Members of Congress, entrusted to represent the best interests of the average American, instead play out a stilted, ineffective soap opera on our TV screens, complete with phony discussions of fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings which take the place of real proposals for meaningful change in the country.

There is little doubt that the Republicans--and especially their leader--have become the party of oligarchy. Why more Americans do not seem to notice this fact seems to indicate their disengagement from politics and a misunderstanding about exactly what they are voting for.

It is the wisdom of the age -- shared by Democrat and Republican, by forlorn idealist and anxious realist -- that money rules the world, transcends the boundaries of sovereign states, serves as the light unto the nations, and waters the tree of liberty.

President Obama should throw down the gauntlet by promising to veto any cuts in any domestic programs until the Romney loopholes are closed. Why should the rest of us pay for Romney's money vacationing in the Cayman Islands?

Why not starve government, since the misinformation gang opposes almost any form of financial or environmental regulation, while neglecting aging infrastructure and falling behind other developed countries in education?

Have you been to this country? A vast jumble of haphazard development comprised of forbidding industrial warehouses.

Politicians required to play by the rules, to openly confess that their loyalty has been purchased and forced to identify the highest bidders, could not possibly survive. So they must bend the rules to conceal their transactions. In doing in democracy, their safety is in secrecy, and we must be kept in the dark.

If Mitt Romney is elected in 2012, he will be the richest American president since George Washington, who owned 300 slaves and vast tracts of land. Romney is ten times richer than the patrician George Bush and fifty times richer than Barack Obama.

It is a shame to have to ask whether democracy is a mirage in the United States, but the reality of the disconnect between government and the people has become so stark it is impossible to ignore.

In President Abraham Lincoln's famous "Gettysburg Address" in November of 1863, he wound up his short speech by exclaiming that the living be dedicate...

I make my coffee, I ponder my email, I do my work. I try to make a positive difference in the world, as do do most of us. Sadly, however, most of us no longer run America.

The Democratic Party lost its spine the moment it decided to cash in on corporate political money. If we don't reverse Citizens United and get the money out of our political system, progressive causes don't stand a chance.

During the past hundred years, [The New Republic] has continued to champion the principles that made Brandeis the greatest constitutional philosopher ...

James Kwak extends Michael Lewis's point and feeds my fascination with apocalyptic hysteria and helpless torpor as the twin markers of American politi...

The smart money is betting that this autumn the Supreme Court will give corporations the same right to spend in federal elections as has any person