Paul Krugman Demolishes the 'Zombie' Ideas That Have Eaten Republican Brains

 

By Janet Allon
Progressive America Rising via AlterNet

April 24, 2015 - Paul Krugman has a little fun in his Friday column [3], using an extended zombie metaphor to express a rather serious point. The question the columnist seeks an answer to: why is it that Republicans and the right refuse to recognize the reality, evidence and facts that discredit their ideas? Must be something supernatural. Or more likely Koch and Adelson money. But more on that in a sec.

"Last week, a zombie went to New Hampshire and staked its claim to the Republican presidential nomination," Krugman begins. "Well, O.K., it was actually Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. But it’s pretty much the same thing."

Christie gave a speech [4] in New Hampshire once again positioning himself as a roll-up-your-shirtsleeves, tough fiscal conservative. But his ideas are largley, well, zombies. Things that are dead, but somehow refuse to acknowledge they are dead. Christie thought he was being so smart when he proposed that the minimum age for Social Secutiry and Medicare be raised to 69. Here is Krugman's explanation of the problem with that oh-so-brave idea.

    This whole line of argument should have died in 2007, when the Social Security Administration issued a report showing that almost all the rise in life expectancy [5] has taken place among the affluent. The bottom half of workers, who are precisely the Americans who rely on Social Security most, have seen their life expectancy at age 65 rise only a bit more than a year since the 1970s. Furthermore, while lawyers and politicians may consider working into their late 60s no hardship, things look somewhat different to ordinary workers, many of whom still have to perform manual labor.

    And while raising the retirement age would impose a great deal of hardship, it would save remarkably little money. In fact, a 2013 report from the Congressional Budget Office [6] found that raising the Medicare age would save almost no money at all.

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Progressive Dems: Obama Should Push Economic Executive Actions After Midterm Losses

By Dave Jamieson

Progressive America Rising via Huffington Post

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2014 -  Republican leaders have warned President Barack Obama that pursuing more executive actions after last week's midterm drubbing would be like playing with fire. But Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Monday that unilateral action by the president on economic issues is more necessary than ever.

"The president is in a pivotal position to go assertively with executive orders to create a political balance and an economic balance," Grijalva told reporters on a conference call. "I'm one member that urges them to use that as a balancing tool and a leadership tool in these next two years."

Grijalva and his fellow caucus co-chair, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), are putting their weight behind two proposals in particular: one executive order that would give federal contracting preference to firms that pay a living wage of $15 and provide basic benefits to workers, and another guaranteeing that contractors wouldn't interfere with worker efforts to unionize. Branded as "More Than the Minimum," the proposals are being pushed by Good Jobs Nation, a labor group backed by the Change to Win union federation, and other progressive allies.

Ellison and Grijalva, along with Good Jobs Nation, already have a couple of executive-action victories under their belts. They successfully pressured the White House to institute two executive actions that were signed by the president earlier this year -- one setting a minimum wage of $10.10 for federal contractors, and another that would effectively bar firms that have committed wage theft against their workers from receiving federal contracts.

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Rev. William Barber’s New Book Reminds Us Why We Must Vote

 

By Terrance Heath

Progressive America Rising via Ourfuture.org

Oct 22, 2014 - With Election Day just two weeks away, the words of Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award  recipient and Moral Mondays movement leader Rev. William Barber remind us, “If we ever needed to vote, we sure do need to vote now!” His new book reminds us of the moral power of progressive values when we march “forward together.”

Rev. Barber’s words come from his 2012 address to the NAACP, but as timely as ever with so much at stake in this election, as Denise Oliver Velez writes:

Election Day 2014 is on Tuesday, November 4, a little over two weeks away. This election will make a profound difference in the lives of many of our citizens. For some, it is a matter of life and death—given the refusal of some states to accept Medicaid expansion. We are all too aware of right-wing extremist efforts in many of those same states to suppress the vote, and to construct obstacles to voting.

One of the most powerful voices in the nation, fighting to mobilize a broad-based coalition of social activists to fight voter suppression, is that of the Rev. Dr. William Barber II. What is disconcerting is that with only a few exceptions, the major traditional media have managed to ignore his voice and the Moral Mondays movement he is leading—from his home base of North Carolina, to as far north as Wisconsin.

How did much of the press manage to ignore 80,000 people who marched in Raleigh, North Carolina, back in February?

