Default Deniers or How the GOP Learned to Love Uncertainty - When it comes to perpetuating the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy, Republicans have long been the party which cried "uncertainty." But with economists, business leaders, think tanks and international financial bodies now warning of those dire consequences, more and more Republicans hell-bent on gutting spending and preserving gilded class tax breaks are having no qualms at all about the economic uncertainty they alone are responsible for producing.
The GOP vs. Democracy - The true fault lies with the GOP and its maximalist demands. Eric Cantor's withdrawal from the Biden budget talks shows yet again that the GOP cannot negotiate-because negotiating means accepting something you don't like.
Cantor abandoned debt talks to protect the rich - Not even a surprise anymore... this is what caused Eric Cantor to bolt from the debt-ceiling negotiations entirely, rather than have to listen to such scary stories.
House Appropriations Committee takes first shot at crippling the CFPB - No consumer protections from the banksters for you! That's the verdict from the House Appropriations Committee, which voted Thursday to slash the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's budget by more than half.
Baucus: There are Medicare cuts in debt limit negotiations - "Medicare cuts - additonal Medicare cuts" - for revenue increases. Presumably that means they were already talking Medicare cuts, and then tossed in extra ones in order to try to get some revenue increases. DAMNED (closet Republican) DEMOCRATIC TRAITORS!
JPMorgan Chase Fined $154 million in Goldman-Like Case - Which is the only "punishment" any bank will ever receive. The fine will come out of the shareholders pockets and those responsible will keep their spoils and laugh all the way to the bank.
Congress Rebrands Earmarks as "Programmatic Requests" - LIPSTICK ON A PIG! Congress may talk big about the deficit and debt, but when it comes to their "relection finance", they don't care how big the deficit and debt is.
Congressional Trading on Advance Info Not Illegal: SEC - The SEC has largely determined that [Congressman] trading stocks based on advance knowledge of action in Congress is not insider trading. [M]embers of Congress can [buy and sell] shares in expectation of the effect that their own action has on the company's stock price.
Rigging the 2012 Election - An attack on the right to vote is under way across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we'd condemn it as election-rigging. But it's happening here, so there's barely a whimper.
The worst tax cut in Washington [One] would vastly increase deficits now and into the future and would permanently lower the tax rate on overseas income from 35 percent to 5 percent.
Wisconsin: The GOP's meth lab of democracy - Sometimes it's useful to take a peak at what the Republican Party is doing in the states just so can get a preview of what they'll do should they regain both the Senate and the White House in 2012.
Justices Have Been Forced To Resign For Doing What Clarence Thomas Has Done - Justice Clarence Thomas is an ethics problem in a black robe. Just eight months after ThinkProgress broke the story of Thomas' attendance at a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser, we learn that Thomas doesn't just do unethical favors for wealthy right-wing donors - they also do expensive favors for him.
With executive pay, rich pull away from rest of America - For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. The largest single chunk of the highest-income earners, it turns out, are executives and other managers in firms.
BP Continues to Increase Donations to Federal Political Candidates - Oil company BP continues its slow climb out of political purgatory, as its political action committee on Friday reported donating thousands of dollars in May to federal-level politicians hailing from a variety of states
Ron Paul: Champion of greed, not liberty - This would outrage the Founding Fathers if they were with us today to defend their dream against impostors who call it liberty, but advocate selfishness and greed, and call it freedom, to excuse corruption and fraud.
GOP Votes To Slash Funding For Oil Speculation Watchdog - The bill also contained "a $30 million cut to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)," which is the federal agency charged with policing the nation's commodities markets, including the oil market.
Former CIA Admits They Sought Information To Discredit Juan Cole For Bashing Bush - I don't think this surprises anyone if they remember a systematic campaign of attack the Bush administration applied to anyone who criticized them: Joe Wilson [Valerie Plame], Scott Ritter, Don Siegelman, the list is long and distinguished.
Audit Debunks GOP's Latest "ObamaCare" Conspiracy - In the report, which was conducted on behest of House Republicans, the GAO concluded that the Obama administration granted or rejected waivers based on objective criteria, not partisanship.
Republicans Use Bully Tactics to Block Law Enforcement in Boeing Case - What would an average person-liberal or conservative-say if members of Congress attacked a U.S. attorney for simply enforcing the law of the land in court against a powerful criminal suspect? And how would he or she react if those same politicians then threatened the government prosecutor with loss of his job?
