Oct 27 2008
New campaign ad urges young people to talk to their grandparents about politics. There are issues in this election that does not just affect you, but affects the life, health, and economic security of your family members.
So watch the video, then turn off the computer and “Tell your granny“.
Oct 23 2008
For weeks USAction and a growing number of the nation’s most respected economists have called for greater financial regulation and government oversight of financial institutions as a result of the Wall Street collapse and $700 billion government bailout package.
Today, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted under pressure that free-wheeling ideology championed by fiscal conservatives is at least partly responsible for the “credit tsunami” that has pushed this country into a recession.
But in a tense exchange with Rep. Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Mr. Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.
Questioned by Rep. Waxman, Greenspan said he was “shocked” that the economic philosophy he has championed for the past 40 years has completely failed.
Alan Charney, USAction program director, wholeheartedly agreed. “Reality has proven that the laissez-faire free market philosophy just does not work in the long term,” Charney said. “At a minimum, there must be strict government oversight and regulations of our financial institutions to get this economy moving again.”
“We appreciate Greenspan’s sincerity and realize it is not easy for someone to admit that his view of how the economy works has a serious flaw,” Charney added. “That is why it is time for us to embrace the idea that we need bold, new economic policies to keep things from going from bad to worse. We certainly can’t keep doing what we have been doing.”
Oct 23 2008
Check out these two videos of speakers at Georgia Rural Urban Summit’s September 26th protest and press conference in front of Cigna, Aetna, and Kaiser Permanente in Atlanta. First is Cathy McClure, a supporter of HCAN who a few years ago took the initiative to found VoteHealthCare.org, speaking about her family’s terrible experiences with insurance companies.
Next check out State Rep. Roberta Abdul-Salaam speaking passionately about the need for affordable, quality health care for all Americans. We need more like her!
If you’re in Atlanta, come to our next action. Sign up at
Oct 22 2008
We don’t think America is better off. According to recent statistics, unemployment, inflation and gas prices are up 50% from 8 years ago. Manufacturing levels, real wages and property values are down significantly. Our financial institutions are destabilizing before our very eyes and the quality of our health care system continues to decline.
The overwhelming majority of people know that our nation is definitely on the wrong track and we need a change.
Now that we’ve bailed out the banks, it is time to provide relief for millions of Americans and get our economy back on track. Congress must pass a comprehensive economic recovery package which includes four key aspects:
As Congress continues next week with hearings to develop a well-crafted economic recovery package news reports state that the package could be as large as $300-$400 billion. What do you think? What else should be in it and how large?
Oct 09 2008
This is the first news article that I’ve read that has made me understand just how bad the economy is, and just how likely things are to get worse if radical changes are not made…. like…. NOW! Normally copying articles verbatim is strictly a “no-no” in the blogosphere, but what this guy is saying in a CNN editorial is much to serious to mince words or rephrase.
Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Barry Eichengreen
Every time the economy and stock market turn down, financial historians get predictable calls from reporters. Could this be the start of another Great Depression? Could “it” possibly happen again? My stock answer has always been no.
The Great Depression resulted from a series of economic and financial shocks — the end of a housing bubble in 1926 and the end of a high-tech bubble in 1929 — but also from truly breathtaking neglect and incompetence on the part of policymakers.
The first thing that made the Great Depression great, of course, was the Fed’s failure to act. It basically stood by as the banking system and the economy collapsed around it. This time, in contrast, the Fed can hardly be criticized for inaction. Not only has it cut rates, but it has rolled out one new unprecedented initiative after another.
Unfortunately, it has reacted more than acted. First, it provided funds to the commercial banks. Then, it targeted broker-dealers. Now, it is desperately propping up the commercial paper market. All the while however, the problem has been infecting new parts of the financial system.
U.S. Treasury bill rates have essentially fallen to zero, and the Fed’s policy interest rates are only slightly above that level. Central banks are out of ammunition. This is no longer a problem they can solve by themselves.
G7 leaders, when they meet in Washington at the end of this week, need to explain exactly how they will address this aspect of the problem. They need to commit money to recapitalizing their banking systems — now, and not next week.
