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Meet the 28-year-old Student Who Exposed Two Harvard Professors Whose Shoddy Research Drove Global Austerity

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Lynn Stuart Parramore - Apr. 18 (News Report) - Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous in politic and economic circles. These two Harvard economists wrote a paper, “Growth in the Time of Debt” that has been used by everyone from Paul Ryan to Olli Rehn of the European Commission to justify harmful austerity policies.

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David Stockman, Ex-Reagan Budget Director: George W. Bush's Policies Bankrupt The Country

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Mar. 31 (News Report) - A former adviser of Ronald Reagan has some choice words for George W. Bush. David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985, slammed Bush and his former boss in an op-ed in The New York Times Sunday. Stockman argued in the piece that Reagan’s

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The Most Expensive Fighter Jet Ever Built, by the Numbers

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Theodoric Meyer - Mar. 29 (Special Report) - Thanks to the sequester, the Defense Department is now required to cut more than $40 billion this fiscal year out of its $549 billion budget. But one program that's unlikely to take a significant hit is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, despite the fact that it's almost four times more expensive than any other Pentagon weapons program that's in the works. We've compiled some of the most headache-inducing figures, from the program's hefty cost overruns to the billions it's generating in revenue for Lockheed Martin.

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‘Homeland Security’

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

nationofchange.org - By Chris Hellman, Mattea Kramer - Mar. 01 (News Analysis) - Homeland security is supposed to be the actual “defense” department—since the Pentagon is essentially a Department of Offense—and it’s rife with all the same issues and defects that critics of the military-industrial complex have decried for decades. In other words, “homeland security” has become another obese boondoggle.

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How the Economic Quacks Promoting Austerity Will Increase the Deficit

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Marshall Auerback - Mar. 01 (News Analysis) - The real fiscal responsibility lies in understanding how we invest in the future with jobs, education and decent roads and bridges. Letting our country fall apart, on the other hand, is the height of irresponsibility. If the US continues to make headway on the jobs front, it will do even better on the deficit front, which is why any sensible economist will tell you that deficit reduction per se should never be an object of government policy.

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Paul Krugman: Clueless Washington Doesn't Know The Deficit Is 'Mostly Solved'

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Bonnie Kavoussi - Jan. 11 (News Report) - It has become conventional wisdom that the United States has a deficit crisis. But according to Paul Krugman, most politicians and journalists don't realize that the deficit has been "mostly solved." "Reasonable projections do not, repeat do not, show anything resembling the runaway deficit crisis that is a staple of almost everything you hear, including supposedly objective news reporting,"

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Fact-checking the Denver presidential debate

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Becky Bowers, Jon Greenberg, Angie Drobnic Holan, Louis Jacobson, Molly Moorhead, Katie Sanders, J.B. Wogan - Oct. 04 (Fact Check) - President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney traded barbs Wednesday night on taxes, jobs, health care and the economy — and often stretched the facts. "Mr. President," Romney said, "you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts." Romney also would have benefited from that advice. We're combing through the pair's remarks from the University of Denver's Ritchie Center, where moderator Jim Lehrer focused on the economy, health care, the role of government and governing. Here's what we've checked so far.

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Dubious Denver Debate Declarations

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Oct. 04 (Fact Check) - We found exaggerations and false claims flying thick and fast during the first debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. Obama accused Romney of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Not true.

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The Ryan-Romney Flim-Flam Ticket

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Jim Hightower - Aug. 22 (News Analysis) - The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, however, has tallied Ryan's budgetary giveaways to the rich and take-backs from the middle-class and the poor. Far from balancing the federal budget, as the self-proclaimed deficit hawk claims, the analysts found that Ryan's plan increases the federal deficit. And not by a little, but by about $2.5 trillion! So, yes, he is serious - serious as a snakebite.

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Obama’s Spending: ‘Inferno’ or Not?

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Jun. 10 (Fact Check) - Is President Obama's spending an "inferno," as Mitt Romney claims, or a binge that "never happened" as an analysis touted by the White House concluded? We judge that both of those claims are wrong on the facts.

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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Mark Gongloff - Mar. 09 (News Report) - Though lots of people grumble about the government bailing out banks in the financial crisis, we have at least taken some comfort in the idea that the government has turned a profit on that bailout. Only problem is, that profit comes from taxpayer money -- money that was meant to spur banks to develop communities and help small businesses. Instead they've used it to develop and help themselves.

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A real Wall Street takeover threat

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By David Talbot - Sep. 19 (News Report) - The hundreds of young people who converged on the New York Stock Exchange this weekend are calling their demonstration against Wall Street greed an "American Tahrir Square." While they have a long way to go before they create the tremors that brought down the Mubarak regime, their passion was clearly on display on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. The protestors were gathered in the square at the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street, after police blocked them from the epicenter of American finance a couple of blocks away. Many had spent the night in sleeping bags and insisted they were prepared to spend many more to make their point. "This country is in decline," said Jack Laxson, an 18-year-old Hampshire College student who was carrying a sign that read, "Corporations Run This Country -- Let's Do Something About It."

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Warren Buffett says the super-rich pay lower tax rates than others

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Aug. 14 (Fact Check) - It's not often you see someone stand up and say, "Tax me more!" Yet that's just what famed investor Warren Buffett has done in an op-ed in the New York Times headlined, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich." Buffett says that very wealthy people like himself pay lower tax rates than the middle class, thanks to special tax categories for investment income. "While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks," he writes. As an example, Buffett said he paid an effective tax rate of 17.4 percent, while people who worked in his office made much less but paid higher effective tax rates of between 33 percent and 41 percent, averaging 36 percent.

