by Robert Borosage | Mar 5, 2013 | Economy, Minimum Wage
Today, Senator Tom Harkin and Representative George Miller offer a ray of light amid the austerity blight in Washington. They are announcing introduction of a bill – the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 – to raise the minimum wage gradually to $10.10 and index it so it...
by Richard Eskow | Mar 5, 2013 | Blog
Bloomberg Businessweek created quite a stir last week when it illustrated a cover story about the return of risky mortgages with artwork that was widely interpreted as racist because ... well, see for yourself. The cartoon drawing showed only people of color - people...
by Sam Pizzigati | Mar 4, 2013 | Blog
Luxury fortresses. Armored cars. Helicopter commutes. The abominably unequal 'good life' may be closer than you think. Meanwhile, in South Africa . . . A dozen years ago, Brazil ranked as the world’s most unequal major nation. Brazil’s most affluent 10 percent were...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 4, 2013 | Blog
I was doing research, gathering headlines for a post. But the headlines told a story of their own. So here they are: 2010 November 2010, Corporate Profits Hit New Record, U.S. Workers Still Struggling 2011 January 2011, Profits Are Booming. Why Aren’t Jobs? May 2011,...
by Digby | Mar 4, 2013 | Blog
Dylan Matthews at Wonkblog reports on a fascinating study about liberal vs conservative beliefs: Last year, a group of political scientists took a random sample of state legislators and asked them a slew of questions, most of which boiled down to: “What do your...
by Stan Collender | Mar 4, 2013 | The Sequester
How did the sequester happen? How is it possible that what supposedly was the worst possible way to cut the deficit somehow became what actually happened? Over the weekend Ezra Klein, in a much retweeted blog post that was the talk of large parts of the political...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 4, 2013 | Blog
The Speaker of the House last week said that taxing people to pay for government is theft. Let's look at just where actual theft is occurring. Michael McAuliff and Sabrina Siddiqui covered the story at the Huffington Post, in John Boehner Compares Tax Proposals Of...
by Bill Scher | Mar 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: Sequester Cuts Confirm GOP Party Of Deadbeat Dads OurFuture.org's Jeff Bryant: "...some of the hardest hit by the budget cuts will be children. Prenatal children will feel the brunt of $353 million in cuts to nutrition, care, and education for their...
by Jeff Bryant | Mar 3, 2013 | Education, The Sequester
This post is republished from the Education Opportunity Network, a new online publication edited by Jeff Bryant. It's a popular analogy among fans of the political game to call Republicans the "Daddy Party" and assign "Mommy Party" to Democratic folk. The source of...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 2, 2013 | Blog
Republicans insist on cutting and gutting the things government does to make our lives better because, they say, "we're broke." Meanwhile a new study by Congress’ Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that in 2010 the big U.S. companies paid only 12.6% in taxes...
by Ben Johnson | Mar 1, 2013 | The Sequester
You wouldn’t know it from the shopping list drawn up for the Pentagon by defense hawks in Congress, but we’re long past the days of contending with a global superpower developing weapons that rival our own and flaunting its military might in menacing, destabilizing...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Mar 1, 2013 | The Sequester
The smackdown that President Obama delivered today to people who assert that he and others are exaggerating the impact of the sequestration for dramatic effect is worth publishing in full: Q: What do you say to the people like Mayor Bloomberg -- who is no critic of...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 1, 2013 | The Sequester
Remember when Republicans were so concerned about deficits? Not so much... today they are outraged that the IRS is not being shut down by the sequester and will continue to collect the revenue that reduces deficits. Gosh, do you think maybe deficits are not their real...
by Ben Johnson | Mar 1, 2013 | The Sequester
President Obama’s State of the Union address highlighted the importance of keeping medical and scientific research fully funded by the federal government. “Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the space race,”...
by Derek Pugh | Mar 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
Engraved onto the front of the Internal Revenue Service building is Oliver Holmes’ wise words: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” This year, the 16th Amendment, which grants Congress the right to levy an income tax, will be 100 years old. The anniversary...
by Bill Scher | Mar 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: Into The Vast Inane OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage: "Today the 'sequester' – mindless, across the board cuts of military and domestic spending designed to be abhorrent – will go into effect. Republicans claimed a 'big victory' as House Speaker John...
by Robert Borosage | Mar 1, 2013 | Economy, Minimum Wage, The Sequester
Someone asked the Master about the principles of … traveling into the vast inane. – From the Bao Pu Zi, AD 320, Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China Welcome to the vast inane. Today the “sequester” – mindless, across the board cuts of military and...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 1, 2013 | The Sequester
The Truth and Consequences of Sequestration, Pt. 2 Earlier I wrote that truth about the sequester is that White House prescribed it as antidote to the "fever" that had driven the GOP into such delirium that the Republicans were ready to crash the economy and take the...
by Richard Eskow | Mar 1, 2013 | The Sequester
Today is the day the package of budget cuts they call the "Sequester" takes effect. There will be endless postmortems and realtime analyses. But as its draconian effects, there’s one thing to remember above all: Congress did this. We’ve criticized both the President’s...
