I was pleasantly surprised to be invited to the White House jobs summit last Thursday, where I got to watch President Obama engage with about 130 people off the cuff. And I was reminded, first hand, what drew so many of us to the promise of this remarkable outsider -- the decency, the intellect, the idealism, and the evidently progressive impulses. I came away even more bewildered and dismayed at the reality that this president, who could have been such an insurgent at a moment demanding insurgency, has been so utterly captured by the Wall Street elite, the health insurance industry elite, and the military elite.
Curbing piracy and making it easier to visit our country are straightforward and immediate ways to spur long-term job growth. The decline in foreign visitors has probably cost the country around 245,000 jobs. Piracy has cost another 375,000.
If the Obama administration waits until it takes punitive action against Iran to censure human rights abuses there, it will look like we view human rights as a pressure tactic, rather than as the foundation of free society.
We need to start imagining and preparing for a global, coordinated economic transformation on the scale of a world war -- not only to restore jobs, but to restore means of making a sustainable living to everyone on Earth.
The health care reform bill now being debated in the Senate must include a provision that sets a minimum medical loss ratio to keep insurers from gouging consumers and leaving patients without the care they need.
The inaugural #DowningTweet party brought together Twitter users with the desire to stop the scandal of a woman dying every minute of every day from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications.
Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute and an Afghanistan expert who visited the White House during the months President Obama was crafting his new AfPak policy, recently spoke to a group of journalists.
Targeting the executive pay of health care insurance executives is like going after AA baseball players for steroid abuse: Everyone knows that's not where the real action is. Today's Gordon Geckos are not flocking to the health insurance industry.
This week there is yet another attempt to introduce a "public option" into health care legislation that could pass the Senate. It's not really a public option. It's not really new. But it just might do the job.
My father was a decent, hardworking family man, and he did not deserve the fate of dementia that he suffered. But, in all honesty, not the worst of us does.
Altamont, which took place on December 6, 1969, is remembered with infamy not only because four people died there. Altamont was a moment when the counterculture attacked itself. It was a countercultural civil war.
I've spent the week speaking with military leaders about the spilling of more blood. What becomes clear is that they genuinely believe that the judicious application of force can make the world a better place.
The end game of any major legislative fight, such as what we're going through on health care, is what I call the crazy season. Here are some general rules to help you understand the season a little bit more.
Determined to show that they are a political force to be reckoned with, the coalition of nightclub hostesses, cocktail waitresses and lingerie models stopped traffic for hours as they marched to the Capitol.
OPEC, in conspiring to hold back over 4 million barrels of oil a day from the market, is clearly colluding to impact oil's price. It is a willful policy seemingly tolerated by the U.S. government.
While the unemployment rate dropped last month, the overall trend is still rising. We need a few more months of data before we can claim a change in the overall trend.
Alan Khazei represents a rare opportunity to elect a bridge builder with a proven ability to work inside Washington, while also galvanizing outside pressure to effectively pass meaningful legislation.
Climate change is not like any other issue we've ever dealt with. The adversary here is not Republicans, or socialists, or deficits, or taxes, or misogyny, or racism. The adversary here is physics.
"Many people were killed in the crossfire," Ruti says, as she escorts me to her makeshift shelter. "I saw bodies lying dead in the street. The only thing I managed to bring with me was a frying pan. "
A partnership between the University of California and Los Angeles County to open a new hospital in South L.A. moved closer to reality with the unanimous approval of the UC Board of Regents.
Ninja Assassin dropped on account of being terrible and shockingly boring for the first half of the picture. It's a bunch of ninjas trying to kill each other and James McTeigue found a way to make that unexciting and tedious.
Tiger Woods earned an estimated $105 million from sponsorships last year. Could his future earnings from endorsements be at risk?
