Obama’s Lesser Evil

Jeff Madrick

President Obama’s budget proposal this week shows just how thoroughly austerity economics now dominates the policy debate for both Democrats and Republicans. This emphasis is not new: Obama had already signaled he was giving special priority to cutting the deficit well before the November elections, when he named a bipartisan panel to make recommendations on how to deal with future deficits. It was hardly an objective panel, headed by two deficit hawks, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and retired Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson.

Not so very long ago, some economists feared Obama’s stimulus plan was not doing enough, quickly enough to rescue the economy. With US government spending now surpassing revenues by about 10 percent of GDP, those voices have been muffled. Conditions are now ideal for the growing number of deficit hawks in Congress and well-financed think tanks, mostly long-time small-government proponents like the American Enterprise Institute and the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform, to control the discussion again. And the financial catastrophes in Ireland and Greece, plus serious doubts about economic stability in other countries, have given conservatives another argument for sounding the alarm. An American general now tells us that the deficit is the nation’s biggest security threat.

The Make-Believe Billion

How drug companies exaggerate research costs to justify absurd profits.

By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, March 3, 2011, at 9:19 PM ET

For years the government has sought to make brand-name drugs cheaper and more widely available to the public. It has tried and failed to limit to a reasonable time period various patent and other "exclusivity" protections. Or it's tried and failed to negotiate volume discounts on the drugs that the feds purchase through Medicare. Every time, the pharmaceutical lobby has used its considerable wealth and political clout to block any government action that might trim Big Pharma's profits, which typically amount to between one-quarter and one-half of company revenues. And just about every time, Big Pharma has argued that huge profit margins are vitally necessary to the pharmaceutical industry because drug research and development costs are so high.

Not Mincing Words

On his way out the door, Robert Gates gives the military some refreshingly frank advice.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, March 4, 2011, at 6:14 PM ET

---

And so it seems, Robert Gates really will be leaving the Pentagon soon.

He's been going around to the military academies—West Point last week, the Air Force Academy today, Annapolis sometime soon—bidding farewell to the cadets, pointedly noting at the start of each speech that it will be his "final" address to them as secretary of defense. But Gates is not indulging in valedictory bromides. He's using the occasions to lay out his vision of what each branch—and each future officer—of the U.S. armed forces must do, and not do, to meet the threats of the 21^st century.

He's given bits and pieces of these speeches before: The Army needs to shift from a garrison peacetime force that's preparing for a possible head-on armored clash against a foe of comparable strength to a mobile force that's fighting actual "asymmetric" wars against rogue states and insurgents. The Air Force needs to pull back from its traditional obsession with high-tech air-to-air combat and focus more on joint operations—surveillance, precise air strikes, cargo transport, and rapid rescue—that help the troops on the ground. The Navy needs to focus less on aircraft carriers and more on vessels that can maneuver in coastal waters.

Elected By Promising Jobs, Cutting Jobs Once In Office

By Dave Johnson

Created 03/04/2011 - 1:14pm

See if this sounds familiar. Get elected by promising jobs. But once in office push through tax cuts for the wealthy and their corporate masks, and cut jobs. Then use the resulting budget deficits and jobs crisis to whip up pubic panic. Finally, use that panic to push through "solutions" that have little to do with jobs or budgets and everything to do with consolidating wealth and power. How often to you see that formula played out?

Promise Jobs

In 2010, Republicans around the country were elected after running hundreds of millions of dollars in ads (paid for largely by billionaires and big corporations) promising jobs (and promising to protect entitlements [1].) They promised this because poll after poll after poll shows that the public wants the government to focus on jobs and protect the things government does for We, the People.

Job Deficit Of 28 Million: Our Lost Decade Continues

By Charles McMillion
March 4, 2011 - 1:38pm ET

Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report shows 192,000 net new jobs created in February, the best monthly gain in the nine months since the peak of hiring temporary Census workers in May 2010. Excluding the loss of 30,000 jobs in local, state and federal agencies, the private sector added 222,000 jobs in February, the 12^th consecutive month of private sector job growth and the most since adding 229,000 in April, 10 months ago.

