... by Walter Brasch Two things are assured this coming week. One is that Arizona will do its best to put into practice its controversial anti-immigration bill. The other is that a federal district court will rule whether that law is constitutional. The Arizona law requires all law enforcement officials w

A double-dip recession leading to a period of hardship for ordinary people is worth it according to Martin Feldstein because people will not give up their safety net unless the government is disciplined to ignore the people. Title of the piece:

... by Walter Brasch Millions of Americans had pleaded with basketball superstar LeBron James to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and come to their city when he became a free agent. Bloggers, media pundits, and reporters of every kind seemed to devote much of their lives to figuring out what team James would be a pa

This story about Banksy the illusive graffiti artist whose latest work showed up on the ruins of the old Packard factory in Detroit is really amazing. What an artist and what a commentary of contemporary life. From Detroit Mark's

... by Walter Brasch For a few days last week, the harpies of the extreme right assaulted the president of the United States for first considering, and then firing Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of allied forces in Afghanistan. In a 10-day interview with Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, McChrystal a

via Barry Ritholtz

As Brad DeLong shows, the economic data today shows an economy that isn't doing all that well. But I think the real problem isn't what the economy is doing today, but what it wil

Could we change who we are by just changing the way we look at time?

The code name for the BP well now gushing in the Gulf is the Macondo Prospect, but today is more often referred to by the name Deepwater Horizon (which is the drilling rig that exploded). The company tagged this well with Macondo from the fictional town

Evidently the Very Serious People have decided that austerity is the name of the game (despite the best efforts of Prof. Krugman to explain the reason this is crazy). As Digby

Following up with the subject of the two paths laid out for our country with Jimmy Carter's speech is this very apropos segment from This America Life that provides a comparison of Barbados and Jamaica and how they approached a fisc

I want to recommend these two posts by my friend, Dave Johnson, one which lays out the path our country took in electing Reagan and the other choice we had.

Evidently because there were no accidents for decades, the problem didn't exist according to a senior administration official. Makes you wonder how good the regulation is for nuclear power plants. After all, catastrophic accidents haven't happened for any nuclea

Tonight I heard one of the rival oil companies former CEO/president talk about how BP and its CEO has been doing a commendable job in the face of great crisis. (Sorry, no link as I believe it was a BBC segment and I'm not able to find it online.) He said Hayward was not responsible for the mistakes of those tho

... by Walter Brasch The British are upset with the United States. That's not too unusual. There was this revolution thing a couple of centuries ago. But America's Number 1 ally is upset that Americans are blaming BP for that nasty little oil spill in the Gulf. You know, the one where as much as 1.7 milli

One excellent dKos diary from the weekend was: "What Do YOU Think?" by Granny Doc. As she says, everyone has an opinion these days and with our 24x7 media, so much opinion is based on our gut reactions or just hearing someone else you agree with expres

... by Walter Brasch Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) had a good idea to slow or stop the Gulf Coast oil spill from reaching shore. Build artificial barrier islands, he told the federal government. He wanted the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River to strengthen and connect the

In a very moving statement this week, Congressman Charlie Melancon talked about the importance of the wetlands of Louisiana to the US economy: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and

Via The Big Picture, studies show that providing monetary incentives for complex cognitive work actually backfires. So what does work? Perhaps this explains the failure of so many corporatio

Joe Romm of Climate Progress has an important piece today about Obama's challenge and what his legacy will be based on the ecological disasters that face him (namely, the BP Gulf oil-gusher and catastrophic climate change). And

Where were you on May 18, 1980? If you were living in the Pacific Northwest, you might remember the dramatic eruption of the Mt St Helens volcano. Portland Blogger, Ron Beasley provided his memories and pictures of this time in a moving piece. One of the memories I have is of my friend Bob Kasewete

When trying to make sense of the candidates for the May 2010 election, I turned to the Willamette Week's endorsements as they have always been a good place to get some solid insight into the candidates. This hasn't made them too popular with some of the politic

... by Walter Brasch My father, a federal employee with a top secret clearance, carried a copy of his birth certificate when he went into Baja California from our home in San Diego. Many times, when he tried to reenter the U.S., he was stopped by the Border Patrol. He had thick black hair and naturally dark skin,

As we watch the slow but inevitable environmental calamity moving toward the Gulf states, I couldn't help but remember another massive oil spill in Alaska in which BP was involved. In 2006, I

On Tuesday's Morning Edition, Evan Thomas, discussed his new book, The War Lovers. During the last few years he realized that the reason America invaded Iraq war was because of the lust for war on the part of the Bush administration and a bunch

It looks like a winner. via

Last year when I attended the RMI 2009 conference in San Francisco, one of things I learned was that Amory Lovin's message about energy efficiency and the need for aggressive development of sustainable energy solutions was picked up by the very top leader

Turns out that Goldman Sachs' CEO Lloyd Blankfein is upset with the SEC because the Suit will "Hurt America".

What does the financial industry contribute to our country's economic well-being? Answer: not much. And what can we do to bring it back in line? I think this commentary in the Economist talking about using public shame to change the cult

Yesterday, I was shocked to hear Morning Editions' reporter talking about the current military situation in Afghanistan using the phrase "an area infested with the Taliban". The use of the word "infested" is extremely problematic because no matter what you think about the Taliban, they are human beings and the people wh