Internal Revenue Service agents have been struggling to do their jobs–which have been made essentially impossible by an incorrect interpretation of the law that the IRS made in 1959. It was then that the IRS changed the language of the law without any authority to do so. Here is how t… Read full post »

The Picard Center carried out a ten-year study looking at whether education provided through LA4, the state's primary preschool program for at-risk 4-year-olds, stuck with its participants for any meaningful amount of time.

The study found that when compared across a host of measurements, LA4 partic… Read full post »

The Picard Center carried out a ten-year study looking at whether education provided through LA4, the state's primary preschool program for at-risk 4-year-olds, stuck with its participants for any meaningful amount of time.

The study found that when compared across a host of measurements, LA4 partic… Read full post »

The Picard Center carried out a ten-year study looking at whether education provided through LA4, the state's primary preschool program for at-risk 4-year-olds, stuck with its participants for any meaningful amount of time.

The study found that when compared across a host of measurements, LA4 partic… Read full post »

In 2002, after Texaco was purchased by Chevron, its stake in what became known as Motiva Enterprises was bought by Shell and Saudi Refining, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco. Today, Motiva also has two refineries in Louisiana and markets its production through a network of 7,700 Shell-branded gasoline st… Read full post »

Michael Grunwald: Everything people think they know about the stimulus is wrong. It was called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and it did produce a short-term recovery. We dropped 8.9 percent of GDP in Q4 2008. We lost 800,000 jobs in January 2009. We passed the stimulus. And then the… Read full post »

In short, when faced with a 3 a.m. test, he reacted immediately, rather than having the instinct to wait. And after he waited, he mistook this as a moment for partisanship rather than for at least the appearance of statesmanlike national unity. The irony, of course, is that resisting the… Read full post »

Romney's supporters are almost certainly wrong when they assert that Romney "already paid taxes on his ordinary income" and that now he's just risking his "capital."

This is because Mitt Romney has almost certainly taken advantage of one of the most outrageous tax loopholes in our entire tax code: Th… Read full post »

Romney's supporters are almost certainly wrong when they assert that Romney "already paid taxes on his ordinary income" and that now he's just risking his "capital."

This is because Mitt Romney has almost certainly taken advantage of one of the most outrageous tax loopholes in our entire tax code: Th… Read full post »

ver since Barry Goldwater lost his bid for the presidency in 1964, the conservative movement has been looking for a choice, not an echo (Goldwater's mantra). Reagan came close, but compromised too often on taxes and back-slapped with Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill too often to give them total… Read full post »

That was the primary purpose, at least. There was also a really important side effect: The health care law extended the solvency of Medicare’s Trust Fund. If the program pays hospitals less, each dollar stretches a little bit further. Earlier this year, the independent Medicare Board of Trustee… Read full post »

A group of Catholic nuns ended its nine-state bus tour here Monday (July 2), speaking out against a Republican federal budget proposal they say favors wealthy Americans at the expense of poor families.

Led by Sister Simone Campbell, the “Nuns on the Bus” rejected the budget proposa… Read full post »

Despite mounting complaints from conservatives, the Obama Administration’s announcement yesterday that it will give states waivers to run demonstration projects in their TANF programs will not kill or undermine welfare reform. Indeed, it will strengthen welfare reform by giving states greater f… Read full post »

ON THE U.S. MEDIA: Like any public figures, bin Laden and his advisers were mindful of the media. Adam Gadahn, one of bin Laden’s spokesmen, provided a summary of his view of U.S. TV cable news.

“From the professional point of view, they are all on one level except (Fox News)… Read full post »

But didn’t Congress spend the money in the trust fund?

Yes, but it would have spent it anyway. Congress spent way more than what it borrowed from the trust fund, which holds roughly one-fifth of federal debt outstanding. There’s a global market for U.S. Treasury securities, which are espe… Read full post »

Some conservative critics of federal social programs, including leading presidential candidates, are sounding an alarm that the United States is rapidly becoming an “entitlement society” in which social programs are undermining the work ethic and creating a large class of Americans who pr… Read full post »

The United States went through its longest, and by most measures worst economic recession since the Great Depression between December 2007 and June 2009. This chartbook will document the course of the economy following that recession against the background of how deep a hole the recession created &nd… Read full post »

Check out Matt Taibbi on Current TV's The Young Turks last night. The topic: Matt's recent Rolling Stone article about too-crooked-to-fail Bank of America. "It’s no different than here on the streets of New York where you see people selling fake Prada bags or phony blue jeans. What they were do… Read full post »

Uploaded by BarbaraBoxer on Mar 13, 2012

I thank three Oscar-winning song writers -- Marvin Hamlisch and Alan & Marilyn Bergman -- for allowing me to play their moving song, "A Woman's Voice," with iconic images that speak to my heart and I hope to yours. It is so crucial to… Read full post »

FROM the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of Ameri… Read full post »

I printed it out and it took 22 pages. Took a while to read too. I loved it! Intelligent, informative, useful and revealing. I will save my copy for my children for the day when they come to ask me later what happen during the Obama Presidency so I can counter… Read full post »