Media

Rupert and James Murdoch have even more explaining to do after today's arrest of James Desborough, the former U.S. editor of News of the World, and Tuesday’s allegations that top editors at the paper knew about the use of phone hacking by reporters. While the Murdochs have pleaded ignorance about the sordid doings of their underlings, a growing pile of evidence suggests that at least James was very much in the loop. That is not surprising. You don’t build a business empire – or even inherit one – by being a hands-off boss.

Here's some positive news out of Europe for a change: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called yesterday for a tax on financial trades. This isn't a new idea -- European leaders have pushed it before -- but a financial transaction tax (FTT) is a good idea that deserves to be taken seriously on both revenue-hungry sides of the Atlantic.

According to Fox News Latino, Texas' economy isn't the only one showing that the road to prosperity is paved by austerity. Since March of this year, the unemployment rate in Puerto Rico has fallen from 16.9 to 14.9 percent. Never mind that the Puerto Rican economy still endures an unemployment rate greater than any other state.

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a pair of decisions affirming campaign finance disclosure provisions in Maine and Rhode Island. I let out a sigh of relief when I read them.

Some progressives might be skeptical of the argument -- which I have made often -- that today's Republican Party is less and less trusted by Wall Street. After all, congressional Republicans slavishly service the financial industry on Capitol Hill, most recently by trying to gut the Dodd-Frank law and stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from ever operating. 

Let's say you're a member of the upper class. You work as an investor or a banker or an entrepreneur or a highly paid professional (like a doctor, lawyer, or accountant) or a business owner in some industry like retail or transportation. Or maybe you don't work at all, but live off your stocks and bonds. Which economic scenario looks more attractive to you, strictly in terms of how it will affect your bottom line:

Warren Buffet, the second richest person in America, has spent years complaining about how tax policy favors billionaires like himself. Now, with another big fight over revenues looming in Washington, Buffett is once again calling for tax hikes on the wealthy -- penning an op-ed in today's Times entitled "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich."

In its bombshell of a report “Discrediting America,” the nonpartisan public policy research group Demos sums up the problem for black and Latinos:

Credit reports largely mirror racial and economic divides, with African Americans and Latinos disproportionately likely to have lower scores. In turn, these communities are more likely to be offered high-priced loan products, which may contribute to more defaults, maintaining and amplifying historical injustice.