Baucus, Grassley, Hatch, Snowe. These are the murderers. Murderers for hire. They have been bought, or have willing sold themselves, to the Health Insurers — Wellpoint, Aetna, Cigna, United.... We remain ill, we die so they can make money.
Krugman: On bad mornings I wake up and think that we are turning into a Latin American country.
On good mornings I think "This is America" and we have always in the past managed to turn ourselves around, and there's an FDR just around the corner.... I was kind of hoping that Obama might be FDR, but maybe not.
If America was officially a third world country, the International Monetary Fund would come in and say, "You have to break the power of your oligarchs. Those banking interests, they have too much power."
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The truth is that most people don't have parents who [can send them money].
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The American Dream is not totally dead but it's dying pretty fast. You look at the numbers on social mobility, on the ability of people to move from modest or poor backgrounds up, the United States is way down on the list.... You have a much better chance of getting up the scale in Finland or Sweden or France than in the United States.
On "Real Time with Bill Maher" Friday night, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said that while the American dream is not totally dead, it is "dying pretty fast," particularly when it comes to social mobility. Krugman made this statement during a lengthy discussion with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and host Bill Maher about the troubled state of the American economy and where we are in terms of reforming the system.
Both Krugman and Spitzer expressed optimism that America could right itself in the coming years if the correct steps were taken, but they were also highly critical of the degree of inequality that has become a part of American life and the lack of reform that has so far taken place.
"On bad mornings I wake up and think that we are turning into a Latin American country," Krugman said. "But on good mornings I think, well this is America, we have always in the past managed to turn ourselves around, and there is an FDR just around the corner if we could only find him. I was kind of hoping Obama might be FDR, but maybe not. "
"Trying to find the most corrupt member of Congress is like trying to find the wettest fish in the ocean."Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has published a report on the 15 most corrupt members in Congress. Of those 15— me
Incidentally, I now think the invasion was indeed an error: carried out at the wrong time, by the wrong coalition for the wrong reasons. But where I do agree with the “decents” is that those who opposed intervention in 2002/3 were arguing for the murderous Baathist regime to stay in power. This should remain on their conscience just as the murderous consequences of the invasion are on the conscience of those who supported the war.(via Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber, via comments at Aaronovitch Watch)
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