Tag: Opinion

Last evening, Tavis Smiley hosted a program that was broadcast live on C-SPAN live and that focused for two-and-a-half hours on the issue of poverty in America.  It was terrific.  The energy and commitment of the experts assembled to investigate and help alleviate poverty made the conversation rich beyond anything I’ve seen in ages.  Each panelist came at the topic from a different perspective.  That added to the richness of the discussion about being poor in America. [..]

Even though I’ve been through the slide from middle-income to poor and now am fighting the unwinnable fight to climb back out, I still need the affirmation these sorts of discussions can give to remember that it still isn’t my fault.  The system crushed me, and the system will crush me again unless I stay intensely vigilant — and maybe it will crush me again even if I do.  But I do not want to stay vigilant about the wrong things.

John Nichols: Mitt Romney Abandons His Father’s Civil Rights Legacy

The Republican Party, founded by militant abolitionists and once the political home of civil rights champions such as George Romney, has since the late 1960s been degenerating toward the crude politics of “Southern strategies” and what former Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater referred to as the “coded” language of complaints about “forced busing,” legal-services programs, welfare and food stamps. But the 2012 campaign has seen this degeneration accelerate, as the candidates have repeatedly played on stereotypes about race, class and “entitlements.” [..]

If ever there was a time when the man who is likely to be party’s 2012 presidential nominee should be joining the NAACP in objecting to the racialized language being heard on this year’s GOP campaign trail, it is now.

But that’s not happening.

Instead of objecting to the excesses of the other contenders, the “adult” in the race, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, picked up on the themes developed by Santorum and Gingrich to gripe about “the ever-expanding payments of an entitlement society” as “a fundamental corruption of the American spirit.”

Romney is arguably the most disappointing of the current candidates, as he surely knows better.

Charles M Blow: Bitter Politics of Envy?

You’re just jealous. At least that’s how Mitt Romney sees it. The millionaire who posed for a picture with the boys at Bain Capital with the long green clinched between their teeth and poking out of their collars and jackets now says that people who question what he did there, and what rich people do now, are just green with envy.

In his New Hampshire victory speech on Tuesday, Romney lambasted his Republican opponents (who have raised real issues about his role at the private equity firm Bain Capital) for following the lead of President Obama, whom he described as a leader who divides us “with the bitter politics of envy.”

Gail Collins: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Back in the late-1950s there was a TV show called “The Millionaire” about a mysterious rich man, named John Beresford Tipton, who would anonymously give checks for $1 million to total strangers.

Usually, the recipient was a poor schlub who was over the top with joy until it turned out that the money didn’t buy happiness. Clearly, we were all better off in our humble homes, clustered around our 14-inch TVs.

I am bringing this up because the current presidential race has demonstrated that a million dollars is nothing – nothing – these days. Nothing! A million dollars is what they give you for designing the best pantsuit on a reality TV show.

For Mitt Romney, Tuesday night’s triumph in the New Hampshire primary offered a tempting opportunity to gloat. Such unattractive conduct is no longer surprising from the Republican front-runner, who is enduring the gradual disclosure of his personality.

The hot Romney video of the moment displays him telling the Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” and went viral not because of its specific context, which wasn’t particularly damning, but because the public perceives the remark as a distillation of elite heartlessness. Every decent person who has had to fire someone knows that doing so-under almost any circumstances-is unpleasant, difficult and frequently wrenching. To boast that you “like to fire people” after observing years of economic pain among the jobless suggests a deep defect that, to most Americans, may disqualify Romney from the presidency.

Of course, that quote could have been a peculiar gaffe or a meaningless slip, but it wasn’t. There is no shortage of evidence, emanating mostly from his own mouth, that privilege, arrogance and entitlement are major features of Romney’s character.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Is This Land Made for You and Me – or for the Super-Rich?

The traveling medicine show known as the race for the Republican presidential nomination has moved on from Iowa and New Hampshire, and all eyes are now on South Carolina.  Well, not exactly all.  At the moment, our eyes are fixed on some big news from the great state of Oklahoma, home of the legendary American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated later this year.

