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By Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper
$10.17
By Christopher Caldwell
$19.80
$22
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By Marie Cocco — Conservatives fear a “period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy” should Barack Obama and the Democrats sweep in November, but the voters care more about competent government than ideology.
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By Eugene Robinson — Grouchiness, twitchiness and haughtiness didn’t help John McCain in Wednesday’s debate, but what he said hurt him more than how he said it.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — John McCain’s debate performance almost certainly did him good among those whose votes he already has: very conservative Republicans who share Joe the Plumber’s view that Obama is some kind of socialist.
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AP photo / Madalyn Ruggiero
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Things really aren’t going well for John McCain, but then he has only himself to blame. Take Joe the Plumber, whom McCain mentioned more than 20 times in Wednesday’s debate. For the record, Joe’s name is Sam, and he’s not a plumber.
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AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite
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Although the pundits were impressed with John McCain’s debate performance, the polls showed another win for Barack Obama, who once again kept his cool against an angry, negative opponent.
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By Marie Cocco — The last thing we need is another “economic stimulus” package. What we need is a jobs package. And we ought to start calling it that.
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Flickr / Jeff Kubina
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It’s hard to get cell reception in an out-of-the-way place like Sedona, Ariz., but it helps if you sit on the Senate committee that oversees the telecommunications industry. The Washington Post has learned that AT&T and Verizon, both of which have lobbying ties to the McCain campaign, provided cell towers for the McCains’ ranch at no charge to the couple.
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By Eugene Robinson — Can any Republican candidate claim with a straight face to represent the party of small government? For that matter, can any Republican candidate plausibly explain what the party is supposed to stand for these days?
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Flickr / Allison Harger
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Barack Obama unveiled his $60-billion economic rescue plan on Monday and urged Washington not to wait for a new president to take up his proposals. The Obama plan includes tax breaks for companies that hire new workers, a short moratorium on foreclosures and, with an eye on job creation, federal financing for public works and infrastructure projects.
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guardian.co.uk / Barry Batchelor
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Following the Dow’s 600-point drop, former President Jimmy Carter had some pointed words for the Bush administration on Friday, blaming the current economic crisis on the “atrocious” policies of the past eight years and declaring the economic situation to be an “entrenched problem” that will “take years to correct”.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Bill Boyarsky — As was the case in the first presidential debate, Barack Obama emerged from Tuesday night’s confrontation with John McCain in Nashville, Tenn., in command of the situation. The Democratic nominee looked calm, confident and presidential as he won their second contest.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Tuesday night’s debate, a town-hall discussion dominated by economic questions, made it clear that John McCain’s effort to change the campaign’s focus to the culture wars of the 1960s is not going to work.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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The Bloomberg news service counts 10 lawmakers who may be ready to switch their votes when the bailout proposal takes another run at the House of Representatives. The original measure failed by only 23 votes and has since been substantially fattened by the Senate.
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npr.org
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And to think that anyone thought James Dobson would sit out this presidential race. The Christian right leader and his advocacy group, Focus on the Family Action, are planning a multistate strategy to help elect McCain, and to prevent Democratic gains in Congress while they’re at it.
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By Joe Conason — The initial failure to pass bailout legislation reflected a political system as bereft of confidence as the financial markets.
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Flickr / Qfamily
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Well, that was easy: While the House had to contend with round-the-clock negotiations and a last-minute revolt, the Senate just threw more money at the problem. That was enough for 74 lawmakers to say yes to the $810-billion package. The House will take another crack at it on Friday.
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White House / Susan Sterner
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The House couldn’t swallow the $700-billion bailout proposal, so the Senate added about $100 billion of incentives—mostly in the form of tax cuts. The Senate will vote on the proposal tonight and the House could decide as early as Friday whether $700 billion is too much, but $800 billion is just about right.
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By Marie Cocco — Americans are reluctant to make John McCain pay for George W. Bush’s sins, but with so many crises on so many fronts, the country can’t afford to cut him any slack.
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By Marie Cocco — So this is how the “ownership society” works. We own all the bad stuff.
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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By Chris Hedges — The lobbyists and corporate lawyers, the heads of financial firms and the crooks who control Wall Street, all those who spent the last three decades assuring us that government was part of the problem and should get out of the way, are now busy looting the U.S. treasury.
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Flickr / jurvetson
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Nancy Pelosi isn’t buying into the idea of a $700 billion gift basket for Wall Street without any strings attached. The House speaker is all for a bailout, so long as it’s clear that “the party is over for the Bush administration’s anything goes, failed economic policies.” Update 2
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By Marie Cocco — Obama shows more promise than McCain, if only because he correctly sees deregulatory zeal as a culprit. But Obama’s economic strategy simply can’t be implemented now: He wants to spend on necessary investments such as health care, but would have no money to do it.
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John McCain’s campaign would like to nominate—who else?— John McCain and Sarah Palin as just the ticket to get Americans out of financial crisis, claiming they’ll fight “special interest giveaways” on Wall Street(?!), cut taxes and, of course, drill, baby, drill!
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By Eugene Robinson — There was a time when Republicans campaigned on their ideas, programs and values. This year—lacking ideas, programs or values—John McCain and Sarah Palin are running for the White House on an elaborate fictional narrative of victimhood.