Conservative Media Go Ballistic Over Holder's Civil Rights Lesson

March 03, 2011 2:54 pm ET

The right-wing media have repeatedly mischaracterized Attorney General Eric Holder's recent reference to "my people" to claim that he is a "black nationalist" or that the Obama Justice Department is motivated by "racial bias." In his statement, Holder actually took issue with the suggestion that a 2008 incident involving the New Black Panther Party was a more "blatant form of voter intimidation" than what occurred in the 1960s; Holder said the suggestion "does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all."

Holder Slams Suggestion That NBPP Incident "Is Greater In Magnitude" Than '60s-Era Incidents

Holder: Statement "Does A Great Disservice To People Who Put Their Lives On The Line, Who Risked All For My People, My Wife's Sister." During a congressional hearing on funding for DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) repeatedly questioned Holder on the New Black Panthers case, alleging that the "case reveals a pattern in the department of refusing to enforce the law if white voters are being harassed." Culberson also read sworn testimony about the case from former Democratic activist Bartle Bull, saying that, according to Bull, the incident "would qualify as the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s." Holder replied:

The Scopes Strategy: Creationists Try New Tactics to Promote Anti-Evolutionary Teaching in Public Schools

Under the guise of "academic freedom" creationists are co-opting some old heroes of the fight to teach evolution in the classroom for their anti-science campaign

By Lauri Lebo
February 28, 2011

Now, more than 80 years after the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Tennessee, creationism proponents are pushing for state legislation there that could make it easier for teachers to bring unscientific ideas back into the science classroom in public schools. To bolster their cause, the backers of the new bills are invoking none other than teacher John Scopes, the trial's pro-evolution defendant, as an icon of independent thinking.

"…[T]oday's evolutionary scientists have become the modern-day equivalents of those who tried to silence Rhea County schoolteacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in 1925, by limiting even an objective discussion of the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory," David Fowler, head of the Family Action Council of Tennessee and chief lobbyist behind Tennessee's proposed anti-evolution bill, wrote recently in an op–ed in the Chattanoogan.

As Health Costs Soar, G.O.P. and Insurers Differ on Cause

By ROBERT PEAR

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Workers at a circuit-board factory here just saw their health insurance premiums rise 20 percent. At Buddy Zaremba’s print shop nearby, the increase was 37 percent. And for engineers at the Woodland Design Group, they rose 43 percent.

The new federal health care law may eventually “bend the cost curve” downward, as proponents argue. But for now, at many workplaces here, the rising cost of health care is prompting insurance premiums to skyrocket while coverage is shrinking.

As Congress continues to debate the new health care law, health insurance costs are still rising, particularly for small businesses. Republicans are seizing on the trend as evidence that the new law includes expensive features that are driving up premiums. But the insurance industry says premiums are rising primarily because of the underlying cost of care and a growing demand for it.

Why Washington Doesn't Care About Jobs

Christopher Hayes

March 3, 2011

Remember when everyone agreed that what the American people wanted from Washington was, in John Boehner’s words, a “relentless focus on creating jobs”? In the past few months the unemployment rate has barely budged, and yet lawmakers of both parties have jettisoned the jobs agenda in favor of an austerity program that will barely reduce the deficit but will almost certainly hurt employment. If the Republican proposal to trim $60 billion from the fiscal budget puts thousands out of work, well then, says Boehner, “so be it.”

This disconnect between the jobs crisis in the country and the blithe dismissal thereof in Washington is the most incomprehensible aspect of the political moment. But I think there are two numbers that go a long way toward explaining it.

Public Employee Unions Don't Get One Penny from Taxpayers and Can't Require Membership, But the Big Lie That They Do Is Everywhere

Nobody has to belong to a union or support its political activities, but you'd never know that from reading the news.

