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Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., speaks January 19 during a briefing on a petition to the Securities and Exchange Commission urging the agency require publicly traded corporations to disclose their political spending. The petition is a response to the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. The briefing was sponsored by the Corporate Reform Coalition, made up of institutional investors managing a combined total of $800 billion in assets, as well as public officials, legal scholars, good government groups and CEOs.

Rep. Barney Frank is ratcheting up his longstanding push to reduce federal defense spending with a series of town hall events in his Massachusetts congressional district this weekend. And in this interview he is encouraging the Occupy Wall Street movement and its sibling movements around the country to get involved.

Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison and Campaign for America's Future co-director Robert Borosage discuss the need to change the political debate in Washington to one that addresses the need for jobs in an interview on National Public Radio's "Tell Me More" on June 15.

The interview previewed the Speakout For Good Jobs Now tour, which was scheduled to make its first stop at the Netroots Nation conference of bloggers and activists in Minneapolis on June 18.

"There is no national association for the unemployed, so we are going out to the people," Ellison said, with a mission to bring the concerns of unemployed people back to Washington to highlight the need for job-creating and job-preserving legislation.

"I think it's time to listen," Borosage said. "Out in the country, people are hurting...and they are looking for action on the economy" and for "a bigger, bolder agenda" to get Americans back to work. Borosage said that it will be critical for elected officials in Washington—who have for the most part been out of touch with the mood of the rest of the country—to listen carefully and respond properly. Progressives who elected a Democratic majority to the House and Senate in 2006 and President Obama to the White House in 2008 in particular "are looking to hear vision and hope and a strategy to get us out of the mess we're in."

The federal budget cuts being proposed by conservatives on Capitol Hill are not just heartless and reckless; they will if enacted "close off the route to jobs" and out of poverty for millions of Americans.

That's how Deborah Weinstein, the director of the Coalition for Human Needs, describes the impact of the $65 billion in cuts proposed February 11 by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. The list of cuts released over the weekend by the House Appropriations Committee has been described as "madness" by our own Bill Scher, but Weinstein says there is a dangerous method to that madness: a targeting of "the lowest-income, most vulnerable people in this country" in ways that will affect our entire economy.

The additional financial reforms we still need and the unfair economic privileges the big banks still enjoy are the focus of an exchange I had with Gil Gross on KGO Radio in San Francisco during the run-up to President Obama's State of the Union address. In this five-minute interview, we also discuss the important work of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, whose report was released the next day.

Leaders of four national organizations active in the fight to protect Social Security briefed reporters on a large campaign involving hundreds of thousands of citizen activists urging President Obama not to propose cuts to Social Security in his 2011 State of the Union address.

Featured speakers in this news briefing were Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America's Future, Daniel Mintz of MoveOn, former Rep. Barbara Kennelly of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and Eric Kingson of the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

The four lay out their argument against Social Security cuts as well as some alternatives for strengthening Social Security for future generations.