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We are at a crossroads: do we choose economic growth or environmental sustainability?

Not two weeks after September 11, 2001, when the stock market was still all over the map and plans for and unfunded war in the offing, President Bush famously told Americans to "[d]o your business around the country" and

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who calls himself “America’s toughest Sheriff”, claims that harassing Latino immigrants is good for America. His actions, however, are pretty far from what America is all about.

Does $9.04 an hour sound like a lot of money to you? Probably not. But it's a $1.79 more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 and, starting January 1, $9.04 be the new minimum wage in Washington State.

Seven other states will also be raising their minimum wages on January 1. As the Economic Policy Insitute reports:

Lots of us hate Christmas shopping, so it's nice to have some moral support for these Grinch-like sentiments from an organized campaign called Buy Nothing Christmas. This group has lots of ideas about how to celebrate Christmas without a pile of Chinese-made presents that, chances are, the recipents don't even want.

We owe much to the Occupy movement. In less than a month, protestors across the country (and the world) ignited a conversation about the destructive nature of inequality in our lives and in our democracy. With a motto that created a big tent—We Are The 99%—the leaderless movement seemed to resonate with Americans from the beginning.

Where is John Maynard Keynes when you need him? While mainstream economists have long agreed that government spending is crucial for stimulating demand amid economic downturns, many elected leaders have pushed for the exact opposite approach—trying to slash government spending just when we need it most.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officially opened for business in July 2011.

Laws to restrict or curtail voting spread like wild fire across the country in 2011 with 19 new state laws now in effect.

Are caucuses paragons of participatory democracy, unrepresentative playgrounds for zealots, both, or somewhere in between?

The Associated Press is reporting that President Obama will appoint Richard Cordray today as the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Agency, all but ensuring a pageantry of exploding heads on the right.

This week, Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute -- the largest oil and gas industry trade group -- claimed that not approving the Keystone XL pipeline would be against the wishes of the “vast majority” of Americans.

When the Montana Supreme Court upheld its restrictions on direct corporate political spending, it showed a real-world understanding of politics and people which had somehow eluded the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010’s disastrous Citizens United.

The new IRS report on the "tax gap" is a good news, bad news story -- although mostly bad news.

David Brooks writes today in the Times about how few Americans identify as "liberal" -- noting that twice as many Americans now identify as conservatives -- and concludes that over the last forty years, "liberalism has been astonishingly incapable at expanding its market share."

Yesterday, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver posted an open letter in protest of growing opposition to the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipelines.