Daily digest – Weep not for the billionaires
What you need to know to navigate today’s most critical debates.
Occupiers to ‘fight like an Egyptian’ (Politico)
Roosevelt Institute Fellow Matt Stoller notes that both major parties have the opportunity to coopt America’s most popular movement by implementing basic reforms to restore sanity to the political system. In other words, OWS’s independence is in no danger.
Pitying billionaires as America starves (Salon)
David Sirota writes that despite growing anger from the rest of the country, wealthy Americans and their pals in Congress and the media keep crying into their chardonnay about the pain of struggling through life with a 10-figure net worth.
How Occupy Wall Street Really Got Started (MoJo)
Andy Kroll profiles the group of international activists who drew on their experience with movements like the Arab Spring to lead an uprising in the U.S. Unless you believe it’s all the work of George Soros’s crack squad of Canadian rabble-rousers.
Posted Prices and the Capitol Hill Stalemate Machine (Washington Spectator)
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Tom Ferguson explains how gridlock arises from a fundraising system in which committee memberships come with a price tag and elected representatives become sales agents for their party’s leadership.
Simplify Banks and Bank Regulation (HuffPo)
Robert Kuttner observes that instead of restoring Glass-Steagall’s simple guidelines for banking, President Obama has championed a 300-page compendium of rules that still leaves many questions. How else could you tell he was being all compromise-y?
What should have been different this time? The policy response (EPI)
Responding to Ezra Klein’s recent analysis of the Obama administration’s response to the Great Recession, Josh Bivens points out that the problem wasn’t just the scope of the crisis, but the cultivated stupidity of many Democratic policymakers.
Veterans’ unemployment outpaces civilian rate (WaPo)
“Support our troops” continues to be a slogan that America adheres to in only the most abstract terms, as veterans find that the rigorous training they receive in the military gets dismissed by civilian employers as running around with guns and stuff.
Economics has met the enemy, and it is economics (Globe and Mail)
Ira Basen writes that economists are slowly realizing that if they want their profession to remain relevant to the real world, they can’t keep following models that assume human beings are perfectly efficient and rational econo-bots.
On family economics, Rick Santorum gets it only partially right (WaPo)
EJ Dionne notes that Santorum is right to say that America’s working families need more support to help make ends meet, but no one sits around the dinner table at night wondering how they’ll pay the electricity bill if gay marriage becomes legal.
The Constitution: A Love Story (TAP)
They say you always hurt the ones you love, which would explain why the Tea Party Republicans who claim to worship the Constitution are always looking for ways to rewrite it. Garrett Epps suggests that progressives take a more faithful approach.
Short URL: http://aworldofprogress.com/readingroom/?p=1236
Posted by ThinkProgress
on Oct 18 2011. Filed under New Deal 2.0, the reading room.
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