CORP. TAX CUT = GROWTH? Um, Not So Much — Contrary to popular conservative dogma, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has found no substantial correlation between corporate tax reductions and economic growth since 1947.

by Dale Coberly How to Sound Insane by Talking Like a Bi Partisan Expert on Social Security I apologize for the next couple of paragraphs because they sound overworked and insane,  but that’s what happens when you try to illustrate the way Washington talks about Social Security. Try to imagine you have to buy a medicine […]

Via Economist’s view: Mark Thoma writes:  This is a research summary from the NBER Digest. It discusses work from Autor, Dorn, Hanson, and Song that finds “Workers bear substantial costs as a result of the ‘shock’ of rising import competition”: Employment Effects of International Trade, by Claire Brunel, NBER Digest: In the past two decades, […]

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/03/junk-health-insurance/index.htm   Consumer Reports, which also destroys that story. They take a look at the Florida woman’s cancelled health policy and compare it to what she could—affordably—get by shopping on the exchange. Barrette’s expiring policy is a textbook example of a junk plan that isn’t real health insurance at all. If she had ever tried […]

AB had a post on Congressman Steve King, an advocate of austerity and shut down yet received $9.17 billion in subsidies 1995-2012 for his district without offering cut backs for his district to share the sacrifices needed for austerity. Brad DeLong points us to another stunning set of subsidies, this example for Congressman Tim Huelskamp: […]

…hybrid eclipse of Nov. 3 will be a special case: here the eclipse starts out as annular, then after only 15-seconds it will transition to a total eclipse, and then it remains total up to the very end of the eclipse path. The last time this happened was on Nov. 20, 1854 and the next […]

And some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the negotiations with sources they trust, including Dean Baker and Yves Smith, who join Moyers & Company this week. Both have written extensively about the TPP and tell Bill the pact actually has very little to do with free trade. Instead, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center […]

by Linda Beale Religious rights, taxes, and corporatism–whose rights are they? Part I The United States has a tradition of separation of church and state that goes back to the founding discussions that concluded that it would be inappropriate to establish a state religion because individuals should be at liberty to believe or not believe.  […]