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Why the Republican Crackup Hurts America

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - Dec. 22 (Opinion) - America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way - seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010. Newt Gingrich's recent assertion that public officials aren't bound to follow the decisions of federal courts derives from the same tradition. This stop-at-nothing radicalism is dangerous for the GOP because most Americans recoil from it. Gingrich himself became an object of ridicule in the late 1990s, and many Republicans today worry that if he heads the ticket the Party will suffer large losses. It's also dangerous for America. We need two political parties solidly grounded in the realities of governing. Our democracy can't work any other way.

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The Remarkable Political Stupidity of the 'Street' - you know, Wall Street

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich: - Dec. 10 (News Analysis) - 'Wall Street has blanketed America in a miasma of cynicism. Most Americans assume the reason the Street got its taxpayer-funded bailout without strings in the first place was because of its political clout. That must be why the banks didn't have to renegotiate the mortgages of Americans - many of whom, because of the economic collapse brought on by the Street's excesses, are still under water. Some are drowning.' Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

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Tonight’s Republican Debate: The 19th Century or the Stone Age?

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Sep. 07 (Opinion) - listen tonight (if you can bear it) for anything other than standard Republican boilerplate since the 1920s — a wistful desire to return to the era of President William McKinley, when the federal government was small, the Fed and the IRS had yet to be invented, state laws determined worker safety and hours, evolution was still considered contentious, immigrants were almost all European, big corporations and robber barons ran the government, the poor were desperate, and the rich were lived like old-world aristocrats.

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Medicare Is the Solution, Not the Problem

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Jul. 24 (Opinion) - 'Not only is Social Security on the chopping block in order to respond to Republican extortion. So is Medicare. But Medicare isn't the nation's budgetary problems. It's the solution. The real problem is the soaring costs of health care that lie beneath Medicare. They're costs all of us are bearing in the form of soaring premiums, co-payments, and deductibles. Medicare offers a means of reducing these costs - if Washington would let it.' Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

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The Swamp of Washington

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - Jun. 13 (Opinion) - Not a shred of urgency. This morning I was on ABC's "This Week," debating jobs and the economy with Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. Shelby restated the standard Republican playbook of spending cuts and tax cuts (except for one instant when he inadvertently conceded America emerged from the Great Depression only when government spent big time mobilizing the nation for World War II). But what struck me most was the similarity between Shelby's overall attitude and that of the Democrats I talked with - a kind of shrug of the shoulders, a sense that it's really not all that bad out there, and that nothing can be done anyway.

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How to Get Washington's Attention

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - Jun. 02 (Opinion) - We're coming full circle: The stock market is dropping because corporate earnings are slowing. Corporate earnings are slowing because consumers are pulling back. Consumers are pulling back because they don't have enough jobs or adequate wages.

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Paul Ryan Still Doesn't Get It

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - May. 25 (Opinion) - 'Ryan calls it 'demagoguery,' accusing Hochul and her fellow Democrats of trying to 'scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected.

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Blackwater Shouldn't Lobby With Our Dime

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - May. 21 (Opinion) - It's one of the most insidious conflicts of interest in American politics.

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The People's Budget

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - May. 18 (Opinion) - The message from the 'People's Party' should be unconditional: No cuts in Medicare and Medicaid or Social Security. More spending on education and infrastructure. Pay for it and reduce the long-term budget deficit by cutting military spending and raising taxes on the rich. The People's Budget is the template.' Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

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The Big Economic Story, and Why Obama Isn’t Telling It

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Robert Reich's Blog - Dec. 02 (Opinion) - by Robert ReichQuiz: What’s responsible for the lousy economy most Americans continue to wallow in? A. Big government, bureaucrats, and the cultural and intellectual elites who back them. B. Big business, Wall Street, and the powerful and privileged who represent them. These are the two competing stories Americans are telling one another.read more

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White House Should Stop Pandering to Wall Street

Sat, 08 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - May. 08 (Opinion) - he White House opposes three important financial reforms that have drawn bi-partisan support in the Senate. It should reverse course.

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Why the Economy Is So Out of Whack

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - Alan Greenspan is now being interviewed. He says he bore no responsibility for the housing bubble that catapulted the nation into a financial crisis in 2008 because no one could have known about the bubble when he chaired the Fed in the years before it burst. Larry Summers was interviewed just before Greenspan. He said the economy is expanding, that the Administration is doing everything it can to bring jobs back, and that the regulatory reform bills moving on the Hill will prevent another financial crisis. What?