March 5, 2011 | Let us begin with this simple, indisputable truth: public employees' unions don't get a single red cent from taxpayers. And they aren't a mechanism to “force” working people to support Democrats – that's completely illegal.

Public sector workers are employed by the government, but they are private citizens. Once a private citizen earns a dollar from the sweat of his or her brow, it no longer belongs to his or her employer.

Breaking News: Tax Revenues Plummeted

David Cay Johnston | Mar. 3, 2011 08:43 AM EST

We take you now to the official data for important news. Federal tax revenues in 2010 were much smaller than in 2000. Total individual income tax receipts fell 30 percent in real terms. Because the population kept growing, income taxes per capita plummeted.

Individual income taxes came to just $2,900 per capita in 2010, down 36 percent from more than $4,500 in 2000. Total income taxes and income taxes per capita declined even though the economy grew 16 percent overall and 6 percent per capita from 2000 through 2010.

Who Drives Innovation?

Republicans like to argue that private companies are responsible for technological breakthroughs, but that's not true.

Monica Potts | March 3, 2011

Last month, many of us heard the story of Brett Hallman. Hallman's mother was early in her pregnancy when she learned her son would have spina bifida, a neurological disease that affects the spinal cord's development and, in the worst cases, makes children with the disorder unable to walk and have brain damage.

Advanced Crazyology, 101

Josh Marshall | March 3, 2011, 6:38PM

We had one of those experiences today that must be unique at some level to this era of boffo and institutionalized expressions of The Crazy. As we told you a couple weeks ago, a guy from the UK had planned to lead a protest outside the White House calling for the United States to be brought under Sharia Law. So anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney and his group planned a counter-rally. And as you'd imagine this was just too much of a Godzilla v. Mothra moment for us to pass up. So we sent TPM Reporter Ryan Reilly over to watch what happened.

Well, the Muslim guy from the UK didn't show up. So the point of Gaffney's protest sort of dissolved. So Ryan's there. And as Gaffney's protest is breaking up, they see this Muslim guy praying. So folks from the Gaffney protest and other protestors drift over to where he is and start yelling at him and one of the protestors starts throwing crosses at his feet. That's the story we reported a bit earlier this afternoon.

Oilquake in the Middle East: The Collapse of the Old Oil Order

by Michael T. Klare

Whatever the outcome of the protests, uprisings, and rebellions now sweeping the Middle East, one thing is guaranteed: the world of oil will be permanently transformed. Consider everything that’s now happening as just the first tremor of an oilquake that will shake our world to its core.

For a century stretching back to the discovery of oil in southwestern Persia before World War I, Western powers have repeatedly intervened in the Middle East to ensure the survival of authoritarian governments devoted to producing petroleum. Without such interventions, the expansion of Western economies after World War II and the current affluence of industrialized societies would be inconceivable.

Paul Krugman: How to Kill a Recovery

The economic news has been better lately. New claims for unemployment insurance are down; business and consumer surveys suggest solid growth. We’re still near the bottom of a very deep hole, but at least we’re climbing.

It’s too bad that so many people, mainly on the political right, want to send us sliding right back down again.

Before we get to that, let’s talk about why economic recovery has been so long in coming.

Why the White House Must Stop Trying to Negotiate With the GOP

Uhm, White House? When you are negotiating with *epistemic relativists, this doesn't work:

the White House argues the president has already essentially agreed to $44.8 billion in spending cuts from his original proposal. Add the current $6.5 billion in new cuts proposed today and voila! – roughly half of $100 billion.

Republicans argue that President Obama’s original budget is a nonsensical baseline from which to begin since it was never enacted.

Republican Pollster: GOP Is Jumping Off a Cliff, Chased By Tea Party "Tiger"

By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
Posted on March 3, 2011, Printed on March 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150117/

If there's any good news for Republicans in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, it's hiding well.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, says these results are a "cautionary sign" for a Republican Party pursuing deep budget cuts.