While the traditional media is willing to pay homage to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks in memorials and tributes, journalists are far too willing to pretend that the civil rights movement was buried with Dr. King. Contrary to those who speak as if the movement ended in 1968, it is alive and growing. Blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, women and men—straight and LGBT, religious and non-religious, young and old—have come together in a breathtaking and extraordinary fusion movement, Moral Mondays, spearheaded by the Rev. William Barber, head of the North Carolina NAACP. His book about that movement, Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation, is being released by Chalice Press November 1.

Just in time for the election, Rev. Barber’s new book from Chalice Press, Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation, recalls the beginnings of the historic Moral Mondays movement, puts progressive values in a moral context we can take with us into the voting booth.

Last summer, after seven years of grassroots organizing, “Moral Mondays” grabbed the nation’s attention as thousands protested North Carolina’s General Assembly in Raleigh in support of the poor, voting rights, health care, immigrant rights, and other issues. Over 13 consecutive weeks, the protests against legislative extremism resulted in the arrests of nearly 1,000 people, making it one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in U.S. history. As thousands more gathered in support each Monday, Barber, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, became widely recognized as the leader of a new civil rights movement in the South. More than 100 “Moral Monday” connected events have since taken place, and the spirit of the movement has spread to Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, and New York. This reflection on the movement’s beginnings introduces Barber, the sources of his courage from both a biblical imagination for justice and a deep connection to “fusion” civil rights history, and the inspiring story of the Southern freedom movement’s revival.

Barber invites readers into a big-tent, faith-based movement for justice that has room for black, white, and brown, gay and straight, rich and poor, old and young, Republicans and Democrats, people from all walks of life. Offering his unique analysis of what he has called the “Third Reconstruction,” Barber locates North Carolina’s struggle in the spiritual and political landscape of 21st-century America. With civil rights and social justice battles with a deep moral narrative, particularly in southern statehouses that then move to federal courts on appeal, what happens in North Carolina can shift the center of gravity in political discourse, debate, and decision—and thereby change the nation.

“Messages of moral dissent are designed not to just be spoken and heard but to shape the prophetic consciousness of a movement and of society,” says Barber. “The prophetic voice rises when government systems and sometimes even religious systems have abdicated their responsibility to the least of these. When the forces of extremism have become so overwhelming and have depressed the hope of the people, the prophetic voice and mission is to connect words and actions in ways that build restorative hope so that there can be a movement for restorative justice. So this book is an attempt to capture the practice of ‘preaching’ in the public square, which is where prophetic inquiry and critique must function.”

Check out Rev. Barber’s book when it drops on November 1st and take his message into the voting booth on November 4th!

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Is Elizabeth Warren the Only Person Standing Between You and Total Bank Domination?

Book Review: Fighting Chance

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

Progressive America Rising via Alternet

May 1, 2014 - There’s really a storybook quality to Elizabeth Warren. How did this cookie-baking housewife from Oklahoma end up staring down the most powerful financial powers on Planet Earth, causing them to tremble in their wingtip shoes?

Seemingly conjured up from the fabled town of Mayberry, a place of bake sales and heart-to-hearts with Aunt Bea (she actually had an Aunt Bea), Sen. Warren seems aware of her mythic dimension: at one point in her new memoir, A Fighting Chance, she refers to herself as “Alice in Crazyland.” As Alice/Elizabeth heads down the rabbit hole to navigate the money-papered halls of Washington, she uses words like “vile” and “shameful” to describe the evildoing of bankers and corporate predators: she’s an outsider from a realm of truer American values who looks upon the upside-down goings on with outraged astonishment, frequently peppering her narrative with her favorite term for disbelief at human folly, an emphatic, “Really?!?”

This Alice among the evil wizards of Wall Street is full of homespun charm and Midwestern wisdom, but in this cynical age, the truly fabulous thing is that her story is true.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren really did grow up among ordinary, struggling people in Oklahoma, and she really did try her very best to content herself with baking brownies and tending her young family before deciding to go to law school. She really did become a crack expert in bankruptcy law and a Harvard professor, and used what she’d learned to challenge the bankers who spent billions purchasing their own facts and unleashing armies of lobbyists to make victims of hard-working, law-abiding Americans.

You get the feeling that Warren's fight against these financial predators is deeply personal. And from her memoir, you can see why: she’s fighting for the people who raised her, the neighbors she grew up among, the students in her classes, and the people she has met along the way who have lost their homes, jobs and savings through the deliberate traps set by people who measure their income in human suffering.

