The invisible hand of the market, which the GOP worships as an infallible god, is curled into a fist and is pounding America’s lowest-paid workers. Those workers have complained about the grinding poverty level of minimum wage. Wal-Mart warehouse workers and New York fast food workers recently demonstrated. They’re fed up. Well, they would be [...]
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Last week, President Obama described the sequestration situation in simple, stark terms: keep it in place and punch the middle class in the gut. Or, he suggested, soften the blow substantially by ending special tax breaks for the rich. Here’s what he said: “Republicans in Congress face a simple choice. Are they willing to compromise [...]
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Rig the Vote is the evil opposite of Rock the Vote. Rock is the campaign by a nonprofit to increase political engagement and register young people. Rig is the campaign by the GOP to suppress political engagement and subvert balloting. The GOP rigged the vote by limiting registration, demanding specific photo ID at the polls [...]
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President Obama demonstrated his gutsiness in recent months by speaking so many words that craven politicians contend cannot be spoken. These are hot-button words like same sex-marriage, immigration reform, gun control and climate change. Fighting words. The president even specifically addressed three of these in his second inaugural speech – the civil rights of gay [...]
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Oscar came to the United States at the age of 16 to work. There were no jobs for him in his native Guatemala, and he felt obligated to help support his parents. He was lured across borders by the promise of work. He believed, as so many immigrants do, that there would be a job [...]
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Last week, 11 European nations forged ahead to create a new tax while American Republicans walked backward into a no-new-tax trap. On Jan. 22, the European Union gave 11 member countries – including economic giants Germany and France – permission to institute a financial transaction tax, a tiny fee charged on trades of stocks, bonds [...]
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Oddly, the top international cyclist – Lance Armstrong – and the top international retailer –Wal-Mart – revealed last week that they have much in common. No, not doping. It’s their dopey concept of the atonement process. Armstrong, already punished for misdeeds he’d denied, took to television on Thursday to finally confess. But he didn’t apologize. [...]
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“Uncertainty” is the pitchfork that corporations now effectively wield to prod politicians into action. It’s a threat, as in, if Congress doesn’t do this or that, such as avoid the fiscal cliff or raise the debt ceiling, then corporations will suffer the unbearable pain of “uncertainty.” Uncertainty is really, really bad, business lobbyists lament. It’s [...]
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Last week, as Congress opened its new session, two regular Joes – Sen. Manchin of West Virginia and Vice President Biden of Delaware – gave a hand to Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, who’d suffered a stroke a year earlier. Joe and Joe assisted Sen. Kirk in climbing the 45 Capitol steps to [...]
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Apparently, uncertainty is a fate worse than death for a CEO. Billionaires bellyache about it constantly on TV, contending they must know, right now, whether next year’s tax rates will rise. Republicans bewail uncertainty, insisting CEOs must know, right now, whether they’ll get a tax holiday for overseas profits. Their deep, abiding concern about the [...]
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