He points out that the Americans who are most concerned about spending cuts are core Republicans and Tea Party supporters, not independents and swing voters.

FactCheck.Org Joins Anti-Social Security Lynch Mob

By Daniel Marans

Created 03/03/2011 - 5:25pm

Call it speaking untruth to power. Until recently, FactCheck.Org had a well-deserved reputation for exposing and correcting the lies of elected officials. But in the article, “Democrats Deny Social Security’s Red Ink,” [1] FactCheck is guilty of distorting the truth, and the politicians it criticizes get it right. The media watchdog has now joined the chorus of elite media outlets hell-bent on convincing a wary public that Social Security will not be there for them. Click here [2] for a chart comparing the article’s claims with the truth, and a graph showing Social Security’s surplus. Click here [3], here [4] and here [5] for more comprehensive takedowns of the article.

Supreme Court: Corporations don’t have ‘personal privacy’ rights

By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 -- 8:54 pm

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled Tuesday that AT&T and other corporations do not have personal privacy rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to make documents publicly available upon request, but contains an exemption for documents that "constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

Discrimination creates racial battle fatigue for African-Americans

University Park, Pa. -- Just as the constant pressure soldiers face on the battlefield can follow them home in the form of debilitating stress, African Americans who face chronic exposure to racial discrimination may have an increased likelihood of suffering a race-based battle fatigue, according to Penn State researchers.

African Americans who reported in a survey that they experienced more instances of racial discrimination had significantly higher odds of suffering generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) some time during their lives, according to Jose Soto, assistant professor, psychology.

America Blows It on Bahrain

By Stephen Zunes, March 2, 2011

The Obama administration’s continued support of the autocratic monarchy in Bahrain, in the face of massive pro-democracy demonstrators, once again puts the United States behind the curve of the new political realities in the Middle East. For more than two weeks, a nonviolent sit-in and encampment by tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters has occupied the Pearl Roundabout. This traffic circle in Bahrain’s capital city of Manama – like Tahrir Square in Cairo – has long been the symbolic center of the city and, by extension, the center of the country. Though these demonstrations and scores of others across the country have been overwhelmingly nonviolent, they have been met by severe repression by the U.S.-backed monarchy.

Tea Partiers Have a Very Mixed-Up Notion of What the American Revolution Was About

By William Hogeland, NewDeal 2.0
Posted on March 1, 2011, Printed on March 3, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150097/

Note: Think the Tea Party has a monopoly on American history and values? Think again. With 'Founding Finance', the Roosevelt Institute's New Deal 2.0 blog reclaims the progressive narrative from the earliest days of the Republic, showing how ordinary Americans bravely stood up to financial elites. Tune in every Monday for author William Hogleand's rousing stories of our forbears who fought for economic prosperity.

“I got debts that no honest man can pay … ”~~Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City”

O. Max Gardner III, a patrician lawyer in Shelby, North Carolina, has started a movement for resisting home mortgage foreclosures.

In what Reuters describes as “legal jiu jitsu,” Gardner teaches techniques for using a bank’s lumbering hugeness to enable people to stay in their homes long after banks want them gone. He’s not alone. A foreclosure resistance movement has gained national traction in the past year. The Times has reported on local sheriffs’ refusals to evict, and in an especially pointed act of guerilla theater, Patrick Rodgers of Philadelphia recently turned the tables on Wells Fargo by starting a foreclosure against the bank’s local mortgage office. According to ABC News, the bank had not paid Rodgers a court-ordered judgment it sustained in the process of failing to respond to his demand under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) for information about his mortgage. Rodgers thought his foreclosure gesture would at least get the bank’s attention.

