Within one week Republicans are going to grab the national spotlight on two huge issues that should be the realm of the party who stands up for the little guy. That party used to be the Democratic party. How can they let this happen?

On Friday, at the CPAC convention, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher is going to call for breaking up the big banks in the wake of a failed Dodd-Frank bill.

Three national organizations offered a scathing criticism of policies endorsed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, in a conference call with reporters last week. Their findings strike a stake in the heart of ALEC claims that its view of the world — lower taxes, fewer workplace protections, and diminished public investments — is good for the public.

We need leadership from the Progressive Caucus on economic issues. It’s time to get rid of the dumb theories that led us into the Great Crash and replace them with ideas that will make the economy work for everyone.

Thomas Friedman is once again mass marketing misinformation on economics, something that he does all too frequently. Just about everything in the piece is 180 degrees wrong: the Friedman standard.

The January Jobs reports are out and for once, there is a modicum of (somewhat) good news. The Labor Department reported 157K new jobs for January 2013 and significantly revised both November and December 2012 numbers upwards.

Most people know that the deficit whiners live largely in a fact free zone, but every now and then it is worth trying to throw a few in their direction in the quest for intelligent life. The immediate motivation is Joe Scarborough’s latest tirade after having Paul Krugman as a guest on his show.

A Sunday drive with the whole family packed together in the old station wagon staring out the back window at the yachts plying the inter-coastal waterway and pointing out to each other the palatial homes that sat on the beach shore as we drove north on AIA; stopping at McDonald’s for hamburgers and fries on the drive home and sitting outside on the tiled cement tables enjoying food as different from mom’s tallateli, melongene, or pasta e fagioli as the places we just drove through were from our own neighborhood, and thinking how it would feel to be sailing under a raised bridge out to an open sea as the cars waited for us to pass.

One part of the “fiscal cliff” deal that received little attention was the expiration of the middle class payroll tax cut. The tax increase occurred immediately and hit workers right in the paycheck.

While the lower classes may not drive the economy, their spending does have influence.

Joe Stiglitz had an Opionator piece in the NYT arguing that inequality was bad for growth. Krugman responded by taking issue with a couple of the points raised by Stiglitz: that upward redistribution of income leads to fiscal problems and that upward redistribution of income leads to stagnation.

I love the new homophobia. In the vein of Chik-Fil-a, bigoted establishments welcome gay dollars, but want to condemn at the same time. In New Bern, NC on December 4, Ariel and Shawnee McPhail walked into The Stingray Café, sat down and had their meal, and had this handed to them by the restaurant’s owner, Ed McGovern — after they had paid and were leaving.