Progressive Opinion

nytimes.com — Occupy Wall Street is shining a useful spotlight on one of America’s central challenges, the inequality that leaves the richest 1 percent of Americans with a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent. Most of the proposed remedies involve changes in taxes and regulations, and they would help. But the single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It’s an expansion of early childhood education. Huh? That will seem naïve and bizarre to many who chafe at inequities and who think the first step is to throw a few bankers into prison. But although part of the problem is billionaires being taxed at lower rates than those with more modest incomes, a bigger source of structural inequity is that many young people never get the skills to compete. They’re just left behind.

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huffingtonpost.com — As our kids march off to school or college in the coming days, a nagging question presents itself: Why are they so goddamn calm? Or are they numb? I realize they occupy their own little world, but here's a reality check: Confronting them is a stalled economy and a stalemated government. That translates into big college loans and no job prospects. Even more confounding, the young people throughout the rest of the world are far from calm — in fact, they're in a state of revolt. There are riots in London, Israel and Spain and violent demands for change across the long-languid Arab world.

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nytimes.com — After a summer of budget cuts in Washington and state capitals, we have only to look to our schools, when classes begin in the next few weeks, to see who will pay the price. The minimum required school day in West Virginia is already about the length of a “Harry Potter” double feature. In Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Milwaukee, summer school programs are being slashed or eliminated. In Oregon and California this year, students will spend fewer days in the classroom; in rural communities from New Mexico to Idaho, some students will be in school only four days a week. For all the talk about balancing the budget for the sake of our children, keeping classrooms closed is a perverse way of giving them a brighter future.

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nytimes.com — Over the next few weeks, millions of Americans will be heading off to college, and despite the promise of need-blind admissions, more of them than ever will be struggling to pay for it. It’s not just the economy’s fault: even as they publicize lavish financial aid packages, colleges and universities are making it harder for average American families to afford higher education, while making it easier for the wealthy.

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consortiumnews.com — What are we to make of the Obama-brokered deal on debt and spending? I am reminded of a sermon that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave during the turbulent 1950s, in which he peered into the future and issued a prescient warning: “A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.” In promoting and then signing the so-called “deficit reduction” legislation, President Barack Obama has definitively confirmed that he stands in the ranks of those spiritual-death-dealing, “soft-minded” men about whom Dr. King warned so ominously. In my view, even dyed-in-the-wool Obama supporters will now have to let the scales fall from their eyes. The new one-sided “compromise” so clearly promotes the interests of the wealthy over those of the poor that, in Biblical terms, it can readily be seen as a Goddamned deal.

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ft.com — Those responsible for America’s multi-month debt ceiling debacle deserve, at best, an “incomplete”. They could even merit a “fail” grade if both the process and outcome inflict the type of damage to America and the global system that I suspect they will. It is discouraging that several months of disruptive political bickering and posturing failed to deliver a well-defined medium-term fiscal reform effort. Instead, the legislation signed into law by president Obama on Tuesday is terribly unbalanced in design, lacks proper operational details, and leaves key issues to at least one more round of political brinkmanship. This incomplete endeavour could be dismissed as business as usual in Washington except for one important consideration: it materially darkens an already fragile outlook for economic growth and job creation.

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The debt ceiling deal hammered out by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders and passed in the House on Monday afternoon makes deep, painful, and lasting cuts throughout the federal government's budget. What's on the chopping block? The numbers tell the tale. The Obama-GOP plan cuts $917 billion in government spending over the next decade. Nearly $570 billion of that would come from what's called "non-defense discretionary spending." That's budget-speak for the pile of money the government invests in the nation's safety and future—education and job training, air traffic control, health research, border security, physical infrastructure, environmental and consumer protection, child care, nutrition, law enforcement, and more. more »

washingtonmonthly.com — Republicans were warned, clearly and repeatedly, that even going down this road would put America in danger. Even if they hit the brakes before going over the cliff, starting this fiasco in the first place would very likely weaken the nation at a critical time. Republicans didn't care. Even if the debt deal is signed before the deadline, we will pay a price for their monumental stupidity. The United States, thanks entirely to the right's breathtaking stunt, is now seen as a less-safe bet and a less-attractive place for investment. The nation is now seen as more dysfunctional and less responsible. We've been made to look like fools on the global stage, and China has sought to exploit the Republican crisis, to the GOP's indifference.

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digbysblog.blogspot.com — When faced with an opposition willing to use lies, extortion and terrorism to achieve its goals, there are two possible responses. The first is equal and opposite aggression: to give as good as you get. But the second is to remain open-handed and and assume that by being the adult, turning the other cheek and giving way to your opponent even if only temporarily, you will seize the moral high ground and let the opponent's own momentum carry him over to his own destruction. That is the essence of what can be loosely characterized as "Eastern" wisdom, a very Taoist or Buddhist approach. In the Christian tradition, this sort of counsel can be found throughout the Book of Matthew. In a more secular vein, it could be called the Atticus Finch approach. Insofar as one gives Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt, he almost surely sees himself as Atticus Finch refusing to punch back even as the villain spits in his face.

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washingtonpost.com — So this is what we’ve driven the global economy and America’s credit rating to the brink for? This is why Republicans decided it was vital to not lift the debt ceiling to accommodate their own budget’s outsized debt? This is the best the White House could salvage after inexplicably failing to insist that the debt ceiling be raised as part of December’s deal to extend the Bush tax cuts? If you put aside the talking points both sides will peddle, the disappointing contours of the emerging endgame run as follows: First, Washington will do nothing more to boost jobs and growth. The best that can be said is that the spending cuts will be tiny in the next two years, so the feds won’t be contracting demand, save for the end of the stimulus. Our epic jobs crisis remains ignored. Next, as to long-term deficit reduction, the deal remains utterly inadequate -- even if the joint congressional committee the plan would empower to address this succeeds. Here's why.

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