Here’s an almost completely unremarked-upon side effect of the foreclosure fraud settlement: the tax implications. If you are one of the lucky few eligible to receive a principal reduction from the settlement, when the banks aren’t paying off their penalty bulldozing homes and waiving deficiency judgments, you have to reckon with this: because of the [...]

More Democratic politicians embraced the #OccupyWallStreet protests today, supporting the core grievances of a broken economy and corporate influence as broadly similar to their own platforms. This includes the co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison, saying that “We share the anger and frustration of so many Americans who have seen the [...]

Greg Sargent gets some intelligence about how Congressional Democrats plan to proceed with trying to get the Catfood Commission II to include job creation measures in their final plan: (Rep. John) Larson and other senior Dems are also gravitating towards several new proposals to get the current super-committee to adopt job creation as a core [...]

What a silly person this John Larson is, thinking that Congress would create a jobs supercommittee. Why, what would that have to do with the deficit?   Rep. John Larson (Conn.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, wants to amend the recently passed debt-limit package to establish a joint select committee on job creation to operate [...]

House Democrats have been largely silenced in the debt limit debate. They’re the minority in a majoritarian body, so that’s somewhat natural. But seeing that the numbers are so close for any plan in the House that Democrats could hold the margin of victory, it’s a little curious. Now, House Democrats are responding to that [...]

The House Democrats are going back to a formula that started them on the road to success in 2005 – attacking the opposition for wanting to privatize Social Security. In this case, they will finally create a tough vote for the GOP – introducing a resolution opposing future privatization of the social insurance program, which [...]

While all the hoopla over Richard Shelby’s hostage situation is a little overhyped – if not him, some other Republican would have held each and every one of these nominees – it does amount to what you would call a “teachable moment” about the dysfunctional Senate. Anyone who thinks that the fillibuster is merely a [...]