president

White House Targeting GOP Senators In Seven States For Their Support

December 5, 2011

WASHINGTON — The White House is launching an aggressive, eleventh-hour media blitz this week aimed at pressuring Senate Republicans to confirm a stalled nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But senior Senate Republican aides are already signaling that the all-out public relations offensive planned by the White House — one that even includes President Barack Obama’s personal involvement — won’t be enough to sway Republicans to support a director for an agency that they say needs an overhaul first. The Senate is lining up its vote on Obama’s nominee, Richard Cordray, for Thursday. The president nominated the former Ohio attorney general for the slot in July, but his confirmation process has been beset by delays by Republicans, nearly all of whom signed a letter in May saying they would oppose any CFPB nominee until key changes at the agency are made. Among their demands: eliminating the director’s position, creating an oversight board instead, and requiring the agency to be dependent on congressionally appropriated funds for its operating budget. Democrats have framed Republicans’ criticisms as an attempt to undermine the agency’s work altogether. Cordray cleared the Senate Banking Committee in October along partisan lines, but Thursday’s vote is the real test. And with just a few days left to sell its message to the public, the White House is coming out of the gate full throttle. Administration officials kicked off their effort Sunday night with the release of a report , “Improving Americans’ Financial Security: The Importance of a CFPB Director.” In it, the administration outlines the kinds of bad practices that will continue to play out among nonbank institutions like payday lenders and credit reporting agencies until CFPB has a director officially to supervise their activities and ensure consumer protections are in place. For example, the report states that, unlike banks, payday lenders don’t currently have to comply with federal laws that relate to consumer financial protections, which means they can continue to charge fees of about $16 for a $100 two-week loan. That translates to an annual percentage rate of 400 percent for borrowers already struggling with debt. About 20 million people currently rely on payday lenders, the report states. “The fact that the CFPB cannot currently supervise payday lenders creates a serious regulatory gap that puts consumers at substantial risk,” reads the report. In addition to releasing the report, Obama will sit down on Monday with a handful of print reporters from seven states — Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Tennessee and Utah — to discuss the impact that Cordray’s nomination would have in their communities. The White House is targeting those states because they are home to Republican senators who currently oppose Cordray’s nomination. “We’re making a special effort in this handful of seven states because we believe … the citizens in these states have a lot to gain from the confirmation of Mr. Cordray,” White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said in a Sunday conference call with reporters. “It sets up an important decision for senators who represent the families in those states: whether they will side with the financial industry and block Mr. Cordray, or side with middle-class families.” Throughout the week, senior administration officials plan to flood television markets in those states with messages about the need for a director at CFPB, the idea for which originally came from Harvard law professor and now-Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. The White House will also release bipartisan letters signed by dozens of attorneys general and mayors calling for Cordray’s confirmation. And on Thursday, the day the Senate is expected to vote, the president will talk to local television anchors from each of those seven states about the need for a leader at the consumer protection bureau. Obama is also expected to press for Cordray during a previously scheduled speech on Tuesday in Kansas, though White House officials would give no details on what he will say. The consumer protection agency was created a year and a half ago as part of the sweeping Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation that was signed into law. But while it has some operations in effect, it still lacks a director, which administration officials say has prevented the agency from fully supervising nonbank financial institutions like payday lenders, nonbank mortgage lenders, debt collectors and credit reporting agencies. “In summary, today the CFPB is hamstrung by not having a director in place,” said Brian Deese, deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council, during the same Sunday conference call. The lack of a director at the agency means there isn’t an even playing field for banks and other financial entities, which is “bad for the financial system overall,” Deese said. In addition, he contended, some of the most “harmful, deceptive, unfair, predatory lending practices” will continue to take place, including those that precipitated the financial crisis that drove the economy into a recession. Senate Republican aides dismissed the idea that any GOP senators would cave in their opposition to Cordray without changes being made at the agency first. “You know who they’re not talking to? Republican senators who raised concerns about transparency and accountability at the CFPB seven months ago,” said a Senate GOP leadership aide. “Maybe instead of a PR campaign, they should work with Congress to fix the problems. But they haven’t lifted a finger. They haven’t talked with us about this at all. The President will talk to more reporters this week about the CFPB than he has to Republican senators.” Another senior Senate Republican aide chalked up Obama’s latest push on the issue to his need for a bump in the polls. “Another week and another White House public relations campaign ostensibly about policy but more likely related to the president’s sagging poll numbers and dicey reelection prospects,” said this aide. “There are serious policy concerns about the CFPB as it is currently exists, and we ought to be addressing that rather than having yet another White House media blitz.”

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China Concerned U.S. Ruling Underscores ‘Inclination To Trade Protectionism’

December 4, 2011

SHANGHAI – China said it was “deeply concerned” about a preliminary ruling by a U.S. trade body that trade practices by Chinese solar makers are hurting U.S. producers and said the decision underscored a U.S. “inclination to trade protectionism.” Such protectionism measures would hurt bilateral trade and jeopardize mutual cooperation on new energy issues, the Commerce Ministry said in a statement on its website. The statement came after the U.S. International Trade Commission approved an investigation into charges of unfair Chinese trade practices in the solar energy sector, setting the stage for possible steep U.S. duties and ratcheting up tensions with Beijing on the green trade front. The U.S. commission voted 6-0 that there was a reasonable indication that SolarWorld Industries America and other U.S. producers had been harmed by the imports or could have been. “The ruling was made without sufficient evidence showing U.S. solar panel industry has been harmed and ignored defenses from Chinese firms as well as opposition from the U.S. domestic industries and other stakeholders,” the ministry said. “China is deeply concerned with the decision, which does not tally with facts and highlights the United States’ strong tendency for trade protectionism.” China also hit back by saying that the U.S. should “objectively analyze why some of its solar panel firms lack competitiveness.” The vote allows the Commerce Department to continue an investigation that could lead to both countervailing and anti-dumping duties on solar cells and panels from China. The dispute is one of several to have broken out on the environmental front, as governments seek to reduce dependence on carbon-emitting fossil fuels blamed for global climate change. Chinese solar manufacturers most affected by the petition include Suntech Power Holdings, Yingli Green Energy Holding and Trina Solar. U.S. imports of the solar products from China totaled $1.5 billion in 2010, up from $640 million in 2009. (Reporting by Fayen Wong and Samuel Shen; Editing by Nick Macfie) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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What God Told Bachmann In Vision About Her Husband

December 3, 2011

ON THE ROAD TO ESTHERVILLE, Iowa — The cornfields edging two-lane Iowa Highway 9 fade to a sunbaked blur as Rep. Michele Bachmann’s blue-and-white campaign coach rolls on, bound for a “town hall” meeting with voters in the basement of a public library 25 minutes down the road. Inside the bus – which four years ago was chartered by John McCain and whose odometer now has 460,000 miles to show for it – the candidate folds her feet underneath her on a blue velour bench, answering questions with variations of the sound bites she’s repeated for months across this critical first-to-vote state. She pauses just once for a query that seems to catch her by surprise: What’s the public’s biggest misconception about her? “Oh, that’s a good question,” she says, the brassiness in her voice softening as she looks to a pair of campaign aides. “One thing people will say to me at these town hall conventions … they’ll say `the media doesn’t tell the story of who you are. They make you two-dimensional, a caricature.’” Bachmann has a point. The choreographed repetition of modern presidential campaigns can turn the most personable candidate into an endless loop of talking points. But any close observer of Bachmann’s political career would be hard-pressed to dismiss her as two-dimensional. At a time when voters accuse politicians of being difficult to pin down on issues, Bachmann proudly draws herself with hard lines and sharp edges. First in Minnesota and later in Washington, Bachmann has alienated some members of her own party nearly as much as Democrats. On this trip through a conservative corner Bachmann must win to resuscitate her candidacy in Iowa’s January caucus, she has another chance to make her case and offer voters a window into a political life that, now clouded by time and rhetoric, remains a singular story. Bachmann calls herself an accidental politician. But both supporters and critics say that’s selling her short. ___ Campaigning across Iowa, Bachmann frequently reminds voters she is a native. But that does not explain the route she has traveled: from Waterloo, a manufacturing city of 68,000 where she was born 55 years ago in a Democratic-voting family with union roots, to congresswoman from St. Paul’s exurbs whose personal and political life have been shaped by her embrace of evangelical Christianity and later, a highly combative brand of conservatism. Bachmann’s family left Iowa when she was 12 and her father, an engineer, took a job in Minnesota. Her parents divorced two years later. Bachmann’s father moved to California. Her mother found work as a store clerk and bank teller, but money was tight. The family managed by rigorously watching spending and relying on the generosity of relatives, says Bachmann’s brother, Paul Amble, a Connecticut psychiatrist six years her junior. “I just remember taking trips down to Iowa where my grandmother lived and we’d come back with huge Tupperware things full of food,” Amble says. The family attended a Lutheran church. But Bachmann says her life was transformed at 16 by a religious awakening. In a speech this year at Liberty University, Bachmann recalled entering church one night with three friends after mistakenly hearing there was a party inside. “When we got up to the front of the church, all of us under the power of the Holy Spirit, were called to our knees and we knelt in front of the altar and we started in prayer and the Holy Spirit convicted me and touched my heart and that of my three friends and one thing that I understood at that moment is that I didn’t know Jesus,” she said. In college, Bachmann met husband Marcus (in a vision, God told her to marry him, she says). After law school, the Bachmanns returned to Minnesota, eventually settling in Stillwater, whose historic downtown along the St. Croix River is a popular shopping and dining destination. Marcus opened a Christian mental health counseling practice nearby. Michele Bachmann tells audiences she began working as a “tax litigation attorney.” But the outspoken critic of big government avoids talking about the specifics of her job as an Internal Revenue Service lawyer pursuing people who did not pay their taxes. The couple sent their five children to a private Christian school. But over the years their colonial became home to 23 foster children who attended public schools. Bachmann says she became dismayed by one girl’s high school math assignment to color a poster. In 1993, Bachmann joined a group starting one of Minnesota’s first publicly funded charter schools. But it immediately became the center of controversy, with some parents and teachers complaining founders were trying to incorporate religious teachings. Bob Beltrame, a member of the school’s parental advisory board, says teachers complained that Bachmann and another school board member were sitting in on classes and questioning them about their methods. He recalls a phone conversation with Bachmann that fall discussing the school’s approach. “I remember one thing she said. I’ll never forget it. She said, `You know, if you really read the scientific literature you’ll find that today there’s a lot more evidence of creationism than there is the theory of evolution,’” Beltrame says. The controversy peaked that December, when the school’s CEO and board members including Bachmann resigned. But her interest in education and policy was far from over. ___ Icicle lights twinkle from the ceiling of the Rock Rapids Community Center when Bachmann steps before about 60 people on a Friday afternoon, betraying the Rotary Room’s usual function as a rental wedding hall. On the way to the podium, she works her way diligently around the room, always smiling and spending a few seconds with each person, being sure to ask their names and to make contact with her deep aquamarine eyes. “Hi, I’m Michele,” she sometimes offers. “A couple of Lyon County facts for you,” says Cody Hoefert, a chiropractor and chairman of the local Republican party, in his introduction of the candidate. In 2004, the county gave George W. Bush the third largest margin of victory of any in Iowa, he tells Bachmann. What’s more, Rep. Steve King – generally considered one of the most conservative members of Congress – gets 80 percent of Lyon’s vote. “Oh, man,” Bachmann replies. The diminutive politician beams up at Hoefert, more than a foot taller. “This is it! This is the center of the universe.” Bachmann assures the audience that together they will take their country back. “This will be a miracle from God for us to be able to repeal `Obamacare,’” she says, inviting questions. The last comes from Hoefert, who asks if Bachmann understands what it’s like to spend hours on the phone trying to get an answer from federal tax officials. “Yes, I have called the IRS because my background is I’m a federal tax litigation attorney,” replies Bachmann, not mentioning that she worked for the very agency being criticized. “So, yes, I have called them. I’ve called them and been rerouted 19 times.” ____ In Minnesota, Bachmann attacked state education standards called Profile of Learning, warning church audiences the guidelines were dumbing down lessons. She railed against federal involvement in schools. “My clearest memory is people saying `amen, amen,’ often,” said Mary Cecconi, then a Stillwater school board member who attended one of Bachmann’s presentations. “It had a true sense of a revival meeting.” One presentation impressed Bill Pulkrabek, a county commissioner and chair of the district Republican Party, who found Bachmann articulate, smart and attractive. “I said you’re too good of a candidate to be sitting on the sidelines,” Pulkrabek said. Pulkrabek backed Bachmann’s 1999 run for Stillwater’s school board, atop a slate with four of her friends. But at a candidate forum, Bachmann said she might not serve the full term because she was considering a challenge to state Sen. Gary Laidig, a moderate Republican in the legislature for 28 years. “I tried to present information to Sen. Laidig on the Profile of Learning, he was not interested,” the Stillwater Gazette quoted her as saying. “I told him if he’s not willing to be more responsive to the citizens that I may have to run for his seat or find someone else who would do so.” Bachmann and other Republican board candidates lost, alienating voters accustomed to non-partisan elections. But the turnout tripled from the previous election, raising her profile. Laidig said he arranged for Bachmann to meet legislators, but was one of just two Republicans who voted to retain state education standards. Still, he was surprised the following April at the district Republican convention, when she was nominated to oppose him. Bachmann has said she came to the convention without makeup and in a sweatshirt, not expecting to be nominated. But Bill McCallum, a party official responsible for counting votes, said he saw printed signs supporting Bachmann when he walked in the door. Bachmann won the nomination by two votes. Her candidacy caused a Republican rift, with the Senate minority leader backing Laidig in the primary. But Bachmann blanketed the district in yard signs and sent out mass mailings, including a letter promising to defend the Second Amendment in which she called a Washington rally for gun control, “the Misinformed Mom March.” And she won. In the state Senate, Bachmann led a campaign to ban gay marriage. Some Republicans saw the issue as needlessly distracting and gay rights activists called for a boycott of stores in Bachmann’s hometown. But Bachmann urged 3,000 supporters at a 2004 rally at the Capitol to “storm the doors.” Her push came despite divisions within her own family. One of the most notable opponents of the gay marriage ban was Bachmann’s stepsister, Helen LaFave, a lesbian who came to the Capitol with her partner to “bear witness on what she’s doing that’s so personally hurtful to me and to so many others.” ___ The campus center at Dordt College in Sioux Center is packed at lunch hour as Bachmann takes the stage. When rivals Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain spoke here last summer, Bachmann was on her way to victory in an August straw poll. But ever since Texas Gov. Rick Perry entered the race the same day, Bachmann has struggled to reclaim the mantle as the field’s conservative champion. Today, Bachmann wins the loudest applause for statements against abortion and defending traditional marriage. But she speaks mostly about her distaste for big government. “I want to close down the federal Department of Education – turn off the lights, lock the doors and keep that money here in Iowa,” she says. Afterward, standing before TV cameras in the parking lot, Bachmann briefly commends Perry for announcing an energy plan similar to hers, before tarring him as a politician too willing to ignore the Constitution. “We’ve seen President Obama do that by putting into place EPA regulations through the executive order. That’s a misuse of power and authority. Unfortunately we’ve seen Gov. Perry have a pattern of that in Texas,” Bachmann says. “But I do thank him and welcome him for endorsing my energy plan today.” ___ When Bachmann ran for a House seat in 2006, she drew criticism after a video surfaced in which she told worshippers at a church in her district that God “has focused like a laser beam in his reasoning on this race,” and had instructed her to run. But in a year when Democrats took control of the House, Bachmann won handily. “I’m coming here as a conservative,” she told reporters. “I’m not coming here for the purpose of controversy.” In Washington, Bachmann emerged as one of the most outspoken members of Congress, criticizing Obama’s “anti-American views” during the 2008 presidential campaign. Republican leaders kept her at arm’s length, despite her fundraising prowess, supporting a rival’s bid for a House leadership role. Bachmann, though, found her own soapbox, embracing the tea party movement and delivering a response on its behalf to Obama’s State of the Union address in January, moments after the Republican Party’s official response. And when conservative commentator Glenn Beck staged a “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall in August 2010 but did not invite Bachmann, she staged her own rally immediately afterward. It was a reminder of Bachmann’s fierce will, says Ron Carey, a former chair of the Minnesota Republican Party who served as Bachmann’s chief of staff in 2010. Carey – the fifth chief of staff in four years – quit after five months. He says he left because Bachmann repeatedly refused to listen to her staff’s advice. The last straw, he said, was a disagreement over paying a campaign contractor. Carey says Bachmann believed the contractor was not fulfilling its duty, and while he agreed, he pointed out that she was bound by a contract. She ordered him not to pay the company anyway. “She wanted what she wanted the way she wanted it and even though the facts said she couldn’t have it, she was just adamant she was going to have it her way,” Carey said. ___ On the road, Bachmann tells voters she will push to elect “13 like-minded senators,” giving her a filibuster-proof majority to push through changes as president. As her bus nears Estherville, she is asked what that says about her vision of leadership for a country whose increasingly fractured politics have left many voters mourning the seeming inability of leaders to find compromise. “My plan is not to fail. My plan is to succeed,” Bachmann says. Later, about 60 voters fill the basement of the Estherville library to hear the candidate and ask for autographs. “It’s going to be a lot of tough love,” Bachmann promises if she’s elected president. “You’re going to be hearing screaming and crying and gnashing of teeth from Washington, D.C. all the way to Estherville.” Afterward in the library’s lobby, Bachmann rushes over to hug Stacie Seckinger, a long-ago friend from Stillwater. It’s been years, the women tell each other, and so much has changed. Seckinger’s daughter, Erin, recalls how Bachmann gave her class a tour of the state capitol after her election to the Minnesota Senate. Then Bachmann dashes for the bus. This, Seckinger says, was the same strong woman she knew as a school activist. “She knows what she wants,” Seckinger says. “And she doesn’t waver.”

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‘What The Hell Are We Paying You For?’

November 29, 2011

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) slammed President Barack Obama at a press conference in Camden, N.J. Monday for the super committee’s failure. “I was angry this weekend listening to the spin coming out of the administration about the failure of the super committee,” said Christie. “The president knew that it was doomed for failure so he didn’t get involved. Well, then what the hell are we paying you for? It’s doomed for failure so I’m not getting involved? Well, what have you been doing exactly?” he said. ( Video above via Christie’s YouTube account.) The president, however, released a plan (pdf) to Congress entitled “Living Within Our Means and Investing in the Future,” outlining $3 trillion in net savings over the next decade. Obama blamed Republicans’ refusal to raise taxes for the failure of the super committee. The Obama administration has also dismissed the idea that the president would change the construction of the automatic spending cut triggers, scheduled to take effect in 2013, to lessen the impact on defense spending. The automatic cuts contain $600 billion in defense cuts and $600 billion in Medicare and domestic spending cuts. The 12-member super committee, formally known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, was set to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings, but failed to meet its Nov. 23 deadline. Christie announced in early October that he would not run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. He endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for president. Christie said both the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party movement “look at Washington D.C. and they look at a president who is a bystander in the Oval Office.” He added that both movements come from the same frustration about government. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have expressed that the movements arose from similar frustrations.

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Larry Summers Denounces Inequality — But Why?

