Paul Krugman

Former Republican congressman/MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough was a guest on Al Sharpton's show this morning, talking about how the House needs a strong new Speaker and he pointed out that Boehner wasn't one and that McCarthy wouldn't have been one. He came up with the one person already proven: Nancy Pelosi. He didn't mention, at least not while I was watching, Paul Ryan. Paul Krugman got a bead on Ryan early on and has been warning American voters about his dangerous extremism for many years.

Boehner has been begging Paul Ryan to run for the Speakership-- and so are Mitt Romney and Kevin McCarthy, as well as almost every conservative even vaguely "mainstream" in the Republican House caucus. Ryan wants it but he's playing coy and making believe he has to confer with his wife.

I was happy for the U.K. last week when I read that the newly elected leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, had selected two of the world's most brilliant economists as advisers, Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz.

David Brock may be discredited for his Republican-like sliming of Bernie Sanders on behalf of the Clinton machine that has helped finance his career, but the watchdog organization he founded in 2004, Media Matters for America, is as vibrant and essential as it ever was.

Yesterday we looked at how the unicorn-like "reform conservatives" are trying to rationalize what is coming to look like Trumpian inevitability.

Monday Paul Krugman used his column to explain why-- after 80 years-- Republicans are still working to wreck Social Security. Americans love Social Security and it's not a smart move to try to undermine it...

A few weeks ago Blue America endorsed Eric Kingson, co-founder of Social Security Works, for the Syracuse-based congressional seat (NY-24), just a few weeks after GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush started espousing raising the retirement age and a few weeks before he started calling for a phasing out of Medicare and an end to the American social safety net-- i.e., the Paul Ryan plan.

In the new video above, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, asserts, "The only sure way to stop excessive risk-taking on Wall Street-- so that you don't risk losing your job or your savings or your home-- is to put an end to the excessive economic and political power of Wall Street by busting up the big banks."And in a new Senate report, Broken Promises: Decades of Failure to Enforce Labor Standards in Free Trade Agreements Elizabeth Warren punched back hard at the absurd contention

by Gaius PubliusJust a fast comment, a quick hit, since I'm on deadline editing an interview. The recent news is that the left-wing Syriza party has won the Greek general elections, sparking concern that Greece might default on its debt, on purpose, and exit the euro. Naturally the holders of that debt, led by Germany, are aghast at the prospect.

Last week we took a quick glance at Schumer's anti-Obamacare re-positioning, not because he's Chuckie Schumer, the consummate asshole from Brooklyn, but because he's in charge of DSCC massaging.