If there was ever any illusion that the super-rich would start acting nicer after Congress gave them both income and estate tax breaks, I present Wal-Mart’s thanks for Congress’ willingness to make the Walton family even richer: (h/t Consumerist) Wal-Mart managers in the U.S. received instructions to mark up an average of 1,800 types of [...]

We know the government is blocking Wikileaks sites: the Air Force, the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, as well as orders from the State Department that its employees should not read the leaked cables. Which is why I find it so interesting that AT&T and Verizon are blocking Wikileaks sites internally, too. From [...]

Apparently, the Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission have abandoned the commission because the other six members would not agree to ban the phrases “Wall Street” and “deregulation” from the final report. The four Republicans appointed to the commission investigating the root causes of the financial crisis plan to bypass the bipartisan panel and [...]

As I noted last week, Halliburton is in negotiations to reach a plea deal with Nigeria to drop its bribery charges against Dick Cheney. At that point, Nigeria was demanding $500 million for such a deal, which led Gregg to quip, “So, Cheney Halliburton is bribing Nigeria to drop bribery charges?” As Reuters reports, Halliburton [...]

A month ago, Brad Miller and a dozen other Congressmen — including House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank — wrote the Financial Stability Oversight Council to ask that they look into the systemic dangers of foreclosure fraud. The letter requested that three very specific things be included in upcoming stress tests and overall consideration [...]

This was, IMO, the highlight of Bernie Sanders’ non-filibuster on Friday: GE is of course one of our major corporations, and in fact this recent disclosure pointed out the taxpayers of this country, through the Fed, provided $16 billion in bailout to General Electric during the recent crisis. This is what the head, CEO, of [...]

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder admitted what bmaz laid out yesterday — the problems with prosecuting WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange under the Espionage Act. But at the same time, he said, the Espionage Act may play a role in a possible Assange indictment. “I don’t want to get into specifics here, but people would [...]

As promised over the weekend before I realized I had forgotten my Toobz, I wanted to compare the behavior of two bailout recipients, the UAW and the banksters. A number of people have pointed to this intriguing interview about the Korea Trade deal with the UAW’s President Bob King. In addition to confirming my math [...]

The US determination to prosecute Julian Assange is not just a destructive and myopic scheme to effect prior restraint in a digital world, it is laughable from the point of legal foundation.

When Dwight Eisenhower warned of the creeping military-industrial complex, little did he know it would invade even the football trash talk of the liberal blog set. But, yet, here we are this week all soldiered up. That is because the big story today is the Army/Navy game. The reason I say Army/Navy is the big [...]