Blog Archive

Low-Income Women Pushed to the Sidelines

May 24, 2011 By Gwendolyn Mink

Low-income women have been invisible in budget deliberations thus far – yet they will be injured disproportionately by cuts to income programs like Social Security and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF], as well by cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Food Stamps.

Despite the prolonged recession, income assistance to low-income families has shriveled over the past decade, providing help to less than 40 percent of families who meet TANF criteria and to an even smaller fraction (27 percent) of all families in actual need. For those who do receive benefits, the cash value has eroded so badly that TANF cash assistance does not bring a family up to the poverty line in any state. [Read more...]

Filed Under: The U.S. Economy

Uprisings: Online Resouces

February 23, 2011 By journalist

With protests continuing, here is a partial list of online resources:

For Libya: #Feb17; CNN’s Ben Wedeman; @EnoughGaddafi; For Bahrain: #Feb14, @OnlineBahrain; For Yemen: #Feb3; @JNovak_Yemen; Palestinian: #Mar15

Gulf: @dr_davidson, @tobycraigjones

For Saudi Arabia: on Twitter: #Mar11; Webpages and blogs: rasid.com, ysoof.com/blog/?p=242, saudiwoman.wordpress.com, alasmari.wordpress.com, saudijeans.org

To translate: translate.google.com

Based in the U.S., but with extensive contacts in the Mideast: angryarab.blogspot.com; the new journal jadaliyya.com; merip.org; juancole.com

For Tunisia and generally: #Sidibouzid (refers to the town of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who on December 17 was the first of several in the region to immolate himself in protest.)

Egypt: #Jan25 (all dates referring to date protests began in each country); [Read more...]

Filed Under: Electoral Issues, Resources on Trade, World Bank & IMF, The U.S. Economy, War: Info, Analysis, Policy Options

Bruce Reed Appointed Biden Chief of Staff Today

January 14, 2011 By Alice OConnor

In light of his prominent role in deficit reduction and the ‘end of welfare’ in the 1990s, Reed’s appointment sends a clear — and troubling — signal about the administration’s domestic policy priorities in the years ahead.

Alice O’Connor is author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy and the Poor in Twentieth Century U.S. History and professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Filed Under: The U.S. Economy Tagged With: deficit, welfare

The End of New Deal Liberalism

January 5, 2011 By William Greider

We have reached a pivotal moment in government and politics, and it feels like the last, groaning spasms of New Deal liberalism. When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government’s extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson.

Political events of the past two years have delivered a more profound and devastating message: American democracy has been conclusively conquered by American capitalism. Government has been disabled or captured by the formidable powers of private enterprise and concentrated wealth. Self-governing rights that representative democracy conferred on citizens are now usurped by the overbearing demands of corporate and financial interests. Collectively, the corporate sector has its arms around both political parties, the financing of political careers, the production of the policy agendas and propaganda of influential think tanks, and control of most major media. [Full piece in The Nation.]

Filed Under: The U.S. Economy

Responses to Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address

January 30, 2003 By editor

Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished citizens and fellow citizens, every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead.

You and I serve our country in a time of great consequence. During this session of Congress, we have the duty to reform domestic programs vital to our country, we have the opportunity to save millions of lives abroad from a terrible disease. We will work for a prosperity that is broadly shared, and we will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Electoral Issues, Resources on Trade, World Bank & IMF, The U.S. Economy, War: Info, Analysis, Policy Options

Rethinking Welfare Reform

September 4, 2001 By editor

WASHINGTON — With re-authorization of key “welfare reform” legislation due in the coming year, activists are mobilizing to place the rights of minorities and women foremost on the agenda. Many indict the current system — established by the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act — as a racist and gender-biased structure that keeps the poor in poverty and further burdens disadvantaged families.

The five-year-old legislation has in fact reduced welfare rolls. A White House report in 2000 said that the number of Americans on welfare had decreased from 5.5 percent in 1993 to 2.3 percent in 1999. An argument now rages over whether the point of reform is to reduce the welfare rolls or to reduce poverty. Some activists maintain that these numbers reflect a slashing of America’s “safety net.”

“Welfare rolls dropped by more than half nationally since 1996, but poverty for single mothers is only down 0.7 percent,” reports Ann Withorn, professor of social policy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Withorn is a co-author of “An Immodest Proposal,” a series of demands collected by the feminist Women’s Committee of 100 that challenge the gender and race discrimination they find rampant in current welfare legislation. The document contains demands for an end to mandatory work outside the home, a “caregiver’s allowance” that reimburses mothers for work they do inside the home, and a substantial increase in labor standards for women. [Read more...]

