by Dave Johnson | Feb 17, 2010 | Blog
Conservatives claim that President Obama "tripled the deficit" and point to the huge 2009 budget deficit as proof. They use charts that show the fiscal-year 2009 deficit, as reported in October was, indeed, about triple the prior year's borrowing. But the 2009 budget...
by Bill Scher | Feb 17, 2010 | Blog
Before tomorrow's expected executive order establishing a commission to reduce the debt, the White House has leaked the names of who wi
by Dave Johnson | Feb 17, 2010 | Blog
Today's new York Times has a front-page editorial calling for cutting the Social Security pensions of Americans and other things that we as citizens are entitled to. Many analysts say the president and Congress could send a strong signal to global markets by agreeing...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 17, 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. Bill Scher is ill today. On the...
by Richard Eskow | Feb 16, 2010 | Blog
Mattel makes a little toy called the "Magic 8-Ball." It looks like a pool ball with a little window in it. You shake it and a little answer pops up in the glass. They were a craze in the corporate world a few years back, and you still see lots of them holding down...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 16, 2010 | Blog, Economy
Thanks to the "stimulus plan" and rising demand from infrastructure work, a new steel rolling mill is opening in Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown area to get 350 more jobs when new steel tube plant opens, The new facility, which will be more than 1 million square-feet,...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 16, 2010 | Blog
When President Obama tried to get a "Buy American" clause as part of the "stimulus package" he was met with howls of protest. Meanwhile China has a "buy Chinese" policy for their own government procurement. The policy includes "intellectual property" so America's...
by Robert Borosage | Feb 16, 2010 | Blog
Oregon Democrats: Taking on Lobbyists? Oregon Democratic legislators seem to be spaking the corporate lobbyists that opposed the successful initiatives that produced vital revenue by raising corporate and top end taxes. The business lobby thinks so – and isn’t that a...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 16, 2010 | Blog
Getting health care reform done in 2009 might not have saved the life of Melanie Shouse, who died of breast cancer last month at the age of 41. But what we do know is that the lives of thousands of other women like her are at risk because, one year after Congress and...
by Terrance Heath | Feb 16, 2010 | Uncategorized
On Today's Menu: Senator Bayh Says Goodbye President Obama's Approval Up Job and Budgets Debt and China GOP Meets Tea Party Bye, Bayh. A Political Career Gone Bayh: Politico's Glenn Thrush & Jonathan Martin remember another young Democrat who gave a convention keynote...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 15, 2010 | Blog
I have a regular spot on the radio show, The Fairness Doctrine, currently in Massachusetts but going national. The show has a liberal and a conservative host and they present and discuss differing viewpoints -- without shouting. On the show today we talked about my...
by Richard Eskow | Feb 15, 2010 | Blog
Like an cat burglar, Goldman Sachs leaves its fingerprints in the most unusual places. The news of Goldman's role in the Greek financial crisis isn't just a black eye for Wall Street. It's also a diplomatic disaster for the United States, whose government has become...
by Robert Borosage | Feb 15, 2010 | Blog
The Post's Robert J. Samuelson has been a purblind corproate trade ideologue, preaching its virtues even as the US sank into debt, corporations sent jobs abroad, and global imbalances helped drive the economy off the cliff. But in today's Post -- http://is.gd/8qu3b --...
by Sam Pizzigati | Feb 14, 2010 | Blog
In contemporary American political life, only the rich can afford to be politically impatient. The big question: How long will the rest of us tolerate such a starkly unrepresentative status quo? By Sam Pizzigati Four score years ago, amid the tumult of the Great...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 13, 2010 | Blog
Bob Herbert has a column today, Watching China Run, asking our country's leaders to get moving on the country's problems, Our esteemed leaders in Washington can’t figure out how to do anything more difficult than line up for a group photo. Put Americans back to work?...
by Mary Bottari | Feb 12, 2010 | Blog
It's really unbelievable. The way that Goldman Sachs keeps sticking its foot in it is simply unbelievable. Let's not review their gross profits and bonuses or their many failed PR schemes to gloss over unseemly profits (a practice we have dubbed "greedwashing"). Let's...
by Bill Scher | Feb 12, 2010 | Blog, Economy
The Nation published this week a fascinating report of a new model of worker cooperative that could attack the jobs crisis and the climate crisis, called "The Cleveland Model." Cleveland's "Evergreen" network of large-scale co-ops, backed with a multi-million dollar...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 12, 2010 | Blog
I was in DC a few weeks ago, and stopped by the AFL-CIO building. While I was there I bought a hat with AFL-CIO on it. Inside the hat is a label, "Union Made in the USA." I was looking at this yesterday and thinking about how unions wouldn't buy cheap hats made in...
by Bill Scher | Feb 12, 2010 | Blog
The ideologically conflicted American people is starkly depicted in the latest NYT/CBS poll. While conservatives can cling to the 56% of the public that says they want "smaller government providing fewer services" in theory, liberals can point to reluctance to put...
by Bill Scher | Feb 12, 2010 | Uncategorized
Baucus-Grassley Tiny Jobs Bill Scrapped For Reid Tiny Jobs Bill Reid dumps Baucus-Grassley deal as bloated. Bloomberg: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced yesterday he was dropping scores of provisions from a $85 billion compromise jobs plan ... Reid said...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 11, 2010 | Blog
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor today reiterated the claim that "uncertainty" created by the work Democratic congressional leaders are doing to clean up the mess left by conservative economic policies is responsible for the anemic state of the economic recovery and...
