by Bill Scher | Mar 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: Harry's Fight Is...
by Sam Pizzigati | Mar 27, 2011 | Blog
If the wealth of the wealthy really bothered Americans, flacks for grand fortune enjoy declaring, our political system would be shaking something fierce. They don't see a whole lot of shaking. Should we? Apologists for inequality have an all-purpose defense for our...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 25, 2011 | Blog
In 1983 NY hotel-chain-owning billionaire Leona Helmsley said, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes..." As our country migrates from democracy to plutocracy, this more and more appears to be official policy. Again and again we see tax cuts for the...
by Robert Borosage | Mar 25, 2011 | Blog
"We have to understand. We have other patriots who love our country who have other ideas about how to solve our problems... We're patriots; they're patriots too." That was my friend Van Jones, speaking about the Tea Party at the Summit on Jobs and America's...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 25, 2011 | Blog
I admit sometimes I look at the GOP majority in the House and wonder where these people came from. (Their districts, I know.) Defending the Defense of Marriage Act? Hearings on Muslim Americans? Emergency meetings to defund NPR? All this while unemployment is at 10.2%...
by | Mar 25, 2011 | Blog
With Michael Winship Like Jake LaMotta and his brother Joey in the bloody boxing classic Raging Bull, we are gluttons for punishment. So here we are again, third week in a row, defending NPR against the bare-knuckled assault of its critics. Our earlier pieces on the...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 25, 2011 | Blog, Economy, Minimum Wage
In his remarks at the Summit on Jobs & America's Future, Van Jones summed up the GOP agenda: "They want to repeal the last century." As the GOP declares war on regulations that protect workers, the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory...
by Jeff Bryant | Mar 25, 2011 | Blog, Education
It’s getting really hard to look at the distorted rhetoric of today’s debate about public schools and NOT see it in the same whorish light as other political discussions of the day. Just as we’re being stoked with down-is-up claims that tax cuts balance government...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 25, 2011 | Blog, Economy
The usual suspects are trying to sell us on yet another scheme to keep from paying their taxes. This one is called a repatriation tax holiday—a huge cut in the tax rate on money companies are holding outside of the country. We did this before and it didn't work out so...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 25, 2011 | Blog, Economy
"Free trade" treaties like NAFTA have wiped out entire regions of our country and left entire segments of our population without good-paying jobs -- or in so many cases with no jobs at all. And they have had similar results with our trade "partners." We can see that...
by Bill Scher | Mar 25, 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 Alternate...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 24, 2011 | Blog
A picture is worth a thousand words, the saying goes. Get a bunch of pictures together, and they tell a story.The Huffington Post has posted a slideshow of images depicting the decline of Detroit, Michigan, taken from the book The Ruins of Detroit, by Yves Marchand...
by Bill Scher | Mar 24, 2011 | Blog
It's been a year since the President Obama's Affordable Care Act became law. During that period of time, no federal government health department, bureau, agency or panel has ordered anyone's death. I just checked on my family's grandmother. She's still here. This news...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 24, 2011 | Blog
Hey, everyone in the Rand Paul pile-on, make room for one more. I'm coming in for a landing! I shouldn't pick on the good doctor, though he makes it too easy. After all, his latest media train wrecks gave me a chance to resurrect a timeline of industrial disasters I...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 24, 2011 | Blog
(If They Could Turn Back Time, Pt. 2) When I heard Rand Paul's statement about the civil rights act, I had a sense of deja vu. Not only that I'd heard them before, but that I run into the peculiar conservative phenomenon they represented: wanting have it both ways on...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 24, 2011 | Blog
Imagine, if you will, Rand Paul, Michelle Bachman, and Sharron Angle — with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on speakerphone — sitting down together with a copy of the constitution, and a red pen. For edits, of course. Now, open your eyes. And, if you're a...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 24, 2011 | Blog, Minimum Wage
You hear it all the time, these days. Tea baggers, militia members and various other conservatives all that to "take their country back." My usual response was to ask just how far back they want to go. I used to think I knew. It turns out, I had my time...
by Bill Scher | Mar 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 Debit Card...
by Richard Eskow | Mar 24, 2011 | Blog, Financial Reform
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co (that guy again?), recently said that his bank would add new customer fees if it couldn't continue to charge exorbitant hidden fees for the use of debit cards. He was sorry, Dimon said, "but, of course, the...
by Mary Bottari | Mar 23, 2011 | Blog
The reign of lawlessness continues in Wisconsin. Last week, a local court issued a temporary restraining order blocking the implementation of Governor Scott Walker's radical proposal to do away with most collective bargaining rights for public workers and cripple...
