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In recent months, I've been scratching my head about how conservatives could turn so vehemently against the individual mandate when it tracks with one of their most sacred philosophical principles -- namely, that there should be no free lunch and people should take care of themselves. 

The personal responsibility argument was made by the Heritage Foundation in initially advancing the individual mandate -- and it was the argument that Mitt Romney has used in the past, too. As Romney wrote in a 2009 USA Today op-ed:

Though it fell in a rather busy week and didn't grab much attention, another Supreme Court decision last week should have ramifications for Connecticut. The ruling affirmed the constitutionality of a Maryland law that counts incarcerated persons as residents of their last legal home addresses, not the prisons, for redistricting purposes.

Wal-Mart has been the target of union campaigns for years. Why? Because Wal-Mart is the biggest fucking retailer in the world, and the most famous anti-union company in America. It makes sense for both practical and symbolic reasons. In L.A. right now, unions and worker advocates are trying to stop the construction of a new Wal-Mart in the city's Chinatown district. But Wal-Mart has an ally in the fight: the Wall Street Journal.

The Supreme Court's ruling on the healthcare mandate was bittersweet. The Affordable Care Act's greatest virtue was the expansion of Medicaid to include all persons under 133 percent of the poverty line. That meant that every family of four earning less than roughly $31,000 would be covered; that amounted to between 16 and 18 million new enrollees and almost half of all the people to be newly insured by the ACA. But on Thursday, the highest Court determined that the "forced" expansion (states who failed to comply faced losing all their Medicaid funding) was unconstitutional.

Just a few weeks after news came that Governor Cuomo was considering allowing limited fracking, emails were uncovered that show just how closely the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) works with the fracking industry.

A two-income American family with an average income that dutifully invests in a 401(k) plan using typical strategies will lose $155,000 – or about 30 percent of what they should have saved for retirement -- to Wall Street fees, according to a study by an economic justice advocacy organization. 

The Supreme Court’s decision is in. With the Affordable Care Act mostly intact, tens of millions of uninsured Americans will gain coverage. Senior citizens will get billions of dollars of prescription drug benefits. Everyone with insurance will get preventive services at no cost.

New York – Today, in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act, Miles Rapoport, President of Demos and The American Prospect, released the following statement:

(Flickr/Wallyg)

For the first time in nearly 100 years, cities are growing faster than the suburbs. That is the finding of new Census data, released today.