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WORKERS' MEMORIAL DAY, 2014: WHAT WORKERS NEED

By Harry Targ

Progressive America Rising via Diary of a Heartland Radical

The stench is vomit-making as never before. The fat and plucks, the bladders and kidneys and bungs and guts, gone soft and spongy in the heat, perversely resist being trimmed, separated, deslimed; demand closer concentration than ever, more speed. A helpless, hysterical laughter starts up. Indeed, they are in hell; indeed they are the damned. Steamed, boiled, broiled, fried, cooked. Geared, meshed.

In the hog room,108 degrees. Kerchiefs, bound around their foreheads to keep the sweat from running down into eyes and blinding, become saturated; each works in a rain of stinging sweat. Almost the steam from the vats seems cloud-cool, pure, by contrast. Marsalek falls. A heart attack. (Is carried away, docked, charged for the company ambulance.) Other hearts pound near to bursting. Relentless, the conveyor paces on.

Slow it, we got to slow it. (Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio: From the Thirties, 1974)

American workplaces from the dawn of the industrial revolution to the recent past were living hells for workers.

Novelist and essayist Tillie Olsen described working conditions in meat-packing plants in the 1930s. Others have written about auto assembly lines, mines, textile assembly plants, and food-processing plants. Analysts such as Harry Braverman, in Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), pointed out that employers have usually sought to control the minds and motions of workers. Profit-making has been seen as tied to controlling every movement of workers, the speed-up of production, and cutting costs for health and safety. After years of labor mobilization, the Occupational Safety and Health Act passed in 1970 to begin to address the problem of how dangerous it was to go to work each day.

Every April 28, workers across North America assemble to remember those workers who died or were injured on the job. Workers’ Memorial Day, initiated in the United States by the AFL-CIO in April, 1989, celebrates the inauguration of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (1970). Workers’ Memorial Day is about remembrances, reviews of progress toward safety and health, and re-commitment to making the workplace safer.

In April, 2013 the AFL-CIO issued its annual data-based report, “Death on the Job: the Toll of Neglect,” to review the current state of worker health and safety, given the administration of OSHA rules initiated over forty years ago. “Since that time, workplace safety and health conditions have improved. But too many workers remain at serious risk of injury, illness or death as workplace tragedies continue to remind us.” These tragedies have occurred in mines, oil refineries, fertilizer plants, meat-packing plants, manufacturing facilities, and on construction sites.

The AFL-CIO report indicated that 4,693 workers were killed on the job in 2011 (13 workers per day). Over 3.8 million work-related injuries were reported with unofficial estimates of such injuries doubling or tripling that total. Particular sub-groups, such as Latino workers and those born outside the United States, experienced excessively high injury rates, presumably because of their fears of raising safety concerns within the workplace.

The report indicated that workplace inspections had decreased over the years because of budget constraints limiting the hiring of inspectors. Given the numbers, federal OSHA employees could be expected to investigate a workplace once every 131 years and state OSHA inspections can be expected every 76 years. Penalties for workplace violations also are inadequate to deter violations.

The Report indicated that budget allocations for OSHA must be dramatically increased, more laws must be passed to regulate the complex reality of workplace dangers, and worker rights to protest dangerous conditions at the workplace must be strengthened.

This year, Workers’ Memorial Day events will highlight demands to address contemporary issues of concern such as

-defending the OSHA process from political campaigns to reduce workplace regulations.

-requiring employers to establish work-site safety and health programs with worker participation to address enduring hazards.

-adding safeguards against respiratory diseases from silica, combustible dust, and Black Lung.

-protecting workers who seek to challenge workplace safety hazards, particularly for immigrant workers.

-passing more legislation such as the Protecting America’s Workers Act to expand protection for workers not yet covered by OSHA rules.

-increasing worker voices on the job including creating an environment that would allow workers to freely choose to form unions.

Earl Cox, Community Services Liaison, Northwest Central Labor Council, Indiana AFL-CIO, concluded as he announced the 2014 event that legislators must be made aware of workplace health and safety “…so when a vote comes up to slash funding for OSHA, they vote to protect workers and not corporate interests.” The AFL-CIO believes that “safety laws and regulations don’t kill jobs—but unsafe jobs kill workers.”

