ehm1212

Gabriel Arana argues that addressing immigration is the best way to ensure health-care reform is truly effective — and score big political points with Latino voters: Most of the final negotiations over health care have turned on the abortion language, but last week members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus joined the fray, threatening to vote […]

Matthew Yglesias explains why public opinion on health care is turning around: Like a specter, the unpopularity of Congress’ reform proposals haunted the ultimate goal of universal health care all winter long. This issue weighed heavily on the minds of Democratic senators as they moved toward a final pre-Christmas vote on their version of reform; […]

Tim Fernholz says that regulatory reforms need to be a lot tougher if Democrats intend to campaign on them: 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 […]

Michelle Goldberg argues in favor of health-care reform legislation, despite its weakness on reproductive rights: In the final days of health-care reform, we’re once again mired in a dispiriting debate about whether the legislation is sufficiently anti-abortion. The Senate health-care bill will allow states to ban insurance policies that include abortion from their insurance exchanges. […]

Latoya Peterson argues that current economic policies don’t address the deep financial problems facing many women of color: How far will $5 go toward an unexpected emergency? Or even $100? Sadly, for many women of color, not even a single dollar stands between them and financial destruction. For black women the median wealth (savings and […]

Tim Fernholz reviews Michael Lewis‘ new book: In the prologue to The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis explains that he envisioned his first and perhaps most famous work, Liar’s Poker, as a grim obituary for an industry that rewarded inexperience and greed. However, the byzantine banking industry continued to flourish, and young […]

Paul Waldman on conservative semiotics: As much as politicians like to imagine themselves men and women of action, what they mostly do is talk. They talk to the cameras, they talk to constituents, they talk to contributors, they talk to each other. It’s almost impossible to be a successful politician without the ability to lodge […]

Sarah Jaffeprofiles Anton Gunn: Anton Gunn’s e-mail promises I won’t have a hard time picking him out in the Starbucks in Richland County, South Carolina. He’s right. Easily the biggest guy in the room, the former offensive lineman looms over an older man in an American Legion baseball cap with whom he’s chatting about local […]

Edward Alden explains that a Supreme Court ruling in a terrorism case is making it harder for many other important lawsuits to proceed: Javaid Iqbal lived for a decade on Long Island, working first as a 7-Eleven clerk, then as a gas station attendant, then as a cable-television installer. On Nov. 2, 2001, the Pakistani […]

Bruce Ackerman argues that if Biden is willing to exercise the power granted him in the Constitution, he could pass health care — and undo the filibuster rules that threaten to deadlock our system of government: The question of whether Congress will fulfill the dream of every modern Democratic president and pass health reform now […]