Sikivu Hutchinson: The solipsism of the prosperity gospel as vehicle for commodity capitalism mires African-American communities in an endless spiral of dependence on the supernatural.
Why We Should Trade Broccoli and Asparagus for Hot Dogs and Apple Pie
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Robert Reich: The requirement that everyone purchase health insurance, or pay a fine doesn’t appeal to many Americans. They don’t like the government telling them they have to buy something. But the healthcare system can’t work without this mandate. Only if everyone buys insurance can insurers afford to cover people with preexisting conditions, or pay the costs of catastrophic diseases.
Dems: Obama Broke Pledge to Force Banks to Help Homeowners
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Paul Kiel and Olga Pierce: The Obama administration has relied on a voluntary program with few sticks, that simply offers banks incentives to modify mortgages.
Answering The Anti-Tax Whiners
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Mark Dempsey: After having reduced taxes without reducing spending, the Republicans can now get Jerry Brown and the California Democrats to do the politically unpopular work of terminating programs that would otherwise be too popular to touch. It’s clever, but hardly non-partisan.
Is No New Taxes What Voters Really Want?
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Steve Hochstadt: The voters spoke in November: They picked Quinn and a tax increase over Brady and no new taxes. One reason is that Brady could not identify for voters where he would cut much spending. The opponents of taxes did not propose any reasonable alternative to raising taxes to solve Illinois’ debt crisis.
Bank Errors Cause Damage to Credit, Distress to Homeowners
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Marian Wang: Some consumers have been surprised to see damage to their credit score after requesting information from the banks.
The Shameful Attack on Public Employees
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Robert Reich: Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers.
Why Inequality Matters
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Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer: The only alternative available to working people that offers real prospects for success are mass mobilizations in the streets and strikes – the kind of militant struggles that scored so many gains in the 1930s.
Foreclosure Paperwork Scandal
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Marian Wang: Though foreclosures continue to speed through courts in some states, in recent months some judges have increasingly questioned banks bringing foreclosure cases in court, forcing them to prove their legal standing to foreclose.
Los Angeles Homeowners Take to the Streets to Protest Foreclosure Abuses
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Peter Dreier: In Los Angeles this Thursday, members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) — a statewide community organizing group — will sponsor a demonstration at a major bank that will include civil disobedience and probably arrests.
Why America’s Two Economies Continue to Drift Apart
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Robert Reich: Nothing is trickling down to the Average Worker economy. Job growth is still anemic. Unemployment won’t get down to pre-recession levels for 20 years. And almost half of October’s new jobs were in temporary help.
Why the Bush-Era Tax Cuts Should Not Be Extended to the Nation’s Top 2%
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Tracy Emblem: Let’s give the new legislation which provides tax breaks and job incentives for “small businesses” time to work before blindly accepting McConnell’s argument that allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire would hurt small businesses. We must start closing the deficit gap.
Why the Tax Deal Confirms the Republican Worldview
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Robert Reich: As income and wealth have risen to the top, so has political power. Money is being used to bribe politicians and fill the airwaves with misleading ads that block all of this.
Serious Tax Problems
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Tom Degan: The debt that the United States has incurred in the last ten years is now at a level where it’s probably insurmountable. The only solution (and that’s assuming there is a viable solution) will involve taxes – decades of serious taxation.
The Myth of the Overtaxed Europeans
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Steven Hill: In return for their taxes, Europeans get valuable support systems like childcare, senior care, university tuition and healthcare. Americans must pay exorbitantly, out-of-pocket, for these support services often going without because the cost is prohibitive.
Who Is Behind the Deficit Crisis
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Shamus Cooke: Unless labor and community groups massively mobilize working people in fighting for a pro-worker solution to the deficit crisis, austerity measures — like reducing Social Security and Medicare — will be forced upon us.
Ahead of Congressional Hearings, Robo-Signer Scrutiny Spreads
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Marian Wang: Several recent reports about robo-signers have brought fresh attention to another angle of the foreclosure scandal: Robo-signing didn’t just occur in the foreclosure process. It also occurred in the processing of mortgage assignments.
Banks Face New Rules on Foreclosures from Skeptical State Judges
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Marian Wang: As banks resume foreclosures and claim to have added safeguards to their processes, it’s been left up to state court judges to decide whether they buy what the banks are saying. Many judges haven’t.
The Perfect Storm
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Robert Reich: The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.
The Fed’s New Bubble (Masquerading as a Jobs Program)
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Robert Reich: The latest jobs bill coming out of Washington isn’t really a bill at all. It’s the Fed’s attempt to keep long-term interest rates low by pumping even more money into the economy (“quantiative easing” in Fed-speak).
What Happened to Our Money? Oliver Stone Returns to Wall Street
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Robert Brent Toplin: More than any other current Hollywood director, Robert Stone has dramatized American political, social, and economic history of the past fifty years.
Wall Street’s Global Race to the Bottom
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Robert Reich: So the race to the bottom is now official. Wall Street will set up its casino wherever financial gambling is least regulated.
Republican Economics as Social Darwinism
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Robert Reich: John Boehner, the Republican House leader who will become Speaker if Democrats lose control of the House in the upcoming midterms, recently offered his solution to the current economic crisis: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life.”
The Politics of Taxes
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Tracy Emblem: Bush Tax cuts have conferred the most benefits, by far, on the highest-income households – those least in need of additional resources – at a time when income already is exceptionally concentrated at the top of the income spectrum.
Investing in Our Future
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Rep. Pete Stark: The idea of a financial speculation tax is getting consideration in many corners of the world, and not a moment too soon. When the UN Summit kicks off next week, an international financial speculation tax to fund the Millennium Development Goals should be at the top of the agenda.
Why There’s An Enthusiasm Gap: An Illustration
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Robert Reich: Super-rich financiers on Wall Street and top corporate executives have grown richer, though most Americans are getting poorer.
Slash Social Security? No – Double It
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Steven Hill: Social Security Plus would provide a stable, secure retirement for every American and contribute greatly toward a solid foundation from which to build a strong and vibrant 21st century U.S. economy.
Congress Should Pass the “Medicare You Can Buy Into” Act
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Tracy Emblem: Grayson’s simple public option plan is more cost-effective for many individual’s who are held hostage now by the BIG Four. Buying into Medicare’s larger insurance risk pool brings down individual premiums.
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The Four Most Dangerous Words To Your Portfolio
Manisha Thakor: “How Should I Invest?” are the four most dangerous words to your portfolio. The answer to that question is often given as if one size fits all, when it’s anything but. To protect yourself, here are 5 things to think about to make sure your hard earned money is invested in a way that is appropriate for your specific situation.