Hold Fast

Politicians should not be held to a different standard of justice than anyone else, but of all the various criminal enterprises operating in America from 2007-2008, I really don’t think John Edwards‘ infidelities via campaign cash would be as high a priority as, say, criminal fraud on Wall Street. But what do I know about [...]

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The New York Times’ editorial board: For starters, various government guidelines on loan servicing would be replaced with tough national standards. Among the new rules, homeowners would be evaluated for loan modifications before any foreclosure — or foreclosure-related fee — is initiated. The bank analysis used to approve or reject modifications would be standardized and [...]

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Mike Konczal has a good, comprehensive piece in The American Prospect on how we need to go about fixing mortgage servicing and unraveling the foreclosure crisis. For those looking for a primer on the problem, Konczal’s is a good place to start: Three elements are needed to reform this broken system. The first is an [...]

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Matt Stoller, writing at Naked Capitalism: This increasing rigidity of the global economic order is frightening, and dangerous. It is the consequence of the new normal, Spanish and Wisconsin-colored flames licking up at the system be damned. One day, these protests won’t be leaderless, rudderless, and directionless. Perhaps the popular energy on that date will [...]

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Digby responds to a long, interesting piece on the differences between how Republicans and Democrats maintain their political coalitions across time and legislative battles by Robert Cruickshank. Digby writes: Cruikshank is making an appeal to progressives to apply the GOP coalition rules to themselves and stick together, even if the centrists continue to play their [...]

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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is giving a big speech today on the economy, the American Dream and labor’s independence from political parties. In it, he says: From the beginning of this country, through our efforts and our ideas, working people have made the American Dream real. And what is that dream? It is the idea [...]

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Greg Sargent quotes Nancy Pelosi: “It is a flag we’ve planted that we will protect and defend. We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.” I agree with Atrios, “the only one who understands how this game is played is Nancy Pelosi.”

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The literati at the DNC weigh into the Gingrich/Ryan kerfuffle and simultaneously make both Newt and every GOPer who thinks Gingrich was insufficiently obsequious to Ryan look nuts. Obviously this video is obviously a falsehood. As Dan Pfieffer said on Twitter, “ending Medicare as we know it is the new GOP litmus test.” Originally posted [...]

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I was a supporter of Bill Bradley in the 2000 Democratic primary, largely because of a speech I saw him give in the spring of 1999 on race relations and the broken criminal justice system. Bradley was moralistic, clear-minded, and willing to talk about racism in a way that I’d never seen a white politician [...]

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This piece in the American Prospect by Vivien Labaton and Gara Lamarche, titled “Why Movements Matter,” is definitely worth reading. On the one hand, I strongly agree with the identification of pro-worker, pro-fair taxation, and pro-immigrant rights movements as pointing in the direction of a meaningful broader progressive movement (though if you were to look [...]

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