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We’ve highlighted how the U.S. media leads the world in the amount of time given to climate deniers, even though nearly 80 percent of Americans believe in climate change.

One of the best proposals to come out of the State of the Union was the President's proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour, phased in over three years, and tie it to the cost of living so it automatically adjusts. If anything, the proposed minimum wage is still too low. If the minimum wage had kept up with the rate of inflation, it would now be over $10.

Demos has produced a very important document about our austerity crisis. I don't think its conclusions will surprise many of you, but it certainly should be eye-opening to general public. It discusses the well-known fact that austerity is counter-productive in an economic down turn and that unemployment remains our greatest barrier to a full recovery. And it lays out the time-line of the politicians' obsessive focus on deficits at exactly the wrong moment. 

On January 1st of this year, 10 states raised their minimum wage. New Jersey, however, won’t be joining them. Chris Christie vetoed legislation that would have increased the state’s minimum wage to $8.50 per hour and also tie it to the consumer price index. Christie instead offered a smaller increase that would be phased in over three years with no automatic increases.