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By Reinhold Niebuhr
By Mark Heisler
$23.96
$40
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Flickr / Gage Skidmore
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Republican lawmakers who planned to ride Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed Medicaid overhaul to glory can think again, as polling confirms the voter opposition demonstrated in New York’s 26th Congressional District on Tuesday.
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Loren Javier (CC-BY-ND)
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Most of us take access to overpriced hotels, lousy food and syrupy mixed drinks for granted, but ordinary Cubans suffering island fever may get their first shot at a vacation since 1959. A proposed reform might eventually allow Cubans (presumably those surviving on more than government subsidies) to “travel abroad as tourists.”
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Taylor Jones, Cagle Cartoons, El Nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico —
Posted on Apr 24, 2011
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The GOP begins to roll back Wall Street reform, college graduates are snubbing law school, and Washington’s pro-nuke consensus. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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For-profit schools, some of which are accused of failing to properly educate while loading students with debt, have banded together to fight the introduction of three federal reforms.
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AP / Jason Redmond
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The U.S. Senate has failed us again. On a 55-41 vote, the proposed Dream Act, an immigration reform measure aimed at paving the way to citizenship for undocumented students who attend college, has effectively been killed for this year.
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Flickr / soathevy
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New rules curbing credit card company shenanigans took effect Sunday, as restrictions on “unreasonable late payment and other penalty fees” will now block the companies from charging excessive levies if users, to cite just one choice example, do not use their cards.
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AP / Richard Drew
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Bank stocks had a surprisingly good day Friday, outperforming the rest of the market after it became clear that financial reform legislation hammered out in Congress would not meddle with precious bank profits.
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AP / Richard Drew
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After a marathon final negotiating session, Congress has cobbled together a historic overhaul of financial regulations for Wall Street. The bill is expected to win final approval next week and land on President Obama’s desk.
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Flickr / epicharmus (CC-BY)
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The Senate passed on Thursday what The Wall Street Journal described as “the most extensive overhaul of financial-sector regulation since the 1930s.” The New York Times breaks down what’s in the bill and how it might change when reconciled with the House version. Worth noting: Democrats Russ Feingold and Maria Cantwell voted against the measure.
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AP / Daniel Roland
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The Icelandic volcano isn’t the only problem blowing over from Europe, judging by Thursday’s dismal stock market dive, touched off in part by problems in the euro zone as well as homegrown concerns about the American government’s plans for financial regulation.
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Flickr / LakelandChamber
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A national small-business lobbying group has tossed in with 20 states in their legal challenge to the Obama administration’s health care reform law. The mostly Republican push claims the health care overhaul violates states’ rights guaranteed in the Constitution.
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Flick / ANSWER LA
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According to police estimates, as many as 60,000 marchers took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday in a show of support for comprehensive immigration reform and against laws like Arizona’s recently passed SB 1070.
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AP / Lauren Victoria Burke
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By John Dean — The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, none of whom has been elected to anything, ever, has given a monumental victory to special interests.
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It’s difficult to confirm the origin of all of these news and Internet videos of protests in Iran, but it’s clear that something major is again happening there.
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AP
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At least nine protesters, including the nephew of Iran’s opposition leader Mir Houssein Mousavi, were killed as demonstrators in Tehran continued the civil unrest that began a week ago in honor of the death of dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri.
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AP / Leslie E. Kossoff
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By Mike Rose — What’s new about them? They sound like the skills one would have gotten from a good 20th century education—or from a lot further back than that.
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AP / Rich Pedroncelli
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By Mike Rose — The Obama administration has committed serious money to education reform, but many of the Department of Education’s big ideas are flawed.
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zimbio.com
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German election exit polls are showing that reigning Chancellor Angela Merkel is headed for a second term, with her conservative bloc collecting more than a third of the national vote.
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AP / Bob Child
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By Chris Hedges — The proposed health reform plans rattling around Congress all ensure that the profits for corporations will increase and the misery for ordinary Americans will be compounded.
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AP / Susan Walsh
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The good news, at least for those hoping for progress on the health care reform front, is that the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the latest version of a bill aimed at revamping the nation’s flagging health care system. The bad news: Now that Congress is headed for a monthlong vacation, we’ll have a whole new round of squabbling to look forward to in September.
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By Amy Goodman — As the Obama administration pushes for a vote on health care reform before Congress recesses in August, has health industry money too thoroughly polluted the process for anything good to come of it?
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AP photo / Carlos Osorio
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By Paul Cummins — A friend of mine, J.M. Zimmerman, once stated that to revitalize our schools, engage our children and ultimately save our planet will require “the death of education and its rebirth.” Sometimes systems are so flawed that they need to be scrapped and replaced rather than fiddled with or fixed.
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bloomberg.com
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It’s the first full day of Obama’s administration and things are looking a bit different in D.C. Treasury secretary nominee Timothy Geithner called for “fundamental reform” of the $700 billion bailout, claiming the existing bailout package favored big business over struggling families.
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By Amy Goodman — Fifty million Americans are without health insurance, and 25 million are “underinsured.” Millions being laid off will soon be added to those rolls. At this perilous moment, we need sweeping New Deal-caliber changes, not the impotent tinkering that has been proposed.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Because Arne Duncan gets along with teachers unions but is also seen as a reformer, his selection was interpreted as a politically shrewd, split-the-difference choice by Obama. But that is not the whole story.
