You may have noticed news items that a company called Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) is proposing to have strapped localities use the public power of eminent domain to deal with the problem of underwater mortgages. Officials of San Bernardino County, California, where one home in two is worth less than the value of the mortgage on it, are very interested in the idea. The New York Times' Joe Nocera wrote a favorable column on the proposal, calling it the "last chance" to resolve the mortgage mess. But if using eminent domain as a way to address crisis in underwater mortgages is a promising idea, this particular scheme is not.
Over the past two decades, the financial services industry has become a pervasively unethical and highly criminal industry, with massive fraud tolerated or even encouraged by senior management. But how did that happen?
To establish male control in family life, both conservative Republicans and the Catholic Church propose taking a metaphor literally, that A Fertilized Egg Is A Person. Taking the metaphor literally allows for the claim that preventing abortions constitutes saving lives.
New York Times columnist David Brooks may not realize it, but when he recently bemoaned the state of American boys, he joined a long line of despairing worriers about American manhood. Worrying about boys is an older American pastime than baseball.
The DISCLOSE Act doesn't limit how much money individuals or corporations can spend on independent expenditures. All it does is require that this spending be disclosed publicly.
In the age of Obamacare, will porn stars finally have the security of health insurance, or will they get the shaft like they have so many times before?
Here's a playlist of previously released records meant to encourage Mitt Romney to come clean and release his own tax records. I also call upon Mitt Romney to release all of his other records too -- I'm thinking maybe there are a few Carpenters albums and a Mormon Tabernacle Choir box set.
After all the Republicans have done to coarsen the political rhetoric, they have little or no credibility to complain about negative campaign attacks now. The Republican attack machine has come back to haunt itself.
Casper's airy little fist packed no wallop when it came to impeding high-risk betting on Wall Street, the LIBOR lending rate manipulation or the disappearance of client money at MFGlobal. There's a much better way than Casper to catch a bankster: pay them to turn each other in.
It has been in the making, as consistently predicted in this blog, and now it is finally happening. The Sunni uprising against the Alawite-dominated regime of Bashar Assad is fast approaching the point of decision.
If one has nothing to hide, why not release a set of comprehensive records (Romney reportedly, after all, provided the McCain campaign with 20 years of returns when being vetted for VP)? The answer is simple -- Mitt Romney must have something to hide.
For those scores of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of individuals world-wide who suffer the consequences of unchecked compulsive behaviors, there is hope; there are alternatives.
With Obama campaigning like it's October, the photos of Prez in the rain in Virginia on Saturday drew plenty of buzz. For a day, at least, it felt like the return of "yes we can."
A party with fewer than 150,000 members is getting to call the shots on more and more issues. If the three Republicans who voted with Gov. Cuomo on the gay marriage law lose their nominations the Conservatives could make the next few years a nightmare.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has named over 1,000 counties in 26 states as disaster areas -- the largest declaration in history.
Unknown to most Americans, Washington's garrisoning of the planet is on the rise, thanks to a new generation of bases called "lily pads." These are small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.
In Freaks and Creeps, I head off to the farthest corners of the planet to seek out some of the strangest animals in existence.
I'm going on a journey to document my attempt to quit the very thing that quite possibly defines me: my beloved Buffalo Bills. My goal is nothing less than to be the savior of losing, trying to bring salvation to my fellow sports masochists. Their pain will become my pain.
Just a decade ago, this nation began to dig itself out from the Enron fall-out. At the core of Enron and the impetus behind the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was the importance of knowing who's in charge and who's making the decisions.
If a candidate's slogan is "Believe in America," shouldn't he invest in America? And will GOP governors really turn down 100 percent funding to cover free riders at hospitals?
I've learned that the fear that a girlfriend's parents won't like you can be squashed by being charming and giving a great first impression, basically pretending that you're a game-show host. Behind door number one is a nice, responsible young man who will pay for dinner, use "protection" and help you move... into a nursing home in five years.
Either the country can provide a lot of people a little bit of insurance coverage or provide a few people very generous coverage for treatment. We cannot have widely-available and generous health insurance.
There's been a lot of buzz recently about a new study that punched a few new holes in the already-tattered notion that weight gain and loss is simply a matter of "calories in vs. calories out."
The real question is not "Can liberal Christianity be saved?" The real question is: Can Christianity be saved?
Rarely is the only problem in the relationship the fact that he hasn't proposed. Sometimes we get so focused on why he isn't choosing us instead of asking ourselves if he is really the right choice for us.
CEO Romney's actions, in selecting Massachusetts as his base, suggest he understands the importance of government in making America a better place. But, Politician Romney's statements suggest otherwise. Which Romney are we supposed to evaluate for president?