Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege
Let's be clear. Our health care system is disintegrating. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. At a time when 60 million people, including many with insurance, do not have access to a medical home, more than 18,000 Americans die ( Read more... )

( Why the economic crisis, and its solution, are bigger than anyone has so far admitted. )

New York Times:Stimulus Flows Into Patchwork of State Transport ProjectsKansas will widen U.S. 69 to remove a bottleneck outside Kansas City, along with a few other expensive projects. Maryland will spend its money in smaller pieces, resurfacing dozens of rutted roads and highways. Colorado will build an interchange on Elk Creek Road in Jefferson ( Read more... )

From The Atlantic.

The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide-destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the ( Read more... )

First, time for thinking ahead--science serving society

Wired: The New Deal's Lessons for Now
By Brandon Keim

It's too soon to call the economic crisis a depression, but it's not too early to learn an important lesson from the Great Depression: science is more important than ever.

Of course, giving money to scientists - or, as Sarah Palin famously ( Read more... )

The Work Foundation CEO Will Hutton pointed out in an interview Tuesday with CNBC Europe that just using official forecast guidance and presently available economic data, the UK is set to experience a much sharper contraction than even endured during the severe global recession of the 1930s, and that the UK and much of the rest of the world has ( Read more... )

What Obama Must Do ( Read more... )

New York Times:Fighting Off Depression
(By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: January 4, 2009)

“If we don’t act swiftly and boldly,” declared President-elect Barack Obama in his latest weekly address, “we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment.” If you ask me, he was understating the case.
The fact is that ( Read more... )

..the relevant portion is italicized..

From WaPo
By David S. Broder
Sunday, December 28, 2008

( As a rule, a new president's choice of a secretary of transportation makes few headlines... )