Today as I leave for Brazil, I go back to a place and a people that literally saved my life.

Without Brazil, I wonder how I would even be alive today. Brazil was the place that taught me to finally be happy with myself despite my numerous defects.

I was shocked when I heard that my conservative Grandma had stormed out of church after her pastor denounced "being gay as the worst sin." My 81-year-old grandmother, who has two gay grandchildren, wasn't taking any of that shit, and made my mother, my aunt, uncle and cousins leave...

Here she goes again: Wall Street's favorite Democrat, Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., is once again shilling for the banks.

As I wrote back in October, Bean misrepresented the views of financial watchdog Elizabeth Warren in arguing that states should not be able to set tough laws against the...

Somebody call up Pat Robertson! Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is going around claiming he's "doing God's work."

That's exactly what he's quoted as saying last week in an interview for the Times of London. A group of around 200 protesters gathered outside the company's Washington headquarters Monday to...

Conservatives win many votes saying that liberals are elitist. I am here to tell you that the liberal movement is indeed very elitist. Its organization's staffs are composed mainly of Ivy leaguers whose life experiences are dramatically different than the 70 percent of Americans that never graduate from college. Very...

After leading the dramatic three-day Showdown in Chicago at the American Bankers Association (ABA) Convention in Chicago, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will head to the House Financial Service Committee today to testify against proposed reform legislation and argue that the bill actually gives the banks more power.

As...

As markup on financial reform legislation continued today in the House Financial Service Committee, a pattern has emerged in which committee members are not forced to go on the record to vote for key amendments that weaken financial reform. Instead, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Barney...

Despite all the apocalyptic nay saying by right wing economists that the falling dollar is a bad thing, its actually a really great development for Economic Recovery:

From Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman:

The truth is that the falling dollar is good news. For one thing, it's mainly...

Democratic Congresswoman Melissa Bean is earning the title of Wall Street's favorite Democrat.

The three-term Illinois Congresswoman and leader in the New Democrat Coalition has pocketed almost $2.2 million since she's been in Congress from the banking and financial services interests she oversees as a member of the House...

Speaking Tuesday on a Campaign for America's Future conference call, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said that the climate change legislation will not get 50 Senate votes if it does not place a tariff on imports that have unacceptably high carbon footprints.

For example, Chinese steel mills produce

This week on the anniversary of the financial crisis, there has been a flurry of talk about the bailout. We often talk about the bailout in terms of the increase in the national debt and the lack of transparency at major banks. Rarely do we discuss it in terms of...

My breakfast nearly fell out of my mouth when I read this line about the China Tire Case on the front page of the Washington Post:

a chorus of economists and climate activists fretted that the president's action might undercut U.S.-China climate talks and poison relations just two weeks...

In recent days, the Administration has made encouraging signs that it plans to enforce U.S. trade law, but is it smoke screen for advancing a free trade agenda?.

Today, it came that Senator Harry Reid and the Office of U.S. Trade Representative are in support of putting safeguards on illegal,...

The first day of President Obama's administration, he made a promise to his former campaign staff at a party honoring their work:

"I promise you if everybody in this hall is willing to keep doing what you guys did over the last two years, then I am optimistic about America....

I just joined thousands of others, including several hundred former staffers from the campaign, in signing a petition to President Obama, telling him that health care reform without a public option is not "change we can believe in."

As a staffer of the President's working as a community...

For a long time, Corporate Democrats have taken advantage of organized labor to mobilize voters for them and fund their campaigns. However, when big votes come up against powerful corporate interests, these Democrats continually abandon organized labor on key issues like the public option, Employee Free Choice Act, trade agreements,...

West Virginia shows us how we could easily win over this key segment of society, working class whites, with a New Deal-style industrial policy. Currently, 85,000 people in the United States are employed by the wind industry; Slightly more than the 81,000 in the...

In the coming days, many great eulogies of Ted Kennedy will be written. Many will offer personal anecdotes in the coming days about what a great man he was. I do not intend to write one here.

I have no great anecdotes or personal stories to tell about how...

After reading an article by Chris Townsend the other day in the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America's (UE) Political Action Update, I noticed the the strong similarities between union busting and the tactics of teabaggers -- namely, how they suppress, intimidate, and delay action at all...