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This video by One Wisconsin Now is an inspirational look at the protests Madison over the last two weeks.

Jim Hightower

By Jim Hightower
Author, radio commentator, America’s number one populist

Let’s play a game called “Washington Budget Whackers Go Wacky!”

Unfortunately, though, it’s not a game. Ax-wielding Republicans and Democrats alike are madly whacking at our nation’s public programs in a political contest to show which of them is the scroogiest of all. For example, both are going after the very useful program that helps low-income Americans pay the ever-rising cost of heating their homes in the dead of winter. This budget cut will literally cut off the heat to some of the most vulnerable people in our society – but, hey, say Congress critters (whose workplace is always kept toasty at taxpayers’ expense), everyone must sacrifice.

Well… not really everyone. Washington’s ferocious ax wielders are sparing assorted corporate subsidies. Take the Market Access Program – please! It hands $200 million a year to such huge processors and exporters of agricultural commodities as Sunkist and Welch’s so they can advertise their products abroad. Hello – these “free enterprise” giants have plenty of money to do their own ads.

Even wackier, this subsidy often is frittered away on nonsense. Last year the Cotton Council used a big chunk of its $20 million handout from Uncle Sam to promote U.S. cotton sales in India. India? That country produces twice as much cotton as we do and is a major exporter of the stuff, so it has no interest in buying ours. (more…)

Robert Kuttner

By Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect

My friend, the late Mike Harrington, used to describe his politics as “on the left wing of the possible.” It’s a fine aspiration. But if anything, economic problems have become more politically intractable since Mike died in 1989.

Scanning the various economic ills afflicting our Republic and its citizens, it’s evident that nearly all of the solutions lie beyond what is currently deemed thinkable in mainstream politics — beyond the left edge of the possible.

It’s not that my own views and values have become more radical in two decades. What has changed is that the American political center has shifted further to the right, while the twin assault on the good society by the private financial system and the organized right has become more intense.

There are only two possibilities: either we act to expand the boundaries of the possible, or we suffer the consequences.

Consider these five prime economic challenges:

Economic Recovery and the Budget. We are told by Beltway solons of both parties that the prime malady harming the economy is the budget deficit. But nobody can explain how fiscal austerity will promote economic recovery. On the contrary, the more we cut, the more we retard economic recovery and the more we remove the cushions that make the recession slightly more bearable for regular people. (more…)

Robert Creamer

By Robert Creamer
Political organizer, strategist and author

Yesterday, ABC News leaked a confidential report from investment bank Goldman Sachs warning that the spending cuts proposed by the Republicans to take effect this year would slow the economy by 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product. It also found that even compromise cuts of $25 billion would cut growth by 1 percent.

This report would not be surprising if it came from the progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI) — or even someone at the Brookings Institution. Instead it comes from Wall Street — which is, after all — the principal base of the GOP.

Of course, their conclusions are not surprising. Virtually everyone with an ounce of economic literacy understands that cutting federal spending right now — just as the economy is clawing its way out of the worst recession in 60 years — will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Right now, the government projects about a 2.7 percent rate of growth in the economy this year. So according to Goldman Sachs, if the Republicans have their way, most of that growth would be wiped out and we would be perilously close to a double-dip recession.

It’s time to stop treating proposals for immediate cuts in spending as “reasonable” policy alternatives. These proposals are dangerous to the economy and the welfare of everyday Americans. (more…)

Since government workers refuse to live up to the greedy goon stereotype, the Tea Party must do it for them. Stephen Colbert shows how they accomplish this.

Carl Pope

By Carl Pope
Chairman, Sierra Club

The mounting evidence is that the Gulf Oil disaster will cost far more than originally estimated, and that BP is desperately seeking to avoid paying its share of the bill. New data suggest that young dolphins are the latest marine victims of the toxic remnants of the geyser on the floor of the Macondo rig. Marine scientists report that oil residues have not, as previously reported, been digested by bacteria and broken down, but remain on the ocean floor.

Even as the evidence mounts, scientists are hampered by a lack of resources and focus on continuing the assessment. They’re worried that we might never really know the full toll of the disaster because we aren’t looking in the right places.

What investigations have revealed is that BP knew of the problems with cement seals long before they failed at Macondo. In 2007 BP found that Halliburton, its contractor, couldn’t properly test cement seals. Although BP knew that the cement mix it was using was unstable, it failed to oversee Halliburton to make sure nothing went wrong. (more…)

George Lakoff

By George Lakoff
Author, “The Political Mind,” “Moral Politics,” “Don’t Think of an Elephant!”

