The IRS, always friendless, now is a pariah. Republicans can’t stop condemning it. Democrats can’t stop agreeing. Targeting Tea Party groups for scrutiny, even if through incompetence, not intention, turned the IRS into a nasty carbuncle on the governing body. Carbuncles are never good. Strength-sapping, painful, ugly, they’re to be avoided. Here’s the thing, though: [...]
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President Obama went to Austin, Texas, last week in pursuit of an industrial and employment revival. He wants to launch manufacturing institutes to foster American innovation and job creation. Republicans responded by ridiculing the President, in the same arrogant way that the blooded aristocrats on the British television series “Downton Abbey” scorned a chauffeur who [...]
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A century ago, workers were a lot more “flexible” than they are now. Veritable Gumbies in the mills and mines and factories they were, distorting their lives to slog 10 or 12 hours a day, six – even seven – days a week. Then came the 40-hour week. And weekends. And eventually sick days. And [...]
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You are not safe. Not at work. Not at home in your bed. The biggest threat is not terrorism. It’s corporate negligence leading to a blast or collapse or release of toxic chemicals. Terrorism killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11. But in the dozen years since then, terrorists on American soil have taken the lives of [...]
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Iciness is the defining feature of Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s first and only female prime minister, who died last week. She was the cold-as-steel Iron Lady. President Obama, warm, friendly, shaking hands, hugging the bereft, is the opposite. It’s the same with their philosophies. President Obama, who worked as a community organizer, believes in [...]
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As the U.S. Commerce Department released a report late last month showing corporate profits at a 60-year high, suddenly the big news was about how cheating surely must be rampant in social security disability. Wait, what? Also late last month, a Washington Post investigation showed that the 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones [...]
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Republicans are suffering grievously from the syndrome that singer Joni Mitchell memorialized in the hit “Big Yellow Taxi” in 1970. The chorus says it all: Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s gone They paved paradise And put up a parking lot Republicans bellyached for years that [...]
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It’s hard to believe considering what happened in 2008 on Wall Street and in Washington, but banking is built on trust. A worker hands his hard-earned dollars to a teller and trusts the money will be deposited and available for withdrawal when needed. Despite the crash on Wall Street, workers still trust bankers to safeguard [...]
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Just four months ago, Americans told the Romney-Ryan team: “No.” The electorate rejected them. Many voters objected to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan treating them the way arrogant 1 percenters treat “The Help.” Last week, Ryan revealed the election loss left him unchastened. He remains intent on telling “The Help” what to do. The princeling of the royal Republican team reprised his prosperity-for-the-rich-austerity-for-the-rest budget. Although the public rejected that path in November, Ryan continues to insist he’s correct and the majority is wrong. He doesn’t care what they want. Like any pampered princeling, he doesn’t tolerate challenges from “The Help.”
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The U.S. Attorney last week confirmed Americans’ fears about Wall Street. The banks, Eric Holder said, were not just too big to fail, they were also too big to jail. That means bankers operate beyond the pale, outside the historical fence line encircling civil society. Past the pale is where barbarians resided, returning regularly to [...]
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