June 28

What you need to know to navigate today’s most critical debates.

On Finance Bill, Lobbying Shifts to Regulations (NYTimes)
Wall Street’s Plan A was to convince Congress to give them the bill they wanted. Plan B is to convince regulators to give them the rules they want (i.e., none at all).

G-20 Agrees to Cut Debt (WSJ)
President Obama secured a token commitment to pro-growth policies at the G-20 meeting in Toronto, but Europe is still focused on cutting deficits and restricting debt.

What Obama Should Have Said to BP (New York Review of Books)
Obama needs to realize that he’s not dealing with reasonable people like himself.

The Third Depression (NYTimes)
Paul Krugman argues that G-20 leaders have taken a page from Herbert Hoover’s playbook, and that their policies will leave us all suffering for a long time to come.

Strategic Default Penalties Threaten Struggling Homeowners (The Washington Independent)
Fannie’s not showing any sympathy, and Mike Konczal knows that their new rules are going to be very strict.

Osborne’s first Budget? It’s wrong, wrong, wrong! (The Independent)
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow and Chief Economist Joe Stiglitz thinks Tory budget cuts in the U.K. are unwise and unfair, and that countries should focus on spending better rather than spending less.

Frustration With Obama Goes Beyond Left and Right (HuffPo)
Arianna Huffington, Eliot Spitzer, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Ross Douthat appeared on Fareed Zakaria GPS yesterday to discuss growing criticism of President Obama’s overly deferential leadership style. At least it cuts down on the Hitler comparisons.

It’s the Jobs, Stupid (HuffPo)
Robert Kuttner says President Obama has no one to blame but himself for jumpstarting the austerity movement, but he can still follow Harry Truman’s example and become a champion for the working class.

Full Employment (n+1)
Benjamin Kunkel argues that in order to achieve the promise of full employment, we must rethink what the term means and rebalance labor and wages worldwide.

Spending Debate a Throwback to New Deal (NPR)
As the Senate continues to block an important jobs bill in the name of fiscal responsibility, historians recall the disastrous attempt to balance the budget in 1937.

Whose Supreme Court is it? (WaPo)
Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings offer progressives an opportunity to shift the argument about judges away from wedge issues like abortion and toward the basic rights of individuals to stand up to corporations. Remember those?

Republicans discover the “F” word (DailyKos)
With a slate of right-wing women up for election this year, Republicans have finally embraced feminism, as long as it doesn’t involve helping women in any way.

Sen. Robert Byrd dead at 92 (WaPo)
The West Virginia Democrat, who was the Senate’s president pro tempore and the longest serving member of Congress, passed away early Monday morning.

In Deficit “Town Meetings,” People Reject America Speaks’ Stacked Deck (HuffPo)
Even when fed conservative misinformation, Americans intuitively support progressive economic reforms, which is more than can be said for a lot of elected Democrats.

Climate bill gets GOP cold shoulder (Politico)
Though several Republican legislators supported policies like cap-and-trade in the past, they’re opposed to it now that Tea Partying is in and bipartisanship is passé.

The Return of Superfund (NYTimes)
Imposing excise taxes on oil and chemical companies would force polluters to pay for environmental damage even when they’re able to shift enough blame and point enough fingers to keep regulators from determining which company is responsible.