Progressive Opinion

huffingtonpost.com — Arguably the biggest lie coming from the Republicans and the Romney campaign is that President Obama is a tax and spend liberal who's directly and personally responsible for record deficits and a crushing national debt. Not only is Mitt Romney telling his supporters that President Obama continues to spend out of control, but additionally that the president is responsible for doubling the budget deficit since he took office. This is not a new attack. Republicans who blindly greenlit trillions in Bush-era spending have been engaged in this nonsense practically since the minute the president was inaugurated.

more »

thedailybeast.com — This morning comes the news that the "prairie fire"Obama spending spree is, surprise surprise, a lie. What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year. It takes time to develop a budget and steer it through Congress — especially in these days of congressional gridlock. The 2009 fiscal year, which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House. The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress.

more »

truthdig.com — Take the case of Newark Mayor Cory Booker, whose comments about being nauseated by Obama’s Bain Capital remarks were quickly exploited in Republican ads. What is truly nauseating is that Booker did not reveal that his own rise to power was floated by contributions from Bain and other leading financial hustlers. Indeed, what is surprising is not that Democrats like Booker are on the take from the hedge funds, as Obama himself has been, but rather that the president has dared to criticize those who have been so supportive of his campaigns.

more »

alternet.org — In one short decade, home ownership has gone from being the Holy Grail of middle-class financial achievement -- the biggest and most lucrative investment most of us would ever make, and the one most reliably likely to pay off -- to a very risky financial ball-and-chain that more and more of us are going way out of our way to avoid. For the last few years, renting has seemed prudent and safe -- even for those lucky enough to have the cash for a down payment and a stable enough income to buy. But as the bubble has deflated, and the prices are getting closer to what they would have been in a less exuberant economy, a few hardy souls are starting to venture back in. What's different now, though, is that there are signs that the deep expectations and motivations of American homebuyers are changing.

more »

robertreich.org — Fairness isn’t inconsistent with growth; it’s essential to it. The only way the economy can grow and create more jobs is if prosperity is more widely shared. The key reason why the recovery is so anemic is so much income and wealth are now concentrated at the top is America’s the vast middle class no longer has the purchasing power necessary to boost the economy. Wall Street is part of the problem because it’s responsible for so much of the concentration of income and wealth at the very top – and for much of the distress still felt in the rest of the economy after the Street nearly melted down in 2008. Translated into presidential politics, all this means the President should be talking about fairness and growth and jobs, and explaining why we can’t have the latter without the former.

more »

tomdispatch.com — Recent months have seen a flurry of headlines about cuts (often called “threats”) to the U.S. defense budget. Last week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives even passed a bill that was meant to spare national security spending from future cuts by reducing school-lunch funding and other social programs.   Here, then, is a simple question that, for some curious reason, no one bothers to ask, no less answer: How much are we spending on national security these days? With major wars winding down, has Washington already cut such spending so close to the bone that further reductions would be perilous to our safety? In fact, with projected cuts added in, the national security budget in fiscal 2013 will be nearly $1 trillion -- a staggering enough sum that it’s worth taking a walk through the maze of the national security budget to see just where that money’s lodged.

more »

propublica.org — States have diverted $974 million from this year’s landmark mortgage settlement to pay down budget deficits or fund programs unrelated to the foreclosure crisis, according to a ProPublica analysis. That’s nearly forty percent of the $2.5 billion in penalties paid to the states under the agreement. The settlement, between five of the country’s biggest banks and an alliance of almost all states and the federal government, resolved allegations that the banks deceived homeowners and broke laws when pursuing foreclosure. One part of the settlement is the cash coming to states; the deal urged states to use that money on programs related to the crisis, but it didn’t require them to.

more »

huffingtonpost.com — Obama supporters are seething and the RNC is dancing with delight in the aftermath of Newark Mayor Cory Booker's nonsensical comparison of ads exposing Mitt Romney's real record on job creation with racially tinged attacks on Barack Obama's former pastor. The RNC thinks that it caught the Dems with their pants down, inadvertently admitting that Romney's work at Bain Capital should be off limits. But the indisputable fact is that Romney's experience at Bain is completely fair game -- Romney himself made that choice when he decided to present it as his chief qualification for the presidency. In fact, it's beyond fair game: if this election is truly about jobs and the economy, then Bain is one of the only games in town.

more »

truthdig.com — American society has lost its claim on democracy. One indication of such a loss is that the crises produced on a daily basis by crony capitalism operate within a discourse of denial. Rather than address the ever proliferating crises produced by market fundamentalism as an opportunity to understand how the United States has arrived at such a point in order to change direction, the dominating classes now use such crises as an excuse for normalizing a growing punishing and warfare state, while consolidating the power of finance capital and the mega-rich. Uncritically situated in an appeal to common sense, the merging of corporate and political power is now constructed on a discourse of refusal—a denial of historical conditions, existing inequalities and massive human suffering—used to bury alive the conditions of its own making.

more »

huffingtonpost.com — I love this Bain debate. It is exactly the kind of debate about the nature of business and job creation we need to be having in this campaign. The Republicans, along with pro-Wall Street Democrats, are squealing like stuck pigs about the Obama campaign "attacking free enterprise" because they want to change the subject fast. They are saying to themselves: please, let's talk about anything else. Deficits would be their first choice, but anything would be preferable. Maybe we'll see them start talking about contraceptives and how people shouldn't have sex again just to change the subject. Because this debate goes straight to the heart of what kind of economy we should be trying to build in this country.

more »