Reid’s rule change can be credited with securing confirmations for at least fourteen nominees, including Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Melvin Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; John Koskinen, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service; Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve Board; and three D.C. Circuit judges. But the…
Category: News & Opinion
Right vs. Left in the Midwest
MINNESOTA and Wisconsin share much more than bone-chilling winters: German and Northern European roots; farming; and, until recently, a populist progressive tradition stretching back a century to Wisconsin’s Fighting Bob La Follette and the birth of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. But in 2010 these cousin states diverged. By doing so they began a natural experiment that…
Special Report: The Cost of Crisis-Driven Fiscal Policy
Even as Congressional leaders and the president discuss a potential temporary solution to the current stalemate over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, the repeated cycle of lurching from crisis to crisis has significant and real costs to the U.S. economy. A new report, prepared by Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC for the Peter G. Peterson…
China state media blasts US shutdown, calls for a ‘de-Americanized’ world
With days to go before the United States debt default deadline, Beijing aired its frustrations with the shutdown Sunday, saying it was time to consider a “de-Americanized” world order. With $1.28 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, China is easily the biggest foreign holder of American debt. China has also funneled billions of dollars into private American investments…
Boehner Too Embarrassed to Defend Extortion
The most telling thing about Boehner’s remarks is their brevity. The Speaker spoke for about five minutes, responded briefly to one question, and bolted out the door. Obama’s disquisition earlier today may have been long over an hour and professorial. But he was able to defend his position against questions, engage counterarguments, and marshal facts…
Shutdown: 300 Sick; Coal Miners Killed; Flu Monitoring Stopped
CDC isnt the only agency protecting health and safety thats strained. The shutdown has forced the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration to halt its regular mine safety inspections, which it normally conducts at each of the nations underground mines every three months. The lack of inspections is coming under scrutiny after three mine workers…
WTF Are The GOP Up To? Independent Senator Sanders Breaks It Down
This isn’t all about the affordable care act. This is about the destruction of the federal government. This is about a few rich people who don’t have enough, and want the federal government out of their way so that they can have an ever larger slice of the pie – all while you get less….
A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman’s Fall
Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever…
Experts begin destroying Syrias chemical weapons arsenal
A team of international experts began the process of destroying Syria’s chemical weapons on Sunday, according to the United Nations. The group consists of international inspectors from the Netherlands-based watchdog Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons along with a U.N. team. Under their supervision, “Syrian personnel used cutting torches and angle grinders to destroy or disable a range of items,”…
Yes, the White House Is ‘Winning’
Still, it is true that the Obama administration is winning the zero-sum contest. One way to measure this is polling, which already shows movement toward the Democratic side. Another way to measure it is that Republicans, who have spent months refusing any budget deal, are suddenly desperate to make a budget deal. A flurry of…
$11 a month? Obamacare super-cheap for some, feds find
Bare-bones health insurance could cost just $11 a month for a family of four in Indianapolis on the federal governments new exchanges, which start serving customers next week. A similar family in New Orleans might pay as little as $23 a month, although they’d have to shell out $282 for a more generous “silver” plan,…
The Biggest Myth About Obamacare
When Congress wrote the law known as the Affordable Care Act, their idea was to maintain Americans current health coverage as much as possible, to boost consumer protections in the health insurance market for individuals, and to cover the uninsured. That doesnt mean all workers will keep what they have. The Congressional Budget Office predicts…
GOP Congressman Pushes For Obamacare Repeal: “This is not a Democracy”
Doug Collins, representative from Georgia came on Politics Nation and it was no surprise when he started spouting the typical one-sided nonsense about how they weren’t shutting down the government and were in fact funding the government – as long as it didn’t include the affordable care act. Nothing shocking there, but what may have…
Florida Among States Undercutting Health Care Enrollment
As many states prepare to introduce a linchpin of the 2010 health care law — the insurance exchanges designed to make health care more affordable — a handful of others are taking the opposite tack: They are complicating enrollment efforts and limiting information about the new program. Chief among them is Florida, where Gov. Rick…
48 Million Americans Remain Uninsured, Census Bureau Reports
The rate of uninsured Americans dropped slightly for the second consecutive year in 2012, from 15.7 percent to 15.4 percent, largely a result of more people enrolling in Medicare and Medicaid, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. The closely-watched report found that about 48 million Americans were uninsured in 2012, down from 48.6 million in…
Republicans Like The Affordable Care Act More Than Obamacare
Republicans like the 2010 health care law better when its called by its proper name — the Affordable Care Act — instead of Obamacare, according to a new Fox News poll. Republican support for the law jumped eight percent, from 14 percent for Obamacare to 22 percent for the Affordable Care Act, when pollsters…
UN Inspectors On Syria: Clear And Convincing Evidence Chemical Weapons Were Used On Large Scale
The inspectors report said “the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used … in the Ghouta area of Damascus” on Aug. 21. “The conclusion is that chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in…
Obama May Have Played Us All And Won–That Is Leadership
In one chess match the President was able to make the rank and file Republicans seem like doves, the neocons look reckless, the Tea Party wing seem like flip flopping buffoons all while potentially shutting down Syria’s use of chemical weapons without firing a shot or dropping a bomb. The Right Wing would have none…
U.S., Russia Reach Deal – Syrian Weapons May Be Destroyed In Less Than A Year
After days of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia reached agreement Saturday on a framework to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 and impose U.N. penalties if the Assad government fails to comply. The deal, announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, includes…
Syria Napalms Kids, Americans Bury Their Heads
I have to shake my head at the level of American ignorance displayed in regards to the Syria conflict. People talk about Muslims and say they will never stop fighting. AMERICA has never stopped fighting. Our last war is still going on! Just because we take our fights out of our country does not make…