Businessman and TV personality Mark Cuban has a seemingly straightforward question for the huge drug middleman owned by CVS: If you’re as transparent about drug pricing as you claim, why don’t you publish prices on your website? The company didn’t answer directly. Cuban, founder of Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, last week raised that question to the Capital Journal in response to a paid column that appeared April 3 in Forbes magazine. It was written by David Joyner, president of CVS Caremark, CVS’s pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM. The company is the largest drug middleman in the United States ..read more

The leadership of a union that represents more than 3 million building trades workers in the U.S. and Canada endorsed President Joe Biden's reelection bid on Wednesday, slamming presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump for catering to the needs of billionaires like himself during his first four years in the White House. "When Trump was elected, we took him at his word that he would have a worker-centered agenda and deliver on long-stalled issues such as infrastructure investment," said Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), whose governing board voted to endo ..read more

The late conservative economist Milton Friedman was an aggressive promoter of the "shareholder theory," arguing that corporations' main obligation was not to society on the whole, but to their shareholders. Friedman influenced many libertarians and neoliberal thinkers who equate a laissez-faire or hands-off approach to economics with personal freedom. But in an in-depth essay/think piece published by The Atlantic on April 24, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz challenges those beliefs and stresses that "unfettered" capitalism isn't necessarily synonymous with freedom. "(Economi ..read more

South Dakota state Sen. John Wiik likes to think of himself as a lookout of sorts — keeping an eye on new laws, programs and ideas brewing across the states. “I don’t bring a ton of legislation,” said Wiik, a Republican. “The main thing I like to do is try and stay ahead of trends and try and prevent bad things from coming into our state.” This session, that meant sponsoring successful legislation banning cities or counties from creating basic income programs, which provide direct, regular cash payments to low-income residents to help alleviate poverty. While Wiik isn’t aware of any local go ..read more

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — a federal government agency created in 2011 during former President Barack Obama's first term — recently created a cap on credit card late fees. But on Wednesday, April 17, the Republican-controlled House Financial Services Committee voted to advance a bill that, if passed, would keep those fees much higher than the CFPB would like. Rolling Stone's Nikki McCann Ramirez reports that the House bill "drastically reduces the caps on credit card late fees — from $30-$41 to $8." READ MORE: Bank overdraft charges may be capped at $3 as new Biden rul ..read more

As House Republicans prepare for Donald Trump's possible White House return by plotting to expand the billionaire and corporate tax cuts that were the cornerstone of the former president's first administration, congressional Democrats and advocates for working Americans warned Thursday that a second Trump term would bring more of the same inequality-exacerbating policies. The GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing Thursday on "expanding the success" of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)—widely derided by opponents as the "GOP Tax Scam." Republican committee members c ..read more

'Buy land – they aren't making it any more,' quipped Mark Twain. It's a maxim that would certainly serve you well in a game of Monopoly, the bestselling board game that has taught generations of children to buy up property, stack it with hotels, and charge fellow players sky-high rents for the privilege of accidentally landing there. The game's little-known inventor, Elizabeth Magie, would no doubt have made herself go directly to jail if she'd lived to know just how influential today's twisted version of her game has turned out to be. Why? Because it encourages its players to celebrate exac ..read more

Economic experts are happily surprised by the just-released March jobs report, which – contrary to expectations – saw unemployment has dropped further, overall employment has grown, and wages continue to outpace inflation. “Another blockbuster month for jobs. The US economy added 303,000 jobs in March — way above expectations. The big gains were healthcare (72k) and gov’t (71k),” The Washington Post’s Heather Long writes. “Unemployment rate: 3.8% (vs 3.9% in Feb) Wage growth: 4.1% in past year (well above 3.2% inflation).” Or, as CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla sums up the wages and inflation number ..read more

Georgia showed how much of a swing state it has become when, in the 2022 midterms, both conservative Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and liberal Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock were reelected. And it's a state that Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump will be paying close attention to in the months ahead, as Georgia — like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin — is among the Trump 2016/Biden 2020 states that will ultimately decide 2024's presidential election. Most of the polls released in March showed Trump with narrow single-digit leads over Biden in the Peach State. According ..read more

Fifty-eight years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. That major infrastructure bill enjoyed strong bipartisan support, and the fact that many Democrats in Congress voted for it didn't discourage the Republican president from getting behind it. In fact, many Democrats who voted to reelect Eisenhower that year liked the fact that he helped expand and improve the United States' infrastructure. But in a biting New York Times opinion column published on April 1, liberal economist Paul Krugman fears that 2024's MAGA Republicans — unlike Eisenho ..read more