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. [...]
Read Post
Rick Perlstein, a former writer for the Campaign for America’s Future who now writes for The Nation, has a detailed and deeply troubling two-part examination (Part I and Part II) of President Obama’s nominee to be Commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker. We interviewed Perlstein earlier this week to get his views on the kinds of questions [...]
Read Post
At least three Senators up for re-election in Republican-leaning states next year are defying President Obama by indicating they’ll refuse to support the White House’s Social Security cuts in any “Grand Bargain” on the budget. There are a number of reasons why this is important, including the fact that it may scuttle the chance (if there ever was one) for any deal.
Read Post
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 [...]
Read Post
By now it's become clear to anyone willing to pay attention that our nation's obsession over education standards and testing has gotten out of hand. In a moment of sanity last week, a leading proponent of the new standards-aligned tests defected from the run-up to implementation and called for a moratorium on the high stakes associated with the Common Core and its new tests.
Read Post
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 [...]
Read Post
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 minimum wage – have been blocked in the Congress, and disappeared from the public debate. [...]
Read Post
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 [...]
Read Post
The scheme that Apple cooked up this week to finance a $55 billion stock buyback for its shareholders was orchestrated to avoid paying $9.2 billion in taxes, Bloomberg reported Friday. That $9.2 billion tax bill that Apple dodged would have been enough to make unnecessary all of the major budget cuts we’ve been writing about [...]
Read Post
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 [...]
Read Post
