The candidate for US Senate from Massachusetts seems to have passion and a willingness to take on the big financial interests that are working against the poor and the middle class. While the US Senate has become a largely ineffective body, she may still be able to use it as a platform to articulate a point of view that is currently with little voice in Congress.
Of course, I have been disillusioned before by many candidates who [Read more…]
France’s parliament has just passed a law that forbids denying that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 constituted genocide. This has infuriated Turkey which has suspended military, economic, and political ties with France.
Outlawing points of view, however much you disagree with them [Read more…]
Large gifts given to others are taxable. There are some loopholes. For example, a parent can give up to $10,000 per year to a child without incurring gift taxes. But if you have income that can be classified as ‘carried interest’, then you can give huge gifts to your children without incurring any tax whatsoever.
Romney’s tax returns reveal that he gave $100 million to his children using this loophole, that is available only to the wealthy whose income is from investments.
This Thursday will see Republican primary debate number 19, if you can believe it. Who has the time, or the patience for that matter, to sit through them all? But apparently enough people other than total political junkies watch them to make it worthwhile for the cable news outfits to show them.
I myself have not watched a single one, preferring to read The Guardian‘s funny live blogs by Richard Adams. Here is his report on last Monday’s debate.
More informative, more fun, far less time.
There was a time when I would have absolutely loved a film like this: a political drama that showed the backstage maneuverings of politicians and their campaigns. I would have thought that I was getting a look at what ‘real’ politics was all about, as opposed to what was reported in the newspapers and on TV.
You can read about the film at the official website. Here’s the trailer.
The film deals with a crucial Democratic primary election in Ohio and [Read more…]
What has come to be known as the Haditha massacre was one of the worst atrocities committed by US forces in Iraq in which 24 unarmed Iraqis – including old men, women, and children – were killed in revenge for a roadside bombing attack.
The trial for the leader of that squad has [Read more…]
Thanks to reader Henry, I learned about this article by James Surowiecki in the New Yorker that explains how private equity firms like Bain Capital (where Romney made his fortune) make their money. It is not pretty.
Private equity firms use a small amount of their own money and [Read more…]
One reason that politicians and other officials can avoid addressing hard questions at press conferences is because each journalist is usually given the chance to ask just one question. The politician can answer evasively or dismissively and [Read more…]
The Republican party likes to portray itself as defenders of ‘traditional family values’, which seem to many of us to be synonymous with narrow-minded, bigoted, and religiously-motivated ones. But that’s fine. People have their own moral standards and need some measures by which to evaluate candidates and they have every right to expect the candidates they support to have the same values that they do.
But what is odd is that rather than letting the values determine who their candidate should be, many of those voters seem to reverse the process and [Read more…]