Rome lived on its principal until ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia Road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt – and the carts brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo….

They knew he had never
Been on their T.V.
So they passed his music by

A report from CNBC yesterday, November. 2010, announced that the Obama Administration and Congress are working on, and ‘may consider’ a bill for the Lame Duck session to ratify MERS as a legally credible entity and limit its liability in major parts of the foreclosure fraud debacle.

Mr. President, you are the most intelligent and classy political figure I've seen in my lifetime.

Mr. President, if you squander this opportunity to reform the banks and Wall St. I will join in a primary challenge to your re-election.

Mr. President, you can seize an historic moment.

The populace is feeling two emotions which are related but separate. One is a sense of unfairness. The other is the gut knowledge that the system is rigged. The sense of fairness is relative: a moderately well off person thinks his taxes are unfair, but so do the poor and the wealthy.

The trial balloon floated by The Obama Deficit Commission co-chairs Simpson and Bowles has been afforded all the respect it deserves. In a statement following the release of the "chairman's mark," Dean Baker does as good a job as anyone in dismantling the report. Baker is perhaps most critical of the ludicrous timing of such a counter-intuitive, anti-stimulative initiative smack dab in the middle of the greatest recession in modern history.

Students have finally had enough. Fees were introduced in 1998 and we hardly heard a squeak; they were bumped up to over £3,000 in 2006 and no one revolted. But today students smashed their way into the Tory party campaign HQ in a show of anger against a political elite they believe have abandoned them.

This is an old piece but I think needs resurrection to illustrate some points. 

I keep seeing "President Obama's Bipartisan Deficit Reduction Committee" references in headlines and news articles.  I also see left leaning commenters lament the political disaster this is.  On one hand, I can see this from Obama's point of view.  Sure, he formed the committee and picked its members so it is, in that sense, "his."  But he formed the committee and chose the members so that they could put together a proposal for the rest of us to contend with.  It's "Obama's" in the sense that he hired these people.  But it's their work.  That's a subtle but reasonable distincting.  Those of