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By Allen W. Smith
Dissident Voice

In December, the Obama deficit-reduction commission will make recommendations for budget cuts that will then be voted on, with an up or down vote, by the lame-duck Congress. Already, there is much speculation that Social Security will be one of the big targets. The rationale for cutting Social Security seems to be that, during such difficult economic times, everything should be a candidate for the chopping block, and that the public should support such cuts out of a sense of patriotism.

Does the G-20 Show the Shape of things to Come -- austerity and extreme police actions?

By Paul Jay
Real News Network

With all the public attention during G20 on the 1000 arrests and such, something critical was overlooked. That's the paradox the assembled heads of governments created for ending the global economic crisis.

The G20 leaders recognize that "demand" needs to grow. That means people must have the means to buy stuff. Do a search in the G20 Toronto Summit Declaration and fourteen times you'll find a reference to boosting or increasing "demand".

Debt commission leaders paint gloomy picture

By GLEN JOHNSON
Associated Press

BOSTON – The heads of President Barack Obama's national debt commission painted a gloomy picture Sunday as the United States struggles to get its spending under control.

Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles told a meeting of the National Governors Association that everything needs to be considered — including curtailing popular tax breaks, such as the home mortgage deduction, and instituting a financial trigger mechanism for gaining Medicare coverage.

By Walter Alarkon
The Hill

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO

Next month, Social Security, one of the nation’s most successful and important government programs, turns 75. It is the cornerstone of retirement security for tens of millions of Americans.

(Today, the U.S. House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security will examine the success of Social Security 75 years after President Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law. We’ll be covering the hearing.)

By Michael Snyder
Business Insider

The 22 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

Thanks! Thousands of you responded powerfully to our demand that Brian Moynihan, Bank of America CEO, start publicly demanding unemployment benefits extensions.

The bill should pass at this point, but all pressure is important. Moynihan met with Obama (and Bill Clinton) yesterday, and hasn't told anyone what he said--I hope that someone at BofA told him that there are thousands of angry people who are holding him responsible. Moynihan is still publicly silent on unemployment. We have written five of their executives, including three PR people, on behalf of the thousands of people who have signed our petition, and gotten no response.

If you haven't already, please add your voice here: Brian Moynihan, what are you doing about unemployment benefits?!

Tell Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan that he needs to make a statement and proactively lobby for emergency unemployment benefits http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1312/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4258

By Brian Beutler
TPM

Is there a new, bipartisan consensus forming on Capitol Hill about whether (and how) to scale back Social Security benefits? A surprising number of signs point to "yes" -- and that has many progressives looking ahead a few months to what they believe could become a serious fight.

But is his U.S. Chamber of Commerce good for business?

By James Verini
Washington Monthly

In this RSA Animate, radical social theorist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

By Kevin Zeese
Huffington Post

The United States can be fiscally responsible and meet the urgent necessities of the American people by stopping corporate welfare to concentrated industries, taxing the wealthiest that profited from three decades of tax breaks and reigning in weapons and war spending. Expanding Medicare to cover all Americans will save money and improve health. And, Social Security is essential to most Americans and is a contract between the government and the people that should not be broken.

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
AP

WASHINGTON – The economic rebound is stalling.

A raft of weak new reports Thursday provided the strongest evidence yet that the recovery is slowing and added to concerns that the nation could be on its way back into recession.

Most notable was a rise in the number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time. The four-week average for jobless claims now stands at its highest point since March.

By Dean Baker
Center for Economic and Policy Researc

The opponents of Social Security and Medicare are getting in high gear. After all, it makes perfect sense that after the collapse of a housing bubble has just destroyed the life savings of near retirees that we would cut their Social Security and Medicare. Okay, at least in Washington that makes perfect sense.

Testimony of Kevin B. Zeese, Executive Director, Prosperity Agenda
June 30, 2010

By Robert Kuttner
New Deal 2.0

As Obama’s Fiscal Commission prepares for its June 30 hearing, New Deal 2.0 invited leading thinkers to participate in our Social Security’s Fiscal Fitness series, which examines the soundness of the program, its relationship to the federal deficit, and the vital role it plays in America’s economic future.

By Stephanie Condon
CBS News

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday that Congress will not pass a traditional budget resolution this year because long-term deficit questions are better left to President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission, an 18-member panel charged with creating a plan to bring down the deficit to 3 percent of the economy by 2015.