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You can explain the current plight of the American middle class in three sentences. Timothy Egan did in the New York Times this week:

Progressives have typically attacked economic inequality on fairness grounds, arguing that it's just not right that so much national wealth is funneled to the top even as millions struggle to get by.

Credit card fees can be expensive and annoying, there’s no doubt about it. But many of them can be avoided if you’re careful and others may be worth paying if you get something worthwhile. For example, many of the best rewards credit cards charge annual fees, but people who use them frequently are

By some measures, public trust of government is now at its lowest point ever recorded. To be sure, this partly reflects a concerted thirty year assault on government by conservatives. But it also reflect legitimate public doubts about the ability of government to solve problems -- doubts that are

Most people think of sequestration as imposing across-the-board cuts of 5 to 7 percent, a figure that doesn't sound all that alarming. While that's technically correct, what's now becoming clear is how the cuts have ramifications far larger than the 5 to 7 percent figure would suggest. This is the

The co-chair of the Moreland Commission set up to investigate campaign finance issues in New York, William Fitzpatrick, is a Republican, fiscal conservative, and a recent convert to public financing. Fitzpatrick stated, “If the money's not there, I'm inclined not to spend it.

The establishment consensus is accurately summarized by Martin Feldstein, “Preventing an explosion of the national debt requires slowing the growth of the benefits of middle-class retirees.” But the truth is that the middle class and poor need more help than ever.

There aren't a lot of causes that can fire up Americans across the political spectrum, but getting money out of politics is definitely one of them. That's the finding of a recent poll-based memo by the DemocracyCorps. A majority of Americans see Washington as corrupt, the memo reports, and many

Perhaps the most striking fact from the exit polls last Tuesday is just how well Democrats did among highly educated voters. In Virginia, Terry McAuliffe won voters with a postgradudate degree by 22 points. In New Jersey, the Democratic candidate lost high school and college grads by double digit

Here's a basic conundrum facing progressives right now: We're the people who want more big government, yet populist anger at all major institutions -- public and private -- is the most powerful current in politics today. How do we square that circle?