by Bill Scher | Nov 22, 2010 | Uncategorized
Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security. MORNING MESSAGE: Media Lets Rich...
by Sam Pizzigati | Nov 21, 2010 | Blog
The rich, many Americans have come to believe, rule. But how? The current hubbub over the federal budget deficit opens a welcome window to understanding just how our rich keep riding so high. How can you tell whether you live in a plutocracy? Easy. Just conduct this...
by | Nov 19, 2010 | Blog
Nearly 2 million U.S. workers are facing premature elimination of federally-funded unemployment benefits if Congress doesn't act by November 30. Yet the talk dominating Washington, D.C. these days is about extending George Bush's tax giveaway to the rich. Really? It's...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Nov 19, 2010 | Blog
Most of the media this week ignored two significant mass defections from the Chamber of Commerce line that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans must be extended indefinitely, even though doing so will worsen the federal deficit and won't help...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 19, 2010 | Blog, Economy, Reagan Revolution
Washington is inundated with deficit commissions. The country has piled up a huge debt because we cut taxes for the wealthy and borrowed to make up the difference. But everyone says we can't fix the problem by raising taxes on the rich in a recession because taxes...
by Terrance Heath | Nov 19, 2010 | Blog
A couple of years ago I started writing about something I called "Drop Dead Conservatism," and attempted to define it: High on delusion, denial, and derision, it's the face of a conservatism unequipped to recognize — let alone meet — the challenges America...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 19, 2010 | Blog
The Washington Post criticizes President Obama because he is holding out for a better Korean Free Trade Agreement deal for American workers and businesses. They call that a "setback." But a setback for who, exactly? In a Thursday editorial, Mr. Obama's Korea trade...
by Terrance Heath | Nov 19, 2010 | Blog
A while back I attempted to define "Drop Dead Conservatism." High on delusion, denial, and derision, it’s the face of a conservatism unequipped to recognize — let alone meet — the challenges America and the world now face, and blind to the possibility drowning itself...
by Terrance Heath | Nov 19, 2010 | Blog
Read part one. There's a literary reference that comes to mind when I consider "Drop Dead" conservatism. (My English Lit. degree occasionally comes in handy.) It's a Shakespearean reference, actually, to a character from one of his lesser known plays. Timon of Athens...
by Terrance Heath | Nov 19, 2010 | Blog
Drop Dead. That's the best answer that some conservatives have been able to offer to a country in teeth of the worst financial crisis we've faced in a generation. When the Wall Street crisis loomed and the bailout was being debated: let the market fail, and risk...
by Bill Scher | Nov 19, 2010 | Uncategorized
Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security. MORNING MESSAGE: Did The Rich Cause...
by Richard Eskow | Nov 18, 2010 | Blog
We expected to see an all-out assault on Social Security and progressive taxation in November, and we expected it to come under the banner of "deficit reduction." That was always the plan: Wait until after the election, when a lame-duck Congress could pass the...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Nov 18, 2010 | Blog
When the House of Representatives held its unsuccessful vote earlier today on a measure to continue emergency unemployment benefits that are set to expire at the end of the month, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Sander M. Levin, D-Mich, told Congressional...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Nov 18, 2010 | Blog
The next time a conservative politician goes to the microphone and says something to the effect that "the American people have spoken, and they've made it clear that they want us to rein in out-of-control entitlement spending and keep programs such as Social Security...
by Bill Scher | Nov 18, 2010 | Blog
After the President signed the health reform law, opponent GOP Sen. Scott Brown immediately promised to push for changes. In a March 30th Boston Globe oped, he wrote: "I am working on legislation that would allow states to opt out of this federal health care bill...
by Bill Scher | Nov 18, 2010 | Blog
Jon Stewart presumably came to DC to rally the sane against Glenn Beck's minions and 9/11 Truthers. But instead of amplifying that message in The Daily Show interview with President Obama yesterday, Stewart opted to focus on the most weak and superficial criticisms of...
by Terrance Heath | Nov 18, 2010 | Blog
Faced with a foreclosure fiasco of astounding proportions — as chronicled by my fellow bloggers, Zach Carter and Richard Eskow — in which banks practically kick down doors to foreclose on homes even when they can't prove ownership of the...
by Bill Scher | Nov 18, 2010 | Uncategorized
Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security. MORNING MESSAGE: We've Foreclosed...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 17, 2010 | Blog
The Healthcare is Too Damn High from CEPR Oh My goodness. The deficits are out of control. We have to do something! What is wrong with the deficits? Well, we have to cut them. Why? Because if we don’t do something, something really bad will happen Like what? The...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 17, 2010 | Blog
"Free trade" by any other name ... is still just a scam to pit workers against each other and evade the protections of democracy. We, the People fought to build this democracy with its laws and institutions and protections. This fight brought us a middle class with...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 17, 2010 | Blog
A CBS poll shows that only 6% of the public is concerned about budget deficits or taxes. The rest of us are more concerned about jobs and the economy, with very good reason. The Washington elite are insulated from the pain the rest of us and are focused on the deficit...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Nov 17, 2010 | Blog
A petition signed by more than 100,000 supporters of extending emergency unemployment benefits was sent to members of Congress earlier today, but this example of overwhelming public support has had no effect on Senate conservatives, who so far haven’t shown...