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The National Health Care Anthem

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - Now, Anthem Blue Cross is going a step further. It's raising rates for individual policyholders by as much as 39 percent. That's fifteen times faster than inflation. So far, my group policy hasn't been affected but I'm expecting the worst.

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How a Few Private Health Insurers Are on the Way to Controlling Health Care

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - we still end up with a system that's based on private insurers that have no incentive whatsoever to control their costs or the costs of pharmaceutical companies and medical providers. If you think the federal employee benefit plan is an answer to this, think again. Its premiums increased nearly 9 percent this year. And if you think an expanded Medicare is the answer, you're smoking medical marijuana. The Senate bill allows an independent commission to hold back Medicare costs only if Medicare spending is rising faster than total health spending. So if health spending is soaring because private insurers have no incentive to control it, we're all out of luck. Medicare explodes as well.

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Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Nov. 19 (Opinion) - Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to ... our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.

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An Open Letter to Harry Reid on Controlling Health Care Costs

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Robert Reich - Nov. 13 (Comment) - But Harry, you really need to take on future health-care costs. The House bill fails to do this. The public option in the House bill is open only to people without employer-provided health insurance.

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The Audacity of Greed: How Private Health Insurers Just Blew Their Cover

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Oct. 12 (Opinion) - The health-insurance industry has finally revealed itself for what it is. Background: The industry hates the idea that's emerged from the Senate Finance Committee of lowering penalties on younger and healthier people who don't buy insurance. Relying on an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, insurers say this means new enrollees will be older and less healthy -- which will drive up costs. And, says the industry, these costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Proposed taxes on high-priced "Cadillac" policies will also be passed on to consumers. As a result, premiums will rise faster and higher than the government projects. It's an eleventh-hour bombshell.

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The Guns of August, and Why the Republican Right Was So Adept at Using Them on Health Care

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Aug. 31 (Editorial) - What we learned in August is something we've long known but keep forgetting: The most important difference between America's Democratic left and Republican right is that the left has ideas and the right has discipline. Obama and progressive supporters of health care were outmaneuvered in August -- not because the right had any better idea for solving the health care mess but because the rights' attack on the Democrats' idea was far more disciplined than was the Democrats' ability to sell it. I say the Democrats' "idea" but in fact there was no single idea. Obama never sent any detailed plan to Congress. Meanwhile, congressional Dems were so creative and undisciplined before the August recess they came up with a kaleidoscope of health-care plans. The resulting incoherence served as an open invitation to the Republican right to focus with great precision on convincing the public of their own demonic version of what the Democrats were up to -- that it would take away their Medicare, require "death panels," raise their taxes, and lead to a government takeover of medicine, and so on. The Obama White House -- a veritable idea factory brimming with ingenuity -- thereafter proved unable to come up with a single, convincing narrative to counteract this right-wing hokum. Whatever discipline Obama had mustered during the campaign somehow disappeared.

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Will Geithner Fire Corporate America?

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - Tim Geithner said on Sunday's Face the Nation that the Treasury might fire the heads of big banks that depend on financing from the federal government, just as it summarily deposed Rick Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors -- and before Wagoner, the heads of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. "Where that requires a change in management and the board, then we will do that," said Geithner.

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Robert Reich's Blog: Is Obamanomics Conservative or Revolutionary?

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - There are two ways to see Obamanomics. The first, much preferred by the White House, is as a set of initiatives so modest as to hardly merit a raised eyebrow. Yes, steps must be taken to deal with the current economic crisis. But assuming the economy recovers next year, Obama's budget projects that government spending by the end of the decade will drop to around 22.5 percent of GDP, which is about where it was under Reagan. What about those tax hikes on the wealthy? Obama merely restores the top two marginal income tax rates to what they were in the 1990s, the capital gains rate to its lowest level during that same prosperous decade, and the rate on dividends to a level even lower than it was in the 1990s. And even these modest reversions to the 1990s will affect only the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans, and not until 2011. Ninety-seven percent of small businesses won't pay a dime more. True, the very rich won't be able to deduct quite as much as they can now for their mortgage interest and charitable donations, but this is hardly revolutionary, either. In fact, it's another throwback -- to the limits in place under Ronald Reagan. All told, taxes are projected to total 19 percent of GDP by the end of the decade. That's even lower than it was in the late 1990s.

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