Three lives are lost and counting in the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah. The flamboyant, camera-hogging mine owner, Bob Murray, has called this a “once in a lifetime” accident, like a car crushed by a boulder suddenly dislodged. These horrors happen. Yes, but when we add one plus one plus one, we don’t call three [...]
Read Post
Wall Street’s investment banks just got another one step closer to making defrauding investors an accepted line of business. And Enron’s employees who lost their pensions and the small investors who got fleeced in the Enron frauds just got shafted again – this time at the urging of President George W. Bush. Wall Street’s most [...]
Read Post
Here’s how the Sunday news shows did with our Weekend Watchdog questions. In a word, not well. For former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (Fox News Sunday): One of the first things you did after leaving the mayor’s office was become a PR flack for the makers of Oxycontin, which was under fire for [...]
Read Post
The Enron scandal is rearing its ugly head again, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has to decide with whom it will stand: Will it be with small investors who depend on the honest advice of financial advisors or with bankers who, thanks to a recent federal court decision, have a license to facilitate fraud? [...]
Read Post
Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, gave these remarks at a press conference this week with victims of the Enron collapse and their supporters, along with attorney William S. Lerach. The victims are asking the Supreme Court to overturn a lower-court ruling that bars the victims from suing bankers who advised Enron [...]
Read Post
There is more evidence that partially privatizing Medicare is currently hurting our seniors. Private insurers already have been given a role in delivering Medicare coverage. In addition to private companies providing “Part D” prescription drug coverage, seniors can enroll in “Medicare Advantage”—private plans that supposedly save money. But back in December, Families USA (PDF file) found [...]
Read Post
Today is the Failure of Conservatism Conference, hosted by Campaign for America’s Future and The American Prospect, which will seek to make the case that “the failures of the Bush administration—from Katrina to Iraq—are more than a matter of incompetence and cronyism. They are a matter of ideology.” Conservatives, of course, are busy trying to [...]
Read Post
The pharmaceutical lobby joined forces today with the Senate’s conservative minority and killed legislation empowering Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices, which would have saved us $30 billion a year. Fixty-six senators tried to carry out the will of 85 percent of the public. But they needed 60. (The official vote was 55-42, but [...]
Read Post
Today on TomPaine.com I offer my take on the Don Imus controversy, as well as that of Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who writes on another critical aspect of the flap for AlterNet. Yes, it’s well-worn ground, but there are a couple of points that I thought it was important to stress. First, Imus’ slur against the [...]
Read Post
The following post is a part of this week’s TPMCafe Book Club group discussion of the new book “Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price” by Jonathan Cohn. Kudos to Jonathan Cohn for his important new book. One of the reasons we are talking about [...]
Read Post
