Three stories will dominate American politics over the next week. As it turns out, they are very much related. On Thursday, President Obama will unveil his jobs plan which will invariably be opposed by Republicans claiming "America is broke." That same day, Congress' debt "super committee" will begin its work to slash $1.5 trillion from […]

Judging from the furious reaction of some of the gilded-class crowd and their Republican protectors, billionaire Warren Buffett struck a nerve with his plea to Congress to "stop coddling the super-rich." Former American Express CEO Harvey Golub and Tea Party sugar daddy Charles Koch were quick to protest respectively "the unfair way taxes are collected" […]

For Republicans hoping to preserve the Bush-era tax cut windfall for the wealthy, the past week was not a happy one. While billionaire Warren Buffett asked Congress to "stop coddling the super-rich," GOP representatives found themselves under attack from constituents who polls show overwhelmingly support debt-reducing tax increases. So, it should come as no surprise […]

That all six of the Republicans selected to the Congressional debt reduction "Super Committee" are signers of Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge is hardly surprising. But the choice of Arizona Senator Jon Kyl is an especially fitting one for the GOP. After all, Kyl didn't merely define a generation of Republican talking points when he explained […]

If nothing else, the 2012 Republican presidential contest has forced GOP White House hopefuls to run a gauntlet of ever more draconian pledges demanded by party purists. At the top of the list is the Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which demands candidates "solemnly bind themselves to oppose any and all tax increases." But at […]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Just for different groups of Americans. That's the picture emerging from a wave of stories about the depths of the American economic downturn. On the same day The Economist revealed that the U.S. economic contraction beginning in late 2007 was far deeper than […]

The ink isn't yet dry (or even written) on the 11th hour debt deal, but the media are already doing their usual body count of the victors and vanquished. In the Washington Post, conventional wisdom regurgitation machine Chris Cillizza produced the predictable winners and losers list. While the Wall Street Journal and right-wing columnists proclaim […]

"In Washington more spending and more debt is business as usual," House Speaker John Boehner declared on Monday before warning, "I've got news for Washington - those days are over." The days, Boehner should have explained, before Barack Obama took the oath of office. As Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) rightly pointed on the Senate floor last […]

On Thursday, House Republicans will vote on John Boehner's debt plan. But whether they follow his order to "get your ass in line" or not (and 23 have already gone on record saying they won't), Republican hostage takers on Capitol Hill will continue to threaten the United States with default - and economic catastrophe - […]