by Bill Scher | Mar 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: Rewriting Cantor's...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Mar 23, 2011 | Blog, Economy
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Monday unveiled what his office called a “pro-growth economic plan” in a speech at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. If the speech only exemplified one of the basic definitions of "cant"—"insincere or almost meaningless...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 22, 2011 | Blog, Economy
I was a guest on a segment of the Peter Schiff radio show this morning, guest-hosted today by Mike Pento. The show takes a libertarian/conservative point of view, and I welcomed the opportunity to contribute an alternative perspective. We need more like this to get a...
by Bill Scher | Mar 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: Merchants Of...
by Eric Lotke | Mar 22, 2011 | Blog
As the debate heats up over Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I took a step out on my own. I got a divorce. I am no longer a wholly owned subsidiary of Wells Fargo Bank. First Wells Fargo acquired the bank I’d been banking in. Then...
by | Mar 22, 2011 | Blog
Melinda Gibson is the Operations Manager for Health Care for America Now! The following originally appeared on the HCAN blog. Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nationwide coalition that led the successful fight for health reform, is hosting more than 75...
by Richard Eskow | Mar 22, 2011 | Blog, Financial Reform
Fukushima is "a very huge disaster that has caused very large damage at a nuclear power generation plant on a scale that we had not expected," according to the deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. But the risk of disaster was easily...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 21, 2011 | Blog, Economy
No, I'm not jumping ship or anything like that. I'm just at CPAC looking for something, anything about how conservatives plan to create jobs. Let's just say I'm still looking. Today, I'm attending (and covering) the Conservative Political Action Conference (a.k.a...
by | Mar 21, 2011 | Blog
with Michael Winship There’s no more scrupulous or versatile broadcast journalist than NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling. He is one of those reporters who keeps his eye on the sparrow – that is, on small details from individual lives that add up to significant issues of public...
by Bill Scher | Mar 21, 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: Stand With Warren...
by Sam Pizzigati | Mar 20, 2011 | Blog
The rising public clamor for higher taxes on America's wealthy has conservative ideologues increasingly uneasy. For good reason. They don't have the numbers on their side. Or much history either. A simple but powerful chant is now starting to reverberate, all across...
by Jeff Bryant | Mar 19, 2011 | Blog, Education
Imagine taking your child to her first day of kindergarten and finding out that there won’t be a teacher for the class of 30 children until October. Imagine being a working family with two young children barely getting from paycheck to paycheck and getting told that...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 18, 2011 | Blog
As I wrote earlier, a funny thing happened on the way to budget solvency in some pretty red states: It didn't work. Budget cuts and austerity have left Texas in the red, and the legislature taking a hammer to the state's piggy bank, with an eye toward spending some of...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 18, 2011 | Blog
A funny thing on the way to state budget solvency in Texas and Mississippi, which are among the reddest of the red states. You can't get much more conservative than Texas' and Mississippi's governors, Rick Perry and Haley Barbour. The same goes for their budget...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Mar 18, 2011 | Blog, Economy
This headline in The Washington Post earlier this week—House Republicans try to steer focus back to jobs—(after guess who took the focus off of jobs) highlights how silly the silly season has gotten for the right in Washington, but it also is a sign that even the...
by | Mar 18, 2011 | Blog
Originally posted at UnemployedWorkers.Org. Far too many American workers, stricken by the plague of long-term unemployment, find themselves at a place that now exists just off of 'Main Streets' in big cities, small towns and rural communities across the...
by Bill Scher | Mar 18, 2011 | Blog, Economy
Today, Politico reported that congressional Republicans are actually aware that they are failing to convince the electorate that they have a strategy to create jobs. But they appear to think they only have a communication problem: National Republican Senatorial...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 18, 2011 | Blog
As a progressive, sometimes I almost feel that I should say "Thank you" to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Not for what he's trying to do to Wisconsin, but for energizing the progressive movement, and motivating the Democrat's base in a way that many of us...
by Anne Thompson | Mar 18, 2011 | Blog, Economy
The House Republicans have developed a track record of bait and switch when it comes to their approach to job creation. Last week, House Republican leadership released a PowerPoint by Congressman Paul Ryan that they are using to educate the Republican Caucus on...
by Robert Borosage | Mar 18, 2011 | Blog, Economy
Governor Scott Walker and a gaggle of Republican governors assault the right of workers to bargain collectively in states across the country. Teachers get laid off as school budgets are cut across the country. Colleges hike tuitions and shut down course offerings....
