Given the incredible structural similarity between the Massachusetts health care reform law signed by Mitt Romney and the new national Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama, the release of the annual physician workforce survey (PDF) from the Massachusetts Medical Society has generated a lot of attention. But I would caution everyone involved that on [...]

Alan Simpson doesn’t like “the Catfood Commission people.” In a testy interview with Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim, the chair of Obama’s deficit commission questioned Grim’s stated facts about Social Security, speculating that Grim’s information came from “the Catfood Commission people.”

To help define what role Firedoglake should play in the 2012 election and beyond, on Wednesday, May 11, at 7:00 pm EDT, I plan, as part of the FDL members webinar series, to examine four basic electoral strategies that have been used by groups or organizations to influence the political process. They include: Primaries Balance [...]

According to Bradley Manning’s attorney David Coombs, Manning’s confinement conditions have improved dramatically. veryone who said that Manning was being stripped naked, held in solitary confinement and shackled in chains “for his own good” was evidently lying. It should be obvious to everyone now that Manning’s mental health status was being mis-classified as a way to abuse and punish him, in complete violation of both the Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Jonathan Gruber, the economist paid by the White House to consult on the health care reform law, has put out a paper for the Commonwealth Fund that reaches the conclusion that the law is pretty good. What is interesting is that even this supporter and part architect of the law is forced to admit that [...]

The Hill is reporting that the Obama administration is flirting with the idea of taxing cars based on how many miles they drive. From the Hill: The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they [...]

The Obama Administration intends to meet Congressional demands to move all three pending NAFTA-style “free trade” agreements with Colombia, Korea, and Panama by an arbitrary deadline of July 1

Imagine that, for absolutely no logical reason, the government was about to mail you a check for $4 billion, but some people want to stop you from getting that check. How much would you be willing to pay to make sure you got your hands on that $4 billion? The selfish rational answer is, you [...]

I’ve been told that, after nine years, the reason we must continue to spend billions fighting in Afghanistan is to prevent it from again “becoming a safe haven for terrorists.” Alternately, I’ve also been told we can’t pull out of Afghanistan because that could destabilize Pakistan and allow it to become a “safe haven for [...]

Imagine if five of the 12 voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee were selected exclusively by unemployed Americans, instead of the current system of having them chosen by rich bank executives. This could be done. Currently five of the voting members on the FOMC, which sets monetary policy, are presidents of one of [...]