(For those living in Tippecanoe County, Indiana Workers’ Memorial Day events will occur April 28, Inside the Depot, Riehle Plaza, Lafayette at 5:15 p.m.)

www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com

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Why the Minimum Wage Should Really Be Raised to $15 an Hour

By Robert Reich

Progressive America Rising

Momentum is building to raise the minimum wage. Several states have already taken action -- Connecticut has boosted it to $10.10 by 2017, the Maryland legislature just approved a similar measure, Minnesota lawmakers just reached a deal to hike it to $9.50. A few cities have been more ambitious -- Washington, D.C. and its surrounding counties raised it to $11.50, Seattle is considering $15.00

Senate Democrats will soon introduce legislation raising it nationally to $10.10, from the current $7.25 an hour.

All this is fine as far as it goes. But we need to be more ambitious. We should be raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour.

Here are seven reasons why:

1. Had the minimum wage of 1968 simply stayed even with inflation, it would be more than $10 an hour today. But the typical worker is also about twice as productive as then. Some of those productivity gains should go to workers at the bottom.

2. $10.10 isn't enough to lift all workers and their families out of poverty. Most low-wage workers aren't young teenagers; they're major breadwinners for their families, and many are women. And they and their families need a higher minimum.

3. For this reason, a $10.10 minimum would also still require the rest of us to pay Medicaid, food-stamps, and other programs necessary to get poor families out of poverty -- thereby indirectly subsidizing employers who refuse to pay more. Bloomberg View describes McDonald's and Walmart as "America's biggest welfare queens" because their employees receive so much public assistance. (Some, like McDonalds, even advise their employees to use public programs because their pay is so low.)

4. A $15/hour minimum won't result in major job losses because it would put money in the pockets of millions of low-wage workers who will spend it -- thereby giving working families and the overall economy a boost, and creating jobs. (When I was Labor Secretary in 1996 and we raised the minimum wage, business predicted millions of job losses; in fact, we had more job gains over the next four years than in any comparable period in American history.)

5. A $15/hour minimum is unlikely to result in higher prices because most businesses directly affected by it are in intense competition for consumers, and will take the raise out of profits rather than raise their prices. But because the higher minimum will also attract more workers into the job market, employers will have more choice of whom to hire, and thereby have more reliable employees -- resulting in lower turnover costs and higher productivity.

6. Since Republicans will push Democrats to go even lower than $10.10, it's doubly important to be clear about what's right in the first place. Democrats should be going for a higher minimum rather than listening to Republican demands for a smaller one.

7. At a time in our history when 95 percent of all economic gains are going to the top 1 percent, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour isn't just smart economics and good politics. It's also the morally right thing to do.

Call your senators and members of Congress today to tell them $15 an hour is the least American workers deserve. You can reach them at 202-224-3121.

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Syria War Will Destroy Efforts vs.Austerity at Home

Syria and the Reality at Home in America

By Robert Reich

Progressive America Rising via HuffPost

Sept 9, 2013 - While all eyes are on Syria and America's response, the real economy in which most Americans live is sputtering.

More than four years after the recession officially ended, 11.5 million Americans are unemployed, many of them for years. Nearly 4 million have given up looking for work altogether. If they were actively looking, today's unemployment rate would be 9.5 percent instead of 7.3 percent.

The share of the population working or seeking a job is the lowest in 35 years. The unemployment rate among high-school dropouts is 11 percent; for blacks, 12.6 percent. More than one in five American children face hunger, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

And the median wage keeps dropping, adjusted for inflation. Incomes for all but the top 1 percent are below where they were at the start of the economic recovery in 2009.

A decent society would put people to work -- even if this required more government spending on roads, bridges, ports, pipelines, parks and schools.

A decent society would lift the minimum wage, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (a wage subsidy), and provide food stamps and housing assistance, so that no family with a full-time worker has to live in poverty.

We can afford this minimal level of decency.

Deficit hawks in both parties don't want you to know this but the federal deficit as a proportion of the total economy is shrinking fast: It's on track to be only 4 percent by the end of September, when the fiscal year ends. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts it will be only 3.4 percent in the fiscal year starting October 1.

To put this into perspective, consider that the average ratio of the deficit to the GDP over the past 30 years has been 3.3 percent. So the deficit is barely a problem at all. (We're still projected to have large deficits starting 10 years from now because of all the aging boomers needing health care.)

