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Roger Hickey

By Roger Hickey
Co-Director, Campaign for America’s Future

Last week’s special election in New York’s 26th Congressional district was a political earthquake, demonstrating that the American majority, even in the most Republican of districts, will reject a candidate who embraces cuts to Medicare benefits or major changes to that most popular program. And, since almost every Republican in the House — and now the Senate — has voted for such drastic changes, Democrats across the country are happily learning how they can campaign to win back the House and keep the Senate.

But we can’t let Democrats undercut themselves again. Even as most of them practice their talking points about the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare, prominent beltway Democrats and Washington pundits are advising candidates that pressing their advantage on Medicare would not be the right thing to do. And others are urging Democrats to embrace policies — like cutting Social Security benefits — which would just as unpopular as dismantling Medicare and would confuse voters and undermine a winning message. (more…)

Robert Borosage

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

Less than a week after launching his presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich’s candidacy has already been declared “done” and “over” by conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer. Gringich’s mouth – always faster than his brain – has been gorging on foot. He’s provided Democrats with great ad copy, denouncing the Republican plan to end Medicare as “radical” and “right wing social engineering.” He managed an astounding 360 overnight, from having “consistently favored” an individual mandate on health care to calling it unconstitutional the next day. He’s received well deserved scorn for dog whistle race bait politics in http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gingrich-promises-to-slash-taxes-calls-obama-food-stamp-president/2011/05/13/AF9Q602G_story.htmldeclaring Obama the “food stamp president.”

And of course, in the run-up to his announcement, he retired the trophy for the most creative excuse for cheating on your wife, declaring that it was his passion for his country that led him astray.

Despite Gingrich’s gift for self-immolation, even with his own candidacy already sapped by the licentiousness of his mouth and his libido, he shouldn’t be dismissed. He has provided the clearest statement of how Republicans will run against Obama and Democrats in the next election – in the Reagan tradition, combining city on the hill economic homilies with back alley racial allusions. Consider Gingrich’s calling card: (more…)

Mike Lux

By Mike Lux
Author, “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be”

With so many Americans out of work, working part-time or temp jobs that barely make ends meet, and in danger of having their homes foreclosed on, you would think that the Republicans in the House would have better things to do than erupt in outrage over whether something is “advice” or a “recommendation.” But Reps. Spencer Bachus and Shelley Moore Capito are all worked up over this pressing matter. In one of the most ridiculous examples of a phony brouhaha I have ever witnessed (and I have worked in politics for more than 30 years), Bachus and Capito wrote a letter asking Elizabeth Warren to clarify whether she had merely offered advice and expertise, or whether she actually had the temerity to make recommendations on the state AGs-big banks talks.

Our very democracy clearly hangs in the balance.

Just because this incident made me curious, I looked up the definition of the two words. It turns out that the Merriam-Webster definition of “advice” is a “recommendation regarding a decision or course of conduct.” Wow, that is a big difference. Congressman and Congresswoman, I am so glad you are taking the point on asking these tough questions and exposing these major scandals.

Seriously, it is really troubling that these guys in Congress don’t have better things to do. Bachus is the chair of an important committee, one that theoretically is supposed to have oversight over the American banking industry. Given its role in the wrecking of the world economy in recent years, you would think that having the job of providing oversight would keep one a little bit busy. Instead, we get burning issues like this: (more…)

Robert Borosage

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

Washington is afflicted with its own version of March Madness, and we’re not talking college basketball. Call it a severe case of attention disorder. Washington has forgotten that 25 million Americans remain in need of full-time work — a human calamity and national emergency.

When the Campaign for America’s Future (which I help direct) convenes its Jobs Summit on March 10 to address what to do about jobs, it will have to pierce through a bipartisan clamor about cutting spending.

“The American people want the government to stay open and they want us to cut spending” House Speaker John Boehner trumpets, apparently forgetting that he just campaigned across the country bellowing “Where are the jobs?” In Washington, the argument is about less — how much and what to cut. And if cutting spending costs jobs, the speaker tells us “so be it.”

But So Be It economics is both bad policy and bad politics. It ignores the human casualties of mass unemployment, threatens already faltering growth, scorns the broad consensus of economists, and offends the priorities of voters.

