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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Uphill Fight: Taking on Finance Capital in Congress

How Bernie Sanders, In New Role, Could Make Wall Streeters Very, Very Unhappy

By Ari Rabin-Havt
Progressive America Rising via American Prospect

Jan 26, 2015 - Big banks now have to contend with an old enemy in a new position of power.

Bernie Sanders, the United States senator from Vermont, plans on using his new position as ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee to take on too-big-to-fail financial institutions by advocating for their dissolution. Though a registered independent, Sanders caucuses with the Democrats, allowing him to assume the ranking member role representing the minority party.
Sanders knows how to draw the media spotlight when advocating for a cause.

While normally the domain of the Senate Banking Committee, the oversight of Wall Street, Sanders and his staff believe, is a critical budgetary issue. Democrats need to directly challenge Wall Street’s power, they assert, by boldly reframing the argument against the consolidation of financial institutions in terms of its cost to the national coffers. Though the term “ranking member” might not ordinarily have the barons of finance quaking in their custom-made oxfords, Sanders knows how to draw the media spotlight when advocating for a cause.

“Being the ranking member of the budget committee gives Senator Sanders the opportunity to say, look, people on food stamps didn’t cause the economic crisis, people that lost their jobs weren’t responsible for the economic crisis that we faced,” explained Warren Gunnels, director of the committee’s minority staff, during an interview in his office. “Average ordinary Americans weren’t responsible for the financial crisis we had.”

While centrist Democrats have expressed displeasure with progressives' forceful defense of regulations included in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Sanders plans on pushing the boundaries of the debate in the other direction. This potentially puts Sanders, who is seriously considering a run for the White House, in a head-on conflict with Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s favorite presidential candidate.

As media types muse over Sanders’s prospective presidential campaign, the focus of the minority Budget Committee staff, hard at work in a corner suite on the sixth floor of the Dirksen Senate office building, is elsewhere. Such a run by the senator would no doubt shine a light on the mission he’s set before his committee staff, but the work in this office has no connection to that effort.

Packed boxes are stacked almost randomly as the staff focuses on more important matters—unpacking would be just a temporary process, anyway. Republicans, having won the Senate in the midterms, will take over the office in a few months after the rush of budget season subsides.

Warren Gunnels’s office has a sweeping view of the Capitol dome, but for most of the hour I spent speaking with him about Sanders’s plans for the upcoming Congress, the blinds remain closed.

Gunnels has worked for Sanders in a variety of capacities since 1999, journeying with the Vermonter from his House staff to his Senate staff, when Sanders won the office in 2006, and now to the Budget Committee. There Sanders has recruited a hard-charging group that is by far the most progressive of any committee on Capitol Hill. Instead of sulking in the Democrats’ new minority status, Sanders is preparing to use his staff to advocate aggressively on behalf of a progressive agenda.

Even late on a Friday afternoon, with the senator back in Vermont, there is a sense of hustle in the office, with several meetings taking place around desks.

Gunnels put the blame for our economic collapse squarely on Wall Street. “The people responsible for the financial crisis were the CEOs in charge of the largest financial institutions in this country,” he said. “That nearly drove the economy off a cliff. We are still paying for that today.” (Continued)

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GOP’s Shameful Treatment of the Powerless

By Jesse Jackson

Progressive America Rising

April 7, 2014 - The Bible’s injunction that we shall be judged by how we have treated the “least of these” (Matthew 25:40) appears in different forms in virtually every religion or faith. And surely the measure of a country is how it treats the most vulnerable of its people — children in the dawn of life, the poor in the valley of life, the ailing in the shadows of life, the elderly in the dusk of life.

This week, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the Republican budget proposal put together by Rep. Paul Ryan, chair of the Budget Committee and Mitt Romney’s running mate. The vast majority of Republicans are lined up to vote for it, with possible exceptions for a handful who think it does not cut enough.

It is a breathtakingly mean and callous proposal. The Republican budget would cut taxes on the wealthy, giving millionaires, the Citizen for Tax Justice estimates, a tax break of $200,000 per year. (Ryan tells us only what tax rates he would lower, not the loopholes he would close to make his proposal revenue neutral. But CTJ shows that even if he closed every loophole, it wouldn’t make up for the revenue lost by lowering their top rate). The Ryan plan would also extend tax breaks for multinationals, moving to make the entire world a tax haven. He would raise spending on the military by about $500 billion over the levels now projected over the next decade.

Yet Republicans are pledged to balance the budget in 10 years.
To achieve this, the Republican budget would turn Medicare into a voucher program (but only for those 55 and younger). He would repeal the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). He would gut Medicaid, turning it into a block grant for states and cutting it by more than one-fourth by 2024. The result, as estimated by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, would be to deprive 40 million low and moderate income Americans of health care insurance.

The Republican budget also devastates domestic programs and investments, cutting them by one-third of their inflation adjusted levels over the decade, ending at an inconceivable one-half the levels of the Reagan years as a percentage of the economy. Infant nutrition, food subsidy, Head Start, investment in schools, Pell Grants for college, public housing, Meals on Wheels and home heating assistance for seniors or the confined all would suffer deep cuts. The poorest children will suffer the worst cuts.

The Republican budget also savages investments vital to our future — not just education, but research and development, renewable energy, modern infrastructure.

This budget is scheduled to be voted on by the House of Representatives this week. It is expected to pass with a majority made up entirely of Republican votes. Speaker Boehner has lined up this vote, even as he refuses even to allow a vote on extending unemployment benefits and on raising the minimum wage.

It is hard to see this as anything other than a declaration of class warfare by the few against the many. Republicans declare the country is broke, against all evidence to the contrary. But they still want to cut taxes for the rich and corporations and hike spending on the military. So they lay waste to support for working and poor people.
Ryan argues that cutting programs for the poor will set them free, removing a “hammock” and forcing them to stand on their own feet. That might be worth debating if jobs were plentiful, schools received equal support, housing was affordable and jobs paid a living wage.
But none of this is true.

In today’s conditions, with mass unemployment, savagely unequal schools, homeless families and poverty wage jobs, Ryan’s words simply ring false.

Needless to say, the wealthy and corporations reward Republicans for arguing their case. As the Koch brothers are showing, their campaigns will be lavishly supported; their opponents will face a barrage of attack ads.

