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

Which battles to fight?

That final paragraph really gets to one of my obsessions: that the political left and the mainstream media focus so heavily on culture-wars issues–especially regarding the Supreme Court–that the corporatocracy and other rightwing non-culture-wars interests (states’ rights!) have been having an incredible run these past years in the courts, without most people even knowing it. […]

You Can Fool Most of the People Most of the Time

At least on certain issues. I’m not inherently a great pessimist, but with few exceptions each passing month for over a decade now has seen my optimism whither, at least a little.  So I can’t help but see the manure-colored lining in this otherwise rosy, fluffy cloud. Steve Benen reports that according to the new […]

Republican "fiscal cliff" proposal

by Linda Beale Republican “fiscal cliff” proposal House republican leaders have sent a letter to President Obama with their “fiscal cliff” proposal, which the Republicans cast as a “fair middle ground” and a “balanced framework for averting the fiscal cliff.”  Id.  Republicans object that the administrative proposal has is unbalanced, because it has “four times […]

Links Worth Noting: Stealth (Class) Warfare

by Linda Beale Links Worth Noting: Stealth (Class) Warfare(Op-ed) Paul Krugman, Class Wars of 2012, New York Times (Nov. 30, 2012). When Mitt Romney disparaged ordinary Americans, it was visible, obvious, and clearly an indication of the lack of esteem he held for ordinary Americans. The same arrogance is at work in the class warfare […]

A Different Look at GDP and Inflation

At Illusion of Prosperity, Stagflationary Mark posted this scatter-graph of quarterly GDP YoY growth and CPI data from Q1, 1948 through Q4, 2011.  Each point represents the differences from the medians of each data set for each of the variables, respectively.  This gives you a picture of time spent above and below what might be […]

Three-Card Monte (Spring 2004)

Angry Bear archives reminds us of the longstanding strategies embedded in the current political debate, and trial balloons of possible current Super Committee proposals November 22, 2011. The Social Security surplus as a significant amount of money is recent, in the last fifteen years or so: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 Three-Card Monte Following up on […]