Media

President Obama laid out a compelling vision for rebuilding the middle class yesterday, but he largely sidestepped the all-important question of whether U.S. workers can compete, long-term, with lower paid workers in places like China, India, and Mexico. 

Last week, my colleague Joe Hines analyzed how impossible it was to live on the budget McDonald’s outlined for its employees. Among many issues, McDonald’s budget assumed each employee had a second job to help ends meet.

Are we ready for the next Citizens United? Can our democracy, and Americans’ faith in government, take another body blow from the Supreme Court?

I am of course glad to see President Obama focus the country on what he correctly identifies as the most pressing national problem, the crushing of the middle class. The solution he laid out in his address at Knox College, a middle-out economics which sees the middle class as the engine of the economy, is both good economics and a powerful political message. It is what progressives and Democrats need to keep emphasizing over and over again, both rhetorically and in their legislative agendas.

Washington, D.C. – A coalition of membership groups with more than 9.4 million members and supporters has filed an amicus brief today urging the U.S.

80 percent of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. 

It is a myth that we are helpless to do anything about the state of the economy. 

 Why does Obama well lag behind Clinton, who he has far outstripped in legislative accomplishments, and find himself only eight points higher than Nixon, a president heading fast toward resignation? 

The New York Times reported last week that New York State’s health plans are set to fall 50 percent in cost, which prompted a fierce debate between right wing critics of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its defenders. But missing from the conversation was the fact that insurance companies, who are driven not by the public’s interest but by profits, still control the market.