by Eric Hunt | Jun 30, 2011 | Blog
New York Sen. Charles Schumer spoke today at the Economic Policy Institute about the need for Congress and the White House-Republican budget deficit talks to focus on America's most important issue of the day: job creation. "The view that Congress should focus on jobs...
by | Jun 30, 2011 | Blog
So Jonathan Chait thinks we should give the Lieberman-Coburn "Ryan Lite" plan to destroy Medicare a chance. I'll let you read the article to decide if it makes any sense to you or if it sounds more like it should be a satire: As Sargent notes, Republicans are already...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 30, 2011 | Blog
July 1 starts the fiscal new year in many states around the country, and thanks to economic policies pushed by conservative governors or state legislatures, combined with gridlock at the federal level, many of these states will set in motion policies that will make...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 29, 2011 | Blog
Republicans are perpetrating a fraud. They say they're concerned about reducing government deficits. But you don't need to look at how they treat all of the country's biggest corporations (which is extremely well) or even how they kowtow to its richest 400 families,...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 29, 2011 | Blog
The Congressional Progressive Caucus's "Speakout For Good Jobs" tour rolls into Milwaukee, Wisconsin, tonight, on what could hardly be a more auspicious day for workers in that city, as Gov. Scott Walker's bill stripping the state's public workers of almost...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 29, 2011 | Blog
As my husband and I watched anxiously for news of the outcome of the New York state senate vote on marriage equality, my thoughts drifted back to one last worrisome aspect of the Supreme Court's Walmart ruling — what it means for minorities. It may not be obvious, but...
by Robert Borosage | Jun 29, 2011 | Blog
On Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders committed common sense on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It's amazing that he wasn't cited for an ethics violation. Sanders called on the president to leave the Beltway, go across the country and talk sense to the American people about...
by Bill Scher | Jun 29, 2011 | 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: Dems Must Embrace...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 28, 2011 | Blog
How broken is today's political debate? The only politician standing up for most Republican voters on today’s most burning political issue is. … a Socialist. The question is whether we reduce the deficit only through spending cuts, or also by raising taxes on the...
by | Jun 28, 2011 | Blog
Originally published at Capital Gains and Games. There was no way to know for sure that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) would cause the collapse of the debt ceiling talks being led by Vice President Joseph Biden, as occurred last week when Cantor decided to...
by | Jun 28, 2011 | Blog, Rick Perlstein
Perlstein Rant: Often folks ask me how America can be saved from its present course. Not by changing wingnuts—they will always be wingnuts, same methods and worldview since the 1950s; and not by changing the hearts corporate plutocrats—ditto, since the dawn of...
by | Jun 28, 2011 | Blog
Throughout our history, there have been alternative, competing visions of the "good life" in America. The story of how these competing visions played out in our history is prologue to an important question: What is the American Dream and what is its future?...
by Bill Scher | Jun 28, 2011 | 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: The Not-So-Loyal...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 28, 2011 | Blog, Minimum Wage
In the debt-ceiling debate Republicans are holding the country hostage again, demanding that the country shift to a radical pro-big-corporate/big-wealth agenda as the ransom. At the same time the Tea Partiers say don't raise the debt limit, period, and let the country...
by Sam Pizzigati | Jun 27, 2011 | Blog
The world's ultra rich, those 103,000 deep pockets with at least $30 million to invest, could afford to pay off the entire national debt of the world's biggest deadbeat nations without having to sacrifice a single Rolls or Bentley. Sober central bankers the world over...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 27, 2011 | Blog
Here is the video of last night's launch of Rebuild the Dream campaign, with Van Jones. (If you want to skip the music parts, start at 9:15.) Watch Van Jones spell out "the three big lies" of the conservative narrative: 1) America is broke. 2) Asking the super rich to...
by Sam Pizzigati | Jun 27, 2011 | Blog, Economy
'Asset bubbles' have been roiling our economy ever since America's wealthy started supersizing three decades ago. But another bubble, this one enveloping those wealthy, may be just as essential to understand. America’s corporations, the latest stats show, have been...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 27, 2011 | Blog
Why are people still interested in what Jamie Dimon has to say? As CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Dimon presides over a serial corporate criminal whose long list of misbehaviors[1] got longer only last week. As an investment and economics "expert" he failed to anticipate...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 27, 2011 | Blog, Minimum Wage
This is my presentation from last week's Netroots Nation panel session: Revitalizing Manufacturing: The Road to Renewed Job Growth. Click through for panel details and other panelists, here for a pdf of slides, including Jared Bernstein's. See below for video -- and...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 27, 2011 | Blog
It has been called the city that moved America; the city that spawned the sound of a generation. For decades, Detroit was the assembly line of the American Dream. Its auto factories produced the cars that made possible the suburban life that defined the American...
