Last weekend, comedian Roseanne Barr announced her candidacy for President of the United States of America.  This bid is a bit more serious than the short lived candidacy of another comedian, Steven Colbert, earlier this year.   Roseanne’s plan is to use her celebrity to gain attention for the Green Party, before throwing her support to Jill Stein, the candidate she actually supports for the Green Party nomination which will be decided at the Green Party Convention in Baltimore in July.  Roseanne’s announcement will not be the last effort to capture headlines on political pages with “third party” bids in 2012 – and we expect quite a few of them will reach the front pages as well.

The unusual pattern that emerged last year in the contest for the Republican nomination helps demonstrate how easy it has become to have a presidential campaign surge.  With voters searching for… Read the rest

There is an ongoing, intense and highly politicized discussion going on in the U.S. about the reality and implications of climate change.   With Jon Huntsman’s withdrawal from the race for the Republican nomination, there is now no candidate remaining in that race who squarely affirms that climate change is a reality, much less one who concedes that human activity is causing it, or that some policy response might be needed.   Of the candidates who contended in the South Carolina primary, one (Santorum) is a steadfast denier, while Gingrich and Romney are recent converts to the skeptical position.  The possibility that the latter might revert to their former stance is viewed with alarm by those whom they now court and as a source of solace for those who hope that even a Republican victory in November might not directly imply a disastrous turn in energy and climate policy.  It is… Read the rest

From CEO To Candidate, Romney Flip-Flops on Debt 

Truthout: If Mr. Romney were really running as a private equity executive, how would he view what his campaign regards as one of the nation’s most pressing issues, the national debt?

Understanding The Science Of Gratitude 

Zoelle and Michelle Levey: The practice of gratitude antidotes two root sufferings that pervade the human experience. The first can be characterized as a feeling of “insufficiency” — not having enough or not being enough. This fundamental sense of dissatisfaction opens the way to the second kind of suffering — being incessantly busy trying to get more or be more in order to somehow fill this inner feeling of discontentment and lack. Living with an inner attitude of scarcity and poverty-consciousness also makes us prey to being manipulated by external forces that tell us that we will find happiness and satisfaction — finally — if we only acquire or consume this product or that, or once we go to this place or take some other action “out there.” 

What a nice holiday gift for Democrats!  The Republicans are waving the white flag of surrender in their dispute over the two month extension of unemployment benefit and payroll tax reductions.  The substantive importance of this is fairly modest.  This is only a two month extension to a few fairly small changes in middle class taxes and benefits; the dispute over how (or whether) to pay for them will continue into January and February, and all of this is a small sideshow to the much larger dispute over the nations’ short term job creation problem, and long-term debt problem – the issue the Simpson-Bowles Commission took on and the “Congressional Super-committee” failed to resolve – which still looms over us.

Still the political importance of the Republican faux-pas is tremendous, because it brings into crystal clear focus, an accurate picture of the positions of the two… Read the rest

What Our Health Care Spending Buys 

Washington Post - A few commenters asked what all this spending means for health: Does higher spending on medical care translate into better health status? Thanks to another study out this week, this one from the United Health Foundation, we have an answer. The rankings measure 23 health outcomes in states including rates of smoking, obesity, preventable hospitalizations and cardiovascular deaths.

Some people do not know what our political future holds because they have not given it much thought.  And then there can be people who reach a deep level of Zen meditation and know that they do not know what will happen in 2012.  This is called “profound not knowing,” and the after reading most of the political analyses written over the past few months, and doing some of our own political analysis, we have decided that:

• The chance of the Republicans gaining control of the Senate is about 50-50.
• There is a one half probability of the Democrats regaining control of the House of representatives, and…
• President Barack Obama has about even odds of holding onto the White House.

All three events are essentially a coin flip, and if these were independent events, the chance that all three branches would change party control — a triple… Read the rest

The Strategic Value of Forgiveness 

Marc Gopin: There is one more element in the astonishing success of Gandhi/King/Mandela: love and forgiveness of adversaries. Nelson Mandela could have nationalized all the white wealth in South Africa but he did not. Mahatma Gandhi could have easily demonized the British in India but he did not. Martin Luther King had good reason to hate America but he loved it instead.

The Occupy Wall Street message: “We are the 99%” has the benefit of simplicity but conveys a deep and complex message that is likely to find acceptance far beyond the mostly young people camping in urban centers around the world.  The slogan is a challenge to rebalance a system of democratic capitalism that has lost its equilibrium and no longer seems to be delivering on its promises for the majority of participants.  The social contract offering a middle class life for workers, a secure retirement, and a better life for the next generation now seems to be a broken promise except for those at the very top.  But beyond this breakdown of the economic system, the breakdown of the political system presents an even greater challenge to what it means to live in, and believe in, a country based on democratic capitalism.

The Occupy movement has started a… Read the rest

We are living in remarkably uncertain times.  Middle class families have been facing stagnant wages and declining job prospects for decades, but since the collapse of financial markets and the housing bubble crash in the last years of the presidency of George W. Bush, middle class families are uncertain about keeping their homes and uncertain about keeping their jobs.  Older workers worry that if they lose their job now it may be their last one, and younger workers graduating from college worry they may not find a first job for which they are qualified and be able to hold on to a middle-class lifestyle that is as good as that of their parents.      

So if you don’t think about it very hard, there is real brilliance to the ubiquitous Republican talking point about businesses needing certainty in order to put Americans back to work.  Each time… Read the rest