Woody saw the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Depression firsthand; his own family came unraveled in the worst hard times.  And he wrote tough yet lyrical stories about the men and women who struggled to survive, enduring the indignity of living life at the bone, with nothing to eat and no place to sleep.  He traveled from town to town, hitchhiking and stealing rides in railroad boxcars, singing his songs for spare change or a ham sandwich.  What professional success he had during his own lifetime, singing in concerts and on the radio, was often undone by politics and the restless urge to keep moving on. “So long, it’s been good to know you,” he sang, and off he would go.

John Nichols: Walker, Texas (Money) Ranger: Can Lone-Star Cash Save Anti-Labor Governor?

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is scared, so scared that he is calling in a posse of Texas billionaires to try and save his political skin.

Facing the threat of a recall election, Walker poured money into a television advertising campaign to convince Wisconsinites that his attacks on collective bargaining rights, his budget cuts for education and local services, and his pay-to-play approach to politics are good things.

Wisconsinites weren’t buying what Walker was selling. On Tuesday, the recall campaign mounted by United Wisconsin will submit not just the 540,000 signatures needed to recall Governor Walker but hundreds of thousands more.

This fight is going to happen. Walker knows he faces an accountability moment that threatens to end his long political career.

But he is not giving up easily. The governor is arming himself with all the money he can get his hands on. Big money. Texas money.

Mark Weisbrot: The Economic Idiocy of Economists

The American Economic Association’s Annual Meeting is Red-letter Day for ‘the Dismal Science’. And Dismal it Proved

The American Economic Association’s annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on “the economics of regime change”, when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about “the political economy of the US debt and deficits”.

The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States’ rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn’t do something about it. Yawn.

But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the US national debt as generally ranging from “ludicrous to horrific”. True, that. He asked and answered four questions.

Isabeau Doucet: Haiti’s Hard Road to Recovery

Two years after the earthquake life is improving, but the nation still faces a cholera epidemic and a huge rebuilding challenge

In Haiti, you’ll see a young man sitting on a crumbled wall blasting a song out of a bashed-up radio and singing along – apparently without irony – lyrics that just repeat “I love my life”. You’ll see a woman trying to peddle half-rotten papayas from a basket on her head, dancing to kompa on a pile of sewage-soaked rubble and trash. You’ll see a barefoot six-year-old boy flying a homemade kite wearing a T-shirt that says “Save Darfur”. You can be sure that if your motorcycle, car or SUV breaks down in the potholes of Port-au-Prince, any one of these folks will bend over backwards to help, rather than pose any threat to your safety.

What’s remarkable about Haiti is that despite the devastating earthquake, tent camps, cholera, political instability and chronically corrupt and neglected judicial institutions, it couldn’t be further from the orgy of violence people around the world associate with it. The United Nation’s latest homicide statistics show that Haiti is one of the least dangerous places in the Caribbean region with a murder rate on a par with the US.

Pakistan’s civilian governments are typically short-lived and cast aside by military coups. This disastrous pattern could be repeating itself as the current civilian government comes under increasing pressure from the army and the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, the standoff hardened when Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani fired his defense secretary, Naeem Khalid Lodhi – a retired general and confidante of the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani – and replaced him with a civilian, Nargis Sethi. Infuriated military officials said they might refuse to work with the new secretary and warned vaguely of “serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences” after Mr. Gilani publicly criticized them in an interview.

Eugene Robinson: Two-For-Two and Game On

MANCHESTER, N.H.-It’s going to be mean and dispiriting, this campaign. We’ll be assailed with talk of “European socialism” and “vulture capitalism”-not “hope” and “change”-and the months between now and November will seem an eternity.

There’s no use trying to gainsay or belittle Mitt Romney’s victory here Tuesday. Yes, he might have hoped for a bigger turnout. Yes, he would have been happier to win with at least 40 percent of the vote, rather than 39-point-whatever. And yes, given that he’s a part-time resident of New Hampshire, he was always expected to dominate the contest.