How the rich soaked the rest of us

The astonishing story of the last few decades is a massive redistribution of wealth, as the rich have shifted the tax burden

Richard Wolff
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 March 2011 16.10 GMT

Over the last half century, the richest Americans have shifted the burden of the federal individual income tax off themselves and onto everybody else. The three convenient and accurate Wikipedia graphs below show the details. The first graph compares the official tax rates paid by the top and bottom income earners. Note especially that from the end of the second world war into the early 1960s, the highest income earners paid a tax rate over 90% for many years. Today, the top earners pay a rate of only 35%. Note also how the gap between the rates paid by the richest and the poorest has narrowed. If we take into account the many loopholes the rich can and do use far more than the poor, the gap narrows even more.

More than 300 Economists Repudiate Right-Wing "So Be It" Economics

By Isaiah J. Poole
March 1, 2011 - 2:24pm ET

The stream of economic experts who are denouncing the budget slashing that the House of Representatives did last month has just turned into a flood.

Today the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for American Progress jointly released a statement signed by nearly 320 economists from around the country, including Nobel Prize winners Kenneth Arrow and Eric Maskin, former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Alan Blinder, and former Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and Director of the National Economic Council Laura Tyson.

Study: Over 16-year span, Wisconsin teacher salaries lag private sector wages

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – New research by a University of Illinois expert in employment relations and labor economics shows that, for more than a decade, Wisconsin teacher salaries have fallen behind changes in the cost of living as well as wage growth in the private sector.

Craig A. Olson, a professor of labor and employment relations, says the salaries of Wisconsin teachers have lost ground to those of their private sector counterparts over the last 16 years.

REPORT: How Koch Industries Makes Billions By Demanding Bailouts And Taxpayer Subsidies (Part 1)

Koch Industries, the international conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch, is not only the second largest private company in America, it is the most politically active. As ThinkProgress has carefully documented over the last three years, Koch groups have spent tens of millions to influence government policy — from financing the Tea Parties, to funding junk academic studies, to undisclosed attack ads against Democrats, to groups promoting climate change denial, to a large network of state-based and national think tanks. In an opinion column for the Wall Street Journal today, Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch fired back at his critics, who have grown more vocal as it has become clear that Koch groups are providing the political muscle for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) union-busting power grab.

Fox News reporter appears to have lied about being ‘punched’ by protester

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011 -- 1:51 pm

Fox News has been making a lot of hay about one of their reporters allegedly being "punched" by a protester in Madison, Wisconsin.

Turns out, that didn't happen.

Mike Tobin, reporting from amid the massive demonstration on Friday, claimed that one of the protesters "punched" him in the arm. In another broadcast, he claimed a man threatened to break his neck.

Unintended, but Sound Advice

By BOB HERBERT

In Lewis Powell’s now-famous memo to America’s business community, which felt beleaguered in the political environment of 1971, the future Supreme Court justice stressed the importance of organizing.

“Strength lies in organization,” he wrote, “in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”

Powell’s memo points to the reason why there is such an effort now not just to extract concessions from public employee unions to help balance state budgets, but to actually crush those unions, to deprive them once and for all of the crucial and fundamental right to bargain collectively.

O'Reilly Misleads With Footage of Violent 'Wisconsin' Protesters--With Palm Trees in Background

Via Digby, here's a clip in which Bill O'Reilly discusses the Wisconsin protests while running stock footage of angry, shoving and shouting demonstrators--with no snow on the ground palm trees in the background. Wisconsin, this clearly ain't. Another one of many misleading gambits on Fox to hype up a nonexistent union thuggery--a line of thinking which is important to debunk at every turn.

Why the Right Attacked Unions, ACORN and Planned Parenthood

Ilyse Hogue

February 28, 2011

For the past two weeks, all eyes have been glued to Madison, Wisconsin. The collective and joyful resistance to Governor Scott Walker’s power-grabbing budget bill has inspired the demoralized progressive base and put the corporate-backed assault on working people front and center in the national conversation.

