The Terrible Post-9/11 Truth: Our Government’s Been Hijacked Democracy has been commandeered by a self-interested gang by Michael Winship About a year after the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, I visited Oklahoma City and went to the bombsite with a friend who had covered the attack as a television news cameraman. No memorial or museum had yet been built; fencing covered with teddy bears, flags...

Elizabeth Warren, 62 and Michele Bachmann, 55 are American women of the same generation, but they live on different planets. As Bachmann grows more desperate in the GOP race to fire up the fringe of the Tea Party, Warren emerges in Massachusetts to remind Americans of their traditional values. “If there was any election when we conservatives don’t settle,” Bachmann warns about her “radical” opponents,...

All The World’s a Stage by Peter Funt With modern media, know this: you can run off at the mouth, but you can’t hide. It’s surprising how many media-savvy folks fail to grasp that. Some politicians still think they can say things in the hinterlands and not have the remarks rebound on the Internet. Some pundits believe they can let loose in relatively small corners of the blogosphere, or on...

Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The Zero Cost Job Stimulus the White House Should Be Pursuing AND The Reason Why General Electric Pays No U.S. Corporate Income Taxes by Johnny Byrd How many times in the past year have you heard someone in the political sphere make reference to the fact that General Electric pays no U.S. income taxes as proof that the U.S. corporate tax system is broken? Plenty. I’ve heard it until I am sick of hearing...

In the latest and perhaps most pungent sign that the inmates have taken over the GOP asylum, leading congressional Republicans are demanding that the Federal Reserve butt out and stop trying to fix the economy. The demand in a letter signed by Senators Mitch McConnell and John Kyl and Representatives John Boehner and Eric Cantor comes as the Fed concludes a two-day meeting during which efforts to lower long-term...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

George W. Bush never admitted a mistake. It’s time for his successor to save a crumbling presidency by admitting his own while going head-to-head with Tea Party treason that is subverting his and America’s future. “These guys are playing a different game than the president’s playing,” Vice President Biden tells Democrats about the intransigence of Congressional Republicans. “And we are no longer...

WASHINGTON — Have you noticed that one of the Obama administration’s most successful programs is also its most “socialist” initiative? OK, the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler was not socialist in the classic sense: the government was not looking to hold onto the companies over the long run. Their turnaround was accomplished in significant part by tough, capitalist management...

The phrase was Pierre Trudeau’s, and it caught on. Canadians like to think of themselves as citizens of a Just Society. Certainly, they believe, things are better here than in the United States. But, Carol Goar wrote recently, we have been emulating our southern neighbours. In fact, Since the mid-1990s, income inequality has been rising faster in Canada than the U.S. They’re still in top spot, but...

I’ve only just begun what will no doubt be a long exploration of the ideas put forward by anthropologist (and anarchist) David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Graeber supposes that our traditional reading of history, that debt followed barter, is backwards. He posits that debt comes first, here in a much discussed interview with naked capitalism: [W]hat anthropologists observe when neighbors...

Politics Schmolitics: Ten New Laws Worth Fighting For by Leslie J. Sachs 1) FLAT TAX: a. 6% for all earning less than $40,000 per year (amazingly over 46% of Americans currently pay no income tax whatsoever). b. 12% for all earnings thereabove, no exceptions. c. 24% for those earnings above $100,000. d. This flat tax to include worker’s compensation and basic no frills medical insurance....

WE DIDN’T LEARN ANYTHING FROM PRIOR REPUBLICAN POLICIES BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T GO FAR ENOUGH Perhaps Republicans have been correct in asserting that the eight years of President George W. Bush didn’t go far enough in enacting conservative policies. The current Republican presidential candidates argue that the nation must take all their proposals to their logical conclusions in order for them to properly...

The significance for Israel will be small even if the Palestinians get full or limited recognition as a State at the United Nations in coming days. Even though UN resolutions in 1947 and 1949 created Israel, it has ignored dozens of subsequent UN resolutions and refused to implement them. It has done so with impunity since neither the UN nor the US or other governments have the power to force implementation....

A progressive Democrat and a conservative Republican were walking together one day on the sidewalk alongside a busy downtown street. They were arguing about various public policies, what to do about the growing number of unemployed Americans, and whether President Obama was partially or fully to blame for the current economy. Then they stopped and observed the following: An unemployed man was standing in the...

Multi-Millionaire Rep. Says He Can’t Afford A Tax Hike Because He Only Has $400K A Year After Feeding Family Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) appeared on MSNBC with Chris Jansing this morning to attack President Obama’s new deficit reduction plan, which includes some tax increases on the wealthy. Taking up the typical GOP talking point, Fleming said raising taxes on wealthy “job creators” is a terrible idea...

President Barack Obama unveiled his profusely leaked proposal for more than $1 trillion in new taxes mostly on the country’s wealthiest Americans and threw down the gauntlet to Republicans in more ways than one. His key phrase that will be carried on talk radio and cable shows (friendly and unfriendly to him), news websites and blogs (partisans of the left and right and independent) will be this: “This...

For once leading congressional Republicans have it right. Taking to the unquestioning Sunday morning talk shows, they decried the proposed minimum tax rate for millionaires rolled out today by President Obama as “class warfare” and an insidious way to portray the GOP as being indifferent to the many hardships being faced by ordinary Americans. Which, of course, is exactly what they are. The outpouring...

Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

WASHINGTON — With apologies to Winston Churchill: The talk in the political class is that this is the beginning of the end of the Obama administration, while the talk in the Obama administration is that this is the end of the beginning. Which will it be? Last week was not exactly what President Obama hoped for when he rolled out his big jobs initiative. He expected pushback from Republicans. He did...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

President Barack Obama will tomorrow propose a tax that specifically would tax millionaires — a proposal that is absolutely certain to be rejected by Congressional Repulbicans and that his campaign will absolutely certainly use to define Republicans in the 2016 Presidential and Congressional elections. The proposal is similar to Hollywood “high concept” film projects: it’s gist is so...

A Decade of Memorials Squandered? by Michael Winship A long time ago, I helped produce for public television an annual year’s end interview with New York City Mayor Ed Koch. We always shot it in a private room at Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of the north tower of the World Trade Center, with a spectacular view toward the Empire State Building. From that height, at the end of a sunny winter’s...

This was highly predictable if you view the responses of the House GOP as not just piecemeal reactions but part of a general strategy as poll numbers see President Barack Obama on the (increasingly shaky) ropes: House Republican leaders say they are rejecting President Barack Obama’s jobs proposals to rebuild schools and blighted neighborhoods, and help keep state and local employees on the job. In a memo...

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.