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The Public Sector We Need  

To have any chance of implementing popular left-wing ideas, we need to restore the capacity of democratic government to serve working people.



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A Short History of American Empire  

Stephen Kinzer is one of the few mainstream voices reminding Americans of our imperial identity. In The True Flag, he takes us back to where he thinks it all began—1898, when the U.S. political class pushed off on the quest for global domination.





Big Dollar, Little Democracy  

Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig Twelve, 2011, 381 pp. Money talks. It is also a conversation stopper. Almost any discussion among progressives of what is really needed to solve the nation’s …



The Shaky Case for Optimism  

Rebound: Why America Will Emerge Stronger from the Financial Crisis by Stephen J. Rose St Martin’s Press, 2010, 288 pp. The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 by Joel Kotkin Penguin Press, 2010, 320 pp. The Next 100 Years: A …





Obama’s Mexican Challenge  

When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pledged to Ohio Democrats last spring to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, they were immediately charged by the mainstream press with pandering to labor, thus re-igniting the simplistic “free-trade vs. protectionism” debate …











The Politically Talented Mr. Greenspan  

A few short days after Bill Clinton vacated the White House this January, Federal Reserve Board head Alan Greenspan publicly endorsed the new tenant’s $1.6 trillion tax cut. Democrats who had been convinced by both Clinton and Greenspan to give …



Globalization and the Left  

Our relentless evolution toward a global economy will clearly require new institutions both to regulate unstable markets and to protect ordinary citizens from the brutalities of worldwide, dog-eat-dog capitalism. Eventually, like national economies, the global marketplace needs the equivalent of …



Lost on the Third Way  

Bill Clinton’s climb in the polls—a gift of the self-destructive Republican handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal—has reinforced the punditry’s conviction that Clinton’s centrist politics define the only sensible path for Democrats to follow into the twenty-first century. It is …