himwhynot

Tim Fernholz asks whether efforts to offer borrowers mortgage modifications are endangered by the current documentation crisis? The mortgage mess isn’t going away. Loans, sold as many as 12 times before ending up in a complex security or on a financial institution’s balance sheet, have been found with key legal paperwork misplaced or incorrectly transferred. […]

Sam Rosenfeld says FDR eventually did what many wish Obama would do — challenge the troublemakers in the party. Franklin D. Roosevelt began his “fireside chat” on June 24, 1938, as he had begun others, recounting New Deal battles won and lost during the most recent congressional session. But he ended the broadcast with a […]

Paul Waldman says that as conservative deficit hawks go looking for new targets, expect to hear a lot about outsized federal paychecks. In late 2008, as the government began debating whether to save General Motors and Chrysler from bankruptcy, conservatives saw an opportunity to open a new front in their decades-long war on labor unions. […]

Mark Schmitt asks, if “ideas have consequences,” as conservatives like to say, what’s the consequence of having none? In the years since then, the balance of power in the war of ideas has switched. Beginning in the late 1990s, progressive donors began to see the value of think tanks like the New America Foundation and […]

Courtney Martin says that instead of drawing inspiration from political candidates, young people must be motivated by the promise of a country that reflects our deeply held values. Chalk it up to my old age (I’m staring down 31 next month), but it seems to me that counting on candidates to provide incentives for voting […]

Kay Steiger talks with Jenn Pozner about the reality of reality TV. Which are the worst offenders when it comes to sexism? It’s a toss-up — is it better or worse when shows package themselves as sincere or when the sexism is totally overt? A show like The Bachelor is the longest-running dating show. We’ve […]

Monica Potts says the new Congress jeopardizes a tenuous agreement among liberals on how to reform Bush’s poverty programs. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the program for low-income families formerly known as welfare, is up for reauthorization in 2011. During the Bush administration, policy-makers co-opted TANF programs — which had been aimed primarily at struggling […]

Gabriel Arana talks about conservative gays’ search for a diva icon of their own. But it takes more than songs about rainbows and avant-garde fashion sense to call yourself a gay icon. My own childhood obsession with Whitney Houston wasn’t just rooted in the pathos of “One Moment in Time,” which hinted at possibilities beyond […]

Cord Jefferson says that on the Internet, society’s most intractable issues with race and class are increasingly prominent. For an example of where the Internet has gone tragically wrong, one need only look to the strange rise of Antoine Dodson. On July 28 of this year, a man broke into Dodson’s Huntsville, Alabama, housing-project apartment […]

Jamelle Bouie talks about the legislation Democrats need to pass before the 111th Congress is done. This session promises to be both productive and a little more high-profile than usual. In addition to passing routine items like the Medicare “doc fix” — done to prevent the recurring 23 percent slash in Medicare reimbursements — and […]