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...

Watch out for corporate junk economics on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, has reportedly asked more than 150 trade associations, corporations and think tanks to provide a wish list of public health, environmental and other public protections that they...

BP CEO Tony Hayward today faces what is sure to be a tough inquisition before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Here are five questions Hayward should be forced to answer under oath:

1. Do you agree that the Deepwater Horizon disaster could have been averted if BP had...

BP generates enough cash to absorb its liabilities from the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico.

But that doesn't mean it will.

One of the benefits of the corporate form is that it gives giant corporations the ability to escape liability. BP may or may not choose to capitalize...

Boycott BP.

Why?

Because BP must pay.

Eleven oil workers are dead. One of the largest oil spills in U.S. history continues to worsen. BP's oil gusher at the floor of the Gulf of Mexico may be 100...

Does BP CEO Tony Hayward want millions of people to take the BP boycott pledge?

Admittedly, it seems unlikely.

Yet, how else can you explain a company CEO who before and during what is now the worst oil spill in U.S. history provokes consumers with comments like this:

The Senate resumes debate today on the Wall Street reform bill, having late last Thursday rejected probably the most important measure proposed to reduce Wall Street power, strengthen financial stability and fortify our democracy: breaking up the banks.

By a 33-61 vote, the Senate defeated the Brown-Kaufman amendment, which would...

Any time in the next couple days, the Senate may consider a measure, sponsored by Senators Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware, to break up the biggest banks. It's a vital step to strengthening the economy and rescuing our democracy.

It's past time to break up the big...

One of the most astounding passages in the Supreme Court's mind-boggling decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission -- the January decision holding that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend as much as they choose from their treasuries to support or oppose candidates for elected office --...

Shed a tear for our democracy.

Today, in Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding...

It takes a special skill for a Democrat to lose a federal election in Massachusetts.

But whatever the failings of the candidacy and campaign of Martha Coakley, the Democratic senate candidate in Massachusetts, the Democrats' loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat held for almost half a century by Edward Kennedy,...