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“Whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I’ll use it,” announced President Obama in last month’s landmark economic address in Galesburg Illinois. Now consensus seems to be building around one thing President Obama can indeed use his executive powers to do to boost hundreds of thousands of workers into the middle class: raise their wages.

For decades, the dictators of the Middle East basically gave the following rap to any westerner who questioned their tyrannical rule:

You may not like us, but we're better than the alternatives. We're better than a democratic government that will inevitably be hijacked by Islamists. And we're better than the sectarian or tribal civil war that will erupt if we don't keep a lid on things. 

In the wake of the Detroit bankruptcy, there has been no shortage of finger pointing, blame, and calls for “shared sacrifice.” On a personal note, I love hearing the phrase “shared sacrifice” because what usually follows is a lot of sacrifice that is rarely shared. And, the case in Detroit is no exception.

We hear a lot that college "isn't for everybody," but this phrase is typically applied to working class kids—with the suggestion that we should expand opportunities to get vocational training that leads to solid blue-collar jobs. 

Of course, though, there are young people across the class spectrum who may not want to spend four years sitting in classes and doing piles of homework. And as I wrote yesterday, the financial downsides of college are higher now than ever.

The huge trading losses suffered by JP Morgan last year—and the cover-up of those losses—stand as just one example of that giant bank's long record of excess, criminality, and deception.

And when you think of who should be held accountable for the London Whale fiasco, one name comes to mind. It's a name that should be on the lips of every regulator and ordinary citizen who wants justice for years of financial malfeasance by JP Morgan. 

That name: Julien Grout.

Imagine Michael Bloomberg being stopped on the street by police and ordered in contemptuous tones to spread his arms and legs wide and lean over the hood of a car so he could be patted down.

New York City’s billionaire mayor would be outraged, to say the least, and so would his constituents. But such humiliating treatment by the police has been a daily reality for staggering numbers of young black and Latino New Yorkers whose only crime has been waking up each morning in the wrong colored skin.

How much should we trust private corporations to solve public problems? That’s the question cash-strapped state and local governments are asking as they experiment with private partnerships to fill the funding gaps that tax dollars can’t. From contracting out sanitation services, to privately-owned public spaces, private dollars infiltrate many of the programs and places we take for granted.

Study after study shows that college still pays off financially. Quite apart from the well-known income gains that come with post-secondary degrees, more education also translates into a much higher net worth on average.

Two weeks from today will be the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. As advocates prepare to march again, it is clear how little some things have changed -- many of the policies people fought for back then are the same that we are fighting for now.