Yet while attention is focused on Syria, food stamps for the nation's poor are being cut. House Republicans would eliminate food stamps for more than 800,000 Americans who now receive them but still do not get enough to eat or have only a barely adequate diet.

Even if the Democrats prevent these draconian cuts, food stamp benefits will still be reduced in November, when a provision in the 2009 stimulus bill expires.

While attention is focused on Syria, funds for the nation's poorest schools are being slashed. Teachers are still being let go. Classrooms are more crowded than ever. The sequester will drain even more funds after October 1.

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America’s Descent Into Madness

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

    – John le Carré

By Henry A. Giroux
Progressive America Rising via Counterpunch

August 13, 2013 - The stories it now tells are filled with cruelty, deceit, lies, and legitimate all manner of corruption and mayhem.  The mainstream media spins stories that are largely racist, violent, and irresponsible —stories that celebrate power and demonize victims, all the while camouflaging its pedagogical influence under the cheap veneer of entertainment.

Unethical grammars of violence now offer the only currency with any enduring value for mediating relationships, addressing problems, and offering instant pleasure. A predatory culture celebrates a narcissistic hyper-individualism that radiates a near sociopathic lack of interest in or compassion and responsibility for others. Anti-public intellectuals dominate the screen and aural cultures urging us to shop more, indulge more, and make a virtue out of the pursuit of personal gain, all the while promoting a depoliticizing culture of consumerism.

Undermining life-affirming social solidarities and any viable notion of the public good, right-wing politicians trade in forms of idiocy and superstition that mesmerize the illiterate and render the thoughtful cynical and disengaged.   Military forces armed with the latest weapons from Afghanistan play out their hyper-militarized fantasies on the home front by forming robo SWAT teams who willfully beat youthful protesters and raid neighborhood poker games.  Congressional lobbyists for the big corporations and defense contractors create conditions in which war zones abroad can be recreated at home in order to provide endless consumer products, such as high tech weapons and surveillance tools for gated communities and for prisons alike.

The issue of who gets to define the future, own the nation’s wealth, shape the reach of state resources, control of the global flows of goods and humans, and invest in institutions that educate an engaged and socially responsible citizens has become largely invisible.  And yet these are precisely these issues that offer up new categories for defining how matters of representations, education, economic justice, and politics are to be defined and fought over. The stories told by corporate liars and crooks do serious harm to the body politic, and the damage they cause together with the idiocy they reinforce are becoming more apparent as America descends into authoritarianism, accompanied by the pervasive fear and paranoia that sustains it.

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Vote Rush Holt: Don't Give Wall Street Banksters Another Senate Seat

Defend Social Security! Only a Few Days To Go Before The New Jersey Primary  

This week Blue America and Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) sent a joint letter to all our members asking them to support Rush Holt for the open New Jersey Senate seat.

The August 13 primary has 4 Democrats vying for the nomination-- Rush Holt and Frank Pallone, both progressive congressmen, General Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, a kind of boss-affiliated garden variety Democrat, and the Wall Street candidate, Newark Mayor Cory Booker. The special election itself will be held October 16. Digby penned the letter:

    Last April, just three months before he passed away, the ailing liberal lion Senator Frank Lautenberg issues a strong statement in opposition to proposed cuts to Social Security. He said: "We can't afford to further balance our books on the backs of middle-class families and seniors. The proposed cuts to Social Security benefits are a major problem that would hurt countless Americans.”

    Sadly, the man considered to be the front runner to succeed him, Newark mayor and media darling Cory Booker, isn't willing to hold that line. He said just this week that he'd consider raising the retirement age for younger people, a patented Republican dodge and a sure sign that he cannot be trusted to protect the Democratic Party's greatest achievement.

    But there is someone in the race who will protect Social Security and his name is Congressman Rush Holt.

    Holt not only opposes all cuts to our most important social insurance program, he is a co-sponsor of the Protecting and Preserving Social Security Act, which would expand Social Security benefits not cut them. Where Mayor Booker has said that he has "not formed an opinion" on a carbon tax, something which 41 Democratic Senators have already voted for, Rush Holt is card carrying scientist who strongly supports it.

    Where Mayor Booker thinks calling for repeal of the Patriot Act is "irresponsible", Rush Holt sponsored a bill in the House just this week to do just that. He said: "The executive branch’s groundless mass surveillance of Americans has turned our conception of liberty on its head. My legislation would restore the proper constitutional balance and ensure our people are treated as citizens first, not suspects.”

