The White House has given the go-ahead to a third trade agreement since December, this one with Panama. US Trade Representative Ron Kirk hinted that the Panama deal was coming soon in a conference call earlier this month announcing the Colombia trade deal. The NAFTA-style trade deal with Korea was announced in December.

You wouldn’t know it from watching the news, but over the past several days thousands of dedicated activists gathered for a conference in Washington, protested throughout the city, took over several places of business in the process, and even secured a meeting with the President of the United States.

It’s all very precious. An entity funded by the big banks makes a judgment (which shouldn’t be seen apart from their other discredited judgments) about the debt. The party most allied with the big banks uses that judgment to demand that their preferred policy, which doesn’t reduce the national debt for THIRTY YEARS, must be enacted immediately. Incidentally, that preferred policy reduces taxes on the rich, including the rich executives at the big banks.

We know House Republicans are playing games with the debt ceiling because if a party weren’t, they would have already taken care of it. Or at the least made it abundantly clear they would take care of it in a non-hostage-taking, timely manner, such that journalists wouldn’t even bother asking about it.

The Supreme Court declined to fast-track a challenge to the health care reform law, and will allow the circuit courts of appeal to take up the question of the constitutionality of the individual mandate. This likely means that they won’t get around to a ruling of their own, assuming that whatever the appeals courts decide will get appealed up to them, until 2012 at the earliest. In fact, a decision could come right in the middle of the Presidential election.

The Social Security Solvency and Sustainability Act slashes benefits drastically but continues to require workers to pay the same level of contributions specified under current law. Workers’ paystubs would continue to show that they were contributing to Social Security, but that would be only partly true. Workers would be contributing $6.2 trillion more than what would be needed.

Graham, Lee, and Paul propose to “borrow” those excess contributions, all $6.2 trillion worth, the way a school yard bully borrows –with no intention ever of repaying the money. Like school yard bullies, the three Senators even bragged about the fraud. Their press release announcing their proposal describes “What the plan accomplishes,” and lists as the very first accomplishment, “Reduces debt held by the public by $6.2 trillion by 2085.” How can they reduce the debt held by the public? By “borrowing” $6.2 trillion from Social Security’s Trust Funds with no intention of ever paying as much as a penny back.

Wisconsin Democrats will file their third recall petition against a Republican state Senator today. The woman who initially filed the recall against Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) will return over 23,000 signatures to the Government Accountability Board today. If successful, Olsen will join Dan Kapanke and Randy Hopper, who have had recall petitions filed against them with the proper amount of signatures. The Kapanke and Hopper signatures are currently under review at the GAB.

Who will save us from the socialist dystopia that is Obama’s America?

The only thing wrong with Paul Krugman’s column today is that he doesn’t mention David Brooks by name. But you can see Brooks in every inch of this critique of whiny Republicans who, when challenged on their nonsense, retreat to the higher moral ground of calling their opponents “uncivil.” Krugman hits on this strategy, which essentially is one of working the refs. It allows Republicans to say basically whatever they want in public, and when called on it, they turn from aggressors to martyrs against the big, bad, mean left. As he said in a blog post earlier this week, this is what people do when they know they’ve been beat.

With unemployment still high and job growth anemic, finding jobs for Americans should be the top priority of our elected officials. To deal with this serious crisis, I propose the creation of a National Cooperative Administration to encourage the creation of worker-owned businesses.