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Terrance Heath

By Terrance Heath
Online Producer, Campaign for America’s Future

In keeping with the Western-themed title of Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, allow me to set the scene: It’s well past high noon, and as the dust settles the economy lies bleeding. Looks like it’s all over but the dyin’ and the buryin’. But wait! Here come the “young guns” galloping into the scene. But have they come to save the day, or finish the job?

That depends on what they’re packin’, and it ain’t a first-aid kit. It looks like the same old ammo their forebears used the first time around.

Recycled Bullets

Republican Whip Eric Cantor, the most senior of the “young guns,” takes the first shot, with a somewhat whiny revision of the past 20 months in which he claims that he and House Minority Leader John Boehner handed the president a “fair” and “understandable” alternative stimulus that would cut taxes and lower the deficit. But in reality the plan amounted to a tax increase for millions of Americans and (of course) a massive tax cut for the wealthy. Not only does Cantor conveniently forget the compromises the Obama administration made with Republicans, including shrinking his proposal to get Republican votes, but he manages to block out his GOP’s pledge to exact vengeance upon Republican senators who worked with the White House to come up with a compromised bill. (more…)

Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

The House Ways and Means Committee just approved a bill that pushes China to raise the value of its currency. It looks like the bill will go to a vote on the House floor next week. This is a very big deal because it is a “second front” pushing China to bring its currency to market rates. President Obama met with Chinese Premier Wen yesterday and most of their 2-hour meeting was taken up discussing this issue, and today he gets backing from the House. This tells China that we are serious, that it is more than just the administration talking, and they have to start doing the right thing.

China has been manipulating its currency to keep it low, which means goods made in China cost less in world markets. This, combined with other trade manipulations, has created a huge imbalance in world markets. It moves industries, jobs, expertise, money and power to China, and has created a huge “bubble” of imbalance that threatens the world’s economy. Currently the interests in China and elsewhere, including here, that benefit from the imbalance have the upper hand. But this vote demonstrates that the rest of us, here, in China and around the world, that would benefit from a rebalancing are rallying and challenging the current policies. (more…)

Terrance Heath

By Terrance Heath
Online Producer, Campaign for America’s Future

A few things become clear upon picking up Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, the new book by Republican House members Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy. First, “young” is apparently a relative term in the GOP. Second, a better title might have been, Half-Cocked: Old Ideas From a “New” Generation of Conservative Leaders. And finally, half-cocked though they may be, these “young” guns are not shooting blanks. Their “ammunition” is as old as they are but still quite deadly. And we have the economy to prove it.

The same rule that applied to the GOP’s “Young Eagles” — that donor group for whom the RNC held a fiscally-irresponsible recruitment event in an ill-chosen venue: “young” is pretty much anyone under 45. In one sense, I find that encouraging. Since I’m one year older than the youngest of the “young” guns (Paul Ryan, 40), I’m still “young” by their definition. (McCarthy, 45, still has a tenuous grasp on “youth.” But Cantor (47) is a bit past his “sell-by” date.)

In the foreword, Fred Barnes (you may remember him from such shows as The Beltway Boys and The McLaughlin Group) does them the favor of making their titles seem less self-appointed by labeling them as, “Cantor the leader, Ryan the thinker, McCarthy the strategist.” If these three are what passes for “young,” it bodes ill for what they will spend the next couple hundred pages passing off as conservative “leadership” or conservative “thinking,” let alone strategy.

But for the moment let’s take them at their word that they are right’s “idea men,” and future leaders of the conservative movement. (Hey, if it’s good enough for Newt Gingrich, it’s good enough for me.) (more…)

James Parks

By James Parks
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

The days when the United States could mobilize hundreds of factories and trainable workers to quickly produce what the nation needs to fight a war are gone. Thousands of factories are sitting idle and the workers who make our ammunition, GPS systems and build our planes are nearly all overseas.

Testifying today before a House subcommittee, several experts called for an immediate rethinking of our national economic policies so as to regain our global lead in manufacturing before it is too late. As manufacturing goes abroad, so do the skills workers need to produce today’s computer-driven, advanced technology weapons and the research and development that support them, they warned.

It’s time to make the “Made in America” label really mean something again, Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. We must stop importing most of what we consume and begin to manufacture more of it here, he said. (more…)

Robert Reich

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

The super-rich got even wealthier this year, and yet most of them are paying even fewer taxes to support the eduction, job training, and job creation of the rest of us. According to Forbes magazine’s annual survey, just released, the combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans climbed 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list, while 85 saw a decline.

For example, Charles and David Koch, the energy magnates who are pouring vast sums of money into Republican coffers and sponsoring tea partiers all over America, each gained $5.5 billion of wealth over the past year. Each is now worth $21.5 billion.

