Can we break the machine that is imposing right-wing radicalism on the United States? The scariest part is that the media is part of that machine.

Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they're down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand.

And when the chickens that didn't hatch come home to roost, we will rue the day when, misled by sloppy accounting and rosy scenarios, we gave away the national nest egg.

The federal government is basically an insurance company with an army.

[I]n America, at least, we have a pretty good record for behaving in a fiscally responsible fashion, with one exception - namely, the fiscal irresponsibility that prevails when, and only when, hard-line conservatives are in power.

The habit of disguising ideology as expertise has created a deficit of legitimacy.

You really have to go searching desperately to find any contemporary examples of good, old-fashioned runaway inflation.