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| Politics But We're Superinnocent The surest sign that Republicans killed the supercommittee is their continued insistence that they didn't. Posted Tuesday, Nov 29, 2011, at 11:55 PM ET  If you think that political leaders can't link arms and get things done, you haven't been watching the aftermath of the supercommittee. Sure, the 12-member team of rivals never came up with a deficit-shrinking plan. Its existence cheapened the prefix "super" more than anything since Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. But when the Gang of 12 died, the six Republicans who killed it formed a new pact: They would tell the history of the superfailure and the debt crisis the way it should be remembered. Oh, that embarrassing slapstick collapse? It was the other side's fault. Democrats absorbed the collapse and moved right along. After issuing a statement and giving a punchy press conference, respectively, Sens. Patty Murray and John Kerry basically stopped talking about it. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, co-chairman of the committee, signed off on the statement immediately before the Wall Street Journal published his woe-is-us op-ed. "Republicans were willing to agree to additional tax revenue," he wrote, "but only in the context of fundamental pro-growth tax reform." Alas. "The Democrats said no. They were unwilling to agree to anything less than $1 trillion in tax hikes—and unwilling to offer any structural reforms to put our health-care entitlements on a permanently sustainable basis." Three days later, Hensarling combined his powers with his five Republican cohorts; all six of them published an op-ed (this time in the Washington Post) blaming failure on the Democrats' wanting "$1 trillion in tax hikes." This week, as they returned ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Proof That Republicans Sabotaged the Supercommittee: They Keep Insisting They Didn't Humans Should Build a Beacon so Aliens Can Find Us. Here's How We Can Do It. Joke Thief Carlos Mencia Is Making a Comeback, but It's Hard To Cheer for Him | Advertisement   |
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| Moneybox A Secret Scandal The government and the big banks deceived the public about their $7 trillion secret loan program. They should be punished. Posted Wednesday, Nov 30, 2011, at 06:34 PM ET  Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth: At the time you made the statements to the bank, you actually were unemployed, you had a $1 million mortgage on your house on which you had failed to make payments for six months, and you hadn't paid even the minimum on your credit-card bills for three months. Do you think the bank would just say: Never mind, don't worry about it? Of course not. Whether or not you had paid back the personal line of credit, three FBI agents would be at your door within hours. Yet this is exactly what the major American banks have done to the public. During the deepest, darkest period of the financial cataclysm, the CEOs of major banks maintained in statements to the public, to the market at large, and to their own shareholders that the banks were in good financial shape, didn't want to take TARP funds, and that the regulatory framework governing our banking system should not be altered. Trust us, they said. Yet, unknown to the public and the Congress, these same banks had been borrowing massive amounts from the government to remain ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Proof That Republicans Sabotaged the Supercommittee: They Keep Insisting They Didn't Humans Should Build a Beacon so Aliens Can Find Us. Here's How We Can Do It. Joke Thief Carlos Mencia Is Making a Comeback, but It's Hard To Cheer for Him | Advertisement |
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| Brow Beat For the First Time, Stephen King Makes NYT's 10 Best Books Posted Wednesday, Nov 30, 2011, at 09:40 PM ET  The New York Times' list of "The 10 Best Books of 2011," announced today, includes four first-time novelists and one fifty-first-time novelist. The NYT's own analysis of the list points out that the number of first-time novelists is unprecedented—the only other year more than one first-time novelist made the list was in 2007, when Michael Thomas's Man Gone Down and Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End were both selected—but it makes no mention of the one 51st-time-novelist (give or take a novella), Stephen King. To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Proof That Republicans Sabotaged the Supercommittee: They Keep Insisting They Didn't Humans Should Build a Beacon so Aliens Can Find Us. Here's How We Can Do It. Joke Thief Carlos Mencia Is Making a Comeback, but It's Hard To Cheer for Him | Advertisement |
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