by Bill Moyers | Jun 8, 2016 | Financial Reform
With Michael Winship Return with us now to the saga of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the soul of the Democratic Party.First, a quick recap: Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chair of the Democratic National Committee, also has been an advocate for the payday loan...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 8, 2016 | Blog, Democracy, Progressive Vision
Are you tired of all the nasty, hit-piece, smear ads and mailings against candidates for pubic office that we have to put up with? The way things are set up, we don't even get to know who paid for them. In January President Obama said in the State of the Union...
by People's Action | Jun 8, 2016 | Breakfast
Sanders Stays In As Clinton Claims Victory Clinton wins CA, NJ, SD and NM, claims nomination. NYT: "Reaching for history, Mrs. Clinton pledged to build on the achievements of pioneers like the 19th-century leaders at Seneca Falls, N.Y., who began the fight for women’s...
by Robert Borosage | Jun 8, 2016 | Blog, Election 2016, Progressive Vision
Hillary Clinton became the “presumptive nominee” of the Democratic Party Tuesday night, and will be the first woman ever to win the presidential nomination of a major party. Clinton won primaries in New Jersey, New Mexico and California, the large states at issue. She...
by Burning Issues Video | Jun 8, 2016 | Burning Issues, Defense/Foreign Policy
[fve]https://youtu.be/VckahRnih6g[/fve] We should be asking the presidential candidates more about their views on using the U.S. military to train foreign armies, a strategy that has not worked well in Iraq and Afghanistan, says Lt. Col. Daniel Davis in this Burning...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 7, 2016 | Conservatism, Jobs and Growth
House Speaker Paul Ryan ended up overshadowing his own efforts Tuesday to highlight the Republican Party's proposals for overhauling aid programs for low-income people by telling reporters that he was still planning to endorse and vote for a presidential candidate...
by Bill Scher | Jun 7, 2016 | Blog
Winning India's cooperation with cutting greenhouse gas pollution is a critical goal if we are to avert a climate crisis, as it is the fourth-largest emitter in the world. The rapidly developing country has resisted adopting strict pollution reduction targets for fear...
by People's Action | Jun 7, 2016 | Breakfast
Sanders Still In It To Win It Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says don't "rush to judgment" as primary polls open in six states. "The spokesman, Michael Briggs, said Clinton hasn't secured the nomination because superdelegates, party leaders who can...
by Leo Gerard | Jun 7, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, This Is The GOP
Way back in January, Donald Trump got himself a ton of prime publicity on the backs of veterans. He organized a benefit that he said was for them. But really he did it because he didn’t feel like debating other GOP presidential candidates that night. At the event, he...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 7, 2016 | Blog
Not so long ago, Social Security was endangered by a “bipartisan” consensus that sought to cut its benefits – already lower than those of comparable countries – as part of a “grand bargain.” President Obama even put a slow-motion benefit cut into one of his proposed...
by Bernie Horn | Jun 6, 2016 | Blog, Progressive Vision
America is not really a nation of laws. Our legislative system governs only the most egregious behavior. The way Americans treat each other day-to-day—attitude and etiquette, willingness or wariness, prejudice or tolerance—is driven mostly by our national culture. Our...
by Bill Scher | Jun 6, 2016 | Blog
The notoriously Machiavellian Republican operative Lee Atwater once famously revealed his party's strategy to use so-called "dog whistles" to communicate racist sentiments without overtly racist language: You start out in 1954 by saying, “N****r, n****r, n****r.” By...
by People's Action | Jun 6, 2016 | Breakfast
Burning Issues: How Currency Manipulation Costs Us Trade expert Pat Mulloy, in this Burning Issues video, says the Trans-Pacific Partnership does not address a key driver of the job-sapping trade deficits the United States has with some of its trading partners,...
by Burning Issues Video | Jun 6, 2016 | Burning Issues, Trade
[fve]https://youtu.be/Axg4kHLk6lc[/fve] The Trans-Pacific Partnership does not address a key driver of the job-sapping trade deficits the United States has with some of its trading partners, currency manipulation, says trade expert Pat Mulloy in this Burning Issues...
by Roger Hickey | Jun 5, 2016 | Blog
As Bernie Sanders has continued to win primaries and caucuses in the Democratic primary, many hard-core Hillary Clinton supporters have called on him to quit the race, arguing that his campaigning, featuring huge rallies of enthusiastic supporters, is somehow hurting...
by Richard Eskow | Jun 5, 2016 | Blog, Progressive Vision
In the end, Muhammad Ali wasn't just the most important athlete of his time. And he wasn't just a world-changing activist. He was even more than those things: he was a unified human being. His occupation was inseparable from his aspirations, his spiritual ideals...
by Courtney Freudenthal | Jun 3, 2016 | Democracy, Gender Justice
American University professor Jennifer L. Lawless reignited a long-standing debate when she wrote in a May 24 Washington Post article that “there’s much less gender bias in politics than you think.” This is as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 3, 2016 | Blog
Rush Limbaugh knows less about evolution than the average seventh grader, and now it looks like Limbaugh's own failure to evolve may land him on the endangered list. Rush Limbaugh is confused about evolution (among other things). On his radio show, Limbaugh claimed...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 3, 2016 | Blog, Trade
The U.S. Census Bureau reported Friday that the April goods and services trade deficit was $37.4 billion in April, up $1.9 billion from a revised $35.5 billion in March. (March was previously reported as $40.4 billion before the revision.) According to the report:...
