In our family, the old tales were told about “The Wise Men of Chelm.” It seemed that when the Creator was creating the world, the animals and plants and human beings, Creator also made villages surrounded by forests and mountains. Into each village, Creator placed a wise man and a wise woman and also one fool. However, by the end of creation, Creator had quite a few fools left over, and thus put...

The IRS makes people mad enough to crash airplanes into buildings. That’s what Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) essentially said back in February. Today, April 15 — the deadline for Americans to turn in their tax returns — Rep. King spoke at Tax Day Tea Party Rally, which took place in Washington, D.C., and was sponsored by FreedomWorks, a powerful corporate lobbying outfit. Needless to say, he...

The ironic statistic du jour is that, despite Tea Party howling, 47 percent of American families are paying no federal taxes on their income this year. Most are households with young children and (pace the white-haired, red-faced ragers at rallies) the elderly, benefiting from Obama-sponsored stimulus measures, most notably a 2009 reprieve from mandatory withdrawals from their pension plans. As instant-gratification...

WASHINGTON — You might imagine that if a terrorist attack killed an American public servant and threatened the lives of 200 people, it would have been big news for weeks and an enduring symbol of the risks taken by those who serve their country. Yet when an American named Joseph Stack flew a plane into an office building in Austin, Texas, in February, killing Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Vietnam...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

When I picked up my newspaper from the driveway yesterday morning, it felt heavier than usual. As I generally go directly to the Opinion section, I found the reason almost immediately. While normally there are less than a dozen Letters to the Editor in my hometown newspaper, yesterday there were a whopping 21 of them, all heavily laden with sarcasm, ridicule, scorn and indignation about and against the governor...

The New York Times has just released the results of a New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted April 5 through April 12. The findings just reported by the New York Times are intriguing: The fierce animosity that Tea Party supporters harbor toward Washington and President Obama in particular is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration...

The fur has begun to fly in Congress in the latest controversy in that body where bipartisanship is as now as much in style as the pay telephone. The latest: Democratic and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying about Dodd’s financial reform bill: The architect of sweeping legislation that would revamp financial regulation took the...

I come here today to assess the nation’s economic recovery efforts and will provide links to support and fill in the details at the end of this essay. Just as a sick patient, the economy is out of intensive care and on the road to recovery. A return to full health is fragile. The wrong combination of events could return it to the OR where the coroner’s call is on standby. Our free market system is...

To some of us, it’s now become as welcome as the sound of chalk screeching as a teacher slowly scrawls on a blackboard. It’s today’s world of mega partisanship 24/7 — it’s a world Americans dabbled in before, but with the new media, the efficacy of over-the-top and at times provocative rhetoric to mobilize partisans, a non-ending seemingly “looped” news cycle, it’s...

I don’t want to harp on Dorian’s post of optimism (OK I do slightly) but I do find it telling that Daniel Gross’ breezy article argued for US economic success made up nearly entirely of anecdotes about major multi-national corporations. It is becoming less clear whether success of these corporations really helps the USA in many ways other than the stock market. Mish has a great post on this...

Dorian, the site’s (increasingly less lonely) optimist wrote a post earlier linking to Daniel Gross’ article in Newsweek. I have long been skeptical of “green shoots” talk as being bad statistics; for instance the economy grew 5.9% in the fourth quarter, but after inventory adjustment is stripped out the increase was only 2%. There are many measures showing that inventory adjustment...

Just about a year ago, and just after Limbaugh added to his infamous wish list his hope that Obama and our economy would fail, I started writing naïve, optimistic (“optimalistic” I called them) posts grasping at every “green shoot,” chasing every “glimmer of hope,” reaching for every silver lining in the hope that maybe, just maybe, our economy was beginning to recover from the deep and tragic...

The Currency Bubble by Martha Randolph Carr One of the bigger obstacles to the US economy gaining substantial numbers of jobs is the battle over valuation of currency among different nations. The amount a currency is valued at is largely tied to the strength of their economy but it’s possible for individual countries to manipulate the pricing in either direction so that they can gain an advantage on the international...

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown better brace himself for more GOPers demanding refunds and perhaps a swipe or two from powerful talk show hosts: he was one of four Republicans to join with Democrats to move to extend jobless benefits. What’s going on here? Brown still probably hasn’t gone over the line for many Republicans, but he clearly intends not to be a lockstep talk show political culture...

GAMBIER, Ohio — Ohio’s U.S. Senate campaign offers an excellent preview of what this fall’s midterm elections will be like: Everyone in the race wants to be an outsider, everyone pledges to break with politics as usual, and everyone is talking about jobs. Those running against Washington include Republican Rob Portman, even though he was elected to Congress in 1993 after working for the...

By Jason Arvak The New York Times reports on growing signs of rising interest rates on everything from cars and houses to government debt. This is the leading edge of a tsunami of inflationary pressures that is the necessary cost of a trillion-dollar economic bailout program and the chosen cost of an endlessly expanding set of government entitlements. The bailout for the banks politically stinks to high heaven,...

Only in financial terms can three decades of low interest rates be described as a honeymoon for home buyers and credit card consumers. As the nation creeps out of the recession. higher interest rates are a foregone conclusion — perhaps between 1% and 1.5% annually. The good news from financial sources interviewed by the New York Times is rate hikes will not reach the 1981 pinnacle of 18.2% for home mortgages...

“A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.” Those were the words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 and their predictions turned out to be highly accurate, as we all know. Now the spectre of communism is haunting America and the end of the world is near. The conservative media is mega-scared by this spectre and accuses Obama of turning the land of the free and the home of the...

In West Virginia, Coal Miners’ Slaughter by Michael Winship The high cost of energy in America was paid in human lives this week, with the deaths of more than two dozen miners in a massive explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia. It’s the worst mine disaster in a quarter of a century. Upper Big Branch is owned by Massey Energy Company, which operates 47 mines in...