The Wisconsin protests are about much more than budgets and unions. As I observed in “What Conservatives Really Want,” the conservative story about budget deficits is a ruse to turn the country conservative in every area. Karl Rove and Shep Smith have made it clear on Fox: If the Wisconsin plan to kill the public employees’ unions succeeds, then there will be little union money in the future to support democratic candidates. Conservatives will be effectively unopposed in raising campaign funding in most elections, including the presidential elections. This will mean a thoroughly conservative America in every issue area.

The media, with few exceptions, is failing to get at the deeper issues.

Let’s start with the case of the Lincoln legislators. As is well known about Lincoln, and as the Political Wire reports,

On December 5, 1840, Democrats “proposed an early adjournment, knowing this would bring a speedy end to the State Bank. The Whigs tried to counter by leaving the capitol building before the vote, but the doors were locked. That’s when Lincoln made his move. He headed for the second story, opened a window and jumped to the ground!”

Lincoln would be, and we all should be, proud that the Wisconsin state senators have courageously crossed the state line to Illinois to avoid a quorum in Wisconsin that would have a disastrous effect, not only on Wisconsin, but on America for the indefinite future. (more…)

 Robert Daraio

By Robert R. Daraio
Recording Secretary, New York Broadcast Trades Council

Corporate executives who run their companies into bankruptcy get bailed out with taxes paid by the same working people whose livelihoods have been destroyed by those same executive’s greed. Highly compensated movie and TV stars can reek the same sort of havoc on the hard working people whose incomes are seriously effected by the behavior of those key actors.

Last Thursday, CBS pulled the plug on the remainder of the current season of “Two and a Half Men” following the latest in series of outrageous radio rants by actor Charlie Sheen.

Following the cancellation announcement, Charlie vowed to fight any attempt by CBS/Warner Bros. to withhold his $ 1.2 Million per episode salary for each of the canceled “Two and a Half Men” episodes.

As for his co-stars and crew, now facing unemployment as a result of Sheen’s erratic behavior, Charlie said to “be patient.”

How much if anything the show’s cast will receive is also uncertain at the moment. The regulars on the show have a 13-episode guarantee that has already been met, so, by invoking the force majeure clause in their contracts, the studio is not obligated to pay them for the canceled episodes. (more…)

Hundreds of off-duty police officers and deputies joined protests Saturday against what Gov. Scott Walker calls a “budget repair” bill, which really is anti-union legislation that would strip most collective bargaining rights from about 170,000 public employees – though not from cops and firefighers.

Police, state troopers and firefighters are exempted from the legislation that would also require public workers to pay more for their health and pension benefits. Most of the public employee unions already agreed to pay the higher fees. As off-duty officers marched with the thousands protesting the proposed anti-union legislation, hundreds of on-duty officers from around the state provided security.

Dan Benson of Gannett Wisconsin Media reported that Richard Daley, 62, of Green Bay, who retired from the Madison Police Department after 20 years on the force, returned to  Madison to support “the fact that we all see this as union busting and wage suppression. This is a long-term, downward spiral of wages for working families.”

Benson also reported that Wausau police Detective Cord Buckner, 42, stood in the cold Saturday, his fourth day of protesting. He held a “Cops for Labor” sign and said, “I’m here to support all the unions’ rights.”

Michael Winship

By Michael Winship
Former senior writer at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS

“More cheese, less sleaze!”

That was the funniest group chant at Tuesday’s rally of several hundred union and other progressive activists outside the Manhattan headquarters of Fox News.

Several “cheeseheads” were in attendance, their noggins topped by the now familiar wedge-shaped, orange hatwear made popular by Green Bay Packer fans. On Tuesday they were out in the twilight chill expressing their opposition not to lactose intolerance but Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s intolerance of organized labor. (Unadorned by cheddar, I briefly spoke at the gathering as president of an AFL-CIO affiliated union, the Writers Guild of America, East.)

Governor Walker continues his obdurate opposition to the state’s public employee unions’ right to collective bargaining, despite a willingness on their part to concede pension and health givebacks he claims would help close Wisconsin’s alleged deficit. Meanwhile, there has been a decided increase on the sleaze end of the cheese vs. sleaze quotient, as evidenced in part by the prank phone call to the governor in which an online newspaper editor impersonating right wing billionaire David Koch elicited from Walker a proposed scheme to lure back, then double cross Democratic state senators who have prevented a quorum by retreating to Illinois. Further, when asked about planting troublemakers amongst the protesters, Walker told the trickster that he and his team had “thought about that” but decided not to. Apparently, all the really good disrupters are tied up in the Middle East. (more…)