DAVID A GRAHAM, - The Daily Beast
Stephan:
This is the real deal. This is the specific budget that neither Congressional Democrats, nor Republicans will offer, enslaved as they are to their corporate masters. This places people first, and is a good place to start the conversation.
The full technical analysis of the plan is available at www.epi.org.
David Graham is a reporter for Newsweek covering politics, national affairs, and business. His writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal and The National in Abu Dhabi.
Unlike unpopular budget plans by Obama and Paul Ryan, the People’s Budget saves Social Security, jacks up taxes on the rich, and produces a surplus within a decade. David A. Graham explains why the plan is flying under the radar.
As members of Congress talk to constituents during recess, they’re getting an earful. Just as angry crowds of constituents greeted Democratic members during the health-care reform debate, angry voters are coming out to tell their representatives that they’re mad about Paul Ryan’s proposed changes to Medicare and Medicaid. They want to know why corporate giants like GE aren’t paying any taxes. And they want the rich to shoulder more of the tax burden. Even President Obama’s plan is too lenient, some say.
So what if there were a plan that proposed keeping entitlements intact, closed corporate tax loopholes, and jacked up taxes on the rich-all while producing a budget surplus within a decade? As it turns out, there is-and has been for several weeks. Called ‘The People’s Budget,
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EZRA KLEIN, - The Washington Post
Stephan: There is nothing in this to surprise an SR reader, but it is quite useful to see the entire narrative in one essay.
Did Osama bin Laden win? No. Did he succeed? Well, America is still standing, and he isn’t. So why, when I called Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism expert who specializes in al-Qaeda, did he tell me that ‘bin Laden has been enormously successful
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Stephan: We are destroying our capacity to be competitive. Think about what this report is saying. How can Detroit be functional as a city if 47 out of 100 of the people who live in the city can't read. Consider this trend in light of the report I ran yesterday on the growing inability of children to read and write cursive.
DETROIT — According to a new report, 47 percent of Detroiters are
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TANYA SOMANADER, - Think Progress
Stephan: Did you think I was exaggerating when I said that there is a conservative war on women? Here is the latest battle in this war -- and women lost. Having lived through, and participated in, struggles over civil rights, women's rights and now, gay rights, I am astonished that women are allowing this retro-movement to do this. I am missing something.
In a 251 to 175 vote this evening, 16 anti-choice Democrats joined every House Republican present in passing H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. A chief weapon in the House GOP’s ‘comprehensive assault
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Stephan: We have the most ideological and activist Supreme Court in generations. They are slowly but steadily reorienting American law to favor corporations.
One of the reasons the class action lawsuit is such an effective tool at stemming corporate overreach is that it forces guilty parties to bear the consequences of their bad business decisions en masse. A gentle fleecing of one customer for $40 a year may not seem like a big deal until tens of thousands of fleeced customers are able to aggregate their claims and place an overarching cost to the bad practice.
But thanks to the Roberts Court, businesses have much less to fear from the class action lawsuit. That’s because, according to the holding in AT&T v. Conception, companies should be free to ban class actions in the fine print of their contracts.
The 5-4 ruling, authored by Justice Scalia, holds that corporations may use arbitration clauses to cut off consumers and employees’ right to band together through class actions to hold corporations accountable.
The decision is the most recent in a series of systematic efforts to roll back consumer protections and class action rights. In Concepcion, a cell phone customer claimed that AT&T’s contract promising a free phone did not mention a $30.22 sales tax charge. The customer sued, but AT&T argued the suit customer’s claim was barred by the […]
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