But while it's obvious that the right wing is out to break the back of the progressive movement, it’s easy to miss the strategy that guides their selection of specific targets. Their attacks are all carefully aimed at the same critical juncture: institutions that work for people in their daily lives and in the political arena, those that connect people’s personal struggles across the country to the political struggle in Washington. Once we recognize the critical role these progressive service organizations play in building progressive politics, the right’s broader strategy in Wisconsin and elsewhere becomes clear. Scott Walker is a soldier in the same army as James O’ Keefe and Lila Rose, the right-wing video pranksters who tried to smear ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

Changing the Terms of Economic Debate

As long as we let ourselves be boxed in by a rightwing agenda that leaves us searching for least-worst options, we're losing

by Dean Baker

There is a new economists' sign-on letter being circulated that warns bad things will happen if there are big cuts to the public investment portion of the federal budget, as Republicans in Congress are now advocating. The argument in the letter is correct, but it is nonetheless painful to see this sort of thing being circulated right now.

The politicians in Washington may have missed it, but we are still in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate is still 9.0% and virtually no forecaster, including those in the administration, expects it to return to normal levels any time soon. In addition to the unemployed, we have more than 8 million people underemployed, and millions more who have given up looking for work altogether.

Revealed: The Group Behind the Bills that Could Legalize Killing Abortion Providers

It's no coincidence that bills to expand justifiable homicide laws have popped up in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa. Meet the group that launched the effort.

— By Nick Baumann and Daniel Schulman

Mon Feb. 28, 2011 12:01 AM PST

First, it was South Dakota. Then Nebraska and Iowa. The similarly worded bills, which have quietly cropped up recently in state legislatures, share a common purpose: To expand justifiable homicide statutes to cover killings committed in the defense of an unborn child. Critics of the bills, including law enforcement officials, warn that these measures could invite violence against abortion providers and possibly provide legal cover to the perpetrators of such crimes.

Vision: 5 Economic Ills That Demand We Go Beyond What We Think Is Possible

By Robert Kuttner, Huffington Post
Posted on February 28, 2011, Printed on March 1, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150073/

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.

USA Today Shows How to Lie with Statistics; Claims Public Employee Pay is Higher than in Private Sector

Forget about whether you're liberal or conservative, pro-union or anti. A simple question: in either the public or the private sector, would you not expect a college grad who has worked his or her job for 4 years to be paid significantly more than someone with a high school diploma who's had his or her gig for 2 years?

And if the college grad were in fact paid more, would that be unfair somehow? Would it be cause for jealousy and resentment? Apparently, USA Today thinks so.

What the Neoconservatives Are Up to in Libya

As Muammar Gaddafi spouts delusional nonsense about how "all my people love me," his 41-year dictatorial reign over Libya appears to be crumbling all around him. Opposition fighters in the cities of Zawiyah to the west of Tripoli and in Misurata to its east have scored defensive victories against Gaddafi's armed forces, much of the army in the east has gone over to the side of the opposition, humanitarian aid is starting to flow into the country in large amounts, and ad hoc councils of Libyans have begun governing areas under anti-government control. Even in Tripoli, still solidly held by the regime and reportedly blockaded against entry by Libyans from liberated areas of the country, public protests continue to take place, albeit at considerable risk to the participants.

Revisiting the FBI's Dirty War on Black America

Tuesday 22 February 2011

by: Earl Ofari Hutchinson | New America Media | Op-Ed

Thanks to a CNN documentary airing this week, the tale of FBI informant Ernest Withers is now well known. The black photographer spent years busily documenting the civil rights movement and capturing candid images of its leaders, most notably Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whether through flattery or the naiveté of his subjects, Withers and his camera were able to get close— very close— to the movement’s inner circles. He got so close that King and others trusted him to record their most intimate moments—ones that Withers would dutifully report back to his FBI handlers.