by People's Action | Jun 3, 2016 | Breakfast
Clinton Turns Up Volume Against Trump Clinton scorches Trump on foreign policy. NYT: "Speaking in a steady, modulated tone but lobbing some of the most fiery lines of her presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton painted Mr. Trump as a reckless, childish and uninformed...
by Robert Borosage | Jun 3, 2016 | Blog, Jobs and Growth
The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added only a startling few 38,000 jobs in May, the weakest number in six years. The official unemployment rate declined dramatically to 4.7 percent, recording not new hiring but new...
by Jeff Bryant | Jun 3, 2016 | Blog, Education, Election 2016
Revelations from documents connected to Trump University are generating outrage across the political spectrum, from my colleague Terrance Heath, who called it "a scheme to transfer wealth from people who had little," to the conservative journal National Review, which...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Jun 2, 2016 | Retirement Security
President Obama on Wednesday did a remarkable 180-degree turn on Social Security, and since we have been dogging him for his earlier failed attempt at a "grand bargain" that would have cut Social Security benefits for future seniors, let's give credit where credit is...
by Courtney Freudenthal | Jun 2, 2016 | Blog, Jobs and Growth
From Congress to the presidential election, politicians are talking about working family issues. Progressives propose paid parental and medical leave, affordable child care and reliable scheduling; conservatives offer business-friendly "workplace flexibility" that...
by People's Action | Jun 2, 2016 | Breakfast
Sanders Closes In Two point race in CA. W. Post: "The latest and most closely watched of the three 'live caller' polls .... was the Field Poll ... Clinton led Sanders by a 45-43 margin ... Polls this week from the Public Policy Institute of California and NBC...
by Liz Ryan Murray | Jun 2, 2016 | Blog, Financial Reform
The stories are endless. ● A woman in Wisconsin cashed out her retirement savings of $28,000 to help her daughter get out from under a payday loan that started as just a few hundred dollars to help pay the bills. ● A man in Alabama took out a title loan...
by Jeff Bryant | Jun 1, 2016 | Blog, Education
First Lady Michelle Obama is scheduled on Friday to provide a commencement address to the graduating class of 3,000 students at The City College of New York in Harlem. As the White House announcement states, her address has some additional historic significance in...
by Terrance Heath | Jun 1, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, This Is The GOP
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has called Donald Trump “a loser” who made his money by “cheating people with scams.” A look into Trump University’s records, as well as Trump’s other business deals suggests that Warren was right on the money. A reunion of Trump...
by People's Action | Jun 1, 2016 | Breakfast
Burning Issues: Choosing Peace-building Over Military Engagement Theo Sitther, director of the peace-building program at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, says in this Burning Issues video that the next president needs to take on the imbalance between...
by Burning Issues Video | Jun 1, 2016 | Burning Issues, Defense/Foreign Policy
[fve]https://youtu.be/EkUwv6WQhDk[/fve] The next president needs to take on the imbalance between what the nation spends on military engagement and our spending on peace-building and conflict prevention, says Theo Sitther, director of the peace-building program at the...
by Dave Johnson | May 31, 2016 | Blog, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership
More and more the word is getting out that President Obama, along with the giant multinational corporations and Wall Street, will launch a push in Congress to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the "lame duck" legislative session following the election....
by Dave Johnson | May 31, 2016 | Blog, Economy, Jobs and Growth, Progressive Vision
The long Verizon strike has ended, and the unions won. This means that the American middle class won, too. Verizon is an extremely profitable company. But even with massive, astonishing profits the company was demanding that its workers provide givebacks, allow...
by Dave Johnson | May 31, 2016 | Blog, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership's "Democracy Hijacking" with Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, this past weekend on his radio show "The Zero Hour with Richard Eskow." The "hijacking" refers to a...
by People's Action | May 31, 2016 | Breakfast
Burning Issues: Fracking as Foreign Policy Charlie Cray, a researcher at Greenpeace, in the latest Burning Issues video says the United States has been promoting hydraulic fracturing – fracking – in dozens of countries around the world despite the direct environmental...
by Leo Gerard | May 31, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, This Is The GOP
Donald Trump scorns traditional presidential candidate standards. The Donald doesn’t do what’s expected. And he certainly doesn’t do what he tells other candidates they must do. If Donald doesn’t feel like debating, he stiffs his opponents and grabs attention doing...
by Robert Borosage | May 31, 2016 | Blog, Election 2016, Progressive Vision
The media has declared the Democratic presidential race over, even though no candidate has won a majority of the delegates. The Democratic establishment is in a tizzy about polls showing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump running even with Democratic...
by Burning Issues Video | May 31, 2016 | Burning Issues, Climate, Defense/Foreign Policy
[fve]https://youtu.be/u2alBcISoeU[/fve] The United States has been promoting hydraulic fracturing – fracking – in dozens of countries around the world despite the direct environmental risks and its contribution to global warming, says Charlie Cray, a researcher at...
by Terrance Heath | May 27, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, This Is The GOP
Proving once and for all that he truly has not one shred of decency in him, Donald Trump has traded in his red trucker hat for a tinfoil hat. The sad and frightening part is that he’ll probably get away with it. Claiming that he was “just asking the question,” Trump...
by Dave Johnson | May 27, 2016 | Blog, Trade
Members of Congress are weighing in against the U.S. government's use of "gunboat diplomacy"-style intimidation of Colombia against that country allowing a generic version of an ultraexpensive cancer drug named Gleevec in order to protect the public's health....
by Dave Johnson | May 27, 2016 | Blog, Jobs and Growth
[fve]https://youtu.be/q6qvdDacozM[/fve] NOTE: Shortly after this article was posted, news broke of a settlement in the strike between Verizon and workers represented by the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers....