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Debt Limit Debate Round-Up

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Lori Robertson - Jul. 29 (Fact Check) - The last few weeks have been filled with debate, accusations, stalemate and false claims about the debt ceiling and how -- and whether -- it should be raised. As the Aug. 2 default deadline looms, here's a look at the less-than-factual talking points ...

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Boehner: GOP ready to act alone on debt deal

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

yahoo.com - By Ben Feller - Jul. 24 (News Report) - Scrambling to head off disaster, House Speaker John Boehner on Sunday readied a plan to prevent the first government default in U.S. history and said Republicans would act alone if Democrats didn't go along.

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Bernie Sanders Gets Sarcastic, Rips Gang Of Six Plan

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Jul. 21 (News Report) - Sanders congratulated the GOP members of the Gang of Six on their "very significant victory in negotiating a deficit-reduction plan which achieves their long-term goal of dismantling every major social program relevant to working families."

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Fiscal FactCheck

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Jul. 15 (Fact Check) - Washington's spending has recently been higher as a percentage of the nation's economic output than at any time since World War II. But by the same measure, Washington's revenues are the lowest in more than 60 years. So does the U.S. have "a spending problem," as Republicans keep repeating in the current debate over how to reduce the nation's record deficits? Or is the problem that taxes are not high enough? Those questions frame a long-running partisan debate, and as usual we won't offer an opinion one way or the other. But for those seeking their own answers, we can offer some fiscal history and factual context.

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If the Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers Paid Taxes Like You and Me, We'd Cut 44 Billion of the National Deficit

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By R.J. Eskow - Jul. 07 (News Analysis) - Republicans are perpetrating a fraud. They say they're concerned about reducing government deficits. But you don't need to look at how they treat all of the country's biggest corporations (which is extremely well) or even how they kowtow to its richest 400 families, who now have 6900 times as much income as the average household. You only need to look at the way they treat 25 people.

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Democratic Senator Calls Big Oil Execs Selfish, Unfeeling -- And Unbeatable

Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Dan Froomkin - May. 12 (News Report) - The unapologetic -- indeed combative -- testimony on Thursday by top oil executives summoned to defend multi-billion tax subsidies for their industry infuriated some Senate Democrats, one of whom accused the executives of being "profoundly out of touch" with average Americans. The heads of the Big Five oil companies, currently enjoying a windfall from high oil prices, soundly rejected a Democratic request that they renounce $2 billion in tax breaks, declaring instead that they were entitled to every penny. Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson called the attempt to roll back the subsidies "misinformed and discriminatory" and he issued a threat to the assembled members of the Senate Finance Committee: "You give me a different tax burden," he said, "I'm going to take my capital then, since the U.S. isn't attractive, I've got to go somewhere else." It was all too much for Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).

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GOP Budget Would Leave Up To 44 Million More Low-Income Americans Uninsured: Report

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ricardo Alonso Zaldivar - May. 10 (News Report) - The House Republican budget would leave up to 44 million more low-income people uninsured as the federal government cuts states' Medicaid funding by about one-third over the next 10 years, nonpartisan groups said in a report issued Tuesday. The analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute concluded that Medicaid's role as the nation's safety net health care program would be "significantly compromised ... with no obvious alternative to take its place," if the GOP budget is adopted.

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Punishing Worker Success Doesn't Count

Sun, 08 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

sensen-no-sen.blogspot.com - By Paul Belle-Isle - May. 08 (News) - There is a vast and sensible middle ground in which some people pay more to create an environment in which everyone has a better shot at success, and such an environment is crucial to avoiding the stagnation of our society and encouraging upward mobility. Success should be rewarded, but the plain fact is that, for most people, right now, it simply isn't.

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Under House Budget, “Tax Reform” Places Top Priority on High-Income Tax Cuts and Ignores Deficit Reduction

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - By Chuck Marr, Gillian Brunet - Apr. 29 (Special Report) - The proposal in the House budget plan to devote every dollar of revenue raised by curbing tax expenditures to finance other tax cuts — principally the lowering of the top rate to 25 percent — suggests that the plan’s framers regard additional tax cuts for high-income individuals as a higher national priority than stronger deficit reduction. Their proposal also ignores the fact that incomes have skyrocketed at the top of the income scale even as the real income of the typical American household has fallen over the last decade.

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Is America Finally Waking Up?

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

sensen-no-sen.blogspot.com - By Pbi - Apr. 23 (News Analysis) - A slew of recent polls seem to indicate that enough Americans are feeling the pain of the financial crisis that taxing the rich as a way to help close the deficit is gaining traction, even among Republicans.

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White House Deficit Talks Coming Apart At The Seams

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jennifer Bendery, Elise Foley - Apr. 20 (News Report) - House and Senate Republican leaders announced Tuesday that their sole appointees to the May 5th meeting would be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)--neither of whom are budget leaders and both of whom function largely as political mouthpieces for their party. GOP leaders also each opted to send only one appointee, instead of the requested four, to the meeting.

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The Credit Rating Hoax

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By William Greider - Apr. 20 (News) - Standard & Poor's, the self-righteous credit-rating agency, has a damn lot of nerve. It provoked scary headlines by solemnly threatening to “short” America. That is, downgrade the credit-worthiness of US Treasury bonds unless Congress and the president oblige creditors by punishing the citizenry with severe budget cuts. What a load of crap.

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