Steve Hochstadt: So we end up with the same racial profiling that conservatives have been using to win votes since Richard Nixon’s southern strategy. The euphemisms change, but the intent is the same.
Obama Accomplishments
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Richard Mathews: It is time for an update to the list of Obama accomplishments. This is based on an older list by David Phillips and a recent one by Obama WILL Be ReElected In 2012.
Democrats Hold Upper Hand As Fiscal Cliff Approaches
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Robert Reich: Democrats want a deal that raises taxes only on America’s wealthy and doesn’t substantially alter Medicare, and Social Security — which is the opposite of what Republicans want.
Republicans at Home, and at Heart
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Steve Hochstadt: Romney and his campaign advisers know that he was not telling the truth on that Boca Raton tape. But a bigger mistake was to put into the same basket all the people he doesn’t like.
Is Barack Obama a Radical Socialist, a Pro-Business Sell-Out, Both, or Neither?
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Peter Dreier: These contradictory views of Obama reflect not only the nation’s ideological chasm but also a country whose stances on economic and social issues are constantly in flux.
Can America Withstand Its Own Political Rhetoric?
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Anthony Samad: The Republicans need a vehicle with a big enough horn to get the public’s attention. They need to raise the ideological rhetoric just to have a chance. Regardless of what it does to the nation. The rhetoric bomb is coming under hood and sheets. The question is, will the nation stand for it.
5 Right-Wing Obstacles That Must Be Overcome
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Joseph Palermo: These powerful right-wing political obstacles that must be sidelined if progressive change can have any chance of success, whether Obama is at the helm or any number of the string of future presidents he now tells us we’ll probably need.
If You Care About Keystone and Climate Change, Occupy Exxon
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Paul Loeb: If we want President Obama to make the right decision on the Keystone Pipeline and deny the permit, maybe it’s time to Occupy Exxon, with creative protests at local Exxon/Mobil stations.
Obama, Reid and Pelosi Lead Charge Against Tea Party Millionaire Party
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Brent Budowsky: There are smiles today throughout the Democratic base because the fighting spirit is back for the Dems.
What Speaker Boehner Should Have Told House Republicans about Compromise—A Year Ago
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Walter Moss: Rather than using his leadership position as House Speaker to help educate new House Republicans and others, including American voters, about the noble history of political compromise, he succumbed to ignorance, displaying a lack of leadership.
Why the Republican Crackup Is Bad for America
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Robert Reich: Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican crackup threatens the future of the Grand Old Party more profoundly than at any time since the GOP’s eclipse in 1932. That’s bad for America.
GOP Payroll Tax Disaster
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Brent Budowsky: As President Obama and Democrats battle during this holiday season to enact a tax cut for the 99 percent of Americans who constitute the heart of the nation, House Republicans are making a seismic political blunder reminiscent of the self-destructive overreaching of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) that rejuvenated the Clinton presidency during the 1990s.
The Defining Issue: Not Government’s Size, but Who It’s For
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Robert Reich: Not a day goes by without Republicans decrying the budget deficit. But the biggest single reason for the yawning deficit is big money’s corruption of Washington.
REVISED: How to Avoid Being a Principled Republican on Taxes
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Robert Reich: Republican leaders are trying to get rank-and-file Republicans to go along with an extended payroll tax holiday — but by paying for it without raising taxes on the very rich.
Trigger Deficit Cuts When Unemployment Drops to 5 Percent
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Robert Reich: So the best of all worlds is to have a big jobs plan now, and also commit to automatic cuts triggered when unemployment falls to 5 percent.
Obama’s Jobs Speech: Prepare to Be Underwhelmed
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Joseph Palermo: President Obama’s much anticipated speech outlining his jobs agenda for the 2012 election year will sound a lot like a tiny mouse trying to make a loud roar. Instead of clarity, we’ll get hedging; instead of “bold,” we’ll get wishy-washy.
Obama’s Bold Jobs Bill (Maybe)
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Robert Reich: A bold jobs plan is also good politics. With more than 25 million Americans looking for full-time jobs, the wages of people with jobs falling, and an economy on the verge of a double dip, the President has to come out fighting on the side of average people.
Healthcare: What Democrats Should Have Learned By Now
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Robert Reich: Had the President and the Democrats stuck to their guns during the health-care debate and insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option, they wouldn’t now be facing the possible unraveling of the new health care law.
Vicious Cycles: Why Washington Is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse
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Robert Reich: The only way out of the vicious economic cycle is for government to adopt an expansionary fiscal policy — spending more in the short term in order to make up for the shortfall in consumer demand.
Back Toward Double Dip
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Robert Reich: The Republican lie that the nation’s long-term budget deficit is responsible for high unemployment would be laughable if it weren’t so tragically irrelevant to the current situation.
Budget Baloney
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Robert Reich: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says in order to “save” Social Security the retirement age should be raised. The media are congratulating him for his putative “courage.” Deficit hawks are proclaiming Social Security one of the big entitlements that has to be cut in order to reduce the budget deficit. This is all baloney.
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.
The American Jobs Emergency Requires Action
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Robert Reich: Not only do we need extended unemployment benefits. We need a new WPA, modeled after the WPA of the Great Depression, to put jobless Americans to work. We need a national infrastructure bank to rebuild our crumbling highways and water and sewer systems, thereby putting additional people back to work.
D-Day in the Class War
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Joseph Palermo: After a decade of stagnant or declining real wages, “bipartisan” schemes are proliferating to shift the burden of Washington policymakers’ own catastrophic mismanagement of the nation’s fiscal policies right onto the shoulders of working people.
The Great Jobs Depression Worsens, and the Choice Ahead Grows Starker
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Robert Reich: If there was ever a time for bold government action it is precisely now. Obama should be storming the country, demanding the largest responses to the jobs emergency in history. He and the Dems should be giving Republicans hell for their indifference to all this.
Tax Jujitsu: Why Democrats Should Propose a “People’s Tax Cut”
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Robert Reich: Democrats should propose eliminating payroll taxes on the first $20,000 of income, and making up the revenue loss by applying payroll taxes to incomes above $250,000.
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.
We’re Even Deeper in the Hole
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Robert Reich: An extraordinary number of Americans are still hurting. It’s more important than ever for the US government to step in with a larger stimulus that puts more people to work and tax cuts for people who will spend them
Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Herbert Hoover
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Robert Reich: Both Greenspan and Rubin are deficit hawks. So was Herbert Hoover and so was Hoover’s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. And look what Hoover and Mellon got us into. When we least need him, Hoover is being exhumed.
We’re in a One-and-a-Half Dip Recession
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Robert Reich: The President should stop talking and acting on anything else – not the deficit, not energy, not the environment, not immigration, not implementing the health care law, not education. He should make the whole upcoming mid-term election a national referendum on putting Americans back to work, and his jobs bill. Are you for it or against it?
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