by Robert Borosage | Jun 27, 2011 | Blog
It was an accident of scheduling, but call it fate. As President Obama was meeting with 600 major donors from the gay and lesbian community in New York to raise money for his re-election campaign, three blocks away, Van Jones and the driving beat of the The...
by Bill Scher | Jun 27, 2011 | 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: Good Jobs Tour...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 24, 2011 | Blog
To start your weekend on a boiling mad note, read what Talking Points Memo published this afternoon regarding the details of why Republicans bolted Thursday from the deficit-reduction talks being conducted by Vice President Joe Biden: Democrats want to close tax...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 24, 2011 | Blog
The Supreme Court's Dukes vs. Walmart, raising the bar for plaintiffs in class action suits, means workers who already have it bad in this economy probably won't have it any better, and won't be able to do much about it. Can't Win. Don't Try. The lesson Betty Dukes...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 24, 2011 | Blog, Making it in America
President Obama today announced a new Advanced Manufacturing Partnership that will bring together industry, universities and the federal government to invest in emerging technologies. This is nuts-and-bolts government work, to help American manufacturing and American...
by | Jun 24, 2011 | Blog
A packed Senate hearing room sat quietly, slowly leaning in to catch the grief-stricken testimony of Amanda Greubel. “I’ve sat with parents as they completed the eligibility application [for free or reduced lunch], held their hands as they’ve shed tears of shame,” she...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 24, 2011 | 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: The Selling of...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 23, 2011 | Blog, Making it in America
I watched a Congressional hearing yesterday (webcast), examining why we need a national industrial strategy. There were a few pro-manufacturing voices. But in a surprise move, Republicans and representatives of Wall Street & giant multinationals opposed such a policy...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 23, 2011 | Blog
The Federal Reserve and its chairman, Ben Bernanke, should not be allowed to get away with what they did on Wednesday. What they did at the end of their Open Market Committee meeting was to essentially throw up their hands in the face of their legal responsibility to...
by Jeff Bryant | Jun 23, 2011 | Blog, Education
As American public education arrives at the summer of its discontent, we have to contemplate how a system that has already had over 201,600 jobs wrung from its payrolls since August 2008 will handle the prospect of having to shed nearly a quarter of a million more...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 23, 2011 | Blog
It's Walmart's world, and the rest of us are just living in it. That seems to be the take away from the Supreme Court's ruling in Duke v. Walmart. The court ruled on a narrow aspect of the case, but the decision has broad and foreboding implications for workers,...
by | Jun 23, 2011 | Blog
January 2011: At the House GOP retreat in Baltimore, "Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivered a stern message that the debt ceiling will eventually have to be raised to keep the government from defaulting. But he also promised that Republicans will 'use the...
by Bill Scher | Jun 23, 2011 | 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: Bring Our Soldiers...
by | Jun 22, 2011 | Blog
This piece in Slate about libertarian philospher Robert Nozick has engendered quite a bit of online chatter and it's very much worth reading if you are interested in the intellectual underpinnings of that side of our economic debates. There are lots of responses...
by | Jun 22, 2011 | Blog
The United States has to cut back spending on the Commerce Department or it will bankrupt the country. Okay, I have no evidence for this and it really doesn't make any sense. The Commerce Department's budget is about $10 billion a year, less than 0.3 percent of total...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 22, 2011 | Blog, Minimum Wage
There is no "Texas miracle" for workers and job-seekers. There is a Texas mirage, painted vividly by conservatives and being sold as the real deal by arch-conservative Texas governor Rick Perry, who may in a few days declare his intent to run for the Republican...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 22, 2011 | Blog
t's one of modern political life's strange ironies that defending Social Security and Medicare is considered an "old people's issue." Old people are doing just fine with these programs, thank you very much -- at least so far. Anti-government hawks like Alan Simpson...
by Bill Scher | Jun 22, 2011 | 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: Deficit Hysterics...
by | Jun 21, 2011 | Blog
Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games. Last week was the point in this year’s budget negotiations when everyone’s worst fears about what would happen seemed to be on the verge of being realized. The combination of increasingly happy talk about the summit being...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 21, 2011 | Blog
Did you hear the story about the group of millionaires who called a press conference Monday and called on Congress to levy higher taxes on them? I didn't think so. On a day in which we were treated with TMI about a New York congressman's errant self portraits, the...