But most Americans are better than this. Majorities oppose these cruel priorities. The question is whether those who vote for these harsh priorities are held accountable this fall in the elections. After decades of struggle, we all have the right to vote. The majority can speak if it chooses. It has to sort through annoying ads, poll-tested excuses and glib politicians. But we can decide we aren’t going to support politicians who protect the privileges of the few and vote to make the poor pay the price.

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Does America Need a Robin Hood Tax?

A tiny fee charged to the biggest banks could generate hundreds of billions of dollars every year for social services, but what effect would it have on Wall Street?

By Kyle Chayka

Progressive America Rising via Pacific Standard

In a video released last month by an organization called The Robin Hood Tax, an increasingly frantic U.K. prime Mmnister (played by British actor Bill Nighy) is forced to defend his decision made 10 years ago back in 2014 not to pass a tax on banking transactions. While Nighy hems and haws, a trio of polished European Union leaders extoll the tax. They say that the revenue, drawn largely from investment bankers, has “restored health services” and “helped fight extreme poverty” in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The video, which has over 250,000 views, is clearly satire, but it comes at the forefront of a burgeoning political movement to do a little more to curtail the excesses that caused the 2008 crisis. The Robin Hood Tax also hosts an international petition with over 650,000 signatures that proposes levying a tax every time a bank trades in commodities like stocks, bonds, foreign currency, or derivatives. The fee would be small—just 0.03 or 0.05 percent of each transaction—but enough to raise $416 billion globally, the organization suggests.

That money would go toward solving basic social issues like public education, affordable housing, and public services—in other words, taking from the rich, as epitomized in the kind of hedge-fund gamblers depicted in Wolf of Wall Street, and giving to the poor, just like the initiative’s namesake.

By trading in risky commodities, the banks lost everyone a lot of money, so why not punish them for it by targeting the very transactions that caused the problem in the first place?

A Robin Hood-style tax, also known as a financial transaction tax, is on track to be finalized by a coalition of 11 European Union governments before May of this year, including Germany and France, where the tax has 82 and 72 percent approval respectively. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for progress on the tax before the May 2014 E.U. parliamentary elections; European lawmakers are actively pushing their United States counterparts to join the effort.

The idea of a financial transaction tax has a certain visceral appeal that the Robin Hood rhetoric reinforces: By trading in risky commodities, the banks lost everyone a lot of money, so why not punish them for it by targeting the very transactions that caused the problem in the first place? Yet it’s important to weigh the impact the proposed tax would have on Wall Street and Main Street alike.

One benefit of the tax is that it’s designed to make large banks bear the burden (as opposed to consumers or small business owners). Spot currency transactions—tourists switching from U.S. Dollars to Euros, for example—won’t be counted under the tax, nor will transactions with governmental banks, trades in physical commodities, and transactions involving private households, explains a briefing on the bill.

Yet critics fear that any restriction on the flow of investment capital could damage the economy for everyone, not just redistribute some of the wealth away from banks and bankers.

A report from London Economics points out that many households have savings invested in financial instruments that would be impacted by the tax. “In Italy, there is a high level of direct investment in financial markets, with 40 percent of household savings being held directly in the form of equity or debt,” the report notes, with 23 percent of household savings in Spain. The financial transaction tax would quickly make these investments less valuable by slowing down trading and, theoretically, growth.

Another fear is that taxing trading transactions in the European Union, or in the U.S. or U.K. where such a law is less imminent, will cause capital flight from the region as investors look to funnel their money through countries that don’t tax. A recent report by the U.S.-based Financial Economists Roundtable argues that the tax wouldn’t make as much money as has been suggested, since it would provide a disincentive for future business. “Volumes—and thus tax revenues—would shrink as trading dropped or moved to other locations or to lower-taxed vehicles,” the report reads. “A transaction tax imposed at any economically meaningful rate by only some countries would cause many transactions to be shifted to other countries.” What’s currently happening with corporate profits being shuttled through Ireland and the Caribbean, losing billions of dollars in tax revenue, could also occur with investment capital.

The Financial Economists Roundtable report cautions against a kind of cascade, where taxes on transactions would lower financial liquidity, meaning “less capital per worker in the long run and thus lower wages throughout the economy.” Though likely over-exaggerated in the report, the threat of capital flight, which would lead to more difficulty securing loans and start-up funding, is real. But there’s another way to structure a financial transactions tax so it’s even more tightly focused.

IN SEPTEMBER 2013, ITALY became the first country to pass a tax on high-frequency trading, the technology that hedge funds often use to buy and sell financial commodities in fractions of seconds. The tax is tiny at 0.02 percent, and it’s only levied on trades occurring every 0.5 seconds or faster (the Robin Hood tax plan includes a high-frequency tax along with wider-reaching measures).

The high-frequency trading tax is meant as a way for banks to pay for the damage they’ve caused to the economy, but it’s also meant to make trading more efficient rather than less. Driven by computational algorithms rather than human beings, high-frequency trading is less about allocating capital to the businesses that can use it best and more about gaining a competitive edge over other funds. The algorithms that control trading likely aren’t even completing trades, as Felix Salmon points out—they’re putting out buy or sell orders then rescinding them immediately in order to confuse the other algorithms they’re competing against. They might as well be called “high-frequency spambots,” Salmon writes.

Democratic Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Peter DeFazio have repeatedly introduced a U.S. high-frequency trading tax, most recently around a year ago. They propose a 0.03 percent tax on trades that excludes initial public offerings and bonds in order to dampen the tax’s impact on capital raising, which they say will amount to $352 billion in revenue over 10 years. The bill has repeatedly failed, and no plans have been announced to bring it back (Harkin declined to comment for this article).

We’ve already come to the point that stock exchanges are building laser networks to shave extra microseconds off their high-frequency trading. Though our country might benefit from seeing how the European Union’s full financial transaction tax plays out, perhaps it’s time for a little bit of Robin Hood to curtail the worst of the excesses that aren’t benefiting anyone but the banks.

Kyle Chayka is a freelance technology and culture writer living in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @chaykak.