None of this is likely to matter. Romney is the first non-incumbent Republican to open two-for-two, winning both Iowa and New Hampshire. Exit polls show him with decent support among all the GOP’s diverse constituencies-and no glaring weaknesses. It’s true that most Republicans would prefer someone else, but there’s no agreement on who that someone else might be. By the time the anti-Romney forces get organized, he’ll be giving his acceptance speech.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: What Kind of Capitalist Was Romney?

Thanks to Mitt Romney and such well-known socialist intellectuals as Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, the United States is about to have the big debate on the nature of modern capitalism that should have started back in 2008. The focus will be on whether some kinds of capitalism are bad for the system as a whole.

As a political matter, the discussion will be a classic test of an old Karl Rove theory that the best way to undercut an opponent is to attack him in his area of perceived strength. Romney’s central claim is that his business experience prepares him to be the nation’s great job creator. That message runs into some difficulty if he is seen instead as a job destroyer.

Ralph Nader: Iran: The Neocons Are At It Again

he same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul’s inimitable words, “lie their way into invading Iraq” in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam.

With the exception of Ron Paul, who actually knows the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, the Republican presidential contenders have declared their belligerency toward Iranian officials who they accuse of moving toward nuclear weapons.

The Iranian regime disputes that charge, claiming they are developing the technology for nuclear power and nuclear medicine.

Dave Zweifel: High Court Opened Door to Legalized Bribery

Remember the 2010 State of the Union address when President Obama spoke directly at the Supreme Court justices sitting in the front row and “lectured” them about their Citizens United decision?

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama told the justices, as the glare of the cameras focused on them. “Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.”

The court, by a 5-4 vote, had just declared that corporations are, in effect, people when it comes to First Amendment rights and, therefore, their “free speech” can’t be limited by campaign spending laws.

After wincing a bit from the free flu shot, my young patient turned to me and said, “What you’re doing here is awesome – it’s so hard get health care!”

“Here” happened to be New York City’s Zuccotti Park in mid-November, the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street, just days before the encampment was broken up by hundreds of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s armor-clad police in the dead of night. But it could have been anywhere in the United States.

Health care is in fact increasingly unaffordable for the 99 percent. More than 50 million Americans lack health insurance and thus reasonable access to treatment. A recent Harvard study showed about 45,000 excess deaths annually can be linked to lack of insurance.

Even people with insurance face formidable barriers to care like rising co-pays and deductibles. As a result, they are putting off care, getting sicker and ending up in our emergency rooms with serious complications – often facing crushing medical bills later.

Miriam Pemberton

: Obama’s New Military Strategy Doesn’t Add Up

We’re Not Stepping Down From Being the Planet’s Top Cop

President Barack Obama ordered up yet another strategic review last year. This one explicitly aimed at bringing the nation’s military posture into line with something we can afford.

In response to that review, his administration forged a plan, unveiled during the first week of the year, which takes a few modest steps in the right direction. The job description for our self-appointed role as world policeman will be trimmed a bit. We won’t be patrolling everywhere all the time, but we’ll be doing something more like check-ins in places like Latin America and Africa. Some of those U.S. troops that have been guarding Europe since World War II will probably come home. The Army and Marine Corps will shrink modestly. There’s a verbal commitment, at least, to share more responsibilities with allies. And we’ll cut a few more Cold War weapon systems. That’s probably a safe move, now two decades since the Cold War ended.

Stephanie Penn Spear: Fracking, Keystone XL, Mountaintop Removal and More

On Jan. 10 at 1 p.m. on the west lawn of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, concerned citizens from all over the state will gather to ask Gov. Kasich to impose an indefinite moratorium on Ohio’s oil and gas wastewater injection well sites and the natural gas extraction process that has become well-known as fracking, until further research and proper regulations are put in place to protect human health and the environment.

