MORNING MESSAGE: “60 Minutes” And America’s Billionaires Want Us to Beg OurFuture.org’s Richard Eskow: “’60 Minutes’ was once a shining light of independent journalism. Now it’s a covert mouthpiece for the far-right, anti-government values of the Peterson crowd. Once it spoke to, and for, a majority whose interests it fought to defend. Now it represents [...]
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Earlier this week, I noted that the Republican plan to take the debt limit hostage to demand unspecified tax reform at a future date was too ridiculous to be believed. But that battle plan looks like the Invasion of Normandy compared to the latest Keystone Kops scheme the Republicans floated to Politico today: hold the [...]
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MORNING MESSAGE: Pass The Warren Student Loan Bill OurFuture.org’s Robert Borosage: “…we are enthusiastically endorsing the first bill introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), which would lower student loan interest rates for one year to 0.75 percent, the same rate at which the government loans money to the banks through the Federal Reserve discount window. [...]
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In a stunning development, the decision by our federal government to raise taxes has also had the amazing effect of simultaneously cutting the budget deficit. As CNN reports: The annual deficit has fallen 32% over the first seven months of this fiscal year compared with same period last year, according to Congressional Budget Office figures [...]
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MORNING MESSAGE: Stop High Stakes “Common Core” Testing OurFuture.org’s Jeff Bryant: “Ratcheting education standards ever higher at the same time we cut supports that schools and students need to reach those standards never made any sense to begin with. And the value placed on testing isn’t yielding the return promised in terms of significantly better [...]
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MORNING MESSAGE: Good Jobs – The Challenge of Rebuilding the Middle Class OurFuture.org’s Robert Borosage: “This week, President Obama will travel to Austin, Texas to call for action on jobs. The proposals the president put forth in his State of the Union address – investing in infrastructure, expanding preschool, bolstering manufacturing assistance centers, raising the [...]
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According to the Washington Post and Politico, GOP leaders are laying the groundwork to refuse any debt limit increase this year, reneging on debt payments mandated by Congress, shredding the full faith and credit of the American government, thereby plunging the global economy into the abyss, unless Washington … does some sort of unspecified revenue-neutral [...]
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MORNING MESSAGE: The Democratic Dilemma: It’s Still the Economy OurFuture.org’s Robert Borosage: “… for all of the Republican disarray, Democrats are in trouble. The bi-elections in 2014 come in the president’s sixth year in office. The economy and jobs will be the overwhelming issues. Voters will hold the president’s party accountable for the state of [...]
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MORNING MESSAGE: Repeal the Sequester, And The Insanity Behind It OurFuture.org’s Richard Eskow: “Sure, we urgently need to repeal the sequester. (You can tell your Representative that here.) But it’s even more important to repeal the insane thinking that led to the sequester … The argument shouldn’t be about where we should be cutting, but [...]
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Fix The Debt is a coalition of corporations pushing for a “grand bargain” that would reduce debt by changing Social Security, Medicare and the tax code. Oddly, the coalition spends more time talking about what other people should give up — namely, Social Security benefits — than about what its own members would give up [...]
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