Working Life

Yesterday, after one week of silence and stonewalling, Lesley Stahl’s name disappeared from the list of Advisors to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. But, this story is not quite over. CBS continues to stonewall over the circumstances of Stahl’s service on the Peterson Foundation Advisors’ board — which was a blatant violation of basic ethical journalistic standards and CBS’ own ethical guidelines. Let us refer to this as Stahlgate — and as usual it’s the cover-up that is the worst part of this saga.

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A week ago, I wrote about Lesley Stahl’s obvious,no-brainer, significant conflict of interest. I wrote to CBS asking for an explanation. Crickets. Are we going to let this nonsense continue

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Why is Leslie Stahl sitting on the Advisory Board of an organization deeply involved in a contentious political debate? And is her service on that Advisory Board blessed by “60 Minutes”? Or were Stahl’s superiors even aware of her service? In any case, if “60 Minutes” has any inclination to adhere to CBS’ ethical guidelines, Stahl must be forced to resign from the board.

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The enduring mystery — thought perhaps it isn’t a mystery when you dig deep enough — is why liberals/progressives have never taken stock of their complete failure at taking advantage of the greatest crisis in the so-called “free market” in half a century. This comes to mind when you ponder the somewhat comical hand-wringing underway among the leaders of the progressive movement over the prospects of a “grand bargain” around government fiscal policy.

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It’s a sad state of affairs when the people have to rely on Senator “Wall Street” to stand in the doorway to block the barbarians from storming in to, once again, rob the national treasury. But, it does give us a window into how narrow the debate is over our economy — and why people are rightly pissed off.

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     So, it’s not all bad news in the world. Some sanity prevails when real-life economics, not blather about the glories of the "free market", triumphs and one can hope for a bit of truthiness to spread.    First, the good news: President François Hollande’s Socialists and their allies won an absolute majority in runoff [...]

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   I love it when billionaires feel misunderstood. It sounds something like this: “I’ve fleeced you or just piled up gobs of money at your expense but, gee, that really wasn’t personal, I’m really a good guy with all the right motives, if you could just see it my way because, well, my way is [...]

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   I’ve written a lot about the complete immoral insanity of the obsession over the phony debt and deficit "crisis"and the rush to impose austerity on the people when we really need much more public spending to employ the masses of people who are falling, falling, falling further behind. Well, truth is austerity is not [...]

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    Yesterday, I wrote about the monumentally crazy letter co-signed by 60 House DEMOCRATS, who, by adding their names to the letter, in my view, were embracing austerity, cuts in Medicare and a de-funding of basic government services. One of the signers of the letter, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), responded to my post. So, in [...]

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   In today’s installment of stupidity, crass political calculations and the desperate need to be inducted into the Washington Post’s circle of Very Serious People, I present to you a list of 60 House Democrats who now say they are willing to lock arms with the people who seek to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security [...]

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Somehow, I’ve been thinking a lot about Molly Ivins recently and how she would know exactly what to say about the absurdity of our political leaders who are just clueless. She once said, of former Republican House Majority leader Dick Armey, “If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drillin’ rights on that [...]

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    This is great news: Senate and House leaders are becoming more directly involved with the supercommittee responsible for delivering a sizable deficit-reduction plan by Thanksgiving, amid growing concern the panel’s members could be deadlocked. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has been meeting more frequently with Democratic members of the 12-member supercommittee, an [...]

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   Greeks have taken a big part of the brunt in Europe because of the preying on its country by banks and international institutions. Essentially, the failed strategy has been all about AUSTERITY: shrink the economy even more in return for not…plunging the economy even deeper.    The people in Greece have had enough–and they’ve [...]

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   You can smell the fear and the alarms going off–not by reading The Nation (snore…kick me when it has something new to say) or The New York Times, whose "economic" reporters, with one or two exceptions, are astonishingly dumb. For some real insights, look to the Financial Times and The Economist. And the message [...]

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    Dear Ms. Warren: congratulations for jumping into the U.S. Senate race in your state. And good luck and be well–you will find that being a "candidate" offers challenges quite different from having to answer to discourteous, uninformed Republicans. Respectfully, I’d like to ask your position on a number of issues.    Quick context. There [...]

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   To return to my theme of "numbers are a bitch"…here is one to chew on: $1.3 trillion. It’s a gap–a BIG gap…and in that number is part of the story of the crisis we’re in.   At this point, after checking in with my colleague and friend Dean Baker, the Gross Domestic Product is [...]

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