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Majority in the US: Redistribute Wealth, Enact 'Robin Hood Tax'

New Gallup poll finds strong support for ending inequality plaguing the nation

By Andrea Germanos

Progressive America Rising via Common Dreams

April 18, 2013 - A majority of people in the U.S. want more equal wealth distribution and support a "Robin Hood tax" on the rich to achieve that, according to results from a Gallup poll released Wednesday, evidence that the economic policies that concentrate wealth and fuel inequality are out of line with what most people want.

Only 33% of respondents said that the current distribution of wealth in the U.S. is fair, while 59% said it should be more evenly distributed.

The poll results reflect a longstanding sentiment. Wanting more equal wealth distribution has consistently been the position of the majority of Gallup poll respondents since it started asking the question in 1984. At its lowest point in 2000, support for more wealth equality was still the majority opinion at 56%, and was at its highest level in April 2008 at 68%.

Further, a slight majority of respondents in the new poll, 52%, said that more equal wealth distribution should be achieved by a "Robin Hood tax"—heavy taxes on the rich.  Support for such taxes showed clear partisan differences, with 75% of Democrats in support compared to only 26% of Republicans.

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‘Flip the Script’ –Jobs over Deficits

Job seekers waiting in line

The Republican Lock on Congress

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Progressive America Rising via billfletcherjr.com

There is a strategic question that faces progressives, one that is receiving increased attention.  Due to the 2010 elections and the Republican domination of state legislatures, Congressional Districts have been gerrymandered in order to guarantee a lack of any significant electoral challenges.  In other words, these Districts have Republican Congresspeople who are not worried about opposition.

As we saw in the lead up to the ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations/resolution, most Republicans felt no internal pressure to compromise.  It is quite likely that they will feel little pressure in their districts for at least ten years.  As a result the sort of pressure that they must feel must transcend their districts and actually be more at the societal level.  What this means is that while progressives absolutely need an independent electoral strategy that builds locally-based organizations capable of successfully running candidates for office–both inside and outside of the Democratic primary system–that is insufficient.

In fact, it is the Occupy Movement that pointed us in the direction of the other leg of such a movement. What the Occupy Movement accomplished, among other things, was to change the social discourse.  Despite every effort by the mainstream media to dismiss the Occupy Movement it not only grew but forced the country to start to address the question of economic inequality.

In the current context the implications should be clear.  If, for instance, we are to fight it out on the economy and specifically on unemployment, this will not happen on the basis of fights in the Republican Congressional Districts.  It will be a fight that we will have to take up in cities, including but not limited to state capitols, around the country.  It means social protests which are disruptive. 

In order for this to happen we must actually re-train many social movement activists and thinkers in the lessons of the 1930s labor movement, the 1950s-1960s freedom movements (including but not limited to the Civil Rights Movement), the movement against the Vietnam War, and the work of the early environmental movement. 

Occupy, in that sense, was onto something.  We must carry out a fight for space as part of the fight for power.  Land occupations, eviction blockades, boycotts, as well as mass demonstrations are all critical.  [Note: in fact, we need, right now, a series of REALLY mass marches for jobs.] In other words, the sort of pressure that needs to be brought about must be something that Republicans AND Democrats feel, and in fact, become a serious source of concern.

Before we find ourselves wallowing in self-pity as we worry about the Republican ‘lock’, let’s rethink our strategy and tactics.  We may be able to flip the script, and sooner rather than in the distant future.

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So You Want to Create Jobs? Study This…One Graphic, 10,000 Words

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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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The Economic Platform for a Popular Front vs. Finance Capital & the Right

Let's Fight for a Progressive Agenda

By Senator Bernie Sanders
Progressive America Rising via HuffPost

Sept 29, 21012 - There are two major economic and budgetary issues which Congress must address in the lame-duck session or soon afterward. First, how do we reverse the decline of the middle class and create the jobs that unemployed and underemployed workers desperately need? Second, how do we address the $1 trillion deficit and $16 trillion national debt in a way that is fair and not on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick or the poor?

Both of these issues must be addressed in the context of understanding that in America today we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth and that the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider. Today, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent of Americans. In 2010, 93 percent of all new income went to just the top 1 percent. In terms of wealth, the top 1 percent owns 42 percent of the wealth in America while the bottom 60 percent owns just 2.3 percent.

In my view, we will not make progress in addressing either the jobs or deficit crisis unless we are prepared to take on the greed of Wall Street and big-money interests who want more and more for themselves at the expense of all Americans. Let's be clear. Class warfare is being waged in this country. It is being waged by the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adeslon, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and all the others who want to decimate working families in order to make the wealthiest people even wealthier. In this class war that we didn't start, let's make sure it is the middle class and working families who win, not the millionaires and billionaires.

In terms of deficit reduction, let us remember that when Bill Clinton left office in January of 2001, this country enjoyed a healthy $236 billion SURPLUS and we were on track to eliminate the entire national debt by the year 2010.

What happened? How did we go from significant federal budget surpluses to massive deficits? 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, but "forgot" to pay for those wars -- which will add more than $3 trillion to our national debt.

President Bush and the "deficit hawks" provided huge tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans -- which will increase our national debt by about $1 trillion over a 10-year period.

President Bush and the "deficit hawks" established a Medicare prescription drug program written by the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, but they "forgot" to pay for it -- which will add about $400 billion to our national debt over a 10-year period.

Further, as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was driven into the worst recession since the Great Depression which resulted in a massive reduction in federal revenue.

And now, as we approach the election and a lame-duck session of Congress, these very same Republican "deficit hawks" want to fix the mess they created by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and education, while lowering income tax rates for the wealthy and large corporations. Sadly, they have been joined by some Democrats.

The fiscal crisis is a serious problem, but it must be addressed in a way that will not further punish people who are already suffering economically. In addition, it is absolutely imperative that we address the needs of 23 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed.

What should working families of this country demand of Congress in response to these crises? Let me be specific:

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Eye Chart for GOP Apologists

One Chart, 10,000 Words:

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Anti-Austerity: The Progressive Majority Option

A Budget to Rebuild America:

Now Elect a Congress to Pass It.

Editorial, The Nation

April 4, 2012 - Representative Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney kept relatively straight faces as they used their first campaign swing together, on the eve of the primary in Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin, to celebrate the “courage” of their austerity budget. That was no small task, as there is nothing more comic than “corporations are people, my friend” conservatives suggesting that it requires fortitude to propose tax cuts for the rich and a restructuring of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that would steer trillions toward insurance firms and Wall Street speculators.

