"Words that make actions speak louder."
You’ll be hearing a lot about a Korean Free Trade Agreement in the next few days. Negotiators are finalizing last-minute changes to the Korea Free Trade Agreement before President Obama arrives in Seoul Thursday for the G20 and to meet with President Lee Myung-bak. President Obama hopes that increasing exports will help restore American jobs. […]
The way a lobbyist argues for or against anything today is to say it will create or cost jobs. Prohibiting lawsuits against giant corporations that harm people creates jobs. Making oil drilling safer costs jobs. Tax cuts for the rich creates jobs. Just getting rid of government will create jobs. So, of course, we hear […]
Trade is good. Honest, free and fair trade brings prosperity to everyone involved. Unfortunately the kind of one-sided, exploitative trade deals that have been negotiated in the past might have made a few elites very rich in the short term but threaten to impoverish everyone else. The trick is negotiating better “We, the People” outcomes […]
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (“Deficit Commission”) was charged with coming up with a plan to reduce the budget deficits and accumulated debt caused by tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases. It was supposed to come up with a bipartisan package that, taken as a whole, would get votes […]
In the news: Congress debates extending an extra tax cut for the rich, Obama’s “deficit commission” proposes tax cuts to cut the deficit. Both of these assume tax cuts help the economy. But do they? What is the record? In this morning’s public hearing of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (deficit commission) […]
As the clock ticks down on tonite’s expiration of extended unemployment benefits for the 9.6% of Americans who are officially unemployed, the coming end of school lunch and other child nutrition programs, and the possibility of doing anything whatsoever to help create jobs, the President and Republican leaders instead met to discuss how many tax […]
In a stunning public display of just who our government works for and who it does not work for, unemployment checks for people out of work longer than 26 weeks run out tomorrow night. Congress, meanwhile, is caught up in a debate over extending a special tax break for the few people making more than […]
In the news: President Obama has proposed to freeze the pay of all federal workers. Demonstrating again his unique negotiating technique of giving concessions before negotiations begin, without asking for reciprocal concessions from the other side (also known as “pre-caving”), the President today announced that the pay of all federal employees will be frozen for […]
Are they there to govern, of just destroy? As Washington works through its “lame duck” session and prepares for next year’s new Congress, there are signs that the government-haters are preparing some serious hating on government itself. The country needs to get moving. But conservatives, rewarded in the midterms for a strategy of obstruction, are […]
Here is MY deficit-reduction plan. This plan does not reflect the views of anyone but myself — and maybe half the population. Unlike deficit plans from the “serious people” in DC, this one doesn’t annihilate the poor and gut Social Security and the middle class while passing even more of the benefits of our society […]