May 3, 2010
Chapter 5: May 2010 Update
The depth of the recession reportedly created in 2010 the situation long projected for 2016 – the moment at which the Social Security Fund paid out more than it took in: a projected small shortfall for 2010 of $29 billion in a total inflow and outflow of $700 billion. The gap will be more than […] read more »
May 2, 2010
Chapter 4: May 2010 Update
The ‘progressive’ elements of the health care reform passed March 21, 2010 – especially the proposed taxation of so-called “Cadillac plans” and the payroll taxing of incomes over $250,000 – continued to attract rightwing criticism, in a year in which CEO pay in the 200 major U.S. companies continued to decline slightly. The median package […] read more »
May 1, 2010
Chapter 3: May 2010 Update
On the TARP front, Ben Bernanke (in a April 8 speech at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress) defended the way central bankers and public policy-makers had acted since September 2008, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression and so averted an even worse calamity. ‘In the current episode,” he […] read more »
April 25, 2010
Stumbling Over a Mess of Your Own Making – Arizona and Immigration Reform
When Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law last week, she presented her signature as a legitimate response to a failure of policy at the federal level. No fan of racial profiling, she described what is now set to become the nation’s toughest immigration enforcement law as simply “another tool for […] read more »
April 17, 2010
Chapter 2: April 2010 Update
The first 3 months of 2010 were dominated politically by the struggle to pass health care reform. That struggle raised partisan bitterness to new heights, both in Washington DC and beyond. The January 2010 victory of Scott Brown in the special Senate election in Massachusetts totally altered the dynamic of Senatorial politics, removing any possibility […] read more »
April 14, 2010
Health Care Lessons from the Old South
Apparently the insurance commissioner of Georgia is currently refusing to comply with Kathleen Sebelius’ request to create a state pool for high-risk insurance plans as required under the health care reform bill signed into law in March. According to The New York Times (April 13, 2010) the commissioner told Sibelius that the legislation is likely […] read more »
April 12, 2010
Chapter 1: April 2010 update
ZP Heller posted an excellent piece on The Huffington Post on April 1 that is well worth reading if you can get to it. It is entitled ‘Ten Things You Can Do to Help Progressive Journalism”. The fact that ZP Heller had to post it at all speaks to his main initial point: the huge […] read more »
March 23, 2010
The Invisible Immigration Rally
(written with Peter Siavelis) Did anyone even notice? Last Sunday’s massive immigration rally was supposed to push political leaders towards comprehensive immigration reform. Unfortunately it was largely overshadowed by the final vote on healthcare reform. Hunt for coverage of the rally in the national press and you will find it, but you will have to […] read more »
March 22, 2010
Health Care for the Ages: Initial Reaction to the Passage of Health Care Reform
Yesterday (March 21 2010) was a good day. The House vote for health care reform was a good vote. It started us on a journey towards universal health care. It threw up a road block against some of the most egregious practices of the insurance industry. It established the principle that when you’re healthy you […] read more »
March 21, 2010
Another Debt to Jon Stewart
The debt that progressives owe to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show is large and growing. It certainly grew again last Thursday when the program delivered a much needed demolition job on Glenn Beck. The critique delivered that day has been made by others – not least by David Sarota and Adele Stan immediately after […] read more »
March 21, 2010
Before the Vote: Commentary on the health care debate before March 21 2010
The importance of health care reform was brought home sharply by data released February 20th, showing that in June 2009 48.9 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid programs country-wide, an increase of nearly 3.3 million on the number in June 2008 (This data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, reported in The New York Times February […] read more »
March 7, 2010
Winning reform one hard-fought trench at a time
The great Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci once explained the success of the Russian Bolsheviks and the failure of their Western European comrades by using a military image from the First World War. When Lenin took the first trench in his fight with Czardom, the old regime had no supporting defensive trenches to fall back on. […] read more »
March 7, 2010
Immigration: Recent Developments in 2010
