April 14, 2010
Health Care Lessons from the Old South
Apparently the insurance commissioner of Georgia is currently refusing to comply with Kathleen Sebelius’ request to create a state pool for high-risk insurance plans as required under the health care reform bill signed into law in March. According to The New York Times (April 13, 2010) the commissioner told Sibelius that the legislation is likely […] read more »
March 23, 2010
The Invisible Immigration Rally
(written with Peter Siavelis) Did anyone even notice? Last Sunday’s massive immigration rally was supposed to push political leaders towards comprehensive immigration reform. Unfortunately it was largely overshadowed by the final vote on healthcare reform. Hunt for coverage of the rally in the national press and you will find it, but you will have to […] read more »
March 21, 2010
Another Debt to Jon Stewart
The debt that progressives owe to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show is large and growing. It certainly grew again last Thursday when the program delivered a much needed demolition job on Glenn Beck. The critique delivered that day has been made by others – not least by David Sarota and Adele Stan immediately after […] read more »
March 7, 2010
Winning reform one hard-fought trench at a time
The great Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci once explained the success of the Russian Bolsheviks and the failure of their Western European comrades by using a military image from the First World War. When Lenin took the first trench in his fight with Czardom, the old regime had no supporting defensive trenches to fall back on. […] read more »
February 21, 2010
Delusions at CPAC
Watching CPAC is never great fun for progressives. It wasn’t last year, when Rush Limbaugh made his now notorious call for President Obama to fail; and it wasn’t again this year, when Marco Rubio brought the conference to its feet with his denunciation of the direction of White House policy. read more »
February 13, 2010
The “health” side of the health care debate
Michele Obama’s initiative on child obesity is to be welcomed as long overdue. Like so much of what emerges from this White House, however, the intention is laudable but the impact will be small. Mobilizing the great and the good to improve the labeling on processed food, to redesign physical education programs, and to get […] read more »
February 7, 2010
Will Obama disappoint? Probably. Should that surprise us? Probably Not
When judging the Obama administration, both now and in 2012, there is (and will be) some virtue in remembering that progressive governments, both here and abroad, are always in some sense a disappointment to their more committed supporters. One trick for mental health is to remember how much better they are, even as they disappoint […] read more »
January 31, 2010
Framing Errors in the State of the Union Address
Anyone who watched the televised exchange between the President and Republican lawmakers at their retreat last week – anyone, that is, with an ounce of objectivity in them – would presumably concede that, in a straight-up fight between Barack Obama and the entire Republican leadership, the President would win by a clear knock out. So […] read more »
January 23, 2010
We Need a Fighting State of the Union Address
It took FDR two goes to establish the political architecture of the New Deal. We do well to remember that the Roosevelt administration triggered a second “hundred days” of radical reform as a conservative Supreme Court began to strike down the first wave of New Deal legislation. There is surely a lesson here for the […] read more »
