Community colleges are popular among political leaders of both parties. But because of the lack of funding and a lack of direction, they have lost their critical edge in preparing workers for a 21st-century economy.
Disability has become a form of permanent welfare for a lot of folks. It's not that hard to prove a mental illness or mental issues or pain issues.
In the new economy, we all have to be entrepreneurs with our own lives - with all the rewards and risks and, yes, anxieties that entails.
Barack Obama's political roots are liberal, but he has always resisted buying into the brand of liberalism that denigrates American greatness and potential.
We know this much about how Barack Obama plans to govern: He will deploy the fattest checkbook ever at the disposal of an incoming American president.
It's become glib political conventional wisdom in Washington that a massive spending plan will provide a parachute rescue for a cliff-diving economy - landing it safely and with strong enough legs to move toward a healthy future.
Main Street versus Wall Street was the 2008 economic mantra of Democrat Barack Obama.
Presidents can be judged by the company they choose to keep.
The fierce battles between New Democrat centrists and old-style liberals that defined the Democratic Party in the 1990s are long gone, with the party unified behind Barack Obama's economic agenda of universal health care, expensive federal programs and more regulation of the financial markets.
The centerpiece of Obamanomics - raising taxes on high earners and investors and lowering them on the middle class - is attacked by free-marketers for penalizing economic success and possibly further stalling economic growth.
Globalization is stirring widespread economic anxiety, and middle class incomes have stagnated while a class of super-rich has emerged.
Events like Hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse suggest a national infrastructure that has suffered from lack of tending.
Fame legitimizes. Being conspicuous gets confused with being illustrious.
'George' exploits John Kennedy Jr.'s cult of celebrity at a time when Americans are hungry for icons, not heroes.