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Category Archives: Politics

Miracles do happen: bought and paid for politicians looking at a financial transactions tax

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Sometimes the stars align, and what once seems far fetched suddenly becomes possible. For years people like Dean Baker and Paul Krugman have been recommending a financial transactions tax. It brings in immense amount of revenue, discourages useless and non-productive speculation, and has negligible impact on people who are buying stocks for actual investment. Since […]

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Krugman summarizes it

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A friend directed me to the video of Sunday’s This Week with Christine Amanpour, which featured poor Paul Krugman sitting around a table with three Republican doofuses. This, by the way, is the typical Sunday show alignment. Conservatives must always be overrepresented. Krugman neatly summarizes the Republican dilemma: KRUGMAN: I have a structural hypothesis there. […]

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Changing the conversation

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Over the last few days and weeks, I’ve noticed, or thought I noticed, a bit of a change in the national conversation. My impression, for which I had no solid evidence, was that the issue of growing income inequality and the disappearance of the middle class was being discussed more and more frequently in the […]

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Sometimes it only takes 51 votes

Monday, November 7, 2011

Why is it that I’m absolutely positive that it won’t take 60 votes to pass this: Senate Set to Vote on Neutering Net Neutrality Give Obama credit for threatening a veto; more if he follows through.

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Socialism Works

Saturday, November 5, 2011

You don’t have to take my word for it. From the New York Times, discussing the second pathetic response by CL&P here in Connecticut to a storm and the resultant power outage: There’s even a near-perfect model of how Connecticut Light and Power could have done the job better. Norwich, Conn., a city of 40,000, […]

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Where’s Harry Truman when you need him?

Thursday, November 3, 2011

A poll taken in Florida shows that 49% of the people there believe that Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the economy. This is an extraordinary statistic, because while this has been happening in plain sight, it has until very recently been considered impolite for our lords and masters who style themselves Democrats and/or pundits to take […]

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Cain channels Clarence Thomas

Monday, October 31, 2011

We have strange rules in this country. A black conservative is allowed to charge that racism is at work whenever he’s attacked, even when, as in Herman Cain’s case, the attacks are obviously based on fact and race is not implicitly or explicitly involved. The correct response, apparently, is for whites, particularly liberals and the […]

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Raising (the subject of) Cain

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Okay, I’ve largely or completely (I think) avoided even mentioning Herman Cain, but I can’t help myself now. It’s been a temptation, but I’ve resisted it, largely as penance for too frequent posting about Sarah and Michelle. It’s not that I put Herman in their league, by the way. If anything, on the continuum of […]

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The Kids Are Alright

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

First they ignored them, and that didn’t work. Then they mocked them, and that didn’t work. Then they arrested them, and that didn’t work. The kids in New York and throughout the country who are following their lead, have the most to lose from the rise of the oligarchs. We oldsters can fade away, a […]

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Fox reporter gets slammed

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Okay. I’m jealous. Wouldn’t you love to do this good a job if you were interviewed by Fox? The kids in New York and in other cities seem to be doing it: forcing these issues into the conversation. Now, if only the politicians who call themselves Democrats would tap into this discontent and actually advocate […]

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