November 28, 2011

Why is Larry Summers suddenly so worried about inequality? The Harvard professor — a former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Barack Obama’s first Director of the National Economic Council — penned an opinion piece last week decrying the concentration of income at the very top. Warning of “a strong and troubling shift in market rewards for a small minority,” Summers cited “dismal” figures, such as a 275 percent increase in incomes of the top 1 percent from 1979 to 2007. During that same period, income grew a mere 40 percent for the middle class. The need for fixes is fiercely urgent, he said. But his timing is curious. Summers was driving economic policy during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, yet he remained largely silent on income inequality. A scan of news items featuring Summers during his recent time in power turns up almost nothing on this topic, at a moment when economic matters were at the forefront of public debate. The gist of Summers’ op-ed — that the United States has become a profoundly unequal society — will surprise no one who’s been following economic trends for the last several years, to say nothing of the country’s thousands of Occupy protesters, whom Summers conspicuously did not mention. But it’s remarkable to hear the alarm being sounded by someone who’s been portrayed by detractors as an embodiment of the tight link between Washington and Wall Street. Summers’ motivation is largely political, according to several economists contacted by The Huffington Post. “Reputation,” said Derek Shearer, who served in the Clinton administration as an economics official in the Commerce Department and is professor of diplomacy at Occidental College, when asked about the purpose of Summers’ recent move. “Show he’s a good liberal guy.” Summers did not return request for comment for this article. A career-minded technocrat like Summers — especially one who’s been associated with discredited policies like financial deregulation — has to try to stay on the leading edge of political discussion, Shearer said. “These are issues of the day, and he’s out marketing and branding himself. The facts are there, you can’t deny them. All he’s doing is stating reality. It’s like, ‘Oh, my god, there’s global warming.’ ” Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, agreed: “My guess is he’s being political here — he’s trying to go with the tide.” This isn’t the first time Summers has swung to the left while out of government. Baker and Shearer mentioned a series of increasingly progressive-sounding opinion pieces Summers wrote in the run-up to the 2008 election. “If you go back to ’06, ’08, he started to say some really good things in the Financial Times . There was talk about a new Larry Summers,” said Baker. But when Summers joined the Obama administration, where his job was to gather and present the president a range of economic policy options, many observers criticized him for marginalizing progressive opinions, including those of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and economists Joseph Stiglitz and James K. Galbraith. “None of the economists who were named to the council were particularly progressive,” Shearer said. “What you can fairly say is that there’s no evidence Larry was concerned with the issue [of inequality], and he really limited the range of interests and expertise that would be provided to the president. He saw himself as an expert on the economy, not somebody with strongly demonstrated progressive values.” In fact, when Summers is quoted talking about inequality in Ron Suskind’s new book, “Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President,” it’s in starkly different terms than those employed in his recent opinion piece: “One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is kind of a disequalizer.” Summers is quoted as saying. “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.” Summers has disputed aspects of Suskind’s account , but the remarks seem in line with a couple of other famous Summers statements. While a vice president of the World Bank in 1991, Summers penned a memo suggesting it was only logical for high-pollution industries to move to developing countries . Once the memo was leaked, Summers said it was written in jest. And in 2005, Summers said innate ability may partially explain why women are underrepresented in the sciences — comments that drew a firestorm of criticism at the time. To be sure, Summers has publicly adopted progressive positions before. During the 2008 campaign he spoke forcefully about inequality in a speech at a Harvard Business School conference . At the time, Summers was an adviser to Obama, and seen as a potential candidate to head the Treasury. Once secure in the White House, however, Summers seems to have lost focus on inequality: His next prominent statement about the issue came on October 14, 2010, when his departure from the Obama administration had already been announced. In an interview with the Washington Post , Summers spoke of the subject almost in passing, seemingly at the prompting of the interviewer, while discussing the benefits of letting upper-income tax cuts expire. The chief reason to do so, Summers said, was to allow the government to invest in job-creation: “Summers, who will step down and return to Harvard in January, agreed that tackling income inequality is also a factor,” read the article. “But ‘ this isn’t about redistribution ,’ he said.” Ira Kalish, director of global economics at Deloitte Research, said Summers should be forgiven for having other priorities while working in the White House. “The Obama administration was dealing with a near-collapse of the financial system. It was in a sense a triage,” said Kalish, who authored a study of income inequality’s implications for U.S. business . “They had to prevent the economy from collapsing before they could focus on longer term issues, and this [inequality] is a longer term issue.” While Shearer agreed that the Obama administration had to address many short-term issues, he said it wasn’t an either/or situation. “If this inequality was a major concern of yours, after dealing with the meltdown you move into the reform stages,” Shearer said, “and you of course could have been much tougher in the reforms you proposed.” At the very least, Shearer said, the White House could have established a presidential commission on inequality in the U.S., its causes and potential solutions. “That’s the bare minimum you could have done. That’s something Larry seemed to have no interest in. Instead they set up a Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission.” In his recent op-ed, Summers was careful to position himself at the political center, chiding those who blame “the success of the wealthy” for “the disappointing lack of income growth for middle-class workers,” as well as those who “call concerns about rising inequality misplaced or a product of class warfare.” But this equivocal stance — part denunciation, part defense of inequality — lead Summers into a vague and limited appraisal of the problem and its solutions. None of the economists contacted by The Huffington Post were impressed with Summers’ assessment of the problem of income inequality and potential solutions. Baker called the analysis “really the standard textbook stuff, small-bore stuff.” The cause of the problem, according to Summers, is that “the market system distributes rewards increasingly inequitably.” But Baker notes that the inequality we see is consistent with the direction of policy: “They designed the system to redistribute income upward. The taxpayers are subsidizing the executives at the banks and the shareholders. We have those huge compensation packages on Wall Street; that has nothing to do with the market, it’s government subsidy.” Trade agreements too have played a large part, Baker said, putting less educated workers in direct competition with people from the developing world. “That puts downward pressure on their wages, and at the same time we largely protect the most highly educated professionals — doctors, lawyers — so that they aren’t competing with their counterparts in the developing world.” “This is stuff that’s been said since the Clinton years,” Baker said. “The position is, ‘We have inequality from the market and we can ameliorate it a little bit with good policy.’ The position is that inequality came from the market, not inequality came from the policy.” “He’s not going to say something too controversial,” Shearer said. “Because then he’s not going to be hired by another hedge fund.” “You do very well if you don’t rock the boat in America. I don’t expect Larry to lead the charge,” Shearer added. “I’d be shocked if he did.”

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Occupy Seattle Protester Alleges Miscarriage After Pepper Spray Incident

November 23, 2011

NEW YORK — In recent weeks, the repeated use of pepper spray by police officers against Occupy Wall Street protesters has elicited widespread criticism. (CLICK HERE OR SCROLL DOWN FOR LATEST UPDATES ) Whether it’s September’s use of pepper spray against young demonstrators in New York’s Union Square or last weekend’s forceful confrontation with seated student protesters at the University of California, Davis campus , many critics have questioned the deployment of such tactics against a largely peaceful and nonviolent movement. Meanwhile, in Seattle, a recent crackdown against Occupy protesters may have claimed its latest victim . On Monday, The Stranger , a Seattle-based alternative weekly newspaper, reported that one Occupy Seattle protester allegedly suffered a miscarriage. She said police used pepper spray and hit her in the stomach . “I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Jennifer Fox, 19, told The Stranger . “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’” Fox is reportedly homeless, living in the Occupy Seattle encampment in Westlake Park without a working cellphone. The Stranger reported that immediately following last week’s incident , Fox was rushed to the Harborview Medical Center in downtown Seattle , where Fox said doctors performed a routine ultrasound and didn’t discover any evidence for alarm. But on Monday, after experiencing cramping and nausea, The Stranger reported that Fox returned to Harborview Medical Center, where she was later diagnosed as having suffered a miscarriage once the fetus’ heartbeat was no longer detected . As of Tuesday evening, Fox had neither provided medical records to substantiate her claim, nor filed a formal complaint with the Seattle Police Department. But despite the lack of a formal complaint, a Seattle Police Department spokesman confirmed to HuffPost that police are launching a formal investigation into the matter. “We are aware of a claim that a pregnant woman who attended the Nov. 15 Occupy Seattle march has been treated for a miscarriage,” said the SPD spokesman. “Consistent with standard procedure, the Office of Professional Accountability has initiated an internal investigation to look into the matter further.” In the coming days, investigators will be actively searching for information to support Fox’s claim, the spokesman confirmed. Until more information is made available, Kathleen Taylor, executive director of the ACLU of Washington, told HuffPost that she remains troubled by what she perceives as an uptick of pepper spray use by members of law enforcement against the movement’s protesters nationwide. “The police have the authority to use force when it’s necessary to prevent physical harm, but the use of pepper spray against non-violent protesters raises very serious questions,” said Taylor, who highlighted the Seattle Police Department’s policy of not using pepper spray and tasers as a first line of defense. “We condemn police violence in other countries,” Taylor said. “Let’s first be sure our own house is in order.”

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Protester Occupies Obama Hand Shake Session

November 22, 2011

A speech by President Obama in New Hampshire was briefly disrupted Tuesday, when Occupy protesters attempted to upstage him with a so-called “mic check.” Though they were quickly drowned out by a chorus of “Obama, Obama,” one protester reached the president while he was shaking hands after his address and delivered him their complete message by hand. (PHOTOS BELOW) Obama addressed the Occupy Wall Street movement during a broader speech pushing for the passage of elements of his jobs bill, particularly the extension of payroll tax cuts. After the brief interruption, Obama called attention to the demonstrators and the larger Occupy movement. “I’m going to be talking about a whole range of things today and I appreciate you guys making your point. Let me go ahead and make mine,” Obama said. “I’ll listen to you and you listen to me.” The president continued, painting the motivations for getting his jobs bill passed as in line with the concerns of the Occupy protesters. “For a lot of the folks who have been in New York and all across the country in the Occupy movement, there is a profound sense of frustration about the fact that the essence of the American dream, which is if you work hard, if you stick to it that, you can make it, feels like that’s slipping away,” Obama said. “And that’s not the way things are supposed to be. Not here. Not in America.” The text of the Occupy protesters’ message: “Mr. President: Over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While banksters continue to destroy the American economy with impunity. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.” Photos of the encounter below:

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The Raid On Occupy Wall Street: How It Happened And What Comes Next (VIDEO)

November 16, 2011

NEW YORK — On the day of an unexpected 1:00 a.m. police raid on Zuccotti Park, where New York City cops evicted the protesters, dismantled the two-month old tent city and arrested hundreds, the Occupy Wall Street movement is facing what may be its most critical moment yet. Beginning early Tuesday morning, police surrounded Zuccotti and announced that the park must be emptied to be “cleared and restored.” While protesters could return in the morning, police officials said at the time, they would not be allowed to bring back the tents and sleeping bags that had previously coated the 33,000 foot concrete rectangle. By nightfall, a court challenge brought by protesters had failed to override the city’s actions , leaving the protesters’ continued occupation of the park to an uncertain fate. Police gave protesters a choice: stay, be stripped of all your belongings and face arrest, or leave peacefully. Those who left joined hundreds of other protesters wandering the financial district, corralled by ever tightening police barricades and facing a basic problem: what to do now that the movement had lost its hub. The raid decimated the infrastructure of the movement, removing supplies and uprooting protesters from the movement’s birthplace. Whether it was a mortal blow or merely the latest obstacle for the what is now a global movement is still unclear. Some protesters expressed hopes it would allow their movement, which has faltered in the face of internal struggles and safety concerns, a chance to start again and emerge stronger. At a press conference Tuesday morning, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg explained the city’s actions. “From the beginning, I have said that the City had two principal goals: guaranteeing public health and safety, and guaranteeing the protesters’ First Amendment rights,” he said. “But when those two goals clash, the health and safety of the public and our first responders must be the priority”. By Tuesday afternoon, a core group of 20 or so protesters were stationed at 50 Broadway — an office space recently donated to the movement that, as the crisis developed, transformed into an information hub — attempting to coordinate protesters still walking the streets and account for the night’s losses. They were significant. “We are stretched very thin right now, a lot of our best folks are locked up,” said Haywood, an occupier who only goes by one name has been living in the park for more than a month. According to police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, nearly 200 people had been arrested as of Tuesday morning. Like many protesters surveyed today, Haywood has the phone number for the National Lawyer’s Guild — he’d scrawled it in permanent marker on his upper arm. If you’re arrested, the cops take your cellphone. “This is your one call,” he said, slapping his arm. But the early morning raid, Haywood continued, did more damage to the movement than just shrink the body of occupiers. Haywood, bald with a full red beard, was sitting at a long table at 50 Broadway, where sleeping bags, tents and stuffed backpacks rescued from the park in the pre-dawn hours were piled in the corners. What was lost in the park, he said, was “priceless.” A handful of others sitting around, typing on laptops or sipping coffee nodded. “I you want to put a price on the tents, the medical supplies, the kitchen equipment, the laptops, the library, I think it’s somewhere edging up towards six figures,” Hayword said. “Let’s say $80,000.” Some of the protesters pointed to a supposed silver lining: While Zuccotti Park may have been the heart of the occupy movement, it was not without significant problems. In recent weeks, protesters struggled to deal with drug use, assaults and theft — as well as an increasingly divided populace. And then, there was the ever looming threat of winter. If the occupiers are allowed to move back in to Zuccotti, or another space, this could be a chance to start anew. “The problems that were in Zuccotti were huge, and now they’re gone,” said Hall Powell, a protester involved in numerous working groups, committees focused around issues related to the movement, including town planning and architecture. “Now, we’ll be able to learn from all the things that we’ve done, and things we’ve been unable to do.” But regaining the park is a big if. After a day of legal wrangling between the protester’s lawyers, Brookfield properties — the park’s owner — and the city, a judge ruled shortly before 5:00 p.m. that Brookfield has a right to enforce rules inside Zuccotti Park — those rules include no sleeping and no tents in the park. But the lawyers for the protesters claimed after the 5:00 p.m. ruling that there’s nothing barring them from returning. How the protesters will respond to this ruling, announced late Tuesday afternoon, remains an open question. “It’s definitely a lot of figuring out how to create something positive moving forward from the chaos,” said Autumn, an occupier who has taken on many more tasks — media outreach, to name one — in the last 12 hours to fill in for those arrested. “Because there’s a lot of really good energy right now, if you can capture it in a way that moves this protest forward.” Haywood nodded, reflecting on the other mass arrests that have taken place in the last two months at occupations in New York City and around the country. “There is a distinct pattern here: Every escalation of police arrests and violence is met with exponential levels of support.” But that support has yet to fully materialize. While unions have come down to the lower Manhattan and sent supportive press releases, many of those at 50 Broadway said they expected more from organized labor. “Where is the institutional support? I don’t see it,” said Shen Tong, a protester and a former student leader of the Tiananmen square protests in 1989. While it’s too soon to tally the donations gained, the support on the street from unions and other organized groups, Tong said, has been lacking. Haywood said he was withholding his full judgement until this evening’s General Assembly, where he said he expects — and hopes — to see greater crowds. Today, he estimated, was an average turnout for a Tuesday, no more. “I’m waiting to see what happens tonight, but it does worry me.” “I’m very disappointed,” Tong said. “Events like last night, this is usually how you escalate and deepen the movement. But so far, on the streets, we see more uniforms than anything else.” “It’s not clear yet if this is a movement or a moment,” he went on, surrounded by exhausted occupiers and half eaten take-out. “If this is a moment, we’re facing some serious problems. If this is a movement this could be the best thing that’s happened to us.” HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN In a movement that has elevated the drum circle to an icon of social change and a target of heated controversy and ire, it seems fitting that possibly the first person to have warned the protesters of the coming raid was a famous drummer. At about 10 p.m. Monday night, QuestLove, the drummer for the hip-hop band The Roots, was driving down South Street when he saw something that made him reach for whatever device he Tweets with. “Something bout to go down yo,” he wrote, “swear I counted 1000 rito [sic] gear cops bout to pull sneak attack.” By 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, QuestLove’s predication had come true. Hundreds of police officers had descended on the park, evicting protesters and arresting those who stood in their way. According to occupiers, the police announced that they had 15 minutes to gather their belongings and get out. Kevin Sheneberger, a 28-year-old cook who participates in the information working group, said that he’d learned of the raid while sitting in a bar with a number of other protesters who had gone out to celebrate a successful meeting. They immediately ran over to the park, where, he said, a police official told protesters to leave and promised they’d be able to retrieve their belongings at a later time. Sheneberger said he then watched as the police gathered tents, sleeping bags, bicycle generators, raw food, thousands of books from the group’s library and countless other belongings, and then threw the property into the open mouths of several New York City sanitation trucks waiting by the sidewalk. In the hours after the eviction, protesters circled the blocks surrounding the park, blocked in and corralled by the police at every intersection. A 25-year-old web developer named Leia Doran said the police pushed a crowd of protesters down Broadway shortly after evicting them, prodding them with their nightsticks. She said she was standing in the front line of protesters, urging the police to be careful, when an officer reached out and slapped her with an open hand. “Maybe I’ve been privileged,” she said, “but nothing like that has every happened to me.” Many grabbed what they could and headed over to Foley Square, one of several places outside of the Zuccotti that the OWS movement has claimed as a rallying point and gathering place. There they held a General Assembly session — an “emergency GA,” they called it — and tried to piece together a clear picture of what was happening. A smaller group eventually broke off and marched to a dusty vacant lot on Canal Street and Sixth Avenue. By 9:00 a.m., several hundred protesters had gathered at the Canal Street lot. Soon, the protesters heard that a judge in the New York State Supreme Court named Lucy Billings had issued a temporary restraining order against the city. Billing’s order should have governed affairs at the park until the afternoon hearing in Stallman’s court began around noon, the protesters’ lawyers said. But police refused to allow protesters into the park throughout the day. “This morning, the mayor and this police force knowingly violated a court order when they continued to bar access to the park,” said Yetta Kurland, a member of the National Lawyers Guild who helped secure the early morning emergency court order and represented the protesters in court Tuesday afternoon. “We do not live in a police state. The mayor is also subject to the rule of law.” After congregating at the lot on Canal St. a group of protesters peeled off and marched back to Zuccotti, shouting that they intended to take back the park. Several in the crowd held copies of the court injunction. As the group marched down West Broadway, Murray Street and finally Church Street, the mood got increasingly tense. A protester wearing a brown leather jacket stepped off the curb to avoid walking into a pile of trash bags, and a police officer shoved him with the side of his nightstick and ordered him to get back on the sidewalk. The protester yelled in his face: “You work for me!” At Zuccotti Park, the group found the park blocked off by metal barricades. “You’re in contempt of court!” many shouted at the police. About a hundred protesters marched between two barricades on either side of the sidewalk in an attempt to get to Broadway only to find that the end of the street had been blocked off too, forming a pen. “It’s a trap! It’s a trap!” protesters yelled. The police eventually removed that barricade. Ethan Buckner, 21, was with the group who marched from Sixth and Canal to Zuccotti around 10:00 a.m. When he attempted to show a copy of the ruling to a Brookfield security officer once he arrived at Zuccotti, he was rebuffed. Bruckner and a friend then attempted to jump the barricade. He was immediately tossed to the ground, he said, as six cops and security guards grabbed him and forcefully flung him back over the barricade. A few hours later he was wearing a bandage on his arm. He also said he’d injured his knee. Meanwhile, as many as 200 protesters were winding their way through the gears of the city’s court system. After the police had initially ordered everyone to leave, perhaps 150 protesters disobeyed their orders and were arrested. Several who stayed but managed to evade arrest later said they saw the police fire pepper spray into the faces of immobilized members of the kitchen working group, who had fastened themselves to the kitchen structure with U-shaped bicycle locks around their necks. Throughout the morning and into the afternoon, protesters and media continued to arrive at Zuccotti, where they stood on the sidewalks surrounding the park and waited for news from the courthouse. Some protesters made a show of reading the injunction to the cops and the private security guards stationed around the park. One young man jumped over the barricade waving an American flag, and was promptly arrested. A member of the cigarette-rolling group sat on the sidewalk, offering doses of nicotine and words of encouragement. “Hand-rolled has that love, you know?” he said. Claims of abuse at the hand of the police flew through the crowd on Tuesday afternoon, and there were plenty of media types on hands to listen. A clutch of people with cameras and notepads surrounded a petite woman named Hilary Bettis, who said that police had rammed her with the side of her nightstick 15 or 16 times. “They told me I had no rights,” she said. “I’ve never felt less like a human being in my life.” She also claimed that the police had grabbed a girl who was standing next to her, pulled her out of the crowd, and pressed her face against the pavement. Not everyone outside the park on Tuesday afternoon supported the protest. A man in a beige suit named Alan Feuer, who said he worked on Wall Street as a broker, offered words of sympathy to one of the cops standing by the barricades. He didn’t like the protesters either, he said. “They don’t understand economics. They’re stupid.” At his Tuesday morning press conference, Mayor Bloomberg insisted that the pre-dawn raid was temporary and designed to “reduce the risk of confrontation and to minimize destruction in the surrounding neighborhood.” But, after the 5:00 p.m. ruling affirming Brookfield’s right to enforce no-camping rules in the park, Dan Alterman, a lawyer representing the protesters, questioned the legality of much of the city’s actions over the last 18 hours. “If Mayor Bloomberg was so sure this met constitutional muster, then why did he do it in the dead of night with a phalanx of police officers?” he said to a crowd of reporters gathered on the New York Supreme Court Steps. As of now it remains unclear whether protesters will be able to move back into the park, or if they can’t, how the change will effect the broader movement. Earlier this afternoon, Bill Dobbs, who works in Occupy Wall Street’s public relations group, reflected on the importance of the 33,000 square foot space in downtown Manhattan means. “It’s a sliver of land,” he said. “It’s smaller than a suburban house plot. It’s power comes from the people within it.”

