Berry Craig: Talk about a close encounter of the worst kind: Imagine a Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a House Speaker John Boehner.
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 President’s Backyard Discussion of the Economy (as It Could Be)
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Robert Reich: As Obama continued his economic tour with backyard discussions on the challenges currently facing the middle class, according to the White House. Here’s an imagined version of that discussion
Breaking the Eleventh Commandment
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Tina Dupuy: The Tea Party’s premise is like phoning someone you’re mad at because they won’t call you back and telling them never to call you again. That’ll show ‘em you aren’t crazy!
The Tortoise Economy
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Robert Reich: The rich don’t spend nearly as much of their incomes as everyone else, and the $36 billion windfall they’d otherwise get could be better spent saving the jobs of teachers, fire fighters, and police officers who do spend almost all their incomes.
Why A Civil Society Extends Unemployment Benefits
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Robert Reich: A record number of Americans is unemployed for a record length of time. This is a national tragedy. It is to the nation’s credit that many are receiving unemployment benefits. This is good not only for them and their families but also for the economy as a whole, because it allows them to spend and thereby keep others in jobs.
Forget Double Dip: We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper
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Robert Reich: It’s nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double dip when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We’re still in one long Big Dipper.
Something’s Wrong Somewhere: Pimps, Whores and the Glitterati Who Game The Global Empire
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Gary Corseri: Moscow is choking, Pakistan is drowning, Gaza is withering, war clouds gather over Iran, Venezuela, and Korea…dead zones in the oceans…but, rejoice! Chelsea has married her investment banker!
The Jobs Emergency
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Robert Reich: We need a response proportional to the crisis. Obama, Pelosi, and Reed should summon Congress back to Washington for action on the jobs emergency.
Origins of the Enthusiasm Gap
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Robert Reich: Whatever the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections, the activist phase of the Obama administration has likely come to a close. The President may have a fight on his hands even to hold on to what he’s already achieved because his legislative successes have been large enough to fuel strong opposition but not big enough to strengthen his support. The result could be disastrous for him and congressional Democrats.
Parents & Community Involvement at Mt. Washington Elementary School – By Invitation Only
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Nina Zippay and Fernando J. Orozco: The parents in this complex and diverse system are firm believers in LAUSD’s mission: “to create critical thinkers prepared to participate in a diverse and complex society.” And it can’t get any more complex than LAUSD.
Movies Ignore Corporate Wrongdoers, Populist Messages
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Randy Shaw: Many believe that Hollywood films provide escapist entertainment, and should not be seen as sending political messages. We are told that studios are about making money, and that they would make tribute films to Karl Marx if that were good for the box office. Well, the historic record and the films of 2010 say otherwise.
The Vanishing American Consumer and the Coming Trade War
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Robert Reich: We’re unlikely to see a repeat of the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs that worsened and lengthened the Great Depression. But you can forget trade-opening agreements. In Toronto last week, the G-20 leaders dropped their 2009 pledge to finish the Doha round this year. In the U.S., agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Columbia are languishing.
Slouching Toward a Lousy Recovery at Best
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Robert Reich: The people who are suffering the most from the failure of public officials and the greed of large bankers are the least able to endure it. Unemployment among people with four-year college degrees is barely over 5 percent; among high-school dropouts it’s over 25 percent.
LA Progressive Articles: June 6-12, 2010
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Articles by Anthony Samad, Gil Troy, Paul Hogarth, Seth Hoy, Carl Matthes, Andrea Nill, Randy Shaw, Tom Degan, Marcy Winograd, Seth Hoy, Mark Bowen, Gary Coseri, Michael Sigman, Tom Hall, Sharon Kyle, Robert Reich, Tom Degan, Sikivu Hutchinson, Adam Eran, Carl Bloice, Shamus Cooke, and Tina Dupuy
Why Economic Advisors Are Paid to Be Economic Advisors
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Robert Reich: Say you’re a high government official with some responsibility for advising the President on what he should be doing and saying about the economy. You know the economy is still in a deep hole, the deepest since the Great Depression.
