I’ve written about the revival of the Move Your Money movement alongside the Occupy Wall Street protests. But there’s a second-wave innovation here that has the potential to make the banks take notice in a much more direct way. When ordinary citizens take their savings out of big banks, it has a small effect, but [...]

Adam Serwer writes about a new report on DHS’ Secure Communities program, showing that it harms law enforcement efforts: The law enforcement argument against Secure Communities goes something like this: Because the program is automatic, undocumented immigrants are discouraged from talking to police because of the possibility that they might end up getting deported. “When [...]

Republicans are barnstorming across the country in support of a balanced budget amendment. This, they say, will force government to “live within its means” and lead to surging economic growth, though I’m not really sure how they get from A to B. But we don’t really have to guess about the impact of a balanced [...]

Lori Montgomery reports that the White House is “speeding up” debt limit talks, with an outline of spending cuts and deficit triggers in exchange for a debt limit increase. Montgomery breaks some news about one potential trigger, which would, according to Delaware Senator Chris Coons (D), lead to tax increases and specifically entitlement cuts, if [...]

MADISON, WI (FDL) – The Assembly Democrats have presented an alternative budget proposal and are meeting with the head of the Department of Administration, Mike Huebsch. We’re trying to get a copy of the alternative proposal, but I’m not sure they’ll have any more success with that as they’ve had with their litany of amendments [...]

Lee Fang adds an interesting detail to my story on yesterday’s Koch Brothers protest in Rancho Mirage. Riverside County Sheriff spokeswoman Melissa Nieburger told me that the city of Rancho Mirage contracts its police force from the county sheriff. What I didn’t know is that the sheriff’s department covered a large shortfall in their budget [...]

During the stimulus debate, the White House emphasized “shovel-ready projects,” things that could begin construction immediately so that the impact of the funding could be felt right away. At the same time, they exercised caution, demanding no waste or fraud in the money they appropriated, with strict oversight of all the projects. These two mandates [...]

The New York Times ran a very damaging story about Michael Bennet, and more specifically a deal between JPMorgan Chase and the Denver Public Schools, which has led to the bank gouging the school district for millions. These municipal deals have been long chronicled, most recently by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, and they’re absolutely [...]

The President’s message on the monthly jobs numbers actually offered some hope that he would press for some needed steps to keep the economic recovery going. But we still have more to do. In my State of the Union address, I called for a $30 billion small business lending fund, which would help increase the [...]

Last month, Rep. George Miller introduced the Local Jobs for America Act, a $100 billion dollar bill that would directly deliver needed resources to local communities to provide as many as 1 million jobs. Specifically, the Local Jobs for America Act invests: $75 billion over two years to local communities to hire vital staff Funding [...]

Obviously it hasn’t run through the legislative wringer yet, but the Local Jobs For America Act proposed by House Education and Labor Secretary George Miller looks like an exceedingly good piece of policy. It would provides through the community development block grant program $100 billion dollars to create local jobs through state and municipal budgets. [...]