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Obama Says No To World Summit Tradition

November 14, 2011

HONOLULU — Chinese President Hu Jintao in pastels and plumerias? Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sporting pineapples and palm trees? It didn’t happen. President Barack Obama on Sunday chose not to continue a tradition started by President Bill Clinton nearly two decades ago. Leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Obama’s native Hawaii were photographed together in the customary, stodgy presidential wear – neckties and dark suits – not the casual, colorful Hawaiian aloha shirts that many were hoping to see them in. There wasn’t even a single floral lei. “I got rid of the Hawaiian shirts because I looked at pictures of some of the previous APEC meetings and some of the garb that appeared previously and I thought this might be a tradition that we might want to break,” Obama said late Sunday. “I suggested to leaders, we gave them a shirt and I promise you if they wanted to wear it that would have been fine but I didn’t hear a lot of complaints about breaking precedent.” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard stood out by contrast with her white jacket and reddish blouse. The leaders smiled for the quick shot for a sea of photographers amid a backdrop of tropical trees and the blue Pacific Ocean. As the leaders walked toward the APEC photo platform, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera Echenique even asked Obama, “Where are the Hawaiian shirts?” “We are ending that tradition,” Obama replied. Heads of states have posed together in the traditional costumes of the host nation each year at APEC, often making it one of the lighter and memorable moments of the forum. The tradition began the last time the United States hosted APEC. In 1993, Clinton handed out bomber jackets for leaders to wear in their commemorative group photo in the Seattle area. The custom continued through the years: silk tangzhuang jackets in China; long, flowing hanboks in South Korea; ponchos in Peru and sailing jackets in New Zealand. To see leaders in aloha attire was a golden opportunity to market tourism-dependent, cash-strapped Hawaii. The shirts are a symbol of the multicultural history of Hawaii and widely accepted here for everyone from tourists sipping umbrella-adorned drinks beachside to bureaucrats in downtown. Obama hinted that he would skip the shirts at a dinner Saturday he hosted for the leaders. “Two years ago, when I was in Singapore and it was announced that we would be hosting the APEC Summit here in Honolulu, I promised that you would all have to wear aloha shirts or grass skirts,” Obama said. “But I was persuaded by our team to perhaps break tradition, and so we have not required you to wear your aloha shirts, although I understand that a few of you have tried them on for size, and we may yet see you in them in the next several days.” While the Asia-Pacific leaders didn’t don the shirts, there was plenty of aloha around. The APEC host committee had more than 2,000 special APEC aloha shirts made for volunteers. Some Honolulu police officers assigned to crowd control also wore aloha shirts. The shirts first emerged in Hawaii in the 1930s and became accepted business wear in the islands by the 1960s. Designs often carry patterns or fabrics representing many of the Asia-Pacific cultures found here and feature scenes of Hawaii. They have been worn for decades by celebrities and politicians visiting the islands, from Elvis Presley to Richard Nixon. Hu even wore a brown and green patterned one to a luncheon with Hawaii’s governor when he stopped here as China’s vice president in 2002. Obama, however, isn’t the first to skip the tradition. Last year, the host nation Japan skipped the ritual for the first time. Officials cited a tight schedule, and said tight-fitting traditional kimonos might not be suitable for a photo session. The leaders instead wore jackets, slacks, and shirts without neckties to their photo. All eyes will now be on next year’s APEC host, Russia, to see if it revives the tradition and dresses the leaders in rubashka shirts or ushanka fur hats. ___ AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller in Kapolei, Hawaii, contributed to this report. __ Follow Jaymes Song at http://twitter.com/jaymessong

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Obama’s ‘Kindred Spirit’ In Treasury

November 13, 2011

WASHINGTON — As friends, donors, cabinet members and celebrities like Tom Hanks, Jay-Z and Stevie Wonder partied at the White House one evening last August to celebrate President Obama’s 50th birthday, the president tapped a lesser-known guest on the shoulder.

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White House Ready To Make GOP Pay For $1,000 Failure

November 10, 2011

WASHINGTON — Top officials in the Obama administration on Thursday outlined a major end-of-the-year push to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut, pledging to make Republicans take a political hit for inaction. In a background briefing with reporters, two senior administration officials repeatedly warned they would make an example of GOP lawmakers adjourning in December without acting on that major component of the president’s job package. “I think it is going to be very dramatic as we count down towards the end of the year and the clock is ticking on whether the average person’s taxes are going to go up $1,000 next year,” said one official. “It is going to be certainly an organizing principle and a focusing principle for this debate, and we are going to make the argument as clearly as we can. … Congress cannot leave town and on their way out of town wave to the American people and say, ‘We just raised your taxes $1,000.’” “I do think making sure that the public understands that Congress ought to do something before they leave town, I think we can zero in some attention on that,” the official added. With the payroll tax cut set to expire at the end of 2011, the White House is increasingly looking to the lead-up to the year-end holiday recess as the make-or-break moment for the policy’s future. While the Senate’s adjournment date is not yet determined, the House of Representatives is eyeing a Dec. 8 end to the legislative calendar . Both adjournments will likely be pushed back as lawmakers weigh a host of other legislative matters before heading back to their districts. “I find it hard to believe that these members of Congress are going to go to National Airport on December 23 and go home, and basically tell their constituents your taxes are going up $1,000 next year and we didn’t do anything to help the economy,” said one administration official. The simpler legislative route for the White House may be to make a big push on the payroll tax cut prior to the Thanksgiving break. In previous briefings, administration officials have argued as much. On Nov. 23, the deficit-reduction super committee is supposed to offer its set of recommendations. The president and his staff have made little secret of their desire to see the super committee tuck the payroll tax cut extension (along with other elements of the president’s jobs package) into that proposal. Democratic aides on Capitol Hill have largely agreed. But there remain obstacles. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Republican leadership, has said he opposes extending the payroll tax cut on the grounds that it’s undermining the solvency of Social Security’s trust fund. Other GOP lawmakers have objected to Democratic efforts to put a surtax on millionaires as a means of offsetting the extension, which is projected to cost $145 billion. Still others have argued that, rather than extending the tax cut for an additional year or so, the White House and Congress should work to make it permanent. Asked about the latter argument, a senior administration official said any discussion of making the tax cut permanent would likely have to take place in the context of negotiations on broader tax reform. And with the Bush-era income tax cuts set to expire at the end of 2012, those talks are about a year away. As for the offset for the payroll tax cut, the senior officials were pressed by reporters as to why there needed to be an offset at all. The payroll tax cut was originally passed without corresponding revenue savings elsewhere. Although deficit reduction hysteria has since taken over Capitol Hill, there is some economic merit (it would prove more stimulative to the economy) to doing that again. “It is too early to begin to speculate about [dropping the millionaire's surtax],” the official said. “But I will say that every element of our jobs bill can be paid for.”

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Lynn Forester de Rothschild: Restoring Capitalism — Restoring America

November 10, 2011

Although portrayed as opposites, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protesters are essentially kissing cousins, both with important contributions to make to America. Neither movement believes that our nation is working for them. They see a society rigged by big government, big labor and big business against the people. They have a point. Ironically, they would each be more persuasive if they acted together, instead of allowing themselves to be exploited by the squabbling and ineffective political parties. Engagement in a war of attrition dilutes the power of both groups. However, the two movements could claim victory if they force our nation to rethink and rebuild our economy and our civil society based on a shared belief in the best of our democratic values and capitalist roots. President Obama has broken trust with the American people. Not only has he left us more bitterly divided than ever imaginable, but since the beginning of his presidency, 1.3 million more Americans are unemployed, 913,000 private sector jobs have been destroyed, 13 million people have been added to food stamp dependency and over 6 million have lost their homes. While our economy needs 90,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with our national birth rate, we have reached that threshold only 9 times since February 2009. All that is bad enough, but at the same time our government has increased our debt burden from $5.8 trillion in 2008 (40.3% of GDP) to over $9 trillion in 2011 (67% of GDP). And, our annual federal government budget deficit has grown from $458 billion in 2008 to $1.4 trillion in 2011. Only 19% of Americans “always” or “mostly” trust the government to do what is right, down from 75% in 1958. Millions are fed up and are opting to “starve the beast”. That is not crazy. In light of all this, the government’s disproportionate protection of the financial sector is appalling. The implied guarantee for “too big to fail” banks, a tax regime that levies lower tax rates on financial engineers making millions at hedge funds and private equity funds than on earners in any other industry, and the failure of banks to loosen financing for small and medium sized businesses hurts the majority. Lending to small and medium businesses has fallen to $607 billion from $711 billion in 2008. This is in spite of the June 2011 report by the Federal Reserve that excess reserves at banks totals nearly $1.57 trillion — 20 times what banks need to satisfy their reserve requirements. These realities provide evidence of collusion between the political and financial elites. Frustration, even anger, with this state of our country is not insane or unreasonable. But, to blame either a duplicitous government or a greedy private sector is too simple. Instead, we need to ask all sides to put aside their divisive rhetoric and work together to restore the shared greatness of America. Although abused in recent years, capitalism has been the bedrock of our prosperity and our fairness. In order for our economy to lift all of our citizens, our economy will need to be powered by the private sector and government will have to take actions that are anathema to the vested interests of both parties. We must find common ground to reform our tax system, eliminate most tax subsidies, recalibrate our regulations, restructure our entitlement programs, re-create a smaller and wiser government and establish private-public partnerships for many essential tasks. We have had leadership in America in the past that has brought us together in this way. Bill Clinton had it right in his State of the Union Address in 1996 when he said, “the era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the era of fending for yourself. We have to go forward to the era of working together as a community, as a team, as one America, with all of us reaching across these lines that divide us — the division, the discrimination, the rancor — we have to reach across it to find common ground. We have got to work together if we want America to work”. The Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements both have legitimate gripes. We need to be what we have always been; a nation that creates better opportunities for a greater number of people. It is through the hopes and dreams and hard work of the believers in the American Dream that our differences will disappear and our confidence will return. After all, deep down in our soul we know that with inspired leadership, which we sorely lack right now, success, and even outrageous fortune, should be available to anyone who works hard and plays by the rules in America. Lynn Forester de Rothschild is CEO of EL Rothschild, LLC and the co-Chair of the “Better Values, Better Markets” Task Force at the Henry Jackson Society in London.

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Obama’s Latest Executive Order

November 9, 2011

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is coming out against swag. That’s swag, as in the coffee mugs, pens, T-shirts and other public relations articles that federal government agencies purchase with taxpayer money to promote their work. The swag ban is part of an executive order the president will sign on Wednesday to cut waste and make government more efficient. Obama has been using his executive powers on modest proposals to promote job creation, assist homeowners and consumers, or alleviate spending. Besides putting an end to the promotional gear, the new order directs agencies to reduce travel spending, cut back on cellphones and laptops issued to employees, cut down the size of the executive vehicle fleet and post documents online instead of printing them – measures that individually would hardly merit a White House news release. The administration’s goal is to cut spending by 20 percent in areas covered by the executive order. “We’re cutting what we don’t need so that we can invest in what we do need,” Obama said in a statement. The president was expected to make brief remarks on the administrative action Wednesday after signing the executive order in the Oval Office. The White House on Wednesday also plans to announce four finalists in a cost-saving contest among federal government employees. One finalist suggested the creation of a tool “lending library,” another proposed ending the purchase of U.S. code books that are already available online. Among examples cited by the White House of cost-cutting already under way are the Internal Revenue Service’s plan to cut 27 percent of its travel costs by relying more on teleconferences and webinars and the Homeland Security Department’s decision to conduct annual audits to reduce the number of unused cellphones and air cards. At the Commerce Department, the White House said, the agency has reduced the number of fleet drivers to one for all top departmental officials, including for new Secretary John Bryson.

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Jed Kolko: October Jobs Report: Disappointing News for the Housing Market

November 7, 2011

The October jobs report was disappointing for the housing market: construction job growth was down 0.5 percent (annualized) versus last quarter, and unemployment among 25-34 year-olds rose to 9.8 percent. However, one bright spot was that job growth in “clobbered cities” was strong at 2.4 percent (annualized). Today’s new numbers on jobs and unemployment in October show how the economy is doing overall. Economic recovery is essential for housing demand to pick up. We track three indicators in the monthly jobs report that matter most for housing to understand whether the recovery in housing demand is underway, approaching, or still far off. These include: 1) Construction job growth 2) Unemployment among 25-34 year-olds 3) Job growth in cities clobbered by the housing bust Construction job growth Why does this indicator matter for housing? Construction jobs are at the heart of the virtuous or vicious cycle that connects jobs and housing. Housing demand leads to more jobs in construction and related industries, and more jobs means more income and housing demand. Construction job growth is a key indicator of whether this cycle is spiraling downward or spinning upward. What happened this month? In October, construction employment fell month-over-month and declined by 0.5 percent versus three months ago (seasonally adjusted annualized rate) and is essentially unchanged from October 2010. Total employment in all industries grew by 1.0 percent in the last three months. Construction employment growth has not quite caught up to the overall job growth rate, after contracting sharply in 2007-2009 and still lagging behind overall job growth in 2010. Construction jobs in October were 4.2 percent of total U.S. employment, down from 5.7 percent at the height of the housing boom below the normal range around 5 percent. Construction employment still has a lot of catching up to do to get back to its pre-boom share of overall jobs. Unemployment among 25-34 year-olds Why does this indicator matter for housing? Between the ages of 25 and 34 is prime time when many people form households with a spouse, partner, roommate, or by themselves, then start families and buy their first home. During and after the recession, household formation dropped for this age group, and more of them than ever are living with parents or other adults rather than renting or owning their own place. These folks will wait to form their own households and consider homeownership only when their job prospects improve. A key measure for housing demand and homeownership is the unemployment rate for this group and the share of this age group that is employed. What happened this month? In October, the unemployment rate for 25-34 year-olds rose to 9.8 percent from 9.7 percent in September and is at its highest level since December 2010. The unemployment rate for all adults, in contrast, fell from 9.1 percent to 9.0 percent. In October, 73.5 percent of 25-34 year-olds were employed (the rest are unemployed or not in the labor force because they’re in school, discouraged from looking, or not looking for other reasons), down from 73.7 percent in September and 73.9 percent in August. Before and during the boom, almost 80 percent of this age group was employed. The job market remains tough for this key age group: before the recession, unemployment for 25-34 year-olds followed the overall rate pretty much exactly, but has remained stubbornly above the all-adults rate even as the unemployment rate has drifted down slowly. Job growth in “clobbered cities” Why does this indicator matter for housing? The housing bust had unequal effects nationally, with many local markets in Florida, the Southwest, inland California and Michigan facing some of the largest price declines and highest vacancy rates. Job growth anywhere will boost housing demand, but compared to other places, these clobbered cities are in more desperate need of motivated homebuyers to help their local housing markets recover. We define “clobbered cities” as metro areas where home prices dropped at least 30 percent during the bust (according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency house price index ) and where vacancy rates are still over 7 percent (excluding seasonal or vacation homes, according to the 2010 Census). Metro-level BLS data are released several weeks after the national data, so this indicator is for the previous month. What happened this month? Job growth in clobbered cities grew 2.4 percent in September relative to three months ago (seasonally adjusted annualized rate). The comparable national figure for September was 0.9 percent so these “clobbered cities” had faster job growth than the U.S. overall. That’s a big change from the recession, when job growth in these metros lagged the U.S. Among these clobbered cities, job growth was especially high in Tucson, Phoenix, Riverside-San Bernardino and Tampa, but other Florida metros — like Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando — lost jobs in the last quarter. Links: October 2011 BLS Employment Situation Summary Additional jobs and unemployment data

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Shadow Economy World’s Second Largest

November 7, 2011

By Freakonomics : In 2009, the OECD concluded that half the world’s workers (almost 1.8 billion people) were employed in the shadow economy. By 2020, the OECD predicts the shadow economy will employ two-thirds of the world’s workers. This new economy even has a name: “System D.” In a new article (accompanying photoessay here ) for Foreign Policy , Robert Neuwirth explains: System D is a slang phrase pirated from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The French have a word that they often use to describe particularly effective and motivated people. They call them debrouillards. To say a man is a debrouillard is to tell people how resourceful and ingenious he is. The former French colonies have sculpted this word to their own social and economic reality. Read the entire post here, or more Freakonomics content below: – Read more from Freakonomics here : – How Far Along Are We Towards Reducing Healthcare Spending? – The Pricing Strategy Of Omelets

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The Center for Public Integrity: As they lobby for a tax holiday, some big multinational players say they’ve got plenty of cash on hand

