Daily digest – America’s vision deficit

What you need to know to navigate today’s most critical debates.

The Book of Jobs (Vanity Fair)
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Joseph Stiglitz argues that the economy is undergoing the kind of fundamental transformation not seen since the Great Depression, so pouring more money into a broken financial sector and crossing our fingers won’t cut it.

The limits of our jobs debate (WaPo)
Katrina vanden Heuvel notes that it’s a problem when even the most comprehensive progressive jobs bill on the table is more concerned with showing its math to deficit hawks who will never vote for it than it is with actually putting people to work.

House GOP Passes Payroll Tax Cut Bill Obama Has Threatened To Veto (TPM)
The GOP’s Christmas gift to congressional Democrats comes with all sorts of fun stocking stuffers, like capping federal spending and drug testing people who receive unemployment benefits. They probably would have preferred a nice pack of socks.

Fed Takes No Action, Citing Signs of Moderate Growth (NYT)
The Federal Reserve issued its final interest rate statement for 2011 yesterday, laying out its policy goals for the rest of this year and next. Here’s the plan: …

Banks Are Lending Again (Marketplace)
The good news is that banks are loosening up their credit lines. The bad news, says Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal, is that getting consumers past their massive debt hangover will take more than a little financial hair of the dog.

On fairy tales about inequality (EPI)
Yes, the richest Americans took a hit from the recession, just like everyone else. But as Lawrence Mishel points out, the nice thing about having tons of money is that even when you lose a little bit, you’re still left with a lot more than most.

The Political One Percent of the One Percent (Sunlight Foundation)
Just 26,783 Americans, or about 0.01 percent of the population, made over 24 percent of all political donations in 2010. Maybe we should just skip the media circus next year and have them fill out a survey to decide who gets to be president.

Wal-Mart Heiress’s Art Museum a Moral Blight (Bloomberg)
Jeffrey Goldberg writes that with Alice Walton investing so much of her family fortune in the worthy cause of assembling her favorite artwork under one roof, it would be nice of her to spare a dime, or a thought, for the retail empire’s workers.

What Occupy Wall Street Owes to Feminist Consciousness-Raising (Ms.)
Stephanie Rogers notes that early feminists developed a model for sharing their struggles and raising public awareness that has helped overcome similar efforts to paint Occupy protesters as a bunch of hysterics in need of a fainting couch.

The Myth of the Middle (Democracy)
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Mark Schmitt poses a question to those who argue that the American political system could be fixed by electing someone who isn’t beholden to either of the two major parties: And then what?

Short URL: http://aworldofprogress.com/readingroom/?p=1615

Posted by New Deal 2.0 on Dec 14 2011. Filed under New Deal 2.0, ThinkProgress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry