All Life Is Problem Solving

Today I was favored with a message from Organizing for America (OFA). They asked me to listen to a video clip from the President explaining the deal he made with the Republicans. The President spent a lot of time explaining the process he’s gone through and the constraints he’s under, and what it was possible […]

[Read more →]

Self-styled “progressive organizations” and commentators have been releasing their own deficit reduction plans in reply to the plans released by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici, and The Peterson-Pew Commission. These new plans, were released by the Institute for America’s Future, Citizens Commission on Jobs, Deficits, and America’s Economic Future and […]

[Read more →]

On Friday, the Government reported its 2010 Fiscal Year results. Here are some fragments from a “news” article in WaPo by Vincent Del Giudice. The U.S. government posted its second straight annual budget deficit in excess of $1 trillion as lingering unemployment constrained tax revenue. The shortfall totaled $1.294 trillion in the fiscal year ended […]

[Read more →]

Mike Konczal is writing a terrific series on the foreclosure crisis. The other day I read Parts 1-3 of it at New Deal 2.0. I recommend it as providing a very clear explanation with some diagrams about what’s behind the crisis, and a discussion of some possible ways in which could represent big trouble for […]

[Read more →]

Substituting for the vacationing Ed Schultz on MSNBC today, Cenk Uygur delivered a pretty good narrative on the Democrats mistakes in bailing out Wall Street, but not Main Street. He let people know about the shift in wealth distribution over the past 3 decades, and he was very direct and forthright in telling us about […]

[Read more →]

Every once in a while, Richard Kirsch, does a “happy dance” article celebrating his own Health Care for America Now campaign for health care reform, whose outcome of course was the wonderful bill legislated by the Congress last Spring. Kirsch, who is now a Senior Fellow at The Roosevelt Institute, posted his latest happy dance […]

[Read more →]

In early December, I asked whether President Obama would choose to be more like Hoover, or more like FDR. Well, I guess it’s definitely Hoover. The President believes that Federal dollars for a jobs program necessary to end The Great Recession are limited. He can only believe that because he believes that the Federal Government […]

[Read more →]

Dear President Obama: I’m not entirely sure how to put this, so I guess I’ll just come right out and say it. During the last presidential campaign and in the context of John McCain’s admission that he didn’t understand economics very well, you let us know that you thought you had a very good understanding […]

[Read more →]

The progressive counter-attack against the President’s emerging “austerity” political strategy and program is beginning to emerge. In the last few days, we’ve seen posts by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson of Social Security Works, Jane Hamsher, Robert Kuttner, and Dean Baker writing against the thrust by the Administration, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]