Bill Moyers: Neil Barofsky’s disappointment with Vikram Pandit and President Obama

October 23, 2012 | Former TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky explains his disappointment with the former Citigroup CEO and the president for failed financial leadership.

Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Cold Shot"

Who Stole the American Dream?

The promise of a prosperous middle-class life with decent work, rising living standards, and the potential for a better future has long been the foundation of the American dream. But as America continues to struggle to recover from the Great Recession, it has become clear that the middle class is in jeopardy – and many of the policies of the last 40 years are to blame.



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Carl Sagan in 1994

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when we're a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition". – Carl Sagan (1934-1996), astronomer and popularizer of science, in 1994

How the GOP became the party of the rich

The staggering economic inequality that has led Americans across the country to take to the streets in protest is no accident. It has been fueled to a large extent by the GOP's all-out war on behalf of the rich. Since Republicans rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the wealthy in 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million – while their share of the tax burden has plunged by 40 percent

Tim Dickinson | rollingstone.com
9 Nov 2011

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."

Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"

The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"

The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

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The Last Word - Sen. Webb rewrites Mitt Romney

Sarah Muller | msnbc.com
28 Sept 2012

We've heard from his own mouth that Mitt Romney thinks of "47 percent" of Americans as takers dependent on government.

Before introducing President Obama at a campaign rally in Virginia on Thursday, Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a former Marine who served in Vietnam, called out the Republican presidential candidate over those harsh comments and reminded him of what the so-called "47 percent" has done for the country, which includes members of the military:

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