November 4, 2011

By John Aloysius Farrell and Aaron Mehta , iWatch News As select U.S. multinational corporations push for a tax holiday on a trillion dollars parked overseas, their own recent financial reports undermine the arguments they are making for preferential treatment on Capitol Hill. Proponents of the tax break for “repatriated” overseas earnings say that bringing the money home will give U.S. corporations an infusion of cash, stimulating investment and creating jobs. But an iWatch News survey of some major players in the tax repatriation debate found that corporations, far from being cash-starved, are sitting on billions of dollars of liquid assets. In new filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and conference calls with Wall Street analysts, some big players flatly say they don’t need the tax holiday. Firms like Microsoft and Oracle, Google and Apple have tens of billions in cash stashed offshore, and lots more here at home. “We currently do not intend nor foresee a need to repatriate these funds,” the Microsoft Corp. said in its latest quarterly report . “We expect existing domestic cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, and cash flow from operations to continue to be sufficient.” Microsoft said it had $57.4 billion in cash and other liquid sources on hand, with $51 billion of that kept overseas. Though it rests in offshore accounts, the lion’s share of Microsoft’s money is already invested in U.S. assets. The firm says it has socked 83 percent of the billions it holds offshore in U.S. government securities, U.S. corporate bonds and U.S. mortgage-backed securities. The story was much the same at Google Inc., which reported its corporate coffers held $42.6 billion, with $20.2 billion of that stashed overseas. “Our intent is to permanently reinvest these funds outside of the U.S. and our current plans do not demonstrate a need to repatriate them,” Google said. “Our sources of funding will be sufficient to satisfy our currently anticipated cash requirements through at least the next 12 months.” Google and Microsoft are members of WIN America , a coalition of US multinationals and trade groups pushing for the tax break. The holiday could cost the U.S. Treasury as much as $80 billion , one reason why its prospects are mixed as Washington remains inundated by a lake of red ink. Yet 80 members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have signed up as co-sponsors . Some 70 of those co-sponsors have received almost a million dollars in campaign contributions from WIN-affiliated companies since the start of 2009. WIN and its members have spent millions lobbying Congress, and employ dozens of lobbyists, to press for the tax break, iWatch News has reported. Need aside, the payoff could be huge. A similar tax holiday in 2004 cut the 35 percent corporate tax rate to 5.25 percent for repatriating companies. American firms face a 35 percent corporate income tax at home, but money earned overseas is taxed only by the country of origin until it is returned to the United States, at which time an additional tax is levied to make up any difference and restore the rate to 35 percent. If the rate was dropped to 5 percent, “the amount of corporate cash that would come flooding into the country could be…used for creating jobs, investing in research, building plants, purchasing equipment and other uses,” wrote John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems, and Safra Catz, the president of Oracle Corp., in an op-ed last year in The Wall Street Journal . However, after a number of deductions and tax breaks are employed, the effective tax rate for U.S. corporations is often much lower. And critics of the repatriation proposal, pointing to a previous tax holiday in 2004 , say that the influx of cash will not create jobs, but will be spent instead to benefit shareholders and corporate executives, via higher dividends and stock repurchasing plans. “They should use the cash they already have here at home to invest in America rather than ask for still another break,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told iWatch News . U.S. firms are flush with cash, analysts from the Heritage Foundation noted last month, and can easily borrow at bargain rates if they need to raise funds. “The repatriation holiday would have little or no effect on investment and job creation, the key to the whole issue, simply because the repatriating companies are not capital-constrained today,” the Heritage report said. “Any investment, any action that they would deem worthwhile today can be and is being financed by current and accumulated earnings.” Apple Inc. is a prime example. In its latest annual report , filed on Oct. 26, Apple noted record sales and profits, and plans to expand its network of retail stores and its lines of iconic products. But Apple does not need a tax break to finance its plans for expansion. The firm’s report shows that it is sitting on some $81 billion in cash and cash equivalents, up 60 percent during 2011. America’s education system, not taxes, is what keeps Apple from employing more Americans, according to a new biography of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs. Author Walter Isaacson recounts that Jobs told President Obama that the company employed 700,000 workers in China, instead of the United States, because of a lack of qualified American engineers. Other cash-rich firms have been acquiring new subsidiaries and letting go “redundant workers,” or distributing wealth to shareholders and corporate executives. Another prominent member of the WIN America coalition is Pfizer, the pharmaceutical firm that manufactures such popular products as Lipitor and Viagra. Speaking to Wall Street analysts on Tuesday, the firm’s executives were focused on slimming down its workforce, and buying back shares – not creating jobs. “We are…focused on shareholder value,” CEO Ian Read told the analysts. The company hopes to boost its dividends, and has spent $6.5 billion this year repurchasing shares of the company’s stock as part of an ongoing buyback program that it hopes will reach $9 billion this year. Meanwhile, the Pfizer executives said they cut 4,100 jobs in 2011, as part of an ongoing company-wide purge of redundant positions from recent acquisitions. Pfizer was the single biggest benefactor of the 2004 tax holiday, when it took advantage of a cut-rate “one time” 5.25 percent tax rate to bring back $37 billion from overseas. In a paper for the nonpartisan New America Foundation , cited by WIN America, economist Laura D’Andrea Tyson and two Berkeley associates say that the trickle-down effects from rewarding stockholders could be significant. Tyson and her colleagues acknowledge that 74 percent of the money brought back to the US in a tax holiday would probably be distributed to shareholders in the form of dividend payments or stock repurchases. But for every dollar returned to a stockholder, Tyson says, from 25 to 40 cents will be used by higher-income Americans to go shopping. The boost to the economy, when combined with direct hiring and investment, could ultimately lead to the creation of between 1.3 million and 2.5 million jobs. Tyson serves on the board of directors of Kodak, a member of the WIN America group. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, serves as chairman of the New America Foundation. WIN America, when asked to comment, declined. Microsoft also rewarded shareholders. It spent $1 billion in the 90 days prior to its Sept. 30 report buying 38 million shares as part of its ongoing stock repurchase program. A similar tale was told by software giant Oracle. “Our current cash…will be sufficient to meet our working capital, capital expenditures and contractual obligation requirements,” Oracle reported to the SEC. And “we could fund any future acquisitions, dividend payments and repurchases of common stock or debt with our internally available cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, cash generated from operations, additional borrowings or from the issuance of additional securities.” Oracle is in the midst of an $8 billion stock repurchase program, and purchased 27.5 million shares for $823 million in the three months ending Aug. 31. It is paying dividends and has its own robust merger and acquisition strategy, which in recent years has led to thousands of layoffs. Though not as flush as Apple, Cisco Systems reported that it held $44 billion in cash, with $39.8 billion of that stashed overseas. The company used $6.8 billion last year to benefit shareholders in the latest stage of a long term $82 billion stock repurchasing plan. At the same time, Cisco said, it was paring its workforce by 6,500 employees to beef up its bottom line. Requests for comment, by phone to Microsoft and Pfizer and by email to Google, were not returned. Continue this story and read more investigations at iWatch News

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Restaurant Near Occupy Wall Street Lays Off 21 Employees

November 2, 2011

Steel police barricades near the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York’s Zuccotti Park are hurting some nearby businesses — and have led at least one restaurant owner to lay off employees . Marc Epstein, owner of Milk Street Cafe, said the metal barriers are reducing foot-traffic and forced him to lay off 21 of his 120 workers last week amidst plummeting sales . The restaurant’s troubles have not been uncommon . Several small businesses in the vicinity of New York’s protests and near similar gatherings in city centers across the country have reported that they are feeling the effects of the Occupy movement, as the protests prompt local police to erect barriers and take security measures that may be deterring customers . “The barricades have created a siege mentality down here that is bad for business,” said Epstein, whose cafe is located across the street from where protesters first started camping out six weeks ago. Since then, Epstein said he has seen his restaurant’s sales plummet by more than 30 percent, as the metal barriers police use to cordon off protesters block easy access to the cafe’s front door. His repeated calls to police to remove the blockades have gone unanswered. Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, did not immediately respond to e-mails requesting comment. “The police concerns about safety are legitimate,” Epstein said. “I just wish that, in their desire to maintain the peaceful environment, we not be the sacrificial lamb.”

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Jared Bernstein: Why No Action on Jobs?

October 31, 2011

Why, you may be wondering, do politicians refuse to take the necessary fiscal steps to dislodge the unemployment rate from its elevated perch of 9.1%? Why, to the contrary, do they seem if anything intent on austerity measure that will push it in the wrong direction? I can think of three reasons: 1) They want the president to fail; 2) They don’t believe fiscal measures will work; 3) They irrationally fear a higher budget deficit, even temporarily. Re 1, what can anyone say? If you’re willilling to throw the economy under the bus to gain political advantage, you — not the millions hurt by your actions — should be the one who loses his job. Re 2, I’ve got more sympathy for you. Folks have a hard time accepting counterfactuals — the idea that things would have been worse absent the Recovery Act. But the evidence is at this point pretty plain to see: here, where the economy improved while the Recovery Act was in place and stumbled as fiscal stimulus come off too soon, in the UK, where austerity is clearly stifling growth, and in southern Europe as well. Re 3, it can’t be emphasized enough that temporary spending measures, even large one, are not what drive the long-term debt problem. Note how the Recovery Act — all $800 billion of it — adds nothing to the growth of the debt/GDP ratio starting around now. The culprit there would be the Bush tax cuts — it’s the permanent spending, not the temporary stuff that whacks you here. I’m all for laying the groundwork to get on a sustainable budget path once the private sector is back in the business of creating jobs for people here in America. For now, the question regarding budget deficits should be: are they large enough to help pick up the slack until that moment arrives?

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Midwest Occupy Wall Street Protesters Seek To Highlight Foreclosure Mess

October 28, 2011

As the Occupy Wall Street movement enters its seventh week of protest against income inequality, some Midwestern Occupiers are zeroing in on housing issues affecting their communities. Occupy Minneapolis successfully pressured U.S. Bank this week to postpone a Twin Cities woman’s eviction . Now they’re planning “Operation F,” a campaign pushing for a foreclosure moratorium by occupying foreclosed homes. “What we started to do was to make preparations, digging in and taking the occupations to peoples’ homes,” said Ben Egerman, a protester at Occupy Minneapolis. The protesters will go to houses where the homeowners face eviction and ‘occupy’ the homes to highlight the ongoing mortgage mess. And in Iowa, Occupy activists met Thursday with state Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading a nationwide investigation of bad faith foreclosure dealings by big banks, to voice their concerns. Homeowner advocates fear the attorneys general will reach a settlement that is not tough enough on banks, despite the potential for it being the largest multi-state settlement since the agreement with tobacco companies in 1998 . “I’m still not sure if the settlement committee is going to require the banks pay anywhere near as much as they should, but that’s a hard number to get your arm around,” Ed Fallon said after he left the meeting with Miller and his staff. Fallon, a onetime gubernatorial candidate, was a state legislator for more than a decade. Now he’s active with Occupy Des Moines . When Fallon first proposed an ad hoc “Attorney General Bank Settlement Committee” at an the group’s General Assembly, the protest’s governing body, activists worried the settlement would be too small compared with the amount of abuse suffered by homeowners. But they felt since their Attorney General was leading the case, they had a shot at national influence. Some of the protesters involved with Occupy Des Moines said they were on hand when Miller said last December that he ” would put people in jail ” as a result of the investigation. They said they worried Miller wouldn’t follow through thanks in part to increased campaign contributions from the financial sector he’s brought in since taking the helm of the investigation. But Fallon said he left this week’s meeting feeling a little more at ease that the investigation would not be the be-all-end-all of the mortgage crisis. “We are focused on homeowners, not investors,” Geoff Greenwood, communications director for Miller, told HuffPost on Friday. “This case is about foreclosure and servicing issues, including robo-signing, and we do intend to leave the door open for attorneys general and others to pursue issues beyond the scope of this settlement. This case will not address everything connected with the housing crisis. There are many other pieces.” Twin Cities resident Ruth Murman connected with Occupy Minneapolis, and by Wednesday she was thanking them at a rally outside of downtown Minneapolis banks for helping push back on her eviction, according to the Star Tribune . Murman was trying to get an extension on her eviction by U.S. Bank. She had financial trouble when economy tanked and her business, day care and convalescence center for pets, lost money. Egerman said Murman’s case energized their members. And after hearing about Murman’s story, he said, dozens more people facing evictions and foreclosure asked them for help. “Members were potentially interested in this and there’s no question people were incredibly interested in helping people as much as possible,” he said. Egerman said they’re trying to help people who have been “screwed over by a bank” and are being kicked out of their homes. In the case of Murman’s eviction, Egerman said it showed the small concrete victories they could win as Occupy Minneapolis. While in Iowa, Fallon said “Our primary goal to make Wall Street pay,” adding with caution: “It looks like Wall Street is going to pay.”

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Private College Students Arrive At Zuccotti Park To Air Complaints

October 28, 2011

NEW YORK — Since graduating from Ithaca College in May, Nathan Grant has searched high and low for steady work. After spending the summer renting kayaks at a local campground, Grant moved back in with his parents in Little Egg Harbor, N.J. In mid-September, Grant first read about Occupy Wall Street online. He said he felt a deep connection to the movement early on, motivated to join it not only because of his struggle to find a job, but also because of the $90,000 in student loan debt that now hangs like an albatross around his neck. A little over a week ago, Grant, 22, moved into lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. He has yet to return home. “I got a degree so I wouldn’t be in this position,” said Grant, who has worn the same gray beanie and gray hoodie all week long. His student loans are currently in deferment, though interest continues to accrue. “Like a lot of the people now living in this park, I’ve had the toughest time finding work.” Private college students and recent graduates living in the New York area have gravitated toward Zuccotti Park to join a community where they feel comfortable airing their frustrations and making their demands known. For students attending private colleges, fears about being able to finance their costly degrees are a particular burden. An annual study released earlier this week by the College Board found that average costs at private colleges have continued to climb . The College Board reported that tuition and fees at private colleges had risen 4.5 percent to $28,500 a year. Many college students have flocked to the Occupy Wall Street movement in recent weeks, citing rising amounts of student loan debt and increasing rates of joblessness . Nationwide, an estimated 150 campuses have staged walkouts — with Occupy Colleges, a student-led grassroots coalition, planning additional teach-ins during the middle of next week . Nate Barchus, a 23-year-old recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, counts himself among the “overeducated and underemployed.” Barchus, who stood sweeping the Occupy Wall Street library early Friday morning, is about $25,000 in debt. Earlier this fall, he first heard about the protests on Facebook and soon arrived in Manhattan, where he had hoped to find work. “I came here for a job search and was so demoralized by the lack of meaningful jobs that I figured this was a more valuable use of my time,” said Barchus, who, despite the frigid weekend forecast, plans to remain camped out in the park indefinitely. Last weekend, Sara Bachman paid a three-day visit to Zuccotti Park during her fall break at Middlebury College. Bachman, a 20-year-old environmental studies and religion major, grew up near Portland, Maine, in an upper-middle-class home. Her mother is a school nurse and her father is an emergency room physician. Come graduation day, Bachman said she faces between $30,000 and $40,000 in student loan debt. While her school participated in a campus-wide solidarity protest a few weeks back, Bachman wanted to see Occupy Wall Street with her own eyes. Alongside two other Middlebury students, Bachman plopped her backpack and sleeping bag down on an unoccupied stretch of concrete in Zuccotti Park and prepared to spend Saturday night. Though Bachman returned to Vermont in time for Wednesday’s classes, she said the sense of community and passion she discovered among the fellow protesters not only filled her with a sense of hopefulness about the future, but is likely to fuel her return later this year. When Grant heard about Occupy Wall Street, he also felt compelled to experience it firsthand. By his own admission, Grant grew up poor. He’s the first person in his family to graduate from college. His mother looks after an elderly woman and his father wraps meat at a local grocery store. Grant made the hour-and-a-half trip into Manhattan in the back of a van owned by his brother’s boss. Though he’d only visited Manhattan two or three times before, he walked from Pennsylvania Station on 34th Street to Zuccotti Park. Since Grant initially planned to stay only a week, he brought along just a few changes of clothes, some cologne, deodorant, toothpaste, a toothbrush and a tent. The first night, he said he nearly froze to death without a sleeping bag. In order to last the winter, Grant has realized he’ll have to acquire some heavy-duty outdoor gear. So far, Grant said he has yet to meet many other recent graduates or current students living in the park. “Everyone says this a youth movement, but I don’t see that many youth,” said Grant, who eventually wants to go back to school to become an elementary school teacher but refuses to take on more debt until he’s paid off his undergraduate loans. “But where is everyone?”

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Lloyd Chapman: Obama Jobs Bill Ignores Basic Principle of Job Creation: Small Businesses Create All the Jobs

October 27, 2011

Imagine that you’re President Obama and one of your economic advisers tells you that you can create millions of jobs without raising or cutting taxes and without any additional spending. Now imagine that same adviser telling you that you already know what the plan is, and in fact, you promised to fulfill it during your presidential campaign. In February 2008, Barack Obama stated , “Small businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy and we must protect this great resource. It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.” Every year billions of dollars in federal contracts awarded to companies like Lockheed Martin , General Electric and British Aerospace are recorded as small business contracts, which helps the government appear to be trying to hit its congressionally mandated 23 percent small business contracting goal. During FY 2010, 60 of the top 100 small business federal contractors were actually large businesses. It costs a fortune to win an election, even more to stay in office, and big companies have funds to foot the bill. There are enough of these contracts to buy the House and the Senate, which is at the root of the problem. Without money or lobbying power, even the most vigilant small businesses barely stand a chance, and it’s killing the middle class. There is irrefutable proof that small businesses create virtually all net new jobs. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau , since 1989, small businesses have created 90 percent of all net new jobs. Large businesses destroyed more jobs than they created almost every year from 2000 to 2008. The Kauffman Foundation says that young firms, which are also small, have created virtually 100 percent of all net new jobs since 1980. Congress understood this in 1953 when they passed the Small Business Act, which remains the statutory mandate that the federal government award 23 percent of contracts to legitimate small businesses. Unfortunately, that goal might as well be in outer space. The federal government has never come close. It is difficult to pin down the actual federal acquisition budget, but it seems to be about $1 trillion, which means small businesses should receive about $230 billion annually. Based on data the American Small Business League (ASBL) has collected through the Freedom of Information Act and by simply looking at the federal government’s own publicly available data, we estimate that small businesses are receiving closer to $50 billion annually. The federal government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the world. Small businesses need those contracts, not the tax cuts proposed in the president’s jobs bill. If you own a business and the government cuts your payroll tax, you’re not going to hire more employees. Tax cuts don’t create demand. You’re going to hire more employees when demand goes up, which is where the federal government could work wonders for the economy by directing federal contracts to small business, where all the jobs are created. I drafted legislation that would finally stop the government from spending in all the wrong places. The bill is H.R. 3184, “The Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act of 2011,” and was introduced in the House by Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson. The Small Business Act says that to be considered small, a business must be independently owned, which means not publicly traded. H.R. 3184 would prevent any publicly traded company from receiving small business contracts. If President Obama really wants to create jobs, he’ll stick to his campaign promise and support H.R. 3184, or he will issue an executive order that simply states, “The federal government will no longer report contracts awarded to publicly traded companies as small business contracts.” That would create more jobs and do more to save our devastated economy than anything he has ever proposed.

