Progressive Opinion

huffingtonpost.com — House Speaker John Boehner should be ashamed of his deceitful speech Monday night. He didn't tell the truth. After introducing himself as the speaker of "the whole House," Boehner spoke as a political partisan and not a practical problem solver. Boehner is a hostage of the Tea Party fanatics in his caucus and the Republicans' obsession with protecting tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, like hedge fund managers, corporate jet owners, oil companies and other special interests.

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nytimes.com — At the time of writing, President Obama’s hoped-for “Grand Bargain” with Republicans is apparently dead. And I say good riddance. I’m no more eager than other rational people (a category that fails to include many Congressional Republicans) to see what happens if the debt limit isn’t raised. But what the president was offering to the G.O.P., especially on Medicare, was a very bad deal for America. It's terrible policy, and it would almost surely be terrible politics, too. The crucial thing to remember, when we talk about Medicare, is that our goal isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, defined in terms of some arbitrary number. Our goal should be, instead, to give Americans the health care they need at a price the country can afford. And throwing Americans in their mid-60s off Medicare moves us away from that goal, not toward it.

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progressive.org — CNN has just come out with a poll that shows Obama losing support from his left flank. “Roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he's not been liberal enough,” the poll said. “Obama's approval rating among liberals has dropped to 71 percent, the lowest point in his presidency.” Overall, the poll had Obama with an approval-disapproval rating at 45%-54%. For anyone within shouting distance of most progressive communities, this is not a surprise. The dissatisfaction with Obama has been building steadily over the past three years, and it has grown more audible by the month. While he spoke progressive on the campaign trail, Obama has, for the most part, governed from the corporate center right.

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huffingtonpost.com — John Boehner's exit from debt ceiling talks with the president made it official. The GOP is willing to risk driving the economy off a cliff -- all to protect tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, oil companies and CEOs who fly around in corporate jets. They're like teenagers at a drag race -- lots of preening and strutting and big talk. All ever so eager to impress the girl of their dreams that they are the coolest, toughest dudes around. Trouble is they've got the girl of their dreams -- in this case Wall Street and the CEO class -- riding shot-gun in their ever-so-fast roadster -- and she's beginning to get a little nervous. After all, if their game of chicken ends with the car actually tumbling off that cliff -- Wall Street, the CEOs and the American economy will be right there next to the reckless hot shots behind the wheel.

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With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions. Despite what antigovernment conservatives say, non-defense discretionary spending on areas like foreign aid, education and food safety was not a driving factor in creating the deficits. In fact, such spending, accounting for only 15 percent of the budget, has been basically flat as a share of the economy for decades. Cutting it simply will not fill the deficit hole. more »

huffingtonpost.com — There are 23 million Americans who can't find full-time work. There are 50 million Americans who can't see a doctor when they are sick. There are more than 15 million American families who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. That's almost a third of all the families who own homes. If I were in Congress right now, these are the problems that I would be trying to solve. But instead, we see a bizarre contest to see who can cut federal benefits and inflict the most pain on the American people. With the proponent of each new sadistic plan announcing proudly, "mine is bigger than yours." The federal deficit for the year 2021 is not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. But let's assume that there were some compelling, emergency need to work out how to cut $2 trillion from the deficit over ten years. I have an idea about how to do that. It's a very simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up in one five-letter word: PEACE.

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alternet.org — One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn't required," Deepak Chopra writes in a recent column. “There are no hidden agendas. Ideology doesn't lead to unreason.” This virtue, however, can become a liability when it comes to building a movement. Liberals, progressives and lefties of varying generations rarely agree on what truly constitutes fair-trade coffee, much less how to go about changing the current political climate. In walks Van Jones, and his “Rebuild the Dream” movement. The movement will be comprised of non-Tea party sympathizers, 'ordinary Americans' who will come up with solutions to solve the social and economic problems that affect our country. He made no qualms about this movement being the more reasoned, but still impassioned answer to the Tea Party and this sentiment wasn’t lost in the follow-ups to the launch.

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washingtonpost.com — It’s one thing for a political party to lose its moral bearings – after all, community values evolve, and large swaths of people and their elected representatives can end up on the wrong side of history on such questions as slavery, suffrage, and civil rights. But when a party loses its mathematical bearings – well, that’s a little shocking. Yet that’s what’s happened to the Republican Party. The debt ceiling endgame has exposed the denial gripping the GOP in the face of the inevitable loss of “lower taxes” as the core of the party’s identity. You can feel the Republicans’ pain; tax cuts have been the party’s defining issue since Ronald Reagan rode them to power in 1980. But in an aging America, the numbers no longer work, and Republicans have failed to develop a new conservative vision to replace their fading mantra.

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newdeal20.org — On June 18th Van Jones gave a rousing speech at Netroots Nation, calling for a new effort to “Rebuild the American Dream”. Moveon.org and several other organizations have come together to build a new movement to rebuild the American dream, and this past weekend, 25,000 people went to over 1500 house parties to talk about a potential set of issues that could constitute a “Contract for the American Dream”. It is enormously important to start an effort such as this, something that can pull together the various strands of the progressive community, which will directly tackle the economic problems of our day. Progressives have tended to leave the larger economic questions to the Right, at least since the 1950s, and I think it is critical to take back this central social debate. So my advice would be to think big – both in terms of ideas, and in terms of money.

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truth-out.org — The budget plan produced by the Senate’s “Gang of Six” offers the promise of huge tax breaks for some of the wealthiest people in the country, while lowering Social Security benefits for retirees and the disabled. Despite claiming that they will "reform" Social Security on a "separate track, isolated from deficit reduction," the plan includes cuts to Social Security that would be felt in less than six months. The plan also calls for a process that is likely to reduce benefits further for future retirees. In short, this is a plan that should be expected to please the wealthy since it will mean large reductions in their tax liability in the decades ahead. On the other hand, most of the rest of the country is likely to feel the effects of lower Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, in addition to other cuts that are not yet fully specified.

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