Source: Think Progress Romney, his son Tagg, and Romney’s chief fundraiser, Spencer Zwick, have extensive financial and political ties to three men who allegedly participated in an $8.5 billion Ponzi scheme. A few months after the Ponzi scheme collapsed, a firm financed by Mitt Romney and run by his son and chief fundraiser partnered with the three men and created a new “wealth management business” as a subsidiary. In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress, Tagg Romney confirmed their busi...

Source: Business Weel U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan accused President Barack Obama of attempting to exploit resentment of the wealthy in promoting his stalled economic agenda, prompting an administration response that criticized the Wisconsin Republican. Ryan said that Obama, in his weeks-long campaign for his jobs plan, is “sowing social unrest and class resentment” and “pitting one group against another.” # # # Carney also said a Ryan plan the House passed in April that wo...

Interesting analysis of President Obama and Democrats proposal to increases taxes on the rich that is embodied as means to pay for President Obama's jobs bill. Of course, Republicans, including Romney, reject consideration of any such taxes. (Link)/ Just how much Romney pays in taxes is, for the moment, a private matter. But his income is public knowledge. In August, Romney disclosed that in 2010 he and his wife made between $1.1 million and $2.8 million in royalties, salary, speaking fees...

Source: LA Times The super committee has until Thanksgiving to reach an accord. A deal to reduce the deficit has eluded Congress this year because of a simple stalemate: Republicans refuse new taxes and Democrats will agree to cut federal programs only if new revenues are in the mix. * * * The Republicans' opening offer was a $2.2-trillion proposal that resists new taxes, in keeping with the anti-tax pledge most GOP lawmakers have signed with activist Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform...

Amazing. Fox is arguing that if you are anti-bank, then you are anti-Jew! Isn't Fox's expression of outrage itself anti-semetic? (Link) Every demonstration has its kooky and sometimes offensive signs. But some critics say that many at Occupy Wall Street have looked the other way when it comes to anti-Semitism. A new commercial by the emergency committee for Israel highlights anti-Semitic hatemongering at Occupy Wall Street rallies. The CEO of Adbusters magazine Kalle Lasn is said to be on...

Fox News and its commentators have been working over time to demonize the 99 percent movement and OWS protestors, so it is nice that the activist community has not been taking the corporate media threats lieing down. (Link)/ The hactivist group Anonymous plans to take down the Fox News Web site on November 5, according to a new video released recently by the group. The group said it targeted the network for what it called biased news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests occurring in...

Source: San Francisco Chronicle With polls showing that most people support increasing taxes on the wealthiest households, as Obama and Democrats are proposing, the GOP flat-tax plans would largely end up as a boon to the wealthiest, independent analyses suggest. The tax debate coincides with spreading protests, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, against economic inequality. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently reported the top 1 percent of American earners doubled t...

Source: CBS News The longer he runs for president, the more doubts Republican front-runner Mitt Romney seems to have about the science behind global climate change. Speaking at a closed-door fundraiser Thursday in Pittsburgh, Romney's position on the causes of global warming continued the rightward shift that has been underway for several months. "My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to re...

The corporate media loves to push the meme that the left, unions and Democrats will do nothing in 2012 in an effort to diminish turnout. While the corporate media celebrates Tea Party anger and protests as a reason why the right wing is going dominate the 2012 elections, the same media pushes the meme that liberal anger will lead to inaction and apathy in 2012. That's right, the meme is that when the right wing gets angry, they win elections. When the left gets angry, they boycott them. The...

Remember how Bill O'Reilly's efforts to demonize a doctor who performed abortions lead to the murder of the doctor. Well, here is Bill O'Reilly of Fox News cheerleading the near fatal injury of an Iraq war veteran: (Link) Nice job Mayor, throwing your entire police department under the bus. That's what real leadership is all about. Some liberal Americans continue to believe the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters have a valid beef and some may have. But these people are being exploited by powe...

Source: Washington Post Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest company by market value, said net income exceeded $10 billion for a third consecutive quarter as rallying crude prices more than made up for the biggest production decline in three years. * * * Third-quarter profit rose to $10.33 billion, or $2.13 a share, from $7.35 billion, or $1.44, a year earlier, the Irving, Tex.-based company said today in a Business Wire statement. The per-share result was in line with the average estimate of 19 a...

I know that there is a popular talking point that the Republicans only control the House so why can't President Obama simply pass legislation over their objections. Well, besides the Republicans in the Senate who are abusing the filibuster, the fact remains that you need the House to do something. Checks and balances. It is easy stall action. Not so easy to make things happen and in this case, the Republicans that the American people elected to the House are refusing to take any action:

Source: Christian Science Monitor After the Senate blocked consideration last week of Mr. Obama’s jobs proposal, the administration has moved to Plan B: bypass Congress and enact change via executive-branch measures. On Monday, the federal government announced new rules for some “underwater” homeowners, to make them eligible for lower interest rates. The president will discuss the new program in a speech in Las Vegas Monday at 5:30 p.m., Eastern time. Nevada has both the highest unemployment (...

Source: Washington Post The 2012 Republican field largely slammed President Obama’s decision, which the president announced Friday, to end the Iraq war and bring U.S. troops home by the end of 2011, suggesting that the move was a purely political one. Republicans have suddenly found themselves running against a president who has notched clear foreign policy victories over the last year, among them the May killing of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki last month. But the narrative among Republ...

Source: LA Times As you might expect, Republicans aren’t exactly rushing to credit the Obama administration for first the downfall and now the death of Moammar Kadafi, even though the United States was part of the NATO force that backed the rebels who deposed the longtime Libyan leader. Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio, who have favored strong U.S. intervention in the Libyan conflict, took it one step further Thursday, praising the efforts of Britain and France in bringing down Kadafi. That’...

