Hold Fast

I actually agree with this: We need equality under the law. From now on, laws that apply to the private sector must apply to Congress, including whistleblower, conflict-of-interest and insider-trading laws. Trading on nonpublic government information should be illegal both for those who pass on the information and those who trade on it. (This should [...]

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To call Hedges’ analysis of how elites control power in America damning would be to soft peddle his critique. This is powerful stuff.

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Originally posted at AMERICAblog A rare moment of political integrity emerges from the Super Congress process, thanks to Senator John Kerry: “I’m not meeting with a lot of lobbyists; I’m meeting with people I choose to meet with, who can inform me, assist in the process of crunching numbers and dealing with consequences, and so [...]

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Via John Aravosis, this piece at Truthout by Mike Lofgren, a thirty year veteran Republican staffer, is an interesting read. Lofgren claims he resigned recently after watching the GOP get taken over by lunatics (his word) like Michele Bachmann, Allen West, Patrick McHenry and Steve King. This passage stands out: A couple of years ago, [...]

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In an op-ed in the Nashua Telegraph, Daniel Weeks writes: Our problem today is not a broken government but a beholden one: government is more beholden to special-interest shareholders who fund campaigns than it is to ordinary voters. Like any sound investor, the funders seek nothing more and nothing less than a handsome return – [...]

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Paul Krugman describes what he calls the Doom Loop – the process wherein political elites are radically (and potentially deliberately) misinterpreting signals from financial markets to enact destructive policies. 1. US debt is downgraded, sparking demands for more ill-advised fiscal austerity 2. Fears that this austerity will depress the economy send stocks down 3. Politicians [...]

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This is going up shortly at AMERICAblog Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Above is a rant by Ari Melber on the Super Congress that’s a big piece of the deficit deal that passed earlier this week. Here’s a snippet of the transcript: I think that brings us to [...]

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I’ve lived in Washington, DC for almost two and a half years, but only this past weekend, as Congress approved a budget which included a ban for the District to use its own funding to pay for abortion services for poor women, did the absurdity and cruelty of DC’s status become clear. The budget bill [...]

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Not terribly surprising, but there won’t be major Senate rules reform, let alone filibuster reform, this session. David Dayen has a post up about the deal, which can only be viewed as an early sign of the sort of fecklessness we’ll see from Democrats in the 112th Congress. Sen. Reid thanked his colleagues in the [...]

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Matt Taibbi’s post yesterday praising the honest and conviction of Senator Bernie Sanders is a great reminder that these are characteristics politicians are capable of possessing in genuine ways. Taibbi writes: I can live with the president fighting for something and failing; what I can’t stand is a politician who changes his mind for the [...]

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