Wall Street Backs One of Its Own
February 03, 2012
Prospect.org
Bankers are supposed to be the personifications of economic reasoning, but anyone looking at the financial reports of the presidential candidates and super PACs that have come out this week might conclude that there’s more to their political calculations than dollars and cents. Indeed, what these reports fairly shout is that Wall Street’s political picks have been swayed by offended egos and tribalism.
Read More
Newt's Vegas Odds
February 02, 2012
Prospect.org
By one measure, at least, Nevada should be Newt Gingrich’s kind of state. Like the Newtster himself, it’s grown comfortable with divorce, having had the highest divorce rate of any of the 50 states in a succession of decennial Census reports. In a state full of weather-beaten tumbleweeds, Newt’s peregrinations should be distinctly no big whoop.
Read More
The man who shaped Obama’s drive to hold banks accountable
January 31, 2012
Washington Post
A week ago Tuesday, seven hours before President Obama began delivering his State of the Union address, the White House released the names of the people who’d be sitting that night in the first lady’s box. Besides Michelle Obama, there were 23 people on the list. But when the president began to speak, a 24th guest, whose name hadn’t been on the list, was also seated in the box: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. And therein lies a tale.
Read More
GOP debate: Mitt Romney’s night
January 26, 2012
Washington Post
One of the mysteries of Mitt Romney’s campaign until tonight was how could a guy with so much money not buy himself a better debate coach. But sometime between South Carolina and tonight, the private equity investor must have made the right investment. Tonight, for the first time ever in a Republican presidential debate, Romney was extremely effective, particularly in the first half-hour when he took it to Newt Gingrich on the question of the former Speaker’s scorched-earth rhetoric. He had Gingrich on the defensive for the first time since this interminable run of debates began.
Read More
A new vision for America: Restoring a country that makes things
January 25, 2012
Washington Post
So much for post-industrial America. After decades of our leaders and sages assuring us that the United States would thrive as we moved beyond manufacturing, President Obama used his State of the Union address to officially declare post-industrial America an unqualified bust.
Ours has become, he said, a land of “outsourcing, bad debt and phony financial profits.” Reconstructing “an economy that’s built to last,” by contrast, means revitalizing manufacturing, he said. The president proposed ending tax breaks for corporations that move offshore and imposing a tax on their overseas profits, while cutting taxes on domestic manufacturers. He promised a trade enforcement unit to investigate foreign violations of trade law — for instance, China’s massive state subsidies to solar and wind power companies, which manufacture almost entirely for export. So far, U.S. manufacturers and unions that suspect foreign countries of violating trade laws have had to investigate such practices themselves: No agency of government has been empowered to initiate legal actions against trade law miscreants, which speaks volumes about the unquestioning faith that our elites have had in the blessings of free trade and the benefits of corporate offshoring.
Read More
Obama's History Channel
January 25, 2012
Prospect.org
After months in which the Republican candidates for president have dominated the nation’s political discourse—likely, to their own detriment— President Barack Obama retook center stage last night with a State of the Union address that was the overture to his own re-election campaign. His theme was the indispensability of collective action—of national purposes advanced by public commitments to such mega-goals as the reindustrialization of America, with the burdens and rewards shared equitably by all. (At times, the speech sounded like a rebuttal to Maggie Thatcher’s assertion that there is no society, just individuals.) At the same time, however, Obama vowed to go it alone, if needs be, in reaching those goals—or, more precisely, that if congressional Republicans weren’t going to help him, he’d call them out again and again.
Read More
|
|
In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
