Progressive Media Advocates
Shamus Cooke: Portland is simply following a national trend on a city, state, and federal level where Democrats and Republicans have agreed that taxing the wealthy and corporations must not be an option in addressing the social crisis that resulted from the Great Recession, regardless of the vast inequality of wealth that has erupted over the last 30 years.
Rob Tossberg: I am no fan of Clinton – a child of poverty who forsook the poor and gave us deregulation – but our country seemed to prosper with his policy of, as Republicans call it, ‘Tax and spend’ government.
Mark Naison: The punitive, stress-filled environment that No Child Left Behind and Race to the Hop has created is good for no one’s children. But it is especially damaging to children who come to school hungry and fearful because their families are living on the edge.
Sherwood Ross: Although America’s 25 million unemployed and underemployed could be a powerful force for social change, they aren’t combining in any effective way to protest, an eminent business authority writes.
Brent Budowsky: The sin of the supercommittee is that it has merely mirrored the old-think politics it was created to rise above.
Robert Reich: Occupiers and others have had enough.
Yet paradoxically the presidential race that officially begins a few months from now is likely to be as passionless as they come.
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.
Iwan Morgan: If America does manage to avoid a new recession and achieve stronger growth, it will be a testimony to the underlying strength of its economy. At present its political leadership in both the executive and legislative branches does not appear to have the same reserves.
Joseph Palermo: Even hardcore capitalists are displaying a lack of faith in U.S. economic leadership, compounding the legitimacy crisis that has already engulfed millions of less exalted members of the global community.
Robert Reich: Chalk up a big part of Europe’s slowdown to the politics and economics of austerity. Europe – including Britain – have turned John Maynard Keynes on his head. They’ve been cutting public spending just when they should be spending more to counteract slowing private spending.
Robert Reich: We are slouching toward a double dip because we’re getting the problem wrong. Despite what Standard & Poor’s says, notwithstanding what’s occurring in Europe, and regardless of U.S. budget projections years from now — our current crisis is jobs, wages, and growth. We do not now have a debt crisis.
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.
Carl Bloice: If one out of ten people seeking work can’t find any, it follows that the average person has a friend, relative or neighbor amongst them. All she or he has to do is look out the window or answer the phone to be scared.
Shamus Cooke: Because both parties simply threw money at the banks and hedge funds instead of punishing them, a condition of “moral hazard” was created, meaning, that banks would assume another bailout would come their way if they destroyed the economy again — too big too fail, remember?
Robert Reich: According to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, the recovery has stalled because of strict banking regulation. I’m not making this up.
Brent Budowsky: Never before in American history has unemployment been so high, yet neither the president nor Congress pushes for a major jobs bill.
Sherwood Ross: Instead of investing in a framework to help blacks advance by their own initiative, the Federal government has flushed billions down the toilets of friendly foreign strongmen such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarek.
Tom Hall: How perfect can heaven be, with 200 million new souls crowding into a facility designed by He who designed a world with shifting tectonic plates, ozone holes and republicans?
Robert Reich: Even for Americans with jobs, wages are going nowhere. Basically, the only employers hiring are paying peanuts. McDonalds just announced it would start hiring big time.
Robert Reich: The question on everyone’s mind: Will the Fed signal it’s now more worried about inflation than recession?
Robert Reich: Monday Standard & Poor’s (hardly a beacon of reliability after the Crash of 2008, to be sure) downgraded America’s credit outlook. Expect more downgrades if the game of chicken continues.
Adam Eran: Historic tax reductions on the wealthy, and the Wall-Street-Fraud recession, have reduced public revenues, and this reduction now makes otherwise too-popular-to-cut programs vulnerable. But are such cuts really necessary?
Republicans, for their part, worry that if they tell it like it is Americans will want government to do more rather than less. They’d rather not talk about jobs and wages, and put the focus instead on deficit reduction (or spread the lie that by reducing the deficit we’ll get more jobs and higher wages).
Andrea Nill: Driving the undocumented immigrants out of Arizona would lead to significant losses of jobs for both native-born and foreign-born workers.
Dan Bacher: Despite intense political pressure by the oil industry, the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on April 29 approved three bills proposing to halt fracking, a controversial method of oil and natural gas extraction, in California.
Benjamin called on the President to use his power as Commander-In-Chief to close Guantanamo prison, release the 86 Guantanamo prisoners who have been cleared for release, and stop the killer drone program
Angola 3 News: Hidden behind the walls, huge numbers of human beings have their spirits broken daily. Secretly, many suffer false disciplinary reports, illegitimate confiscation or destruction of personal property, physical beatings, rape, and sometimes fraudulent criminal penalties.
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