria vote in Congress will be one of the biggest congressional votes in history. Our elected representatives will determine if America should adopt a foreign policy principle in which military force is used to prevent genocide, or...
by Dean Baker | Sep 9, 2013 | Economy, Financial Reform
All knowledgeable D.C. types know that the TARP and Fed bailout of Wall Street banks five years ago saved us from a second Great Depression. Like most things known by knowledgeable Washington types, this is not true. Just to remind folks, the Wall Street banks were on...
by Bill Scher | Sep 9, 2013 | Uncategorized
Obama Seeks To Reverse Opposition For Syria Strike President meets with Republicans, prepares TV blitz. W. Post: "...millions of Americans will see him make his case during network television interviews Monday and a prime-time address from the White House on Tuesday...
by Dave Johnson | Sep 9, 2013 | Shutdown
Congress is coming back to Washington, and the Republican agenda of obstructing efforts to help jobs and the economy will continue. But in the next weeks they will make the economy worse with threats to shut down the entire government over Obamacare and blow up the...
by Richard Eskow | Sep 8, 2013 | Federal Reserve Chair, Financial Reform
The selection of the next Federal Reserve chair is no longer just a matter of policy or personnel. It has also become a test of the Obama administration’s ability to respond pragmatically when confronted with evidence that its preferred course of action would be...
by Sam Pizzigati | Sep 8, 2013 | Blog
America's corporate chiefs deserve all their hefty rewards, we're told, because they take hefty risks. And what exactly are these richly rewarded corporate chiefs putting at risk? Our retirement security. How’s your 401(k) doing? Working Americans ask themselves this...
by Digby | Sep 8, 2013 | Financial Reform, Progressive Vision
Not that this is exactly news, but Michael Bloomberg is a jerk. A very wealthy jerk. "This city is not two groups, and if it is, it's one group paying for services for the other." Yeah, well these rich assholes wouldn't have any of the "services" that helped them to...
by Joshua Holland | Sep 6, 2013 | Economy, Minimum Wage, Progressive Vision, The Jobs Challenge
Low-Wage Employers Have Fought Hard to Keep Their Workers Poor — Now Workers are Fighting Back (via Moyers & Company) After decades of seeing their incomes shrink, those at the bottom of the economic ladder are starting to band together and fight back — and it’s...
by Bill Scher | Sep 6, 2013 | Uncategorized
Party Divisions Thwarting Syria Resolution "Obama making little headway with getting Congress to support attack on Syria" reports W. Post: "The president’s challenge is made more difficult by the fact that the two parties are splintered on the issue — and that...
by Robert Borosage | Sep 6, 2013 | Jobs and Growth
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the creation of 169,000 net new jobs with the unemployment rate “little changed” at 7.3 percent. However mediocre, these figures are likely to reconfirm the Federal Reserve's inclination to begin “tapering” back the $85 billion...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Sep 6, 2013 | The Jobs Challenge
As Washington today digests the significance of yet another ho-hum jobs report, "official" Washington would do well to take a short trip to what many of us consider part of the "real" Washington, where there is a lot more clarity about what our top economic priority...
by Dave Johnson | Sep 5, 2013 | Trans-Pacific Partnership
I am sounding the alarm. Right now governments and the giant multinational corporations are engaged in writing a treaty that would overrule national laws that try to rein in what these giant corporations can do to us. This treaty will allow corporations to sue...
by Digby | Sep 5, 2013 | Economy, The Jobs Challenge, The Sequester
I haven't heard much concern about the cost of this Syrian operation which is kind of surprising since the last four years has been a non-stop barrage of rhetoric about the need to cut government spending, from members of both parties. We've had epic unemployment...