The Republican attack on financial regulationRepublicans aren't content with blocking anyone and everyone from leading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Next week, they're planning to attach a series of anti-Dodd-Frank amendments to a noncontroversial economic development bill. One amendment would neuter the CFPB. Another would repeal the whole law. And there's more amendments.
Shrinking The Vote: Using Election Reform To Decrease Turnout - As the U.S population grows and the number of eligible voters continues to climb with each election cycle, a disturbing trend of limiting voter access to the polls is taking place.
The Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin Gives Goldman a Rubdown - Sorkin has written an elaborate defense of Goldman in the New York Times "Dealbook" section, arguing among other things that Lloyd Blankfein probably did not commit perjury and that the bank did not have a huge directional bet against mortgages in 2007. As evidence, Sorkin cites unsubstantiated Goldman documents and Goldman sources.
Political payback? GOP donors enjoy huge tax breaks - several [homeowners] helped power last year's GOP political campaigns, the tax cut will yield tax savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars and maybe even more than $1 million for a few.
Taxpayer Dollars Still Bailing Out Banks - None of America's largest banks raise money on the free market. Every single one of them is propped up by an implicit taxpayer guarantee. It is a huge subsidy by taxpayers to the banks, enabling them to be far more profitable than they would be otherise.
The law is for the little people - Power grows from the barrel of a gun. And the wealthy can purchase a whole lot of guns. There is only one power that has ever managed to even halfway prevent the wealthy from simply taking everything at gunpoint, and that is the power of the People as a whole getting together and using the wealth they produce to buy their own guns to offset the wealthy.
Republicans continue rich tradition of blaming their candidates - You have to hand it to the GOP. Even with all the evidence that Ryan's Curse poses a mounting problem for Republicans across the country, Republican leaders are firmly digging in their heels
Moody's Reveals Huge Taxpayer Subsidy for Banks - The news that Moody's is reviewing the debt ratings of Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup shows how dependent these banks have been on the invisible and unwilling support of the American taxpayer.
The Republican Party's War on Democracy - All of the current efforts to reduce the number of people who vote are aimed at disenfranchising Americans who are less wealthy, less mobile, less knowledgeable about voting requirements - and, of course - the young, particularly on college campuses.
Moody's Reveals Huge Taxpayer Subsidy for Banks - It's not as if we didn't already know this - it was just a matter of having someone officially expose it. That's part of the reason for the following headline.
Caught on tape: Wisconsin GOP looking to run fake Democratic candidates in recall elections - A secret recording has revealed that high-ranking officials in the Republican Party of Wisconsin are actively seeking to run spoiler, fake Democratic candidates in the upcoming recall elections. The recording indicates that this effort stems from the very top of the Wisconsin GOP
Ignoring the constituency - Again and again, Republicans are ignoring what the voters sent them to do: create jobs, help people who've been harmed by the Great Recession, fix public infrastructure, strengthen the public safety net. Instead, at state and federal levels, they do just the opposite, catering to the big corporate money that got them there.
Richest One Percent Of Americans Control 40 Percent of Wealth - It probably won't end up on the evening news - massive news organizations controlled by the world's wealthiest people don't tend to focus on the gap between the rich and everyone else.
10 Inconvenient Truths About the Debt Ceiling - The nation's mounting debt is largely attributable to wars, a recession and tax policies President Obama inherited from his predecessor.
America Loses 112,000 Jobs in May - Well, I guess all those "job killing tax policies", mainly for the wealthy, the GOP was harping on late last year just didn't work! Who would've every thought!!?? (See ticker at top)
Republicans Play Debt Ceiling Joke on Themselves - [They] voted to add $6 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next decade. And that means, as Speaker John Boehner acknowledged, Republicans now and in the future would have to increase the debt ceiling - repeatedly.
The Tea Party Rewrites The Constitution - The Tea Party movement has begun a disturbing new initiative to rewrite constitutional history in American classrooms.
SEC Illegally Bought $1 Million Worth of Useless Apple Computer Equipment - In addition to bungling its job looking for billion-dollar Wall Street fraudsters, such as Bernard Madoff, or allowing employees to surf for porn, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) itself broke the law by buying faulty computers.
