"Words that make actions speak louder."
Last November, when the Tea Party Express was just building up a head of steam, it seemed worthwhile to stop for a minute and listen to a country song. Why? For one thing it’s a really good song, and it had a great hook. “Here in the real world,” it says, away from those powerful […]
I appeared on the Stephanie Miller Show yesterday with guest host John Fugelsang to discuss Social Security and the Deficit Commission. He’d seen my piece on the fact that the Commission members who want to cut retirement benefits all have excellent retirement plans themselves, thanks to Uncle Sam (that is, us). The exchange at […]
Peter Orszag’s maiden voyage as a New York Times columnist resonates with twenty years of failed economic policy. It’s a grab bag of Robert Rubin’s Greatest Hits, remixed by a younger DJ for new audiences. It’s all there: The mythologizing of the markets. The ritualized search for “credibility.” The search for a middle ground position, […]
Events of the last week have made the Deficit Commission an embarrassment. Co-Chair Alan Simpson is a one-man disaster movie, compulsively offending one key voting bloc after another. Commission member Paul Ryan faced an angry crowd over his anti-Social Security stance, while another Commissioner locked experienced workers out of a nuclear facility rather than provide […]
A hedge fund manager’s “investor letter” – really more of a staged, theatrical tantrum – has been getting a lot of attention lately. Daniel S. Loeb’s diatribe demonstrates that banker greed is still out of control, and that it’s as short-sighted and destructive as ever. The fact that Loeb is a registered Democrat and former […]
Sam Seder and I guest-hosted The Young Turks yesterday and spent our last few on-air minutes talking about Social Security and the Deficit Commission. We were discussing the fact that Simpson’s personally objectionable behavior is only one aspect of the problem. There are more fundamental problems with the composition of the Commission, as well as […]
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the enormous power that’s been given to the Deficit Commission, which is co-chaired by Alan “Social Security recipients are milking it” Simpson and dominated by people who have advocated cuts to Social Security and
Four prominent leaders of women’s organizations held a conference call today, accompanied by Rep. Raul Grijalva, to demand the resignation of retired Sen. Alan Simpson as co-chair of the Deficit Commission. Their comments, together with a number of private conversations with women’s leaders, indicate that Simpson and his Commission could be an even greater political […]
Millions of Americans are struggling to survive in the ruins of a once-healthy economy. A bipartisan frenzy of bank deregulation led to this catastrophe, and the financial reform bill passed this year is only a first step toward repairing the damage. We should be talking about the additional actions needed to prevent future disasters. But […]
Alan Simpson said he’s sorry, but it’s not enough. The calls for his resignation will continue – and not because of “political correctness” or his use of the word “tit,” has his apologists suggest. They’ll continue because he’s uninformed about Social Security, ideologically biased, and temperamentally unfit for his position. They’ll also continue because people […]