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Michael G. Winston: On Wall Street Protestors

October 22, 2011

It is almost surreal. Concerns over Wall Street practices and economic inequality that have led to sit-ins and rallies in New York and elsewhere reverberated up to the White House last Thursday, with President Obama saying the protesters are expressing the frustrations of the American public. The president said he understood the public’s concerns about how the nation’s financial system works and said Americans see Wall Street as an example of the financial industry “not always following the rules.” True enough. However, only days earlier, these same Americans, who have been long-suffering victims, were the target of his criticism. President Obama recently told an Orlando television reporter that our country has “grown soft.” He also acknowledged that some “folks” have not been playing by “the rules.” Mr. President, the country has not “grown soft” and the issue is less about playing “by the rules” than it is about enforcing the law for those who do not. When people do not obey the law, whether rich or poor, it is expected that they will be held accountable. Securities fraud is a crime; insider trading is a crime; market manipulation is a crime. So, too, are perjury, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. It appears to many that what has “gone soft” is our Justice system. People are frustrated that the government appears to have more time, resources and interest in prosecuting professional athletes for alleged steroid use than white collar criminals causing cataclysmic financial setbacks to tens of millions of people. Not a single architect the financial crisis that has brought the U.S. to its knees has yet been charged. Americans wonder why not. Americans feel a sense of deep frustration and helplessness in the face of the mounting oppressive problems that the gasping economy and rudderless leadership in Congress have engendered. This growing public outcry shouldn’t be surprising at all. This is not new; it has been building for years. It has been exacerbated by a perceived inconsistent strategy, weak leadership and failed policies. Use the word “recovery” all you want; but Americans feel we have been in a recession for over three years. A year ago, former Medtronic CEO and current Harvard Professor, Bill George stated … The highly visible corporate leadership failures of recent years have deeply shaken public confidence in business leaders. All too often these leaders have placed self-interest ahead of the well-being of their organizations. After the companies got in trouble, their leaders then refused to take responsibility for the harm caused to the people they served. The problems at British Petroleum, Hewlett-Packard, and failed Wall Street firms, along with the actions of dozens of leaders who failed in the post-Enron era, are glaring examples of these lapses in leadership. Consequently, there has been a widespread and dramatic loss of trust in business and political leaders in the past decade. People are angry and suspicious. Can you blame them? This is almost all-pervasive. The Harvard Center for Public Leadership 2009 National Leadership Index revealed that 69 percent of those surveyed believe there is a leadership crisis in the U.S., with politicians, media, finance, and business leaders getting the lowest ratings. The same is true in Europe. This is even more the case in 2011. Very discouraging. What can we do to repair the visibly eroding standards of leadership? We must turn up the heat on our leaders. We must further turn the heat up on elected officials to uphold the law. Also, let’s hold ourselves to the highest exemplary standards. Not out of fear of legal consequences. And despite the most prominent examples to the contrary. First, we can strive to be role models of leadership that exude the following leadership qualities… • The vision to spell out clearly what we will do for those who depend upon us. • The drive to share that vision broadly with those who have the biggest stake in our success. • The courage to challenge the status quo, stimulate the change, and to make decisions that move us forward in even the most difficult times. • The ability to inspire people to action, individually and in teams, to achieve our goals. • The foresight to empower people to learn new skills and stretch their capabilities to higher levels of achievement. • The wisdom to listen, learn, and translate that knowledge into higher performance. • The willingness to recognize accomplishments and celebrate successes. • The integrity to serve as a good example through actions that consistently reinforce our basic values. Implementing a new strategy requires a leader who can drive an organization, energize its operations, and inspire its people. This kind of leader must personify the organization’s purpose, through values, thinking, and character – all necessary to inspire and energize commitment to the strategy and goals of the leader and to secure the allegiances required to make any bold purpose succeed. Clearly, an essential element of leadership is trust. High performance leaders and organizations believe that words and deeds should match and have the guts and intestinal fortitude to keep their promises through thick and thin, in good times and bad. It is in translating the commitment to consistent, purposeful action, often under fire (business downturn, budget crisis, etc.) that the true test of leadership is passed or failed. Without the requisite character and integrity, the organization is “built to fail” not “built to last.” According to the infamous Edward R. Murrow: To be persuasive, we must be believable; To be believable, we must be credible; To be credible, we must be truthful. Second, we can uphold the law and prosecute lawbreakers, including “white collar criminals”, no matter how highly placed or cozy with government officials. As highlighted in the 2011 Oscar award winning Documentary “Inside Job,” hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost by investors while millions of borrowers have lost their homes. Yet, none of the people who ran the institutions that contributed to the disaster have been found liable. If these people are not to be indicted for criminal fraud, then the Wall Street/ financial services leadership that recklessly crashed the economy must be breathing easier and celebrating their ill-gotten record gains. The world was brought to the brink by the American banking/mortgage system and thus far, no one has been held accountable. Why not? On my way to getting my Ph.D. in psychology, one of the most important principles I learned was the notion that what gets rewarded gets repeated. That which gets punished gets extinguished. If malfeasance and downright corruption are not punished, they will return and again shake our very foundations. We will never be able to get this behind us if we do not get full and complete investigations with accountability and punishment for the guilty parties. The banks and financial services companies that tanked the world economy got off with carefully orchestrated settlements. The companies paid small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the people who actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines themselves; banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder money to foot the tab of justice. This stands in striking contrast to the failure of many savings and loan institutions in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. Among the best-known: Charles H. Keating Jr. of Lincoln Savings and Loan in Arizona. So, 800 bank officials went to jail then, and zero have been incarcerated now, for malfeasance that is much larger, more damaging and more resistant to recovery. Many are explaining this by noting that a large sum of the President’s campaign contributions come from Wall Street. They wonder if Wall Street owns the Federal Government. Our elected and appointed officials must do their jobs, satisfy their commitment to transparency, responsibility and accountability. We must “keep the heat on.” In this way, justice may eventually be done. So many leaders have failed themselves, their families, their shareholders, and their neighbors on the most important of leadership behaviors…honesty, integrity and ethical decision-making. It is a national disgrace. We have lost our standing on the world stage. Let’s try to rid the world of companies that abuse shareholders, customers, employees and society. It is time for the “good guys” to win and the “bad guys” to lose. Americans will be just fine when they see that the system works.

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Senate Approves Obama’s Nominee For Commerce Department

October 21, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Thursday to approve President Barack Obama’s nomination of former utility executive John Bryson to head the Commerce Department, easily overcoming conservatives’ objections that his pro-environmental views made him unsuited for the job. The chamber’s 74-26 vote came five months after Obama chose the former head of Edison International, the holding company that owns Southern California Edison, to head the agency. Bryson has also served on boards of major corporations including the Boeing Co. and the Walt Disney Co. Twenty-one Republicans joined all 51 Democrats and two independents in backing Bryson, while 26 Republicans voted no. Bryson’s nomination had become entangled in the dispute between Obama and Republicans over free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama when some GOP lawmakers said they would block his approval until the president sent those pacts to Congress. The House and Senate approved those pacts last week. Since Obama announced his choice of Bryson, unemployment has been stuck at around 9.1 percent and the public mood about the economy has been gloomy – a dangerous combination for the president and his party with Election Day for control of the White House and Congress barely more than a year off. “At such a critical time for our economy, I nominated John because I believe his decades of experience both in the public and private sector have given him a clear understanding of what it takes to put America on a stronger economic footing and create jobs,” Obama said in a written statement after the vote. “I’m confident he will help us do that.” Bryson, 68, was a co-founder four decades ago of the Natural Resources Defense Council and has supported cap-and-trade legislation, which would set an overall cap on pollution and allow companies to buy and sell the right to produce emissions. Many conservatives oppose the proposal, saying it adds costs to businesses. The selection of Bryson shows that Obama “has no intention of backing down on his job-killing war on affordable energy,” said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., one of Bryson’s fiercest opponents. Inhofe called the Natural Resources Defense Council “one of the most radical, left-wing, extreme environmental groups.” Bryson won solid backing from Democrats like Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who praised his business background at a time of 9.1 percent unemployment and said, “We need all the good people we can get.” Bryson also won support from some more moderate Republicans like John McCain of Arizona, whom Obama defeated in the 2008 presidential race. “Elections do have consequences,” said McCain. He said he wouldn’t have nominated Bryson, but said senators should not block presidents from appointing top cabinet officials except for rare occasions “when that individual is not fit to serve.” “I don’t think you could really question Mr. Bryson’s credentials and background,” McCain said. Bryson was supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, which applauded his business background. He will succeed Gary Locke, who left to become ambassador to China.

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‘Occupy George’ Activists Stamp Income Inequality Graphics Onto Dollar Bills (PHOTOS)

October 17, 2011

Instead of broadcasting their views on a sign, Facebook group or Twitter, some supporters of the Occupy Wall Street protests are illustrating their frustrations on dollar bills. The group, calling itself Occupy George , is circulating dollar bills featuring infographics with facts about income inequality. One graphic includes a dotted line drawn through George Washington’s face with the words “Richest 400 Americans” on one side and “Bottom 150,000,000 Americans” on the other, indicating that the top 400 earners in America make as much as the bottom 150,000,000. In actuality, the disparity in incomes may even be worse than the graphic let on: The total net worth of the bottom 60 percent of Americans is less than that of Forbes 400 richest Americans . Another dollar bill drawing features pie charts illustrating the income growth disparity in the 1920s, 1960s and 2000s. The picture indicates the gap is wider now than it was during the Great Depression. The top one percent of earners netted two-thirds of the nation’s income gains from 2002 to 2007, which put income concentration at the highest level since 1928, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . The U.S. median income declined 7 percent in the last decade and though economists predict incomes will rise in the next 10 years it won’t be enough to get incomes back to pre-recession levels, the Wall Street Journal reports. At the same time, tax cuts for the wealthiest five percent of Americans are costing the U.S. government 11.6 million every hour , according to the National Priorities Project. Famed billionaire investor Warren Buffett advocated in an op-ed in The New York Times to end tax breaks for the “mega rich” as one way to close the income gap . The goal of Occupy George is to inform “the public of America’s daunting economic disparity one bill at a time,” according to its website . Here are dollar bill infographics from Occupy George :

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State Rep Rick Perry Voted Against Divesting In Apartheid-Era South Africa

October 14, 2011

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Conservatives concerned about Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Democratic past may have one less reason to worry. From Perry’s past comes a crucial rebellion: a vote against a Democrat’s proposal to sanction Apartheid-era South Africa. In 1985, another member of Perry’s former party put forth an amendment in the Texas State Legislature that would have outlawed the state’s investments in the South African government. South Africa had been widely condemned for its vicious racial segregation, and economic sanctions were considered a popular — and ultimately successful weapon — against its Apartheid government. As proposed, the rule was explicit: “Investments of the Permanent University Fund and other funds available for investment may not be invested directly in the Republic of South Africa.” The amendment was killed, with state Rep. Perry voting with the majority, according to Texas Legislature voting records. A subsequent bill included a similar amendment to ban state investments in any business incorporated in South Africa. Again, Perry voted against the measure. That measure ultimately passed. A recent Washington Post exposè has provoked an examination of Perry’s handling of race issues. The Post reported that the Perry family had leased a hunting camp with the name “Niggerhead” emblazoned on a rock. Perry has insisted that the name had been painted over as soon as his father leased the property. But the paper found Perry associates that countered the GOP presidential candidate’s claim. Other incidents in Perry’s past have caused controversy in his home state, whether it was standing up for an underling who was accused of using the n-word during a meeting , or referring to immigrants as “Jose” during a press conference. Perry’s vote against a Texas ban on investments in Apartheid-era South Africa, amongst these incidents, has led some to accuse Perry of insensitivity on race issues. Peck Young, director of Austin Community College’s Center for Public Policy and Political Studies and a former political consultant, explained Perry’s vote. “I wish I could say Perry was unique,” said Young. “The conservative Democrats weren’t going to vote for that stuff because, for one thing, Texas had major financial activities in South Africa, and Texas in terms of its business attitudes was a conservative state … He was voting like every other right-wing Democrat and Republican.” In this case, a Democratic Perry fell to the right of Republican President Ronald Reagan. The president favored a watered-down, limited set of sanctions against the Apartheid regime. Members of Perry’s own party in Texas Congress pushed for a far more stringent embargo. Perry’s campaign spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

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Report: Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Cost U.S. Millions Every Hour

October 14, 2011

Tax cuts for America’s top earners are costing everyone, every hour of every day, a new report from the National Priorities Project finds. Tax cuts for the wealthiest five percent of Americans cost the U.S. Treasury $11.6 million every hour, according to the National Priority Foundation. America’s top earners will get an average tax cut of $66,384 in 2011, while the bottom 20 percent will get an average cut of $107. The report comes as party leaders wrangle over the best way to curb the nation’s budget deficit, protesters around the world demonstrate against income inequality and corporate greed and Republican presidential candidates offer their economic plans to voters. Former pizza company CEO and Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain, has been getting lots of attention in recent weeks for “999 Plan” which would cap the corporate, income and sales tax rates at 9 percent. President Barack Obama unveiled his deficit reduction plan last month , which aims to curb the national debt through a combination of tax cuts and increased spending. The plan includes a proposal to increase taxes on millionaires — the so-called Buffett rule, name for famed billionaire investor Warren Buffett. In an August op-ed in The New York Times , Buffett argued that lawmakers should put an end to tax breaks for the “super-rich.” After Obama announced the proposal Republican leaders criticized the Buffett rule calling it “class warfare.” Still, there are some Republicans who support increasing taxes on the wealthy. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan — a registered Republican — told CNBC earlier this month that he supports allowing the George W. Bush-Era tax cuts for the wealthy to expire. That could because the tax cuts are weighing on the national debt. The non-partisan Center for Budget and Priorities found that the Bush tax cuts costs about the same as the shortfall from Social Security in the ten years after they were signed into law. If the U.S. reverted to Clinton-era marginal tax rates, the U.S. Treasury would net an additional $72 billion annually , according to Citizens for Tax Justice. In addition, increasing taxes on the wealthy could also help to narrow the widening wealth gap. The net worth of the bottom 60 percent of U.S. households — about 100 million households — is lower than that of Forbes 400 richest Americans. Tax cuts for the wealthy provided Americans making more than $1 million with a $128,832 benefit, while Americans earning from $40,000 to $50,000 got an $860 benefit on average .

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HIV Positive Protester Punched By Police, Suggests Cop Gets Tested

October 14, 2011

Tales of police brutality coming out of the Occupy Wall Street protests have become routine since activists took over Lower Manhattan in September. Earlier this month two women were hit with pepper spray for no apparent reason and a trans protestor claimed he was subjected to unfair treatment when he was arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Now Gothamist.com is reporting an HIV positive protestor received an unprovoked punch from a police man. In the accompanying video, above, Felix Rivera-Pitre is seen walking when a member of the NYPD suddenly attacks him. The crowd instantly goes wild and Rivera-Pitre says that he was pulled to safety by those around him: “The cops were pulling me by my feet and the crowd was pulling me by my hands, and I was suspended in the air. But there were more people than cops, and they pulled me out.” But it wasn’t before Rivera-Pitre’s earring was torn from his ear, covering him in blood. “I remember seeing my earring on the ground next to me and it was full of blood. I was completely dumbstruck. I’m HIV positive and that cop should get tested,” he says.

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10 Job Slashers That Benefited From A Tax Holiday

October 8, 2011

More money doesn’t always mean more jobs. Take when the U.S. government last imposed a tax holiday on offshore profits in 2004. Those companies that benefited most saved an estimated $64 billion, but cut nearly half a million jobs in the following years, according to a new report from The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) . Indeed, the Tax Holiday mostly benefitted a small handful of companies. In total, 58 corporations accounted for nearly 70 percent of all funds repatriated as a result of the Tax Holiday. And two of the companies that slashed the most jobs in the following years, Citigroup and Bank of America, received massive bailouts only a few years later. Nor is it only the recession that’s to blame. According to one government study cited in the report, 13 of the top beneficiaries from the tax break cut 67,000 American workers in the two years following it. Now major corporations, such as Apple, Cisco Systems and Pfizer, are again lobbying for a similar tax holiday. On Friday, Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Kay Hagan (D-North Carolina) introduced a repatriation bill with the idea it would spur job creation. Yet it’s possible that the corporations that would most benefit aren’t the ones that need the money: 58 corporations that benefited most in 2004 already sit on $450 billion in cash reserves, IPS reports. The idea of a tax holiday even faces opposition from the right. Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, for one, no longer says a tax holiday would lead to job growth , reversing it’s prior position. Here are the recipients of the 2004 repatriation tax holiday that cut the most jobs from 2004 to 2011, according to the Institute for Policy Studies :

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WATCH: Obama Continues Push For Jobs Bill

October 8, 2011

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is pushing in his weekly radio and Internet address for Senate passage of his nearly $450 billion jobs bill as senators prepare to vote Tuesday on moving to debate on the measure. Obama also asked listeners to Saturday’s address to tell their senators to support the bill, which he’s been lobbying for aggressively against Republican opposition since unveiling it a month ago. With the economy listless and unemployment stuck above 9 percent moving into the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama said the bill “can help guard against another downturn here in America.” “But if we don’t act, the opposite will be true,” the president said. “There will be fewer jobs and weaker growth. So any senator out there who’s thinking about voting against this jobs bill needs to explain why they would oppose something that we know would improve our economic situation.” Obama’s jobs plan would reduce payroll taxes on workers and employers, extend benefits to long-term unemployed people, spend money on public works projects and help states and local governments keep teachers, police officers and firefighters on the job. He proposed paying for the plan mainly by closing tax loopholes for oil and gas companies and raising taxes on individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000. Those proposals were rejected by Senate Democrats who substituted a tax on millionaires, with Obama’s agreement. But with Republicans opposed to much of the new spending in the bill and to tax hikes even on millionaires, the legislation stands no chance of getting through the Republican-controlled House in its current form, even if Senate Democrats were able to muster the necessary Republican support for Senate passage. Despite the opposition Obama intends to keep pushing for the plan in an effort to show the public that Republicans are standing in the way. “The proposals in this bill are steps we have to take if we want to build an economy that lasts; if we want to be able to compete with other countries for jobs that restore a sense of security for the middle-class,” Obama said. “There are too many people hurting in this country for us to simply do nothing,” he said. “The economy is too fragile for us to let politics get in the way of action.” Despite opposition to the overall bill, individual elements of it may well get through Congress, particularly an extension and expansion of a payroll tax cut that took effect Jan. 1. Republicans used their weekly address to criticize the plan. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., called it “nothing but a rehash of the same failed ideas he’s already tried, combined with a huge tax increase.” “This is a cynical political ploy that’s designed not to create jobs for struggling Americans, but to save the president’s own job,” Thune said. He also accused Obama of promulgating excessive regulations and too much red tape, to the detriment of business. “We’re calling for a regulatory time-out, an affordable energy plan, broad-based tax reform including lower rates, and policies that provide the certainty and stability our economy desperately needs,” Thune said. ____ Online:

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Democrats Reportedly Want Tax Hikes To Be First Item Negotiated By Super Congress

October 1, 2011

By Richard Cowan and Tim Reid WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats want tax hikes to be the first item negotiated in “super committee” deficit-reduction talks, trying to force Republicans to confront an issue at the heart of this year’s budget fights, sources told Reuters. The tough stance by Democratic members of the powerful 12-member congressional panel reflects the party’s wariness that Republicans might try to sideline the issue of revenue increases in the negotiations. “They’ve raised the idea of doing taxes first,” a Republican aide involved in the discussions said Friday on condition of anonymity. The panel has the task of finding ways of cutting the U.S. deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. If it fails to agree on a plan by Nov. 23, automatic spending cuts will be triggered, beginning in 2013. If Democrats hold firm to their demand for taxes to be discussed first, that could make it hard for the committee to make the tight November deadline. Congress is due to vote on the panel’s recommendations by Dec. 23. Another congressional aide, who also did not want to be identified, confirmed that among Democrats, “there is an effort to try to discuss revenues” now. During the super committee’s initial closed-door meetings, “Republicans wanted to just talk about spending cuts and Democrats said, ‘No,’” the aide said. Republicans strongly oppose tax hikes, arguing they will hurt an anemic economic recovery. But they have not ruled out closing some tax loopholes as part of tax reform. Democrats, including President Barack Obama, insist revenue increases must be part of any deficit reduction deal. Democrats’ calls for increasing taxes on the rich may have been bolstered by a new Congressional Research Service analysis. The Sept. 23 report obtained by Reuters concluded that letting decade-old tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of next year as scheduled “could help reduce budget deficits in the short term without stifling the economic recovery.” Discussing taxes first would also be a switch from the negotiating tactics employed in earlier talks. In the summer debt talks between the White House and congressional leaders, the strategy was to try first to agree on what were perceived to be less controversial issues, such as domestic spending cuts. Those talks ultimately broke down amid disagreements over taxes. NO AGREEMENT YET ON WHERE TO START A third congressional aide with knowledge of the super committee’s discussions told Reuters the six Democratic panel members were “not completely unified on their approach.” The aide said that while some of the Democrats were willing to work on less controversial items now, others thought tax increases should take priority. If Democrats insist on tackling tax increases first, that is “problematic” given the Nov. 23 deadline, the aide said. The Republican aide involved in the discussions said the deficit talks were still at an early stage. “They’re going through the minutiae of everything that is possible (for government savings). It’s an inventory phase.” There is “no agreement on what will be negotiated first,” the aide added. Budget and tax specialists in the private sector are predicting arduous negotiations that could end with a partial deal at best in which the committee agrees on some savings, with the balance achieved by the automatic spending cuts. Failure by the committee to agree on a comprehensive deficit reduction deal could lead to a further downgrade of the stellar U.S. government credit rating, a move that in turn could damage a global economy struggling to right itself after a deep recession. (Editing by Ross Colvin and Peter Cooney) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Ex-Googler Flees Groupon–Back To Google

