Members of the Socialist Party lined the tree-shaded walkway that guided tens of thousands of self-dubbed progressives and union members of all stripes to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Passing out a newspaper with the headline, “Tax The Rich, End The Wars,” one eager party member More…
Today, Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) took to the Senate floor to argue for the Americans Want to Work Act, a bill extending the maximum number of weeks of unemployment insurance benefits to 119. The legislation also extends the HIRE Act payroll tax exemption and More…
This morning, I recapped the current legislative efforts to further extend unemployment benefits and aid the millions who have been out of work for more than six months:
The question of whether the United States’ unemployment is structural (due to some industries getting bigger and others shrinking, not ameliorated much by stimulus spending or looser monetary policy) or cyclical (due to an economy-wide lack of demand, ameliorated by stimulus spending and looser monetary policy) continues to rage — More…
Democrats have punted, at least for now, on voting on the Bush tax cuts. Rather than forcing moderate Democratic members to OK a tax increase for wealthy Americans, leadership will call a vote during the lame-duck session. After the Nov. 2 election, they also need to take up a reauthorization More…
In response to last month’s Glenn Beck-hosted “Restoring Honor” summit, hundreds of thousands plan to descend on Washington for a rally by the Lincoln Memorial next weekend. On Saturday, liberal groups are hosting the “One Nation Working Together” event, making a case for activism for progressive legislation to a More…
Yesterday, the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee — the team of economists that determines whether the economy is contracting (in a recession) or expanding — announced that the recession officially ended in June 2009.
That means little to the 14.9 million Americans out of work, of More…
So says the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee — a group of economists charged with officially determining whether the economy is in a state of expansion or contraction:
At the Roosevelt Institute, Mike Konczal and Arjun Jayadev have an astonishing paper (PDF) closely examining the unemployment numbers and weakness in the labor force. The key finding:
Starting at the beginning of 2009 it is now more likely that someone who is unemployed will drop out of the
For a few months, I’ve been following the efforts of the unemployed — specifically the long-term unemployed, and especially the 99ers, who have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits — to unionize online. The idea is that the 6.6 million Americans who have More…
rss