It’s Time to ‘Take Back the American Dream’
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The middle class and the American Dream that created it are under attack as never before. But there is a real uprising sweeping the nation to save the middle class.
The Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) is teaming up with Van Jones’ “Rebuild The Dream” organization for the “Take Back the American Dream” conference Oct. 3-5 in Washington, D.C. This year, the CAF annual conference will focus on adding gas to the grassroots fire that has already been lit in Wisconsin and town halls all over the country.
(Online registration for the conference is now closed. You may still register on-site starting at 8 a.m. on Monday at the Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Ave, N.W. For an agenda, list of speakers and other conference information, click here.)
Boehner Is Wrong. Americans Don’t Support Social Security Cuts
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Listen up, John Boehner: The public doesn’t like your plan to cut their Social Security so your rich friends can get another tax break. In fact, according to a poll released today by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, 68 percent of probable voters oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit. The poll was commissioned by the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), MoveOn.org, AFSCME and SEIU.
Robert Borosage, CAF co-director, put it this way in a press conference call this morning:
Republican leaders get this exactly wrong. Last week, John Boehner was on television calling for continuing the top-end Bush tax cuts and for raising the retirement age for Social Security to 70. But as [the poll] noted, the vast majority of Americans, including two-thirds of Republicans oppose raising the retirement age and a broad majority, uniting Democrats and Independents, are for ending the Bush tax cuts.
Netroots Nation: Strengthening Social Security
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One attendee of the Netroots Nation panel provocatively titled “Obama’s Social Security ‘Death Panel’” later told me he had gone into the panel dubious that there is any real threat to Social Security. “But I left mad,” he said, questioning how such an important part of America’s social fabric could be threatened. Yet as the panelists detailed, Social Security is most definitely under attack–and it’s an attack that could fundamentally alter how we understand the program.
Panelists agreed the most direct assaults on Social Security takes are likely to be defeated, as the privatization of the program was in 2005. But they pointed to a more nuanced threat. Robert Borosage of Campaign for America’s Future contrasted the “frightened, timid and cautious leadership” of today with the “confident society” that, following World War II, responded to a much larger deficit (as percentage of GDP) by embarking on a series of spending programs that reshaped the economy and built the middle class.
Bold Action Needed to End Unemployment Crisis
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America’s economy is not working for everybody and progressives must demand our elected leaders fight for economic justice—and economic justice begins with good jobs, said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. This afternoon, Trumka spoke at a press conference and later on a panel at the America’s Future Now conference here in Washington, D.C.
Americans of all political persuasions are angry, and rightly so. We need political leaders to speak to that anger, to harness it to attack the plutocracy that has run our country into the ground, to build an economy that works for all. But instead our politics seems to be about a choice between apostles of hate masquerading as populists, and voices of complacency masquerading as progressivism.
In an emotional presentation, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert said he was “infuriated at the attitude” of the media and political leaders that the unemployed are suffering, “but that’s just too bad.” The nation is wasting its most valuable resource—its people, he said.
There is no real sense of urgency. The media and the government are clueless as to the scope of the problem.
David vs. Goliath: The Fight Begins for Reform of the Financial Industry
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Most Americans want strong regulation of our nation’s financial markets, according to a poll released today by Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), a coalition of nearly 200 investors and civil rights and community organizations.
The poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners, surveyed 900 likely voters in 77 “Blue Dog” or conservative Democratic districts and those in politically competitive Democratic districts.
More than two-thirds of voters in all the districts support creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) to “create and enforce a strong set of rules to require fair, affordable, understandable and transparent financial products like bank loans, mortgages and credit cards for families and small businesses.”
When asked if there was too much, too little or just the right amount of regulation of banks, the stock market and credit card companies, voters agreed, by a 23-point margin, there’s too little rather than too much regulation.
The Lesson of Pittsburgh for G-20: Manufacturing Matters
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The revival of Pittsburgh, site of the G-20 summit this week, can provide valuable lessons for the world’s leaders. Among them: Manufacturing matters and poor trade policies hurt everyone.
“Pittsburgh, G-20 and the New Economy: Lessons to Learn, Choices to Make,” a report released today by the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), makes clear that the renaissance of Pittsburgh after the collapse of the steel industry was cut short because of the lack of a national industrial policy and the nation’s trade policies.
During a telephone news conference, CAF Co-Director Robert Borosage said some manufacturing jobs in Pittsburgh were replaced by high-end jobs in education or medicine.
But many were replaced by jobs in hotels and food services—jobs that never paid as well and proved even more vulnerable in the recent downturn. Some manufacturing jobs were never replaced at all. That helps explain why the city’s population is declining, especially among youth, who seek opportunity elsewhere.
America’s Future Conference: Restore the Middle Class with Employee Free Choice
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The nation’s economy is in a tailspin, and one of the best ways to help turn it around is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act, several speakers said this morning at a national gathering of progressive leaders.
Sponsored by Campaign for America’s Future, the previously titled “Take Back America” annual conference has been renamed “America’s Future Now” to emphasize that this could be the greatest period of progressive reform since the 1960s.
Opening the three-day conference in Washington, D.C., Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, told participants the Employee Free Choice Act is
essential to insuring that the blessings of the next prosperity will be widely shared, that the American middle class will expand, not decline, and that the progressive majority will be consolidated.
New Project to Combat Unconscious Racism
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While the election of President Obama shows that overt racism is less acceptable in America, a new project launched last month by the Institute for America’s Future explores the large role unconscious racial bias still plays in our politics and society.
The Americans for American Values (AAV) project will research the effects of unconscious racial bias on decision-making and develop strategies to support decision-making based on consciously held American values rather than on racial anxiety and stereotypes. The project began with the release of a series of educational videos and a set of research studies. View the new videos and learn more about AAV here.
john powell, the project’s founder and executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, said racial equality and fairness are values widely supported by Americans, but hidden biases often undermine these values.
As society tries to move beyond racial discrimination, a better understanding of implicit bias is needed. Our two-fold goal with this study is to help the American public better understand implicit bias and to give them ways to avoid triggering these biases.
