In an interview from February 2009, Amy Goodman interviews Pulitzer-winning reporting team Jim Steele and Don Barlett about the breakdown of America's tax system, and why Geithner's tax lapses were so much more egregious than Tom Daschle's.

In case you don't remember, or never knew who they were in the first place, Don Barlett and Jim Steele are a highly-respected Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team who wrote a hard-hitting series (turned into a book) almost 20 years ago, called "America: What Went Wrong?" Now they write:

Over the last year we’ve received some remarkable e-mails and letters about something we wrote nearly 20 years ago.

“Your story,” wrote a man from Springfield, IL, “is still going on, but unfortunately few people are aware of the causes, only the dire consequences.”

Our story was a newspaper series and then a bestselling book, America: What Went Wrong? that caused a sensation in the early 1990s by explaining to millions of middle-class Americans why they were losing ground, and why it wasn’t their fault. A:WWW pinned the blame squarely on an alliance between Washington and Wall Street that was implementing policies that were destroying good-paying jobs and eroding hard-earned benefits.

America: What Went Wrong? was controversial. We took plenty of heat from some economists and others who claimed that the agony millions were experiencing had nothing to do with policy, but was just one of those rough patches America had to go through as our economy reinvented itself.

But to thousands of Americans who wrote to us, America: What Went Wrong? explained what had happened to them — and why things might get even worse. And in the last year we’ve been hearing again from many distressed Americans, with comments like these:

“(You) outlined the problems and predicted this . . . No one listened and now we are paying.”

”If everyone had read your book, today’s economy would not be a shock.”

“It is ironic how we face many of the same issues nearly two decades later.”

“Maybe it is time to write a sequel to your great book.”

Some of those who wrote had read America: What Went Wrong? when it was first published; others have recently discovered it. But the message was the same: tell the nation what has created the crisis that is hurting so many people today.

Your messages arrived as we were thinking of doing just that.

We’ve been frustrated by the superficial nature of news accounts describing the current economic meltdown. Most stories focus on immediate causes such as the housing bubble. While that has certainly been a major factor, it overlooks the underlying cause: a series of public and private policies over the last 40 years that are dismantling the American middle class. The current recession is just the latest stage in this progression.

I not only read and admired that original series, I even got to interview Don Barlett, who's actually one of the nicest people in journalism. The series was such a national phenomena, I used to throw it in editors' faces every time they said "readers aren't interested in long-form, comprehensive stories." All I know is, until it came out in book form years later, the Inquirer had a full-time employee who did nothing but answer reprint requests. (This was before everyone had the intertubes, of course.)

American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop is sponsoring this year-long series, which is being co-published with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Barlett and Steele's former employer.

Here's the first part in Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele's "What Went Wrong: The Betrayal of the Middle Class," called "America's 2-class Tax System." Read it, send it to everyone you know:

Eric Cantor, who has represented a section of Richmond, Va., in Congress since 2001 and now is the House majority leader, appears to want to craft a permanent U.S. tax system that caters exclusively to those at the top. So does Michele Bachmann, the Republican representative from Minnesota, a onetime tax lawyer who hopes to make a run for the White House. Likewise, Tim Pawlenty, the former two-term Republican governor of Minnesota, who also sees himself sitting in the Oval Office. Needless to say, none state their proposals like that. But that's the way their numbers and provisions add up.

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I am new to Crooks and Liars. Last Friday when Open Left, where I had blogged previously, sadly closed down, John emailed me that very afternoon to ask me to blog here. My answer was that "I would be thrilled," and so I am.

I have had decades of activism and involvement in women's rights women's abortion rights. Abortion rights are absolutely the integral to the ideas and attainment of freedom and equality for women. Without them, they can not be free or equal, or even safe.

This is part 3 of my series on HR #3 which I began at Open Left. Given the rapid onslaught of anti-abortion legislation being produced by the radical Republican right (the only jobs they seem to be producing are for clerks who have to write up the legislation), I will be writing more. Here are the prior two posts in this series.

