ArcaMax

For four decades, the basic deal between big American corporations and politicians has been simple. Corporations provide campaign funds. Politicians reciprocate by lowering corporate taxes and doing whatever else corporations need to boost profits.

The deal has proven beneficial to both sides, although not to the American public. Campaign ...Read more

Joe Biden is embarking on the biggest government initiative in more than a half-century, “unlike anything we have seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades go,” he says.

But when it comes to details, it sounds as boring as fixing the plumbing.

“Under the American Jobs Plan, 100% of our nation’...Read more

Republicans are outraged — outraged! — at the surge of migrants on the southern border. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, declares it a “crisis ... created by the presidential policies of this new administration.” Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs claims “we go through some periods where we have these surges, but right now is probably ...Read more

The most dramatic change in American capitalism over the last half-century has been the emergence of corporate behemoths like Amazon and the simultaneous shrinkage of organized labor. The resulting imbalance has spawned near-record inequalities of income and wealth, corruption of democracy by big money, and the abandonment of the working class. ...Read more

A quarter-century ago, I and other members of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet urged him to reject the Republican proposal to end welfare. It was too punitive, we said, subjecting poor Americans to deep and abiding poverty. But Clinton’s political advisers warned that unless he went along, he jeopardized his reelection.

That was the end of welfare as...Read more

In 1963, when the newly sworn-in Lyndon Baines Johnson was advised against using his limited political capital on the controversial issue of civil and voting rights for Black Americans, he responded: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”

America is again approaching a crucial decision point on the most fundamental right of all in a ...Read more

Donald Trump formally anointed himself head of the Republican Party at Sunday’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Grand Old Party, founded in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin, is now dead. What’s left is a dwindling number of elected officials who have stood up to Trump but are now being purged. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch ...Read more

Like the poor across America and much of the world, poor Texans are getting hammered by climate change.

The state’s prevailing social Darwinism was expressed most succinctly by the mayor of Colorado City, who accused his constituents — trapped in near-subzero temperatures and complaining about lack of heat, electricity and drinkable water �...Read more

While most of official Washington has been consumed with the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation.

Congress is moving ahead with President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expands health care and unemployment benefits and contains one of...Read more

This week’s Senate impeachment trial is unlikely to convict Donald Trump of inciting sedition against the United States. At least 17 Republican senators are needed for conviction, but only five have signaled they’ll go along.

Why won’t Republican senators convict him? After all, it’s an open-and-shut case. As summarized in the brief ...Read more

Ten Senate Republicans have proposed a COVID-19 relief bill of about $600 billion. That’s less than a third of President Joe Biden’s plan. They promise “bipartisan support” if he agrees.

Their proposal isn’t a compromise. It would be a total surrender. It trims direct payments and unemployment aid that Americans desperately need. ...Read more

The sudden lurch from Donald Trump to Joe Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government — CEOs and their army of lobbyists.

Notwithstanding Biden’s ambitious agenda, dozens of giant corporations have said they will not donate to the 147 members of Congress who objected to the ...Read more

I keep hearing that Joe Biden will govern from the “center.” He has no choice, they say, because he’ll have razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican Party has moved to the right.

Rubbish. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I�...Read more