A funny thing, wonderful in its own small way, happened last week.

Amidst an endless series of votes on amendments to a federal budget bill, the United States Senate voted 99-0 in favor of an amendment to end subsidies to too-big-to-fail financial institutions.

The stated purpose of the...

1. The Obama administration demanded no meaningful quid pro quo from the Wall Street giants it bailed out in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse.

2. The Obama administration has chosen not to prosecute criminally any of the leading Wall Street firms in connection with the rampant...

With one in six Americans who'd like a full-time job not able to find one; with millions of families needlessly being thrown out of their homes; with a generation of young people hampered by outlandish student debt, many of them exploited by for-profit colleges and for-profit lenders; with...

It will take some time to digest the Supreme Court's decision today, but it appears to have averted some terrible jurisprudence that might have very seriously restricted the government's overall ability to regulate the economy and protect citizens.

In upholding most of the Affordable Care Act,...

The World Health Organization's Director-General recently warned of the growing challenge of antibiotic resistance in the starkest terms: "A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill."...

Well, the big business guys are transparent about one thing: They can't stand the idea of the public holding them to account for their attempts to buy elections and influence policy, or even that they be prevented from corrupting the government contracting process through campaign spending.

The latest: They are...

Whether or not you're an investor, it's important to grasp the significance of what's happened with the Facebook initial public offering (IPO).

In the few days since its IPO, Facebook's stock price has fallen almost 20 percent amidst news that underwriters led by Morgan Stanley and...

Fact Number One: Exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months is best for infants and new mothers.

Fact Number Two: Hospital giveaways of infant formula samples to new mothers reduce the amount and length of breastfeeding.

Given these two facts, why would hospitals serve as marketing agents for...

"Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?"

Do those sound like the words of a man who should be running the world's leading economic development institution?

They don't, but the man who put his...

Sometimes, public outrage bubbles up and forces Congress to take action to advance the public interest. The Big Business interests, who normally count on the legislative process operating according to plan, lose control. And that's when they really set to work.

And it's when the public interest advocates and the...

If you are concerned about the collapse of the middle class, you should be concerned about how American campaigns are financed. If you wonder why the United States is the only country in the industrialized world not to have a national health care program, if you're asking why we pay...

We don't yet know who will be running for offices high and low in the 2012 elections, but we do know a lot about what the election itself will look like. In a word, ugly.

The 2012 elections will feature unprecedented spending by corporations and the elite 1 percent,...

Pity poor Newt Gingrich.

Alright, I admit it's hard to muster much pity for Gingrich.

Still, he now stands as not the first, but the most recent, prominent victim of the Supreme Court's abysmal decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

So if you don't have any sympathy for Gingrich, at...

Where are the anti-tax activists when you need them?

They should be protesting outside of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, denouncing the agency for failing to take action. And they should be applauding a new legislative proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Right now, Wall Street speculators are imposing an enormous...

It's a good rule of thumb: If the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- the trade association for large corporations -- is whipped up about something, there's probably good reason for the public to strongly back whatever has sent the chamber into fits.

Well, the chamber is apoplectic over a modest...

It's a modest notion.

Companies that bid for government contracts should disclose their campaign spending, in order to diminish the likelihood that contracts are a payoff for political expenditures.

The Obama administration has indicated that it plans to impose such a rule through an executive order. Ideally, the rule would...

We are now having a major dispute about what kind of society America should be.

Right now, the flashpoint in this controversy is Wisconsin, where tens of thousands of people are demonstrating every day in an effort to block Governor Scott Walker's plan to all but end collective bargaining rights...

"We do big things."

This was inspiring rhetoric from President Barack Obama in last night's State of the Union address.

Many of the president's broad themes -- especially the need to promote innovation, step up public investment, and preserve a vital, affirmative role for government -- are important expressions of...

Compare:

Justice Kennedy, majority decision in Citizens United, January 21, 2010:

With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens wit the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters. Shareholders can determine whether their corporation's political speech...

The nation's great policy crisis, and the Obama administration's political crisis, is the Great Recession and the fact that one in six Americans who would like a full-time job cannot get one.

Why in the world is President Barack Obama selecting as his chief of staff a person who comes...