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The Campaign to Fix the Debt is the newest power-player in D.C. Founded by the beloved Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson (who are taking their act on the road to the tune of $40,000 dollars an appearance, around the average American's yearly income), Fix the Debt advocates a responsible solution to reducing our federal debt.

For most of its history ALEC has operated in the background, but its influence recently drew the spotlight when its promotion of “Stand Your Ground” laws came to light in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida.  Faced with the potential of consumer boycotts, corporate sponsors such as McDonald’s and Pepsi withdrew their support.  Henceforth, the organization announced, it would concentrate on state econom

Every time that President Obama emphatically repeats that he won't raise taxes on anyone making under $200,000 a year, as he did yesterday, I can't help but wince. Promising the middle class -- and a good swath of the upper middle class -- that their taxes will never go up is politically cowardly, economically irresponsible, and a betrayal of the progressive belief in government. 

Let me explain each of these charges in turn.

The US Chamber of Commerce has been one of the most influential lobbying groups in our political system, in part due to the sheer volume of its spending. In the last year alone, the Chamber spent over $95 million lobbying and over $36 million on the last election cycle.

Lewis Powell wanted executives selling tires or aspirin to take on an additional job: selling capitalism itself. Today, the disparate strands of the progressive movement must learn the same lesson, advocating not just for people but for the very idea of the people. Ours is the world’s greatest experiment in democracy: to create one, mutually supporting community of interest out of ancestral strangers—geographically distant, multi-origin, multi-ethnic, multiracial. Our inability to do that has been the Achilles’ heel of liberalism. It’s why we are not yet the 99 percent.

If you follow the stock market, you'll notice that big public companies are paying out all sorts of special dividends early to avoid a dreaded hike in taxes on such earnings. If the Bush tax cuts lapse, the top dividend tax rate will rise from 15 percent today to 39.5 percent on January 1. Or, if President Obama gets his way, dividend tax rates will go up only for the top 2 percent of earners, while remaining unchanged for everyone else.

In other words, dividends will once more be taxed as regular income -- and that's how it should be. 

It is really terrific to see retailers here giving critical attention to the Demos study. As a former business owner in the health services industry, I do realize that these problems are more than just abstract theory. That's one of the reasons why Demos and I thought it would be useful to evaluate the possibilities for adopting this business model across the retail sector, especially as the importance of retail to the US economy continues to grow.

Over the past few years, many observers of America's housing market have been documenting a remarkable rebound in demand for walkable housing and office space in urban areas, driven by Millennials and empty-nester Baby Boomers.

If you follow the stock market, you'll notice that big public companies are paying out all sorts of special dividends early to avoid a dreaded tax hike on such earnings. If the Bush tax cuts lapse, the top dividend tax rate will rise from 15 percent today to 39.6 percent on January 1. Or, if President Obama gets his way, dividend tax rates will go up only for the top 2 percent of earners, while remaining unchanged for everyone else.

In other words, dividends may once more be taxed as regular income -- and that's how it should be.