News & Views

WASHINGTON – Five wealthy people, led by Dallas industrialist Harold Simmons and Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, have donated nearly $1 of every $4 flowing to the super PACs raising unlimited money in this year's presidential race, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

WASHINGTON – Five wealthy people, led by Dallas industrialist Harold Simmons and Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, have donated nearly $1 of every $4 flowing to the super PACs raising unlimited money in this year's presidential race, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama launched a dialogue with corporate America on Wednesday over business tax reform, offering his first clear plan to cut the corporate tax rate, with little prospect of it becoming law in an election year.

A cushion of reliable income is a wonderful thing. It can help pay for basic necessities. It can be saved for rainy days or used to pursue happiness on sunny days. It can encourage people to take entrepreneurial risks, care for friends, or volunteer for community service.

The rich are different from you and me, but the really, really, really rich are also different from the merely rich.Sheldon Adelson, the moneybags who's pumped $11 million so far into Newt Gingrich's right-wing run, made $3.3 million dollars per hour last year. (File).

Ryan Lizza’s new article on policy making in the Obama administration is out in the latest edition of The New Yorker. One of the documents the piece rests on is a December 2008 policy memo from Larry Summers, the former director of the National Economic Council, to President Obama on the size and composition of the stimulus; Mr. Ryan shared it with me to get my take, and some of what I said is reflected in his article.

An audit by San Francisco county officials of about 400 recentforeclosures there determined that almost all involved either legal violations or suspicious documentation, according to a report released Wednesday.

RootsAction joins dozens of national organizations in calling for House Judiciary hearings on the need to amend Citizens United.

In Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case which could have an enormous effect on the future of the American food industry. This is Monsanto's third appeal of the case, and if they win a favorable ruling from the high court, a deregulated Monsanto may find itself in position to corner the markets of numerous U.S. crops, and to litigate conventional farmers into oblivion.

Here's where it gets a bit dicier. Two Supreme Court justices have what appear to be direct conflicts of interest.

As state governments wrestle with massive budget shortfalls, a Wall Street giant is offering a solution: cash in exchange for state property. Prisons, to be exact.