(Charles Schumer | Source: Greg Nash via The Hill) Last month, I wrote that the shutdown was a symptom of a much deeper problem with how Congress is functioning in the age of permanent obstructionism, one that had been apparent since the triggering of the previously unthinkable consequences of budget sequestration. By analogy to Cold […]

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(Source: CNN) Scrooge has come early this year. This holiday season, kids in America’s poorest families are going to have less to eat. November 1 brought $5 billion in new cuts to the nation’s food stamp program, now officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Poor families will lose on average 7 […]

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(Source: AP via New York)  Last week The New Republic resurrected from its archives and re-showcased a 20-year-old cover story, “The End of the Rainbow?” first published on the eve of Rudy Giuliani’s election as mayor of New York in 1993. That story heralded a new, but now two-decade-old, era of top-down, high-capitalist, urban governance, […]

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(Source: Reuters via Fox News) Tea-partying Republicans supposedly pine for smaller government, lower taxes and, of course, the Affordable Care Act’s demise. The conventional wisdom is that these rigid, Republican extremists need to be countered by “moderate” Democrats who will behave like the “adults in the room” by cutting a deal that sacrifices sacred cows […]

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(Steven Beshear | Source: NBC) The biggest Obamacare-related media scandal of the moment is, of course, the fact that some people who buy individual insurance policies have been receiving cancellation letters. The implication is that when Obama assured people that they could keep their policies if they liked them, he wasn’t telling the truth. The […]

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