From the Dispatch - News

Intuit, a private firm that manufactures TurboTax, has pushed California lawmakers to eliminate the popular, successful, and cost-effective public tax filing services, ReadyReturn and CalFile. These two programs offer millions of low- and middle-income Californians a free and reliable method to calculate and file taxes.

Two years of courtroom battles ended on Monday as Georgia received a green light from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to go ahead with its controversial voter verification system, a major step backward for the state.

We've detailed in the past the way new international trade deals empower corporations to undermine local regulations. A recent case highlights just how byzantine and dangerous the process is getting: A Canadian mining company is using a recently established Nevada subsidiary to use the federal Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to try and overturn mining regulations in El Salvador. Earlier this month, a tribunal under CAFTA ruled against the US government’s objections to the mining company's lawsuit and allowed the case to proceed.

Right-wing officials have consistently expressed opposition to the federal recovery effort, even as they take credit for the American Recovery and Reinvestment ACT's (ARRA) impcat on economic growth. The combination with promoting budget-busting tax cuts while bemoaning the deficit just adds to the hypocrisy of rhetoric on the right.

Overriding a veto by their Governor, the Conneticut Legislature has strengthened its Citizen's Election system of public financing of elections that was first instituted in 2005. Responding to a bad decision by a federal appeals court, the Legislature has fixed the system and increased the public financing available to candidates.