With Congress returning today after a two-week break, leaders from both parties are preparing legislative agendas — on issues including the economy, Iraq and immigration — designed to present the three remaining White House candidates with dangerous political choices.
MERIDIAN, Miss., March 31 — Sen. John McCain returned to his ancestral home state Monday to begin a week-long tour aimed at reintroducing himself to the American people and highlighting his military background.
Continue reading "A Campaign Tour of Places From His Past" »
As his Democratic presidential rivals squabble, Sen. John McCain has moved to transform his ragtag primary campaign into a general-election operation by boosting fundraising, establishing control over the Republican National Committee, and beginning a conversation with voters who live in states…
Continue reading "As Rivals Battle, McCain Builds November Machine" »
We saw it coming. Just as MySpace and Facebook change the way we communicate, just as YouTube alters the way we entertain ourselves, just as eBay and iTunes modify the way we shop, the Internet is transforming the way we engage with this never-ending presidential campaign. Like it or not, we now …
“The temptation of Washington is to say that anything short of a massive government intervention in the housing market amounts to inaction”
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, his tenure tarnished by allegations of political favoritism and a criminal investigation, announced his resignation Monday amid the wreckage of the national housing crisis.
He leaves behind a trail of unanswered questions about whether he tilted the Department of Housing and Urban Development toward Republican contractors and cronies.
The move comes at a shaky time for the economy, with soaring mortgage foreclosures imperiling the nation’s credit markets. Read more
Continue reading "HUD Secretary quits amid housing crisis and a criminal probe" »
AP – The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to step into two free speech cases, one involving a church that wants to place a religious monument in a park and the other on payroll deductions for labor union political activity.
Continue reading "Court agrees to take 2 free speech cases (AP)" »
Reuters – The White House on Monday said it
had sent nominations to the U.S. Senate to fill two empty
Democrat seats at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Continue reading "White House sends Democrat SEC nominations to Senate (Reuters)" »
“This plan commits not only to raise educational attainment of our state, but to do so in a way that also closes the gap between Ohio and our competitor states and nations”
The program would treat Ohio’s network of adult learning centers as community colleges, in a novel approach the state hopes will bolster its lagging college graduation rate. via WTCR-AM Huntington
The price of a gallon of gasoline increased to yet another “new high” of $3.29 — that’s 3.1 cents more in one week. Just looking not-so-far back, on January 17, 2005, when Bush began his second term, the average price was $1.84 a gallon.
Obviously, there are some implications here for what’s expected to be in store for oil company executives as they testify before Congress tomorrow.
More:
[Rep.] Markey has pointed out that even though Exxon earned a record $40.6 billion in 2007, oil companies have opposed a push by congressional Democrats to strip about $18 billion in tax breaks from big oil companies and put them toward planet-friendly energy alternatives like wind and solar.
The best quote from this piece in Newsweek: “Reading McCain’s economic agenda, and listening to his speech, it appears that the problem with the last eight years is that we haven’t seen enough tax breaks for the wealthy…” It’s a solid indictment of the (lack of) McCain economic policy, asking a key question: is his economic plan a joke or a fantasy?
But McCain wants to see Bush’s tax relief and raise it some. McCain would slash the corporate-income-tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent (because corporate profits as a percentage of GDP didn’t spike enough this decade?), and he’d abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax, which would be a welcome move for many upper-middle-class taxpayers. “In all, his tax-cutting proposals could cost about $400 billion a year, according to estimates of the impact of different tax cuts by CBO and the McCain campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
I wrote about the flip-flops, specifically on the Bush tax cuts, Friday. But while I suggested he had his finger in the wind, it’s also possible he just has no idea what his economic platform is.
And don’t forget to add in the cost of 100 years in Iraq.
AP – The United States was for slavery “before we were against it.”
Continue reading "Kerry argues for nuance in decisions (AP)" »
CQPolitics.com – It didn’t have the prominence of its presidential primary election earlier this month, but Texas Democrats this past weekend continued their complex and drawn-out process of apportioning national convention delegates to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
Continue reading "Obama’s Texas Turn-Around (CQPolitics.com)" »
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