My recommendation would be to abandon the idea of reverse auctions for toxic assets and instead use the $700 billion of the recently passed rescue plan for bank recapitalization. Although the Great Depression started in 1929, it took until 1933 for American leaders to grasp this nettle and recapitalize the banks. We can’t afford to wait for years this time around.
A final thing that made the Great Depression such a catastrophe was that some of the worst shocks occurred right before the 1932 presidential election. There then followed an extended interregnum between the election and inauguration of the new president when no one was in charge.
The economy was allowed to spiral downward. It was this disaster that led us to amend the constitution to shorten the time between presidential election and inauguration from 4 to 2½ months. The implication is clear. The two presidential candidates should be assembling their financial SWAT teams now. Paulson should promise that they will be invited into his office on November 5.
This problem cannot wait until Inauguration Day.
Oct 08 2008
Below you will find an article about the raid on ACORN’s Nevada office along with their organization’s statement. I assume ACORN’s statement to be true because they claim to hold paper evidence to back up their case. This raid is an attempt disenfranchise voters — we may think this doesn’t happen anymore but conservatives often engage in voter disenfranchisement tactics. The only difference between now and 40 years ago is that the right cannot blatantly tell the poor and people-of-color people they can’t vote. Instead they find other means to bog organizations down with legal battles that won’t be resolved (usually in voters’ favor) until after the elections!
ACORN Office Raid Linked to U.S. Attorney Firings Scandal
M.S. Bellows, Jr.
Posted October 7, 2008 | 03:49 PM (EST)
The raid to uncover alleged registration fraud was the result of a joint investigation by state agencies, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A similar task force, convened in New Mexico in 2004 to investigate “vote fraud” complaints lodged by high-ranking Republicans, found no evidence of illegality. According to an independent government report issued last week, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, David Iglesias, was later wrongfully fired by the Bush Administration for failing to prosecute the case despite the lack of evidence.
…
The Nevada raid comes the day after ACORN and another voter-registration group, Project Vote, announced a new initiative to identify and resolve problematic voter registrations to ensure maximum voter participation on Election Day. The Nevada Secretary of State’s spokesman, Bob Walsh, told me this morning that he did not know when ACORN would regain access to its files and computers; ACORN officials say loss of their computers may hamper their “get out the vote” effort in Nevada, a key swing state this year.
…
ACORN, however, was quick to defend itself. In a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon, Matthew Henderson explained that its workers are paid by the hour, not per registration, and described the occasional workers who cheated as greedy or lazy, not political operatives:
ACORN Statement: Nevada Secretary of State ‘Stunt’ Serves No Useful Purpose
Last update: 8:56 p.m. EDT Oct. 7, 2008
Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act. In early July, ACORN asked to meet with election officials to express our concerns that they were not acting on information ACORN had presented to them. ACORN met with Clark County elections officials and a representative of the Secretary of State on July 17th. ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously. One week later, elections officials asked us to provide them with a second copy of what we had previously provided to them. ACORN responded by giving election officials copies of 46 “problem application packages,” which involved 33 former canvassers.
Oct 07 2008
The following three shows/articles provide a comprehensive, explicit and clear overview of how we got to this point in the credit crisis.
60 Minutes
Length: 12 min
A Look at Wall Street’s Shadow Market: How Some Arcane Wall Street Financial Instruments Magnified Economic Crisis
This American Life
Length: 1 hr, organized into four acts (If you are strapped for time just listen to the conclusion, it’s helpful to watch the 60 Minutes article first for background)
Another Frightening Show About the Economy
The Hill
Length: 2 pages
With bailout passed, lobbyists look to get in the game
Oct 06 2008
What do you do when the house of cards you built start tumbling down on you and the entire country starts defecting “en masse” from your political ideology? Well, if you’re a republican, you blame the victim.
Recently, conservatives have begun attacking progressive housing advocates like ACORN and CRA, blaming it for the recent financial crisis and suggesting that the law forced lenders to make irresponsible loans to underserved communities. They actually want the public to believe that it was poor and working class people - and not Wall Street fatcats - who caused the massive $700 billion bailout passed by Congress last week!
Talk about class warfare.
