Notice how all but one of those tax credits are geared towards and most affect your average working people? Nothing about all the corporate tax credits. I’m a bit too lazy to go do all the research for this but I’d make a WAG that the reason the corporate tax credits aren’t showing is because they are all broken down to the lowest level possible, most likely by industry. Far easier to keep things looking smaller to say “Oil Industry Tax Credits” or “Technology Tax Credits” rather than just to say “Corporate Tax Credits” – makes them look far smaller than the dastardly Earned Income Tax Credit or Mortgage Interest deduction.

For what it’s worth, I’m fairly certain that McDonalds goes through a hiring exercise of this nature most every spring; they just consolidated it all to one day this year and apparently received the hoped for public relations splash.

Today’s Initial Unemployment Claims report for last week is out and once again, the economists have their rose colored glasses on.

But hey! McDonald’s is hiring, right?

Attached strings are bad. Unless they tie you where you already want to be.

When impunity replaces accountability, you are left with the rituals of democracy instead of its substance.

David Sirota wrote about the failing public services in New York City due to lack of funding, New York Provides A Snowy Glimpse Into America’s Future but leaves out one important issue, it’s not an accident.

“Welcome to the New Normal.”

After having spent five months in the Gulf, I decided to read Bob Cavnar’s book of the story behind the Deepwater well blowout starting with chapter 7 on the “BP-government merger.” This was one of the most troubling twists in events that I had witnessed in the Gulf. I figured if he could shed some light on this, then maybe he would have frank insights on how we got into this mess – beyond the human error – and how we might avoid another.

Lots of chatter today about the new Pew Poll that shows the public’s growing dissatisfaction with government. What I found interesting was that Democrats and Independents are pretty consistently skeptical no matter who is in the White House, but Republicans trust government far more than any other group when Republicans are in charge.

President Obama and the Democratic Establishment agree that this is a center-right nation. They leave governance to the epistemic arrogance of their most conservative. Too bad about your good ideas, they don’t count.

How appropriate Sen. John McCain didn’t mention the words “middle class” in this week’s presidential debate—or in the first presidential debate.

Because as a proponent of and heir to the greedy, corrupt, rich-first regime of the past eight years, McCain and the conservative ideologues he’s trying to distance himself from to win the election, are reaping the rotten fruits of policies that have systematically devastated the sound financial foundations of America’s working families.