Paul Krugman: Leaving Children Behind

Will 2011 be the year of fiscal austerity? At the federal level, it’s still not clear: Republicans are demanding draconian spending cuts, but we don’t yet know how far they’re willing to go in a showdown with President Obama. At the state and local level, however, there’s no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming.

And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America’s children.

Paradigms Lost? Cowboys and Indians in the Battle Over Economic Ideas

Mark Blyth | Tuesday 22 February 2011

One of the most interesting organizations to come out of the crisis is the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), which is dedicated to “fresh insight and thinking to promote changes in economic theory and practice.” I attended its first conference in April 2010. The mood was optimistic. Rational expectations theories, the efficient markets hypothesis, capital account openness, Ricardian equivalence, were all on the chopping block. The book of the conference was Skidelsky’s The Return of the Master. We were all Keynesians now, again…for about eight months.

Then came the ECB June 2010 Monthly Report that raised the specter of ‘Ricardian consumers’ and ‘expectation effects,’ while the G20 meeting that same month (coincidence?) focused attention upon ‘Growth Friendly Fiscal Consolidation’ and the overwhelming need to reduce debt. Led by the UK (whose net debt-to-GDP ratio was at that time was below the Maastricht threshold) the voices of orthodoxy quickly regrouped and triumphed. Austerity and belt-tightening gained traction as the advocates of a reinvigorated Keynesianism shifted their sights from dismembering the neoclassical corpus to simply maintaining the legitimacy of spending under any circumstances.

Yes, America Still Needs Unions

Posted on Feb 23, 2011

By Joe Conason

“There was once a need for unions, but they’ve outlived their purpose,” said a nice lady interviewed on the radio in Tennessee just the other day. Annoyed by the spectacle of tens of thousands of teachers, firefighters, cops and other public employees rallying to protect their rights in Wisconsin, she was saying what more than a few Americans think about the labor movement.

They ought to think again—unless they want their children and grandchildren to become the peons of a corporate oligarchy.

REPORT: Top 10 Disastrous Policies From The Wisconsin GOP You Haven’t Heard About

As the standoff between the Main Street Movement and Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) continues for the twelfth day, much of the media coverage — and anger — from both sides has focused on Walker’s efforts to strip Wisconsin public workers of their right to collective bargaining. But Walker’s assault on public employees is only one part of a larger political program that aims to give corporations free reign in the state while dismantling the healthcare programs, environmental regulations, and good government laws that protect Wisconsin’s middle and working class. These lesser known proposals in the 144-page bill reveal how radical Walker’s plan actually is

Cummings Backs Obama With Mortgage Fraud Investigation

Susan Crabtree | February 25, 2011, 4:59PM

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is backing President Obama's hard line on mortgage abuses with his own wide-ranging investigation into foreclosure fraud.

Obama has been trying to broker a deal that would have the nation's largest mortgage lenders agree to cough up as much as $30 billion in fines to settle state and federal claims they abused borrowers and illegally foreclosed on homes, according to media reports citing state and federal officials engaged in the discussions.

Frank Rich: Why Wouldn’t the Tea Party Shut It Down?

NO one remembers anything in America, especially in Washington, so the history of the Great Government Shutdown of 1995 is being rewritten with impunity by Republicans flirting with a Great Government Shutdown of 2011. The bottom line of the revisionist spin is this: that 2011 is no 1995. Should the unthinkable occur on some coming budget D-Day — or perhaps when the deadline to raise the federal debt ceiling arrives this spring — the G.O.P. is cocksure that it can pin the debacle on the Democrats.

In the right’s echo chamber, voters are seen as so fed up with deficits that they’ll put principle over temporary inconveniences — like, say, a halt in processing new Social Security applicants or veterans’ benefit checks. Who needs coddled government workers to deal with those minutiae anyway? As Mike Huckabee has cheerfully pointed out, many more federal services are automated now than in the olden days of the late 20th century. Phone trees don’t demand pensions.