Even Camelot Needed Health Care by Michael Winship Toward the end of George McGovern’s failed presidential bid in 1972, I was helping advance a bus trip for vice presidential candidate Sargent Shriver. The final weekend of the campaign, his caravan would start in New Hampshire and work its way down the Eastern seaboard, holding rallies along the way and winding up in Washington, DC, just before...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Three indicators suggest the answer may be yes. First, orders for durable goods jumped 4.5 percent from June to July, the largest gain in two years.

The Economist magazine announces in almost celebratory tone that “big business” is back. But a spirited discussion follows in the comments section on the merits and demerits of big corporations. Recalls The Economist: “In 1996, in one of his most celebrated phrases, Bill Clinton declared that ‘the era of big government is over’. He might have added that the era of big companies...

Guest post by John Malone John Malone, a VP/Senior Analyst with John S. Herold, an energy investment research firm in Connecticut, is a Truman National Security Project fellow. In the world of renewables, most of the attention is on the wind and the sun. Geothermal power just hasn’t gotten the same respect. That could be changing, as both the Obama Administration and Silicon Valley are considering the...

Domestic automakers General Motors and Chrysler — the two in the biggest world of hurt, financially — had disappointing results in the Cash For Clunkers program. According to Reuters, GM sales accounted for 17 percent of “clunkers” business; however, GM held 21 percent of U.S. auto sales from January to July. Chrysler had a similar tale: the “clunkers” share was 6.6 percent...

The great debate in economic circles these days is whether there’s a turnaround going on in the American housing market. To help determine whether this is occurring, computers used to defeat a Russian chess master in a mere 32 moves have been employed, along with mathematical models that are rumored to have been salvaged from a UFO that went down in Roswell, N.M. in 1947. Yes, this is a tough one to figure,...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV.

Now that Swiss authorities have done the unthinkable: admitted to wrongdoing and handed U.S. authorities the data on over 4,000 of its American clients – how are the people of Switzerland reacting? If the comments of Nachrichten columnist Patrik Etschmayer are anything to go by, there’s going to be hell to pay in Geneva. For Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper, Patrik Etschmayer describes...

At least one California legislator has retaliated with a popgun attack against Nevada’s million dollar ad campaign to lure Golden State businesses to the Silver State. What started as a tongue-in-cheek snarky campaign by Nevada which has inundated the major California markets via cable television advertising the past two weeks is now being greeted by Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana) who told The...

I live across the street from Chaparral High School in Temecula, Calif., and every school morning and afternoon dozens of yellow school buses roll in and out of the campus’s sprawling parking lot. Temecula is a semi-rural area 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles and its boundaries extend miles in all directions. As most school districts, Temecula offers bus transportation to students living outside a determined...

It Is Not Reform Without Public Option by Jim Bell There has been a lot written lately about the possibility of scratching off the public option from the health care proposal now working its way through congress. What, then, can be implemented to control the rampant and out of control cost escalation since the health insurance giants have demonstrated that they are powerless to control these rising costs?...

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Does it add up — or not?

The Invisible Achievement by E.J. Dionne, Jr. Washington Post Columnist SYDNEY, Australia — The hardest slogan to sell in politics is: “Things could have been a whole lot worse.” No wonder President Obama is having trouble defending his stimulus plan. If governments around the world, including our own, had not acted aggressively — and had not spent piles of money — a very...

In effect, many seniors’ checks will shrink:

If you thought seniors fighting phantom cuts in their Medicare benefits at those town hall meetings were angry, wait until the first of the year when it dawns on all of them they’re getting no cost of living increase for the next two years. In fact, six million of Social Security’s 50 million recipients will suffer a pay cut and all will pay more for drugs. I say “phantom” cuts because...

I always make a practice of buying and reading the local newspaper(s) when traveling. Today’s Los Angeles Times had an interesting, timely and probably controversial Op-Ed, titled “Just the ‘facts’ fails us all.” Naturally, it deals with the current healthcare debate, but it also discusses a broader, more complex issue: The media, journalism and “the truth.” I am not a journalist—I did take...

On CNN today, Sen. Joe Lieberman embraced the incremental approach to health care reform (emphasis in original):

All thanks to Big Government. Thomas J. Sugrue writing in the WSJ: In 1934, F.D.R. created the Federal Housing Administration, which set standards for home construction, instituted 25- and 30-year mortgages, and cut interest rates. And in 1938, his administration created the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) which created the secondary market in mortgages. In 1944, the federal government extended...

The Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women is out. The top honour goes to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the world’s fourth-largest economy. She has won this honour for the fourth consecutive year. “In assembling the list, Forbes looked for women who run countries, big companies or influential nonprofits. Their rankings are a combination of two scores: visibility...

Polimom wrote an excellent post just a few hours ago titled “Health Care and Insurance: A Lost (and Crucial) Distinction.” It is generating some great, instructive, civil discussion on a subject that I had not given much thought to. I highly recommend you go there and partake in the discussion. I have been there and learned a lot. But I also learned something new when reading the New York Times today....

Back when I was young, Kris Kristofferson warned us all of the dangers of the silver tongued devil… the person who would come off as a charming fellow and say things you want to hear, then turn around and do you wrong. If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the running series of comments from both President Obama and Congressional Democrats on matters of spending, the deficit and the national...

Mixed Messages Sent On Public Option by Jon Wells One day after HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama both said a public option wasn’t essential to health care reform, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a public option needs to be a part of the health care overhaul. She said there was strong support in the House for the public option, joining Rep. Maxine Waters and Sen. Jay Rockefeller in a...

A quickly emerging question on the political scene is now this: are the Democrats going to do it again? Are they really going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? It certainly seems like it’s headed in that direction. Although events — and political takes — in our increasingly hyperactive political culture can suddenly change the calculations, it seems several factors are at work. But...