by Richard Eskow | Jul 4, 2012 | Blog
This year the message has gone out to the young, the disaffected, and the idealistic: Don't hope for too much. "Don't compare us to the Almighty," says the politician, "compare us to the alternative." Ironically, this comes from the same people who told us four years...
by | Jul 3, 2012 | Blog
As Independence Day approaches, I've been thinking about that iconic American saying, "Freedom Isn't Free." Usually it refers to the sacrifice of the men and women who serve in the military and their families -- and it's especially poignant now that Iraq- and...
by | Jul 3, 2012 | Blog
I honestly don't know how we can survive as a country with leadership this absurd: "We're opposed to it and we're not going to have any part of it," [Iowa Gov. Terry] Branstad said. "But we're taking our own approach. We want to put our own effort together to be the...
by Dave Johnson | Jul 3, 2012 | Blog
It's Independence Day! What better time is there to do something to help your country by buying American-made goods? MSNBC: One mom's challenge: Buy only "Made in USA" for one week When Joey Fortman was challenged to buy only American-made products for a week, she...
by Leo Gerard | Jul 3, 2012 | Blog
America commemorates its Independence Day this week with food, festivity and fireworks. To supply these events, Mitt Romney recommends: Buy foreign. Americans naturally think the patriotic choice would be to buy American. But for Romney, capitalism trumps patriotism....
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jul 3, 2012 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: The Phony "Generational War": It's Like the Hunger Games, But With Old People Ourfuture.org's Richard Eskow: "Like the Hunger Games, this spectacle only distracts us from the real economic injustices in our society. In an economy where most people's...
by Bill Scher | Jul 2, 2012 | Blog
President Obama has endured much criticism of his legislative skills from his fellow progressives. His conciliatory approach has been compared unfavorably with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s gleeful pugnacity and Lyndon B. Johnson’s relentless arm-twisting. His willingness...
by Richard Eskow | Jul 2, 2012 | Blog
Millions of people have read the Hunger Games stories, about a depraved future society where young people are forcing to fight each other for scarce resources while elites in the Capital plunder the nation's wealth. Now take a look at our world, where Washington's...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jul 2, 2012 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: The Tea Party's 1776 Schtick Sam Pizzigati on OurFuture.org: "The Founders, claimed Tea Party types, wouldn’t abide government interference in their lives. And neither should we. … No new taxes. Ever. Not even on the super rich. Forget that...
by Sam Pizzigati | Jul 1, 2012 | Blog
America's revolutionary generation, new research documents, lived in a society much more equal than our own. And early Americans prized that equality, an inconvenient reality for conservatives today. Not too long ago, Americans only dressed up in George Washington...
by Dave Johnson | Jul 1, 2012 | Blog
President Obama promised that if you have health insurance now, it won't change. Here are 7 ways he lied: 1) Under the new law your insurer can't drop your coverage after you get sick. This is a change in the coverage you already have. Obama lied. 2) Your children can...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog
Was today's ruling a victory for justice over corporate power? Did Chief Justice John Roberts rise above partisan differences because that's where an honest reading of the law took him? Nah. The majority on this Supreme Court is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog, Economy
It looks as if Congress got our message on the need to pass, without right-wing poison pills, a two-year transportation jobs bill. Our essential demand was that the House adopt a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate, rather than an ideologically extreme and...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog
If you want something to feel particularly good about this, heading into the 4th of July holiday, why not relive the moment we learned that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act? Nothing quite captures the moment like this Take Action News video of the...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog
Here is a short video with highlights and interviews from the Take Back the American Dream conference panel, Making It In America: Reviving and Strengthening U.S. Manufacturing: See also: Reviving And Strengthening U.S. Manufacturing and Why Can't Apple Make Your...
by | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog
Originally published at OtherWords. The most conservative Supreme Court in history just upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional. This is a victory for American families. It means lower costs, more coverage, and that insurance companies can't rip us off...
by Jeff Bryant | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog, Education
With the glow of high school graduations still lingering in many American families, and analysts predicting that an"economic recovery" is on the way, this is a time when you'd expect to start hearing more positive news about the state of US public education. You'd be...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog
President Obama is visiting Colorado today, one day after the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. The state is the site of two major disasters. The first disaster is, of course, the wildfires now on record as the most destructive the state has ever seen....
by Terrance Heath | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog
Now that our "do nothing" Congress is finally set to "do something" to stop interest on student loans from doubling, I think I’ve finally figured out what motivates conservatives on education in general, and conservative opposition to student loans in general....
