Last year, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney unveiled a plan to extend the Bush tax cuts, eliminate the estate tax and slash corporate taxes. But that proposal, one which would deliver 60 percent of its benefits to the top one percent of taxpayers while draining $6.6 trillion from the U.S. Treasury over ten years, was blasted […]

With their presidential primary process devolving into a farce, Republicans are turning to rising gas prices to bludgeon President Obama. While Newt Gingrich thundered that "gasoline prices are unacceptable," Rick Santorum charged that "We need a president who is on the side of affordable energy." Sadly for the GOP messengers, the data suggest that something […]

As a quick glance at January's presidential fundraising numbers confirms, the unlimited cash flowing into SuperPACs is fundamentally distorting the 2012 election. The millions flowing into conservative SuperPAC coffers are not only far outpacing the GOP candidates' own campaigns, but continuing to overwhelm their Democratic counterparts. But for the likes of Charles and David Koch, […]

A new study this week from the Commonwealth Fund confirmed the shocking gap between lower and higher income Americans when it comes to health insurance coverage. While only 12 percent of families making $89,400 a year (or four times the federal poverty rate for a family of four) was uninsured at some point last year, […]

This week, the Virginia House of Delegates passed a "Tebow bill" allowing home-schooled children to participate in sports and other activities at public schools. For the Republican presidential candidates, the Tebow bill is a two-fer that lets them score points with evangelical voters while riding the wave of the religious right's biggest cultural icon in […]

Back in 1992, President George H.W. Bush tried to counter to the growing perception that he was an aloof, out-of touch patrician utterly detached from the economic struggles of the American people. But his laughably awkward pronouncement to voters, "Message: I care," only served to confirm their suspicions. Now twenty years later, Bush 41's empathy-challenged […]

That GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney announced his support for the Susan G. Komen Foundation's aborted effort to end funding for Planned Parenthood comes as no surprise. After all, defunding the group that each year provides health care and reproductive services for hundreds of thousands of American women is now a litmus test for the 2012 […]

Federal Election Commission filings released this week showed that conservatives groups are amassing an ocean of cash for the 2012 presidential campaign. Thanks to the likes of the Koch brothers, the Walton clan and other of the usual suspects on the right, in 2011 conservative SuperPAC's outraised their liberal counterparts by more than seven to […]

One day after branding President Obama "really out of touch with what's happening in America," Mitt Romney marked his Florida primary victory by declaring, "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Of course, back in December Romney announced that "I'm concerned about the poor in this country," adding, "We have to make sure the safety […]

Behind almost all of the disturbing issues raised by Mitt Romney's jaw-dropping tax returns stands one largely unchallenged conservative article of faith. Much lower tax rates for capital gains than income earned through labor, conservatives claim, spur investment, catalyze economic growth and fuel job creation. But if that Republican theology isn't true, then the United […]