All Life Is Problem Solving

Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson Co-Directors of Social Security Works have written an article called “Has Obama created a Social Security ‘death panel’? In the article they raise questions about the composition, process, and intentions of the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and say: ”We write to raise questions and encourage press […]

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James K. Galbraith’s short piece in The Washington Post Outlook section proposed that we ought to toss the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). I couldn’t agree more. This post is a commentary intended to amplify the argument. Jamie begins with: ”The forecasts of the Congressional Budget Office are holy writ in Washington, and they fuel scary […]

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[Give BDBlue some comment love at OL! –lambert] My friend Ralph writes about the fiscal sustainability issue: Real. Simple (but accurate). Language. Why should people be scared about the Peterson agenda? What are they trying to distract the public’s attention from? What do the American people deserve from their government’s economic policy? Why is this […]

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The purpose of the President’s recently constituted National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform as stated in Section 4 of the President’s Executive Order establishing the Commission is: Sec. 4. Mission. The Commission is charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long […]

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Recently, Paul Rosenberg published a piece called: ““Stimulus for Dummies” — A Public Service Instruction Guide.” at Open Left. It had previously appeared in Random Lengths News, where he is Senior Editor, I appreciate Paul’s attempt to try to explain the stimulus to some imaginary skeptic, though I’m not altogether taken with calling the skeptic […]

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The corporatist-centrist politicians, such as Judd Gregg, Kent Conrad, Evan Bayh, no longer afraid of a total collapse of the world economy, are using deadly innocent frauds, scare, myths, and lies about the deficit and the national debt to undermine the possibilities of progressive change in the United States. It seems, also, that they’re now […]

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One characteristic of modern political and economic discourse is frequent asserting of beliefs about economics and money that have been variously described by some observers as ‘myths’, ‘scares‘, ‘lies’, ‘innocent frauds’, and ‘deadly innocent frauds’. ‘Innocent frauds’ was the courteous labeling of such beliefs by John Kenneth Galbraith in his last book, The Economics of […]

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As I wrote in Part One of this series, “deficit hawkism” is the ideology that prioritizes bringing tax revenues and Government expenditures into balance ahead of other far more essential national needs and priorities. Right now, deficit hawkism is becoming increasingly prevalent, and its expressions very strident. It’s not limited to Republicans, but is bipartisan. […]

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Again, it’s funny how US Administrations can’t simply admit error and then act accordingly. No, they have to try to persuade us that their error wasn’t really an error because of x, y, or z. President Obama has now tried to ”correct” Joe Biden’s statement about “misreading” the economy by saying that there was no […]

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If Progressives and Democrats are going to be successful in the future, they have to solve important problems of middle and working class people, such as stagnant real income, declining wealth, terrible and high risk (i.e. easily disappearing) health insurance, high quality education for all, including opportunities for everyone to get a college education, a […]

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