An Anti Abortion Bill and lots, lots more

HR #3: The Whole Bill is Rape - Not Just the Rape Provision

David Waldman (aka KagroX) wrote an excellent post at Daily Kos last about just how potentially big a net the theory underlying this bill could cast. Very wide, wide enough to get a whale.

It's titled, "H.R. 3 hides even bigger dangers than redefinition of rape". Again I quote him:

" Take the rape provisions out, and you're left with a bill that paves the way for using the tax code to select every American's health care options for them, direct from Washington."

The bill lays the groundwork for the radical right to target every social and economic advance that they don't like. And they don't like much. They are redefining the purpose of the tax code. Taxes are meant to raise money and to apportion fairly the burdens and benefits of government. Taxes have been used to promote innovation like the R&D credit. Or not, like the oil depletion allowance or agricultural subsidies. The tax code has been used to allow religious groups to sustain their mission - to worship and to make the world a better place.

The tax code, as we can see from the church/synagogue/mosque-friendly provisions, have long served social goals as well. But that can now be used to go after social goods.

More after the fold from me and I quote David

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I hate it when Obama gives credence to the right wing's "Social Security is broken" meme (not to mention their oh-so-inconsistent fixation on the deficit), but by most accounts, the planned changes to Social Security sound like positive ones, like raising the cap on earnings. We'll be keeping an eye on it:

WASHINGTON - Just one week after President Obama signed a stimulus package designed to give a short-term boost to the economy, some of the nation's top budget analysts plan to deliver a stark warning today at a White House summit that an even more foreboding long-term crisis will unfold unless Obama quickly fixes Social Security, health care, the tax code, and more.

While the $787 billion stimulus plan relies on tax cuts and increased spending, the list of problems to be addressed at the "Fiscal Responsibility Summit" could result in a series of painful political decisions that might eventually include tax increases and cuts in government benefits.

And although the stimulus package was passed almost entirely by Democrats, any significant changes on taxes and entitlements are considered unlikely without bipartisan support.

The measures to control the federal deficit are considered so controversial that some members of Congress are urging that Obama create a powerful commission, composed of leaders of both parties, to reach a "grand bargain" that would be subject to an up-or-down vote in Congress, possibly with no amendments allowed.

"The stimulus was political nirvana: cut taxes and raise spending," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the fiscal watchdog group Concord Coalition, who is among those invited to the summit. "This is the opposite; it is the political agenda from hell."

Dave N.: Obama's framing at the opening speech of the summit was superb:

Obama: In the end, however, if we want to rebuild our economy and restore discipline and honesty to our budget, we will need to change the way we do business here in Washington. We're not going to be able to fall back into the same old habits, and make the same inexcusable mistakes: The repeated failure to act as our economy spiraled deeper into crisis. The casual dishonesty of hiding irresponsible spending with clever accounting tricks. The costly overruns, the fraud and abuse, the endless excuses. This is exactly what the American people rejected when they went to the polls. They sent us here to usher in a new era of responsibility in Washington, to start living within our means again, and being straight with them about where their tax dollars are going, and empowering them with all the information they need to hold all of us, their representatives, accountable.

Darryl Plant:  A fundraising call from the DLCC sounds like GOP talking points...

Simply Left Behind:  ...And please remember that our nation's tax code supports Paris Hilton...

Princess Sparkle Pony:  ...But no matter how bad things get, we mustn't let the diminutive war criminals get us down...

Bush in 30 Seconds Blog :  our so-called "missle defense shield" is only a little further along than the GOP's plan to resurrect Ronald Reagan's dead corpse and run him for President in 2008.  Of course, for some GOP candidates, every day is Reagan's birthday.

Bucket o' Hank :  Thanks, Hank, for reading every GOP candidates' MySpace page so I don't have to.  And I'm with you on the "explorehuckabee-dot-com" eww factor.

Holy Crap!  Atheists are so darn militant!  But Tom Delay thinks God's talkin' to him?  Actually, meebe She is. Meanwhile, a new book on intelligent design is so full of holes, critics are enjoying the read.

Guest round up by Blue Gal.  bluegalsblog AT gmail DOT com.