Check out the summit for Movement for the People at CSpan.

Cspan is currently showing segments from something called "Movement for the People" Summit. Here's their website.

I've been watching for the last hour and it features Dean Baker, great progressive economist who, along with people like Krugman and Stiglitz, kind of inform my world view. It also features Tim Carney, who is that rare libertarian who criticizes the role of money in politics and how it benefits big business at the expense of small businesses. 


You can watch it here. Here's what CSpan says about it.


A coalition of groups that calls itself the "Movement for the People" hosted an all-day conference focusing on the issue of money in politics and corporate power.  Among the discussions was a look at the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission, which said corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.

Quick Definition of How World Really Works with Economic Hitman John Perkins

This handy video shows you how American foreign policy actually works. Not pretty. Not a Bond film where Bond actually fights against the evil industrialists. That's fiction apparently. This also provides the answer to "Why do they hate us (the United States)." One of the different things about The Greater Good Coalition is that we can work on foreign policy issues. I know, because I determine our issues, that we will support any bill that stops rewarding the outsourcing of American jobs.

Here's the video:

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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