The JOBS Act is insane on many levels. It creates an extraordinarily criminogenic environment in which securities fraud will become even more out of control. One of the forms of insanity is the belief that one can “win” a regulatory “race to the bottom.” The only winning move is not to play in a regulatory race to the bottom.
[As] the chart below underscores, the US changed in the early 1980s from a model where rising worker wages were seen as the driver to ...growth and hence a focus of policy, to one where rising consumer debt levels and asset appreciation were used to substitute for stagnant incomes.
“Big government” isn’t the problem. The problem is the Big Money that’s taking over government. Government is doing fewer of the things most of us want it to do—providing good public schools and affordable access to college, improving infrastructure, maintaining safety nets and protecting the public from dangers—and more of the things big corporations, Wall Street and wealthy plutocrats want it to do."Small government" makes a good sound bite, perhaps, but not a good objective. Giving more money to those who already have plenty as part of an austerity program to shrink government and deficits will not solve the problems of our economy or our society:
Some conservatives argue that we wouldn’t have to worry about this if we had a smaller government to begin with, because big government attracts Big Money. On ABC’s This Week a few months ago, Congressman Paul Ryan told me that “if the power and money are going to be here in Washington…that’s where the powerful are going to go to influence it.” Ryan has it upside down. A smaller government that’s still dominated by money would continue to do the bidding of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, oil companies, agribusiness, big insurance, military contractors and rich individuals. It just wouldn’t do anything else.
"Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money."
I love it when Ron Paul says, “If we get rid of government, freedom will sweep right in.” That’s just not what happens. What happens is that a bunch of elephants stampede in because they’re in a position to take advantage of it. Meanwhile, if you get government out of the way, the people who need government, they don’t have it.The small government types don't like the comparison, but the question begs an answer: how does what they propose differ from Somalia?
There’s this myth that government doesn’t belong in the marketplace. If that were true, there would be no canals, no railroads, no highways, no internet. The government was a critical partner in many of the biggest innovations in U.S. history.
But if you buy into that for 20 or 30 years, and you say, “smaller government, smaller government programs,” who gets squeezed by that? It’s the cities. And the problem is that, as that happens, it accelerates. Kids drop out of school. Neighborhoods decay. Businesses leave. The tax base goes down. Cops get fired. Teachers get fired. It’s a cycle of pain.
The renewable energy industry's hope of extending a slew of federal programs was easily defeated on the Senate floor Tuesday.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., had introduced an amendment to a transportation bill that would have, among other things, extended the Production Tax Credit for one year and revived the expired 1603 Treasury grant.
But that amendment fell far short of the 60 votes required as Senators split 49-49, according to a message sent by the Solar Energy Industries Association on Tuesday afternoon.
Upon examining electricity rate data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration spanning the decade from 2000-2010, a Center for American Progress analysis found zero statistically-significant difference in how renewable electricity standards affect changes in rates.
In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do is nothing.Better to make a decision that has a poor result than to make no decision at all. Observing, thinking, planning are all important, but no leader can make things change without taking action.
The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period.