September 24, 2011

‪ ‬ By Kara Swisher In a blog it just posted, Groupon said its recently hired COO, Margo Georgiadis, “has decided to return to Google (her former employer) in a new role as President, Americas.” She was only hired in April , just months before the company filed to go public. Georgiadis was previously VP of Global Sales at Google. (Interesting way to get a better title at the search giant, Margo!) Georgiadis was in charge of the company’s global sales, marketing and operations at the Chicago-based social buying service. Sources said that the hiring did not gel on either side. It might not be Georgiadis’ fault. She replaced Rob Solomon , who was in his job for one year. And here’s another: PR hire Brad Williams , a longtime Silicon Valley communications exec, who was there and then gone in what felt like 23 minutes. It seems Groupon does not like Silicon Valley types or, perhaps, vice versa. Since its IPO filing, in fact, it feels as if it has been a non-stop circus disaster at Groupon. That has included immense controversy about its sketchy accounting, huge slugs of venture funding going to its founders and a lot of worries about its growth. Today, in a Friday late afternoon dumping of bad news in hopes that no one notices (I do), Groupon also amended its S-1 public offering filing once again to change revenue metrics and also add a controversial internal letter that CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason sent to employees to counter its many and growing critics. There appear to be many more shoes dropping soon, said sources, so stay tuned. Until then, here’s the whole and very terse — for Mason — post : Update on the Groupon Team As a fast-growing company, we’ve done a lot of hiring this year, including on our senior executive team. Since the beginning of this year, we’ve made a total of 8 additions — that’s 57% of the total executive team. It would have been great if I could say that we batted 1,000%, but that’s rarely the case; after five months at Groupon, Margo Georgiadis, our COO, has decided to return to Google (her former employer) in a new role as President, Americas. We’ve built a fantastic team that has proven itself highly capable, so this change won’t have an impact on operations. In fact, we are using it as an opportunity to reorganize in a way that reflects our evolving strategic priorities. Sales, Channels, International, and Marketing will now report directly to me. Here’s a note from Margo: “Groupon is a great company and I feel privileged to have worked there even for a short time. It was a hard decision to leave as the company is on a terrific path. I have complete confidence in the team’s ability to realize its mission.” We wish her well. Via Uh-Oh: Groupon Loses New COO, Who’s Going Back to Google on AllThingsD . More from AllThingsD: More: Groupon Amends Its S-1 IPO Filing — Again! — Over Accounting Issues and CEO Letter Yahoo’s Dueling Internal Memos: Board, Followed by CEO, Spam Employees in Race to Explain From Cradle to, Well, You Know: The Creepy Factor of Facebook’s Timeline

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Health Care Law Sees Nearly 1 Million Young Adults Gain Coverage

September 21, 2011

WASHINGTON — At least one part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul has proven popular. With the economy sputtering, the number of young adults covered by health insurance grew by about a million as families flocked to take advantage of a new benefit in the law. Two surveys released Wednesday – one by the government, another by Gallup – found significantly fewer young adults going without coverage even as the overall number of uninsured remained high. The government’s National Center for Health Statistics found that the number of uninsured people ages 19-25 dropped from 10 million last year to 9.1 million in the first three months of this year, a sharp decline over such a brief period. A separate Gallup survey reported that the share of adults 18-25 without coverage dropped from 28 percent last fall to 24.2 percent by this summer. That drop translates to roughly 1 million or more young adults gaining coverage. The new health care law allows young adults to remain on their parents’ health plans until they turn 26. Previously, families faced a hodgepodge of policies. Some health plans covered only adult children while they were full-time students. Others applied an age cutoff. Elizabeth Wilson, an aspiring opera singer who lives near Indianapolis, said her mother’s plan dropped her in the midst of a medical crisis because she had turned 23. At the time, Wilson was in the hospital under treatment for an inflammation of the pancreas. Because of the overhaul, she has been able to get back on the policy. “It means I don’t have to spend every penny I make to get health care,” said Wilson, now 24. “I can use some of it to further my studies – or buy food.” The two surveys were welcome news for the administration, which is trying to fight off attempts to repeal the law – which some GOP lawmakers and candidates call “Obamacare” – or to overturn it in court. “It’s clear that the new health reform law is making a real difference in the lives of moms, dads, sons and daughters,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Repealing Obama’s law, which Congress approved in March 2010, would end the requirement that health plans cover young adults up to age 26. But some GOP lawmakers say they would include such a mandate in replacement legislation to follow. While the bleak economy has made it hard for young people to get jobs, fewer are being forced to go without medical care, defying an overall trend of rising numbers of working-age Americans who lack coverage. “While we did not see a drop-off in any other age group, we did see a drop in this age group,” said Frank Newport, Gallup’s polling director. Gallup found that the share of 26- to 64-year-olds uninsured rose from 18.1 percent in the fall of last year to 19.9 percent this summer. Public opinion remains divided about Obama’s overhaul, but coverage for young adults has proven to be a popular and relatively low-cost benefit in these days of prolonged school-to-work transitions. The provision technically took effect last fall but wasn’t implemented by most workplace health plans until Jan. 1. “The big change started in the last quarter of 2010 and continued further in the first two quarters of this year,” said Newport. “Bingo, it started going down,” he said of the percentage of uninsured young adults. Those young Americans are still more likely to be uninsured than any other age group. Some are making the switch from school to work. Others are in low-wage jobs that don’t usually offer coverage. And some in this group – sometimes termed the “invincibles”_ pass up workplace health insurance because they don’t think they’ll use it and would rather get a little extra in their paychecks. The latest surveys are in line with other findings. Mercer, the benefits consulting firm, found a 2 percentage-point increase in workplace health plan enrollment as a result of extending coverage to young adults. It’s a less expensive group to cover than middle-aged or older adults, and many companies have spread the extra premiums among their workers. Other early coverage expansions in the health care law have not worked as well, including a special program for people with health problems turned away by insurers. The law’s main push to cover the uninsured isn’t scheduled until 2014. At that time, more than 30 million people are expected to get coverage through a combination of expanding Medicaid and providing tax credits to make private insurance more affordable. And insurers will no longer be able to turn away people in poor health. Gallup surveys nearly 1,000 people daily. Its analysis includes 89,857 respondents interviewed between April 1 and June 30. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 1 percentage point; it is higher for subgroups. The government’s National Health Interview Survey is one of the primary sources of information on the U.S. public, relying on detailed household interviews. The latest results are drawn from interviews with more than 20,000 people from January through March. Wednesday’s report is a smaller and more fleeting snapshot of health trends than are seen in six-month and full-year reports ___ Online: Gallup survey: http://tinyurl.com/3dy4nrk

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Perry-Bush Dispute Still Burns

September 19, 2011

By WILL WEISSERT, ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) AUSTIN, Texas — Here’s the still-beating heart of the rift between Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his predecessor, George W. Bush: When Bush was governor he refused to appoint Perry’s brother-in-law to the Texas appeals court bench. With Perry now running for president, the spotlight is shining on the tense relationship between the two Texans and their allied camps. In public, both Perry and Bush shrug off any friction. “Between the Bushes and Rick Perry there is absolutely no rift at all,” Perry recently told conservative radio show host Sean Hannity. When Bush was asked in a separate interview about it, he mentioned Karl Rove, one of his most trusted advisers, and said: “Maybe with Karl. Not with my brother, with my dad, not with me at all. I admire him.” Despite all the niceties, Perry didn’t hold back when asked during a recent Republican debate about Rove’s comments that Perry’s 2010 book “Fed Up!” contained such explosive language that it could be “toxic” in the general presidential election. “Karl has been over the top for a long time in some of his remarks,” Perry said. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, also has chastised Perry for branding Social Security “a Ponzi scheme.” Perry responded to that by saying, “If Vice President Cheney or anyone else says that the program that we have in place today, and young people who are paying into that expect that program to be sound and for them to receive benefits when they reach retirement age, that is just a lie.” These were just the latest tiffs in a spat that goes back to 1995. Perry was the state’s agricultural commissioner and Bush was the newly sworn-in governor. Perry lobbied for the appointment of his wife’s brother, Joseph E. Thigpen, to a vacancy on the 11th Court of Appeals in Eastland. Bush turned him down. Bill Ratliff, who was Perry’s first lieutenant governor, said Perry blames Rove for denying the request. “It created some friction between the two and Karl got blamed.” Bill Miller, a veteran Austin political consultant, confirms Ratliff’s recollection. “The staff always takes the blame,” Miller said. “Karl absolutely was the surrogate.” In a letter on commission stationary and dated Dec. 17, 1994, Perry wrote a recommendation to Clay Johnson, Gov.-elect Bush’s director of appointments. “Let me, for the sake of `truth in advertising,’ share that Joseph is my brother-in-law,” Perry said. “He is an outstanding talent who has the ability to be a distinguished jurist.” The appointment would last only the two years remaining on the vacant seat’s term, then the judge would face an election. “I obviously will campaign vigorously for him in 1996,” Perry said of Thigpen. Bush spokesman Freddy Ford did not return messages seeking comment on the matter. Mark Miner, Perry’s campaign spokesman, said the request “has no bearing on the good relationship between President Bush and Governor Perry.” “This happened years ago,” Miner said, “and people have moved on.” Thigpen, who like Perry grew up in West Texas, served as district attorney from 1977 until 1984 of a rural district that stretched north of Abilene. He also filled in as needed as a neighboring county’s attorney from 1989 to 1993, when he was fired because the county commissioners claimed he wasn’t often available when they sought his counsel. That mark on his record made Bush look for another candidate, and Jim R. Wright was appointed to the Appeals Court in April 1995. Thigpen, now 65, said he didn’t want to discuss being passed over. “I’m an old man,” he said, “and I prefer to be left that way.” Since the appointment flap, the Perry and Bush camps have drifted farther apart. This year, the establishment embodied by former President George H.W. Bush, father of George W. Bush, is pitted against the enraged tea partyers Perry wants to help him win the nomination. Many who know both former governors say it’s little wonder they never saw eye to eye. The Bush family was patrician. The Perrys were tenant cotton farmers. George W. Bush went to Yale and Harvard, famously quit drinking and rarely curses. Perry graduated from Texas A&M, enjoys fine wine and frequently peppers his speeches with “damns” and “hells.” The two men share the experience of being college cheerleaders. It’s unclear whether bad blood between the two could make it harder for Perry to attract large donors in Texas and around the country who previously backed Bush. Contacted by phone, several people who raised more than $200,000 for Bush campaigns indicated that the Perry-Bush relationship wouldn’t likely sway which candidate they ultimately support. Rove and Perry reconciled briefly in 1998, when Perry was in a dead-heat race for lieutenant governor. Rove believed an attack ad Perry was running was too negative, so he asked Perry to ditch it. In return Rove delivered the all-important endorsement of George H.W. Bush, which helped propel Perry to victory. George W. Bush was already in full national campaign mode while also keeping close tabs on Texas government to ensure it didn’t derail his plans to run for the White House. When Bush took Rove and the rest of his inner circle to Washington, Perry built his own Texas campaign team that twice helped him win the governor’s post. The feud further escalated when Rove and many other top Bush advisers went to work for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in her fierce battle against Perry for the 2010 gubernatorial nomination. Bush’s father even endorsed her. Despite the political firepower behind Hutchison, Perry trounced her and cruised to his second re-election. Some say Perry will want the support of the Bush family and its national political muscle over a long campaign. For now, though, Team Bush, which left the White House with record-low approval ratings, is an easy target. Austin tea party activist Don Zimmerman called Perry’s chiding Rove on national TV “a no-brainer.” “One of the weapons the Democrats will have against Governor Perry is to say, `Here comes another Bush,’” Zimmerman said. “He’s going to run away from that image as fast as he can.”

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Rep. Steny Hoyer: Speeding Up the Patent Process

September 16, 2011

The patent that led to the telephone was approved in one month. The patent that led to the cell phone, as former White House economic advisor Austan Goolsbee recently observed, was approved in three years. Today, patents are held up for even longer — and jobs and growth are held up with them. At this moment, more than 700,000 patents are caught in the backlog. Could one of those 700,000 new ideas be the next iPhone, the next breakthrough drug, the key to the next great American industry? We’ll have to wait a long time to find out. With millions of Americans still out of work, Democrats are working to advance a plan to rebuild American industry and create the solid, middle-class jobs our country needs. We call it the Make It In America plan: it’s a legislative program to help American businesses stay here, grow here, build more products here, and sell them to the world. And a crucial part of that effort is ensuring we are the world’s leader in innovation, so that we can outpace our competitors and stay at the job-creating forefront of the world economy. America is still the world’s most innovative country — but it’s a sobering fact that Japan has recently overtaken us in patent applications. China, too, is on pace to overtake us soon. If we want to regain our innovation edge, we have to make it easier for American inventors to patent new products here and manufacture them here. That’s why it’s so important that President Obama will today sign into law the America Invents Act, the most significant patent reform in half a century. It’s also the first Make It In America bill to become law this year. If we want to put more Americans back to work, it can’t be the last. The America Invents Act creates a markedly more efficient patent system. It significantly reduces the backlog of ideas by hiring more patent examiners, modernizing technology in the Patent and Trademark Office, and speeding up the review process. It also institutes a new, “first-to-file” system for resolving disputes over priority. Such disputes have often been bogged down in costly, time-consuming legal cases. But this new legislation cuts down on that litigation by asking a simple question: who filed for a patent first? While the old system was weighted in favor of the largest corporations with the biggest legal teams and the most money to burn, the new system levels the playing field for small businesses and individual inventors, the kind of people who gave us revolutionary ideas like the personal computer. Speeding up the patent process will get American ideas to market faster, and that unlocks tremendous opportunities for our economy to grow. But a wealth of other innovation-promoting ideas are also part of Democrats’ Make It In America plan, and Congress should build on this success by passing more of the plan into law. We should expand and make permanent the research and development tax credit, so that companies have stronger incentives to invest in new technologies here at home. We should promote high-tech, advanced manufacturing by passing the JOBS Act, which builds job-training partnerships between colleges and advanced manufacturing businesses. These partnerships will help more Americans find job opportunities in fast-growing fields — and help American businesses satisfy their demand for workers without looking overseas. We should create a more efficient corporate tax code, with lower rates and fewer loopholes. That would help businesses make decisions based on their best economic judgment, not based on maximizing their tax deductions. And we should keep pace with international competitors by creating a National Infrastructure Development Bank. It would leverage private investment in much-needed projects from energy delivery systems to broadband networks to modern ports, projects that would create jobs in the short term while laying the foundation for long-term growth. There’s no doubt that America still has the qualities that made its economy the strongest in the world — the work ethic, the competitive drive, and the innovative spirit that have made this country great. I believe in the Make It In America plan because it’s the best way of putting those qualities to work, so that we can out-build, out-educate, and out-innovate our competitors. Today’s far-reaching patent reform is a big step in the right direction. And I can’t wait to see the American innovations that come to market faster as a result.

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Harlan Green: Where Is Harry Truman When We Need Him?

September 13, 2011

The U.S. economic outlook has “clearly” deteriorated this year, and the continued softness of economic indicators shows that the headwinds facing the country are even stronger than thought, Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans said last Wednesday . “Conditions still aren’t much different from an economy still in recession,” said Evans, speaking at a seminar in London. Is there something we can do about it with our current President and Accommodator-in-Chief giving conservatives what they want, such as cancelling the new air quality regulations, without negotiating for something in return? Well yes. Bring back another “Give ‘em hell” Harry Truman, or have President Obama choose him as a model for how to weather the next year during an election season, instead of the “Give ‘em what they want” Barack we have known of late. “Give ‘em hell” Truman was given that nickname for a reason. During a 1948 campaign speech a supporter yelled out “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” Truman replied, “I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.” The post-WWII economy was going through the same malaise as today. Federal debt had ballooned to 120 percent of GDP to pay for WWII (vs. 80 percent today), unemployment was high, and Republicans crying deficit reduction had triumphed in the 1946 Congress. “Republicans stand four-square for the American home–but not for housing,” he said during his 1948 campaign. “They are strong for labor–but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights. They favor minimum wage–the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all–but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine–for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing–but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think the American standard of living is a fine thing–so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people. And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.” Does all this sound terribly familiar, even to the Republican attacks against him? “The smear campaign on your President started in all its vile and untruthfully slanted headlines, columns, and editorials,” said Truman. “Hearst’s character assassins, McCormick-Patterson saboteurs all began firing at me, as did the conservative columnists and radio commentators. Not because they believed anything they said or wrote, but because they were paid to do it.” Truman was following one of FDR’s more well-known maxims: “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” Truman and the Democrats were alone in trying to keep the U.S. economy afloat, in other words. So instead of compromising with deficit hawks by cutting spending, he blasted the “do nothing 80th Congress of that time,” advocating Universal Health Care and extension of unemployment benefits. When the deficit hawks in Congress voted down those benefits — both ‘blue dog’ Democrats and Republicans, we might add — he was able to blame them for the continuing malaise. Then he upset heavily favored New York Governor Thomas Dewey in 1948 — it was one of the most famous comebacks in presidential history. “I have told the people that there is just one big issue in this campaign and that’s the people against the special interests. The Republicans stand for special interests, and they always have. The Democratic Party, which I now head, stands for the people — and always has stood for the people.” Why is this malaise dragging on so long? With some $2 trillion in cash sitting on S&P 500 corporations’ balance sheets, and profit margins the highest since WWII, employers are refusing to hire more workers. This is why there was zero (0) nonfarm payroll growth in August. It’s because businesses have been living in a bubble they are reluctant to leave. It is called supply-side economics, because of a succession of business-friendly administrations that believed the bulk of government benefits should be directed to business, rather than consumers. This was mainly in the form of tax breaks, which are of little benefit to consumers — most of whom pay a payroll tax that has never been cut. Business tax breaks are an indirect form of government support, but nevertheless result in reduced revenues. Yet consumers have been spending more as wages and salaries — 80 percent of the workforce — are rising and have been rising in fact since July 2009, the nominal end of the Great Recession. Consumer spending rebounded a sharp 0.8 percent after slipping 0.1 percent in June. By components, durables jumped 1.9 percent after declining 1.1 percent in June. Clearly, motor vehicle sales are up as the supply constraint related parts shortages from Japan is easing. So what is the lesson from “give ‘em hell, Harry”? Truman was not afraid to take on those who wanted to reduce government, when government was the only support for both businesses and consumers during tough times. “People are waking up that the tide is beginning to roll, and I am here to tell you that if you do your duty as citizens of the greatest Republic the sun has ever shone on, we will have a Government that will be for your interests, that will be for peace in the world, and for the welfare of all the people, and not just a few.” So the Obama the Accommodater has to turn into Obama the fearless Negotiator who is willing to attack his enemies, who are also the enemies of majority who have been hurt most by the Great Recession. Harlan Green © 2010

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Gary Shapiro: We Can Handle the Truth: Our Government Is a Jobs Killer

