To hear conservative Republicans tell it, business is the vital, job-creating, wealth-building, and therefore virtuous, backbone of American prosperity and democracy, while government is a meddlesome, bungling and costly drag on freedom and prosperity. Or, as the icon of conservative Republicans put it: Oh really? We’ve done a little scorekeeping just over the past week [...]
Posts under ‘Government’
Dodd’s reservations shouldn’t keep
Warren from financial watchdog post
An excellent Huffington Post item sheds added light on Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s curious reticence about Elizabeth Warren heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The short of it is that while Dodd is very concerned the Harvard professor and standout consumer advocate might not be up to managing the new agency, he’s [...]
Economists find bailouts, stimulus
better than head-in-sand alternative
Unfortunately, most voters know economics and economic policy the way they know art: “If I like it, it’s a masterpiece. If I don’t, it’s junk.” Exploiting their instinctive dislike of big deficits is like shooting fish in a barrel, never mind what the alternative was.
Time to pass out some kudos
Amidst a whole lot of bad news and atrocious actors on the national scene, let’s break for a few well-deserved pats on the back, starting with NBC News and MSNBC, for their terrific coverage of the historic exit of the last U.S. Army combat brigade from Iraq. MSNBC paired Rachel Maddow and reporter Richard Engel [...]
Russian subs can probably stop oil leak,
if only someone high up would ask
A BBC report offers the most intriguiging possibility yet for stopping the Deepwater Horizon wellhead leak — using powerful Russian submersible craft that work at depths of 6,000 meters, far deeper than the disaster site. A skipper of one of the Mir subs is reported as saying the subs are already at work in Lake [...]
Earmarks bring some Democrats money
but could cost them plenty in November
Earmarks and the senators and representatives who arrange them aren’t all bad, but the potential for abuse is always there, and too often realized. Earmarks can bring to states and congressional districts worthwhile projects and economic benefits that otherwise would never make it through budgetary and legislative processes. The practice gets dirty when taxpayers’ hard-earned [...]
Job numbers point up economy’s longterm ills
Despite dismal job-creation numbers for June, it’s probably premature to say the U.S. economy is slipping into the second decline of a double dip recession. What’s abundantly clear, though, is that America’s hollowed-out, seriously eroded economy is hard put to create sufficient jobs even when there is no recession. Experts say the economy must create [...]
Hoyer says pay-go is alive, well and working
“Democrats have also been wrongly criticized for not sticking to PAYGO’s promise. PAYGO often means saying no to policies we like, and for that very reason those decisions aren’t often reported. They’re like the dog that didn’t bark. They are all the bills that never see the light of day because we can’t find offsets for them; they are the decisions committees make to scale back the policies they want to fit within the savings they can find. . .”
Post-disaster chicanery exposes need
for on-scene federal law enforcement
Where does BP America get off, blocking journalists from property the giant oil corporation doesn’t own because the media were out to show the suffering and mass deaths of creatures, and today interfering with an ABC News reporter doing his job on a public beach? For that matter, why did BP stiff, and why is [...]
Capturing, containing oil a better approach
After trying to shut off BP America’s massive undersea oil leak — and failing — with several long-shot approaches, the company will finally try instead to capture most of the escaping oil. This makes more sense than anything tried so far, offering the best hope for limiting damage from the 12000 to 19,000 barrels of [...]