by Richard Long | Feb 28, 2013 | The Sequester
In the last several years, new economic terms have entered the American lexicon. Debt ceiling, fiscal cliff, sequestration. Well, we reached a deal on the first one, though it lowered our credit rating, and eventually took a few steps away from the fiscal cliff,...
by Derek Pugh | Feb 28, 2013 | The Sequester
The simple truth is, as individuals and a nation we pay most for what we value most. Conservatives in Congress have made it clear that they value corporations and the wealthiest over the middle class and American as a whole. The sequester has brought to light the true...
by Bill Scher | Feb 28, 2013 | The Sequester
For weeks the Campaign for America's Future has been rallying the public, pressuring Congress to simply repeal the sequester. And now, Rep. John Conyers has answered our call. He has introduced a bill so simple even Herman Cain will read it. The entire substance of...
by Derek Pugh | Feb 28, 2013 | The Sequester
Most of the general public may not feel the immediate shock waves of the manufactured ticking time bomb Congress set to go off at midnight Friday, but individuals relying the most on local and federal programs will feel it first. At the epicenter of the man-made...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 28, 2013 | Making it in America
"Buy America" policies work, seriously boosting American manufacturers and helping create American jobs. Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff has a guest-post, Making America a magnet for jobs and manufacturing, at the DOT's Fast Lane. He writes that "Buy...
by Diane Archer | Feb 28, 2013 | Blog
-In his extraordinarily well-documented expose on the medical-industrial complex for Time magazine, "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” Steven Brill explains thoroughly and repeatedly what serious pundits, policy experts and policymakers have failed to...
by Bill Scher | Feb 28, 2013 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: The Truth and Consequences of Sequestration OurFuture.org's Terrance Heath: "It’s hard for anyone except the most committed conservative conspiracy theorist to think that the Obama administration actually wants the sequestration cuts to happen....
by Richard Eskow | Feb 28, 2013 | Blog
The pro-corporate, anti-majority political class is sustaining itself with a lot of self-serving myths these days. Guess you need to do that when you're dismantling the social contract. In the closed society that is Insider Washington, rites and mythologies are used...
by Terrance Heath | Feb 27, 2013 | The Sequester
What if someone told you that a disastrous event is just days away from happening; one that will play havoc with the economy and bring pain and hardship to millions? What if the same someone told you that our government set this disaster in motion, and could easily...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 27, 2013 | Uncategorized
I have a message for Tyler Cowen, the occasional New York Times columnist and George Mason University professor who was quoted this morning in a Times story on the effects of the upcoming federal spending sequester: We're done taking our lumps. "It may be time to take...
by Ben Johnson | Feb 27, 2013 | Uncategorized
Republicans and deficit hawks are out of touch with unmarried women voters, and that is particularly true when it comes to the across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester that are due to go into effect Friday. A study released today by Democracy Corps,...
by Dean Baker | Feb 27, 2013 | Uncategorized
In societies across the globe, men demonstrate their manhood in different ways. There are many wonderful tracts on the topic. However, in the culture of Washington DC, the best way to demonstrate your manhood is to express your willingness to cut Medicare and Social...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 27, 2013 | Uncategorized
This is the story of Bob the Businessman. Suppose a local businessman, let’s call him Bob, went around town raising money from the townspeople to open a car dealership. Dozens and dozens of people in town invested, putting in $1,000, $5,000, and a few putting in as...
by Richard Eskow | Feb 27, 2013 | Uncategorized
The President’s "sequester" offer slashes non-defense spending by $830 billion over the next ten years. That happens to be the precise amount we’re implicitly giving Wall Street’s biggest banks over the same time period. We're collecting nothing from the big banks in...
by Roger Hickey | Feb 26, 2013 | The Sequester
Our month-long campaign to “disarm the austerity bomb” and repeal the sequester is gaining traction in Washington. On Monday, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus joined our call, saying if Republicans refuse to compromise, then we should simply “eliminate...
by Roger Hickey | Feb 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
How many economists does it take to make the Congress, President Obama and the media pay attention? Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has been warning of the dangers of austerity in his New York Times column and on TV for a long time. But the media treats him as an...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
While progressive organizations, Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration correctly focus on the damage the federal spending cuts to be forced by the March 1 sequester will do to the overall economy and to vital government services, USAction is using...
by Jeff Bryant | Feb 26, 2013 | Education
This post is republished from the Education Opportunity Network, a new online publication edited by Jeff Bryant. It's a conventional wisdom among Democrats to write off the state of Texas as a land of gun wielding troglodytes who genuflect to Rush Limbaugh and swill...
by Bill Scher | Feb 26, 2013 | The Sequester
Let's play: Pretend A Democrat Said That. From CNN, here's Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn claiming the sequester won't hurt the military: Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said he plans to make the case to other Republicans and the public that despite warnings from the...
by Robert Kuttner | Feb 26, 2013 | The Sequester
President Obama has miscalculated both the tactical politics of the sequester and the depressive economic impact of budget cuts on the rest of his presidency. The sequester will cut economic growth in half this year. But it’s now clear, one way or another, that we...
by Leo Gerard | Feb 26, 2013 | The Sequester
Last week, President Obama described the sequestration situation in simple, stark terms: keep it in place and punch the middle class in the gut. Or, he suggested, soften the blow substantially by ending special tax breaks for the rich. Here’s what he said:...
