Majority Agenda Project

What are the real effects of long-term unemployment? The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article "Recession Strikes Deep Into Work Force."

"The nation's 9.7% unemployment rate tells only part of the recession's story, according to a new study that found more than half of adults in the U.S. labor force have suffered a spell of unemployment, a pay cut or reduction in work hours. Middle-age workers—50 to 64 years old—are most likely to have taken a hit in the last 30 months of the downturn, a group normally at the peak of its earning potential ...

"Those without jobs are enduring the longest spells of unemployment recorded in modern history. The typical unemployed worker today has been out of work for nearly six months, almost double the previous post-World War II peak—12.3 weeks in 1982-83...

"Long-term unemployment is associated with severe breaks in career paths and erosion in income, health and other aspects of well-being."

Rev. Jesse Jackson and United Auto Workers President Bob King issued the following statement at a July 12th press conference in Detroit.

DETROIT (July 12, 2010) No group has suffered more from America's economic meltdown than working men and women. The auto industry was decimated and workers paid the price. Urban America is in crisis and teachers, transportation workers, and all who do the hands-on work that make our cities run are the first to feel the effects of budget cuts. Unemployment continues at around 9.8%. Detroit is ground zero of this national crisis with an unemployment rate that is far higher. From December 2007 to June 2009, auto assembly and parts production accounted for 325,000 lost jobs. The auto industry has gone from a high of 1.5 million workers to 400,000 today.

In Appalachia and the Gulf, years of unenforced regulation, driven by corporate greed and government complicity, have led to needless deaths and destruction in the coal and oil fields.

As the economic crisis enters its third year, Jason Pramas reports in Open Media Boston that state government plans to continue cutting programs needed by working families. The solutions -- raising revenue through progressive taxation, demanding that Washington provide more help by cutting runaway military spending -- are not on Beacon Hill's radar.

As the global economic crisis continues, Massachusetts lawmakers continue to follow the neoliberal playbook as slavishly as their federal counterparts - slashing programs that help working families and the poor to the bone, and refusing to raise taxes on the rich and corporations to help keep vital social services at reasonable levels. So, as has become our tradition here at Open Media Boston during the annual state budget debates, we're taking a look at the proposed cuts in the final Mass. Senate FY 2011 budget proposal - taking our information straight from the latest budget analysis from the good people at the progressive think-tank Mass. Budget and Policy Center. To get a real sense of what's going on, we highly recommend going to the MBPC's website and checking out their full analysis.

One problem with the U.S.' far-flung military commitmenets is that they generate wars, conflicts, and resentments; but they are also extremely costly.   A policy task force convened by Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank released a report in Washington today which details a package of $1 trillion of realistic military budget cuts.   In a final section, the Cato Institute representatives on the task force say they would cut deeper, adopting a "strategy of restraint" which focuses on defending the U.S.

WASHINGTON - June 11 - House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), along with a bipartisan task force that includes members of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Cato Institute, Center for Defense Information and others, announced the release today of a new report that identifies $960 billion in Pentagon budget savings that can be generated over the next ten years from realistic reductions in defense spending.  The report was produced by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, a group convened in response to a request from Rep. Frank to explore options for reducing the defense budget's contribution to the federal deficit without compromising the essential security of the United States.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), negotiated in 1970, was a grand bargain in which the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states agreed to negotiate reduction and abolition of nuclear weapons, and the non-nuclear states agreed not to build the bomb-- but the nuclear weapons states have never taken their disarmament obligation seriously. 15,000 people marched in New York City May 2 on the eve of the NPT Review Conference calling for worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.  Anna Shen reported for the Inter Press Service.

UNITED NATIONS - Japanese women in kimonos carrying signs urging "No More Hiroshimas", an 80-year-old grandmother, and 18 mayors from around the world were just some of the almost 15,000 people who marched in New York City Sunday to rally for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

With official unemployment hovering at 10%, the promise of a 150,000 new jobs through environmentally friendly investments is something to promote! Writing in the AFL-CIO blog, James Park describes a new report that details just how this can be done. 

Congress has the power to put thousands of Americans in some of the hardest-hit industries back to work and help protect the environment at the same time, according to a new report. New vehicle technology and the right policy choices, including incentives for higher fuel efficiency vehicles, could create up to 150,000 jobs for U.S. workers. But it will take strong, visionary action by our elected leaders to ensure those jobs are created here, the report says.

Two recent studies published in Science, journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, should be of immediate concern to policy makers. On January 22, 2010, the journal carried a study that forecasts more intense hurricanes in the Atlantic. Specifically, the data model predicts more intense category 4 and 5 storms that will batter the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico and the United States.

 The Huffington Post reports that pollster, Celinda Lake is attributing Martha Coakley's defeat in the race for Kennedy's US Senate seat to Washington's big business, big bank bias. Lake cites a study by Peter Hart & Associates in which 62% of the respondents stated that Washington policies benefited the banks while only 10% saw themselves as beneficiaries.