This protest is in response to the 11 earthquakes that have hit the Youngstown, Ohio area since March 2011. The most recent earthquake, with a 4.0 magnitude that was felt nearly 200 miles away, shook the community on New Year’s Eve. Won-Young Kim, a research professor of seismology geology at Columbia University who is advising the state of Ohio on the Dec. 31 earthquake, said that circumstantial evidence suggests a link between the earthquake and high-pressure well activity. Kim believes that the recent earthquake did not occur naturally and may have been caused by high-pressure liquid injection related to oil and gas exploration and production.

Maureen Dowd: A Perfect Doll

As chief executive of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney was all about cold analysis and hot profits.

He took a rare personal interest in one of his investments: the Lifelike Company, which produced My Twinn dolls, fashioned to look like the little girls who owned them.

As Mark Maremont reported in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Romney invested $2.1 million in 1996 for a stake in the company; the idea was brought to him by a Lifelike partner who was a friend from Brigham Young University and Harvard Business School.

Romney, who accuses President Obama of “crony capitalism” on the Solyndra deal, introduced his brother-in-law to Lifelike officials, who dutifully hired the relative and promoted him to vice president with an annual salary of $100,000.

Mitt Romney seems ready to wield his version of birtherism as a major weapon in the fall campaign against President Obama. In his standard stump speech he tells audiences that President Obama wants “to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society.” According to Romney, this means a European-style welfare state that redistributes wealth and creates equal outcomes regardless of individual effort and success.

That’s pretty strong stuff, but of course this doesn’t sound anything like the President Obama who many of us have come to know and criticize. After all, this is the guy who got the top Wall Street bankers and told them that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks. And, according to Ron Suskind, he assured them that he would hold his ground.

John Nichols: No Longer a Party of Lincoln: The Racial Politics of the New GOP

The Republican Party, founded by militant abolitionists and the political home through much of its history for committed foes of segregation and discrimination, has since the late 1960s been degenerating toward the crude politics of Southern strategies and what former Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater referred to as the “coded” language of complaints about “forced busing,” legal-services programs, welfare and food stamps. But the 2012 campaign has seen this degeneration accelerate, as the candidates have repeatedly played on stereotypes about race, class and “entitlements.”

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum told a crowd of supporters: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Richard Dreyfuss: Hawks Hysterical Over Pentagon Cuts

To no one’s surprise, the military-industrial complex and its allies are pushing back against the Obama administration’s plans to trim some fat at the Pentagon.

The big boys-namely, the Aerospace Industries Association, the National Defense Industrial Association and the Professional Services Council-co-wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warning that even Panetta’s modest efforts to slow defense spending could lead to catastrophe. Panetta’s proposed $480 billion reduction might fatally undermine the defense industrial base, the letter warned, and it added that they expect further cuts in years to come.

Noting that the Congressional supercommittee’s failure to reach an accord might trigger another $600 billion in defense cuts, the three industry heavyweights said, “Even if the trillion-dollar ‘doomsday’ scenario is avoided, respondents were operating under the assumption that, based on past history, more cuts would be added on top of the $480 billion over the next decade.”

Dan Savage: Rick Santorum’s homophobic frothing

The Republican candidates now vying to be most anti-gay will find they’re on the wrong side of American voters in November

Alfred Kinsey famously – and, as later studies seemed to prove, erroneously – reported that 10% of the American population was gay. For decades, the American gay rights movement celebrated and pointed to the Kinsey Report; “1 in 10” and “10%” were popular gay rights slogans when I came out in the 1980s. But later research would show that our numbers were smaller. A recent study conducted by the Williams Institute at the University of California found that 3.8% of adults in the United States were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Just as gay America once celebrated Kinsey’s 10% figure, America’s religious conservatives/extremists celebrate these newer, lower estimates. They argue that the LGBT community is so tiny – just 9 million Americans, according to the Williams Institute – that our calls for civil rights protections and full civil equality shouldn’t be taken seriously. Rights, they implicitly assert, should be awarded only to minority communities that have attained some sort of critical mass. (The Williams Institute’s estimates, for the record, are believed to underestimate the size the LGBT community, just as Kinsey once overestimated it – people lie about their sexual orientations; how do you control for the closet; what about LGBT children, etc.)