What’s truly comic, though, is the notion that Ryan’s plan is intended to cut the debt. He admits, albeit quietly, that under his scheme it would take decades to get the government’s fiscal house in order. But that’s not the point. If a Romney/­Ryan administration (yes, Ryan now says he would consider accepting a place on the GOP ticket) were to enact the House Budget Committee chair’s plan, it would make the wealthy much wealthier while dramatically expanding the “shared sacrifice” of working Americans, the elderly and the disabled. President Obama aptly described it as “nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism.”

Ryan’s agenda is better understood as the latest variation on GOP schemes to redistribute wealth upward. But there’s a new willingness among a growing number of Democrats—perhaps spurred by the spirit of Occupy Wall Street and the 99 percent movements—to counter the austerity lie. President Obama’s budg­et, which like the Ryan plan is more an election-year manifesto than a fiscal outline, is a step in the right direction, with proposed tax hikes for the wealthy, respect for entitlement programs and a gentle embrace of new stimulus spending. But the best proposals have been put forth by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Senator Tom Harkin.

Both the CPC’s “Budget for All”  and Harkin’s “Rebuild America Act” recognize that the logical starting point in balancing budgets is to ask the wealthiest to pay their share. To that end, the CPC budget ends tax cuts for the top 2 percent; creates new brackets for millionaires and billionaires (including adopting the Buffett Rule); eliminates preferential treatment for capital gains and dividends; abolishes welfare for oil, gas and coal companies; and eliminates loopholes that allow businesses to dodge taxes. Both proposals suggest a financial transactions tax not just to raise revenues but to clamp down on Wall Street speculation.

This approach is a nonstarter with Congressional Republicans and also with too many Democrats, perhaps in part because the corporate media have mostly ignored the progressive alternatives. But numerous surveys show that Americans prefer taxing the rich over cutting Social Security and Medicare. They also support investment in infrastructure and job creation. That should be a lesson for Democrats this election year: the winning alternative to Romney/Ryan austerity is not kinder, gentler Democratic austerity. As AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka says, it’s smart economics and smart politics to demand that “shared sacrifice start at the top—with Wall Street and the wealthiest Americans.” 

In this election season, progressives must highlight the stark differences between Ryan’s budget and the alternatives offered by the CPC and Harkin. We must not merely reject the false promises and cruel calculations of Romney/Ryan austerity. We must elect a Congress that demands accountability, taxes fairly, defends the safety net and spends to rebuild America.

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Elections and the Emerging Popular Front

Victories in Ohio, Mississippi, Maine and Arizona Provide Seven Key Lessons for 2012

By Robert Creamer
Progressive America Rising via Huffington Post

Nov. 9, 2011 - A year ago the Empire struck back. Right Wing money capitalized on anger at the economic stagnation that their own policies caused just two years before. They brought a halt to the hard-won progressive victories that marked the first two years of Barack Obama's presidency.

Last night the progressive forces tested some of the weapons and tactics they will use in next year's full-blown counter offensive. They worked very, very well.

Progressives won key elections in Ohio, Maine, Mississippi, and Arizona.

The importance of yesterday's labor victory in Ohio cannot be overstated. It could well mark a major turning point in the history of the American labor movement -and the future of the American middle class.

The people of Ohio rejected right wing attempts to destroy public sector unions by an astounding 61% to 39%. Progressives in Ohio won 82 out of 88 counties.

In his "concession," the author of the union-stripping bill, Governor John Kasich, looked like a whipped dog. He was.

Last night's victory will have a direct and immediate impact on the livelihoods of thousands of middle class state employees in Ohio. It will stall similar attempts to destroy unions in other states. It will turbo-charge the campaign to oust Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who jammed a union-stripping measure through his own legislature. And it will massively weaken Kasich and other Republicans in Ohio.

But last night's victory also carried critical lessons for the progressive forces throughout America as we prepare for the crossroads, defining battle of 2012.

Lesson #1: Creating a Movement. The industrial state labor battles that culminated in last night's overwhelming Ohio success transformed the image of unions from a large bureaucratic "special interest" that negotiates for workers and are part of the "establishment" -- into a movement to protect the interests of the American Middle Class.

The Republican Governors who began these battles hoped to make a bold move to destroy union power. In fact, they have succeeded in creating their worst nightmare -- the rebirth of a labor movement.

That is critically important for the future of unions - which by any measure provide the foundation of progressive political power in the United States. It also provides an important lesson for every element of the Progressive community.

These battles put the "movement" back in "labor movement."

And the importance of "movement" can't be overstated. Particularly at a time when people are unhappy with the direction of the country and desperately want change -- they don't want leaders who appear to be embedded parts of the status quo. They want to be part of movements for change.

Movements have three critical characteristics:

They make people feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves.

They make people feel that they themselves can play a significant role in bringing about that larger goal.

They involve "chain reactions" -- they go viral. You don't have to only engage people in movements one by one or one or group by group. They begin to engage each other.

Because they make people feel that they are part of something larger than themselves -- and that they can personally be a part of achieving that larger goal -- movements inspire and empower. And for that reason they give people hope.

To win, Progressives must turn the anger and dissatisfaction with the present into inspiration and hope for the future.

The labor movement turned the battle in Ohio into a fight for the future of America's middle class. It turned the battle into a fight over the dignity of everyday working people -- and their right to have a say in their future. Instead of being about "contracts," it was about "freedom."

Lesson #2: It's much easier to mobilize people to protect what they have than to fight for something to which they aspire.

Every one of the big victories yesterday involved battles that had been framed as attempts by the Right -- or their allies on Wall Street - to take away the rights of everyday Americans.

In Ohio, it was the right to collectively bargain about their future. In Maine, it was the right to same-day voter registration. In Mississippi it was the right to use contraceptives -- once it became clear that the so-called "personhood" amendment was not just about abortion, but ultimately about a woman's right to use birth control. In Arizona, it was the rights of Latino Americans.

And of course, that's why the Republicans' plan to privatize Social Security and eliminate Medicare are so toxic for them in the election next year.