First of all, I can’t imagine that every poor and working class man, woman and child in this country owns anything close to $700 billion in assets. That would be akin to blaming a kindergardner for his parent’s running up his parent’s credit card. Even if the child did get a few outfits from his parents spending spree, who was responsible for signing the receipt? Who determined the interest rate charges? And who decided how much - and how often - to spend?
Most analysts agree, adjustable rate mortgages on overvalued homes (that rapidly depreciated when the housing market bubble burts) is responsible for this financial crisis, not loans on the modestly priced homes in urban neighborhoods.
I guess I should be encouraged that neocons are in full-fledged panic mode and are resorting to the most ridiculous of arguments to shore up its eroding political base, however, as Media Matters reports, mainstream media seems to be tripping over themselves to give credence to this ridiculous blaming the victim:
· The Politico’s Daniel Libit uncritically repeated New Gingrich’s claim that Democrats wanted “provisions to provide money” to ACORN in the bailout bill despite his colleague Ryan Grim’s having noted earlier that ACORN was not specifically directed any funds (9/30/08).
· On Fox & Friends, Steve Doocy said there was a “story” out there that Democrats wanted to give ACORN “20 percent of those almost trillion dollars.” Guest Ken Blackwell called it a “classic payoff” (10/01/08).
· In a Washington Times column, Mona Charon wrote that Democrats “managed to find time to slip language into the bailout legislation that would provide a dandy little slush fund for ACORN” (10/01/08).
· On Lou Dobbs Tonight, Dobbs claimed that ACORN would “reap hundreds of millions of dollars” from the bailout bill (9/29/08).
· Michael Savage, on his nationally syndicated radio show, said we didn’t need the latest version of the bailout bill because “they put in money for La Raza and ACORN” (9/29/08).
· Rush Limbaugh claimed that ACORN “forc[ed] banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘subprime’ loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers” (9/29/08).
· A New York Post editorial accused ACORN of using “intimidation tactics” and “public charges of racism” to extract “hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions” (9/29/08).
· An American Spectator article claimed that after the CRA came into effect, ACORN got into the “shakedown business” and accused them of demanding more government spending on social programs, a higher minimum wage, and gun control (9/29/08).
Oct 03 2008
Certain members of Congress - those who watched this financial crisis unfold while ensuring us that our financial system is working just fine - are now looking for new scapegoats for the meltdown. They found one: unsuspecting borrowers. Yes, that’s right, the right wing now wants to blame ordinary Americans for the meltdown on Wall Street, and not the irresponsible and corrupt lenders and politicians that had a stake in this crisis. As one person put it on the web this morning, it’s kind of like blaming the unemployed for being unemployed.
You can check out Business Week, to see why the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) had absolutely nothing to do with this crisis. Moreover, the hardcore right are, in a not-so-subtle fashion, blaming low-income people of color for the meltdown on Wall Street. WHAT???? These statements are divisive, offensive, and knowingly false. Moreover, it is appalling that they come from elected officials. Check out some of the editorials and blog posts, rebutting the statements
Oct 01 2008
The Senate is trying to stampede the herd and force another vote on the Bush Bailout this week, despite the House’s bipartisan rejection on Tuesday. But there are other, smarter ideas now on the table — like a plan proposed by over a dozen Progressive representatives just yesterday.
We know something needs to be done. So let’s pass legislation that is smart, that helps all of us, and that is properly debated in public instead of rushed through without examination. Your Representative holds the key vote to pass a good economic recovery package instead. It’s important that they hear from you before voting again.
Can you hand-deliver a message to your Representative’s office TOMORROW, Thursday, October 2nd?
It’s simple. Just CLICK HERE to let us know you can do a delivery, we’ll give you the address of your local office and a one-page document to print out. Then, tomorrow, Thursday, October 2nd, drop by the office during the day and hand in the letter to the staff and let them know what you’d like to see in a real economic recovery package for Main Street.
If you have more time, call ahead and schedule a meeting with a staff member for tomorrow - invite a couple friends to join you and sit down with the staff to explain where you stand. We’ll give you some helpful talking points for this as well. But, a meeting isn’t required, just dropping off the flier is a huge step to let your Representative know where you stand before Friday’s vote.
Thanks for taking action!