Even in the Era of New Dysfunction, Congress usually manages to pass a defense authorization bill. The forces of nature demand that the war machine gets to set its budgets on time, even if the budgets for food stamps, welfare, the NIH, the Department of Education, etc., have to sit on pins and needles and [...]

The proposed 5.6% surtax on millionaires, essentially the creation of a new tax bracket at the $1,000,000 income level, would raise enough money to pay for the American Jobs Act, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That pay-for will be used when the Senate attempts to pass a cloture vote this week on the bill.

While President Obama has spent weeks crisscrossing the country publicly promoting his American Jobs Act, ironically in Washington his administration has been focused on lobbying Congress to approve a package of job-killing free trade deals. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the NAFTA-style South Korea Free Trade deal could cost America roughly 159,000 jobs while Colombia would export another 54,000.

Ezra Klein has a very long kind of apologia of the political class for why they failed to return the nation to prosperity after the financial crisis and Great Recession of 2008. I think the article is very good in capturing a point of view of the Administration and its defenders and their litany of excuses.

When Barack Obama ran for president he promised to respect the states’ medical marijuana laws. But since taking office Obama has been steadily using more and more parts of the federal government to wage a war on medical marijuana.

It appears that class warfare is totally OKIYAR.

In anticipation of an imminent Greek default, France and Germany have agreed to a big old-fashioned bank bailout, but so far, the details are secret. Since the two have disagreed on how to structure and allocate the costs of bank bailouts, this could be hopeful sign.

Tonight FDL will be hosting a webinar at 8pm ET on the NAFTA-style trade deals for Panama, Columbia and Korea that congress will vote on this week. Our guests will be actor Danny Glover, Chair of TransAfrica; Congressman Emanuel Cleaver and Professor Joseph Jordan of TransAfrica’s Scholars’ Council. TransAfrica Chief of Staff Joia Nuri will host the chat and serve as moderator. Be sure to sign up.

This video taken by one of the participants of the demonstration at the Air and Space Museum shows protestors (and legal counsel) telling what happened during the pepper spray incident in Washington DC on Saturday, in their own words.

The sides have been chosen. The political world has made their selections on Occupy Wall Street: Democrats are generally supportive though timid, and Republicans are claiming that it sows social unrest and class warfare. But Occupy movements are growing because Americans can see the difference between financial sector profits and what that sector did to their own paychecks.