Among referenda yesterday, the one progressive setback came in the largely symbolic vote -- once again in Ohio -- against the Health Care Reform Act's mandate to buy insurance. The very same people who had voted against taking away the rights of their neighbors to join a union -- also voted against being "forced" to buy health insurance.

The whole issue of the "mandate" is the major card the Right has played against the critically important Health Care Reform Act. Of course the whole issue could have been framed differently. The "mandate" to start paying Medicare premiums when you're sixty-five isn't framed as a "mandate." People do it, both because they really want to get on Medicare, and because if they wait to pay premiums until they need it, their premiums go way up.

That's why a Public Option was so popular with the voters. You got to choose to join something you wanted. But it's also the way we should have framed the overall "mandate" to get insurance -- with premium penalties if you fail to "opt in."

Once the health care law becomes a fact on the ground that benefits ordinary people, every day, it will certainly become very popular. But that will wait until 2014 when most of its provisions go into effect. Once it does goes into effect, if they try to take away those benefits and the Right will run into a firestorm of opposition.

Of course if Romney is the Republican candidate next year, we don't have to worry about the "mandate" issue at all. In fact, our attitude should be "go ahead, make my day." It will be simple to neutralize any attack by Romney or Super-Pacs on Democrats about "mandates" by simply pointing out that the entire question is just one more example of how Romney has no core values -- since he authored and passed the Massachusetts health care law built around "mandates." In the end, Romney's lack of core values is a much more powerful message than anything having to do with "mandates."

Lesson #3: Framing the battle is key. In every one of these issue referenda, Progressives won the framing battle.

In Ohio, Progressives made the fight into a battle for the rights of the middle class -- part of the overarching battle between the 99% and the 1%.

In Maine, Progressives made the battle into a fight over the right to register to vote. Of course the right wing frame was that eliminating same-day registration provided protection against "voter fraud." That was pretty hard to sustain given the fact that there had been exactly two instances of "voter fraud" involving same-day registration in 28 years.

The Mississippi "personhood amendment" was framed as a battle over the rights of women to use birth control - not to make "miscarriage" a crime.

Lesson #4: Turnout is king. In Virginia, a Republican candidate leads his Democratic opponent by only 86 votes, so a recount will determine whether the Republicans there take control of the State Senate.

Turnout in the Virginia contests was low.

In Ohio, by contrast, 400,000 more voters went to the polls yesterday than in the elections in 2010. That's one big reason why Progressives won.

And it wasn't just inspiration and great messaging that turned them out. Rank and file union members and Progressives of all sorts conducted massive get out the vote efforts in every corner of the state.

After all, victory isn't just about great strategy, mostly it's about nuts and bolts -- it's about great execution. In Ohio they had both.

In Arizona, the Latino community mobilized to defeat the author of Arizona's "papers please" law, State Senator Russell Pearce. He lost a recall election, by seven points, 52.4% to 45.4%. The Pearce defeat is just one more example of how the Republicans play the "immigration" card at their peril -- and how important the Latino vote will be to the outcome next year in critical states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Florida -- and Arizona.

Pearce didn't count on Latinos going out to vote. They did.

Lesson #5: Progressives win when we stand up straight. We won last night where we stood proudly for progressive values -- planted the flag -- mobilized our forces and took the offensive.

People in America are not looking for leaders who apologize for their progressive beliefs or are willing to compromise those principles even before they enter the fight. They want leaders who will fight for the middle class, and fight for change; who stand up against the big Wall Street banks and the CEO class that they believe - correctly - have siphoned off the nation's wealth, and whose greed has caused the economy to collapse.

People are willing to compromise when it seems to advance the common good -- but only after their leaders have done everything in their power to defend their interests -- and have mobilized them to defend their own interests.

Lesson #6: The face of the battle in Ohio was your neighbor.

The Republicans bet that they could make public employees the "Welfare Queens" of our time. They bet that they could make public employees the scapegoats for all that has gone wrong with the American economy -- that they could divide the middle class against itself.

They bet wrong.

Turned out to be impossible to convince everyday Americans that firefighters, cops, and teachers were greedy villains. Normal voters recognized them as their neighbors -- as people just like themselves.

The 99% versus the 1% frame is critical to making clear that the problem with our economy has nothing to do with how much teachers, or firefighters, or steel workers, or home care workers, or Social Security recipients make for a living. It has everything to do with growing economic inequality, the exploding financial sector, and an unproductive class of speculators and gamblers who don't make anything of value but siphon off all of our increased productivity.

Lesson #7: Progressives win when we frame the issue as a moral choice.

In Ohio, Progressives did not frame the debate as a choice between two sets of policies and programs. They posed the question as a choice between two different visions of the future.

It was a choice between an America with a strong, vibrant, empowered middle class, where every generation can look forward to more opportunity than the one that went before - or, a society with a tiny wealthy elite and a massive population of powerless workers who do their bidding.

It was posed as a choice between a society where we're all in this together -- where we look out for each other and take responsibility for our future as a country -- or as a society where we're all in this alone -- where only the strong, or the clever, or the ruthless can thrive.

If given a clear, compelling choice, Americans will chose a progressive vision of the future every time.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners and a Senior Strategist for Americans United for Change. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.

Follow Robert Creamer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rbcreamer

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Week Two of ‘Street Heat’ in NYC

Protesters March in Manhattan,

Criticizing Wall Street,

Demanding ‘Tax the Rich!’

NEW YORK (Reuters, Sept 24 2011) - Several hundred marchers wound their way through the streets of lower Manhattan on Saturday in the latest of a string of protests over the past week against what demonstrators saw as corporate greed on Wall Street.

The demonstrations, participants said, were meant to criticize a financial system that they believed unfairly benefits corporations and the rich. They said the protests were inspired by demonstrations in Egypt and Spain.

The marchers carried signs spelling out their goals. "Tax the rich," one sign said. "We Want Money for Healthcare not Corporate Welfare," read another.

At least a dozen protesters were arrested during the largely peaceful march that lasted more than three hours and wound its way north from the financial district into the bustling Union Square area.

The demonstrators were mostly college-aged marchers carrying American flags and signs with anti-corporate slogans. Some beat drums, blew horns and chanted slogans as uniformed officers surrounded and videotaped them.

"Occupy Wall Street," they chanted, "all day, all week."