Latest figures from the Office of Immigration Statistics show the total size of the undocumented population actually falling in 2009: down from its January 2007 peak of 11.8 million by 200,00 through 2008 and by a further 800,000 through 2009: to give a current total of 10.8 million. Those numbers do not, of course, prevent […] read more »
February 22, 2010
Chapter 8: Recent Developments in 2010
Two things to note at the start of 2010 The President’s commitment, in the 2010 State of the Union Address, to ending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military. He said this. “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans […] read more »
February 22, 2010
Immigration Reform in a Time of Recession
By David Coates and Peter Siavelis 2010 is supposed to be the year of comprehensive immigration reform. President Obama promised comprehensive immigration reform when campaigning for the White House. He committed himself to a 2010 (as distinct from a 2009) timetable when meeting the Mexican president in May. His head of Homeland Security reaffirmed that […] read more »
February 21, 2010
Delusions at CPAC
Watching CPAC is never great fun for progressives. It wasn’t last year, when Rush Limbaugh made his now notorious call for President Obama to fail; and it wasn’t again this year, when Marco Rubio brought the conference to its feet with his denunciation of the direction of White House policy. read more »
February 19, 2010
Chapter 6: The Story in 2009
A lot of water has passed under the health care reform bridge since Answering Back went to press in March 2009. The spine of developments since then has been Congressional – the long and hard-fought struggle to turn the Obama commitment to health care reform into actual legislation. That struggle was initially anchored in the […] read more »
February 13, 2010
The “health” side of the health care debate
Michele Obama’s initiative on child obesity is to be welcomed as long overdue. Like so much of what emerges from this White House, however, the intention is laudable but the impact will be small. Mobilizing the great and the good to improve the labeling on processed food, to redesign physical education programs, and to get […] read more »
February 12, 2010
Chapter 3 – Recent Developments in 2010
The contested impact of stimulus money (on the details of which, see the 2009 story below) was politically center-stage in the first quarter of 2010. In the context of an economy with no fewer jobs in 2010 than in 2000, but with 11 million more Americans seeking them, unemployment was stubbornly high: stuck at 9.7% […] read more »
February 7, 2010
Will Obama disappoint? Probably. Should that surprise us? Probably Not
When judging the Obama administration, both now and in 2012, there is (and will be) some virtue in remembering that progressive governments, both here and abroad, are always in some sense a disappointment to their more committed supporters. One trick for mental health is to remember how much better they are, even as they disappoint […] read more »
January 31, 2010
Framing Errors in the State of the Union Address
Anyone who watched the televised exchange between the President and Republican lawmakers at their retreat last week – anyone, that is, with an ounce of objectivity in them – would presumably concede that, in a straight-up fight between Barack Obama and the entire Republican leadership, the President would win by a clear knock out. So […] read more »
January 30, 2010
The Housing Policy in 2009
The Obama administration moved quickly to help American families remortgage their houses and avoid foreclosure. On February 19 it put aside $75 billion of the bank bailout fund to help 4 million homeowners renegotiate their primary mortgages by giving financial incentives to lenders to modify loan terms and by subsidizing the borrowers’ interest payments over […] read more »
January 28, 2010
Chapter 9: Reviewing 2009
The Move from Iraq to Afghanistan Five key developments are particularly worthy of note in 2009 l. The slow run down of the US military presence in Iraq 2. The escalation of the US military presence in Afghanistan 3. Stalemate on the peace progress in the Middle East 4. The Obama acceptance of the Nobel […] read more »
January 25, 2010
Chapter 8: A review of 2009
2009 saw significant (and ultimately negative, from a progressive standpoint) developments on two fronts in 2009: on gay rights and on abortion rights. The record on gay rights was mixed. Initially the year was all progress. Legislatures and courts in Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire, Maine and the District of Columbia legalized gay marriage; the new […] read more »
January 23, 2010
We Need a Fighting State of the Union Address
It took FDR two goes to establish the political architecture of the New Deal. We do well to remember that the Roosevelt administration triggered a second “hundred days” of radical reform as a conservative Supreme Court began to strike down the first wave of New Deal legislation. There is surely a lesson here for the […] read more »
