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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Yesterday, in response to recent IRS admissions, President Obama called the enhanced investigation of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status “intolerable and inexcusable.” And, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a criminal investigation into the allegations against the IRS. But both of them are missing the point.
The scandal here is not that political groups were targeted by the IRS, it's the fact that political groups are being subsidized by John Q. Taxpayer. Groups that are politically motivated, and not really “social welfare” organizations, shouldn't receive preferential tax treatment in the first place – regardless of their political affiliation.
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The Tennessee General Assembly is trying to subvert democracy. Republican lawmakers in that state want to revise our election process, and give themselves the power to select which candidates appear on the ballot for U.S. Senator. This is the latest GOP tactic to destroy our democratic process, and it's their clever way of going around the 17th Amendment.
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If you are reading this, you already know the national score from the November election. The Democrats won the presidency, added two seats in the Senate, and won eight seats in the House by over 500,000 votes – while remaining in the minority. But 2012 is old news. Now, in Washington, focus is on the [...]
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Election night 2012 definitely felt like a victory for progressives. President Obama won re-election convincingly, with more than half the electorate casting ballots for the president, Democrats picked up two Senate seats and eight House seats. The fears of post-Citizens United, that several big donors, notably Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers, would buy their [...]
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Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John? Brother John? Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing! Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong. Early in the morning, the day after Americans awarded him four more years in the White House, President Obama gave his acceptance speech then sought détente immediately by calling GOP Speaker [...]
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In the words of the old spiritual, “My Lord, what a morning!” Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was defined by an iconic poster bearing the single word: “Change.” Obama’s victory in 2008 signified how much America had already changed enough to make his historic campaign and audacious victory possible. Four years later, President Obama’s re-election adopted [...]
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Recently my friend and colleague Bill Scher challenged progressive critics of President Obama's conciliatory approach toward corporations with a New York Times op-ed entitled "How Liberals Win." Far from being "business as usual," Bill writes, "the Supreme Court's upholding of Mr.
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A recent court case proves what many of us have long suspected: Big banks have been ripping off this nation's towns and cities for years in an old-fashioned racketeering scam. We ran some numbers to see how much this criminality might have cost the American people.The answer? Billions.
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Will Mitt Romney create jobs and help our economy, or will he just take us back to the Bush-era, send-jobs-to-China destruction that made him rich? With Romney there is no way to connect what he says with what he means or might do. So we are forced to read tea leaves and look for signs. Should be reading Chinese tea leaves?
The Fire Sale Of Our Economy
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