News & Views

Washington D.C. (August 18, 2011) – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today called upon the White House to ‘get real’ on jobs and not wait until September to announce plans to get America working again. Kucinich’s statement comes as President Obama wraps up a Midwestern ‘jobs tour’ that lacked specific proposals, but included a push for the passage of free trade agreements. Aides to the President Obama have stated the President will deliver a ‘major address’ in September, after Labor Day.

Quelle surprise! Bankers and financiers will be sitting pretty when the “Super Committee” decides where spending gets slashed over the next decade.

Standard & Poor's downgrades US debt, stock markets gyrate around the world, Sarkozy and Merkel perform yet another empty summit, the Chinese and Japanese economies look worrisome. Serious commentators worry about global recession, another global banking collapse, eurozone dissolution and austerity programs that only make matters worse. Nouriel Roubini, famed professor at NYU's Stern School of Business asks this month, "Is Capitalism Doomed?" His answer: maybe.

Not only is the United States slouching toward a double dip, but so is Europe. New data out today show even Europe’s strongest core economies – Germany, France, and the Netherlands – slowing to a crawl.

The overarching challenge in the world today is: how do we advance the institutions and practices capable of enacting a desirable quality of life for a burgeoning global population of 6.5 billion people?  And how do we accomplish that in a way that does not burn up the planet in a Venus atmosphere of our own creation?  That is a tall order to fill, yet it is the [defining task of the 21st century.

RootsAction is calling for a bold jobs plan to address poverty. Join them.

In today's On the News segment: Warren Buffett asks a billionaire-friendly Congress to stop coddling the rich, only one-third of Americans have id="mce_marker",000 or more in savings, Obama approval rating at 39 percent, fear of a deeper recession are growing, Michele Bachmann wins Ames Straw poll, and more.

In the months ahead, we're going to be treated to an endless parade of process stories about the Gang of 12 “super congress” that emerged from the debt ceiling deal. Each time a staffer leaks some bit of trivia about the internal machinations of this opaque committee, the Beltway media will write a flurry of stories about it, lawmakers will signal whether they might support this provision or that one and the pundits will sift through the tea leaves trying to predict whether this time the kind of “grand bargain” the Washington Posteditorial board lusts after will finally come to pass.

The deal worked out to allow a rise in the debt ceiling gives us our first real chance in more than a decade to make significant cuts to our country’s out-of-control war budget, but we are going to have to fight for them. The war industry is already deploying their favorite kind of stealth weapon on Capitol Hill to protect their profits: money and influence. Members of the newly-announced deficit committee have together taken around millions in campaign and PAC contributions from military contractors since 2007, and these companies plan to “cash in” on these donations to stop real cuts to big war contracts. That’s why Brave New Foundation is moving quickly to launch a new campaign, War Costs, to counter their profit-protection strategy, and we need you with us.