WASHINGTON — Every day throughout the summer of 2006, seemingly without end, things just kept getting worse for Washington Republicans. Iraq was spiraling out of control, President George W. Bush was at the depth of his unpopularity. Congressional Republicans were mired in scandal. One was even caught sending dirty instant messages to young boys.
What followed was the Democratic wave of 2006, which handed Congress to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, followed by a second wave ridden by Barack Obama into the White House. Pundits talked about the end of the Republican Party, or at best, a permanent rump status.
Continue reading Faces of Neoliberalism: The War on Teachers | PartII
America’s 10 Most Hated #Banks | Mother Jones
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, these financial institutions draw the most complaints.
| Tue Jul. 29, 2014
If you put out a complaint box for customers of US banks and financial firms, you will get hundreds of thousands of complaints. That’s what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—which was set up by Elizabeth Warren before she became a US senator—has discovered. And the bank that has drawn the most complaints is Bank of America. Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Citibank were other top targets of consumer wrath.
Continue reading America’s 10 Most Hated #Banks | Mother Jones
Cookbook Shows How To Eat Well On A #FoodStamp Budget | NPR
By Molly Roberts
When Leanne Brown moved to New York from Canada to earn a master’s in food studies at New York University, she couldn’t help noticing that Americans on a tight budget were eating a lot of processed foods heavy in carbs.
“It really bothered me,” she says. “The 47 million people on food stamps — and that’s a big chunk of the population — don’t have the same choices everyone else does.” Continue reading Cookbook Shows How To Eat Well On A #FoodStamp Budget | NPR
TavisSmiley interviews Carl and Rob Reiner | PBS
This joint interview with Carl and Rob Reiner is a first. The love and respect between father and son are just beautiful. Both Reiners are accomplished men in their own rights as actors and directors, and fine examples of engaged citizens. Enjoy the show! Continue reading TavisSmiley interviews Carl and Rob Reiner | PBS
David Cay Johnston: Truths and myths about the rise of part-time #jobs | Al Jazeera America
Aggregate demand is the problem, not ‘Obamacare’
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 288,000 jobs had been added in June, critics cried foul. They said the news was misleading: The details showed a deteriorating job market, which many critics blamed on the Affordable Care Act requirement that employers provide workers with health insurance or risk prosecution or penalties.
But an examination of the data tells an entirely different story about what has hobbled the recovery from the Great Recession, which started in December 2007 and ended in the summer of 2009.
3 Reasons Subsidized Jobs Should Be Part of an Economic Mobility Agenda | Center for American Progress
By Rachel West |
The House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee is holding a hearing today on subsidized employment as a tool for boosting economic security. It is high time for Congress to re-examine the evidence on subsidized jobs and to discuss the potential this approach may hold for alleviating our country’s continuing unemployment woes and connecting disadvantaged workers to job opportunities.
Hillary for Liberals: A Conversation With Walter Shapiro | The American Prospect
This piece originally appeared in The American Prospect
By HAROLD MEYERSON
JULY 23, 2014
“As a campaigner, Hillary can do a shot and a beer better than Barack Obama can,” Shapiro says. So there’s that.
As a reporter and columnist for Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, USA Today, Esquire, Salon, and other publications, Walter Shapiro has covered nine presidential elections and the nation’s politics for four decades. He is currently a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and a lecturer in political science at Yale while he finishes a book about his great-uncle, a vaudevillian and con man who once swindled Hitler.
Shapiro is also an accomplished Hillary-ologist, having first interviewed Hillary Clinton in the Arkansas governor’s mansion for Time in September 1992. In early May, Shapiro sat down with Prospect editor-at-large Harold Meyerson to talk about a question he’s internally debated for years: On balance, would a Hillary Clinton candidacy and presidency be a good or bad thing for the liberal cause?
Continue reading Hillary for Liberals: A Conversation With Walter Shapiro | The American Prospect
Jared Bernstein: Financial Market Oversight, Economic Recoveries, and Full Employment: Some Crucial Linkages
“The way to make a train go fast is to keep it from going slow.”
July 29th, 2014 at 2:59 pm
That bit of Zen was told to me by one of the nation’s foremost rail experts back when I worked on that issue. He was explaining that part of developing a high-speed rail system entails straightening out existing curves in the track. But to me, it’s become a metaphor for the importance of financial market oversight.
Hillary Clinton regrets saying “We were dead broke.” – Well, kinda…
Mrs. Clinton in her own words…
This apology reminds me of this quote…
“Apology is only egotism wrong side out.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Clinton was interviewed by Fusion’s Jorge Ramos.