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Keith Olbermann began the second part of his interview with Barack Obama with a tale of two conservatives: “One guy who makes about $40,000 a year said, ‘Ask him why he’s going to raise my taxes.’ Another guy makes about a million dollars a year, said, ‘Ask him why he’s going to raise my taxes.’ ”
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By Eugene Robinson — Talk about role reversal. The Republican Party, which scoffs at the nonsense of “identity politics,” has staked everything on the compelling life stories of its presidential and vice presidential candidates.
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By David Sirota — Twenty-two Electoral College votes in the Rocky Mountain West are up for grabs, meaning this vast expanse is more pivotal than Ohio. And that’s only the beginning of the region’s burgeoning influence on energy, taxes, trade and health care.
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John McCain has found a theme he likes and he’s sticking with it: Barack Obama is popular and that’s bad. Much worse, apparently, than the Reagan-era economic philosophy the presumed Republican nominee is peddling.
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By Marie Cocco — In this summer of our economic discontent, it isn’t necessary to manufacture a financial crisis or to make political hash out of discussing a nonexistent one.
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Flickr / PetroleumJelliffe
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According to the most recent data from the IRS, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans took home a greater share of the nation’s income in 2006 than in any year of the previous 19. It’s possibly the biggest income disparity Americans have seen since the Great Depression. The average tax rate of the super-rich was at its lowest level in at least 18 years.
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The independent Congressional Budget Office has announced the expected federal taxpayer bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will appear as a $25 billion budget expense, but that the real bill could be anywhere from zero to $100 billion. This, even though the once-governmental agencies were formally privatized in 1968.
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By Marie Cocco — Using taxes as the centerpiece of—or as a substitute for—a more comprehensive economic policy is the idea that has dominated Washington since the rise of Reaganism nearly three decades ago, but the global forces shaping the U.S. economy are more powerful than a mere tax cut, or tax hike.
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Are workers to blame for the fix that General Motors (along with many other corporations) is in? A new book by Roger Lowenstein argues that they are. He couldn’t be more wrong.
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gawker.com
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With all the subtlety of a jackhammer, an enterprising right-wing artiste by the name of Mike Meehan has recorded an election-year anthem, “Please Don’t Vote for a Democrat,” and has launched a corresponding PR campaign via the Internet and billboard ads—like this one in noted liberal stronghold Orange County, Florida—in hopes of striking fear and indignation into the hearts of undecided voters.
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By Marie Cocco — Phil Gramm’s dismissal of America’s economic suffering has forced him to the political sidelines, but as one of the congressional architects of Republican economics, the mess he made will haunt Americans no matter who the next president is.
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Satire by Andy Borowitz —
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain unveiled details of his economic policy today, telling an audience in Ohio that if elected he would support a real-estate tax holiday for beer heiresses.
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By Joe Conason — Once upon a time, there was a fiscally and socially responsible senator named John McCain.
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AP photo / LM Otero
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By Robert Scheer — What should be the most important issue in this election is one that is rarely, if ever, addressed: Why is U.S. military spending at the highest point, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than at any time since the end of World War II?
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By Joe Conason — Double standards are endemic in American journalism. But Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican presidential candidate, displayed poor taste in flaunting her family’s special immunity from press scrutiny.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The first important election result for the senator in May—coming before his North Carolina victory—was the outcome of a little-noticed U.S. House contest in Louisiana.
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By Eugene Robinson — There’s something maddening about this presidential campaign. It has become irrelevant whether anything the candidates say actually makes sense. Case in point: cutting the gas tax.
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Flickr/ Captian Giona
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Imagine going to the Internet and being able to see how much everyone in the United States, including you, earned and paid in taxes. The outgoing Italian government just made everyone’s private business public. Needless to say, Italians were outraged as they rushed to the Web to see the income of their neighbors and the rich and famous.
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boston.com
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President Bush announced that rebate checks will start winging their way to taxpayers as early as Monday, helpfully observing that Americans need a little help paying for necessities like groceries and gas during this economic “slowdown”—a slightly different story from his initial justification for this economic stimulus plan, and one that wasn’t lost on his critics.
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By Marie Cocco — Fittingly, and with dreadful predictability, John McCain used April 15—tax day—as the day to release his economic plan. Fittingly, and with dreadful predictability, it offers more of the same. But more of the same what?
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By Eugene Robinson — Once the meaningless inquisition about loose semantics and questionable acquaintances was done, Wednesday night’s debate between Obama and Clinton got interesting.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Hillary Clinton has released seven years of tax returns, which she filed jointly with her former president husband. While there is much poring over to do, one piece of information stands out: The Clintons are rich. America’s most famous power couple made about $109 million in seven years, thanks in large part to Bill Clinton’s speaking fees.
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By Joe Conason — The most puzzling aspect of John McCain’s political persona is his habitual attraction to George W. Bush’s bad ideas.
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By Marie Cocco — Add doctors to that growing list of Americans who would like to see some form of national health insurance.
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barackobama.com
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Barack Obama posted his tax returns for the last seven years on his Web site Tuesday. It’s a direct challenge to his opponent, who has indicated that she will release hers about three days before the Pennsylvania primary in late April.
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