Media

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.

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.

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.

On Monday, Ezra Klein argued that “conventional wisdom on Washington is that corporations win every fight and everyone else — particularly the poor — get shafted" is, wait for it, "wrong, or at least incomplete."

Progressives hoping to better understand why conservatives so dislike government can enlighten themselves by fixing their attention on America's war on drugs -- and the formidable challenge of actually stopping that runaway train.  

Why does a second-string NFL player caught using the “N” word on video receive 24-hour coverage by every major news network in the country for days, but the largest racial wealth gap since the government began keeping records almost 30 years ago barely causes a blip in the press?