by Terrance Heath | Jun 29, 2012 | Blog
Today was a victory. I'll leave it to others to analyze the margins of that victory, parse out what the majority of the Court did and didn't say, and what it means for the progressive movement, the health care reform movement, Democrats, Republicans, the tea party,...
by Bill Scher | Jun 29, 2012 | Uncategorized
Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security. MORNING MESSAGE: What America Won...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 28, 2012 | Blog
The student loan deal is badly needed. It should have just been extended - duh! But the 1 percenters took it hostage and demanded their pound of flesh before We, the People can preserve even this little bit of what we do for ourselves. So as part of the "sweetener"...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 28, 2012 | Blog
Economists Paul Krugman and Richard Layard, the latter of the London School of Economics, today posted a "Manifesto for Economic Sense" that lays out a sound framework for reviving the global economy. "I’ve been arguing for a long time that policy makers have...
by Roger Hickey | Jun 28, 2012 | Blog
The Supreme Court's narrow decision today that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional is a victory for all of us who defend the right of Americans to join together to impose new rules on the private health insurance industry—to require that they cover all...
by | Jun 28, 2012 | Blog
In plain English, from Scotusblog: Amy Howe: In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use...
by Bill Scher | Jun 28, 2012 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: Leaving Us To The Mercy Of The Insurance Companies OurFuture.org's Roger Hickey, quoted in Talking Points Memo: "If they throw out major portions of the reform the most important thing for Dems to talk about right now is how Republicans and the Court...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
The hubby and I were channel surfing last night and ended up watching Frontline. The feature story was "Dollars and Dentists". The more I watched, the more stomach churning it got. If the Supreme Court does a number on health care reform, this model could be waiting...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
The House on Thursday voted to continue surface transportation programs for an additional 90 days, punting to shortly before the Democratic and Republican conventions the question of what our longer-term transportation policy should look like. Most House Democrats...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
As the Senate prepares to take up a well-intentioned, if sorely inadequate, transportation funding bill this week, the Associated Press distributed a "news" story Monday that offered little "news" but much in the way of ideological framing for the opponents of federal...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
As of Wednesday afternoon, House Republicans were at an impasse within their own caucus on how to move forward on a surface transportation funding bill. There is a real possibility that, because of this impasse, federal funding for transportation projects would...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
Back in 2010, one of President Obama's stump-speech lines has him trying to put the economy in "D" to drive it out of the ditch it had fallen into, while Republican obstructionists keep trying to pull the stick shift back into "R." It was a baldly partisan pitch then,...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
The Senate has finally passed a transportation reauthorization bill today, more than 896 days after the last full authorization bill expired. But this is legislation that is much like the transportation infrastructure in much of the country today: well behind the...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog, Economy
A Senate-House conference committee is scheduled to meet today to hammer out differences between the two chambers on what is likely to be the most substantive jobs bill the Congress could pass this year: a surface transportation reauthorization bill. The best thing...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
House Republicans today once again showed that they are not only ideologically wrong-headed but legislatively inept. The House finally passed a transportation reauthorization bill, but not the fatally flawed five-year plan that House Speaker John Boehner had...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog, Economy
There are reports that Congress is at last about to reach a deal on a transportation bill, exactly 1,001 days after the expiration of the last transportation reauthorization bill that Congress passed. What's still unclear is what kind of deal this will be. The right...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
It's about time for us to break into the closed-door negotiations in Congress over a surface transportation bill. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is asking people on Wednesday to call their members of Congress to support "transportation equity" in...
by | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
Bleeding heart liberal rag Forbes does some important journalism and investigates the Fast and Furious pseudo scandal. It turns out that the basic facts the wingnuts are presenting --- that the ATF was engaged in a gun-walking sting operation, is false. Well, waddaya...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog, Economy
When we had democracy, We, the People made the rules and we ran our country and our economy for our benefit. Now that we are a plutocracy things are different. The reason our elites are not doing anything to fix the economy is because from their viewpoint, things are...
by Bill Scher | Jun 27, 2012 | Blog
Yesterday I discussed Mitt Romney's outsourcing problem with David Pakman on the David Pakman show. The strangest aspect of the Romney campaign strategy is the disconnect between the claim that his business experience is what qualifies him to be president, and the...
by Bill Scher | Jun 27, 2012 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: 1M Jobs or 2M Layoffs? OurFuture.org's Isaiah J. Poole: "There are reports that Congress is at last about to reach a deal on a transportation bill, exactly 1,001 days after the expiration of the last transportation reauthorization bill that Congress...
