The Associated Press recently ran an article with the intriguing title "Is GOP Trying To Sabotage Economy To Hurt Obama?". Here is the first paragraph of the article:

 Are Republican lawmakers deliberately stalling the economic recovery to hurt President Barack Obama's re-election chances? Some top Democrats say yes, pointing to GOP stances on the debt limit and other issues that they claim are causing unnecessary economic anxiety and retarding growth.

I've seen comments from several progressive bloggers on the question. Almost all seem to think the answer is obvious -- of course they are. After giving the matter some thought, I'm not so sure.

Now there is no question that the Republicans have used every legislative ...

Republicans tell lots of lies. That's probably because their economic policies have been disastrous and their social policies hard-hearted and mean-spirited. Telling the truth would expose them to public ridicule. But there is one lie they have been telling for years, and that lie irritates me more than any of the others. It is when they tell Americans that they are the party of fiscal responsibility and that is why they want to cut the deficit.

The chart above, which I have used before, shows that Republican presidents have not been fiscally responsible at all, but have been the biggest spenders in recent times (especially the "trickle-down" proponents, Reagan and Bush). The Republicans love to talk about fiscal responsibility, ...

The Technology Entertainment & Design nonprofit, commonly called TED, holds regular conferences where they invite speakers who have interesting or thought-provoking ideas -- and then they make those speeches public. It their way of fulfilling their slogan of "ideas worth spreading".

Recently they invited Nick Hanauer, a Seattle venture capitalist and early investor in Amazon.com, to give a speech. It was an excellent speech, but evidently the folks at TED considered it too dangerous -- because they have refused to post it on their website with all the other speeches they have sponsored.

What did this rich venture capitalist say that was so controversial? He basically upset the apple cart by admitting that rich people do not ...

“Unless you run a financial institution whose business model is built on cheating consumers, or making risky bets that could damage the whole economy, you have nothing to fear from Wall Street reform.” 

Those are the words of President Obama in asking for stronger Wall Street regulation. The need for this reform was highlighted recently by JPMorgan Chase's recent loss in the stock market of somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion dollars. This loss was probably not enough to put the giant bank in danger of failure, but it could have if the loss had been bigger (like what happened to some investment/banks when the market crashed only a few years ago).

Why should taxpayers care about what happens to a giant Wall Street ...

Political Cartoon is by Jeff Koterba in the Omaha World-Herald.