    Where Mayor Booker considers Wall Street a strong friend and ally, Rush Holt... doesn't.

    The last thing we need in the US Senate is another Wall Street friendly centrist with a propensity for government secrecy and a willingness to cut our most important social insurance programs. There are plenty of those already.

    In the upcoming primary, New Jersey can choose an establishment celebrity who plays a progressive on TV or it can choose a real progressive. We strongly believe the choice for progressives in this race is obvious and urge you support Congressman Rush Holt for US Senate. Please donate what you can and spread the word among your friends and acquaintances in New Jersey.

- See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2013/08/less-than-two-weeks-to-go-before-new.html#sthash.ZBzLKQ0t.dpuf

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What Can We Learn from Denmark’s ‘Solidarity System’?

Photo: May Day in Copenhagen

By Sen. Bernie Sanders

Progressive America Rising via Huffington Post

May 26, 2013 - Danish Ambassador Peter Taksoe-Jensen spent a weekend in Vermont this month traveling with me to town meetings in Burlington, Brattleboro and Montpelier. Large crowds came out to learn about a social system very different from our own which provides extraordinary security and opportunity for the people of Denmark.

Today in the United States there is a massive amount of economic anxiety. Unemployment is much too high, wages and income are too low, millions of Americans are struggling to find affordable health care and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider.

While young working families search desperately for affordable child care, older Americans worry about how they can retire with dignity. Many of our people are physically exhausted as they work the longest hours of any industrialized country and have far less paid vacation time than other major countries

Denmark is a small, homogenous nation of about 5.5 million people. The United States is a melting pot of more than 315 million people. No question about it, Denmark and the United States are very different countries. Nonetheless, are there lessons that we can learn from Denmark?

In Denmark, social policy in areas like health care, child care, education and protecting the unemployed are part of a "solidarity system" that makes sure that almost no one falls into economic despair. Danes pay very high taxes, but in return enjoy a quality of life that many Americans would find hard to believe. As the ambassador mentioned, while it is difficult to become very rich in Denmark no one is allowed to be poor. The minimum wage in Denmark is about twice that of the United States and people who are totally out of the labor market or unable to care for themselves have a basic income guarantee of about $100 per day.

Health care in Denmark is universal, free of charge and high quality. Everybody is covered as a right of citizenship. The Danish health care system is popular, with patient satisfaction much higher than in our country. In Denmark, every citizen can choose a doctor in their area. Prescription drugs are inexpensive and free for those under 18 years of age. Interestingly, despite their universal coverage, the Danish health care system is far more cost-effective than ours. They spend about 11 percent of their GDP on health care. We spend almost 18 percent.

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Class Struggle over Budgeting

Cut Deficit, But Not on Backs of Needy

By Sen. Bernie Sanders
Progressive America Rising via Politico

October 1, 2012 - Yes. We must address the very serious problem of a $16 trillion national debt and a $1 trillion federal deficit.

But at this pivotal moment in American history, it’s essential that we understand how we got into this deficit crisis in the first place and who was responsible for it. More important, we must address the deficit in a way that is fair and does not balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor — people who are already hurting.

Let us never forget that when Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, this country enjoyed a healthy $236 billion surplus, and the projections were that this surplus would grow by a total of $5 trillion over a 10-year period.

What happened? How did we go from a significant federal budget surplus to a massive deficit? Frankly, it is not that complicated.

President George W. Bush and the so-called deficit hawks chose to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and put the funding for those wars on our nation’s credit card. By the time the last wounded veteran is cared for, those wars will end up adding more than $3 trillion to our national debt.

During this same period, Bush and the “deficit hawks” provided huge tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans who were already doing phenomenally well. These tax breaks for the very rich will increase our national debt by about $1 trillion over a 10-year period.

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Tough Sell for War and Austerity Candidates

Why Obama's Re-election Will

Depend On the Youth Vote

By Ruy Teixeira
Progressive America Rising via The New Republic

Dec. 26, 2011 - Americans are polarized like never before as we head into the 2012 presidential campaign, and the greatest dividing line of all seems to be age. Indeed, President Obama has astoundingly consistent support from Americans less than 30 years old, the so-called Millennial generation. In a recent Pew survey, this cohort favored Obama over Romney by 24 points, 61-37. The generation least likely to support Obama, on the other hand, is the "Silent generation"—the generational group slighter older than Baby Boomers, and the group now dominant among the ranks of seniors. He trails Mitt Romney in this generation by 13 points, 41-54. This is the same generation that moved so sharply against Democrats in the 2010 election, contributing heavily to the GOP wave that swept the country.