Time to Cut Goldman Sachs and Pals Down to Size
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Joseph Palermo: In 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown , Simon Johnson and James Kwak point out that in September 2008 the high-flying masters of the universe were at their weakest point and had no choice but to do whatever the government demanded of them. Never mind the supreme irony of Wall Street bankers who claimed government had no place interfering in the miracles of the market begging the government to save them, it was at that time when we should have cut them down to size.
The Price Is Right (On)
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Ed Rampell: This confrontation between the brothers has been simmering since the Great Depression, and is a sort of High Noon without the gunplay (despite that fact that Vic, as one of NYPD’s blues, is indeed packing heat) – call it High Strung Noon
Obama Needs To Teach The Public How to Get Out Of The Mess We’re In, But He’s Not
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Robert Reich: The economic lesson President Obama ought to be teaching is that targeted tax cuts, mostly for small business, are good to the extent they give businesses a nudge toward creating more jobs. But businesses won’t begin to create lots of jobs until they have lots of customers. And that won’t happen until lots more Americans have work. The only way to get them work when businesses aren’t hiring is for government to prime the pump.
The Oligarchy Wins Again!
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Something, anything, has to be done at some point to show that the Obama Administration is not just the latest group of good people with good ideas that are absorbed into a system that makes Hamid Karzai look like a clean government activist. The corporate money so clogs the arteries of our body political the whole damn thing is sclerotic, choked off from the life-giving oxygen of democracy.
Name That Decade: the ’00s, the Whatever Decade
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Great pessimism during economic busts is as characteristically American as great optimism during boom times. The oh-ohs’ whateverism is less fleeting and thus more dangerous. A culture of denial, disengagement, dissociation is dysfunctional. We need a culture of engagement and responsibility, even with all our traumas, distractions and high-tech toys.
So Much Happening in Washington and So Little to Show for It, So Far
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The public doesn’t know what’s going on because the national media would rather report on the sexual escapades of famous people or social trends or high finance (a recent Pew study of economic reporting shows the vast majority of stories about the Great Recession have focused on Wall Street rather than Main Street).
New Report: Good Immigration Policy Creates a Stronger American Middle Class
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In the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and in anticipation of a new round of legislative debates on comprehensive immigration reform, DMI’s report makes a rational, concise argument for why comprehensive immigration reform is needed to improve the conditions for middle class Americans.
The Real News About Jobs and Wages: An Ode to Labor Day
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If we’ve learned anything from the Great Recession-Mini Depression of the last 18 months, it’s that the skewing of income and wealth to the top has made our economy far less stable.
The New Employment Numbers: Things are Worsening More Slowly
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So let’s be grateful that the economy is getting worse more slowly than it was. But don’t be lured into thinking we’re ever going back to where we were. Most of the jobs that have been lost are never coming back.
Blacks and Latinos Hit Harder in Hard Times
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Unemployment is and always has been much higher in Black and Latino communities. But the gap has widened during this recession. In fact, Black unemployment is nearly double that of Whites, while Latinos are unemployed at a rate one-third higher than their White counterparts.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Knife Play
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Now we have a Republican governor in California who sees the state’s current budget catastrophe as nothing but a big joke. Why else would Arnold Schwarzenegger post a tasteless Twitter video where he wields a two-foot-long folding knife boasting about his budget-cutting prowess?
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Tea Bagging California
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Just as many of the neo-cons seemingly cross their fingers hoping for a mass-casualty terrorist attack on U.S. soil because they see it as political gold for them, they’re also cheerleading for the economy to remain stagnant
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Half Measures and Lukewarm “Reform” Won’t Save the Middle Class
The 30-year class war the rich launched against the working people in this country (and reached its apogee during the George W. Bush years), has left the middle class reeling and wounded. Only bold federal action that puts something concrete in the palms of middle-class Americans can begin to turn these dire social conditions around.