I wrote earlier that Newt Gingrich's campaign is one of mutually assured destruction for the GOP. No one, I wrote, has to lift a finger to destroy Newt Gingrich. Just stand back, give him room, and he'll do it himself. The thing is, you want to stand way, way back — otherwise Newt's liable to try and take you with him. The problem for the GOP is that they can't put enough daylight between themselves and Newt. And even if they manage to do that, they're still stuck with Mitt.

The latest self-destruction of Newt Gingrich will be televised. If he's able to carry on after losing the Nevada Primary to Mitt Romney, and make good on his promise to campaign all the way to the convention in Tampa, we can look forward to more performances like his post-Iowa temper tantrum, his post-Florida flame-out, and his bizarre concession-speech-cum-press-conference after Nevada.

More »»

Once again we're hearing that a foreclosure fraud deal is about to be announced between major banks, the US government, and most or all of the states. We've heard that before, only to have the deadline pushed back so that holdout Attorneys General can be brought on board with the agreement.

Deal, or no deal? We're not sure, but it's certainly possible we'll hear something today, tonight, or tomorrow.

How will we know if it's a good deal for the American people? After all, this is an issue with a lot of moving parts. It includes all of the states and multiple agencies within the Federal government, and involves a multitude of allegations involving several different kinds of crime that come under different jurisdictions. Even the statutes of limitations are a moving target.

That doesn't mean we don't know enough to judge the deal, if and when it's announced. There are well-established facts to guide us, and the principles involved are clear.

Moral and Legal Context

We keep hearing about what is and isn't possible, practical, or politically feasible. Media discussions of the topic keep mixing the quotidien problems of the process with the underlying principles involved. So let's take a second to perform a moral and legal reset and put this issue in the right context.

More »»

The Senate scheduled a vote for 5:30 p.m. today on restricting labor rights in the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill. Committee Dems caved and gave away union election rights. At least 18 unions, including the Communications Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union, have voiced opposition. Here are some actions you can take right now.

Last week, in FAA Bill Still Anti-Labor! Call Your Senators!:

Why This Fight?

The reason there is a fight over labor rules in an FAA bill at all is that Delta Airlines is trying to keep unions out, so the 1% can keep from paying good wages and benefits to the 99%. And, as usually happens, they are offering the Republican Party a share of the take if they can just make it happen for them.

Such is our present-day political system. It seems to come down to who is giving the most money to the Republican Party gets priority in legislation. ("Drill, baby, drill!")

Compromise?

If you start with a bill that says, "kill all the unions, kill all the unions, kill all the unions, kill all the unions" and take out one "kill all the unions," is that a compromise? The unions are still killed three times over.

More »»

Help us spread the word about these important stories...

Email to a friend

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on OurFuture.org.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Your Email: *

Your Name: *

Send To: *

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. You can only email up to 10 recipients

You are going to email the following: Crucial Senate Labor Vote Today - Actions You Can Take

Message Subject: (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from OurFuture.org

Message Body: (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the OurFuture.org web site.

Your Personal Message: *

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• Delicious
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Propeller
• Reddit
• Magnoliacom
• Newsvine
• Furl
• Facebook
• Google
• Yahoo
• Technorati

• MORNING MESSAGE: Plutocrats Play Political Ponies
• Deadline Today For Foreclosure Fraud Settlement
• Economy Still In Pain
• Romney Winning Now, Weakened For Later
• Breakfast Sides

More »»

Any resemblance between democracy and U.S. Presidential politics has become, in our new super PAC era, purely coincidental. The only mystery: Why aren't billionaires placing even bigger bets?

More »»

The reaction to January's jobs report shows how tragically our expectations have fallen, especially among some Democrats and their supporters. Their cheerleading isn't just bad policy or bad politics, although it is both of those things. It's also callous and insensitive to the misery of millions.

It's important to keep explaining what needs to be done to end that misery. To do otherwise is to serve, however unintentionally, an insidious agenda from the right that would lower our expectations until these tragic levels of unemployment are seen as the "new normal."

An increase in jobs is a good thing, of course, even if it's far from what's needed. Here's something else that was good about the report: Conservatives keep telling us that manufacturing jobs have moved offshore permanently, but 50,000 of them were created last month. Now we can put that argument to bed and can get to work creating more of them.

The Good, the Bad, and the Urgent

But millions of Americans - including minorities and the young - have already endured years of catastrophe, with years more to come if nothing is done. Why won't more people express support for their plight and explain what needs to be done to help them?

More »»

Along with squandering a federal budget surplus, getting us mired in two “wars” and devastating the net worth of most Americans, today’s revised jobs data show a net loss of 646,000 private sector jobs during the eight Bush/Cheney Republican presidential years—and only 1,466,000 private sector net jobs were created during G.H.W. Bush’s four years.

That is, a net of only 820,000 private sector jobs were created over the 12 most recent years of Republican Presidents.

In the first month of Obama’s Presidency another 725,000 private sector jobs were lost. A total of 3,348,000 private sector jobs were lost in Obama’s first six months of trying to get a handle on the economic disaster the Republicans created.

Nonetheless, even including the jobs lost in Obama’s first six months, today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics data show the last 23 consecutive months of private sector job creation restored all but 549,000 of the private sector jobs that existed when Obama was sworn into office.

