It may be that everyone's attention was diverted to health care reform, along with the right-wing echo chamber's indifference to an idea it doesn't take seriously, but for whatever reason, the Wall Street Journal's Damian Paletta was the only MSM reporter to pick up on Obama's suggestion that the...

"If taxpayers are going to support General Motors, let's turn General Motors into a company worthy of it," former SEC chair Richard Breeden, told the Washington Post back on December 10.

The statement wasn't so remarkable because it was made by someone who once served as chairman of the...

Once again, Ralph Nader is sounding the alarm as the Dems and their union allies seem willing to let multinational corporations screw the country over.

President Obama (via Ratner's auto task force and Treasury Secretary Geithner) is about to let GM and the auto industry seek "financial...

The universal handwringing, Congressional hearings, and talk about stringing greedy corporate pigs up with piano strings: There hasn't been this much media outrage about executive excess since Dennis Kozlowski's $6,000 shower curtain.

Back then, after the tickertape of corporate scandals -- Enron, WoldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, etc. -- there was...

It's no surprise that GE's stock slumped to $6.66 yesterday, causing the Post and the Times to lump them in with GM.

That's what happens when companies put financial engineering before real engineering.

Who could have predicted this, you might ask? Well actually, a group...

While the financial sector keeps slowly dragging the rest of us over the cliff, it's clear that our understanding of what must be done has greatly evolved in a short period of time.

This past weekend, both the Times (Joe Nocera) and the Post (guest editorial by...

The folks over at the Department of Justice who have been handling the massive Halliburton/KBR bribery case associated with the Bonny Island, Nigeria liquid natural gas (LNG) plant could not have been too pleased to read about a proposed settlement in the news a couple of weeks ago,...

On this the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, just 70 years after the atom was split for the first time, I'm struck by how nice it is to finally have a president who actually does strive to unite the country.

Yes, as a progressive, I expect to be frustrated by...

A congressional oversight panel (COP) appointed to monitor the Wall St. bailout (TARP) outlined a few of the problems so far in its second report (released yesterday) including:

• The shifting rationale for a program that amounts to dumping hundreds of billions of dollars on the companies that got...

A friend of mine once mentioned as we were nursing a couple of beers that he used to work for the Circus.

"Really?" I asked. "Doing what? Swallowing swords?"

"No, cleaning up after the elephants."

I guess somebody has to do it.

Now, after this eight-year freak show...

Both Obama and McCain said two things during their final debate that indicate how pro-business they both in fact are, and how constricted the political spectrum has become, especially since there was no one to challenge their assertions.

For Obama's part, the moment came when McCain challenged him to...

This is the first race since Watergate that the Republicans have been so desperate that they've had to use plumbers...

Paulson and Bernanke are pushing a giant $700 Wall St. bail-out bill that the public hasn't even seen.

Using the very real threat of a systemic financial collapse, they are beginning to bully Congress into passing the bill quickly before the election recess.

But the "fix" is in....

A politician who calls himself the agent of real change and then denigrates his opponent as a community organizer is like someone who owns five houses spitting on the carpenters and plumbers and electricians who built them.

Those were clearly racist jabs at urban America, the core of Obama's...

Jack spoke there freely, like a saintly sinner --
(jelly donuts for breakfast, and brats for dinner?)
Pronouncing to all who would listen: "Ich bin ein Berliner."

Now Obama's running, and looking like a winner
Except that, if he wasn't such a heavy spinner
He'd be...

One of the stories that has mostly flown under the radar (and which Bushites would rather sweep under the rug), is the Stephen Payne story. Payne, the Houston lobbyist and Bush/Cheney bag man who was caught on tape offering to arrange a meeting with top Bush officials for...

Just as the blind devotion to deregulation of the financial markets can be blamed for much of the current meltdown on Wall Street, the war profiteers have enjoyed a Baghdad Bubble as a result of the Bush administration's refusal to hold them accountable.

Not far from Wall...

It's nice to see the NYTimes pick up on the Department of Justice's shift toward the use of deferred prosecutions of corporations in large corporate crime cases. As far as I know, they are the first major media outlet to do so.

The lack of coverage is pretty pathetic,...

Matt Rothschild's astonishing expose of the FBI's decision to "deputize" 23,000 representatives of private industry reflects a frightening alignment of authoritarian forces, as well as another apparently deliberate flouting of constitutional norms. The sad thing is, we can probably expect an almost total silence from the loyal opposition party,...

The Hill reports today that Loews and other corporations are lobbying lawmakers to slash corporate taxes.

The coalition is calling themselves "America Gains." A nice corny flag-wrapper that should immediately make everyone dubious.

With a straight face, Ed McClellan, a lobbyist for the coalition who once...