by Jeff Bryant | Apr 8, 2016 | Blog, Education
For years, the campaign against public school teachers and their unions has lurched from one outrageous argument to another to support its case. Teachers' unions are accused of fighting for their salaries and benefits while ignoring the interests of school children....
by People's Action | Apr 8, 2016 | Breakfast
Burning Issues: Are We Ready For A Global Economic Slowdown? Josh Bivens, director of research and policy at the Economic Policy Institute, assesses in this Burning Issues video segment whether the United States is ready for the next global economic slowdown. Bernie...
by Burning Issues Video | Apr 8, 2016 | Burning Issues, Economy
[fve]https://youtu.be/DUFYsPCKbb4[/fve] Josh Bivens, director of research and policy at the Economic Policy Institute, assesses in this Burning Issues video segment whether the United States is ready for the next global economic slowdown. The United States is among...
by Dave Johnson | Apr 7, 2016 | Blog, Tax Reform, Trade
[fve]https://youtu.be/FyOVMqAIFw8[/fve] Global Witness recently presented this TED talk on "how exposing anonymous companies could cut down on crime." Should our own government help oligarchs, billionaires and their corporations, criminals and terrorists hide their...
by Terrance Heath | Apr 7, 2016 | Blog, Financial Reform
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the only federal agency out to protect the financial interests American consumers. Naturally, big banks and moneyed interests want to shut it down. A new campaign says, “Not without a fight.” If any good came out of the...
by Jeff Bryant | Apr 7, 2016 | Blog, Education, Tax Reform
Earlier this week, news reporters and public officials expressed shock at the revelations from an unprecedented leak of files from one of the world's largest law firms representing offshore investing. As The Guardian explains, the leaked documents, called the Panama...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Apr 7, 2016 | Blog, Economy, Election 2016, Tax Reform
It's no surprise that the chairman of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, would use The Washington Post's editorial page to defend himself and his company from an attack from Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who told the New York Daily News editorial...
by People's Action | Apr 7, 2016 | Breakfast
Burning Issues: Keep The Terror Threat In Context Paul Pillar, a former U.S. intelligence official cautions, in this installment of the Burning Issues video series, against overreacting to ISIS and against reacting without a long-term plan for addressing the effects...
by Burning Issues Video | Apr 7, 2016 | Burning Issues, Defense/Foreign Policy
[fve]https://youtu.be/CK7V3wW4OR8[/fve] While most of the presidential candidates compete to present themselves as the toughest on terrorism and the threat from ISIS, Paul Pillar, a former U.S. intelligence official and author who now writes at The National Interest,...
by Terrance Heath | Apr 7, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, Election 2016, This Is The GOP
It sounds like a match between a second-rate comic book hero-and-villain pair: the Golden Boy vs. the Orange Man. Thus it’s fitting in more ways than one that former House Speaker (and first “orange” speaker) John Boehner perhaps started the ball rolling. At a Futures...
by Dave Johnson | Apr 6, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, Jobs and Growth
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims to be "a business federation representing companies, business associations, state and local chambers in the U.S., and American Chambers of Commerce abroad." They claim to be "the voice of" their members. They are supposed to...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Apr 6, 2016 | Progressive Vision
[fve]https://youtu.be/U7PIwArgWDQ[/fve]Jacob Hacker discusses "American Amnesia" with OurFuture.org. This time of year, a whole lot of Americans are feeling taxed enough already. But the astonishing momentum of Bernie Sanders’s presidential candidacy reveals something...
by Bill Scher | Apr 6, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, Election 2016
The Republican Party is ceasing to be a cohesive party. In Wisconsin, one-third of Republican primary voters wouldn't vote for either of the party's leading candidates in the general election. As NBC News analyzed: When asked what they would do if [Ted] Cruz were the...
