by Jane Yurechko | Jun 7, 2013 | Making it in America
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, argued that “trade policy needs to adapt to global challenges” and “trade done right creates prosperity for the middle class” during a speech on the “Competitive Agenda for a Global Economy” at the Center for American Progress on Friday....
by Jane Yurechko | Jun 7, 2013 | Uncategorized
Diedre Melson says she had been working from the time she was 13 years old – until the Great Recession hit and she, as a mother with four children, was laid off from her job as a phlebotomist at the Alpha Plasma Center in Oregon, along with 1,500 other people. Today,...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 7, 2013 | Uncategorized
President Obama and Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping begin two days of "get to know you" meetings today near Palm Springs. Amidst talk of development of a new relationship, and "re-examining the premises" of our understandings,...
by Robert Borosage | Jun 7, 2013 | Uncategorized
The May jobs numbers – with a net growth of 175,000 jobs – shows an economy that is treading water. There is no change in the unemployment rate or number of unemployed, no change in number of long-term unemployed. Worse, there is no change in the employment-population...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 6, 2013 | Uncategorized
Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science.” Journalist A. J. Liebling called boxing “the sweet science.” To read the Internet lately you’d think they got the two professions mixed up. Economics is becoming a battle royale, a free-for-all. It’s a melee where...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 6, 2013 | Student Debt Relief
The Senate on Thursday, in a real sense, filibustered the future. A Republican minority set themselves up as a roadblock against college students struggling to pay for their education and establish financial stability. A narrow, 51-vote majority in the Senate...
by Bill Scher | Jun 6, 2013 | Uncategorized
The Center for American Progress, the most prominent left-leaning institution supportive of a "grand bargain" deficit reduction agreement that would include reducing Social Security benefits, today released a new report that effectively renounces that position. After...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 6, 2013 | Making it in America
The nominee for US Trade Representative (USTR) has just promised Congress that he will push for "Fast Track" authority. Fast Track essentially removes democracy from the trade negotiating and agreement process. It also gives negotiators the authority to go way beyond...
by Jeff Bryant | Jun 6, 2013 | Education
With the 59th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education rapidly receding, it's important to remember that the original purpose of federal intervention in local education was to guarantee access and equity. Any Southerner on the front lines of that effort can attest...
by Greg Kaufmann | Jun 6, 2013 | Uncategorized
Denying a Head Start in Washington State (via Moyers & Company) To get a sense of just how foolish and shortsighted the $85 billion across-the-board sequester cuts are you don’t have to look any further than Head Start. The federal government’s only pre-K program,...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 5, 2013 | Financial Reform, Making it in America, Trans-Pacific Partnership
After 237 years, we’re becoming a colony again. Our nation's losing the right to self-determination it fought so hard to win, and it’s happening on a scale unseen since the days of George III. As is so often the case these days, this wholesale loss of our rights is...
by Derek Pugh | Jun 5, 2013 | Making it in America
Down with the deficit rhetoric; it's time for a bold approach that addresses our true crisis: a stagnant economy coupled with high unemployment. On Tuesday, progressives gathered at the Roosevelt Institute's first jobs conference, “A Bold Approach to the Jobs...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 5, 2013 | Making it in America
Ahead of President Obama's meeting China's President Xi Jinping later this week, and with our trade deficit with China up yet again, eight Senators from both parties joined today to introduce The Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Act of 2013. The eight are U.S....
by Dave Johnson | Jun 5, 2013 | Uncategorized
U.S. worker compensation posted its biggest drop since 1947 during the last quarter. The year 1947 is when the Labor Department began tracking the statistic. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released data today showing a 3.8 percent drop in the first quarter. According...
by Robert Borosage | Jun 5, 2013 | Financial Reform, Student Debt Relief
The U.S. Congress votes readily to subsidize the big banks to our peril. The Congress lavishes subsidies to Big Oil to our shame. Congress allows Big Pharma to help health care costs bankrupt us. But Republican senators Lamar Alexander, Tom Coburn and Richard Burr say...
by Bill Scher | Jun 5, 2013 | Uncategorized
I'm on record as not liking Gov. Chris Christie. Two years ago I deemed him the "biggest sham in American politics." Now he has the opportunity to prove me wrong. While there is much political fuss over Christie's decision, following the death of Sen. Frank...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
Late last week, I was invited to be a debater in today's New York Times "Room for Debate" online discussion. The debate is focused on last week's news that mothers are now the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of American households, and the hand-wringing about the...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 4, 2013 | Making it in America
On a press call yesterday in advance of this week's "summit" between President Obama and Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping, Alliance for American Manufacturing's (AAM) Scott Paul called for consequences for China's trade...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
Respected economist John Kay is about to make a public statement which essentially says that the world economy is a ticking time bomb and global markets are a lit fuse. Kay is a professor at the London School of Economics, a columnist for the Financial Times, and the...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
President Obama directly confronted Republican obstruction this morning, nominating three people to fill vacancies at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and challenging Republicans to allow the Senate to vote on their confirmation. This is...
