My first clue yesterday that the President was about to give an important speech on the Economy was from Robert Reich's Facebook page post that appear in my news stream.
Robert Reich, what a fighter. He has come from being a Democratic Party 'company man' kind of guy to a real populist leader imo.
Robert Bernard Reich (ˈraɪʃ;[1] born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.
Reich is currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government[2] and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Reich is a political commentator on programs including Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNBC's Kudlow & Company, and APM's Marketplace. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century,[3] and The Wall Street Journal in 2008 placed him sixth on its list of the "Most Influential Business Thinkers".[4] He was appointed a member of President-elect Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.[5]
He has published 14 books, including the best-sellers, The Work of Nations, Reason, Supercapitalism, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, and a best-selling e-book, "Beyond Outrage". He is also chairman of Common Cause and writes his own blog about the political economy at Robertreich.org.[6] The Robert Reich – Jacob Kornbluth film "Inequality for All" won a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Achievement in Filmmaking at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Utah.[7][8]
Reich has been a critic of our Party, true, but he does so with calls to action and ideas for solutions.
Here was what he had to say on FB:
Today the President will be giving a major address on inequality. He can be expected to say it’s the central domestic challenge of our time, that equal opportunity is the keystone of our social compact, that widening inequality threatens our economy and corrodes our democracy, and that he’ll be devoting the rest of his presidency to this fundamental challenge. All well worth saying, but how hard will he fight to raise the minimum wage, fund better schools for the poor and middle-class, get big money out of politics, and raise taxes on the wealthy for everything else that needs to be done?Even if he were to be suddenly transformed into an LBJ, fighting as hard against inequality as LBJ fought for civil rights and against poverty, one wonders if BHO could manage it, given Republican recalcitrance. Some of the answer obviously depends on what happens in next November's midterm elections. Should the scourge of widening inequality be the President's and the Democrats' major theme heading into those elections?
Yes, and as all can acknowledge President Obama gives inspiring speeches. According to Joan McCarter on the FP yesterday, this one was another big winner:
If President Obama intended to deliver a resounding rebuttal to the Third Way and their argument that economic populism is a loser of an issue, he sure succeeded in his Wednesday speech. Economic disparity, he argued, is a "fundamental threat" to the American dream and to our democracy. This is the agenda that the president promised "where you should expect my administration to focus all our efforts" in the next two years, an agenda that Democrats can and should embrace in 2014 and 2016.
He took Republicans head on, blaming them for the "reckless shutdown," and challenged them on Obama, spoke forcefully in support of a litany of critical policies, some of them urgent, including the current fight to renew jobless benefits and over food stamps. "More than half of Americans at some point in their lives will experience poverty," he said.
President Obama and A Progressive Agenda
This may be the progressive agenda many have been waiting for!
Skeptics will point to election time populist speeches of the past followed by weak tea, opposite action, or inaction. Others will point to the many accomplishments. All will agree that we need to do more. Some will blame the Republicans as the sole cause for more not being accomplished.
Others will simply say we should continually get creative and do the work for a better way.
What hangs in the balance
Millions are in dire straits in this country as the President so aptly said, and long for a sea change in their fortunes through help from our government.
Organized Labor is also stepping up pressure to remedy inequality, as pointed out in this fine FP post up now:
Laura Clawson:
Thu Dec 05, 2013 at 11:44 AM MST
Strikes close some fast food outlets, but strikers are aiming for something bigger
by Laura ClawsonFollow for Daily Kos Labor
SNIP
That's why we see McDonald's advising workers to apply for food stamps or sell their Christmas presents. It's why 52 percent of front-line fast food workers are on public assistance, to the tune of nearly $7 billion a year. The conditions these workers are fighting are the conditions the entire fast food industry is built on. The conditions won't change if the power balance doesn't change first, and the power balance won't change if workers don't fight and their communities don't support them.
So yes, the President's speech was timely and welcome by many Progressives , but actions are needed .
Will he act, or won't he, or will it be just another speech given to raise support for the mid-term candidates.
Today I saw this disturbing news that really makes me wonder what we will see in terms of actions from This President.
Largest Union President Expresses Outrage Over Increase in Contractor Compensation Cap
Taxpayers can be billed $952,000 per contractor employee under new rule
WASHINGTON – American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox Sr. today expressed his outrage at the news that the cap on annual compensation paid to contractor employees using taxpayer dollars has been increased to an astounding $952,000.
The new limit announced by the Office of Management and Budget reflects a one-year increase of nearly $190,000 and a four-year increase of 55 percent. The compensation cap has nearly quadrupled since the mid-1990s.
“Christmas has come early for federal contractor employees, yet the government’s own employees are looking at stockings full of coal,” Cox said.
Federal civilian employees have had their pay frozen for three straight years and incurred a week of lost wages this summer due to sequestration furloughs. Meanwhile, the Budget Conference Committee reportedly is considering cutting federal employee compensation even further by requiring employees to contribute an additional 1.2 percent of their salaries toward a retirement system that is already fully-funded.
“At the same time some in Congress are advocating an array of substantial compensation cuts for modestly-paid VA nurses and Border Patrol agents, wealthy contractors are getting a fat pay raise on the taxpayer’s dime,” Cox said. “It is the height of irresponsible governing and leadership to allow this ridiculous increase in taxpayer-funded compensation for contractor executives.”
OMB announced the new compensation cap on the same day President Obama delivered a speech decrying income inequality. Yet true inequality is taking place in federal agencies and offices across the country, where federal employees who have had their pay frozen for three years work beside contractors who are reaping excessive pay increases at the taxpayer’s expense.
“How can the President have allowed this to happen on the same day he spoke against income inequality in the nation’s heartland? Why is the Administration enriching the top 1% of the nation’s contractors but calling for cuts in compensation to the working and middle class Americans who make up the federal workforce? Administration officials could have demanded a much lower cap on contractor compensation in the budget, but they didn’t,” Cox said.
For years, AFGE has been advocating lowering the cap to the vice president’s salary, currently $230,700. Based on a limited survey of contractors conducted by the Government Accountability Office, annual savings from capping the compensation rate at $230,700 just for Department of Defense contractors would be at least $440 million per year. But the amount that could be saved is likely to be vastly more, since GAO had such a small sample.
Lowering the cap would limit how much corporations could charge taxpayers for each contractor, although firms would be allowed to pay employees in excess of the cap out of their own profits.
“American taxpayers should be appalled by a system that encourages private-sector firms to bill the government for these outrageous salaries while Congress debates slashing food assistance for the poor, gutting Social Security and veterans benefits, and lowering compensation for the working- and middle-class employees who make up the federal workforce,” Cox said.
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The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 670,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia. For the latest AFGE news and information, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Supporting the President on Righting Inequality
The President has spoken, and progressives can celebrate while continuing to grow the movement to turn the party back to its populist roots .
950,000 Progressives have signed on to support change.
In June, the PCCC put together a coalition of over 30 national groups representing over 20 million Americans leading the movement to expand Social Security benefits including the PCCC, AFL-CIO, National Organization for Women, Social Security Works, Latinos for a Secure Retirement, MoveOn, Democracy For America, and CREDO Action.
Momentum is growing! In 2014, the PCCC will ask candidates to campaign and win on this big idea and others — and in the process, spend millions educating the public about the need to expand Social Security benefits. Click here to help us elect progressives who support expanding Social Security benefits and other bold ideas in 2014!
Goes without saying that for the President's agenda to work we have to put more progressives in Congress.
There have been trainings on how to influence Congressional candidate selection etc. and other creative ACTIONS to make this action.
Never give up !