Progressive News Feeds

Conservative media figures are painting a new White House push on affordable housing with the same dishonest brush they used to shift blame away from Wall Street for the housing bubble that precipitated the 2007-08 financial crisis. On the April 3 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom , Fox Business host Stuart Varney said that “lowering standards for who can borrow money to buy a home” is “what got us into trouble in the first place.” The Washington Free Beacon made the same claim in an article titled “Subprime: The Sequel,” and Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com claimed “the central failure in that bubble…was incentivizing increasingly risky loans with government cash and coercion .” But the housing bubble of the early 2000s was caused by private sector lending behavior , not government policy. The government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, commonly called the GSEs, didn’t lead private financial institutions into the subprime market and the complex financial instruments that made the bubble so toxic

Tags: author, desktop, economy, education, governor, housing, science, sponsor, video, war, white house

A new study on mental health in war-ravaged Afghanistan conducted by researchers at the Washington University in St. Louis comes to a jarring conclusion: socioeconomic indicators such as poverty and social vulnerability are more telling risk factors for mental illness than even exposure to warfare

Tags: action, articles, climate, government, governor, iraq, lgbt, obama, public-health, tweets, united-states

During a segment on women’s evolving roles in the workplace on Meet the Press Sunday morning, GOP political operative and former McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt made a compelling case for equal opportunity in American businesses and the country at large, asserting that organizations that do not afford women a place at the table are on the wrong side of history and will, eventually, lose out.

Tags: #abortion, author, economy, elections, facebook, governor, planned parenthood, pregnancy, security

The New York Times’ Floyd Norris noted over the weekend that, since the labor market bottomed out, the recovery has been much more favorable to men than women. In fact, a lower percentage of women over the age of 20 are working now than were working at the bottom of the recession: From December 2009 through last month, the economy added 5.3 million jobs, according to the Labor Department’s monthly survey of households. Only 30 percent of them went to women

Tags: author, black, congress, economy, feeds, governor, health, homes, jobs, taxes, yahoo

The GOP civil war continues to intensify, with numerous prominent conservative media figures lashing out at Karl Rove in recent days over vehement disagreements about the direction of the party. This is far from the first incident pitting Rove against fellow right-wing media figures

Tags: bush, democrat, discrimination, economy, education, governor, interview, media, politics, us politics, war

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R), like Republican governors all across the country , aims to implement a regressive tax plan that involves cutting income taxes for the rich while, in his case, maintaining a sales tax hike that primarily hurts the poor. The sales tax increase was supposed to be temporary when it was adopted in 2010, but Brownback now wants to make permanent

Tags: archives, congress, economy, government, governor, health, history, immigration, kansas, progressive news, security, taxes

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is set to announce his support for Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

Tags: #abortion, #Medicaid, director, diseases, economy, governor, pregnancy, president, security, tweets

Fox News host Geraldo Rivera is poised to become the latest Republican to leverage their Fox News platform into a possible run at political office. During an appearance this morning on  Fox & Friends , Rivera suggested that he will continue to appear on the network while he “hone[s] a message,” and do so until “it’s no longer legal.” On the January 31 edition of his Cumulus radio show, Rivera  told  listeners that he is “truly contemplating” running for U.S. Senate in New Jersey.

Tags: author, breaking news, congress, desktop, discrimination, economy, foreign-policy, governor, network, science, virginia

Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple has been working doggedly to correct one of Sean Hannity’s favorite false claims about the attack on the U.S.

Tags: cheney, conservative, discrimination, economy, feeds, foreign policy, foreign-policy, governor, media matters, security, video, war

The editorial boards of two newspapers owned by oil tycoon Philip Anschutz re-endorsed the controversial Keystone XL (KXL) Pipeline project days after Nebraska’s Governor approved a new route for the pipeline, but neither paper acknowledged the continued environmental danger of the project and both exaggerated the project’s potential for job creation and consumer benefits. The editorial boards of the  Colorado Springs Gazette and The Oklahoman claimed that the Obama administration should approve the pipeline now that TransCanada — the corporation seeking to build the pipeline — has rerouted the project because it won’t have a negative environmental impact. But in fact, the risk of a spill over environmentally sensitive areas remains

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