Organizers said their intent was to occupy Wall Street but, with metal barricades and swarms of police officers in front of the New York Stock Exchange, the closest they could get was Liberty Street, about three blocks away.

The first arrest came shortly after noon near the stock exchange. Several blocks away, another protester, who identified himself as Robert Stephens, was arrested after kneeling in the middle of the street outside the Chase Bank building.

"That's the bank that took my mother's home," said Stephens, a law student, before being handcuffed.

An online activist group called Adbusters organized the weeklong event and word spread via social media, yet the throngs of protesters it had hoped for failed to show up.

"I was kind of disappointed with the turnout," said Itamar Lilienthal, 19, a New York University student and marcher.

The protest appeared smaller than a "Day of Rage" a week ago that turned out to be largely peaceful.

Tourists along the march stopped to snap photos, and some acknowledged the demonstrators with waves and peace signs but few joined the protest.

Laurie Hull, who was visiting New York with her husband from Oregon, stopped to watch and said the couple empathized with the marchers after filing for bankruptcy and living without health insurance.

Near Union Square Park, more than two hours into the march, police attempted to corral the demonstrators behind police lines. But surging protesters weaved around the officers and moved onward, prompting shoving matches that ended with more arrests.

(Editing by Lauren Keiper and Cynthia Johnston)

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Jobs Programs: The Right and Wrong Turns

The Hot Potato Too Many Beltway Wonks Avoid:

The Need to Tie Job Creation to Industrial Policy

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want to be a good policy advocate for jobs these days, two starting points will help you a lot. One is to take off your national blinders and see the economy globally. The second is to grasp how the need for revenues to finance the creation of new jobs can best be filled by increasing taxes on unproductive wealth.

A good example of the problem is Robert's Samuelson's 'Job Creation 101' op-ed column in the Sept 12 Washington Post. If we simply follow his lesson plan, we would end up creating new jobs in the third world--and doing so mainly at the expense of the wrong people at home.

Samuelson begins his argument wisely enough by stressing how increasing demand for goods and services creates jobs, and government has to have a hand in it. But then he goes astray:

"If government taxed, borrowed or regulated less, that money would stay with households and businesses, which would spend it on something else and, thereby, create other jobs. Politics determines how much private income we devote to public services.

"To this observation, there's one glaring exception. In a slump, government can create jobs by borrowing when the private economy isn't spending."

On the first point, tweaking taxes so both people and businesses have more cash to spend glosses over the matter of where and how the money is spent. Using extra income to pay down your Visa Card doesn't help job creation much. And if you spend it at Wal-Mart or other big box stores, you'll create some demand to hire more workers in China or Malaysia, but not much here.

On the second point, it's not always wise to create jobs simply by borrowing. It certainly adds to the revenues of the banks and bondholders.  But it's much smarter to go after unproductive pools of capital with progressive taxation. The proposal for a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculators is an excellent example.

The rule-of-thumb is to tax activities you want to discourage, such as unproductive gambling in derivatives, while subsidizing efforts you want to encourage, such as new green manufacturing startups. It's called 'industrial policy,' and it's why some countries that have one, like China and Germany, are weathering the economic storms better than others.

If Obama's new jobs program is going to be thwarted by a hostile Congress anyway, those politicians who are serious about creating jobs would do well to fight for the best options-direct government programs that fund increasing local demand for local labor and raw materials.  If we had every county in the country funded to build a wind farm or solar array as a public power utility, it would be a good start. So would the building of the new and massive 'Smart Grid' power lines for clean and green energy.

 
When finance capital's opposition in Congress rears its head to crush something that makes perfect sense to everyone else, then we'll learn exactly who is part of the problem and who is part of the solution. If we get political clarity here in a massive way, we'll be in a much better position to assemble the popular power required to get what we really need.

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‘Deal’ Vote Reveals Lay of the Land

House Backs Debt Deal, But Dems Split

With 95 'Conscience' Democrats Voting 'No'

By John Nichols
Progressive America Rising via The Nation

August 1, 2011 - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi reportedly told members of the House Democratic Caucus to vote their "individual consciences" when they were asked to approve the debt-celing deal cobbled together by the Obama White House and congressional Republicans.

Consciences divided evenly, with 95 Democrats opposed the compromise agreement while 95 supported it in a Monday evening vote that saw the measure pass primarily on the basis of Republican backing —despite the fact that this was a deal promoted aggressively by a Democratic White House.

The final tally was 269 in favor, 161 opposed [1].

Republicans generally backed the deal, with 174 voting "yes" while 66 voted "yes."

Democrats were far more closely divided, with widespread opposition to what Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, described as a violation of "core Democratic ideals."

While Pelosi cast her own viote in favor of the agreement, she did not "whip" her fellow Democrats to back the deal during a marathon caucus meeting Monday. The former speaker outlined the consequences of a default by the federal government if an agreement to raise the debt ceiling is not reached. But North Carolina Congressman G.K. Butterfield, who attended the caucus session said Pelosi avoided pressuring House Democrats to fall in line with the Democrats in the White House. "She toldus to leave it to our individual consciences," Butterfield told reporters.

With the House vote done, the Senate will be vote Tuesday on the deal, which proposes radical cuts in federal programs—cuts that some fear will ultimately threaten Medicare and other Democratic “legacy” programs—in return for raising the nation’s debt ceiling.

The Senate is likely to back the deal that was cut between the Obama White House and Republican leaders; Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, is already on board, as are key Republicans.

The general sense from the start was that the real test would come in the House, where Republican leaders had to scramble to keep Tea Party conservatives on board, and White House faced a revolt by progressives.

Even as Pelosi and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer indicated personal support for the measure, a striking number of Democratic spoke out in opposition to Obama's position before the hastily-scheduled Monday evening vote.

Congressman Pete DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who frequently breaks with the White House when he feels the president is not doing enough to address unemployment, went to the House floor Monday to declare that this is a “no jobs” deal. Ohio Congressman Marcy Kaptur was opposed. Veteran New York Congressmen Jerry Nadler and Eliot Engle indicated early on that they are firmly opposed, as did former House Ways and Means Committee chair Charles Rangel, D-New York. Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was another “no.” California Congresswoman Maxine Waters announced her "no" vote with a declaration that the deal was "one of the worst pieces of public policy" she had ever seen.