Americans have been consistently clear about what they want from Washington. Sure they don’t like deficits and think government wastes their money, but, again and again, most recently in last week’s NBC/WSJ poll, they tell Washington to focus on jobs and the economy. Nothing else comes close. (more…)

Mike Lux

By Mike Lux
Author, “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be”

Everything I am reading these days on financial issues points to some serious reckoning soon to come, especially because of — as the folks at Third Way are calling it — foreclosure-gate. The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling in the Ibanez case, along with a growing body of cases where the banks and/or their servicers have been ruled against in foreclosure cases, and even the banks’ lawyers are being castigated in court by judges for bringing in made-up paperwork, is causing a growing sense of panic among the biggest banks that hold the most mortgages. Spokespeople for the banks are talking bravely, trying to dismiss the situation as some minor paperwork errors, but everyone who has been paying attention to the situation fears that there are really big consequences afoot.

The plain fact is that over the last decade, in their overwhelming rush to make bigger and bigger profits from trading in the bubble-driven real estate securities market, the banks ran roughshod over the home mortgage and title system that had served this country (and England and many others) quite well for hundreds of years — and they made a serious mess of it. Because of the way these mortgages have been sliced and diced and sold into complicated securities, homeowners, judges, and the banks themselves are having quite a bit of trouble figuring out who actually owns the note in more cases than is easy to believe. The “paperwork” — figuring out who owns the note – is not just a little messed up, it is a disaster area. (more…)

Robert Creamer

By Robert Creamer
Political organizer, strategist and author

I was struck several days ago to hear Arizona’s Senator Jon Kyl claim that the Democrats’ insistence on considering the new START nuclear inspection treaty in the short time before Christmas somehow defiled the holiday.

Perhaps, I thought, Senator Kyl forgot for a moment that Christmas celebrates the birth of the “Prince of Peace” — that the Christmas story is about “Peace on Earth, good will to men.” Could there be a better way to celebrate Christmas than to approve a peace accord that would reduce the risk of nuclear war?

Of course, this particular episode is actually emblematic of the fundamental disconnect between the values held by Senator Kyl and many of his radical conservative colleagues, and the progressive values that have served as the very definition of human morality, freedom and progress.

When you think of the heroes and heroines of American — and world — history you think of the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Cesar Chavez, Robert Kennedy, Mohandas Gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt.

They are people who expanded the realm of human freedom for everyone. They stood up for everyday people — not the rich and powerful — of their times. They are the people who ended wars, not those who began them. They are the people who created mechanisms that help us avoid violence; who enhanced the ability of every child — no matter her background or income — to live a fulfilling life; who stood up against ignorance and oppression and greed; who understood that we’re all in this together — not all in this alone.

Most of all, they were people who believed that what is important in life is what you can do for other people — not simply what you can do for yourself. (more…)

Edwin D. Hill

Edwin D. Hill
International President, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

In an attempt to rally rank-and-file union members behind the Republican Party in advance of November’s midterm elections, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin recently took to the Internet to appeal to union members to oppose President Obama and congressional Democrats.

To my hardworking, patriotic brothers and sisters in the labor movement: you don’t have to put up with the scare tactics and the big government agenda of the union bosses. There is a different home for you: the commonsense conservative movement.

She even cited her and husband’s former membership in my union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Now former sister Palin is more than welcome to try to sell the GOP’s agenda to our membership — we count Democrats, Republicans and independents among our ranks. But let me offer her a piece of sales advice.

If there is something our members hate — and we’ve done polling on this — it is overheated rhetoric and knee-jerk partisanship. They value their vote and want to know where candidates stand on the issues that matter the most to them, their families and communities — not just to folks like me in Washington. This year it’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs. (more…)

George Lakoff

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

The issue is death — death gushing for months at ten thousand pounds per square inch from a mile below the sea, tens of thousands of barrels of death a day. Not just death to eleven human beings. Death to sea birds, sea turtles, dolphins, fish, oyster beds, shrimp, beaches; death to the fishing industry, tourism, jobs; and death to a way of life based on the beauty and bounty of the Gulf.

Many, perhaps a majority, of the Gulf residents affected are conservatives, strong right-wing Republicans, following extremist Governors Bobby Jindal and Haley Barbour. What those conservatives are not saying, and may be incapable of seeing, is that conservatism itself is largely responsible for what happened, and that conservatism is a continuing disaster for conservatives who live along the Gulf. Conservatism is an ideology of death.

