by Isaiah J. Poole | May 20, 2013 | Blog
I got my first job while I was in high school through a small community organization run by Willie J. Hardy, a community activist (and later D.C. City Council member) who operated out of what legendary Washington Post writer William Raspberry described as a "tiny,...
by Richard Eskow | May 19, 2013 | Blog
The day may come when the worst nightmare a crooked banker or compromised regulator can have begins with the words, "You have a letter from Senator Warren." But before we get to that, here's an experience that may seem familiar: You’re at a party or family...
by Sam Pizzigati | May 19, 2013 | Uncategorized
If President Obama played basketball with the king of Bhutan, would the world have a better shot at becoming a happier place? What makes us happy? A simple question. In America, we’ve been asking it ever since 1776, the year we declared for “life, liberty, and the...
by Richard Eskow | May 18, 2013 | Blog
These days the economic news reads like some strange collaboration between John Steinbeck and Eugene Ionesco, a mashup of The Grapes of Wrath and The Bald Soprano. Grim statistics of poverty, lost hope, and widespread tragedy - the stuff of human reality - are...
by Richard Long | May 17, 2013 | Uncategorized
According to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released Thursday, baby boomers and Generation Xers are increasingly unlikely to be able to afford the costs of retirement, making critical the need for a strong Social Security program to bridge this income gap. Instead of...
by Dave Johnson | May 17, 2013 | Blog
The Senate is getting ready to vote on five nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). They should confirm the whole package and get the NLRB functioning again. They are also voting on several other nominees from judges to cabinet positions. If Republicans...
by Terrance Heath | May 17, 2013 | Blog
For weeks, I've been writing that the movement to increase the minimum wage near you. Next week, however, that movement will arrive in my own back yard. Low-wage workers organized by Good Jobs Nation are coming to Washington, DC to rally for living wages, on Tuesday,...
by Robert Borosage | May 17, 2013 | Uncategorized
Thursday on Bloomberg Television, Robert Borosage made the case for Sen. Elizabeth Warren's Bank On Student Loan Fairness Act, which would set student loan interest rates at the same rate banks get from the Federal Reserve discount window: "There is a universal...
by Bill Scher | May 16, 2013 | Uncategorized
Over at The Week, I make the argument that presidential scandal politics usually fail to lift the political prospects of the party outside the White House. No party has reaped a political reward from pushing scandal since Nixon, yet both parties have repeatedly tried....
by Terrance Heath | May 16, 2013 | Blog
It's official. Minimum wage workers going on strike is no longer a mere trend. It's a movement. Not that there was ever any doubt, after minimum wage workers in the fast food and retail sectors of major cities like New York City, Chicago, St.Louis, and Detroit walked...
by Derek Pugh | May 16, 2013 | Uncategorized
In the latest round of atrocities committed by conservatives, Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee sent to the House floor a farm bill on Wednesday that offers little food for families while dishing out corporate subsides. In protest, organizational leaders...
by Stan Collender | May 16, 2013 | Uncategorized
There was a time when a $200+ billion reduction in the federal budget deficit would have been big news and hailed as a singular achievement worthy of either fiscal sainthood or a dance-on-the-table party...or both. Yet yesterday's Congressional Budget Office report...
by Richard Eskow | May 16, 2013 | Uncategorized
Simpson and Bowles, those two hired pitchmen for budget-cutting hysteria, are still hawking an economy-killing product called "austerity economics," a product that's designed to benefit their wealthy patrons at everybody else's expense. This philosophy provides some...
by Dave Johnson | May 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
The Senate Heath, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will vote Thursday on President Obama's nomination of Thomas Perez, currently head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to head the Department of Labor. There are a majority of Democrats on this...
by Richard Long | May 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
Senate Republican obstruction of President Obama’s nominee for secretary of labor, Thomas Perez, got a strong rebuke from a coalition of Latino organizations that held a march and rally on Wednesday to call for an end to the filibuster threats to his nomination. “We...
by Terrance Heath | May 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
Yesterday I wrote about how obstructionist Republican tactics are hollowing out our government, hobbling its agencies, and diminishing its responsiveness to the needs and concerns of ordinary Americans. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our court system, where...
by Thom Hartmann | May 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
Yesterday, in response to recent IRS admissions, President Obama called the enhanced investigation of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status “intolerable and inexcusable.” And, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a criminal investigation into the...
by Trevor Davis | May 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
Deficit Shrinking, Health Care Costs Slowing New CBO projection shows plummeting deficit. NYT: "Since the recession ended four years ago, thefederal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion every year. But now the government’s annual deficit is shrinking far faster than...
by Richard Eskow | May 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
Deficit projections have already by $200 billion for this year alone, so why do Republicans keep lunging for ever-more radical spending cuts like they were corn dogs at a barbecue? That's more in deficit reduction than President Obama's proposed cut to Social Security...
by Isaiah J. Poole | May 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
On Thursday, House Republicans have scheduled a vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Haven't they already done that, you ask? Yes, they have, in one form or another, 36 times since it has been enacted. This week's vote would make 37. It's gotten to the...
by Digby | May 15, 2013 | Blog
David does a nice job unpacking the dreadful Politico gossip item in his post below. But as a long time Village observer from afar, I thought I might add a little more context. The first observation is that apparently Sally Quinn has officially passed the baton to...