Wall Street continued to dominate the list; 109 of the richest 400 are in finance or investments.

From another survey we learn that the 25 top hedge-fund managers got an average of $1 billion each, but paid an average of 17 percent in taxes (because so much of their income is considered capital gains, taxed at 15 percent thanks to the Bush tax cuts).

The rest of America got poorer, of course. The number in poverty rose to a post-war high. The median wage continues to deteriorate. And some 20 million Americans don’t have work. (more…)

Mike Hall

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

A Big Pharma front group that battled the new health care reform law with a let’s-scare-the-living-daylights-out-of-seniors campaign is using the same tactics in more than a dozen congressional races to try to elect Republicans who have vowed to repeal health care reform.

The innocuous-sounding 60 Plus Association has, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), spent $5,516,241 on independent campaigning so far this year, with 100 percent benefiting Republican candidates. (Click here for the Washington Post’s race-by-race breakdown.)

The commercials follow the tired formula that House member X or candidate Y is a demon because he or she voted for passage of health care reform and reiterate a litany of untruths designed to scare seniors—like cutbacks in care. NOT!

According to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the 60 Plus Association is a

pharmaceutical industry front group, claims it is a “nonpartisan senior advocacy group,” but it really operates counter to elderly citizens’ best interests. 60 Plus advocates positions on issues that benefit big corporations but that stand to harm seniors….60 Plus also stakes out positions that explicitly favor the pharmaceutical industry. (more…)

In one European country after another, working people are staging massive demonstrations, and striking. Millions of people are protesting.

France is leading the way. Air traffic controllers (yes, air traffic controllers!) are striking right now. Flights to and from France from U.K. will be canceled. The walkout will also cause delays to other destinations across Europe.

Big media calls it “major disruption.” Of course, it is major disruption. Strikes are supposed to disrupt “normal” life. And guess what: it’s not just the corporate world’s normal life they disrupt; they disrupt their own lives too. And workers really do not want to disrupt it, unless they’re desperate. No working people want to jeopardize their own lives, and the lives of their families. Unless they’re forced to. And they’re now forced to: their jobs, their livelihoods are at stake.

We’re happy for our French brothers and sisters. Big media says the air traffic controllers’ strike “is set to be significantly worse than the last mass street protests two weeks ago.” Two weeks ago, millions of French workers came out on the street to protest against anti-labor, anti-poor president Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age. Corporate world calls the measure “required reform.”

We call it cruelty. We working people here in the U.S. are sick and tired of these “reforms.” We’re paying back with our own lives.

We remember how another anti-labor, anti-poor president Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers’ strike here in the U.S. We didn’t win then. French workers will win now.

We’re with them on this victory.

Partha Banerjee
Brooklyn, New York
Teacher at a labor studies center.

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Bill Scher

By Bill Scher
Executive editor of LiberalOasis.com

The country may be cynical. The country may be dissatisfied. The country may be angry.

But the country does not want to stop Barack Obama.

An ABC News poll this week found that: “For all their economic gripes, 52 percent of Americans say they’d rather have President Obama than his predecessor in control of economic policy, vs. 35 percent who’d prefer to have former President Bush in charge.

Also, a new focus group analysis finds middle-class mothers have “patience” with Obama underneath the initial disappointment at the pace of change. W. Post’s Ruth Marcus reports:

They are less enraged than unconvinced. “It’s hard to trust him,” one woman in St. Louis said, but it turned out that what she meant was not that Obama wasn’t trustworthy — it was that she was uncertain that matters would improve. “A lot of things have happened since he’s been in office, so we tend to blame him,” she said. “And things haven’t turned around very quickly, so what is going to happen next? You don’t know.” …

Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who viewed the groups, said he was struck by these voters’ seeming patience with the president. “I’ve seen it before that people want him to do well. But the clear voicing of sympathy for the guy was a surprise for me. They feel sorry for what he inherited and what he’s got to deal with. . . . There’s frustration he hasn’t been able to figure it out. There’s a clear sense that he’s not the guy they voted for two years ago, but they still have hope that he can still be that guy.” (more…)

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

When Herbert Hoover ran for president in 1928, the Republican party promised his victory would assure the prosperity of  “a chicken in every pot.” This week, Republicans proffered a similar pledge to America.

Hoover won, and in 1929, after a decade of GOP rule in Washington, Republicans did deliver something foul to Americans. It wasn’t the much-anticipated cooking hen. It was the Great Depression.

Now in the Great Recession, also delivered during a GOP presidency, Republicans have presented a new promise. They pledged to withdraw all unspent Recovery Act money to prevent it from employing even one more worker; kill health care reform to stop 30 million Americans from getting affordable insurance; slash $100 billion from federal programs protecting the middle class; preserve tax cuts for the rich and cut government regulation — like oversight of Gulf-oil-gusher-BP and contaminated-egg-producers Jack and Peter DeCoster.

