It’s all about making tough choices fer our granchirren’ To all my fellow under-55-ers: If you want to know why we have to fund the over-55-ers’ full Medicare and Social Security benefits, leaving nothing for the rest of us, here’s…

For all those feeling the pinch this Tax Day, rest assured America’s wealthiest one percent have no idea what you’re going through. Not only have they shaved over $100 billion off their income taxes thanks to Bush’s tax cuts, but many won’t be paying their property taxes, either.

People don’t seem that interested in talking about Wall Street’s unpunished and ongoing rape of America anymore these days. And that’s too bad. Because Koch Industries has a lot more in common with Wall Street than most people realize.

Data pulled from publicly-accessible federal contract databases shows that over the past 15 years, the Kochs have milked the U.S. war machine for about $170 million, all while funding libertarian groups, organizations and media outfits with anti-war positions.

Why are American taxpayers forced to subsidize the billionaire Koch brothers’ massive campaign contributions to Republican Party politicians, the Tea Party movement, and policies that ensure greater subsidies to the Kochs, while cutting more public services to the taxpayers who…

This article was first published in Alternet. Now that the shock of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting is starting to wear off and the country is returning to its normal insanity again, we’re back to facing a far worse, far more…

In the summer of 2004, I published an article in the New York Press that answered Thomas Frank’s question “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” The Bush-Kerry campaign was heating up, and it was clear to me that the American left…

“I will steal your hard-earned money!” This article was first published on AlterNet. Meg Whitman has always wanted to be Number One in her field. So although it must rankle Whitman that her $1.3 billion in wealth only ranks her…

This article was first published on AlterNet With the elections for governor just around the corner, most California voters probably think they have a pretty good grasp of the pros and cons of Republican candidate Meg Whitman: on the downside,…

  This article was first published on TruthDig.com If tea party candidates were serious about stopping runaway spending and bringing fiscal responsibility to Washington, they would have to address one of the most egregious wastes of taxpayer dollars: federal farm…

An abridged version of this article was first published in the New York Observer Mainstream America is finally getting to know the billionaire brothers backing the libertarian movement, thanks to a pair of dueling profiles in New York and The…

This article was first published in the New York Press. Wall Street bankers and retired hedge fund billionaires have been talking about fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, preparing the masses for austerity measures and cuts in social services—which we are…

This article was first published in Alternet What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn’t a safe, secure, or even desirable…

This article first appeared in Alternet. Ray Dalio is a billionaire hedge fund manager who makes more money in a single day than most Americans will earn in their entire lifetimes. That’s because hedge funds are the top of the…

First published on Alternet Welcome to Gilded Age 2.0, a time when government has become an appendage to the super-rich, used by industrialists, financiers and corporate robber barons to monopolize the economy and strip regular citizens of power and money….

This article first appeared in The New York Press. There was a strange moment last week during President Obama’s speech at Cooper Union. There he was, groveling before a cast of Wall Street villains including Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein,…

This article was first published on Alternet.org “I would rather live under a bridge than live under socialism” —tea bagger slogan   Everyone knows that Tea Party revolutionaries fear and hate socialism about as much as the Antichrist. Which is…

This story was first published on Alternet. There is a fresh interpretive fad in the young field of Tea Party Studies: The New Right of 2010 as the New Left of the 1960s. According to this nascent meme, today’s conservative…

In case you mighta mistaken South Carolina Republican Joe “You Lie!” Wilson for a principled populist who stuck his neck out on behalf of regular folks, this makes it clear that Wilson is nothing but a healthcare industry buttboy, and…

This article first was first published in Alternet. While Tea Party movement followers ran around Nashville last week dressed up in their Paul Revere period costumes, blathering about their heroic struggle against Obama’s Islamosocialist tyranny, the right-wing elite that nurtures…

It’s that time of the year again when AIG’s executive bonuses are announced…and as every American raised on sitcoms knows, this means it’s that time in the show when the plot-twist causes the audience to gasp, and the camera cuts…

If President Obama wants to really understand why he got his ass handed to him in the Massachusetts Senate race—a defeat as shocking and strange as if Joe Lieberman was elected president of Iran—he might want to read one of…

This article was first published in Alternet. A lot of us have been wondering, despondently, why the Hell Barack Obama is keeping Timothy Geithner on the job as Treasury Secretary, given his central role in the plunder of trillions of…

This article first appeared in Alternet. Wall Street Vampires: Lately, a lot of Americans, myself included, have used the blood-sucking freaks as a metaphor to describe the Wall Street billionaires who rule us, and who are ruining us.  Like so…

We’ve been lied to for years now about the severity of California’s water shortage. The media and state officials have been ringing the alarm,  warning that the state was in the grips of the quite possibly the “worst California drought…