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.

A welcome statement

Clinton says that Israeli settlement activity on Palestinian lands is illegitimate.

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.

This is interesting

Sotomayor on corporate personhood, one of the deep roots of U.S. evil.

Whitewashing Blackwater

The old site, and the new site.

Wired is helpin' out with a new logo contest.

Hat tip to Lisa Rivera.

Bush wars to cost 40 times estimates

8K for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.

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.