This time, the GOP downsized the “chicken in every pot” promise. Instead they’re pledging a salmonella-poisoned egg.

In 1932, Americans wisely rejected re-electing Republican Hoover, who is regarded as one of the nation’s most inept leaders, and chose instead Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, revered as one of the best. This fall, it’s crucial that Americans choose sagely again, selecting Democrats intent on reforming Washington and protecting the nation’s middle class.

Eight years of Republican rule in Washington climaxed with the worst recession since the Great Depression. Since that downturn officially began in December of 2007, poverty, unemployment and foreclosures have risen while middle class income and health insurance coverage have fallen.

The poverty rate increased to the worst level in 16 years, with 3.7 million people slipping from the middle class to the ranks of the poor in 2009. One in seven Americans now is impoverished. More than 8 million workers have lost their jobs, and 2.3 million families have lost their homes to foreclosure. Nearly one in four mortgage holders is under water, meaning they owe more on their house than it’s worth. Also, last year, the number of uninsured Americans rose by 4.4 million to 50.7 million — 16.7% of the population. It was the largest annual increase since the government began collecting comparable data in 1987.

By contrast, on Wall Street, where unrestrained and unregulated bankster recklessness caused the recession, happy days are here again. The banks that taxpayers bailed out have resumed paying million-dollar salaries and bonuses. The nation’s top 25 hedge-fund managers each took home an average of $1 billion (BILLION) last year. Those hedgers are among the nation’s richest 1 percent, those whose take home pay grew so fast between 1979 and the start of the recession in 2007 that nearly 39 percent of all income growth went to that tiny number of super-wealthy. Only 36 percent went to the bottom 90 percent of the nation’s population.

Democrats, keenly aware of the diverging experiences of the nation’s sucker-punched workers and its well-heeled elite, have worked to aid the beleaguered middle. They passed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated created between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs by July.

Democrats reformed health insurance so that children with pre-existing conditions can’t be denied insurance; senior citizens won’t have to pay for “donut hole” medications; young adults up to age 26 may remain on their parents’ plans, and insurance companies can no longer choose doctors or place lifetime limits on coverage or drop the sick. On top of all that, the Democrats’ reform will lower federal deficits by $138 billion.

Now, Democrats are fighting to preserve income tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating breaks for the rich. The Democrats would continue to lower by $1,132 a year the taxes of median wage earners, those with incomes of about $50,000 a year. Under the Democrats’ plan, the super rich – those taking home more than $1 million a year — would still get a tax cut of $6,349 – six times that of the middle class. But Democrats would have the super rich pay $97,651 in taxes a year that they now pocket.

Democrats think the rich have an obligation to pay those taxes. To get where they are, in the top one percent income bracket, they’ve used tax-subsidized public services at significantly higher rates than the other 99 percent of Americans. That includes services such as roads and airports, civil courts, the U.S. patent office, the U.S. Department of Commerce and professional licensing, regulation and inspection departments.

Republicans don’t agree. They believe the middle class should pay so the rich can continue getting breaks. The GOP believes it is fine to give tax cuts to the rich that will cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, but not pay for them. Conversely, Republicans have refused to extend unemployment insurance for the middle class jobless unless that’s paid for. The GOP believes it’s appropriate to continue tax breaks for multi-national corporations that ship jobs overseas but it’s not to extend aid to the middle class unemployed to pay for health insurance.

In their Pledge to America, Republicans promise to take care of the rich. They said they’d change Washington by decimating the very regulation that protects middle class workers and their families and by cutting off money that is providing jobs to the unemployed.  The GOP pledges to undermine middle class America.

It might be called a turkey, but even that would inflate its value. It’s a rotten egg hurled at middle America.

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

Bill Scher

By Bill Scher
Executive editor of LiberalOasis.com

Last week, 300 economists warned Washington of the “grave danger” that a “premature focus on deficit reduction could slow growth and increase unemployment – and could push us back into recession.”

Someone got the message. And he just happens to be the highest-ranking Senator on the White House’s deficit commission.

Sen. Richard Durbin told Bloomberg that we shouldn’t start cutting the deficit until the unemployment rate drops below 9 percent:

Congress shouldn’t make cutting the federal deficit a greater priority than creating jobs until the U.S. unemployment rate falls to 9 percent or lower for at least half a year, the second-ranking Senate Democrat said in an interview.

“If we have two or three quarters of 9 percent or less” then Congress can “breathe a sigh of relief” and “move forward on what we need to do on this deficit,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York.

Now, it may well be that our 300 economists would not agree with Sen. Durbin that an unemployment rate of 8.9% is a low enough threshold to start reducing government support for the economy. (more…)