Those polling numbers clearly dictate an electoral strategy: What Obama needs to do is perform a kind of generational pincer movement on the GOP, driving up support and turnout among the Millennial generation while breaking into GOP support among the Silent generation. There’s also a straightforward way for him to accomplish both goals.

Fortunately, the White House already seems to be thinking along these lines. On the Millennial side, Obama’s recent Osawatomie speech may be read as an opening bid to establish a campaign narrative with special appeal to this generation. Millennials are exceptionally sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street movement and its goals. Obama’s attack on inequality and the way that an unfair economy thwarts economic mobility strikes a very responsive chord among these voters.

In addition, Obama’s argument that government must play a strong role in reestablishing healthy economic growth also plays well among this group. In the same Pew poll, Millennials are most likely to select jobs as their top election issue. And, in distinction to older generations, they still believe government spending helps the economy recover—indeed, they believe spending should be a higher priority for the federal government than deficit reduction. Also in distinction to older generations, Millennials say they prefer a bigger government with more services to a smaller government with less services. Finally, a whopping two-thirds of this generation believes the Affordable Care Act should either be expanded or left as is, rather than repealed.

The Silent generation, of course, is a different story: While Millennials are predisposed to support activist government, the Silents are not. But they do feel strongly about certain aspects of activist government like Social Security and Medicare. That should be the other side of Obama’s pincer movement. He needs to draw a very strong contrast between his approach and that of the GOP, which proposes to replace the current Medicare system with underfunded vouchers. Silents, more than any other generation, believe it is more important to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are (64 percent) than reduce the budget deficit (27 percent).

This pincer movement will be key to Obama’s chances, both nationally and in a wide variety of target states. Nationally, he could break-even or a bit worse among middling age groups (30-64) but still win if he carries 18 to 29-year-olds by significantly more than he loses seniors, as he did in 2008, since the two groups tend to be of roughly similar size in presidential elections. But if he carries 18 to 29-year-olds by significantly less than he loses seniors, as congressional Democrats did in 2010, he will lose. Hence the need for both parts of the pincer movement.

On the state level, in contrast to 2008 where the youth vote put Obama over the top in only two states, North Carolina and Indiana, there could be many instances where the youth vote makes the difference in 2012. Consider Ohio. Obama carried 18 to 29-year-olds with 61 percent against John McCain’s 26 percent in 2008, while losing seniors 44-55. Both groups were 17 percent of Ohio voters. Thus, if Obama splits 30 to 64-year-old voters roughly evenly in 2012—significantly worse than he did in 2008—he will likely still win the state if youth voters continue to be more pro-Obama than seniors are anti-Obama.

Virginia and Nevada follow the same pattern. Obama carried 18 to 29-year-olds by 60-39 while losing seniors 46-53 in Virginia. Keep that relative relationship, fight the GOP candidate to a draw among middling age groups, and the state is his. Likewise, in Nevada, Obama carried 18 to 29-year-olds by a lop-sided 67-31 while losing seniors 42-55. In this state, fading to the break-even point among 30-64 year olds would represent a big loss relative to 2008, but Obama could survive it provided, again, he wins 18 to 29-year-olds by significantly more than he loses seniors.

All over the country, in other words, from the Midwest to the New South to the new swing states of the Southwest, Obama’s generational pincer movement could be key to his electoral prospects. Motivate and inspire youth while giving seniors second and third thoughts about the GOP. It’s a good game plan and Obama’s already made an excellent start at implementing it.

Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98937/why-obamas-re-election-campaign-will-depend-the-youth-vote

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GOP Throws Granny Under the Bus

National GOP Leaders Want to

Destroy the US Social Safety Net

They Have Had This Goal for Generations Because People Who Receive the Benefits of the US Social Safety Net Predominantly Are Democrats, or People so Dense ‘Tea Partiers,’ Who Receive These Benefits but Don't Realize They Do

By Brian Conners
Progressive America Rising via Takeaways

Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan wants to turn Medicare into a voucher system and reduce Medicaid by turning them into block grant which won't keep up with the pace of medical costs.