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youtube.com
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In this time of confusion and strife, it’s a good thing there’s FactCheck.org to shine a light through the political fog that surrounds us all. Or something like that. Anyway, the FactCheck folks took a close look at the McCain campaign’s shadowy little commercial number, “Ayers,” and found it to be problematic on several counts.
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By Eugene Robinson — We all owe a debt of thanks to the skeptics who refused to be steamrollered by the Bush administration’s $700-billion financial bailout plan until we at least had some understanding of what we were doing and why.
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John McCain, a lobbyist and fixture of Congress for more than 30 years, nominee of the incumbent party and self-proclaimed foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, tried to convince Americans Thursday night that only he could bring real reform to that wretched place called Washington. Updated
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Barack Obama’s decision to forgo public funds will bring joy to opponents of campaign finance reform. But to say that Obama has killed public financing is to miss the point.
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Flickr / Lauras512
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Raul Castro would like to see his island produce more food. Currently, Cuba imports the vast majority of its basic food products, at increasing expense, despite plenty of arable land. Private farmers and collective growers are hoping new reforms make it easier to produce food more efficiently, and that’s not just good news for Cuba. With rice rationing at Costco, that’s good news for the world.
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AP photo / Monica Matiauda
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Former Roman Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo’s campaign against poverty has won him the presidency of Paraguay, a country that has been ruled by the same conservative party for 61 years—arguably longer than the run of any party in any other country.
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By David Sirota — The real John McCain is re-emerging: a politician who rakes in big bucks by being a hired gun for the corporations.
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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has announced what the media are calling a “massive overhaul” of America’s regulatory agencies, but columnist and liberal economist Paul Krugman isn’t impressed. Krugman doesn’t think the administration’s cosmetic solutions will mitigate our current economic crisis or prevent the next one.
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iiichan.net
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China plans to stick with the economic and political reforms that have brought prestige, wealth and environmental catastrophe to the country, but don’t expect Beijing to turn its back on the Communist Party completely. As the official spokesman of the 17th party congress put it: “We will never copy the Western model of political system.”
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By Bill Boyarsky — As the immigration issue takes the front-and-center position in Congress, opportunities for real reform—as well as legitimization for millions of undocumented workers—are being squandered in each round of deliberation over the pending legislation.
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By Andy Borowitz — Congress will form a “guest congressman” program so illegal immigrants can do the work they’d rather not: reform immigration.
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needlenose.com
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Bush are determined to push through the ailing immigration reform bill, despite heavy opposition from both sides of the aisle. Reid, who has partnered with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said Democrats would work through the July 4 recess if necessary.
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By Marie Cocco — Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y, head of the House Rules Committee, is on a mission to restore some semblance of ethics and accountability to Congress.
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washingtonpost.com
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When Qin Zhongfei took 10 minutes to scribble down a satirical poem about local bureaucrats, he had no idea it would land him a month in jail—a sign that free expression still languishes in China, despite hopes that President Hu Jintao’s economic reforms would translate to a more open society.
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nytimes.com
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The student movement that led to revolution in Iran may now be setting its sights on the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was protested last week during an appearance at the same university where the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy was planned.
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flickr/Rivard
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In the face of vast poverty and exploitation, the Chinese government is about to enact a labor law that would strengthen the role of unions and protections for workers. But American corporations, eager to maintain their fiefdoms in the middle kingdom, have lobbied fiercely against the proposed legislation.
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By Paul Cummins — The co-founder of the trailblazing Crossroads and New Roads schools in Santa Monica argues that if we can?t fund cuts in class sizes and improve educational resources, nothing else we do will matter a whit.
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New welfare rules written by Congress and the Bush administration are taking effect, denying assistance to the poor for education and drug addiction treatment. The rules also require welfare recipients to work more hours a week, without providing additional child support subsidies.
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As the Islamic world rallies to the support of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militia, Iran is feeling more and more emboldened to press its confrontational foreign policy and efforts to silence political opposition at home.
Posted on Aug 1, 2006
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The Arizona senator has withdrawn his co-sponsorship of a public financing bill that he and Sen. Russ Feingold (along with two House reps) had long championed. People close to the situation say McCain dropped his support because he is likely to run for president and may end up not abiding by public financing rules.
We’ve known for some time that McCain has been doing all sorts of unseemly things in an attempt to lock up the nomination.
Posted on Jul 28, 2006
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After promising fast action on lobbying reform in the wake of numerous scandals, the Senate and the House have proved unable to put together a reform bill that both can live with—so instead they’ve made plans to adopt vastly scaled-back versions.
No wonder: USA Today reports that our Congress is on track to spending fewer days in session than the infamous 1948 “Do Nothing” Congress.
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By Molly Ivins — Kenny Lay paid heaps in campaign contributions to use our president as his “errand boy,” and democracy faltered.
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House conservatives just passed a lobbying reform bill that the Washington Post called a “sham,” ?diluted snake oil? and ?an insult to voters.? Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., said, “I happen to believe we are losing our moral authority to lead this place.”
Posted on May 4, 2006
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By Molly Ivins — Calling this lobbying reform measure an “ethics bill” requires brass bravura.
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