Obama Will Not Push for a Public Option by Jon Wells In a move recognizing the sober facts of political reality, President Barack Obama, according to Politico, is shifting his strategy on health care reform, including not insisting on a public option. It will enrage his liberal base, who flew into a tizzy when HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius floated the idea of the public option as a non-essential portion of health...

And house much per house for the first time buyer tax credit? Calculated Risk suggests that instead of $4.2k and $8k per car and house, it really is more like $7.2k and $43k if you look at the cost for increasing sales. Even if that’s true, I’m not sure it’s the proper way to look at it because the people that would have bought anyway are still saving money and may spend it on other things...

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

I was born and raised in Orange County, Calif., the hotbed of right-wing political conservatism. As a young reporter on The Tustin News I met and admired James. B. Utt, my congressman and probably the most conservative Republican to ever walk the halls of the House of Representatives. The closest clone to Utt in today’s Congress would be Ron Paul. But Utt was a flaming liberal compared to the ultra wing-nuts...

WASHINGTON — President Obama can still secure major health care legislation this year if he learns from his mistakes in recent months and spends more time reminding Americans why they were once eager for fundamental change. His White House lost sight of the need to make a strong case that reform would deliver specific benefits to the insured as well as the uninsured. Absent a consistent set of...

Today the voters in Japan are headed to the polls and if the pre-election polling is correct the long dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is going to experience a defeat, quite possibly by landslide margins. The LDP has ruled Japan for almost all of the 54 years since the end of World War Two but they have suffered major losses recently, including the loss of control of the less powerful upper house. This...

Too-big-to-fail is morphing into bigger-than-ever swallowing up failing-faster-than-ever. The nation’s largest banks, infused with taxpayer billions, are feasting on the weak as the Washington Post reports that “no consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.” FDIC chair Sheila Bair sums it...

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...