THE beginning of a new year is a time for resolutions, and Hillary Clinton’s admirers are already busily, lovingly resolving on her behalf. On one sideline, her friends tell me that after a few years of hyperactive globetrotting what she really needs is to put her feet up and dictate another volume of her memoirs while nagging Chelsea to deliver grandchildren. (“She’s tired; she needs some time off,” her husband told ABC.) At the other extreme, a couple of Democratic consultants, Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen, propose to draft her right now as the 2012 Democratic presidential candidate, whether she likes it or not. (“Not only is Mrs. Clinton better positioned to win in 2012 than Mr. Obama, but she is better positioned to govern if she does,” they wrote in The Wall Street Journal.) Other helpful devotees have noticed that Brown University is looking for a new president, or have imagined her creating a clone of the Clinton Global Initiative focused on empowering women. Or maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg will decide to put her feet up, opening a seat on the Supreme Court.

The right choice is none of the above. [..]

The proposal to draft her in place of President Obama this year is preposterous. It exaggerates his vulnerability and discounts Hillary’s loyalty. But the idea that she should replace Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate in 2012 is something else. It has been kicking around on the blogs for more than a year without getting any traction, mainly because it has been authoritatively, emphatically dismissed by Hillary, Biden and Team Obama.

It’s time to take it seriously.

Robert Naiman: Judy Miller Alert! The New York Times is Lying About Iran’s Nuclear Program

It’s deja vu all over again. AIPAC is trying to trick America into another catastrophic war with a Middle Eastern country on behalf of the Likud Party’s colonial ambitions, and the New York Times is lying about allegations that said country is developing “weapons of mass destruction.”

In an article attributed to Steven Erlanger on January 4 (“Europe Takes Bold Step Toward a Ban on Iranian Oil “), this paragraph appeared:

   The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined withe a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear program has a military objectiv, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign. [my emphasis]

The claim that there is “a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear program has a military objective” is a lie.

Eugene Robinson: Hawk in a Clown-Car Field

Before there was the tea party to define the phrase “far-right fringe,” there was Rick Santorum. He’s a nice-guy zealot who should never be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.

It’s understandable that progressives would be tempted to cheer Santorum’s sudden rise as a viable candidate for the Republican nomination. The likely nominee, Mitt Romney, would love to be able to modulate his rhetoric and begin running a more centrist campaign that could appeal to independents in November. But if Santorum continues to pose a threat, Romney will likely have to move even further right-ceding valuable political ground to President Obama.

And if Santorum somehow manages to win the nomination, he will be easier for Obama to beat than Romney. I mean, Obama beats him easily. Doesn’t he?

But I know there’s no such thing as an airtight guarantee, and that’s why those welcoming the Santorum surge for Machiavellian reasons should be careful what they wish for.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Stuck in the Bloody Primaries

WINDHAM, N.H.-It isn’t every day that political candidates are asked whether the 10th Amendment allows states to nullify federal laws, but that was precisely the question Rick Santorum faced at a forum here a few days ago organized by a libertarian-leaning group.

To his credit, Santorum did not pander to the nullifier. “We had a Civil War about nullification,” Santorum said with a smile. “I’m not sure I want to go there.”

But Santorum’s experience raises a larger question about this year’s Republican primary contest: Rather than strengthening the party for the coming battle against President Obama, will it instead leave it more marginalized from the views of swing voters? Have the party’s candidates, particularly Mitt Romney, had to spend too much time and energy wooing voters far to the right of the mainstream?

I know that this week you have been kicking yourself for not having paid more attention to Rick Santorum.

Me, too! How can we call ourselves informed citizens without a thorough grounding in the heart and mind of the man who almost won the Iowa caucuses? So, as a public service, I am concluding my job of reading books by all the Republican presidential hopefuls with the work of Rick Santorum.

So you won’t have to. Not that you were planning to anyway.

