Steven Hill: The White House says its 2014 budget will propose cuts to the retirement program. Not only is that unnecessary, the U.S. could and should expand it.
Obama’s Still Shopping for a Grand Bargain
By
Shamus Cooke: At the end of the day a so-called progressive Democrat is still a Democrat, and the Democratic Party has re-made its image to reflect the interests of its new big donors from Wall Street, who now feel as comfortable buying Democrats as they do purchasing a Republican politician.
Don’t Cut Social Security: Double It
By
Steven Hill: An expansion of the Social Security retirement system — one of the most successful and popular social programs in American history — that converts it into a more robust retirement system would build upon the most stable component of the current system.
Saving Social Security: Easier Than You Think
By
JP Sotille: We need a national campaign to re-name “Social Security.” It is time to re-brand it as “The Freedom Fund.” Re-branding—it’s as American as freedom itself! And it works.
And Now: Forgive Us Our Debts!
By
Peter Laarman: Just a word about the Next Big Thing: the coming lame duck session and the “fiscal cliff” and the prospect of a not-so-grand bargain in which Democrats will yield yet more ground to Pete Peterson’s baleful “austerity for you but not for me” proposals.
Supremes’ Decision Points Way Past America’s Division
By
Bob Letcher: A citizenry cannot claim at once BOTH to value having each other’s back, figuratively, AND to oppose sharing the cost of caring for each other’s back, literally.
Obama’s No FDR, But He’s Made the Case for a “New” New Deal
By
Ira Chernus: No matter who the Republicans nominate to run against Barack Obama, it seems clear that we’ll have a kind of presidential contest we haven’t seen in more than seventy-five years: a referendum on the government’s proper role in economic life.
The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America
By
Robert Reich: Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conservative what we have. It’s to take us backwards.
Victory! Transforming Occupy Wall Street From a Moment to a Movement
By
Peter Dreier: If the Occupy Wall Street activists join forces with the unions and community groups, they could catalyze a massive nationwide movement to resist foreclosures and block evictions.
Labor Occupies Wall Street, But Democrats Go in Reverse
By
As the grassroots campaign against Wall Street grows, Democratic politicians are moving in the opposite direction. President Obama has secured the House Republican support necessary to pass three trade bills strongly opposed by organized labor and most Democrats. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who like Obama was elected with huge labor funding and ground support, [...]
Race and Anti-Obama ‘Hysteria’
By
Berry Craig: The hysteria about Obama, although some of it may be related to philosophical objections to central authority, is largely rooted in race.
The Right to a Job
By
Herb Engstrom: At this time of TEA Party hysteria, Fox News mendacity, and GOP hypocrisy a government guarantee of universal employment might seem like a radical idea, although it seemed not to be so to Franklin Roosevelt.
Democrats Must Push Back
By
Norman Solomon: Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in the vital lessons of the New Deal. Many millions of good jobs must be created — and that will require well-funded federal jobs programs on a large scale.
Kamikazes, Nazis and Republicans
By
Bill Fletcher: We should get away from thinking of the Tea Party elected officials as crazy. They are not. They are no more crazy than the Japanese Kamikaze pilots in 1945. They are just as determined and wish to create maximum damage.
Why Obama Can’t Pivot to Jobs
By
Robert Reich: The nation and Oba,ma remain hostage to the ideology of right-wing Republicans who won’t let the government spend more money. Yet if the government can’t spend more – at least this year and next, until the pump is primed and the economy is growing again – we won’t see job growth. And without job growth, the economy will remain anemic.
America Held Hostage
By
Tom Degan: In a move that is as transparent as it is outrageous, our Republicans representatives are so desperate to take back the White House and the senate in 2012, they are within twenty-six days of sending the American economy – along with the American people – into the abyss.
Stronger Words from the White House? Hold the Euphoria
By
Carl Bloice: The country really does need a deal right now; that’s as in ‘New Deal.” There are a lot of people, groups and new movements out there proposing that we come up with one.
How the Netroots Evolved
By
Paul Hogarth: Everyone from Howard Dean to Van Jones had the same message – that this political movement cannot be reliant on a charismatic leader, but instead on a charismatic network of activists.
Obama Looking Like a Champ
By
Alvaro Huerta: To be a real champ, Obama now needs to end the tax cuts for the rich, withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and get the DREAM Act passed.
Grover Norquist and the American Dream
By
Robert Illes: Grover Norquist, toady of America’s wealthy business class who few but political wonks have heard of, heads the so called “Club for Growth” which requires every Republican who wants to keep his or her government job to promise not to raise taxes.
Relentless Pentagon Pressure Mounts to Keep Troops in Iraq
By
Tom Hayden: Any “new deal” will have to satisfy the power agenda of al-Sadr and his allies in Iran, or risk a renewal of fighting against the retention of the smallest contingent of U.S. troops in Iraq since 2003.
Rewriting the Social Contract; Making Everybody Hurt
By
Carl Bloice: I’m just intrigued these days by how much the people who have a lot have become the most insistent that those below them on the social ladder bear the brunt of paying for capitalism’s current crisis.
Obama’s Deal with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
By
Robert Reich: I’ve been watching (and occasionally trying to deal with) the Chamber for years, and all I know is it has a deep, abiding belief in cutting taxes on the wealthy, eroding regulations that constrain Wall Street, cutting back on rules that promote worker health and safety, getting rid of the minimum wage, repealing the new health-care law, fighting unions, cutting back Medicare and Social Security, reducing or eliminating corporate taxes, and, in general, taking the nation back to the days before the New Deal. So what, exactly, is the deal Obama is pitching to the Chamber?
Winner-Take-All
By
John Peeler: “Winner-Take-All Politics” provides a well-documented analysis of how the United States government, since the 1970s, has systematically enriched the top one percent of the country at the expense of everyone else. Written by distinguished political scientists, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, the book shows how big business interests ratcheted up their national organizations to defend their interests in national policy debates. In addition to employing far stronger lobbying, these interests created think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, designed to challenge the liberal conventional wisdom of the New Deal and Great Society and replace it with an explicitly conservative, free-market-oriented way of thinking.
Still the Age of Reagan: Long Waves in American Politics
By
John Peeler: I suggest that as bad as things are, economically, politically, socially, they are not bad enough to permanently shift the way we think, to force changes in what we consider to be common sense. Such a fundamental reshaping of the political landscape has occurred only a few times in our history.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
The Modern Union versus Workers’ Rights
Wendy McElroy: The raging controversy in Wisconsin over eliminating collective bargaining “rights” for government employees cast a bright and harsh light on public-sector unions.
Pages: 1 2