September 13, 2011

There was a moment in President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress Thursday night when Candidate Obama returned to the limelight. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. Behind all the passion and eloquence that Obama was able to muster for one of the biggest speeches of his presidency, there was the same old stuff. And Americans should expect the same old results. While it’s not quite accurate to say that Obama double-downed on the failed economic policies of his administration — his $447 billion jobs proposal is half the 2009 stimulus — there was absolutely nothing to suggest that Obama is prepared to change course. All the lofty rhetoric couldn’t mask the president’s continued commitment to Keynesian economics and willful ignorance of the needs of job creators. The truth requires listening to those who create jobs. I represent more than 2,000 tech companies in my day job, but I also hear from lots of entrepreneurs and other business leaders. Since the early 2011 launch of my book, The Comeback: How Innovation will Restore the American Dream , I have traversed the country speaking to varied groups and after each talk I am surrounded by job creators with similar stories. The furniture maker in upstate New York; the couple with a landscape company, nursery and day care center in Michigan; the Virginia tech start up; the Oregon inventor and the Florida restaurant owner: they all are patriotic Americans who want to grow their businesses and help the economy. But none of them are hiring. Why? For very good reasons, many related to the tough economic environment but many — startlingly 0 — related to policies of our government. I ask why no one, especially those in power, raises these subjects. More often than not, the answer is some version of the famous retort by Col. Nathan Jessep in the movie A Few Good Men : Because Americans “can’t handle the truth.” Well, I think Americans can handle the truth, and I offer these unconventional views in the spirit that a healthy economy and jobs are vital to our future. Our anti-discrimination laws hurt new jobs creation . Our nation has tens of thousands of underemployed lawyers eager to take on the cause of any fired worker. Anti-discrimination lawsuits and EEOC complaints are easy to file, costly and time-consuming to defend. Combine this with our inability to take responsibility for our own failures and we have a litigation cocktail which discourages hiring. Of course discrimination against individuals based on suspect classification is terrible, but the laws aren’t helpful in encouraging new hires. We are not yet Europe, which makes every dismissal costly, but we can take advice from Laurence Parisot, the head of France’s largest employers’ union, Movement of the French Enterprises, who said , “We will hire more people if it’s made easier to fire them.” Two-year unemployment compensation discourages jobs . According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco , the Obama Administration’s extension of unemployment benefits to 99 weeks increased the U.S. jobless rate as much as 0.8 percentage points. Or put another way, serious job seeking occurs when benefits are about to run out. As an employer, I have twice experienced job candidates asking to delay their start date until after unemployment payments end. I am not alone. In a recent article, The Wall Street Journal recently quoted an Alabama farmer looking to hire who was encountering “Americans who showed up to apply for jobs demanded that he pay them off the books so that they can continue to collect unemployment benefits.” As I’ve argued before , one way to end this fraud is to tie long-term unemployment benefits to volunteer work. The 2010 stimulus package did not boost the economy. The $787 billion stimulus package was divided into roughly three parts : a third to the states so they could avoid tough financial choices; a third to taxpayers in the form of barely noticeable reduction in taxes and a third for pork barrel projects, the so-called “shovel ready” boondoggles that replaced real infrastructure investment. What do we have to show for all this? An unemployment rate above 9 percent and anemic 2011 GDP growth . If the money had at least been invested in real capital infrastructure we would be better off. The same is true with the so-called “cash-for-clunkers” program, first-time homebuyers and other feel-good programs. Each one borrowed from our children so we can feel better today. Shameful! Our political leadership’s business antipathy and uncertainty on taxes, health care and spending discourage jobs creation. People running and owning businesses face political uncertainty in so many areas. They have no idea of how much and what type of taxes they will have to pay over the next few years. They face a new, far-reaching health care law that imposes new costs and may or may not be repealed by a new Congress or the Supreme Court. They fear a president who has no business background, few advisers with business experience, and who encourages an anti-business climate, higher taxes on wealth creators and class warfare. And they have the National Labor Relations Board telling companies in which states they can manufacture and seeking to make secret overnight unionization the status quo. High corporate taxes and pro-union protectionism discourages jobs creation. At 35 percent, the U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world , which forces businesses to invest abroad. The United States also has not passed a free trade agreement in six years. Although the president talks a good game on free trade, he and his Democratic allies keep adding new conditions to the Panama, Colombia and South Korea free trade agreements that have been stalled for years. This means our job-creating exporters pay more than our competitors. Can Americans handle this truth? I think they can, but it will require leadership and responsibility from our elected leaders to do something about it. We need to stop with the little ideas, like lowering the tax withholding and even good ideas like Patent Reform, and go to the real issues — even if they are uncomfortable. Challenge Americans to accept responsibility, sacrifice for their children and contribute to society. The status quo is leading us down the path of decline. Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,000 consumer electronics companies, and author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream.”

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Perry Attempts To Clarify Stance On Controversial Issue

September 12, 2011

In a USA Today op-ed published online on Monday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry seeks to clarify his position on Social Security. The Texas governor writes that he believes current recipients of Social Security benefits should be protected from potential reforms to the entitlement program. For younger Americans, however, he says, “We must consider reforms to make Social Security financially viable.” Perry explains, “For too long, politicians have been afraid to speak honestly about Social Security.” He adds, “We must have the guts to talk about its financial condition if we are to fix Social Security and make it financially viable for generations to come.” The attempt from Perry to outline his position on Social Security comes one week after the Republican hopeful raised eyebrows with harsh language he used in addressing the issue during last week’s GOP presidential debate in California. During the forum, Perry didn’t run from his past characterization of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.” He also repeated his criticism of the entitlement program as a “monstrous lie.” The Texas governor, however, did abandon his use of the questionable choice of words in Monday’s op-ed. HuffPost’s Jon Ward reported last week: Indeed, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — who was the frontrunner until Perry entered the race — has gone for Perry’s jugular, painting the Texan as wanting to “end” or “abolish” Social Security. Perry could have countered that charge by saying Romney was mischaracterizing his position. But he and his staff have been slow to do so, raising questions about how exactly Perry wants to deal with the program. Meanwhile, the Washington Examiner reports that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is preparing to take aim at Perry over the issue during a presidential debate being held in Florida on Monday night. “Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” an adviser to the conservative congresswoman tells the Examiner . “Clearly [Bachmann] feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” A CNN/ORC poll released on Monday shows Perry to be running at the front of the GOP presidential pack. Below, video of what Perry had to say about Social Security during last week’s debate. WATCH:

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WATCH: Highlights From Obama Jobs Speech

September 9, 2011

President Barack Obama outlined a new plan from his administration to boost job creation to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night. HuffPost’s Sam Stein relays details on the proposal: Titled the American Jobs Act, the proposal includes more than $250 billion in tax incentives for small businesses and employers, according to administration estimates. The rest of the money would be devoted to infrastructure spending, state aid, unemployment insurance, and neighborhood rehabilitation. The president will pay for the proposal by asking the congressional super committee tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction to offset the cost of the package in their proposal. Senior administration officials said that the White House plans to introduce the president’s proposal next week as a single piece of legislation. The same administration officials did not rule out the idea that the White House would petition the congressional super committee to simply include the jobs bill in the set of recommendations that they reveal later this fall. In his speech to a joint session of Congress, however, the President repeatedly made the case that quicker action is needed. Below, reaction to the president’s speech from some members of Congress via the Associated Press. Click here for full text of Obama’s remarks. “The proposals the president outlined tonight merit consideration. We hope he gives serious consideration to our ideas as well. It’s my hope that we can work together to end the uncertainty facing families and small businesses, and create a better environment for long-term economic growth and private-sector job creation.” – House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. ___ “President Barack Obama laid out a set of bipartisan ideas to create jobs whose size and scope reflects the urgent need to put Americans back to work. Most of the ideas in this bill have been supported by both Democrats and Republicans. These are common-sense solutions for getting our economy moving again and spurring hiring in the private sector. – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ___ “The president is politically paralyzed and philosophically incapable of doing what needs to be done. The president should take immediate action.” GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman. ___ “The president’s plan is a solid foundation for Congress to build on. It strategically combines tax incentives for small businesses with targeted investments in American workers, the education of our children and improving our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. That said, I would have liked to have seen a greater emphasis on domestic energy production and a special focus on water and flood protection for the nation.” – Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. ___ “Where we agree – like the need to pass the long pending, job creating trade agreements – we should act and act now. All we need is for the president to send Congress the agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea so the American people can begin to take advantage of the up to 250,000 jobs they will create. However, I was disappointed that the president did not discuss the one area that can truly spark sustained private-sector job creation in this country – comprehensive tax reform.” _Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., a member of the supercommittee on debt reduction. ___ “Now is the time to invest in the future of our country by creating opportunities and helping out of work Americans find jobs. Many of the president’s ideas have the potential to create jobs and spark the economy.” – Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. ___ “Ultimately I think the problem is there are some things in there that are good, but by and large, it’s a proposal based on things that just won’t work, haven’t worked in the past and they won’t work in the future.” – Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. ___ “President Obama offered a clear path to help small businesses succeed and hire, provide tax relief for our workers, rebuild America, and provide aid to those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. It will put Americans back to work and it will be paid for.” – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. ___ “The president’s plan makes a mockery of the recent debt limit deal. That agreement cut $7 billion in appropriations next year but the president now wants to borrow hundreds of billions more to finance a second stimulus package.” – Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. ___ The president took an important and necessary step tonight: He started a serious national conversation about how to solve our jobs crisis. He showed working people that he is willing to go to the mat to create new jobs on a substantial scale. Tonight’s speech should energize the nation to come together, work hard and get serious about jobs. – AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

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Republican Presidential Candidates React To Obama Job Speech

September 9, 2011

After President Barack Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on a new plan from his administration to create jobs, it didn’t take long for Republicans running for their party’s presidential nomination to react to the address. Obama outlined his proposal to get Americans back to work as the nation’s unemployment rate sits at 9.1 percent. Job creation and the state of the country’s economy have been central issues for the field of GOP contenders vying for a chance to run against the president in 2012. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman have both released proposals to boost job creation in recent weeks. Below, a slideshow highlighting reaction from the Republican presidential candidates to Obama’s speech. (Note: We will update this post with additional reaction as it is released.) RELATED VIDEO:

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Robert Creamer: Obama Takes the Offensive on Jobs

September 9, 2011

President Obama’s speech to Congress tonight reset the political battle lines and put Progressives back on the offensive. The speech included provisions that Republicans in Congress may actually agree to pass — like continuing the payroll tax holiday that if allowed to lapse would affect the paychecks of virtually every American worker. But it also made the case for bold initiatives to rebuild America’s infrastructure and directly create jobs through a teacher corps and youth jobs program. These bolder proposals are critically necessary to jump start the economy, and Obama is betting — correctly — that if they fail to support them, Republicans will pay a political price next year. What was needed was a package of proposals that were bold, projected urgency, and will create jobs now. The president delivered. Obama explicitly rejected the dangerous, fallacious notion that the path to long-term economic growth runs through the valley of economic austerity. He clearly defined the fundamental difference in values — and economic philosophy — between progressive Democrats and right wing Republicans. The president provided the perfect counter point to Rick Perry’s outrageous statement in the Republican debate, that the Obama economic record had proved once and for all that “Keynesianism was dead.” Of course, just the opposite is true. Any one who has taken a semester of Economics 101 knows that problem at the root recessions is too little economic demand to purchase the available supply of goods and services. Seeing their customer base shrink, businesses make fewer investments, and layoff more workers and the economy enters a downward — deadly spiral. What is needed to restore the economy to health is not “confidence” but customers. And the only economic actor that can provide those customers is the government. We must all collectively act through our government to restart the economy because if everyone is left to act in their own rational individual economic self interests they will make matters worse, not better. With less demand from customers, it is rational for businesses to hold on to their cash and lay off workers, but that only increases the number of people who are unemployed and unable to buy new products. The 2009 stimulus bill halted the slid of the economy into depression. Without it we would have had another Great Depression. But it turns out the stimulus wasn’t large enough to restart the engine of self-sustaining growth. That’s because we now know from new economic data that the Republican policies that lead to the melt down on Wall Street and triggered the recession, had inflicted even more damage on the economy than anyone knew at the time. That means that to get us out of this economic swamp, the government must act to create more jobs now — so that more people have money in their pockets and can buy more products and demonstrate to businesses that it makes economic sense to hire more workers and invest in more plants and equipment. The notion that you can create more jobs by cutting government spending is not just another theory or point of view — it is verifiably wrong. And in his speech the president made it clear that the Republican “emperor has no cloths.” When the Republicans prevented continued aid to state and local government, half a million teachers, firemen, health care workers, and cops were laid off — its that simple. If we were to cut the Social Security or Medicare benefits of middle class seniors they would have less money to buy things and that would mean that businesses hire less workers — this is not hard. As for the Republican’s fixation on eliminating “regulatory burdens” and cutting taxes for wealthy “job creators” — that is exactly the plan that lead to the deregulation of Wall Street and the crash — and that generated exactly zero private sector job growth during the Bush years — that’s right zero . We’ve been there and tried that. It didn’t work when Herbert Hoover tried it before the Great Depression and it didn’t work when George Bush tried it before the Great Recession. And of course in both cases that policy lead more and more of the fruits of our economy to go to the top two percent of Americans and less and less to the middle class. Today 400 families control as much wealth as 150 million Americans. That kind of gaping inequality creates the conditions that lead to economic stagnation, because when the income of everyday workers don’t increase to keep pace with increases in worker productivity, it is mathematically impossible for workers to buy the new products they create. Henry Ford understood that to be successful he had to pay his workers enough so that they, themselves, could by the cars they produced. Rick Perry and the Republicans don’t get that simple fact. Luckily, President Obama does. But this speech did more than clearly define the difference between progressive and right wing economic philosophy. It had huge political benefits for the president and Democrats. First, Obama rejected the Republican view that there is nothing we can do to create new jobs but cut government spending and pray. He argued that we can take the future into our own hands — that we are not just the victims of forces that are so big and so powerful that we are simply at their mercy. People don’t want to be told they are helpless or that they must simply get used to the “new normal” and watch the American Dream go up in smoke. They want leadership, and Obama provided it. Second, Obama recognizes the political fact that jobs trump short-term deficits. According to a July Gallup poll, concern over the economy and jobs top concern for the deficit by at 58% to 16% margin . The great deficit discussion — Republican frame for debate that has dominated the summer — completely missed the mark when it comes to the interests of most Americans. Finally, Obama signaled the kind of campaign he will run in 2012. No incumbent president has won re-election in the last century when the economy was not either good — or materially improving — except for one. Harry Truman won in 1948 in the midst of bad economic news, by running against the “do-nothing Republican Congress.” Obama political adviser David Axelrod was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that “Obama will make clear that Republicans are to blame if they don’t agree to the jobs measures… Harry Truman once said if you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat. And that’s what the president is going to do.” That is exactly the kind of message that will simultaneously attract swing voters who want strong leadership to create jobs — and at the same time re-inspire the progressive base. Even if they want to go further than the president when it comes to the scale of a jobs program, progressives were elated that the President has sounded the call to battle on this critical issue — that he has drawn an indelible contrast between the failed right wing economic policies of the past — and progressive policies that will lead to widely shared long term economic growth. If we take it, progressives and Democrats have the high political ground when it comes to the all important jobs debate. But that requires that we stand up proudly for our economic principles and contrast them sharply with the failed right wing economic policies of the past. Our principles provide solid political ground from which fight the battle of 2012. Obama’s speech signaled that is precisely where he intends to make his stand. Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com . He is a partner in Democracy Partners . Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.

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Economists Looking For Bold Ideas On Black Unemployment

September 8, 2011

President Barack Obama will address a joint session of Congress tonight because of what many economists, pundits and politicians have called a jobs crisis. But the nation’s current employment picture closely mirrors the state of black unemployment before the recession began. Fixing the overall jobs deficit and addressing the way that the recession has ravaged black and Latino households will require bold, even controversial solutions, economists say. “It’s funny that what we call a crisis now is actually a little better than where black workers were in the so-called boom times,” said Algernon Austin, a labor sociologist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “The fact that there was no targeted effort to address African-American unemployment before the recession is a large part of the reason that the jobs problem is so big now.” In 2007, just before the recession began, black unemployment sat at 8.5 percent. In August, black unemployment reached 16.7 percent, a figure unseen since the 1980s . At the same time, the nation’s overall unemployment was 9.1 percent and job growth was zero. But in the depths of a jobs crisis that several economists say may portend a double-dip recession, white unemployment fell slightly to 8 percent. Together, black and Latino workers make up nearly 40 percent of the nation’s unemployed. To address a job crisis where black and Latino workers are being crushed but no one is doing well, the country needs a large influx of government spending and a commitment to create two major jobs programs, said Austin. One program should attempt to put any unemployed person back to work, and the other should target hard-hit demographic groups. Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute have found that the economy could support about $600 billion in government spending this year. “A lot of people right now have gotten caught up in this debate about whether we need a targeted approach to address minority unemployment or whether something universal would work. I’m saying we need both,” added Austin. At a July gathering, the Congressional Black Caucus called on the White House to funnel extra job creation dollars to geographic areas with high rates of poverty. Unlike a jobs program that targets black or Latino workers specifically, geographic targeting is politically feasible, several members said. “It’s time for this president to start proposing big, game-changing ideas that might address long-term joblessness and the growth and persistence of the black-white wealth gap,” said Darrick Hamilton, an economist at The New School. A Works Progress Administration-like program could help to repair some of the recession’s economic scars, said Hamilton. It would put workers into jobs where they can develop, enhance or at least maintain their skills, and it would give unemployed workers income until the economy improves. But to address the persistent and growing economic gap between white and black households, those at the top of the income scale and those near the bottom, the president should also propose wealth-building accounts for every child at birth, said Hamilton. With interest and limits on the purposes for which funds could be withdrawn, eventually every adult would have a pool of funds to cover the cost of attending college, setting up a household or purchasing a home. In 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, the gap between the median wealth of the nation’s white and nonwhite households –- that’s cash and other assets — grew to an all-time high . The median white household has about $113,000 in wealth, compared to about $5,600 for black households and $6,300 for Latino households. “The growing wealth gap in this county is the single biggest piece of evidence that an age of equality and meritocracy has not arrived,” said Hamilton. “That’s a controversial thing to say. But fixing it would go a long way toward solving a number of other social problems.” The most important thing that the president can do tonight is shift the conversation away from the idea that American families are tightening their belts so the government should do the same, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute. That is not economically sound, she said. (The institute has identified 10 things that Congress could do to create jobs and spend effectively.) The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office periodically documents the economic effect of different types of government spending. Shierholz said that, according to the CBO’s most recent report in late 2010, the key to stimulating the economy and job growth is to spend those funds on things such as food stamps, unemployment insurance and a continued payroll tax holiday. These funds tend to hit bank accounts and be quickly spent, which benefits the economy, said Shierholz. In the current economic climate, tax incentives that encourage hiring also produce more economic activity and job growth than those that encourage companies to buy new equipment or facilities, she said. Companies are flush with cash right now, but are not spending or hiring because of lax consumer demand. The president should also propose financial aid for the states, said Shierholz. Such aid would likely stem the tide of black unemployment because nearly 25 percent of black adults hold government jobs . Right now, cash-strapped state and local governments are shedding about 30,000 jobs a month, she said. “We have to stop that kind of hemorrhaging,” Shierholz said. “I mean, not to prioritize workers, but we are talking about teachers here.”

