There will be a lot of talk about the economy tonight. If you find that your mind's getting lost in vagaries and theories, here are 10 benchmarks that provide context for tonight's speeches.

Americans are broke and job prospects are the lowest they have been in 80 years. That's it. Nothing else matters, and public opinion polls bear this out.

With a new Republican Congress, it was only a matter of time before some politician vowed to get rid of regulations. We just didn't think it would be Barack Obama.

When it comes to regulating, the Right is downright irregular. Now that Republicans control the House, they're hell-bent on further deregulating cor...

The House Energy Committee is seeing an intense leadership fight, as four different Republicans are vying to take over the influential post from Democ...

Transparency is not a substitute for better regulation by national governments and international institutions, but more disclosure and increased civic participation would definitely add significant muscle to traditional regulatory systems.

Rather than providing a platform for presentation of a corporate wish list, Darrell Issa should be subjecting corporate claims to the withering scrutiny he promises for the Obama administration. These claims collapse under examination.

The Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission tried to undermine that group's work by attempting to ban phrases like "Wall Street" from its final report. Now they are trying to explain away their behavior.

Some younger readers might need a refresher course in the workings of a thing called the Soviet Union. Republican apologists for Wall Street are doing their best to provide one.

"No Labels" is ultimately destructive because it squelches debate and it suppresses the truth in the name of compromise, congeniality, and cooperation. It is a one-way political weapon.

The presumption that we've got lots of useless regulation in place plays off of years of conservative rhetoric about how regulatory red tape is choking American business. But this idea is divorced from reality.

When you pull a lever on Tuesday, you may think you are voting for one candidate or another, but, in the big picture, the vote won't be for a person. Instead, you will be voting based on these opposing principles.

With the elections coming up in less than a week, prophesies of doom and gloom for democrats are filling the news sites. News sites love bad news, and...

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much les...

The insidious and deceptive self-branding that used to be confined to the corporate world is now also used by political message-makers, aiming to create a look and feel that consumers identify with intuitively.

Medicine has always been grounded in humanitarian ideals, as reflected in codes of ethics. The humanitarian roots of American medicine are evident in our many hospitals named for saints.

Here's the bottom line: the GOP "Pledge for America" will raid your money to make their rich patrons even richer. The middle class will continue to wither away, and those who manage to hold on will be worse off than ever.

The purge began when Obama got elected. One by one even mainstream Republicans have adopted more radical language and attitudes in an attempt to survive politically.