Gara LaMarche

In 1965, Bill Moyers, then a young White House aide, talked with President Lyndon Johnson about a pending bill to provide retroactive Social Security payments to older adults. According to the White House tapes, Moyers argued for the retroactivity clause on the basis that it would boost the economy. But...

It is too early to know whether the current wave of school reforms will lead to lasting improvements in student achievement. But it is not too early to note that many of these reforms have a troubling consequence: a doubling-down on harsh, ineffective zero-tolerance discipline policies. All too often, the...

The release of the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson's draft proposal last month was, for many, the first public announcement that the fate of their Social Security benefits was even up for debate.

Although Congress may not move all of...

Twenty-one months after Barack Obama was inaugurated on a wave of hope for change in America's politics and policies, at least two important and seemingly contradictory things can be said.

First, there has been a series of significant progressive reforms: an economic stimulus bill that contained far-reaching antipoverty, infrastructure, green...

In March, I was honored to watch President Obama's bill signing for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with a group of labor leaders and reform activists. Around me were advocates who had worked for months -- in some cases decades -- to bring about health care reform. At...

In the last few weeks, a variety of groups have been more forthright in expressing criticisms of the Obama administration now that it is more than half a year old, and disquiet in particular about the direction of the health care reform debate and legislation. The right has risen up...

As the Obama Administration has in recent days taken a couple of steps in the civil liberties/national security area -- opposing release of torture photos and declaring an intent to retain some form of military commissions for terror suspects (while considering a system of preventive detention), the media has had...

I delivered a "call to action" at The Encore Careers Summit at Stanford University on Sunday, December 7th. I called on Americans of all ages and across all economic, racial and ethnic lines to serve the country and to growl and kick when necessary. The Summit brought together people in...

Speaking to tens of thousands of his supporters in Chicago's Grant Park, President-elect Barack Obama said his smashing victory was not about him but about "you." In his effort to unify, he meant all of America, but he also was crediting a very special group of people -- his "peacetime...

A few weeks ago I posted some thoughts about the controversy over the American Civil Liberties Union, sparked by the launch of a website, Save the ACLU, in which the former executive director, Ira Glasser, and several former board members call for the resignation of the organization's two...

Some weeks ago I posted a brief comment in response to Wendy Kaminer's July 12 post, "How the ACLU Lost its Bearings." I vowed to return to the subject of what is going on in the organization, since I have a vantage point of almost thirty-five years on it -...

The unexpected retirement of Justice O'Connor fills many of us with dread. Who would have thought, when this conservative Arizona jurist was appointed by Reagan nearly a quarter-century ago, that she would come to be one of the last lines of defense against extremist government?

As has been endlessly...

For some reason bad public policies seem to travel east. Draconian tax and social services cuts, xenophobic immigration policies, three-strikes-and-you're out laws, curbs on affirmative action -- all these started with benighted California initiatives and spread out across the country. Here in England this week, the export version of bad...