by Dave Johnson | May 15, 2013 | Blog
A continuing series Read the full series Tell your member of Congress Washington remains focused on a "deficit problem" when there is no deficit problem. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the 2013 budget deficit will be down 60 percent as a share of...
by Bill Scher | May 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: America's Education Spring: A Growing Revolt Against ‘Reform’ Mandates OurFuture.org's Jeff Bryant: "... the resistance to top-down education mandates is building. The movement is propelled by forces far greater than what education journalists and...
by Jeff Bryant | May 15, 2013 | Education
"It's always hard to tell for sure exactly when a revolution starts," wrote John Tierny in The Atlantic recently. "I'm not an expert on revolutions," he continued, "but even I can see that a new one is taking shape in American K-12 public education." Tierney pointed...
by Adele Stan | May 14, 2013 | Blog
Apparently it never occurred to Attorney General Eric Holder that the Associated Press might be "too big to fail." If it had,then his Justice Department probably never would have investigated it. The AP isn't just any news agency. It's the largest one in the United...
by Terrance Heath | May 14, 2013 | Uncategorized
Republicans in Congress have a new tactic for shrinking government: making sure that nobody's there to run it. Well into the president's second term, an alarming and unprecedented number of vital positions in every branch of government remain vacant. As Republicans...
by Dave Johnson | May 14, 2013 | Trans-Pacific Partnership
You will be hearing a lot about the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. TPP's negotiations are being held in secret with details kept secret even from our Congress. But giant corporations are in the loop. TPP is a "trade" agreement between several...
by Leo Gerard | May 14, 2013 | Blog
President Obama went to Austin, Texas, last week in pursuit of an industrial and employment revival. He wants to launch manufacturing institutes to foster American innovation and job creation. Republicans responded by ridiculing the President, in the same arrogant way...
by Bill Scher | May 14, 2013 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: Lift The Millstone of Student Debt That’s Slowing The Economy OurFuture.org's Isaiah J. Poole: "... if you or someone you know has had a hard time finding a job or selling a home, part of what you are experiencing is the effect that escalating college...
by Isaiah J. Poole | May 14, 2013 | Student Debt Relief
Do you think that student loan debt is only a problem for college students and perhaps their parents? Think again. The escalation of student loan debt in the past decade is a millstone around the neck of the entire economy, and you are touched by its effects....
by Richard Eskow | May 14, 2013 | Blog
Rep. Henry Waxman should make a promise to his constituents, but he doesn't want to. So, instead of promising that he'll protect Social Security from President Obama's proposed benefit cut, Waxman told one of his constituents the very idea of asking Representatives to...
by Dave Johnson | May 13, 2013 | Making it in America
The Communications Workers of America is asking people to contact their senators to block an effort to undermine American workers using the H-1B visa program. Here's the story. What Is H-1B And Why? There is a program called "H-1B" that lets companies hire temporary...
by Dave Johnson | May 13, 2013 | Uncategorized
A NY Times editorial says Republicans need public pressure to get them to stop obstructing ... everything. Meanwhile NY Times and other news coverage tends to obscure the source and extent of the problem and the damage it is doing to the country. Just months after a...
by Sam Pizzigati | May 13, 2013 | Uncategorized
Looking for a quick fix to the deep inequality that so afflicts us? Stop your searching. We need to strategize instead for the long-term. A riveting new work from a leading historian helps us see how. The 79-year-old corporate gadfly Robert Monks, the former top...
by Trevor Davis | May 13, 2013 | Uncategorized
Grand Bargained Out "A rosier economic outlook" reduces pressure on Congress for grand bargain, reports The Hill: "With increased federal revenues reducing the deficit, pushing a debt-ceiling showdown beyond the summer and into the autumn, lawmakers have been debating...
by Bill Scher | May 13, 2013 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: Help Elizabeth Warren Get Students the Same Rates as the Big Banks OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage: "On July 1, interest rates on student loans will double, jumping to 6.8%, according to current law. While the Big Banks are now enjoying interest rates...
by Robert Borosage | May 13, 2013 | Blog
On July 1, interest rates on student loans will double, jumping to 6.8%, according to current law. While the Big Banks are now enjoying interest rates of almost zero. Enter Elizabeth Warren with her first bill as a Senator: It solves the problem by giving students the...
by Trevor Davis | May 12, 2013 | Uncategorized
Declining Deficit Quiets Grand Bargain Talk Shrinking deficit reduces pressure for "grand bargain." WSJ: "...thanks to the improved fiscal picture, analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other firms believe the Treasury Department can maneuver until September or...
by Richard Eskow | May 12, 2013 | Blog
My mother has never liked Mother's Day. She says it's a phony holiday designed to boost profits for Hallmark Cards. I say, Who cares as long as everybody's happy? After all, I tell her, Hallmark isn't Blackwater or Halliburton. And besides, not all profits are evil....
by Richard Eskow | May 11, 2013 | Uncategorized
Will California Attorney General Kamala Harris hang tough in her new lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, the first to target individual bankers accused of defrauding the public? If so, it would be the first time in five years that executives at a major bank have...
