Young People

For the completists among you, here’s the transcript as provided by Cuomo’s staff, with slight copyedits (all typos can be considered mine): Well thank you, and good afternoon to all of you.  First let me begin by thanking the p…

New York magazine has a long piece out by Christopher Beam that, for a much of its wingspan, makes a pretty fair and quote-rich argument for us living in something that at least approaches a "Libertarian moment." Sample: There's never been a bett…

Experience suggests that belief in the American Dream is nothing more than ballast to be thrown overboard as soon as The Economy weakens. Certainly that is the role it has played in this Recession. Two of the most memorable newspaper articles of t…

Elections have consequences, and one consequence of this year's voting likely will be a $90 million plan to bring free preschool programs to all 4-year-olds in the state, a key priority of outgoing Gov. Chet Culver and something that education adv…

A little bit more for the previous post.   It’s important to expand on why, especially in the late 1970s and 1980s, how much the ascendant conservative approach to crime involved a large Prison population.  Here’s the big quo…

Vice President Joe Biden recently appeared on Good Morning, America to rebut the views of Religious Right icon Pat Robertson on the decriminalization of pot. What follows are comments on the subject, one by each of the two men. See if you can figu…

It was a moment of unexpected but fascinating political theater. President Barack Obama was hosting former President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office when the two men decided they wanted to chat with the media. They asked a White House aide if th…

WASHINGTON - Many parents have heard FICA Screams. Indignant Children, holding in trembling hands their first paychecks, demand to know what FICA is and why it is feasting on their pay. FICA (the Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax) is govern…