SUNDAY
Quote of the Day
February 17, 2013
'Well, I do agree that the unfinished task is to make sure that people who work hard and take care of their responsibilities can get ahead, but he has not- and neither has anyone in Congress-laid out how we're going to get there. The big problem-the biggest problem facing the country still is employment: too many people out of work and too many people underemployed. Now, the president touched on some of the things that we need to do. We need to rebuild infrastructure, invest in research and development. He talked about some things related to climate change, you know, weatherizing buildings from coast to coast, which would put lower-income people to work. But all of those things cost money. And he also emphasized in his speech that nothing that he's proposing will add even a dime to the budget deficits. So, one part of the speech is fighting another, so I don't know how we make headway here, if we're not going to make investments in those things that ultimately will put people back to work.'
Bob Herbert, distinguished senior fellow with Demos
Democracy Now!
February 13, 2013
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/13/obamas_sotu_address_calls_for_middle
Toon of the Day
The Minimum Wage Awards
Brian Mcfadden - New York Times
MONDAY
Quote of the Day
February 18, 2013
'You've heard me before quote one of my mentors who told his students that "news is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity." That's why two books are rattling the cages of powerful people who would rather you not read them. Here's the first one. Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age by Susan Crawford. Read it and you'll understand why we Americans are paying much more for internet access than people in many other countries and getting much less in return. That, despite the fact that our very own academics and engineers, working with our very own Defense Department, invented the internet in the first place.
'Back then, the U.S. was in the catbird seat - poised to lead the world down this astonishing new superhighway of information and innovation. Now many other countries offer their citizens faster and cheaper access than we do. The faster high-speed access comes through fiber optic lines that transmit data in bursts of laser light, but many of us are still hooked up to broadband connections that squeeze digital information through copper wire. We're stuck with this old-fashioned technology because, as Susan Crawford explains, our government has allowed a few giant conglomerates to rig the rules, raise prices, and stifle competition. Just like standard oil in the first Gilded Age a century ago.'
Bill Moyers 'Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair'
Moyers and Co. via Alternet
February 9, 2013
http://www.alternet.org/bill-moyers-why-us-internet-access-slow-costly-and-unfair?paging=off
Toon of the Day
Noah Burgers
Peter Brookes - The Times (UK)
TUESDAY
Quote of the Day
February 19, 2013
'Once again, Bowles and Simpson have produced a plan that tells working people to "drop dead." In December 2010, Bowles and Simpson put forward a budget blueprint that proposed to cut tax rates for corporations and the richest Americans and eliminate taxes on overseas corporate profits, and then pay for these lower tax rates by cutting Social Security benefits, shifting Medicare costs to individuals, taxing health benefits and cutting federal employees' pay, benefits and jobs. The updated budget blueprint Bowles and Simpson put forward today cuts tax rates for the richest Americans and corporations and pays for these lower tax rates by cutting Social Security COLAs, taxing health benefits and cutting federal employees' health and retirement benefits. For working people and the future of our nation, it is dead on arrival.'
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, on the release of a new and revised Simpson-Bowles 'defcit reduction' plan that would cut Social Security COLAs to pay for lower tax rates for corporations and the wealthiest.
AFL-CIO
February 19, 2013
Toon of the Day
North Carolina Medicaid and Unemployment Cuts
John Cole - Cagle
WEDNESDAY
Quote of the Day
February 20, 2013
"The (strike) is our answer to the dead-end policies that have squeezed the life out of workers, impoverished society and plunged the economy into recession and crisis. Our struggle will continue for as long as these policies are implemented.'
Statement by the Greek private sector union GSEE that, with its public sector sister union ADEDY, mobilized today's massive ant-austerity protest
Reuters
February 20, 2013
http://news.yahoo.com/anti-austerity-strike-bring-greece-standstill-233851099.html
Toon of the Day
A Meteor Slams into USA
David Horsey - Los Angeles Times
THURSDAY
Quote of the Day
February 21, 2013
`As the president outlined in his State of the Union address, we should be focused on making this economy work for working people once more. This would involve a long-term new strategy for growth and jobs that would put people to work. To address our long-term debt projections, we should be continuing to reform our health care system to get costs under control while providing affordable care for all. If the rest of the industrial world can get there with different models, surely we can, too.
`Instead we are victims of a classic example of shock doctrine - the right using an economic calamity to roll back social protections. At a time of Gilded Age inequality, they seek to exact more pain from an already declining middle class - and get the president and Democrats to offer bipartisan cover. It's a jackal time and it's likely to get worse.'
Robert Borosage
`The Wrecking Crew Is Winning'
Campaign for America's Future
February 19, 2013
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130219/the-wrecking-crew
Toon of the Day
Olympic Sport?
Christopher Weyant - The Hill
FRIDAY
Quote of the Day
February 22, 2013
`For our part, we are opposed to everlasting austerity as means for fiscal rebalancing on both pragmatic and ideological grounds. We consider democracy to be of inalienable political and cultural value. And for this reason we refuse to place it on the markets' Procrustean bed. The subjugation of democratic process to the markets was the reason we have the crisis today and the cause of its perpetual reproduction. Based on such commonsense approaches to reality, and with no need for complex econometric models, we predicted from the outset, well before the IMF admitted to its predictive failures, that austerity-based policies would backfire and would fail by their own criteria and targets, let alone in terms of the interests of the vast majority of the Greek people.
`For us, economic policy ought to be inextricably linked to social policy with a view to look after the social needs of people, of social justice, of intergenerational solidarity and of environmental balance.'
Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza party in Greece.
AlterNet
February 12, 2013
http://www.alternet.org/world/exclusive-interview-meet-alexis-tsipras-most-dangerous-man-europe
Toon of the Day
The Average American
David Horsey - Los Angeles Times
SATURDAY
Quote of the Day
February 23, 2013
'The US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan's official role as America's junior partner in the war on terror, makes that region a much- reported place. The rest of the world is at least aware of the dangers unfolding there. Less understood, and harder to read, is the perilous wind that's picking up speed in the world's favourite new superpower. The Indian economy is in considerable trouble. The aggressive, acquisitive ambition that economic liberalisation unleashed in the newly created middle class is quickly turning into an equally aggressive frustration. The aircraft they were sitting in has begun to stall just after take off. Exhilaration is turning to panic.'
Novelist, writer and Indian
political activist Arundhati Roy
The Guardian (UK)
February 18, 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/18/afzal-guru-dangerous-political-fallout
Toon of the Day
Most Essential Functions
Ben Sargent
Spread the word