The Obama campaign has a unique opportunity to show us what leadership in his Internet-savvy administration might look like. Americans are panicking now over the crisis on Wall Street, panicking but completely at a loss as to what we should do. This is Obama’s chance to show us real leadership through running a serious of [...]
This week’s Economist describes a difficult negotiation underway in Washington:
An impaired mortgage security might yield 65 cents on the dollar if held to maturity. But because the market is so illiquid and suspicion about mortgage values so high, it might fetch just 35 cents in the market today. Recapitalising banks would mean paying as close [...]
The crisis on Wall Street and subsequent negotiation between the Bush Administration and Congress over solutions expose a dangerous weakness of the people’s branch in the modern era: legislators lack unity and the power that unity affords. They will lose almost every time they get into a showdown with the President, especially without an O’Neill [...]
I spent five years working with poverty law advocates and analysts, and it is with those eyes that I’m viewing the proposed $700B bailout of Wall Street. There’s an obvious point to be made here that maybe finally the bootstrappin’ free-marketers finally might develop some empathy for the deadbeat moms and learn that everyone is [...]
We keep hearing from our leaders that “Institution X is too important to fail.” And I’m not in a great position to second-guess just how important companies like Freddie Mac, Frannie Mae, and AIG are, and whether their demise would lead to worldwide depression or not. But what I do now know is that when [...]
Back in the days of Tammany Hall, your ward captain, union leader, or other local boss told you whom to vote for, and you did it. That was machine politics at its well-oiled finest: you follow your leader.
Along came television, and suddenly voters had a closer, much more direct connection with the candidate. It was [...]
Judith Warner’s “No Laughing Matter” has me reeling — it’s written by a liberal female columnist going to a McCain-Palin rally and coming away with the realization that left-leaning Democrats have failed to develop any empathy for the part of the country that voted for Bush, and thus left themselves vulnerable to a counterattack and [...]
Marxism may be dead, but lefty activists still seem to itch for some good old-fashioned class warfare. With rising inequality in America (see this New York Times article from 2006), it’s easy to understand why. But Marxist cynicism is, I think, exactly the wrong way to look at inequality.
We often assume that people vote with [...]
For decades conservatives argued that civil society, not government, is the answer to poverty and other community problems. Communities have been doing just that, thanks to the help of community organizers. But rather than laud these private citizens, Rudolph Giuliani and Sarah Palin mocked them.
Organizers pick up where government leaves off. They exemplify communities trying [...]
Maybe this is chauvinist, but there’s nothing like hearing your wife’s profession being attacked on national television by small-minded, small-hearted vermin to get your blood boiling. Community organizing is a lot like being a mayor, except that the pay is worse and the issues are harder. Why? Because organizing picks up where government leaves off.
Community [...]
