Though the deeply divided Congress can't seem to agree on much these days, the House and Senate did manage to come together this week, with nearly unanimous votes, to extend an $8,000 first-time home-buyer tax credit. But among economists of various political persuasions, there's widespread agreement on the Obama-backed bill: It's a horrible policy that could wind up prolonging, if not worsening, the housing crisis.

"When governments at the state and local level are cutting back funding for everything from preschool education to nursing home care, the federal government is sending $8,000 checks" to home buyers who don't need assistance, says Dean Baker, the codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "It might be possible to develop a more warped economic policy, but it would not be easy." Mark Calabria, the director of financial regulation studies at the libertarian Cato Institute and a former Republican staffer on the Senate banking committee, agrees. "This is something where despite bipartisan opposition to it from experts, there seems to be massive bipartisan support for it on Capitol Hill," he says.

Ted Gayer of the centrist Brookings Institute issued what one CNN blogger described as a "smackdown" of the credit. Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, and James Kwak, who writes a Washington Post column with Johnson, have called the credit "throwing good money after bad." And conservatives—Kevin Hassett, the director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and Ronald Utt, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, have penned pieces slamming the home-buyer credit. Even the Obama-aligned Center for American Progress got in the act; Andrew Jakabovics, the think tank's associate director for housing and economics, criticized the credit's extension on National Public Radio.

President Barack Obama likes to point out that when President Dwight Eisenhower built the federal highway system in the 1950s, he created a network that fueled postwar America’s economic rise. Now Obama’s administration wants to do the same for the green economy with the smart grid—a system of interlocking technologies that could transform the way we use electricity. By receiving real-time data on their energy use, consumers could save big on their power bills by running appliances when electricity is cheapest, rather than during peak demand periods when it’s most expensive. Power distributors could use the system to transport excess energy from one region to another, instead of simply allowing it to go to waste as they do now. The bottom line of such efficiency measures? The US would need to build far fewer new coal-fired power plants.

You have to hand it to Michele Bachmann: She has succeeded in turning the GOP into one big Tea Party. 

This past weekend, the Minnesota Republican went on Fox News and called on viewers to show up on the Capitol lawn on Thursday at noon for a press conference and a last ditch attempt to kill health care reform.  The gathering that resulted was marked by the now-routine extremism of the Tea Party conservatives.  "I'm a bitter gun owner who votes," read one sign. Others questioned President Obama’s citizenship, portrayed him as Sambo, or called him a traitor. One said, "Obama takes his orders from the Rothschilds." Old ladies wore red T-shirts decrying "Obamao care." The crowd also took spirited swipes at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. At one point someone yelled, "Put down your Botox and show yourself."

But what was most noteworthy was that the entire House Republican leadership was also in attendance—and their rhetoric was just as over-the-top as some of the protesters. House Minority Leader John Boehner declared the health care bill the "greatest threat to freedom I have seen." In essence, Congressional Republicans were merging with a movement that gives open expression to racist and anti-Semitic sentiments.
 

This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

Breakfast at Fuddruckers: $19.24.

Snow cone and cotton candy machine: $146.89.

Six extra preview performances of “Little House on the Prairie – the Musical”: $50,000.

Benefit to the economy? According to the recipients of this stimulus money: Priceless.

Last week, the federal government released the first comprehensive tally of the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package. And while the White House has heralded marquee projects like road construction and solar panel factories, the stimulus package is also made up of hundreds of smaller purchases like office supplies, gasoline and lab rats.

Hideki Matsui. 2 RBI homer. 2 RBI single. 2 RBI double. His last night as a Yankee. But a Yankee for all time.

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

In recent weeks, President Obama has been contemplating the future of US military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year's Recovery Act not only saved jobs, but also was "the largest investment in infrastructure since [President Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s." At the same time, another much less publicized US-taxpayer-funded infrastructure boom has been underway. This one in Afghanistan.

While Washington has put modest funding into civilian projects in Afghanistan this year—ranging from small-scale power plants to "public latrines" to a meat market—the real construction boom is military in nature. The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in that country.

In fiscal year 2009, for example, the civilian US Agency for International Development awarded $20 million in contracts for work in Afghanistan, while the US Army alone awarded $2.2 billion—$834 million of it for construction projects. In fact, according to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, the Pentagon has spent "roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years" in that country and, "if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation."

This cartoon requires Macromedia's Flash Player. If you don't see the cartoon above, download the player here.

Mark Fiore is an editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a web site featuring his work.

For more than a decade Dr. Igor Panarin, a Russian academic, has been predicting that sometime around 2010 the United States will collapse, splintering into separate states, some of them controlled by foreign powers. Outside of Russia, no one's put much stock in his crackpot and stereotype-based theories—until now, that is. Who are the newest members of the Igor Panarin fan club? Tea partiers who’ve rallied against the Obama administration's policies and blasted the president for pushing a "socialist" agenda. And he's especially big among tea party activists in Texas, who have hosted Panarin and promoted his work.

In Russia, Panarin, who hosts a weekly radio show, is considered a mainstream expert on the United States. Like Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Panarin used to work for the KGB. He clearly has the support of the Kremlin, for he teaches at* the school that trains Russia's diplomats. And since the election of Barack Obama last November, Panarin has found a new audience in America among far right activists, many of whom believe Obama is destroying the country.

This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

After federal regulators accused the University of Phoenix of systematic enrollment abuses in 2004, the school's parent company paid out nearly $10 million to resolve the allegations.

Phoenix allegedly had broken the law by tying recruiters' pay to enrollment numbers, U.S. Department of Education investigators found, creating pressure to sign up unqualified students.

In the years since, Phoenix cemented its stature as the nation's largest for-profit school and the single biggest recipient of federal student aid. But some of the school's recruiters have continued to use high-pressure, deceptive tactics, according to a dozen current and former students and two former recruiters who spoke to ProPublica and Marketplace as part of a joint investigation.

The students said Phoenix counselors misled them about whether credits would transfer to other schools, pretended to befriend them and lied about financial aid. The recruiters said they were told to rope students in with phony claims that classes were filling fast, or by suggesting that federal grants would cover costs, even if that was uncertain.

Once you whip up a mob, can you control it? That may be Sarah Palin's next problem.

Before the votes were counted Tuesday night, the former Republican vice presidential candidate was already something of a winner. Though her candidate in the special election for a House seat in upstate New York, Doug Hoffman, lost to Democrat Bill Owens—in an area that hasn't sent a Democrat to the House since the 1800s—Palin, by intervening in the race, had established herself as a successful ideological powerbroker. At first, Hoffman was merely a third-party conservative candidate in New York's 23rd congressional district. Yet when Palin backed him over the official Republican in the race, a moderate assemblywoman named Dede Scozzafava, she helped turn this contest into a intra-party clash, which ended with the right wing of her party chasing Scozzafava out of the contest and forcing the GOP establishment to swing behind Hoffman. On a night when the Republicans won the governor races in New Jersey and Virginia, Hoffman's defeat was almost anti-climactic. But for Palin, who previously had been in the news mostly for the wrong reasons—that doesn't count the Levi Johnston soap opera—this episode made her seem relevant and influential.