Filed Under: The U.S. Economy Tagged With: poverty, welfare

Uncontrolled Burn: How congress is adding fuel to the western wildfires

August 21, 2001 By editor

As wildfires rage through woodland in the West, critics are questioning the federal government’s role in protecting the National Forests. Recently, President Bush proposed a $175 million increase in commercial timber sales on public lands — a move that, along with a planned repeal of the “roadless rule” established by former President Clinton, has many suspicious of where the Bush administration’s true agenda lies.

Big forest fires make the news every summer. Last year, over 7 million acres of U.S. land burned during wildfire season. Many forest advocates believe that wildfires are a naturally occurring, healthy phenomenon and should, to some extent, be allowed to burn within certain limits.

In recent years, the National Forest Service, guided by Congress, has partly relied on commercial logging to address the problem of wildfires. This policy has critics like University of Montana economics chair Thomas Power up in arms. [Read more...]

Filed Under: The U.S. Economy Tagged With: environment, fires

Are Americans “Vacation Starved”?

August 16, 2001 By editor

WASHINGTON — When President Bush clocked out to start on a 30-day vacation at his Texas ranch, a collective lament was in the air from much of the population: “When do we get a break?”

The vacation brings to 52 days the president\’s total vacation time since his swearing-in last January, a number that dwarfs the average eight days of vacation most U.S. small business employees receive each year, according to Joe Robinson, director of the Work to Live campaign. Robinson, declaring America to be “the most vacation-starved country in the industrialized world,” is one of many people leading the charge for a decrease in the national workload.

The loosely defined movement gained impetus with the publication of Harvard economics professor Juliet Schor’s book The Overworked American, which noted that — while corporate profits and worker productivity were up — most workers were seeing their free time diminish. Schor’s comments echoed calls made by labor reformers in the 1930s, who successfully established the eight-hour day by pressuring for the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. [Read more...]

Filed Under: The U.S. Economy Tagged With: labor, vacation, work

Son of Star Wars: Another arms race?

July 31, 2001 By editor

WASHINGTON — Reports emerging from the Pentagon about plans to test a “Space Bomber” are drawing accusations that the U.S. government is attempting to engage in another arms race.

The bomber, a spacecraft reportedly capable of destroying targets on the other side of the globe within 30 minutes, is a key component of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s plan to modernize U.S. weaponry. The satellite is currently under production by NASA and Lockheed Martin, a leading military contractor.

Pentagon claims that the bomber can cause greater and deeper ground damage from a virtually unassailable height have many critics questioning it as a component of President Bush’s “Missile Defense Screen.”

Alice Slater, president of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, criticized the Pentagon’s apparent aim to control space through military force. She called it a “total misnomer to talk about missile ‘defense’” when referring to the proposed program.

“The U.S. Space Command ‘Vision for 2020′ report outlines the weaponization of space,” Slater said, “envisioning that ‘space forces will emerge to protect military and commercial national interests and investment.’” She points to this focus on commercial interests as an indication of a desired “extension of 500 years of colonial domination of the world’s resources…to back up corporate interests.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: The U.S. Economy, War: Info, Analysis, Policy Options Tagged With: disarmament, space weapons, star wars

ExxonMobil: Facing a boycott

July 17, 2001 By editor

ExxonMobil, one of the biggest corporations on the planet, is now facing a boycott spearheaded by activist groups protesting the company\’s policies at home and abroad.

The boycott was launched by PressurePoint, a grassroots organization looking to “take real action on climate change and corporate influence,” according to Chris Doran, campaigns director for the group. “The U.S. government’s climate change policy is the ExxonMobil policy,” Doran says. “What sort of democracy do we have when one company can buy off our political process for its own gains?”

ExxonMobil is a charter member of the Global Climate Coalition, an influential industry lobbying group which maintains that the regulations to reduce greenhouse emissions drawn up under the Kyoto agreement of 1997 are neither economically viable nor scientifically sound.

According to the American Chemical Society, ExxonMobil is the only remaining major oil firm that disputes the need to seek out energy alternatives, while other companies — such as British Petroleum, Shell and Enron — have all agreed to do so. Exxon maintains the stance that there are no readily available alternatives to fossil fuels on the horizon. [Read more...]

Filed Under: The U.S. Economy Tagged With: corporate, environment, exxon, oil

Blog Archive | The U.S. Economy | Accuracy.Org