Category: Politics
Bobby Jindal and Grover Norquist Wreck Louisiana
by Stephanie Grace | Jun 1, 2015 | PoliticsThese are not happy times in Baton Rouge, where government officials are desperately trying to plug a $1.6 billion budget shortfall. But even by that standard, Wednesday, April 22, was particularly fraught. In the imposing state capitol that Huey Long built, the Senate Finance Committee was wrestling with a complicated cost-cutting scheme to repeal […]
Scott Walker’s Long Crusade
by Jud Lounsbury | Jun 1, 2015 | PoliticsWhen Scott Walker met 91-year-old Nancy Reagan in 2012, he told her he had a personal connection with her late husband: Walker’s recall election had fallen on the anniversary of President Reagan’s death. Back home in Wisconsin, Walker would try to impress intimate gatherings of Republicans by telling them Nancy Reagan had arranged for […]
The American Chemistry Council’s Trojan Horse
by Lou Dubose | Jun 1, 2015 | Environment, PoliticsCongress hasn’t passed a major environmental bill since 1996, when Bill Clinton signed amendments to the Clean Water Act. Now it seems that the “Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act,” is moving through the Senate and might actually make it to Barack Obama’s desk. The bill is a fix for […]
Why ‘Free Trade’ Treaties Destroy Jobs
by Robert E. Scott | Jun 1, 2015 | Economy, PoliticsRecently, the president claimed that critics who say that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “is bad for working families … don’t know what they are talking about.” Skeptics would respond, “Show me the money. Show me the jobs and wages you’re going to generate for working Americans. Explain how the TPP is going to be […]
You Don’t Miss Your Union ’Til the Well Runs Dry
by Geoff Rips | Jun 1, 2015 | PoliticsWhen Ernesto Cortes, Jr., co-chair of the Industrial Areas Foundation, preaches about democracy in the U.S., he talks about the deterioration of our mediating institutions. We used to depend on our schools, our churches, our political parties, and our unions to mediate between the individual and the marketplace, the individual and the state. “The […]