Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

See Harold Meyerson’s Washington Post Column Today

This shift from wages to profits is called redistribution. It is the central fact of American economic life. And it is the primary reason that economic inequality in the United States has skyrocketed. Yet wages, which are descending, are taxed at a higher rate than income derived from corporate profits — capital gains and dividends. […]

Will the Republicans’ The-Debt-Ceiling-Is-About-Appropriating-NEW-Spending-Measures Disinformation Campaign Succeed? (Well, only if Obama lets it.)

In the wake of the fiscal deal raising taxes only on income over $450,000, Republicans are declaring that the debate over taxes is finished. The next fiscal deal will contain nothing in new revenues. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell said: “The tax issue is finished. Over. Completed. That’s behind us. Now the question is what are we […]

Eh. I’ve changed my mind. [UPDATED, twice!]

I want to remove the post I posted this afternoon called “Harry Reid Throws Down the Gauntlet In Front of … Obama.  Hurray.”  I think Reid has done exactly that, and I think he’ll play a much larger role in the debt ceiling debate and other fiscal-policy debates going forward, as will the other Dem […]

The Best Revenge: Pointing Out that Romney Keeps Pretending to Be Stupid. Or That He Really IS Stupid.

Yesterday in Springfield, Ohio, the crowd listening to Barack Obama booed when the President brought up Mitt Romney and the Republican Congress. That prompted Obama to say: “No, no, no — don’t boo, vote. Vote! Voting is the best revenge.” Romney promptly pretended to be very outraged by this. He told his supporters: “Yesterday, the President said […]

Binders Full of Battleships, Horses and Bayonets

I loved the horses-and-bayonets rejoinder, and I especially loved that it highlighted Romney’s incessant plucking of irrelevant statistics and misrepresenting what they indicate.  But the line I liked best wasn’t any line that Obama said.  It was this one, said by Romney in his closing statement: I’ll lead you in an open and honest way. […]

The Binders That Bind

The most revealing moment last night came as Ann Romney walked toward her husband onstage at the end.  That expression on her face.  I thought she looked like a woman in a binder. It is, I suppose, poetic justice for Romney that an obviously misspoken phrase of that sort is the catch phrase from last […]

At long last, have you left no sense of decency? (The most important fact that Obama can point to tomorrow night)

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency? — Joseph N. Welch, head counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy‘s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities, an investigation known as the Army-McCarthy hearings.  Spring 1954. Shortly after the Denver debate two weeks ago, […]

Why Last Night’s Debate Will Really Matter—and, yes, it will. [– UPDATE: Dana Milbank GETS IT! It’s a start. Hopefully only JUST a start.]

Not surprisingly, the pundits have concluded that, while the debate last night will stop the bleeding for the Dem ticket—stop the momentum for Romney/Ryan—it won’t make a difference beyond that. People don’t vote for the vice presidential candidate; they vote for, or against, a presidential candidate. And anyway, Biden smiled too much!  And Ryan was […]

Why has no one (but me) mentioned Romney’s erroneous claim that the federal budget can’t be balanced if we raise taxes? C’mon, folks; the Clinton administration ended only 12 years ago.*

A really striking feature of the Romney campaign is the candidate’s penchant for stating policy positions as though each one exists in a vacuum.  To wit: His 20% across-the-board tax-rate reduction, which, this successful businessman made clear at the debate last week, he didn’t trouble himself to figure out the likely result of it on […]

Spain. Please, Mr. Obama, talk about Spain. Please.

ROMNEY: Look, the revenue I get is by more people working, getting higher pay, paying more taxes. That’s how we get growth and how we balance the budget. But the idea of taxing people more, putting more people out of work, you’ll never get there. You’ll never balance the budget by raising taxes. Spain — […]