Hope and change strikes again. A provision many are dubbing the “Monsanto Protection Act” was covertly inserted into the Agricultural Appropriations Bill that President Obama signed Tuesday. The provision protects genetically modified food interests from litigation. The provision protects genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health risks and has thus been dubbed [...]

Greg Palast has a new story out about Mitt Romney’s profit from Delphi Automotive, an auto parts subsidiary of GM, during the auto rescue. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or [...]

The successful auto industry rescue is definitely a feather in the cap for the Administration, protecting up to a million direct and indirect auto industry jobs, and putting GM and Chrysler in a position to succeed. Now there’s a new contract with the United Auto Workers to share the success with labor. One criticism of [...]

OPEC announced yesterday they would not increase oil production in the near future. The price of oil remains elevated, at around $100 a barrel, and this means prices will stay high. Goldman Sachs has estimated that gas prices could hit $5 a gallon this summer. The speculation embedded in the system of oil trading is [...]

The President visited a Chrysler plant in Kokomo, Indiana, to tout the success of the auto industry rescue. Obama said he “knew that the very survival of places like Kokomo were on the line” when he enacted the unpopular bailouts and that recent signs of progress for U.S. automakers vindicate his decision. “So here is [...]

We know that all the money sloshing around on TV will culminate in a last-week push to flood the airwaves with anti-Democratic messages. Basically, a series of outside groups are coordinating their spending together, apart from the party infrastructure and outside of any meaningful campaign finance constraints. They’ve gone completely around the RNC, seen as [...]

General Motors, the venerable American auto manufacturer which fell into bankruptcy and received substantial support from the US government, filed the initial papers for an IPO today, which will begin the process of allowing the Treasury Department to recoup some of its investment. In the filing, G.M. did not disclose the number of shares that [...]

The White House basically ended their efforts at passing an additional stimulus – defining stimulus as funding to increase demand that’s not offset – a while ago. Their strategy for the elections seems to be to cast their past decisions in a positive light, and highlight successes, contrasting with Republicans who wanted them to do [...]