The Feed

A great deal of attention is currently focused on the notion that a “fiscal cliff” of higher taxes and spending cuts awaits at the end of this year. The good news is that politicians are finally talking about the budget – and working hard to communicate their competing messages regarding what should be done to ...

A year ago, President Obama gave a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas where he laid out a vision of how the economy grows. This vision proved a successful way to connect with voters during the campaign. Now, as Congress debates whether to push the U.S. economy over the so-called fiscal cliff and policymakers consider far-reaching changes ...

Dear Congress, Please don’t drive our economy off the fiscal cliff. First of all, I really hate recessions—and you should, too. If you take between 3% and 4% of total spending out of an economy, a recession is very likely to follow. People like me won’t lose their jobs, or even take a pay cut. ...

The “fiscal cliff” is a rhetorical device designed to hijack the inauguration of new federal programs that would address our nation’s mass unemployment crisis. It distracts us from alternatives to reducing the federal budget deficit by other means than massive federal spending cuts. Indeed, the fiscal cliff debate has subverted our nation’s courage and imagination. ...

The US has just gone through its most expensive election ever. The projected price tag for the 2012 federal election is expected to top $6 billion. This is no way to run a democracy. This was the first presidential election since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 US Supreme Court case that allowed unions and corporations ...

The Supreme Court is set to hear a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Court will decide if some states need to get permission from the federal government before making changes that affect voting. Host Michel Martin speaks with Spencer Overton of George Washington University and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation.

The fundamental ideological conflict surrounding the Welfare State in the U.S. is no longer over the scope of government, but instead how the government carries out its responsibilities and delivers services. The conservative and neoliberal vision is one of a government that provides a comparable range of benefits as conventional liberals, but rather than designing ...

In a condescending but shallow response to a Huffington Post piece written last week by my colleague Emily Phelps and me, Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto accuses us of appealing to “emotion” and wallowing in “nostalgia for the heroism of the civil rights movement half a century ago.” Our piece mourned the recent death of Lawrence Guyot, a civil rights ...

“Debtpocalypse” looms, Depending on who wins out in Washington, we’re told, we will either free fall over the fiscal cliff or take a terrifying slide to the pit at the bottom.  Grim as these scenarios might seem, there is something confected about the mise-en-scène, like an un-fun Playland.  After all, there is no fiscal cliff, or at least ...

Many responses — from addiction treatment to finding housing — are necessary to reduce recidivism. But these remedies are just chipping away at the problem. What is needed instead is a re-examination of what constitutes a crime and the appropriate punishment. Then, low-level offenders would not even enter the criminal justice system in the first ...