What should the coalition work on...

I was looking over a signature sheet from the consumer group I started and ran for three years in the early 90s. All of the issues that we worked on then are still in play. Just for the record, those issues included health insurance reform, NAFTA, the Clean Water Act and campaign finance laws. We really haven't succeeded in changing anything on those fronts. Looks like Nader had a point about both parties selling out to corporate interests.

Right now, if I had to pick two issues to really work on I would pick social security and net neutrality. I would probably like my president to show a little bit more backbone as well and negotiate like he's not trying to lose the entirety of the Great Society/New Deal programs that make living in the United States bearable.

More Fallout from Open Left's Paul Rosenberg over government pay freeze. Not pretty.

Paul Rosenberg of Open Left has some very unkind things to say about President Obama's decision to freeze government pay for government workers. Not to mention using his OFA to do it...

So, Obama says: Write a letter to the editor praising Obama for freezing federal workers' salaries. (But not the military, and certainly not the contractors!)

But why stop there?

Why not Obama says: Write a letter to the editor praising Obama for launching a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks? (But not, of course the CIA torturers, or even those responsible for destroying the CIA torture tapes.)

Why not Obama says: Write a letter to the editor praising Obama for his "pork for polluters program which

awarded more than 179,000 "categorical exclusions" to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act

?

(But not doing anything to protect green jobs "czar" Van Jones.)

It goes on like that. Of course, before this, a lot of the people who are on that list are or were public sector employees....Just astonishingly bad policy. Worst negotiator, ever.

Bad Obama Watch: President uses his OFA organization to push for wage freeze for public workers.

Well, its a terrible idea to freeze the pay of federal workers because it completely buys into Republican right wing talking points, which are patently false. And its a really really terrible idea to use your own in house organization to lobby for such silliness.

Get the awful news from Firedoglake's David Dayen.

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