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Bridge To Work: Obama’s Plan For Long-Term Unemployed

September 8, 2011

WASHINGTON — President Obama announced Thursday evening a plan to put the long-term jobless back to work by encouraging states to adopt “Bridge to Work” programs that would let businesses try out workers without having to pay them. The scheme, which would only be open to workers receiving federal unemployment benefits, would be modeled mainly on a Georgia program designed to reduce hiring costs and make it easier for the jobless to get back to work. The program, called Georgia Works, is voluntary for workers and employers and allows businesses to train workers for eight weeks with no obligation to pay or hire. “We have to do more to help the long-term unemployed in their search for work,” President Obama said while addressing a joint session of Congress. “This jobs plan builds on a program in Georgia that several Republican leaders have highlighted, where people who collect unemployment insurance participate in temporary work as a way to build their skills while they look for a permanent job.” Labor advocates have warned the White House to stay away from Georgia Works, complaining that it is exploitive and possibly illegal. A senior administration official said the White House is sensitive to those concerns. “We have made it very clear that states must ensure compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Bridge to Work programs would be different from Georgia Works in several ways. Under the Obama proposal, states would be required to ensure participants earn no less than the minimum wage. So if a jobless worker’s unemployment insurance benefit amounted to less than the minimum wage, states would have to boost the benefit. Bridge to Work programs would only be open to jobless workers who’ve exhausted the standard 26 weeks of state-funded benefits and become eligible for the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides up to 53 additional weeks of aid. The EUC program is set to expire in January; the administration is pushing for Congress to reauthorize it through 2012 as part of the “American Jobs Act,” which would include funding for Bridge to Work and dozens of other initiatives. Republicans controlling the House of Representatives have signaled support for a program modeled on Georgia Works, but they’ve also said they’d oppose another reauthorization of federal unemployment benefits if the cost added to the federal budget deficit. “If the millions of unemployed Americans stopped getting this insurance, and stopped using that money for basic necessities, it would be a devastating blow to this economy,” Obama said. “Democrats and Republicans in this Chamber have supported unemployment insurance plenty of times in the past. At this time of prolonged hardship, you should pass it again -– right away.” Money for states to administer Bridge to Work programs would come from a $4 billion “Reemployment NOW Fund” that would also support a range of reforms, including wage insurance, startup assistance, improved reemployment services, and work-sharing. There isn’t a ton of data on Georgia Works or similar programs in other states. But there’s plenty of data testifying to the magnitude of the long-term unemployment crisis: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6 million people have been out of work for six months or longer as of August, and 2 million have been out of work for longer than 99 weeks — the cutoff point for federal jobless benefits in the hardest-hit states. States that decided to adopt Bridge to Work initiatives would have some flexibility. Training periods could last as long as eight weeks or be as short as two weeks. Businesses could train participants for up to 38 hours a week (Georgia Works limits training to 24 hours a week). States could also require participating employers to pay a portion of workers’ earnings. “We’re going to deem these [Emergency Unemployment Compensation] benefits wages and provide support for states to top up benefits if necessary to comply with the minimum wage,” the official said. “If states want to structure programs so employers have skin in the game, we’re not going to stop them.” Participants in the program will be covered by workers’ compensation laws. As the FLSA requires, states will be required to prevent businesses from using trainees instead of hiring new workers, and businesses will not be able to use Bridge to Work participants if a strike is in effect or if doing so would violate a collective bargaining agreement. This story has been updated to include remarks from President Obama. Arthur Delaney is the author of ” A People’s History of the Great Recession ,” HuffPost’s first e-book.

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Robert Reich: Obama Must Be More Aggressive With Republicans

September 8, 2011

JOHNSTON, Iowa — Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says President Barack Obama needs to be more aggressive in confronting Republicans and should use the power of his office to move public opinion. Speaking Thursday on the Iowa Public Television program, “Iowa Press,” Reich said Obama has been too willing to compromise with House Republicans. He says many Democrats want the president to push for his believes before bargaining with Republicans. He says the mood in Washington has never been more partisan, and that the 2012 election campaign is already under way. Reich says the nation could slip back into a recession and that Washington should focus more on creating jobs than reducing the deficit. Reich was in Iowa to make speech Wednesday at the University of Iowa.

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Postmaster General Warns Of Default, Pleads For Congressional Help

September 6, 2011

WASHINGTON — The postmaster general pleaded with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to pass legislation that would help the postal service right its finances and avoid possible bankruptcy. “The Postal Service is at the brink of default,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warned at a Senate hearing. “Our situation is urgent. Congressional action is needed immediately to avoid this default.” John Berry, director of the White House’s Office of Personnel Management, said the White House plans to release a proposal that aids the postal service as part of a $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction package that President Obama will submit to Congress. Faced with flagging revenues and high workforce costs, the Postal Service is projected to post a $9 billion deficit on the year and could miss a $5.5 billion payment on retiree benefits at the end of this month. Arguing that the service suffers from a “restrictive business model,” Donahoe said that Congress needs to pass legislation that would make the independent agency more like “a private-sector business.” “We do not have the flexibility to achieve these cost reductions,” Donahoe said. As part of those cost reductions, Donahoe said he would like to shed more than 100,000 postal workers who are now covered by no-layoff clauses in union contracts; move new employees from a defined-benefit plan to a lesser defined-contribution plan; and eliminate the service’s mandatory annual payment into employee health benefits. The plan would also close around 300 of the postal service’s 500 processing centers, shutter thousands of post offices around the country, and eliminate Saturday delivery. Many of those actions would require a mandate from Congress. Overall, the plan translates into a much leaner postal service — as well as a less attractive job for postal workers — but lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seemed eager to do what’s necessary to keep the agency from crumbling. “It needs to reduce its head count,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said of the postal service’s workforce, noting that a default would be “embarrassing and dangerous.” “They want to do it humanely. We need to let them.” Aware of the American public’s weariness of bailouts, Carper added, “There’s not a huge bailout that’s needed here … We need to get out of the way.” But Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Donahoe on Tuesday saying they wouldn’t support dissolving the no-layoff provision of the agency’s union contracts, a move they believe would undercut workers’ rights. “To now ask Congress to nullify part of this same contract less than five months after it was concluded is neither fair to Postal Service employees nor helpful to the Postal Service’s credibility in future negotiations,” Cummings and Lynch wrote. A bankruptcy of the postal service could have drastic implications, not merely for the agency but for the broader economy. A $1 trillion mailing industry employing more than 8 million workers relies directly on the agency’s services, as do countless American businesses, Donahoe testified. The service has seen a 22 percent drop in the volume of mail handled in recent years, thanks largely to the explosion in internet transactions like online bill pay. At the current pace, the agency is estimating shrinking revenues through 2020. Although the use of first-class mail will probably continue to decline, Donahoe said he sees a brighter future for the agency when it comes to “standard mail,” such as direct-mail advertising, as well as package service. He told lawmakers these services would not suffer significantly from mass layoffs. “We will not have people moving away from us on account of these changes we’re making,” he said. Donahoe also urged lawmakers to pass legislation that would allow for the return of what he described as $6.9 billion in “overpayments” to retiree pension funds over the years. Berry said the administration would support the return of that money, so long as Congress passed legislation allowing it. Phillip Herr, director of physical infrastructure issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, said that the postal service is no longer viable under its current model. “The start reality is the postal service’s business model … is broken,” Herr said. “The gap between revenues and maintaining its network has become unsustainable.” Although nothing calamitous will happen in the coming weeks, Donahoe warned that the agency may run out of cash by next summer, at which point it will be no longer able to pay its contractors. He asked that Congress pass legislation before the end of the year that would enable layoffs, changes to employee benefits and the closing of certain facilities.

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Vast Majority Of Americans Disapprove Of Obama’s Economic Performance

September 6, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s job approval ratings plunged to a new low ahead of his major economic speech Thursday, with widespread discontent among Americans over his handling of the economy and jobs, according to a spate of polls released Tuesday. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of 1,000 U.S. adults showed Obama’s overall job approval rating at a low of 44 percent, down 3 percentage points since July, while his handling of the economy stands at 37 percent. A Democratic pollster who helped conduct the survey said the poor results, which contain a 3.1 percentage-point margin of error, suggest Obama is no longer favored to win re-election in 2012. An ABC News/Washington Post poll of U.S. adults showed that six in 10 Americans rate the president’s job on the economy and jobs negatively, while one in three say they are now worse off financially since Obama entered the White House. It has a 3.5 percentage point margin of error. A third poll of 1,000 likely voters by Washington-based Politico and George Washington University found that 72 percent of voters believe the country is either strongly or somewhat headed in the wrong direction, a jump of 12 percent since last May. That survey’s results have a 3.1 percentage point error margin. The polling, conducted last week, offers grim news for the president after a summer spent wrangling with Republicans in Congress over the debt ceiling and the budget in a rancorous debate that ended with Standard and Poor’s unprecedented downgrade of the U.S. triple-A credit rating. The polls also come three days ahead of his widely anticipated presidential speech to Congress, in which Obama is expected to confront Republican resistance to his agenda for creating jobs and spurring economic growth. The package is expected to include projects for rebuilding roads, bridges and other infrastructure across the country, an approach Republicans who control the House of Representatives reject as wasteful spending. New job figures, showing zero U.S. employment growth in August and a national jobless rate stuck at 9.1 percent, have stoked fears the U.S. economy could slide back into recession. Obama’s ability to reignite the economy could determine whether he keeps his own job in the White House after 2012. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed the president leading Republican front-runner Rick Perry, the Texas governor, by 47 percent to 42 percent and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney by 46 percent to 45 percent. But for the first time in that poll, Obama lost out to a generic Republican candidate by 44 percent to 40 percent, which could suggest a serious campaign obstacle given the bleak economic picture. “Obama is no longer the favorite to win re-election,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the NBC/Wall Street Journal survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. (Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Jackie Frank) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Obama Says Congress Must Pass Jobs Plan

September 5, 2011

DETROIT — President Barack Obama says it is time for congressional Republicans to put their country ahead of their party and vote to create new jobs. In a preview of the jobs speech he will deliver on Thursday to Congress, Obama told a Labor Day rally that there are numerous roads and bridges that need rebuilding in the U.S., and many construction workers who are available to build them. He said lawmakers must move quickly to create jobs, and said his proposal will be a test of whether congressional Republicans will put country ahead of party. Obama said “the time for Washington games is over,” and it is now time for action. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below. President Barack Obama is previewing his ideas for job creation and economic growth at a Labor Day rally with union members in Detroit. Obama’s speech at the annual event sponsored by the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO was serving as a dress rehearsal for the jobs address he’s delivering to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night. He arrived in Michigan mid-day. The president’s appearance follows last Friday’s dismal jobs report, which showed that employers added no jobs in August. It was the first time since 1945 that the government reported a net job change of zero. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, held steady at 9.1 percent. The disappointing report sparked new fears of a second recession and injected fresh urgency into efforts by Obama to help get millions of unemployed people back into the labor market – and help improve his re-election chances. Polls show the economy and jobs are the public’s top concerns. Public approval of Obama’s handling of the economy hit a new low of 26 percent in a recent Gallup survey. The unemployment report also gave Obama’s Republican critics, including those who want to challenge him in next year’s presidential election, fresh ammunition to pound him with. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the report disappointing, unacceptable and “further proof that President Obama has failed.” Romney is scheduled to outline his own job-creation plan in a speech Tuesday in the battleground state of Nevada. In the speech to Congress, Obama is expected to call for a mix of individual and business tax credits and public works spending. He will also press lawmakers for swift action on those proposals. The day after his address to Congress, Obama plans to visit Richmond, Va. – part of which is represented by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., one of the president’s fiercest critics. Obama plans to spend a “decent amount of time” traveling the country to encourage support for his job creation plan, said deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest. “These are bipartisan ideas that ought to be the kind of proposals that everybody can get behind, no matter what your political affiliation might be,” Obama said last week. “So my hope and expectation is that we can put country before party and get something done for the American people.” Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Monday that both political parties should get behind Obama’s efforts to improve the hiring picture. “We do need everyone to be on board,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. Solis said Obama “is very mindful of what the needs and concerns are of those individuals who have been out of work for so long.” But she also said the jobless have a responsibility to seek training in new skills, if necessary, to better prepare themselves for the kinds of jobs available in today’s economy. Obama spent part of the holiday weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland “putting the finishing touches” on the proposals and the speech, said spokesman Jay Carney. “That process continues over the next few days, but he’s very far along,” Carney said. In Detroit on Monday, Obama was also expected to tout his efforts to save the auto industry and millions of jobs by providing federal bailouts in 2009 for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Group LLC. The AFL-CIO rally was being held in a GM parking lot. Obama won Michigan in the 2008 presidential election and the economically challenged state is crucial to his re-election prospects. The state unemployment rate was 10.9 percent in July, above the national average for that month. The Detroit-area jobless rate was even higher, at 14.1 percent in July. ___

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Robert Reich: U.S. Won’t Recovery Until The Country Tackles Inequality

September 5, 2011

THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

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Obama, Democrats Losing Key Support

September 4, 2011

WASHINGTON — In the early days of the Obama administration, organized labor had grand visions of pushing through a sweeping agenda that would help boost sagging membership and help revive union strength. Now labor faces this reality: Public employee unions are in a drawn-out fight for their very survival in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states where GOP lawmakers have curbed collective bargaining rights. Also, many union leaders are grousing that the president they worked so hard to elect has not focused enough on job creation and other bold plans to get their members back to work. “Obama campaigned big, but he’s governing small,” said Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union. Labor remains a core Democratic constituency and union leaders will stand with Obama in Detroit this Labor Day, where he will address thousands of rank-and-file members during the city’s annual parade Monday. But at the same time, unions have begun shifting money and resources out of Democratic congressional campaigns and back to the states in a furious effort to reverse or limit GOP measures that could wipe out union rolls. The AFL-CIO’s president, Richard Trumka, says it’s part of a new strategy for labor to build an independent voice separate from the Democratic Party. Union donations to federal candidates at the beginning of this year were down about 40 percent compared with the same period in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Last month, a dozen trade unions said they would boycott next year’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., over frustration on the economy and to protest the event’s location in a right-to-work state. “The pendulum has swung a long way,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “In the next year, I think all unions can really hope for is to keep more bad things from happening and to get as much of a jobs program enacted as possible.” Unions fell short last month in their recall campaign to wrest control of the Wisconsin Senate from Republicans. That fight was a consequence of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public-employee unions as a part of a cost-cutting effort. Now they are spending millions more in Ohio, where they hope to pass a statewide referendum in November that would repeal a similar measure limiting union rights. It’s a far cry from the early optimism unions had after Obama came into office. Back then, unions hoped a Democratic-controlled Congress would pass legislation to make it easier for unions to organize workers. But business groups fought that proposal hard, and it never came to a vote. Union leaders grew more disappointed when the president’s health care overhaul didn’t include a government-run insurance option. Then Obama agreed to extend President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. Obama came out in favor of trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama that most unions say will cost American jobs. Despite campaigning in favor of raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.50 an hour, Obama hasn’t touched the issue since taking office. It didn’t help that Obama declined union invitations to go to Wisconsin, where thousands of protesters mobilized against the anti-union measure. Candidate Obama had promised to “put on sneakers” and walk a picket line himself when union rights were threatened. Obama has handed labor smaller victories that didn’t have to go through Congress, like granting the nation’s 44,000 airport screeners limited collective bargaining rights for the first time. The National Labor Relations Board and other agencies filled with Obama’s appointees have made it easier for unions to organize workers in the airline, railroad and health care industries. The NLRB has taken a beating from Republicans after filing a lawsuit that accuses Boeing of opening a new plant in South Carolina in retaliation against union workers in Washington state. “The field has tilted against labor so that whatever small victories they get are just tinkering around the edges and get tremendous pushback by conservatives,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But labor’s frustration with Obama reached new heights this summer as Trumka accused him of working with tea party Republicans on deficit reduction instead of “stepping up to the plate” on jobs. Labor unions and other liberal groups want Obama to push a major stimulus bill with hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on infrastructure projects like roads, bridges and transit systems. Even if it’s rejected in the GOP-controlled House, unions want to see Obama show more leadership and take a bold stand in favor of stimulus spending. That’s not likely to happen. Constrained by budget cuts and a tight debt ceiling, Obama is expected to propose a limited package worth far less than the $787 billion stimulus passed in 2009. The plan will call on Congress to extend current payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits, spend money for new construction projects and offer incentives to businesses to hire more workers. James Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said Obama should challenge businesses with healthy bottom lines to spend more in the U.S. by hiring new workers, building plants and expanding operations. If they don’t, Hoffa said, Obama should call them out as disloyal. “I think the president should challenge the patriotism of these American corporations that are sitting on the sidelines,” Hoffa said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added, “We’ve got to turn this around and say, `Hey, we are an American company. We owe an obligation to America. Let’s put America back to work.’” Labor Secretary Hilda Solis defended Obama from liberal critics, saying the administration has established many programs to create jobs, worked to extend unemployment insurance benefits and helped save the auto industry. “The president is very concerned about job creation,” Solis told reporters at the National Press Club. “That been our priority from day one.” Union face a tougher challenge in the states. Walker wanted to patch the state’s budget shortfall by requiring state workers to pay more for their health care and pension benefits. He said curbing bargaining rights was important in the long term to prevent unions from reversing the move in future negotiations. Republican Wisconsin state Rep. Robin Vos said the big money spent by pro-labor forces in the recall elections shows “that they’re not about protecting workers rights, they’re about protecting political power.” “This is the last grasp of those political bosses to be able to showcase why they need to have the political power, and they lost,” he said. Conservatives say Walker’s measure has done just what it promised, closing budget shortfalls without laying off teachers and other workers. “As the changes have had time to sink in, people appear to be accepting it, and it appears to be part of the new status quo,” said James Sherk, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. A measure passed in Tennessee this year ended collective bargaining for teachers unions in the state. In Oklahoma, lawmakers repealed a law that had required large municipalities to collectively bargain with municipal employees. “The fact that you didn’t see much pushback in those states, I think, is significant,” Sherk said. Union leaders see a more sinister plan not only to cut union benefits, but to crush unions altogether, along with their political largesse to Democrats. The Wisconsin law, for example, bans automatic withdrawal of union dues and requires public unions to hold annual votes to avoid decertification. In Ohio, unions are more hopeful that they can win a November referendum to undo the state’s collective bargaining law that passed this spring. A Quinnipiac University poll in July found that 56 percent of Ohio voters say the new collective bargaining law should be repealed, compared with 32 percent who favor keeping it in place. “A victory in Ohio would be a tremendous shot against the bow of Republicans to not mess with the unions,” Lichtenstein said. It could also help unions show they are still a political force to be reckoned with at both the state and national level. ___ Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis., and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

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Nine High Paying Jobs With Lots Of Time Off: 24/7 Wall St.

September 3, 2011

The vast majority of high-paying jobs require a significant initial commitment in the form of education, training and tuition, and then hard work while on the job. Most high-paying jobs require significantly more hours on the job than the average American puts in. 24/7 Wall St. has identified nine jobs that pay well above the national median income, while requiring less working hours than average.

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Canadian authorities probing employees of SNC-Lavalin Group

September 3, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Canadian authorities are investigating employees of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc for possible corruption involving a $1.2 billion World Bank bridge project in Bangladesh, a bank spokesman said on Friday. The World Bank said it had been informed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had raided several locations as part of their investigation. SNC-Lavalin confirmed it was cooperating with Canadian authorities, but gave no details. Canadian authorities launched the probe following a referral from World Bank officials about alleged corruption in the bidding process for the Padma Bridge, a bank spokesman said. He said the bank was continuing its own investigation. The World Bank approved financing for the Padma Bridge project in April, but had not disbursed any funds given the ongoing investigation, said the spokesman. “We commend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for its robust response to the World Bank referral and look forward to the outcome of its investigation,” said the spokesman. Leslie Quinton, a spokeswoman for SNC-Lavalin, said the company was assisting Canadian authorities with an investigation on a specific case, but gave no further details. “We are complying fully with their requests and are not aware of any reason that would warrant such an investigation,” Quinton said. “Because the situation is under investigation, we cannot comment any further.” Constable Julie Morel, spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, confirmed that the police agency had executed search warrants at several locations as part of an investigation of SNC-Lavalin employees on Thursday. She declined to identify which locations or to provide any further details since the investigation was still under way. The World Bank signed a 40-year deal in April to loan $1.2 billion to Bangladesh to build a bridge linking its underdeveloped south with the capital, Dhaka, and the country’s main port, Chittagong. An international consortium, led by the World Bank, last year agreed to lend Bangladesh up to $2.9 billion for the 6-km (4-mile) multi-purpose bridge over the river Padma. The bridge, about 50 km (30 miles) south of Dhaka, is expected to be completed by 2014, improving transportation between Bangladesh and other countries, and establishing a missing link along the longest corridor under the Asian Highway Network that connects Tokyo to Istanbul. The World Bank last week outlined its increased efforts to prevent and deter fraud and corruption. Over the past year, the bank said its new Preventive Services Unit (PSU) had helped build precautions against fraud into 48 high-risk projects in 29 countries with a total value of $14.1 billion. The bank said it had trained over 2,700 government officials and bank staff on how to conduct forensic audits and identify suspicious transactions. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa and Tim Ahmann; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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