Obama’s first three-year job record is already better—less awful—than the eight-year Republican record of President George W. Bush.

More »»

Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.

This should eliminate all doubts about how little some members of Congress understand about federal finances.

As Dana Milbank explains in his column from today's The Washington Post, eight House Republican freshman made a grandstanding play this week to get public attention and credit for something that makes no financial sense whatsoever.

First, the eight representatives didn't spend all of the amount they got in 2011 from the House of Representatives to pay for staff and other expenses in their Washington and district offices. They correctly claimed that they saved taxpayers money by doing so.

But second, the representatives then said that they wanted to return the unspent money to the Treasury and designate that the funds be used to reduce the national deb. They clearly felt that they should get big props for doing this.

This is wrong on so many levels that it's hard to know where to start.

More »»

The news is just out, the economy added a healthy number of new jobs last month, even with government jobs still declining thanks to austeridiocy. The better news is that there is an accelerating trend. The bad news, no help for the long-term unemployed and the charts are still scary.

True Story

This is a true story: I am on a bus from DC to NY. It's a great bus, nice seats, wifi... On the bus I'm checking and the jobs report comes out: U.S. adds 243K jobs in January; unemployment rate drops to 8.3%.

"You got to let me off the bus! I got a job!"

So passing through Baltimore this guy on the bus gets a phone call, goes up to the driver, saying, "You got to let me off the bus, I got a call, I got a job. You got to let me off the bus!"

So I guess maybe there's really something going on with jobs!

The Numbers

More »»

President Obama today will go to a fire house in the Virginia suburbs of Washington to tout his plan to promote hiring of veterans as first responders. It's a program that is sorely needed to address an American travesty: One out of every eight of the veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are out of a job.

But as today's unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, the economy could still use a job corps for the rest of us as well.

The news is good: 243,000 jobs were produced in January, and the unemployment rate went down to 8.3 percent. That includes 257,000 in private sector jobs, offset by a loss of 11,000 local government jobs and 6,000 federal government jobs. With that report, the economy has seen under President Obama's watch 10 quarters of economic growth and five quarters of jobs growth. The report shows growth across the private economy, notably in manufacturing and construction.

More »»

• MORNING MESSAGE: Don't Break Out The Bubbly
• Unemployment Rate Ticks Down
• Romney Economic Message Tied Up In Knots
• President Roots Fight Against Inequality In His Faith
• SEC Goes Easy On Banks
• Corporations Warm To Super PACs
• Breakfast Sides

More »»

The Susan G. Komen foundation has reversed its defunding of Planned Parenthood, at least temporarily, but the falsehoods and hypocrisy haven't ended. An investigation has revealed that at least four other organizations have received Komen money while under Federal investigation, while others have been the subjects of recent investigations, and a lot of the money Komen hands out was provided by sponsors who were also being investigated.

The Komen foundation hasn't been leveling with the public. Even its apology was disingenous.

The organization is behaving more like Bank of America, one of its most prominent sponsors. Like a Wall Street bank, its using its monopoly power to crush competitors, dictate its terms to the public, and to speak both disingenously and hypocritically to the American people. The Susan G. Komen organization has become "too big to fail."

"Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation," said a statement issued today. But the evidence shows that no such policy was ever enforced for anyone but Planned Parenthood.

More »»

Although it's a bit early to know for sure, let's hope that 2012 is the year that the economic policies known as "austerity" finally crashed and burned. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is certainly ready to bid adieu to austerity, writing in The New York Times this week that deep spending cuts leveled by state and local governments have proven to be "a major drag on the overall economy" and most probably have erected an "unnecessary" detour in "the road to self-sustaining growth."

Nowhere have the ravages of austerity policies been more apparent and more ruinous than in public education, where deep budget cuts to schools have taken spending back to 2008 levels or earlier. What we've witnessed over the past two years is the biggest cut to education since the Great Depression, and it has had catastrophic and long-lasting effects on a generation of kids -- beginning with the very youngest.

Austerity Is Eviscerating Early Childhood Education

More »»

On Wednesday the House voted to extend a two-year federal worker pay freeze an additional year. These workers, instead of getting a raise at the end of 2012, will have to wait until the end of 2013. (The House vote and our analysis is posted on our sister site, TheMiddleClass.org.)

The right-wing blogosphere is positively giddy about this, especially in the wake of a Congressional Budget Office study Monday that said that, yes, as a whole federal employees do get somewhat better pay and benefits than many of their private sector counterparts. "Federal Workers Overpaid, and CBO Agrees," reads the Heritage Foundation's blog, The Foundry. "Federal Workers Earning More Than Those Paying Their Salaries," harrumphs Red State.

The right wants the rest of us to join the gripe session: "Look at all of those overpaid federal bureaucrats," they say.

Well, let's look at all of those federal workers—and what's been happening to the rest of the workforce.

More »»

MItt Romney is taking a lot of heat for saying that he's "not concerned about the very poor." To be fair, he also said he's not concerned about the very rich either. Lucky for him the feeling isn't mutual that that side of the economic divide. According to recent FEC filings, the very rich are very concerned with Mitt Romney's campaign for his party's presidential nomination. And why shouldn't they be concerned? After all, some of them are Mitt's friends and former colleagues.

More »»