by Richard Eskow | Feb 11, 2010 | Blog, Financial Reform
Let's have a frank talk about an uncomfortable subject: Progressives need to raise campaign money in order to get elected and stay in office. Sometimes that money has to come from places that progressives aren't comfortable talking about. This gritty reality has too...
by Bill Scher | Feb 11, 2010 | Blog, Economy
Sens. Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley announced a bipartisan agreement for a "jobs" bill, tracking the earlier draft versions which Sen. Jon Kyl accurately described as not really a jobs bill but an exercise in "extending a bunch of tax policy and related items that we...
by Richard Eskow | Feb 11, 2010 | Blog
Never underestimate Sarah Palin. She did a better job articulating anti-banker sentiment at last week's Tea Party Convention than Obama's done. Its followers don't realize it, but the Tea Party movement is really a Trojan Horse filled with bankers and lobbyists. It's...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 11, 2010 | Blog
The unemployed have a lot to fear, including losing COBRA itself. Congress is considering passing an extension of COBRA subsidies for the unemployed. But a bigger problem is not just the subsidies running out, but COBRA itself running out. COBRA allows people to...
by Bill Scher | Feb 11, 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. Weak Job Growth Projected Without...
by Robert Borosage | Feb 10, 2010 | Blog
China has surpassed Germany as the world's largest exporter. It is the largest holder of American Treasury bonds, nearly $800 billion. America runs its largest trade deficit by far with China. The low-price flood of goods—the Wal-Mart trade—is pervasive. Now the U.S....
by Dave Johnson | Feb 10, 2010 | Blog
In the Bloomberg story today, Obama Doesn’t ‘Begrudge’ Bonuses for Blankfein, Dimon, President Obama, spoke up about the huge Wall Street bonuses handed out this year, “I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in...
by Bill Scher | Feb 10, 2010 | Blog, Economy
The possibility exists for the Senate to pass a bipartisan jobs bill. It just won't do much to create jobs. The Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, typically a fountain of misinformation, gets this one right in Bloomberg: "Kyl ... said Democrats shouldn’t advertise the...
by Bill Scher | Feb 10, 2010 | Blog
Yesterday, following the NYT report that bank lobbies, led by private lender Sallie Mae, were succeeding in stalling student loan reform, Education Secretary Arne Duncan shot back. The Washington Post reported on Duncan's blistering retort: "Working Americans pay...
by Bill Scher | Feb 10, 2010 | Uncategorized
Chance For Small But Bipartisan Jobs Bill ... After the Snow Senate jobs package based on GOP tax cut ideas, though GOP still hasn't endorsed. LAT: "In a rare move toward bipartisanship, Senate Democrats prepared Tuesday to unveil an $85-billion jobs bill that would...
by Terrance Heath | Feb 10, 2010 | Blog
What kind of people respond to an invitation with a list of demands? John Boehner and Eric Cantor have responded to Barack Obama's invitation to sit down and talk health-care reform. They answered in the form of a ransom note. Here are their demands: 1) "Assuming the...
by Robert Borosage | Feb 10, 2010 | Blog, Economy
Americans are angry -- Wall Street has been bailed out, and there's no sign of job growth on Main Street. We know this is important because Sarah Palin's poll tested tea party speech featured it. We know its important because that was the clear message of...
by Richard Eskow | Feb 9, 2010 | Blog
It should be, as the President once called it, a "no-brainer": Overhaul our broken system for distributing federal student loans. Stop giving banks undeserved profits for administering these loans (an estimated $80 billion over ten years), since they take no risk and...
by Dave Johnson | Feb 9, 2010 | Blog
In the State of the Union speech President Obama set a goal of doubling American exports by 2015. The Commerce Department is launching a National Export Initiative to work on getting this done. The National Export Initiative is focused on three key areas: 1. A more...
by Mary Bottari | Feb 9, 2010 | Blog
While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was on the talk shows reassuring America that the economy is healing, developments in Europe threatened to cut the legs out from under a U.S. recovery. The short story is that Greece and a number of other European Union (EU)...
by Terrance Heath | Feb 9, 2010 | Blog
Sarah Palin's keynote speech was quite a hit at this weekend's Tea Party convention. She even took a shot at pinning responsibility for the deficit on the Obama administration. "The Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda will leave us less secure, more in debt and under the thumb...
by Bill Scher | Feb 9, 2010 | Blog
Right now, we taxpayers give big banks billions to subsidize their student loans. Giving big banks money is decidedly unpopular after the TARP bailout, among liberals and conservatives. So you'd think there would be consensus to end the subsidies. Apparently not....
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 9, 2010 | Blog, Economy
On Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its report that another 20,000 Americans had lost their jobs in January, the right-wing spin machine immediately unleashed one of their tried-and-true talking points: that the reason the economy is not creating...
by Bill Scher | Feb 9, 2010 | Uncategorized
Republicans Put Conditions On Attending Health Care Summit Republican leaders tell Obama they may not show up for health care summit. W. Post: "Leading House Republicans raised the prospect Monday night that they may decline to participate in President Obama's...
