For the Record

Good reporters opting for comparatively free expression

Being a columnist mean not having to launder your views.

The comprehensive scoop on U.S. economic inequality

Via Slate, a don't-miss historically and statistically informed read: Timothy Noah's The United States of Inequality.

U.S. run by corporations; administered by craven capitulators

The latest bit of evidence here.

More evidence here.

I think I'll just keep the list going for a while.  What fun!

Bank-friendly Dems threaten to block Financial Regulatory reform bill.

Death of public option causes health insurance stocks to climb 20-30% to a 52-year peak.

Obama sells out, and then sells out some more.

Follow the money.  And don't forget the iron law of institutions.

Wheee!

Read this; it's brilliant.

Want the good life? Live in a social democratic country

Call it what you want, but on indexes of what everyone wants the SD-ers knock it down cold.

Michael Moore, voice of reason

Very smart and obviously correct.  Warning: involves repeated pwnage of braindead bloviator Wolf Blitzer.

This about sums it up

Richard Gwyn, in today's Toronto Star, has an excellent "opinion" piece on the prospects for regulation and reform in the U.S.  The short cut:

[T]o really understand what's going on, follow the money. The American political system has become its hostage.

Read this book (or at least the review!)

Larry Bartels's 'Unequal Democracy' reviewed here. Looks to be a treasure trove of interesting and/or surprising and/or hopeful info about the attitudes Americans hold about various political issues -- eg the alleged "rightward shift" in the US is pretty much entirely at upper income strata. (Not too surprising, when was the last time any high profile sources paid the slightest bit of attention to the "little guy"?)

Unbelievable

No, wait.  It's believable.  In fact, it was easily predictable.  Which doesn't make it any less astounding:

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

Whitewashing Blackwater

The old site, and the new site.

Wired is helpin' out with a new logo contest.

Hat tip to Lisa Rivera.

US income inequality worst since 20's

Among the stats released by the IRS (and you know, girlfriend, that the rich have all kinds of ways of hiding their income, so things are undoubtedly much worse than these stats indicate):

-- The top 1% earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent in 2004.

That is, the top 1% gets more than 1/5 of all income.

-- The bottom 50% earned 12.8 percent of all income in 2005, down from 13.4 percent.

That is, the bottom 50% gets about 1/8 of all income.

One of the interesting things about keeping track, to whatever small degree, of things like this is seeing the same old ludicrous and empirically disconfirmed excuses wheeled out over and over by Bush et al.   So last time stats on inequality came out, Bush was all about his "the income gap was an education gap"; now it's that "skills gaps yield income gaps".  Whatever.