Daily digest – It’s a sabotage

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

Obama, FDR and the will of two Congresses (WaPo)
Ezra Klein argues that FDR’s success wasn’t due solely to his bold leadership — he had a Congress that was up to the challenge of its time rather than a group of performance artists half-heartedly pretending to govern.

Occupy the Polls: Tuesday’s Critical Tests of Political Power (The Nation)
This first Tuesday after the first Monday in November may be the calm before 2012’s presidential storm, but John Nichols explains why real political junkies from Ohio to California will still be staying up late to watch the returns.

4 Reasons Why Ohio Isn’t Wisconsin (MoJo)
Andy Kroll writes that Ohio Gov. John Kasich tried to recreate Scott Walker’s union-busting agenda with an extra dash of mean, but a combination of strong organizing and direct democracy turned it into a recipe for political disaster.

The bleak face of U.S. poverty (Salon)
Andrew Leonard notes that the most positive element of the new census data on poverty may be that there are now so many Americans who are so poor that policymakers will find it difficult to ignore them. But they’ll still give it their best shot.

The War Against the Poor (TomDispatch)
Frances Fox Piven writes that conservatives have justified their pro-billionaire agenda by equating poverty with bad character and dependency, but Occupy Wall Street offers an alternative that doesn’t make people twist themselves into moral pretzels.

The One Percent Turns Class War Into Generational War (HuffPo)
Dean Baker takes on the argument that when faced with mass unemployment, economic stagnation, and rising inequality, the best thing the government can do for young Americans is slash their grandparents’ retirement benefits.

Promises Made, and Remade, by Firms in S.E.C. Fraud Cases (NYT)
Citigroup’s recent settlement exemplifies the SEC’s unusual m.o.: Charge firms for breaking the law, make them promise not to do it again, wait for them to do it again, then make them promise again. But this time, they have to pinky swear.

Federal Workers Are Underpaid Compared To Their Private Sector Counterparts (Think Progress)
New BLS data shows an average pay gap of 26.3 percent between public and private employees, but conservatives say that conflicts with their own studies, which find that civil servants get paid exclusively in gold bars and blood diamonds.

Is Overregulation Driving U.S. Companies Offshore? (NYT)
Catherine Rampell highlights a World Bank score card that reveals the sad, shocking truth: The United States is no longer the best country in the world to do business. It’s now stuck all the way down the list at number four.

The growing acceptance of the ‘sabotage’ question (Washington Monthly)
Steve Benen notes that recent polls show about half the country now believes that Republicans are deliberately weakening the economy for political benefit. But voters are also mad that Obama can’t just do some president-ing and work around them.

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Posted by New Deal 2.0 on Nov 8 2011. Filed under New Deal 2.0, the reading room. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry