"Words that make actions speak louder."
A CBS poll shows that only 6% of the public is concerned about budget deficits or taxes. The rest of us are more concerned about jobs and the economy, with very good reason. The Washington elite are insulated from the pain the rest of us and are focused on the deficit instead of jobs and […]
The co-chairs of the “Deficit Commission” released their recommendations yesterday. Basically they said that to cut the deficit we need to give a huge tax cut to the rich by cutting top tax rates from the current 35% down to 23%. The middle-class’ share of the pain will be to cut Social Security, Medicare, the […]
Social Security supporters announced today that over 100 members of Congress are signing a letter to President Obama demanding that the Deficit Commission keep its hands off Social Security. They say that if the deficit commission tries to cut the program they say it will not make it through Congress. I joined a press call […]
What is the matter with people in Washington and New York? There is obviously a jobs emergency and they’re talking about deficits — and in the middle of a frenzy of worrying about deficits they are talking about cutting taxes for the rich! ?? And, to make matters even worse, at the same time as […]
The recession ended in June, 2009? What? Seriously? No one told the millions of unemployed. And last week we got more bad news: 44 million of us living in poverty, and that was last year, before unemployment and COBRA subsidies started running out for the unemployed, … four million additional Americans found themselves in poverty […]
To lift the economy, we have to lift wages. Increased wages will restore demand. The changes that will increase wages will help restore democracy. The social contract used to be that citizens in our democracy share the benefits of our economy through increased wages that come from increases in productivity. This broke down and working […]
“Watch what we do, not what we say.” (Famous Republican advice.) The Reagan Revolution was first and foremost about cutting the taxes paid by the rich and corporations. Now, almost 30 years later, the United States of America is drowning in debt. And that is exactly what they wanted to happen. The Plan There were […]
The conservative argument of the last 30-40 years boils down to this: “Hey look at this big pile of seed corn. Let’s eat it!” Almost 30 years after the “Reagan Revolution” our infrastructure is crumbling around us. Since the Reagan-era tax cuts we have been deferring maintenance of (and never mind modernizing) our infrastructure, and […]
The terrible Gulf oil, West Virginia mining, Wall Street finance and government debt disasters all demonstrate the ongoing catastrophic and continuing results of conservative policies. Each of these is a direct consequence of letting corporate conservatives take over government and dismantle the regulatory and democratic protections that We, the People fought so hard for following […]
Businesses do not create jobs. In fact, the way our economy is structured the incentive is for businesses to get rid of as many jobs as they can. Demand Creates Jobs A job is created when demand for goods or services is greater than the existing ability to provide them. When there is a demand, […]