People have been wondering why the “progressive” Earl Blumenauer would willingly participate in Matt Bai’s hatchet piece on Social Security in the New York Times. Bai says that Blumenauer “sides with the White House” in the belief that “Democrats need to do something now about the federal debt,” starting with “cherished entitlement programs.” Blumenauer says [...]

The Canadian health care system is now on the receiving end of derision and mockery from Robert Gibbs, and White House courtier Roger Simon tells us Gibbs speaks for Obama. Remember when the White House had the JournoList set fan out and tell everyone the Bernie Sanders amendment to the health care bill was the [...]

(The following is the text of my speech at the Personal Democracy Forum on Thursday June 3, 2010 in New York City — jh) Thank you to Andrew and Micah for inviting me to be here today, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak on today’s topic: “Can the internet fix politics?” Which raises the [...]

Subbing for Rachel Maddow Tuesday night, Chris Hayes on the passage of Audit the Fed: CHRIS HAYES:  Something truly remarkable happened in Washington today.  The United States Senate passed something, by the way of a 96 to 0 vote — 96 in favor, 0 against.  Which means Democrats and Republicans voted together, for the same [...]

Richard Burr and Claire McCaskill are signaling that they will flip-flop on Audit the Fed in order to protect Wall Street’s secret bailouts from scrutiny. Burr and McCaskill are among 67 Senators who either voted for or cosponsored Audit the Fed in the past year. Wall Street was asleep when Alan Grayson and Ron Paul’s [...]

Dennis Kucinich knocked Alan Grayson out of the #1 spot and now leads the field in Day 4 of the FDL Fire Dog Contest, to determine which members of Congress will get FDL support in 2010.

Vote now for the 2010 FDL Fire Dogs

Vote now for the 2010 FDL Fire Dogs NY Congressman Eric Massa shotup from #6  to overtake Arizona’s Raul Grijalva for the #3 spot in the week-long contest where the FDL community votes to determine who will be the 2010 FDL Fire Dogs. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts also leaped from #27 to #16 after [...]

Grayson: Listen. Capitalism requires rewarding success and punishing failure. That’s what Joseph Schumpeter said almost a century ago. So far, we’ve seen plenty of reward for success on Wall Street, but no punishment for failure, not when the Fed is handing out blank checks.

It’s time we stop bailing out Wall Street and start investing in Main Street. But we need your support to help make that happen.

If you want us to keep fighting against the bankers and stop them from gutting the Paul-Grayson before it sees the light of day, please consider donating today.

RYAN GRIM: Just this morning the blog Firedoglake organized a letter that’s signed by the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and other economists saying we need to back the Paul/Grayson amednement and a vote for the Watt amendment is a vote for more secresy at the Fed, more secreat bailouts. But you also have unanimous Republican support for this in the committee, so you have this left/right convergence, kind of a grass roots movement, that is trying to challenge the establishment.