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Eighty-four percent of black households carry credit card debt, compared with 54% of white households, according to Demos, a public policy research organization. More than 90% of black families earning $10,000 to $24,999 a year had credit card debt.

The Electoral College is provided for in the United States Constitution. The filibuster is not. In fact, the word doesn't appear in any of our founding documents. Its derivation is from the Spanish filibustero, meaning "pirate" or "freebooter." In the legislative context, a filibuster is the use of delaying tactics to block legislation. It is a mechanism available only in the Senate.

Teenage Research Unlimited, a youth research firm, reported that about 10 percent of teens own at least one credit card. "Generation Broke," a study by Demos, reported that between 1992 and 2001, debt has risen by 104 percent among 18- to 24-year-olds. Demos is a nonpartisan public policy research and advocacy organization.

The Galtists tend to end up in long arguments with their opposites: the Rawlsian liberals who believe life is luck, and so too with the bulk of achievement. Impressive as a corporate titan may appear, his success is truly testament to a thousand variables far outside his control. Good genes and attentive parents and a smart peer group and a legacy admission to Yale and perfect timing and much else.

On Tuesday, Sallie Mae reported that student debt over the past four years has been rising faster than blood alcohol levels at a beer pong tournament. Student debt shot up 44 percent over the past four years, with the average senior now carrying a $4,100 load. It only looks to be getting worse. The average freshman already has $2,000 worth of red. That's on top of the roughly $20,000 they'll have in other college-related debt.

Washington, DC — Federal managers and staff from 23 different agencies and offices across the federal government recommended that the President's Open Government Directive create a new government-wide structure that will transform how the government involves the American people in key decision making in a new report, called "Champions of Participation." While most conversation about the President's commitment to open government has focused on transparency and technology, federal managers urged the task force spearheading the effort to incorporate reforms that enable meaningful face-to-face

Ancient Wisdom and the Modern Knowledge Economy

The moral question is, who owns knowledge? Or who should own knowledge? Put another way, if most of our wealth comes from inherited knowledge — not what we do "today" — then isn't this part of our wealth, this knowledge, something which rightly should belong to everyone as a common inheritance?

Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly provide progressives with some welcome and fresh ammunition for fighting back and for justifying a redistributionist agenda in their new book, Unjust Deserts. Alperovitz and Daly are attempting nothing less than to shift the entire framework for our thinking about distributive justice.

But with so many women joining the work force, other expenses have skyrocketed for middle-class families, who have bid up prices for things like a home in a safe neighborhood with good schools. Other expenses in a dual-earner family -- including child care, an extra car for mom to go to work and rising college costs -- have gobbled up nearly all of the gains in salary, some argue.