by Leo Gerard | Jun 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
Marcus Hedger was wrongly fired. That’s what the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined. Despite that, Mr. Hedger lost his Antioch, Ill., home. His case got mired in allegations that the board that heard it was illegitimate. Similarly, West Virginia’s...
by Sam Pizzigati | Jun 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
America's deepest pockets, a new report shows, are saving big bucks from the U.S. tax code's wide assortment of income tax breaks. They're saving even more from the absence of a wealth tax. A hundred years ago, in 1913, Congress wrote into law a federal income tax....
by Robert Borosage | Jun 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
Democrats now delight in watching Republicans flounder as they try to free themselves from the failures of President George W. Bush and the extremes of the Tea Party. But the GOP’s tribulations should not blind Democrats to their own challenge. The party must free...
by Jane Yurechko | Jun 3, 2013 | Uncategorized
The Senate on May 21 rejected an amendment by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N,Y., that would block a 10-year, $4.1 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as SNAP or the food stamp program) that was included in the farm bill that is now...
by Thom Hartmann | Jun 3, 2013 | Uncategorized
Eleven days after a deadly tornado hit the city of Moore, Oklahoma, five more tornadoes hit that state, killing at least 13 people, and injuring more than one hundred. Among the lives lost were three Discovery Channel storm chasers, Carl Young, and Tim and Paul...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 3, 2013 | Uncategorized
On a call this morning to discuss the continuing obstruction of ... everything ... by Senate Republicans, Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen asked Senate Democrats to change the rules to at least get nominees to the floor for a vote. It may...
by Digby | Jun 3, 2013 | Uncategorized
I don't know if it's a "movement" but it's good to see it anyway: When Tammy Baldwin delivered her first floor speech on the Senate floor late last month, she did not expect to create a national stir—let alone a movement. But Baldwin’s progressive-populist call for a...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 3, 2013 | Making it in America
We the People put together a system here with schools, universities, scientific research, courts, a stable financial/monetary system, infrastructure like roads, dams, airports, and all the other components of a (used-to-be) prospering economy. That takes money, and...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 2, 2013 | Uncategorized
A Northern Ireland county made news this week when it literally created a false front of prosperity for dignitaries in town for the G8 conference. The Irish Times reports that County Fermanagh spent roughly £300,000 ($456,000 at today’s exchange rates) to conceal the...
by Isaiah J. Poole | May 31, 2013 | Uncategorized
Today the Social Security trustees released their annual report, and regardless of what you might hear otherwise from the chattering class, the underlying message is that there is no need to consider cuts in Social Security or Medicare benefits. In fact, we can and...
by Digby | May 31, 2013 | Uncategorized
When I read this piece in the Daily Caller yesterday, I have to admit I thought "oh hell." I assumed there was a good explanation for why the IRS commissioner had spent so much time in the White House (they aren't so dumb that they would openly plan an IRS jihad...
by Dave Johnson | May 31, 2013 | Student Debt Relief
Today President Obama is joining college students at a White House event launching a new push to keep student loan rates from doubling in July. Among the various plans offered, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's plan is the most affordable for students, while the Republican plan...
by Richard Eskow | May 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
(This is Part 3 of a series on our ongoing - and worsening - national healthcare crisis.) As major provisions in the Affordable Care Act are rolled out, we'll need a way to track its effectiveness - a scorecard for "Obamacare," as it's now universally called. What's...
by Greg Kaufmann | May 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
Losing Hope in Detroit (via Moyers & Company) Jobs. They are supposedly the foremost concern of every Democrat and every Republican, and they are certainly the greatest concern for the 20 percent of American workers who are unemployed or underemployed, and the...
by Derek Pugh | May 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
Don’t be fooled. Despite what politicians and the media have led many to believe, struggling middle-class Americans are not in a real recovery. The latest evidence is in a report released this month by the Investor Education Foundation of the Financial Industry...
by Terrance Heath | May 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
Something's happening out there, in fast food restaurants, retail shops, and other places where people work for minimum wage or minimal wages, and don't earn enough to live on. It started in New York, and from there spread to Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Milwaukee,...
by Bill Scher | May 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
A new Congressional Budget Office report is making headlines for finding that the top 10 income and payroll tax "expenditures" – deductions, credits and other tax breaks – amount to $12 trillion over a 10-year period. That's more than Medicare, Social Security or...
by Dave Johnson | May 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
Recent stories appearing in "mainstream" opinion-leader outlets would have you think that things with the economy are going great – if you didn't know better (and they don't). The thing is that outside of the geographic areas and cultural circles these opinion leaders...
by Richard Eskow | May 29, 2013 | Uncategorized
Part 1 of this series took a look at family healthcare costs for people with “good” insurance – better insurance, in fact, than most people will receive from the Affordable Care Act’s health care exchanges. We found that these costs soared above those of other...
by Richard Long | May 29, 2013 | Uncategorized
With the passing of Memorial Day Weekend, summer has unofficially begun. Schools will soon let out for summer break, and families will go on vacations, with many of them heading for national parks. But this summer is going to be a tough one for national parks, their...