This means that the elderly and ill segments of our population will be encouraged to " die quickly" -- remember Grayson's summary of the GOP's health care plan? This isn't what they signed up for. The GOP is not being true to the bargain we gave our people.

The article "Medicare Saves Money" delineates how the GOP is hurting us all by its Medicare plan." states "Every once in a while a politician comes up with an idea that's so bad, so wrongheaded, that you're almost grateful. For really bad ideas can help illustrate the extent to which policy discourse has gone off the rails.

And so it was with Senator Joseph Lieberman's proposal, released last week, to raise the age for Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67.

Like Republicans who want to end Medicare as we know it and replace it with (grossly inadequate) insurance vouchers, Mr. Lieberman describes his proposal as a way to save Medicare. It wouldn't actually do that. But more to the point, our goal shouldn't be to "save Medicare," whatever that means. It should be to ensure that Americans get the health care they need, at a cost the nation can afford.

And here's what you need to know: Medicare actually saves money -- a lot of money -- compared with relying on private insurance companies. And this in turn means that pushing people out of Medicare, in addition to depriving many Americans of needed care, would almost surely end up increasing total health care costs."

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Yet Another Reason to Like the WPA

Mural Depicts Depression Era in Coalfields

By Bill Archer
Progressive America Rising via Bluefield Daily Telegraph

BLUEFIELD, Va, June 13, 2011. — A neon light fixture in the lobby of the Bluefield, Va., post office partially obscures a Tazewell County art treasure, but the tempera mural above the postmaster’s office door represents a New Deal initiative that was aimed at restoring morale among citizens who were suffering the lingering effects of surviving the Great Depression.

In the years after the end of World War I, the U.S. economy experienced some robust growth and left evidence of that growth in cities throughout the nation. Most of the imposing structures in the heart of downtown Bluefield including the 13-story tall West Virginian Manor and the Arts and Crafts Center appeared in the mid-1920s, and steel-making coal from southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia was in great demand as builders used steel as the framework for skyscrapers including the Empire State Building completed in 1931.

While “Black Thursday,” Oct. 24, 1029, signaled the start of the decline, the Dust Bowl drought starting in 1930 and lasting almost a decade threw the U.S. into desperate straights and by March 9, 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a “Bank Holiday” and started the process of restoring confidence in the nation’s banks, every American family had been touched in some way by the depression.

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‘Third Way’ Dems and the Road to Perdition

Why Any Deal to Cut Social Security,

Medicare or Medicaid Would be

a Moral, Economic and Political Disaster

By Robert Creamer
Huffington Post, March 28, 2011

Friday, the Democratic group Third Way published a memo arguing that Democrats should support "entitlement reform" -- by which they mean cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I don't doubt the sincerity or intentions of their proposal, but I believe that if Democrats took their advice it would result in a moral, economic and political disaster.

Here's why:

The immorality of "entitlement reform." The very idea that seniors on Social Security -- whose average income is $18,000 a year -- should be asked to tighten their belts while the Federal Government still gives huge tax breaks to millionaires and subsidies to oil companies is just plain wrong.

The principle voices for "entitlement reform" are the multi-millionaires from Wall Street who argue that we need to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of a bargain to reduce the long-term federal deficit and give the "markets" confidence. Never mind that Social Security in particular does not contribute anything to the deficit and has in fact generated a $2.6 trillion surplus that was paid for by workers and employers through Social Security taxes. Never mind that the Wall Street gang clamoring for "entitlement reform" demanded extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, subsidies for the oil companies, tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas and an end to the estate tax that only affects the sons and daughters of multi-millionaires.

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The Critical Battleground of Social Security

 

Study: Half of Seniors at Risk for Poverty

By James Parks

Progressive America Rising via AFL-CIO Blog

Here’s one big reason congressional Republicans and the deficit hawks are dead wrong about cutting Social Security ^[1] benefits: According to a new study, nearly half (47.4 percent) of all Americans between the ages of 60 and 90 will experience at least one year of poverty or near poverty and seniors of color are twice as likely to be affected.

The study by Mark Rank, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, shows that 58 percent of seniors between 60 and 84 will, at some point, not have enough liquid assets to allow them to weather an unanticipated expense or downturn in income.

But if you are a senior who is black or unmarried or have less than a high school education, the likelihood that you will be poor at some point increases dramatically. Rank found that although 32.7 percent of white older Americans will experience at least one year below the official poverty line, the percentage for black older Americans was nearly double at 64.6 percent.

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