Republican Party

Their opponents shouldn't be too quick to call Republicans "crazy." It makes more sense to employ that time-honored investigative principle: Follow the money. Sure, they've said crazy things -- in their speeches and in their official platform. But crazy? more »

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More on liberty from Ryan's reply to the President's 2011 SOTU. more »

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More Ryan's follies from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU. These are about that old Republican hypocritical favorite, “small government.”

”So I’d like to share with you the principles that guide us. more »

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Here's the next group of Ryan's follies from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU.

On bureaucracy and innovation:

”Depending on bureaucracy to foster innovation, competitiveness, and wise consumer choices has never worked – and it won’t work now.”

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Still more Ryan's follies from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU.

On the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

”Then the President and his party made matters even worse, by creating a new open-ended health care entitlement. more »

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More on Ryan's follies and the overall quality of thinking we find in this young “guru”! more »

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In celebration of Paul Ryan's nomination, and in consideration of his reputation among Washington, DC villagers as a fiscal guru, I thought it might be fun to do a series of posts, of which this is the first, critiquing examples of Ryan's past wisdom. Here's the first example: more »

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Perhaps my reaction to the latest unemployment statistics is colored by the fact that I'm reading them in Africa, far from the comfortable familiarity of Washington, New York, and California. There's nothing like the songs of unfamiliar birds as the sun rises over the hills of Pretoria to accentuate the strangeness of conventional Beltway wisdom. more »

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Here are three things to consider: more »

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Yesterday Thom Hartmann and I discussed the proposal to extend and expand what Democrats have called the 'payroll tax holiday.' (Video is below.) There are no heroes in this debate, but there are certainly villains. There are several different ways this could end - and most of them aren't good.

By proposing to expand and extend this 'holiday,' Democrats have bypassed more efficient ways to help the economy, and have once again endangered Social Security. And by demanding tax breaks for millionaires while blocking them for the middle class, Republicans have once again demonstrated their willingness to blow up the economy for self-serving purposes.

The choice is either to back the highly flawed Democratic proposal or let the Republicans block it, which would plunge the economy into an even deeper hole than it's in right now. Imperfect as the proposal is, the alternative is unacceptable. If it failed the already-wounded economy would suffer even more, and millions of jobless Americans would be left without the unemployment insurance they need. more »

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