It has been said there is no high ground in American politics since any politician who claims it is likely to be gunned down by those firing from the trenches. That's how the Obama team justifies its decision to endorse a super PAC that can raise and spend unlimited sums...

January's increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story -- the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.

Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy -- hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary...

The most significant aspect of January's jobs report is political. The fact that America's labor market continues to improve is good news for the White House. But as a practical matter the improvement is less significant for the American work force.

President Obama's only chance for rebutting Republican claims that...

One of the few things Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich agree on is that President Obama is turning America into "European-style welfare culture."

In his standard stump speech Romney charges Obama with creating a nation of dependents. "Over the past three years Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society...

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few days ago, said the "critical risks" facing the American economy this year were a worsening of Europe's chronic sovereign debt crisis and a rise in tensions with Iran that could stoke global oil prices.

What about...

Republicans are worried sick about Newt Gingrich's ascendance, while Democrats are tickled pink.

Yet no responsible Democrat should be pleased at the prospect that Gingrich could get the GOP nomination. The future of America is too important to accept even a small risk of a Gingrich presidency.

The Republican worry...

Who should have the primary strategic responsibility for making American workers globally competitive -- the private sector or government? This will be a defining issue in the 2012 campaign.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama will make the case that government has a vital role. His Republican...

After refusing for weeks to release his taxes, Mitt Romney now says he'll do so -- by tax day, April 15. But the real news is what Romney has now admitted about his taxes -- the fact he doesn't want to become news once the media begin scouring his tax...

South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint, the darling of the Tea Party wing nuts of the GOP, is urging Republican candidates to listen to Ron Paul. "One of the things that's hurt the so-called conservative alternative is saying negative things about Ron Paul," DeMint told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham....

It's one thing to criticize Mitt Romney for being a businessman with the wrong values. It's quite another to accuse him and his former company, Bain Capital, of doing bad things. If what Bain Capital did under Romney was bad for society, the burden shifts to Romney's critics to propose...

Two years ago the unemployment rate was 9.9 percent. Now it's 8.5 percent. At first blush that's good news for the president. Actually it may not be.

Voters pay more attention to the direction the economy is moving than to how bad or good it is. So if the positive...

First, a confession. If Mitt Romney becomes president I'm partly to blame.

Ten years ago I ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of Massachusetts -- which would have given me the opportunity to whip Mitt Romney's ass in the general election,

I blew it. In the final week...

Meryl Streep's eery reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady brings to mind Thatcher's most famous quip, "there is no such thing as 'society.'" None of the dwindling herd of Republican candidates has quoted her yet but they might as well considering their unremitting bashing of everything public.

What...

Since my New Year's prediction that Obama would select Hillary Clinton for his running mate in 2012 (and Joe Biden would become Secretary of State), I've been swamped by requests for my GOP prediction. Here goes.

You can forget the caucuses and early primaries. Mitt Romney will be the nominee....

My political prediction for 2012 (based on absolutely no inside information): Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places. Biden becomes Secretary of State -- a position he's apparently coveted for years. And Hillary Clinton, Vice President.

So the Democratic ticket for 2012 is Obama-Clinton.

Why do I say this?...

Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican crackup threatens the future of the Grand Old Party more profoundly than at any time since the GOP's eclipse in 1932. That's bad for America.

The crackup isn't just Romney the smooth versus Gingrich the bomb-thrower.

Not just House Republicans who just...

The defining political issue of 2012 won't be the government's size. It will be who government is for.

Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government.

But the surge of cynicism now engulfing America isn't about government's size. It's the growing...

Mr. President, we heard what you said last week in Kansas -- about the dangers to our economy and democracy of the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top.

We agree. And many of us are prepared to work our hearts out to get you reelected -- as long as you commit to doing what needs to be done in your second term:

-- Raise the tax rate on the rich to what it was before 1981. The top 1 percent has an almost unprecedented share of the nation's wealth and income yet the lowest tax rate in 30 years. Meanwhile, America faces colossal budget deficits that have already meant devastating cuts in education, infrastructure, and the safety nets we depend on. The rich must pay their fair share. Income in excess of $1 million should be taxed at 70 percent -- the same rate as before 1981.

-- Raise capital gains taxes to the same level. It's absurd that the 400 richest Americans -- whose wealth exceeds the wealth of the bottom 150 million Americans put together -- should pay an average 17 percent tax on their incomes, the rate day laborers and child-care workers pay. That's because so much of the income of the super-rich is considered capital gains, now taxed at only 15 percent. Close this loophole.

-- Tax financial transactions. A tiny tax on every financial deal would yield billions of dollars more. It would also slow speculators and reduce the wild gyrations of financial markets.

-- Use the bulk of this money to create good schools, give our kids access to a college education, and build a world-class infrastructure, so all our children have a chance to get ahead.

-- Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act, that used to separate commercial from investment banking. It was put in place after the Great Crash of 1929 to prevent financiers from gambling with peoples' bank deposits. But it was repealed in 1999 -- and its repeal contributed to the Crash of 2008. Wall Street lobbyists have made sure the new Dodd-Frank law has enough loopholes to allow financiers to continue to gamble with other peoples' money. The only way to stop this is to bring Glass-Steagall back.

-- Cap the size of Wall Street's biggest banks and break up the biggest. They were too big to fail before the bailout. They're even bigger now. And because of their huge size they get preferential treatment from the Fed, giving them an even greater competitive advantage over smaller banks. Cap their size and break them up before we have to bail them out again.

-- Require the big banks that got bailed out to modify the mortgages of millions of Americans now under water, who owe more than their homes are worth. It's not their fault the banks created a housing bubble that burst, causing home values to plummet.

Mr. President, we know nothing good happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington are organized and mobilized to make it happen.

So here's the deal: We'll reelect you. We'll stand behind you. We'll give you a mandate to do all this -- and more -- in your second term.

As long as you stand behind us.

Deal?

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at

Newt Gingrich has done it again. With his new tax plan he has raised the bar from irresponsibility to recklessness.

Every dollar estimate I'm about to share with you comes from the independent, non-partisan Tax Policy Center -- a group whose estimates are used by almost everyone in Washington regardless...

Two important reforms are stopping the revolving door between Washington and the nation's financial giants, and preventing financiers from flipping companies (making short-term profits by borrowing big sums to buy them, then squeezing payrolls and firing employees, and reselling the stripped-down companies at a profit -- unless the debt-laden firms...