by People's Action | Apr 6, 2016 | Breakfast
Note to readers: OurFuture.org was offline for a few hours this morning. The site is now back to normal. Apologies for any inconvenience. Burning Issues: The U.S. Plan For New Nuclear Weapons Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress,...
by Robert Borosage | Apr 6, 2016 | Blog, Election 2016, Progressive Vision
Bernie Sanders swamped Hillary Clinton in the Wisconsin Democratic primary Tuesday. Ted Cruz won big over Donald Trump on the Republican side. The chances for a contested Republican convention increased markedly. And Sanders’ momentum in the Democratic race continues...
by Burning Issues Video | Apr 6, 2016 | Burning Issues, Defense/Foreign Policy
[fve]https://youtu.be/lR1AtzEyDIc[/fve] Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, discusses what the United States should do to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons around the world, in this Burning Issues segment. Korb was interviewed after...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Apr 5, 2016 | Jobs and Growth
A call for a $1.2 trillion program of federal infrastructure spending is definitely not what you would expect to emerge from the think tank Third Way, the purveyors of austerity-lite, era-of-big-government-is-over centrism within the Democratic Party establishment....
by Dave Johnson | Apr 5, 2016 | Blog, Trade
The February trade deficit numbers are out. Exports were up but imports were up way more than exports. Result: We shipped even more jobs and wealth out of the country in exchange for stuff we could have made here. That means we also shipped out essential components of...
by Dave Johnson | Apr 5, 2016 | Blog, Tax Reform
Giant, mega-profitable companies like the drug maker Pfizer engage in complicated, tricky schemes to dodge paying the taxes they owe. The result is that there is not enough money for bridge repair, better schools, and other public goods. The Treasury Department caught...
by Bill Scher | Apr 5, 2016 | Uncategorized
Sanders Hopes For Wisconsin Momentum Sanders appears to have Wisconsin edge. Politico: "Wisconsin has all the hallmarks of a Bernie Sanders-friendly state: large numbers of college-age voters, a progressive electorate and one of the whiter populations in the country...
by Leo Gerard | Apr 5, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, This Is The GOP
For years, Republicans have kept a gambit going where they gin up hate for political gain. They condemn marriage equality. They throw a hissy fit about what bathroom transgender people use. They try every dirty trick in the book to prevent black people from voting....
by Dave Johnson | Apr 4, 2016 | Blog, Democracy, Election 2016
Republican voter suppression turned Arizona's primary into a fiasco that forced people to wait in five-hour-long lines to vote. Many were turned away. Wisconsin Republicans are also disenfranchising citizens with laws designed to discourage voting by groups that might...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Apr 4, 2016 | Financial Reform, Tax Reform
The Panama Papers disclosures this weekend are giving the world a wider window into a world that is not new to the people who have been fighting against the schemes wealthy people and corporations use to shelter their money from taxes. These papers were leaked from...
by Lynne Stuart Parramore | Apr 4, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, Economy, This Is The GOP
This post was originally published on the blog of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. From the lips of Paul Ryan, Chief Spokesman of Blame-the-Poor politics, came a curious mea culpa just last week: He should not have referred to hard-working Americans trying to...
by Dave Johnson | Apr 4, 2016 | Blog, Progressive Vision
[vimeo 160296205 w=500 h=281] Rev. William Barber, best known for leading North Carolina's Moral Monday movement, is launching a 15-state tour of the country, called "The Revival: Time for a Moral Revolution of Values." Denise Oliver Velez, writing at Daily Kos, in...
by People's Action | Apr 4, 2016 | Breakfast
Burning Issues: Understanding The Children Fleeing To The U.S. Adriana Bertrán of the Washington Office on Latin America explains the tragic causes of the child immigrant wave, and then looks at how the presidential candidates are speaking to those causes, in the...
by Burning Issues Video | Apr 4, 2016 | Burning Issues, Defense/Foreign Policy
[fve]https://youtu.be/TJfTs2oz6ec[/fve] The wave of Latin American children seeking entry into the United States that started a couple of years ago sparked a strong anti-immigrant reaction among conservative politicians and amplified the calls by the leading 2016...
