Buried within the “fiscal cliff” deal was a massive piece of Corporate Welfare for pharmaceutical giant Amgen. That’s not surprising given that the tax increases in the bill were completely offset by the Corporate Welfare stuffed into it – so a huge waste of time deficit wise. But the Amgen subsidy is causing consternation given [...]

Well this is embarrassing. While President Obama pretended raising taxes on those earning $250,000 $450,000 a year and making the rest of the Bush tax cuts permanent was some kind of achievement in fiscal discipline, he spent more than the revenue those taxes will bring in giving welfare to some of the richest corporations in [...]

What may be unknown to many who observed the “fiscal cliff” legislative brawl is that nestled within the legislation was a smorgasbord of corporate goodies. The corporate welfare provisions within the bill received scant attention as the chief concern for most was whether or not the Republican Congress would kill the deal and plunge America [...]

The Daily ShowGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook The not-as-funny way to make the point Jon Stewart made about the Republican conception of the entitlement society and where it fails to intersect with reality comes from Simon Johnson. The true “moochers” in American life are, not surprisingly, [...]

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions has delivered a fairly scathing report on for-profit colleges, arguing that they have provided far more benefits for shareholders than the students that matriculate at their institutions. As of 2009, the report said, three-quarters of students in for-profit colleges attended institutions owned either by publicly traded [...]

I stand by the opinion – backed up by decades of evidence – that we’re in the midst of an inexorable shift to the right in our politics. But sometimes, that shift really defies any conception of ideology at all. It really is the case that conservatives often knee-jerk oppose absolutely anything the opposition supports. [...]

As long as the news media devotes massive amounts of space to a fantasy budget, why can’t they turn their attention for just a minute to a more legitimate one? Sure, the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Budget for All isn’t likely to get much more than the 100 or so votes of its members, short of [...]

Pat Garofalo highlights one of the biggest problems with the corporate tax code, especially at it relates to the states. It turns out that getting to the bottom doesn’t guarantee you win the race: Just a few months ago, Illinois gave retail giant Sears $275 million to keep its corporate headquarters in the state, after [...]

Paul Ryan gave his big speech in Chicago today, desperately trying to reset the debate over his flailing plan for Medicare privatization. And he can pretty up the rhetoric as much as he wants, but in the end, it remains a program to get rid of Medicare. To take the pressure off, Ryan tried to [...]

The other vote we’ve been waiting for the Senate to hold, other than the one on the Ryan budget that ends Medicare, is a vote on ending $21 billion in fossil fuel subsidies to the Big 5 oil companies. This is another vote that has electoral potential, and it’s already proven to be a fairly [...]

Tax subsidies for Big Oil are giveaways to companies that make huge profits. The amount of subsidies that Democrats want to claw back over ten years represent 60% of what Big Oil made last quarter. Oil is traded on a global market, and the Congressional Research Service confirmed that eliminating the subsidies would have virtually [...]