The progressive opposition to the deal grew, as grassroots groups stepped up their lobbying against the package. Progressive Change Campaign Committee [2] co-founder Adam Green said: “This deal will kill our economy and is an attack on middle-class families. It asks nothing of the rich, will reduce middle-class jobs, and lines up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for cuts. Today, we’re putting in thousands of calls to Congress urging Democrats to keep their promise and oppose this awful bill. The 14th Amendment is unambiguous, and President Obama should invoke it to pay our nation’s debt. Then Democrats should focus on jobs—not cuts—in order to grow our economy.”

Progressive Democrats of America launched a national “No Deal!” push. “The corporatists in Congress recognize that the United States cannot go into default for the first time in its 235-year history,” said PDA director Tim Carpenter. “Yet, they are claiming that we can only increase the debt ceiling by cutting vital social programs designed to protect working class and poor people across this country. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid! [3] We can block this “deal” and demand a clean debt ceiling increase.”

At least 20 members of National People's Action, a group that seeks to hold banks and financial institutions to account for the damage their speculation has done to the U.S. economy, were arrested when they disrupted debate in the Capitol. Decrying the debt-ceiling agreement as "a raw deal," the NPA members chanted: "Hey, Boehner, get a clue, it's about revenue!"

Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus members expressed the most serious skepticism regarding the measure.

That skepticism was rooted in a sense that this was a bad deal for both the economy and a Democratic Party that has historically positioned itself as the defender of working families.

Harry Truman used to say: “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”

If the thirty-third president was right, then Barack Obama did himself and his party a world of hurt by cutting the deal with the GOP leadership.

Faced with the threat that Tea Party–pressured Republicans in the House really would steer the United States toward default, and in so doing steer the US economy over the cliff, Obama had to do something. But instead of bold action—borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan to demand a straight up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling; borrowing a page from Franklin Roosevelt to pledge to use the authority afforded him by the Constitution to defend the full faith and credit of the United States—the president engaged in inside-the-Beltway bargaining of the most dysfunctional sort.

In cutting a deal with Congressional Republicans [4] that places Democratic legacy programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—at risk while cutting essential programs for working families and the poor, Obama has positioned himself and his administration to the right of where mainstream Republicans such as Howard Baker, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush used to stand in fights with the fringe elements of their party.

Now, the fringe is in charge of the GOP. And Obama is aggreeing to policies that are designed to satisfy Republicans that Britain’s banking minister describes as “right-wing nutters [5].’”

Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders claimed they have done everything in their power to avert deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And it is true that they have given the Republicans (and their paymasters) less than House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan was demanding with a budget proposal that turned Medicare into a voucher program and began the process of privatizing Social Security.

But a compromise with total destruction can still do a lot of damage.

The president’s bow to the political extremism—and the economic irrationality [6]—of a tiny circle of “right-wing nutters” in Congress and their dwindling Tea Party “base” will, according to reports based on briefings by White House and GOP aides, “raise the debt limit by about $2.7 trillion and reduce the deficit by the same amount in two steps. It would cut about $1 trillion in spending up front and set up a select bicameral committee to put together a future deficit-reduction package worth $1.7 trillion to $1.8 trillion. Failure of Congress to pass the future deficit-reduction package would automatically trigger cuts to defense spending and Medicare.”

An aide familiar with the deal told the Hill newspaper that the Medicare cut would not affect beneficiaries. “Instead,” the aide indicated, “healthcare providers and insurance companies would see lower payments.”

But that’s still a squeezing of Medicare in order to meet the demands of Congressional Republicans who have spent the past six months trying to put the program on the chopping block.

Congressional Black Caucus chairman Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri, responded to initial reports regarding the deal by describing it as “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich [7].”

Congressional Progressive Caucus [8] co-chair Raul Grijalva said Obama and his negotiators bent too far to the extremists. Like many progressives, Grijalva favored the straight up-or-down vote on debt ceiling. “Had that vote failed,” he argued, “the president should have exercised his Fourteenth Amendment responsibilities and ended this manufactured crisis.”

Grijalva joined members of the Congerssional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus at a Monday press conference, where they called on Obama to sidestep Congress and raise the debt limit by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment [9].

Obama has rejected this option.

Instead of taking a tough stance, the president blinked in the face of Republican recalcitrance. And in so doing Obama agreed to what the Progressive Caucus co-chair described as “a cure as bad as the disease.”

“This deal trades people’s livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it,” Grijalva declared Sunday afternoon. [10] “Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.”

Grijalva expressed immediate opposition to the deal. And he was not alone.

Congresswoman Donna Edwards, D-Maryland, slammed the deal. [11]

“Nada from million/billionaires; corp tax loopholes aplenty; only sacrifice from the poor/middle class? Shared sacrifice, balance? Really?” she complained, via Twitter, on Sunday.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-California, complained that she was “not sure how Social Security and Medicare” will be preserved by the bargain the president has cut with the Republicans. “We have to make sure that within this deal…Medicare and Medicare and Social Security and the most vulnerable are protected,” she said, while withholding an endorsement of the measure. “I worry about these triggers [for more cuts],” Lee concluded.

Grijalva objected, in particular, to the lack of shared sacrifice in the deal.

“This deal does not even attempt to strike a balance between more cuts for the working people of America and a fairer contribution from millionaires and corporations. The very wealthy will continue to receive taxpayer handouts, and corporations will keep their expensive federal giveaways. Meanwhile, millions of families unfairly lose more in this deal than they have already lost. I will not be a part of it,” the Arizona congressman explained. “Republicans have succeeded in imposing their vision of a country without real economic hope. Their message has no public appeal, and Democrats have had every opportunity to stand firm in the face of their irrational demands. Progressives have been rallying support for the successful government programs that have meant health and economic security to generations of our people. Today we, and everyone we have worked to speak for and fight for, were thrown under the bus. We have made our bottom line clear for months: a final deal must strike a balance between cuts and revenue, and must not put all the burden on the working people of this country. This deal fails those tests and many more.”

But Grijalva’s gripe was not merely a moral or economic one.

It was political, as well.

