Obama - Enron Loophole.

Well, this is certainly a welcome message considering the last week.

My own concern is that they really shut it down versus the current legislation they had which would have affected just 1% of all futures commodity trading in energy.

And certainly trying to get Obama to move to more middle class focused policy is a worthy effort.

Myself, I believe that if one gets enough true Progressives and Populists into Congress, well, they write the bills and they vote on the bills, that might be the real power to obtain more policy, legislation that is in the interests of most of America. American workers, US middle class, your "average joe" who doesn't have $5B dollars to influence policy.

the two national union federations (AFL-CIO and CtW) poured around $80 million into the Democratic Congressional races. More so than anyone else, that was what won these races. In 2008, the plan is for the AFL-CIO alone to more than double that.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The AFL-CIO and its unions said Friday they will spend an estimated $200 million on the 2008 elections, with the nation's largest labor federation devoting $53 million exclusively to grass-roots mobilization.
In addition, the AFL-CIO said it would deploy more than 200,000 volunteers leading up to the election, with special focus on battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Obama threw the AFL-CIO a curveball though when he backed out of public funding, and said that he wanted to get 527 groups out of politics. Move-On has already shuttered its 527. 527s are one of the few (legal) ways for institutional donors to pour the kind of money the AFL-CIO wnats to into the presidential race.

Obama's going to eventually have to back out of this and let the 527s come out to play with the groups from the right, and is going to come of as a hypocrite.

This is yet another example of Obama being tone deaf on these things.

Thats the problem really. We can expect no meaningful trade and economic reform as long as we have the free trading DLCer's like Pelosi, Rangel, Emanuel, Hoyer et al in leadership postions in congress. A good place to start would be to toss these economic traitors out on their kiesters next election cycle.

Unfortunately we have the mother of all lesser of evils choices to make for president - the neo-liberal global candidate, and the cowboy capitalism neoconservative global candidate. Which one will do the least damage? which one might bring some incremental improvement? It is really not clear at this point.

Obama is pitching a brand of globalism with increased social safety nets - really just a band aid on the overall structural economic problems, while McCain is pitching the notion that supply side voodoo and its cousin "free" trade isn't working for everyone because we simply aren't doing enough of it

On trade they both stink. On Obama's economic team is a bunch of scary globalist academics, and on McCains team a bunch of big corporate shills.

we are so screwed. I think we have to look beyond the presidential race picking the candidate that we agree on other issues and feel will do the least harm, and focus more efforts on bringing in more populist leaning candidates in congressional and the other down ticket races to reinforce the wave of labor leaning and anti war dems from 06, and repudiate Pelosi's cowardice.

I could already see that things were not as they appeared when Pelosi banned Labor from a meeting with the new Democratic freshman swept into office in 2006.

There's a war on for the heart of our party, and it seems that Speaker Pelosi has chosen sides. In a story that lamentably hasn't recieved the coverage that it deserves, Speaker Pelosi shows that she clearly didn't get the message of last month's election. The base of people power is populism, the sovereignty of the people.

Speaker Pelosi has a arranged a series of seminars for freshman representatives. On Wednesday, December 5, freshman representatives will be subjected to indoctrination in economics of fucking the people who sent you to Washington over by Robert Rubin, a free trade fanatic from the Clinton administration. It gets worse, Speaker Pelosi banned Labor from sending representatives to offer an opposing view. Never in my life did I think that I would see a Democratic speaker of the House ban Labor from talking to the people's representatives.

As far as I know, the later meeting with labor that all the Pelosi apologists kept saying would happen never occurred.

And the Hamilton Project?

They're the source of almost all of Obama's economic policy.

Which I suppose shouldn't be surprising, given that Obama was the keynote speaker at their launch.

As for transformational change, I wrote about that last year.

Sen. Obama isn't offering up transformational change. Unfortunately, it looks like things have to get even worse before they get better. The aftermath of Katrina woke most of American up to the realities of American life, and started a real discussion about what's happened to the social and economic life of this country.

The release of that populist genie into the electorate scared the living hell out of the Rubinites, and they've been priming Sen. Obama as their man for the White House ever since they launched the Hamilton Project. Their purpose is to discredit economic populism, and insert in its place a milquetoast liberalism that refuses to recognize that neo-liberal economic policies have failed us.

That is the first time I have seen a chart showing the breakdowns by wages of the stagnation in the mid and lower brackets and the tremendous increases at the top brackets. - The usual right wing response is "see average wages are up!" - because they take the wages as a whole - and I have long suspected that the huge gains at the top skewed the numbers. would be interesting to see a trend lin of the totals of all combined overlayed on the chart

My question always becomes, how much more does the playing field have to be slanted in favor of the haves and have mores before it actually starts trickling own? I think we all know the answer.

The fact is that under the old New Deal we had four decades of unprecendented and sustainable growth as well as a more shared prosperity and this was during a time when the taxes on corporations and the wealthy were much much higher than they are today. Now we have some of the lowest upper bracket and corporate taxes since pre New Deal and yet the economy - at least for most of us- is in the crapper. The right's response is along the lines of - "the reason it isn't working is because we just aren't doing enough supply side"

This is part of the reason the market shifted to trucks in the 80s - trucks offered spartan utilitarian reliable vehicles at affordable prices. Todays trucks are just as loaded up with power accessories and needles options as cars are - and the prices escalated accordingly, and effciency and reliability went down as maintenace and other costs of ownership rose.

The other prime advantage of simpler and basic car designs is that the average backyard mechanic was able to makes simple repairs and do the routine maintenance himself - todays cars that is virtually impossible - and you can't even get a service tech to lift the hood for less than $150

one of the huge problems facing China is dependence on export markets for growth. In 2005 or 2006, the Economist reported that 43% of Chinese GDP derives from exports.

Which means that about half of their economy is dependent on exports to other countries.

GAME ON! re Chinese Subsidies:

China, the world’s second largest oil consumer, will increase retail gasoline and diesel prices by 1,000 yuan ($145.50) per tonne from Friday, according to industry sources.
….Oil prices tumbled $3 following the news.

“Even with the $18.60 (per barrel) increase in price (Chinese fuel prices) are still well below the global market and the subsidy amounts to something on the order of $56 per barrel [at a level equal to $78.69].”