Thom's blog
Constitution doesn’t say, “We the millionaires…”
It’s good to be a millionaire in America. A new report from the Center for American progress shows that millionaires are paying – as a share of their income – 25% less in taxes than they were in the mid 1990’s – 25% less! But that’s not all – according to data from the IRS – in 2009 – 1,400 millionaires paid absolutely no taxes at all. So just like some of the biggest transnational corporations in the world like GE a
Can you afford food tasters to make sure what we’re about to eat is actually safe?
People who eat food are screwed. Giant, transnational agribusiness corporation Cargill announced yesterday that it is recalling 36 million pounds of contaminated ground turkey – that has killed at least one person and sickened 76 others across 26 states. Cargill is just now announcing the recall even though the outbreak started back in March. Coincidentally – back in June – House Republicans passed legislation that g
Republicans are filibustering while they're sitting by the pool with their billionaire donors...
Like the House – the Senate is now on vacation too – but not before Republicans could latch on to a procedural gimmick to keep President Obama from making a recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
If a plane goes down this month – call Speaker Boehner
FAA workers are screwed. With the debt-limit deal out of the way – it’s time for Congress to resolve the FAA funding impasse right? No. Instead of figuring out a way to restore full funding to the agency in charge of making sure our airplanes don’t fall out of the sky – and also figuring out a way to get 4,000 furloughed FAA employees back to work – Republicans are going on vacation.
Republicans should be Dancing in the Streets
Republicans should be dancing in the streets. So says Democratic Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver after an 11th hour debt-limit deal was struck yesterday between President Obama and Congressional leaders to avoid our nation from defaulting. Unfortunately – once again – the President let right-wings take the American people hostage and then gave in to the hostage-takers. The deal – which still needs to be approved by lawm
We're turning into a nation of peons....
As debt-limit talks stall - the economy hit a wall. Economic growth in the second quarter of this year was less than expected – only 1.3%. Not only that – first quarter economic growth was revised downward showing that our economy grew by less than a half-point at the beginning of the year – just .4%. The reason why our economy stalled is consumer spending which only grew by .1% - the slowest growth rate in two years
The Real Leaders of the Republican party - Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist - are quite happy
Speaker of the House John Boehner probably had a few more cocktails and cigarettes than normal last night – it was a rough Tuesday for him. One day after a source at Standard and Poor’s credit rating agency warned that passing Boehner’s short-term debt-limit plan will still lead to a United States credit downgrade – the Congressional Budget Office piled on even more bad news. According to the CBO – the plan that Speaker Bo
Welcome to the next Great Depression...
After Democrats said a short-term debt-limit deal that kicks the can down the road to be picked up again 6-months from now in the middle of an election season is a NON-STARTER – guess what Speaker of the House John Boehner did yesterday? He released a short-term debt-limit deal that kicks the can down the road to be picked up again 6-months from now in the middle of an election season. That’s right – a few days after Boehn
Right-wing Terrorism...
Norway is in mourning after Friday’s terrorist attacks that killed more than 90 people – including more than 80 people gunned down on a remote island campsite. Shortly after the attack – Conservatives here in the United States pointed to Norway’s lack of a state security complex as a reason why they were vulnerable to a terrorist attack. But now we realize Islamic terror had nothing to do with Friday’s chaos in the Nordic