It was conservative laissez-faire free market ideology — that maximizing profit comes first — that led to:

• The corrupt relationship between the oil companies and the Interior Department staff that was supposedly regulating them
• Minimizing cost by not drilling relief wells
• The principle that oil companies could be responsible their own risk assessments on drilling
• Maximizing profit by outsourcing risk assessment that told them what they wanted to hear: zero risk!
• Maximizing profit by minimizing cost of materials
• Maximizing profit by failing to pay cleanup crews and businesses for their losses
• Focusing only on profit by failing to test the cleanup methods to be used if something went wrong
• Minimizing cost by sacrificing the health of cleanup crews, refusing to allow them to use respirator masks to protect against toxic fumes. (more…)

Dan Froomkin

By Dan Froomkin
Huffington Post Senior Washington Correspondent

They come off as so reasonable, so high-minded, so balanced in their thinking.

They are the pillars of the Washington establishment, and they were everywhere you looked at Wednesday’s gala “Fiscal Summit” organized by corporate-takeover mogul Peter G. Peterson’s eponymous foundation. (C-SPAN has it all on video.)

Listen to them and they will tell you how troubled — how very, profoundly troubled — they are by the nation’s rising debt and dangerous fiscal path. They will tell you very self-righteously how you should be troubled, too. And they will tell you that, fortunately, they know — in fact, “everybody knows” — what is best for all of us.

And yet, the illusion of beneficence shatters the minute they get into the details. Because beneath their moving platitudes, the only concrete deficit-reducing proposal that they all agree on involves cutting Social Security payouts, in part by raising the retirement age.

There is no consensus on which taxes, if any, should be raised. There is no consensus on how to reduce health costs. There is certainly no consensus on the need to slash our bloated defense budget.

No, their only fully developed policy proposal — one to which they adhere to with nearly religious devotion –is that America’s most successful social program needs to be scaled back so that it provides fewer people less money over a shorter period of time. This despite admonitions from progressive economists that they are exaggerating the positive effects of Social Security cuts on deficit reduction, while being cavalier about the effect on people.

As insurgent panelist Larry Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, said about the Social Security shortfall on Wednesday: “It happens to be that we can actually pay every benefit promised for the next 30 years or so. It’s the least of our problems. But people cavalierly, like frankly [CBS News correspondent and moderator of the previous panel] Lesley Stahl did earlier, say ‘Let’s raise the retirement age.’ But … [while] life expectancy grew a lot over the last few decades… it only really grew for the people in the upper half of the income distribution. People in the bottom half of the income distribution are not living longer. So we have a fundamental problem of inequality that we have to deal with.”

Peterson, however, just can’t help himself when it comes to Social Security; for instance, he asks guest after guest to explain to the audience how the Social Security Trust Fund, which holds more than $2.5 trillion in government debt, is actually a fiction.

That $2.5 trillion Trust Fund is the repository of payroll taxes paid by generations of working Americans, and the government bonds it holds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. But to Peterson, that doesn’t count, because the actual money that was paid in has been spent on other things and the government, to pay it back, would have to find the money somewhere else — maybe in taxes, maybe by borrowing more money.

So while he won’t say it in so many words, Peterson is essentially advocating for the U.S. to default on its debts — not to the Chinese, of course, (that would “reduce investor confidence”), but to the American working people.

And although he won’t say it in so many words, Peterson’s message to the retirees, widows and orphans who depend on Social Security is: Sorry! We already spent all your money feeding the military industrial complex and paying for tax cuts for the rich and so on. We don’t owe you a thing.

Doesn’t sound so high-minded now, does it?

And consider the track record of these pillars of the Washington establishment. Many of these men, far from deserving trust and respect, should actually be disqualified from setting public policy.

For some, it’s a matter of how they made their money. Peterson, for instance, made billions founding the Blackstone Group, which raked in huge fees for corporate takeovers that didn’t actually end up serving anyone else’s interests as much as its own.

For some, like former Federal Reserve chairman (and honored Peterson guest) Alan Greenspan, it’s a matter of poor decision-making in the past. Greenspan’s overconfidence in the market’s ability to regulate itself was a major factor in the recent financial crisis.

And for some, like Robert Rubin, it’s both. As Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Rubin was a leading architect of financial deregulation — and then went on to nearly drive an increasingly risk-taking Citigroup into bankruptcy, even while enriching himself to the tune of $126 million.

What animates their animus against Social Security? There is apparently something about this triumph of the New Deal, the ultimate reflection of our society’s concern for its elderly, that seems to offend them on a political or personal level.

And why such passion about the deficit? After all, there is a reasonable argument to be made that deficit spending is not such a bad thing.

