Progressive News Feeds

Economic media coverage has been heavily focused on advocating for deficit reduction, even as deficits decline and the federal government posts a surplus.

Tags: desktop, economy, elections, environment, government, house speaker, jobs, media matters, security, unemployment, war

Peggy Noonan is lucky, in a way, for the existence of Karl Rove and Dick Morris. The duo absorbed most of the mockery and heat for their irrationally optimistic predictions that Mitt Romney would trounce President Obama last November, allowing pundits like Noonan, who were no less sanguine about the impending Romney ascendance, to ease into 2013 relatively unscathed. The day before the election, you’ll recall, Noonan explained on her Wall Street Journal blog why Romney would win.

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The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times failed to connect the American Legislative Exchange Council model legislation to the current efforts to change the pension plans of Floridians. Ashley Lopez of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting highlighted a piece in The Palm Beach Post that had a lengthy description of ALEC’s role in the process to overhaul the state’s pension system: Critics trace the campaign back two years — to New Orleans, where dozens of Florida lawmakers gathered for a conference hosted by a controversial advocacy group that helps corporations and conservative interest groups write bills for legislatures across the country. Jonathan Williams, a policy director for the American Legislative Exchange Council, told The Palm Beach Post that the organization’s three days of meetings in August 2011 helped affirm the need among many legislators to take a hard look at public employee benefits

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Media figures have repeatedly forwarded the notion that the United States is currently facing a debt crisis. However, leaders of both parties agree there is no immediate crisis, and by focusing attention too heavily on deficit and debt reduction, the media distract from the more imminent problem of growth and jobs.

Tags: congress, desktop, elections, environment, foreign policy, house speaker, jobs, politics, united-states

Fox News reporter Kelly Wright used a partial quote from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to paper over Ryan’s acknowledgment that debt levels are stable for the near term, misrepresenting the debt conflict between President Obama and House Republicans. On the March 17 edition of CBS News’ Face the Nation , host Bob Schieffer asked Ryan about an interview Obama had previously given to ABC News, in which he observed that “we don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt.” Ryan conceded to Schieffer that “we don’t have a debt crisis right now,” going on to explain that Republicans differ with the president on how to handle the prospective crisis

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell repeated the siren call that Republicans are not going to give up on repealing Obamacare. But in the same speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, McConnell admitted there is little plausibility to the idea, since Republicans have already lost . “When it came to Obamacare, we gave it everything we have, everything we have, and we just lost.” McConnell explained that won’t stop Republicans, in a speech where he assured his audience that the GOP is not stuck in the past: This law is a disaster

Tags: boehner, climate, congress, conservative, economy, house speaker, progressive news, science

Tennessee Rep.

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Fox & Friends questioned the authenticity of President Obama’s most recent outreach to Republicans while ignoring GOP leaders’ numerous rebukes of the president’s past attempts to reach across the aisle. In a widely publicized March 12 article , The National Journal’s Ron Fournier questioned the sincerity of Obama’s current outreach to Congressional Republicans, including dining with GOP senators and visiting Capitol Hill.

Tags: elections, friends, marriage equality, media, politics, science, the nation, united-states, video

As expected, the Minnesota House Civil Law Committee advanced marriage equality legislation tonight with a vote of 10-7, reflecting today’s similar vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill now advances to the full House, but as in the Senate, its potential for passage there is not yet known

Tags: archives, author, defense of marriage act, economy, facebook, house, media, minnesota, security, transgender, tweets, yahoo

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly used his national platform to launch a crusade against openly gay Colorado lawmaker Rep. Mark Ferrandino (D-2) over his opposition to a law that would institute mandatory minimum sentences for sexual predators who target children, repeatedly suggesting that Ferrandino’s opposition to the measure might be linked to his support for gay marriage.

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