Working Life

You can try to divine the various political strategies — from ad campaigns to get-out-the-vote operations — to try to understand how the election is going to turn out. But, one simple fact is the most persuasive: the Republican Party is filled with nuts.

Read the full story

   I love it when billionaires feel misunderstood. It sounds something like this: “I’ve fleeced you or just piled up gobs of money at your expense but, gee, that really wasn’t personal, I’m really a good guy with all the right motives, if you could just see it my way because, well, my way is [...]

Read the full story

   A few months ago, I spent 5-6 hours interviewing Paul Krugman for Playboy magazine. It’s now on-line here. He speaks candidly–surprise–about the economic misdeeds of Wall Street, the foolishness of the current austerity obsession and focus on the non-existent debt crisis, and a whole range of topics including his view that the Obama Administration [...]

Read the full story

   I took a longer break from blogging than I thought–to think, observe a bit, rest the brain, cycle New Zealand’s spectacular South Island. But, what stirred me to break this hiatus, at the very moment that people are switching off their computers to turn to libations and debauchery, was, well, the modest observation that [...]

Read the full story

   Oh, I get it–so, when democracy threatens to advance in a very tiny way the rights of workers, the Republican member of the National Labor Relations Board takes a page from his ideological co-horts in the Senate and threatens to freeze any votes by going home: The National Labor Relations Board’s sole Republican member [...]

Read the full story

    You may join me in the celebration of failure–a celebration I have been urging we look forward to for a very long time. Do not listen to the hand-wringing and whining about the implosion of the Catfood Commission II. This is a great thing. It is fabulous.    BUT…    Let us also pause, [...]

Read the full story

   One of the things I’ve said, only half-jokingly, to a bunch of radio stations and in numerous posts (including just a couple of days ago) is that I am not a religious person but I get down on my hands and knees every day and pray, pray, pray that the Catfood Commission II fails [...]

Read the full story

   As I have said in a number of recent radio interviews, I am not a religious person but I get down on my knees every day and pray that the Catfood Commission II collapses, does nothing and goes home. A glimmer of hope for that: Democrats said they were dismayed to see Republicans rallying [...]

Read the full story

    May I introduce to you my hero for the day: Jed S. Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan. Yesterday, Rakoff said what we all know: the government, our government, is not serious about holding people accountable for the robbery and greed and incompetence that led to the financial collapse, costing millions of [...]

Read the full story

Somehow, I’ve been thinking a lot about Molly Ivins recently and how she would know exactly what to say about the absurdity of our political leaders who are just clueless. She once said, of former Republican House Majority leader Dick Armey, “If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drillin’ rights on that [...]

Read the full story

   Well, we didn’t really have to wait for the Congressional Budget Office to tell us this: the rich got richer. But, the timing is good, what with Rick Perry trying his snake oil salesman pitch for a flat tax, which would make the robbery grow, and the continued growth of the Occupy The Country [...]

Read the full story

   Welcome to another edition in the economic philosophy of the Republican Party, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Today, courtesy of the Citizens for Tax Justice, it’s the Herman Cain Robin Hood-in-reverse plan. Courtesy of CTJ: If presidential candidate Herman Cain’s proposed “9-9-9 tax plan” was in effect today, then [...]

Read the full story

   You can smell the fear and the alarms going off–not by reading The Nation (snore…kick me when it has something new to say) or The New York Times, whose "economic" reporters, with one or two exceptions, are astonishingly dumb. For some real insights, look to the Financial Times and The Economist. And the message [...]

Read the full story

   A good friend of mine often contends that we would have been a lot better off if the Confederacy had won the Civil War, grouping that whole swath of states south of the Mason-Dixon line into their own little country. Perhaps. But, it also seems like actual elected leaders of the country pine for [...]

Read the full story

   I don’t know–does every day that passes seem to you to bring even more bizarre behavior? Republicans write to the Federal Reserve Board and say, don’t you dare do shit to help the people. Ok, not quite in those words: “We have serious concerns that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current [...]

Read the full story

   I hate to ruin a good party–or at least the world of the liberal bloviators who want everyone to stand in line and praise the president’s speech last night. Heck, I am glad he was there to push for something–ANYTHING–to be done to try to respond to the great crisis we have.    But, [...]

Read the full story