by Bill Scher | Nov 17, 2010 | Blog
What was that again about a "center-right" nation? A new CNN poll finds only one-third of Americans backs the congressional Republican position for extending the Bush tax breaks to those earning more than $250,000 a year. Nearly half of American share President...
by | Nov 17, 2010 | Blog
The first thing you need to know about Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s plan to strengthen Social Security is what it does not do. It does not claim to cut benefits in order to “prevent them from being cut” in the future. It does not “fix” Social Security with 70% benefit cuts...
by Zach Carter | Nov 17, 2010 | Blog
A month ago, President Barack Obama vetoed a bill that would have made it far more difficult for borrowers to prove that banks were engaging in foreclosure fraud. The bill was a complex, highly technical bailout for megabanks that have defrauded millions of borrowers,...
by Bill Scher | Nov 17, 2010 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: The DC/Rest-Of-Us Divide OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: " There is a 'deficit commission' but no jobs commission. There are millions of people needing jobs and millions of jobs that need doing, but Washington won't 'spend,' even on badly-needed...
by Bill Scher | Nov 16, 2010 | Blog
Conservative austerity activists have long sought to whip up deficit hysteria and manipulate Washington into gutting Social Security and Medicare and stifling public investments. But Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a progressive member of the White House deficit commission, has...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Nov 16, 2010 | Blog
A piece of conventional wisdom was debunked today by a new report on the 2010 midterm elections released by the Joint Center for Political Studies. One bottom-line conclusion of this report: It was not the failure of black voters to show up at the polls that caused...
by Leo Gerard | Nov 16, 2010 | Blog, Reagan Revolution
The deficit commission report issued last week is another Saturday night special pressed to the temple of the American middle class. “Turn over your money and your benefits or your country will die,” the report screams at workers. “You want your country to go...
by Bill Scher | Nov 16, 2010 | Blog
Yesterday I observed that Republican congresspeople literally are not offering any substantive ideas to create jobs. Now, leading Republicans are coalescing around an substantive idea ... for the Federal Reserve to stop trying to create jobs. It is currently the law...
by Zach Carter | Nov 16, 2010 | Blog
Despite escalating outrage over rampant foreclosure fraud, the Federal Reserve now appears ready to eviscerate a key mortgage regulation in an effort to spare banks the losses from their own wrongdoing. Even as bank executives preposterously claim to have wronged...
by Bill Scher | Nov 16, 2010 | Uncategorized
MORNING MESSAGE: Only 6% Prioritize Simpson-Bowles Agenda Only 6% of Americans want Washington to prioritize deficit reduction, yet we are. OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "Nearly ten times as many people, 56%, want it to focus on creating jobs and fixing the economy....
by Richard Eskow | Nov 16, 2010 | Blog, Financial Reform
Only 6% of Americans think Congress should concentrate on reducing the deficit or changing the tax code, according to the latest CBS News poll. Nearly ten times as many people, 56%, want it to focus on creating jobs and fixing the economy. Guess which set of policies...
by Richard Eskow | Nov 15, 2010 | Blog, Minimum Wage
Former White House budget director Peter Orszag is taking a new approach in his quest to cut Social Security. He's playing progressive "good cop" to to the ultra-right bad cops of the White House deficit commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Now that Bowles and...
by | Nov 15, 2010 | Blog
The following was originally published at New Deal 2.0 The draft proposal released as a surprise yesterday by the two chairmen of President Obama's fiscal commission is conceived and written in panic. It is a profoundly ideological set of policy prescriptions. The...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 15, 2010 | Blog
The co-chairs of the "Deficit Commission" released their recommendations yesterday. Basically they said that to cut the deficit we need to give a huge tax cut to the rich by cutting top tax rates from the current 35% down to 23%. The middle-class' share of the pain...
by Roger Hickey | Nov 15, 2010 | Blog
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have now called for Senator Alan Simpson, co-chair of the White House deficit commission, to step down – after he insulted the head of the Older Women’s League, Ashley Carson, by implying that her dedication to protecting retirees...
by Richard Eskow | Nov 15, 2010 | Blog
If back-channel sources are correct, the White House deficit commission is finalizing a deal that would increase Social Security benefits slightly for low-income recipients while cutting them for everyone else. The Commissioners apparently believe that putting this...
by Dave Johnson | Nov 15, 2010 | Blog
Social Security supporters announced today that over 100 members of Congress are signing a letter to President Obama demanding that the Deficit Commission keep its hands off Social Security. They say that if the deficit commission tries to cut the program they say it...
by Bill Scher | Nov 15, 2010 | Blog, Economy
On the day before Congress reconvened in Washington, in the middle of a continuing job crisis, Republicans took to the Sunday talk show airwaves and ... had no ideas what to do about creating jobs. This is not terribly shocking. There have been no actual job creation...
