Using Bank Interests to Help Students

What better way is there to use the current government giveaway to private lenders than to work toward restoring the promise of equal opportunity? And, high quality early education pays. Long-term studies have demonstrated that taxpayers actually save money from public investment in high-quality early childhood education through reduced special education and correctional system costs, a lower crime rate and a more skilled workforce. Why should taxpayers continue to give large student loan companies both high rates and a government guarantee? Let’s transfer those excess bank profits to students, especially our youngest, while we can still change the trajectory of their lives.

The Fine Print on Financial Reform

On Monday, President Barack Obama released a complimentary statement about Sen. Chris Dodd's latest proposal for financial reform, singling out its creation of "a new consumer financial protection agency to set and enforce clear rules of the road." This is notable largely because it is not, in fact, true. What the bill actually creates is a Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection within the Federal Reserve, a move that has raised great concern among consumer advocates who note, with more accuracy, that the Fed's numerous consumer-protection failures played a large role in the recent crisis. But the rhetoric around the creation of a new consumer-protection agency illustrates the central pitfall of financial regulatory reform: telling real reform from the cosmetic.

The Fine Print on Financial Reform

On Monday, President Barack Obama released a complimentary statement about Sen. Chris Dodd's latest proposal for financial reform, singling out its creation of "a new consumer financial protection agency to set and enforce clear rules of the road." This is notable largely because it is not, in fact, true. What the bill actually creates is a Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection within the Federal Reserve, a move that has raised great concern among consumer advocates who note, with more accuracy, that the Fed's numerous consumer-protection failures played a large role in the recent crisis. But the rhetoric around the creation of a new consumer-protection agency illustrates the central pitfall of financial regulatory reform: telling real reform from the cosmetic.

Glenn Beck: Conservatism's Snake Oil Salesman, Pt. 1

(Or "CPAC: Sideshow and Snake Oil, Pt. 2")

The circus sideshow that was CPAC folded its tent and left Washington weeks ago. However, its apparent ringmaster and chief snake oil salesman still sweats, struts, and sobs across the "stage" of conservative media — that medicine show never stops rolling and never stops hawking its "solutions" to Americans who are in desperate need of something to ease their economic aches and pains, and heal their political maladies.

And like the medicine shows of old, Glenn Beck — and others like him — peddle magical "miracle cures" that either poison directly by filling the body politic with toxic bile, or indirectly by distracting us from actual solutions, and aren't intended to "cure what ails us" so much as to make us think that we feel better even as the illness progresses. Case in point is Beck's latest attack on the very idea of social justice.

A Five-Step Guide To Real Financial Reform

The next big battle in Washington — one that will heat up fast if the health care tussle is ever resolved — will be fought over reform of the financial sector. In recent weeks, President Barack Obama has gone on the offensive, calling for new restraints on Wall Street wheeling and dealing and vowing to veto weak legislation. The big banks and their lobbyists are vigorously resisting a rewrite of their operating rules and working hard to insert loopholes and exclusions that would gut the legislation. Obama can prevent that from happening by spelling out the benchmarks the legislators must meet to avoid his veto pen. The details of financial reform can be complicated. But it’s not hard to come up with the must-have provisions. Here are five that the White House should insist upon to make sure we get financial reform that works, not just window dressing.

Does Meaningful Financial Reform Have Any Chance?

What the Democrats need is something that will compel big banks to come out in force against them — to show their teeth and to pick off votes in an explicit manner. These powerful forces, once mobilized and out in the open, will almost certainly stop anything from passing the Senate. But the debate will grab people’s attention — and the ads, the lobbying, and the outrageous vote buying of Big Finance will help get across the bigger point: Big banks became only more powerful as a result of our most recent boom-bust-bailout sequence. Reasonable reform has almost no chance of passing the Senate. But a well-crafted debate, drawn up on the right terms — and with the support of the president (although don’t hold your breath on that) — could really help shift popular understanding of the issues.

Does Flying a Plane Into a Building Make You a Hero or a Terrorist?

Here's a question I bet you thought didn't need to be asked in a post-9/11 America: Does flying a plane into a building make you a terrorist or a hero?

Let's break this down.

Basically, It's Over

In the early 1700s, Europeans discovered in the Pacific Ocean a large, unpopulated island with a temperate climate, rich in all nature's bounty except coal, oil, and natural gas. Reflecting its lack of civilization, they named this island "Basicland." Today, Basicland is under new management, using a new governmental system. It also has a new nickname: Sorrowland.

The Quiet Revolution

These days, liberals don’t know whether to feel betrayed by or merely disappointed with Barack Obama. From health care reform and the public option to Afghanistan, and Wall Street, Obama has thoroughly let down his party’s left flank. Yet there is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for — but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. In doing so, he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, it is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.

Politicians Will Not Change The World

We have entered a time of realignment not unlike that when city states joined together to form nations. Except this time it is global; countries are becoming less relevant. The emerging rulers are corporate CEOs, members of the corporatocracy. The good news: for the first time in history this new empire has been created not by military force, but through the sale of goods and services. And the marketplace is democratic--once we decide to see it as such. It is the ultimate polling booth. Corporations exist only because we vote for them in their stores, at the malls, and over the Internet. It is up to us to decide which companies will succeed and which ones will fail. Politicians will not change the world, because they are beholden to the big corporations. AND the corporations are dependent upon you and me.