“The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, is at a very serious crossroads at this moment. For decades Democrats have stood for a capable, meaningful government—a government that works for the people, not just the powerful, and that represents everyone fairly and equally. This deal weakens the Democratic Party as badly as it weakens the country,” explained Grijalva. “We have given much and received nothing in return. The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want. While I believe the country will not reward them for this in the long run, the damage has already been done.”

The question that remains is: How much damage? How much damage to vulnerable Americans? How much damage to the global reputation of the United States as a functional state? How much damage to a US economy that is threatened by rising unemployment? How much damage to the image of the Democratic Party as a defender of working families?

This deal cannot be defended as a sound or necessary response to a manufactured debt-ceiling debate and the mess that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has made of it.

That is why the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said: “I will not support the emerging debt deal.”

“I will have no part of a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to appease the farthest reaches of the right wing of the Republican Party,” argued Grijalva. “It is unconscionable to put these programs on the chopping block and ignore the voices and beliefs of the millions of Americans who trust us to lead while continuing to give handouts to the ultra wealthy and the largest corporations. There is no human decency in that.”

Like this blog post? Read it on The Nation’s free iPhone App, NationNow. [12]
Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/162461/house-passes-obamas-debt-deal-even-most-dems-reject-it

Links:
[1] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60443.html
[2] http://www.boldprogressives.org
[3] http://www.pdamerica.org/
[4] http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/174595-reid-signs-off-on-bipartisan-debt-deal
[5] http://www.thenation.com/../../../../../../blog/162258/right-wing-nutters-threaten-global-economy-imf-warns-disastrous-consequences
[6] http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/174571-compromise-deal-could-include-broad-spending-cuts-as-a-trigger
[7] http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_17/Debt-Deal-Emerging-With-Rightward-Tilt-207893-1.html
[8] http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/
[9] http://thehill.com/homenews/house/174601-house-liberals-urge-14th-amendment-fix-in-lieu-of-bipartisan-debt-deal
[10] http://grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=13&sectiontree=5,13&itemid=1063
[11] http://thehill.com/homenews/house/174599-pelosi-dem-leaders-withholding-judgment
[12] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nationnow/id399704758?mt=8

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Congress: Beware of Yellow Stripes and Pot Holes

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity” –William Butler Yeats

 

The Centrist Cop-Out

 

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Progressive America Rising via New York Times

July 28, 2011 - The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

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GOP Still Trying to Dump FDR’s New Deal

Debt Madness Was Always

About Killing Social Security

By Robert Scheer
Progressive America Rising via Nation of Change Op-Ed

This phony debt crisis has now passed through the looking glass into the realm where madness reigns. What should have been an uneventful moment in which lawmakers make good on the nation’s contractual obligations has instead been seized upon by Republican hypocrites as a moment to settle ideological scores that have nothing to do with the debt.

Hypocrites, because their radical free market ideology, and the resulting total deregulation of the financial markets, is what caused the debt to spiral out of control this last decade. That and the wars George W. Bush launched but didn’t have the integrity to responsibly finance. The consequence was a banking bubble and crash leading to a 50 percent run-up of the debt that has nothing to do with the “entitlements” that those same Republicans have always wanted to destroy.

Even Barack Obama has put cuts in those programs into play, warning ominously that a failure to lift the debt ceiling could cause the government to stop sending out Social Security checks. Why, when the Social Security trust fund is fully funded for the next quarter-century and is owed money by the U.S. Treasury rather than the other way around? Why would we pay foreign creditors before American seniors? The answer, offered as conventional wisdom by leaders of both parties, is that we cannot endanger our credit by failing to back our bonds, even though the Republicans have aroused the alarm of the main U.S. credit rating agencies by their brinkmanship on the debt.

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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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BC Series: What Will It Take to Bring Obama Home?

His Home Is Not My Home

By Carl Bloice
BlackCommentator.com
Moving Left, Part 9

May 26, 2011 - Maybe it depends on where home is. It’s not where I am. I’m to the left of Obama. Quite a bit. When Obama refers to “my friends on the left” he’s telling us two things: he has some and that’s not where he’s at. I knew it all along and that still didn’t stop me from welling up when he made that first speech to his party’s convention. I was reminded of the source of that emotion the other night watching the PBS documentary on the Freedom Riders when Robert Kennedy said someday there would be a black president. None of us thought it would happen so soon. When it did most of us were pleased and proud of the brother, in a way that I think a lot of white people have trouble relating to.

Home? The place we should be talking about, I think, is the place he himself described in the campaign, the place he said he wanted to take the country when he asked for our votes and our money. He promised “change” and we crossed our fingers. He said he would end the foreign wars and we pulled the lever by his name. He said he would attack poverty and bring relief from some of the burdens working people increasingly have to bear and we thought: we’ll hold you to it.

Now I’m not saying he hasn’t accomplished anything. Some positive things have happened since he moved into the White House. And I do think he is trying to find a way out of Afghanistan. And, yes he’s been stymied at every turn by members of the opposition party that shape their policies around making him fail, and some members of his own party that lend them a helping hand. And they are egged on by the legions of the reactionary and racist right. And these people are a real danger.

Yet we are very disappointed.

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Budget Debate: Getting Us Headed in a Progressive Direction

Photo: Progressive Caucus Members announcing their alternative

The People's Budget:

Quick Summary of a Good Plan

By Kay Kirkpatrick
Beaver County Blue

Among the budgets proposed in Congress recently, one eliminates the deficit in 10 years, puts Americans back to work, and restores our economic competitiveness.

Unlike the GOP proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the People’ Budget does not seek to crush those with a low-income, the elderly or otherwise cripple vital government services.

Instead, it preserves Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits; expands jobs and job training programs; shifts the tax burden off the backs of the people; eliminates tax credits for the oil and gas industries and subsidies for new nuclear power plants; invests in infrastructure and brings our troops home.

This version of our financial future, proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), is not only in keeping with priorities of the majority of the American people, it is viable, reasonable and sustainable.

The CPC plan ends the budget deficit two decades earlier than the Ryan plan. Specifically, the budget offers:

· $5.6 trillion in deficit reduction

· $869 billion in spending cuts

· $856 billion net interest savings

· $3.9 trillion revenue increase

· $1.7 trillion in public investment, and

· $30.7 billion in a budget surplus in 2021.

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