From Tom Dispatch a quiz: With President Obama’s announced July 2011 drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in mind, the Pentagon has already: a. Begun organizing an orderly early 2011 withdrawal of troops from combat outposts and forward operating bases to larger facilities to facilitate the president’s plan. b. Launched a new U.S. base-building binge […]

Robert Waldmann Matthew Yglesias has a post on poverty which is, shall we say, very different from my post on severe poverty below. In particular he wrote We then had a giant reduction in poverty among this group [female-headed households without husbands] in the 1990s which was a combination of strong economic performance, “welfare reform,” […]

Elizabeth Warren’s Greatest Hits from MoveOn.org Official Channel on Vimeo.

Elizabeth Warren posts on the The White House Blog on her new job: Over the past several weeks, the President and I have had extensive conversations about the vital importance of consumer financial protection. The President asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the […]

by Dan Crawford Via Daily job cuts, this report highlights a problem: NewsFedEx 1Q profit doubles; will cut 1,700 jobs NEW YORK — FedEx says its fiscal first-quarter earnings doubled and the company will cut 1,700 jobs as it consolidates its trucking operations to save money. The company is also boosting its quarterly per share […]

by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter The hypocrisy of most deficit discussions Congress seems incapable of setting aside electioneering rhetoric and talking straight about taxes and deficits. The GOP claims that it thinks deficits are bad things while at the same time it proposes no spending cuts (except to important safety net programs) and does propose […]

by Dan Crawford Stormy asks in an e-mail: At one time, I thought America was supposed to lead the way in green technology, providing jobs for Americans…and sends this quote from the Washington Post. The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month… …What made the […]

The Project on student debt updates on student loans: Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law took a stand for students and consumers by passing the Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act of 2010 (H.R. 5043). The bill reverses the unfair and unjustified special protections for lenders of private student loans […]

Robert Waldmann The Census Bureau has released estimates of poverty in 2009. Coverage focused on the headline poverty rate which is horrible enough. Much worse, 6.3% of people in the USA suffered severe poverty, that is lived in households with income less than half the poverty line. This is the highest severe poverty rate on […]