Eric Martin

by Eric Martin Why tax cuts for businesses is particularly ill-suited for stimulating the economy as it stands: For months, companies have been sitting on the sidelines with record piles of cash, too nervous to spend. Now they're starting to deploy some of that money – not to hire workers or build factories, but to prop … Read more

by Eric Martin You get what you pay for: A full 90 members of Congress who voted to bailout Wall Street in 2008 failed to support financial reform reining in the banks that drove our economy off a cliff. But when you examine campaign contribution data, it's really no surprise that these particular lawmakers voted … Read more

by Eric Martin Spencer Ackerman has been doing yeoman's work uncovering the ways by which Blackwater – despite its horrific record of law-breaking and wrongdoing – is continuing to secure significant portions of multi-billion dollar government contracts (see also): Never mind the dead civilians. Forget about the stolen guns. Get over the murder arrests, the … Read more

by Eric Martin Apparently, the health insurance industry has its knives out in anticipation of gutting the Affordable Care Act, and you'll never guess which Party it intends to anoint as butchers by proxy: The insurance industry, attracted by the prospect of millions of new customers as a result of the coverage mandate, initially backed … Read more

by Eric Martin Apparently, Fox News' parent Corp. wasn't done giving to Republican Party causes/organizations: Ben Smith reports that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, after having donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, has also donated to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a pro-Republican business lobby. Yeah, Obama sure was out of bounds to suggest … Read more

by Eric Martin I'm pretty sure that opposition to this community center is out of sensitivity to the non-Mulism victims of 9/11: My God is better than your God. That's the dispute at the heart of recent hearings in a lawsuit aimed at derailing the new Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. What started as a zoning issue has … Read more

by Eric Martin Sadly, I know the feeling:  

by Eric Martin Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a speech yesterday defending a recently passed California law setting emissions standards/targets that, in many ways, shocked me deeply.  The reason for my surprise (pleasant at that) is that Schwarzenegger spoke some truths that are rarely uttered by mainstream politicians – and even less frequently by politicians on the … Read more

by Eric Martin Conor Friedersdorf's expresses his frustration with the Republican Party's rhetorical reverence of freedom and liberty (in the context of domestic safety net policies) while actively working to undermine actual freedom and liberty in tangible ways at home.  After citing an alarming list of ways in which civil liberties have eroded in recent years, … Read more

by Eric Martin Bernard Finel, riffing on the wrongheaded suggestion from the otherwise intelligent David Axe that the US involve itself militarily in the Congo (because, hey, our military is getting lazy just sitting around doing nothing, and our budget surpluses need to be spent somewhere, and winning other nations' civil wars is something of a … Read more