by Robert Borosage | Apr 4, 2016 | Blog, Jobs and Growth
The largest employer of low-wage workers in America is the federal government. U.S. government contractors employ over two million workers in jobs that pay too little – $12.00 an hour or less – to support a family. Contract workers – organizing under the banner of...
by Terrance Heath | Apr 1, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, This Is The GOP
This week, the problem wasn’t that Donald Trump believes women who have abortions after Roe v. Wade is overturned should be punished. The problem was that he said it out loud. It may go down in history as the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidential...
by Dave Johnson | Apr 1, 2016 | Blog, Jobs and Growth
The March jobs report is out, and the news seems pretty good at first. But when you dig deeper it is the same old story: lower-to-middle-wage job gains, many higher-wage job losses. Gains in retail and food services. But there were losses again in manufacturing....
by People's Action | Apr 1, 2016 | Breakfast
Burning Issues: Understanding the Iran Nuclear Deal Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund offers a passionate defense of the deal in this Burning Issues video and he explains how presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in particular stands out as a leader who...
by Robert Borosage | Apr 1, 2016 | Blog, Jobs and Growth
The April jobs report – 215,000 jobs added in March, with official unemployment ticking up to 5 percent – shows an economy enjoying its 73rd straight month of private sector jobs growth. The U.S. recovery is the best among developed countries. But workers still see...
by Burning Issues Video | Apr 1, 2016 | Burning Issues, Defense/Foreign Policy
[fve]https://youtu.be/wx9CR4fWkbs[/fve] As the Republican presidential candidates continue scathing attacks on the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran, Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund offers a passionate defense of the deal in this Burning Issues...
by Jeff Bryant | Mar 31, 2016 | Blog, Education
T.S. Eliot told us that April is the cruelest month. In the world of K-12 education, that couldn't be more true as the month ushers in the beginning of testing season in public schools across the nation. "Spring testing season starts," notes Politico, referring to...
by Dave Johnson | Mar 31, 2016 | Blog, Election 2016, Trade
Trade is again an issue in a midwestern primary state. The Wisconsin primary is Tuesday and Senator Bernie Sanders is pounding on his opposition to trade deals that have closed factories and cost jobs. A new poll shows this could be his path to success with voters....
by Bill Scher | Mar 31, 2016 | Blog, Conservatism, Election 2016
According to a recent Washington Post poll, Donald Trump is deemed "unfavorable" by majorities of African Americans, Hispanics, white women, and white men. That's pretty much everybody. The notion that Donald Trump "gets away with everything" and can race-bait and...
by People's Action | Mar 31, 2016 | Breakfast
Join the Democracy Awakening mobilization - April 16 to 18 in Washington, D.C. - to deliver a massive wake-up call to Congress. Join us to demand a democracy that works for all of us – a nation where our votes are not denied and money doesn’t buy access and power....
by Burning Issues Video | Mar 31, 2016 | Burning Issues, Defense/Foreign Policy
[fve]https://youtu.be/XYFI1sWyP-s[/fve] Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) discusses President Obama's recent opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba and the reactions of the presidential candidates in this Burning Issues video. "It is an...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 31, 2016 | Blog, Democracy, Progressive Vision
On a road trip to visit relatives in Georgia, our family traveled across the states that have become the newest battlegrounds in the latest phase of the “culture wars.” With my husband’s family in Michigan and my family in Georgia, we don’t visit very often. When both...
by Emily Schwartz Greco | Mar 30, 2016 | Blog, Climate, Progressive Vision
The ISIS supporters who attacked Brussels killed more than 30 people and injured hundreds more. Bombings at the city’s airport and a subway station blew up the notion that measures taken after the Paris siege were keeping Europe safe. The scariest part of this story...
