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Medicaid expansion for low-income Americans just can't catch a break, even with tentative support (or just giving in) from unexpected conservative corners, including Florida Governor Rick Scott. Yesterday, Representative Matt Salmon (R-Arizona), and five other lawmakers backed the Medicaid Expansion Repeal and State Flexibility Act, which would eliminate the Medicaid expansion included under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Research has shown that someone with a poor credit history is not automatically a poor job prospect. Nevertheless, millions of Americans who have emerged from the recession with medical debts or a record of late payments are at risk of being denied jobs by companies that use credit histories to screen applicants. Several states have placed limits on this practice. But until the federal government engages the issue more aggressively, employers will consign otherwise qualified applicants to a kind of pariah class that gets shut out of the job market.

The average retail sales job pays only $10.09 an hour, and some retail outlets—notably Walmart, the largest private employer in the world—pay as little as $8.00 per hour. But a handful of large retail companies have made generous compensation a key part of their business models, and it seems to be paying off.

The libertarian wing of the Republican Party is getting stronger with each passing year, and as a result, the end of America's disastrous 40-year "war on drugs" may finally be in sight. 

Last week, Professor Charles M. Jones, a noted economist at Columbia, published an opinion piece in Politico claiming to enlighten readers on the realities of high-frequency trading (or “HFT”), computer driven trading at millisecond speeds driven by complex algorithms based on complex trading strategies.

The liberal Connecticut Working Families Party and the conservative Independent Party of Connecticut probably don’t share a lot of ideological common ground.

But they agree on one issue: ending the practice of cross-endorsements would be a bad idea. The two parties were part of a loose coalition of disparate political groups that spoke out at a public hearing at the legislative office building Monday on Senate Bill 1146, which would ban the practice.

The Senate voted Friday to get rid of subsidies that “too big to fail” banks receive from what is, essentially, an unofficial insurance policy from the government. The unanimous vote, 99-0, is unfortunately nonbinding. It was an addendum to the Democrats’ 2014 budget proposal, which is not expected to live long.

Connecticut's experiment with New York-style fusion politics gave Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy two lines on the ballot in 2010, and he needed the votes cast on both to narrowly defeat Republican Tom Foley.

So, it's a little surprising that a push to end cross-endorsements is coming from one of the governor's strongest allies in the legislature, Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn. Or that Malloy is open to the idea.

One of the biggest problems with financial reform is having to discuss issues that most people find painfully boring. For instance, “derivatives.”