Source: CBS News A freelance radio host was fired from a documentary program that airs on NPR affiliates after she became a spokeswoman for a Washington protest because her producers believed she violated the public radio network's code of ethics, the host said Thursday. Lisa Simeone said she was fired the previous evening from "Soundprint," a music documentary show that isn't produced by NPR but is aired by its affiliates across the country. She said the head of Soundprint Media Center Inc., ...

Source: Huffington Post A new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics finds that professionals from the finance, insurance and real estate sector are largely backing the former Massachusetts governor over the incumbent Democrat and Romney's rivals for the Republican nomination. Employees (and spouses) from those industries have given Romney's campaign $7.5 million as of the third quarter of 2011 -- more than the seven other top GOP candidates and Obama received, put together. Obama has...

While the 99 percent movement engages in OWS protests nationwide to protest the governments refusal to make the rich pay their fair share, and while President Obama and Congressional Democrats fight to try to enact some unemployment relief bills over staunch Republican opposition, Republicans continue to ignore the protests and ignore the unemployment rates in their ongoing efforts to give kick backs to their corporate supporters: (Link) "The people I meet just don't get it," Gray is Green's ...

President Obama, of course, proposed a comprehensive jobs bill AND proposed a way to pay for it. This bill had everyone from Paul Krugman to Mark Zandi agreeing that the bill would improve jobs. Yet, Republicans killed it, and many folks bought into the talking point that the President was not serious, because he proposed a bill that he knew the Republicans would not agree to, which begs the question of what would the Republicans agree to? Still, here is John Boehner blaming the President for...

The story that continues to be largely ignored by the corporate media is the historical dimensions of Congressional inaction, which is largely due to Republican refusal to compromise or make serious efforts at addressing unemployment. Instead, most congressional Republicans feel relatively safe that they can make the economy worse, and the American people will simply blame the Democrats. By bottling up any legislative in the House, and filibustering legislation in the Senate, they hope people ...

Why is Wall Street so strongly behind Romney even though he cannot mobilize the evangelical right like most Republicans? Is it because he is perhaps the most virulently anti-union, pro-Wall Street candidate in decades? (Link) With Chris Christie now officially out of the running, Mitt Romney has once again emerged as the GOP Presidential candidate to beat. It is hardly surprising that the former Massachusetts governor has reclaimed the frontrunner mantle. Despite a lack of enthusiasm for his...

The corporate media pushes the narrative that the original Boston Tea Party was a protest against high taxes. It was not! Instead, the Tea Party arose from anger at the British government for creating a special tax exemption to the East India Trading Company, which allowed them to undercut American importers and merchants. In other words, the Boston Tea Party was largely driven by anger at the influence and favors granted to the East India Trading Company. Yet, today, the Tea Party is active...

The corporate media has been repackaging and regurgitating the Republican party's latest batch of privitization proposals as "reform." Indeed, CNN breathlessly call Paul Ryan popular for proposing to turn Medicare into a voucher program. Sadly, the mainstream media refuses to call out Republicans for proposing to completely destroy the social safety net. While Democrats get slammed for even considering minor cost saving measures that continue to preserve Medicare and Social Security as govern...

Source: San Jose Mercury House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan says it’s time for Republicans to rally around a comprehensive “replacement” to President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform legislation — with the government giving a limited contribution to help Americans get health coverage. That’s the model Ryan wants to apply through Medicare, Medicaid and employer-sponsored health insurance. It’s the approach he used earlier this year for Medicare and Medicaid in the House-passe...

The press often pushes the talking point that if the economy does not improve, President Obama's chances diminish. Conversely, a declining economy is often trumpeted as a reason why Republicans will consolidate and expand their control of Congress! You have to just love the blatant double standard and hypocrisy of the corporate media, which blinds people to the fact that 112th Congress is the worst ever. What President could be successful when faced with a Congress filled with Republicans who...

Source: Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican House chairman blasted the solar industry Thursday, calling loans to solar panel manufacturers, such as ill-fated Solyndra Inc., a poor bet and predicting the solar panel industry itself could collapse in the United States. An industry group immediately disputed the remark by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., citing a report showing that solar panel installations were up nearly 70 percent in the second quarter of 2011, compared with the same p...

Source: NY Times Congress faces historically low approval ratings as it wades into the debate over the $447 billion jobs package proposed by President Obama, with just 12 percent of Americans now approving of the way Congress is handling its job, matching its all-time low, recorded in October 2008 at the height of the economic crisis, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Voters are slightly more disapproving of the Republicans in Congress than they are of the Democrats, with j...

A while back when this board was being flooded with ubiquitous headlines announcing that unions were abandoning Democrats and the President, I posted an article reporting on an interview by Candy Crowley of Jim Hoffa and a transcript of the interview itself. The article repeated the narrative of great tension between Democrats and unions. But, the transcript itself showed that Hoffa was slamming on Republicans despite the efforts of Candy Crowley to try to get Hoffa to buy into the premise tha...

The corporate media continues to push the Blame Democrats, Give Republicans a free pass narrative, and the American public continues to buy it. The narrative blames unemployment entirely on President Obama, but ignores the complete inaction and unwillingness of Congressional Republicans to lift a finger to address unemployment. Worse, Republicans feel like they can ditch a joint sesssion of Congress to address jobs so that they can prepare for a football party. They can act with impunity, bec...

This is largely being ignored by the corporate media, which is doing its best to blame federal inaction on President Obama, but there is a growing stream of scholarly literature that is making the case that the 112th Congress is the worst ever in history. After flirting with a federal shutdown, then bringing the Nation to the brink of its first ever default, while taking no action to address unemployment, and focusing entirely on austerity, it is hard to argue that the 112th Congress, which is ...