January 18, 2010
Immigration: The Story in 2009
There were three major areas of development on the immigration front in 2009. 1. The adverse effect of the recession on numbers and employment of both legal and illegal immigrants. 2. Clear support from AFL-CIO for comprehensive immigration reform; and 3. Changes in administration policy – away from ICE raids towards employer verification – as […] read more »
January 15, 2010
Chapter 1: January 2010 Update
The need for a “moving left show” could not have been more visibly demonstrated than by the loss of Senator Kennedy’s Senate seat to the Republicans in the special election held in January 2010. The result triggered these thoughts, first put on tpmcafe January 20 2010, the morning after the defeat. read more »
January 12, 2010
Chapter 3: The Story in 2009
2009 was dominated by first the passing and then the impact of the Obama administration’s stimulus package. That package drew a principled rejection from fiscally conservative and free-market minded conservatives, using arguments of the kind discussed in the text. It also drew criticism – as too little and too late – from the progressive wing […] read more »
January 10, 2010
The Foreclosure Crisis
The 2009 story of the Obama Administration response to the foreclosure crisis is given below: but first, this 2010 update, pointing to the very genuine danger of a second wave of foreclosures to come. • Evidence continues to build that the Obama program (details of which are below) helped very few homeowners in difficulty in […] read more »
January 5, 2010
Chapter 2: Looking back at 2009
The intense outrage against any form of progressive agenda that Rush Limbaugh articulated early in 2009 did not abate. On the contrary, it intensified throughout the first year of the Obama presidency, as a new set of right-wing luminaries joined Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Newt Gingrich, Michael Steele, the House Republican leadership and Senator Jim […] read more »
January 1, 2010
Chapter 3: The Story in 2009
2009 was dominated by first the passing and then the impact of the Obama administration’s stimulus package. That package drew a principled rejection from fiscally conservative and free-market minded conservatives, using arguments of the kind discussed in the text. It also drew criticism – as too little and too late – from the progressive wing […] read more »
December 8, 2009
Regulating the Banks?
The large US financial institutions were major recipients of government bail-out money in 2008/9 – bailout money that cumulatively came to a staggering $17.5 trillion – and in consequence they also became in 2008/9 a major target of both public censure and politically-inspired reform. The public largesse to them – predicated on the belief that […] read more »
December 4, 2009
Chapter 1: Introduction
As Answering Back went to press, Ruy Teixeira published his survey of American political opinion at the start of the Obama presidency, New Progressive America (Washington, Center for American Progress, March 2009). Teixeir’s general thesis is that America is no longer a center-right political culture but a more center-left one. ‘It is clear,” he wrote […] read more »
November 28, 2009
Introduction to Chapter 4
One tragic consequence of the downturn in the US economy triggered by the 2008 financial crisis was an increase in the number of people in or on the edge of poverty in the United States. As we just saw, unemployment stood at 10.2% officially in November, and was likely over 17% by then if you […] read more »
November 26, 2009
Chapter 5: Introduction
The recession hit pensions and pensioners hard. It led the administration to estimate that the Social Security fund would be exhausted four years earlier than previously thought – that is, by 2037 (this in The New York Times May 13 2009). It put the public pension schemes for teachers, police officers and other government employees […] read more »
November 23, 2009
Chapter 6: Introduction
The Issues Over 2009 as a whole progressed, a potential consensus emerged on what President Obama referred to as at least 80 percent of what was needed: no denial of coverage because of pre-existing medical condition, help to the low paid and the small business sector to buy basic health care for themselves and their […] read more »
November 21, 2009
Chapter 3: Introduction
Bailing out the Auto Industry? Also heavily in dispute throughout 2009 was the Obama administration’s limited bailout of the US auto industry. Both Chrysler and GM briefly went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the early summer of 2009, to facilitate a restructuring the bulk of whose painful downside was borne by the companies’ workers and […] read more »
