Wall Street

Today, Wisconsin Judge Maryann Sumi ruled Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill," which would eviscerate collective bargaining rights for most public workers in the state, "null and void." more »

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"Money doesn't talk," sang Bob Dylan, "it swears." Rep. Patrick McHenry gave the week's most famous seventy year old a dark birthday gift on Tuesday by proving that those lyrics still ring true after nearly half a century.

McHenry's savage attack on Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was an obscenity by any definition except the FCC's, an assault on human decency which proves once again that Wall Street's Capitol Hill goon squad is prepared to discard decency at a moment's notice to serve its masters.

One of the best ways to understand events like today's hearing is by looking at the actors involved, and today's case study is Patrick McHenry, Republican from North Carolina.He may have disgraced himself before the voters today, but look on the bright side: Rep. McHenry is now Wall Street's "Employee of the Month."

McHenry, like other Republicans before him, is just the latest symbol of a party that's stopped pretending that its actions are motivated by anything except a desire to serve Wall Street and other large corporate interests. more »

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The On May 12 Coalition is holding actions in New York City tomorrow to hold big banks and corporations accountable for crashing our economy and asking them to pay their fair share to help get the country back on track. Mayor Bloomberg is asking for terrible budget cuts, while the big Wall Street firms and the big banks pay big bonuses. more »

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What do you do when the economy's a disaster, things are getting worse, and nobody seems to give gives a damn? What do you do? This country has been divided into two economies. One's the economy of Wall Street and corporate Manhattan, along with Washington's thriving economy of lobbyists, politicians, ex-politicians, national security contractors, and assorted hangers-on.

Call that one the "Acela Economy," since Amtrak's Acela Express links the two urban areas.

Then there's the other economy, the one where most people live. Let's call it the "Majority's Economy." It's a catastrophe, and it's getting worse, not better. Guess which one is getting more attention and care in Washington DC?

It's illegal to shout 'fire!' in a crowded theater. But what if there really is a fire - and nobody cares? It's not like anybody's going to start a stampede in Washington. It would be a major accomplishment just to disrupt their REM sleep.

Fire!

Meanwhile the volunteer firefighters are back at the station as flames rise higher, drinking beer and bitching about how much it costs to gas up the truck. That's because they're afraid the well-paid folks at both ends of that train line will be asked to picked up some of the tab.

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America's top bankers and CEOs don't have any more talent than millions of other Americans. They do have, two timely new data dumps remind us, plenty of generous friends in pivotal places.

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Remember when the fight broke out in Wisconsin over the right to collectively bargain and President Obama and a phalanx of national democratic leaders spread out across the country fighting for the rights of American workers? 

Right, we don't remember that either.
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While Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan prepares to shut down the federal government to prove that government is bad, analysts say the radical agenda of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker suffered a major set back today as his good friend incumbent Justice David Prosser was defeated for Wisconsin Supreme Court. more »

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The nation’s greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on workers. There’s no trickle down. It’s the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class for decades. more »

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Wisconsin continues to spin out of control and a constitutional crisis looms as a judge this week again ordered Walker’s administration to halt implementation of his bill stripping Wisconsin public workers of collective bargaining rights. Walker's team moved to publish the law in defiance of the court order last Friday night and began implementation of the bill on Saturday. more »

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Halloween has come early this year for Wall Street Democrats who are busy disguising their plans to gut Social Security as "progressive"--and smearing Social Security while they're at it.

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