Dana Goldstein: A Decade of No Child Left Behind

As the No Child Left Behind Act turns 10 on Sunday, the bill’s future remains uncertain, with Congress and the Obama administration divided over how to update the controversial law. Meanwhile, NCLB has been largely irrelevant to two of the major trends in national education policy-making over the past three years: the push to tie teacher evaluation and pay to student achievement data, and the move toward a Common Core curriculum in math and English. (The main lever pushing those changes is the Obama administration’s deployment of billions of federal grant dollars to states that agree to adhere to those priorities.) Nevertheless, NCLB has had a profound effect on what students experience in the classroom and on the way the American public talks about its schools. Here is my assessment of how NCLB has changed American education over the past decade, both for the better and for the worse.

Ben Adler: Huntsman: The Better Foreign Policy Alternative to Paul

It’s been a popular conceit on the left that Ron Paul is the GOP’s “peace candidate,” with a superior foreign policy to not only his GOP opponents but President Obama. But there’s actually a Republican presidential candidate with a more sensible foreign policy than Paul’s: former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman.

Paul’s foreign policy has enormous flaws: namely a completely illiberal lack of interest in promoting democracy or human rights, opposition to all foreign aid and crazy conspiracy theories about the United Nations. Huntsman doesn’t harbor such batty ideas.

Danny Schechter: US Political News Is a Fool’s Game

“Game On” was Rick Santorum’s first comment after his “surge” was considered successful with a mere 30,000 votes in Ioway. He inadvertently gave the game away by calling it a game – which is what it is.

Only this game is not just about politics but about the media. Pseudo-events like this are what the media lives for: it provides something for them to do, and to feel important while doing it. It creates airtime for endless punditry, and a spectacle to liven up a dull Iowa winter.

For Iowans, it’s a chance to “participate” in something that sounds important; for media heads, it’s a routine of the news, a ritual. The media, in effect, provides an infomercial posing as real news.

10 current words and phrases that my kid may never know because they might end up as relics of a lost vernacular, starting with “civil liberties.”

By far, the laziest, most vapid articles annually published during this post-holiday season are lists of the past year’s top 10 words and aphorisms. Admittedly, the sloth of such an endeavor tempts me. But as a new dad obsessed with my 1-year-old son’s future, I think I’ve got a more worthy list to add to the pile-one of current words and phrases that my kid may never know because they might end up as relics of a lost vernacular.

Here are those harrowing 10. I hope I’m wrong but fear I’m not.

New York Times Editorial: A Leaner Pentagon

With his new defense strategy, President Obama has put forward a generally pragmatic vision of how this country will organize and deploy its military in the 21st century, while also addressing its deep fiscal problems.

It is based on the idea that the country must be smarter and more restrained in its use of force – a relief after President George W. Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq. It will mean a significant reduction in the size of the Army and Marine Corps. But it doesn’t minimize the fact that the world is a very dangerous place and says the country must still be ready to fight a major land war – although one lasting for years would require another buildup.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Sweet Victories: Lessons for 2012

As we head into 2012, there are a lot of questions about where the Occupy energy will go from here. I’m confident it will move in powerful directions-fighting unjust foreclosures and evictions, exploring alternative banking, taking on outrageous student debt, countering the corrosive role of corporate money in politics, and allying in new ways with the growing ranks of poor Americans.

But there are also tangible-maybe not sexy or systemic-reforms that make a real difference in people’s lives and speak to OWS principles, and would benefit from its energy and activism. In 2011, two victories on paid sick leave offer something to build on as we work towards an economy that is more just and fair. Connecticut became the first state to guarantee this common sense protection for working people; and Seattle joined San Francisco and Washington, DC as the only cities with paid sick leave on the books.

Richard Reeve: America’s 5 Political Parties

It would seem that the United States has a five-party system right now. What was done in Iowa last Tuesday could unravel in New Hampshire, but whatever happens next, the United States is more politically fractured than it has been in decades.

Iowa is the beginning but has never been the bellwether of presidential campaigns. Too white, too rural, only 5.7 percent unemployment, and all that. But hard ideological lines shone through the Iowa results, even if the state had caucuses rather than an all-out primary, which means most of the folks who showed up were not only ordinary American citizens but also activists to some degree.