I gather it has something to do with fears of rising interest rates and inflation — things that may legitimately terrify bankers, but don’t seem enough in and of themselves to justify such fervor among the rest of us.

And the real shame of it is that all this focus on deficits — even if it’s ostensibly on long-term structural issues — is a big distraction from the real crisis upon us, which is unemployment and slow growth. The federal government has a critical role to play in creating more jobs, but scary talk of the deficit tends to make people afraid to spend money.

There is undeniably a need to take intelligent steps to restore some balance to the federal budget down the line, but now is absolutely not the time.

Meanwhile, Peterson’s “Deficit Fest” was timed to come on the heels of the first meeting of President Obama’s deficit commission. And what’s becoming quite clear about that commission — many if not most of whose members were attended the Peterson event — is that there are more than enough votes to block any genuinely daring proposal, such as slashing military spending or enacting a carbon tax.

The way the commission was set up, any recommendations have to be supported by at least 14 of the 18 members.

So the only real question is whether there are five votes to protect the social programs that the deficit hawks find so dangerous.

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This piece originally was published here on Huffington Post

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Dan Froomkin can be reached at froomkin@huffingtonpost.com

Amy Traub

By Amy Traub
Research Director Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

It’s tax day, and Tea Party participants want you to know they’re boiling with rage, denouncing activist government and the taxes that pay for it. Analysts point out that much of the anti-tax fervor is based on half-truths and misinformation: from the myth that half of Americans don’t pay any taxes to the misconception that President Obama has raised taxes on working people (a February CBS/New York Times poll found that just 2 percent of those sympathetic to the Tea Party movement realized that they have received a substantial tax cut from Obama’s stimulus plan, compared with a still-abysmal 12 percent of the general population.) But beneath the scrim of misapprehensions and half-truths, the well-spring of authentic frustration is unquestionable.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich argues that the current surge of anger has little to do with policy debates over health care, taxes or any other substantive topic. Instead, he contends, the rage is rooted in anxieties about demographic change in America, “fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.”

But racial anxiety doesn’t tell the whole story. In a speech last week at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka offered a different interpretation as he explained populist rage to an academic audience:

The jobs hole – and the decades-long stagnation in real wages — are the source of the anger that echoes across our political landscape. People are incensed by the government’s inability to halt massive job loss and declining living standards, on the one hand, and the comparative ease with which government led by both parties has made the world safe again for JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, on the other hand.

Rescuing the big banks hasn’t done much for Main Street. The very same financial institutions that got bailed out have not only cut way back on lending to business, they have never stopped foreclosing on American families’ homes.

The fact is that for a generation we have built our economy on a lie–that we can have a low-wage, high-consumption society and paper over the contradiction with cheap credit funded by our foreign trading partners and financial sector profits made by taking a cut of the flow of cheap credit.

So now a lot of Americans are angry. And we should be angry. And just as we have seen throughout history, there are plenty of purveyors of hate and division looking to profit from our hurt and our anger.

Trumka doesn’t discount the potency of fears of demographic and social change. Rather, he argues that if our democracy can deliver economic policies that address Americans’ economic pain, “hate and division” can be overcome.

In much of Europe, racial hatred and political violence prevailed in response to the mass unemployment of the Great Depression. And in the end, we had to rescue those countries from fascism– from the horrible consequences of the failure of their societies to speak to the pain and anger bred by mass unemployment.
Why did our democracy endure through the Great Depression? Because working people discovered it was possible to elect leaders who would fight for them and not for the financial barons who had brought on the catastrophe. Because our politics offered a real choice besides greed and hatred. Because our leaders inspired the confidence to reject hate and charted a path to higher ground through broadly shared prosperity.

This is a similar moment.

The union movement’s answer is to try to channel justified rage towards its rightful target – not the taxes that educate our children, protect our streets, maintain our highways and keep dangerous products off the store shelves; not the health care bill that bears little resemblance to the “big government” caricature painted by its most ardent opponents – but the real economic policies that continue to prioritize the captains of finance over working people and the millions of Americans who want to be working again. Labor’s effort to make American politics answer to the legitimate economic concerns of the American people may be our nation’s best hope.

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Follow Amy Traub on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AmyTraubDMI

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Amy Traub is the author of the book, From Disaster to Diversity: What’s Next for New York City’s Economy. She also wrote a chapter for the book, Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009).  She has authored several influential DMI reports, including “Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class.” In 2008, the Jewish Funds for Justice gave her its  Cornerstone Award.