Latest From Our Writers

It's either irony or really poor PR planning—take your pick—that the House will debate and vote on an energy bill the same week as Earth Day. The energy bill up for consideration does absolutely nothing to help the earth—or strapped Americans trying to pay for gasoline, for that matter. But things look pretty good for Big Oil once again.

This bill actually backpedals on last year's energy bill, which was no prize itself, by removing tax credits for producers of wind power this time around. There's also the Arctic National Wildlife Refuse drilling provision, which GOPers tacked onto energy bill, hoping to get it pulled along to passage. The list goes on: There's also a provision that would protect manufacturers of the gas additive MTBE —which can contaminate groundwater supplies—from product liability lawsuits. And there's provision upon provision to protect and reward traditional energy industries, like coal, natural gas and oil. We haven't even started on what's not in the bill: incentives for Americans to stop buying gas-guzzling vehicles and start being conservation-minded about their energy use.

More »»

As Tom DeLay's political woes become more high profile, his cronies inside and outside of Congress are getting more attention. Granted, lobbyist Jack Abramoff was already in plenty of hot water before Tom DeLay made congressional ethics headline news. Currently under investigation by the Justice Department and the IRS, among others, Abramoff schemed to swindle American Indian tribes with the help of such paragons of morality as Republican Ralph Reed. To learn more about the DeLay-Abramoff-Reed nexus, see the new website by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington.

More »»

Don't get me wrong, Ceci Connolly's recent article in the Washington Post about declining teen pregnancy and—as a result—declining child poverty, is cause for celebration.  According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the teen birthrate fell by 30 percent between 1991(its 20 year high ) and 2002.  Without that drop (and this is astounding when you really think about it): "1.2 million more children would have been born to teenage mothers in the United States. Of those, 460,000 would have been living in poverty and 700,000 would have grown up in a single-parent household."  Those statistics, quoted from Conolly's article, are evidence that strides have been made over the past 10 years to keep children—and their teenaged parents—out of poverty.  However, it is Connolly's final paragraphs that deserve the most attention:

Despite the encouraging developments, [Sarah S.] Brown and [Deborah] Cutler-Ortiz warned that the nation still faces enormous challenges. "Even with all these declines— in every single state— the U.S. still has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the fully developed world," Brown said. One in three American women conceives by the time she is 20.

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: Teen Baby Boom Ahead?

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

Progressives need to think about how they would govern the country, not just defend yesteryear's gains. So today, TomPaine.com has two articles looking at tax reform from different progressive perspectives. Max Sawicky gives us a great reality check on just who is paying how much, and what conservative notions of tax reform would do to our national fiscal health. The answer is that we're paying a lot less and getting a lot more than people realize. But conservatives want you to think that we're paying a lot more and getting a lot less in order to justify more tax breaks for corporations and the extremely wealthy. If they have their way, all taxes will be on wages and our government will be bankrupt.

More »»

So now that your taxes are signed, stamped, mailed or e-filed, (and they are, right?) let's consider, for a moment, what happens to that money. While I don't like seeing the tax taken from my paychecks any more than the next person, it helps if I tell myself that a portion of my hard-earned funds is being used for the general good of the nation—things like education, housing for people who need it, and support for veterans.

Well, some of my tax money—and yours—is going to those things. But a whole lot more of it is going to defense and interest on the national debt, according to research from the National Priorities Project . For the average family, one-third of tax money goes to defense spending, and 90 percent of that total goes directly to the military (while only 3 percent is used for preventative measures.) Another 18 percent of your taxes go to pay interest on the ever-increasing national debt. The money going toward education? Less than 4 percent. And only 2 percent goes toward housing.

More »»

Read the full speech here: "Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority today or tomorrow will put before this House and the American people a WMD, a Weapon of Mass Debt. They call it the Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Prevention Act of 2005. This legislation is as far away from protecting consumers as a snake oil salesman pitching an elixir to cure all of your ills."

More »»

Guest blogging on the temporary blog about the bankruptcy bill at Talking Points Memo —got all that?— is former Sen. John Edwards. He confesses for his past sin—voting for an earlier version of the bankruptcy bill the House is about to pass today: "The problem is that this bill imposes big burdens on families who did everything right but went broke just because they lost a job or lost their health insurance. And, even more than the legislation I supported, this bill doesn't crack down on the real abusers." Click here to read the entire entry.

More »»

The groupthink goes on. P.J. Crowley's recent piece, "Winning The Battles, But Not The War," is a great example of the national security groupthink I talked about in my latest column, "DLC Misleadership."  Crowley rightly asserts that "What we really need is a new national security strategy—and a more balanced national security budget." But once again, a senior democratic national security hand—this time at the more liberal Center for American Progress—fails to assert a strategic concept substantially different from President Bush's.

Instead, Crowley willingly accepts the president's assertion that Islamic extremism is our biggest threat and that therefore the promotion of democracy in the Middle East is our primary objective. Where Crowley aims his criticism is in how we best accomplish Bush's objectives—not whether Bush identified the real strategic issues facing America. This fully mirrors the confused approach taken by John Kerry in the 2004 campaign.

More »»

If you've been wondering who and what influences the news that ends up on your doorstep and your computer screen, FAIR's  (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) annual report  should be required reading. Actually, it should be required for all of us. Consider this promo quote from a PR firm included in the report:

We can get five reporters a month to do news stories about your product. If you want to be interviewed by 10 to 20 reporters per month, we can arrange that, too. . . . Media Relations, Inc. has placed tens of thousands of news stories on behalf of more than 1,000 clients. 

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: Power, Pressure And News

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

The House takes up a bill to repeal the estate tax today. I'll leave it to E.J. Dionne to argue why a "yes" vote on this measure disqualifies you from ever calling yourself fiscally responsible. But because I've been bombarded by the morally self-righteous Family Research Council about the estate tax, let's look at the moral argument for taxing sizeable estates.

More »»