new york times

From The New York Times, an Op-Ed by Frank Rich describes how "the 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race about “the future,” and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. … [Read more]

From an acclaimed conservative historian and former military officer, a bracing call for a pragmatic confrontation with the nation's problems … [Read more]

From the New York Times, an article about how the financial giants’ downfall has been refusing to see that their investments were worth less than estimated.

How can this be happening?

How can it even be possible that we wake up on a Monday morning to discover that Lehman Brothers, a firm founded in 1850, a firm that has survived the Great Depression and every market trauma before and since, is suddenly bankrupt? That Merrill Lynch, the “Thundering Herd,” is sold to Bank of America the same weekend?

Just months ago, Lehman assured investors that it had enough liquidity to weather the crisis, while Merrill raised some $15 billion over the last year to shore up its balance sheet. Now they’re both as good as gone. … [Read more]

The New York Times reports on the latest gloomy unemployment picture:

The unemployment rate jumped to 6.1 percent in August, its highest level in five years, pushing the troubles of American workers to the center of the political debate as the presidential campaign enters its final weeks.

For the eighth consecutive month, the nation’s employers shed jobs, 84,000 last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. In all, 605,000 jobs have been lost since January. The steady rise in unemployment, from 5.7 percent in July and 5 percent in April, is one that many economists associate with recession.

Both presidential candidates — Senators Barack Obama and John McCain — said through spokesmen that they would favor an economic stimulus package from Congress this fall. … [Read more]

How does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and economic fear for a vast number of Americans? Free Lunch provides answers to this great economic mystery of our time, revealing how today’s government policies and spending reach deep into the wallets of the many for the benefit of the wealthy few.

Johnston cuts through the official version of events and shows how, under the guise of deregulation, a whole new set of regulations quietly went into effect— regulations that thwart competition, depress wages, and reward misconduct. From how George W. Bush got rich off a tax increase to a $100 million taxpayer gift to Warren Buffett, Johnston puts a face on all of the dirty little tricks that business and government pull. A lot of people appear to be getting free lunches—but of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and someone (you, the taxpayer) is picking up the bill.

Johnston’s many revelations include:
• How we ended up with the most expensive yet inefficient health-care system in the world
• How homeowners’ title insurance became a costly, deceitful, yet almost invisible oligopoly
• How our government gives hidden subsidies for posh golf courses
• How Paris Hilton’s grandfather schemed to retake the family fortune from a charity for poor children
• How the Yankees and Mets owners will collect more than $1.3 billion in public funds
… [Read more]

The New York Times Magazine this Sunday will feature a story on how the resistance of the civil rights generation to Barack Obama’s candidacy reveals a generational divide in African-American politics.

Forty-seven years after he last looked out from behind the bars of a South Carolina jail cell, locked away for leading a march against segregation in Columbia, James Clyburn occupies a coveted suite of offices on the second and third floors of the United States Capitol, alongside the speaker and the House majority leader. Above his couch hangs a black-and-white photograph of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking in Charleston, with the boyish Clyburn and a group of other men standing behind him onstage. When I visited Clyburn recently, he told me that the photo was taken in 1967, nine months before King’s assassination, when rumors of violence were swirling, and somewhere on the side of the room a photographer’s floodlight had just come crashing down unexpectedly. At the moment the photo was taken, everyone pictured has reflexively jerked their heads in the direction of the sound, with the notable exception of King himself, who remains in profile, staring straight ahead at his audience. Clyburn prizes that photo. It tells the story, he says, of a man who knew his fate but who, quite literally, refused to flinch. … [Read more]

 Many sources this past week reported on the U.S. Congressional hearings on the 1993 Midwest flooding and the special panel's report that was basically ignored. … [Read more]

Learn how a builder in Chicago is going for the gold certification with their new building - eco18 in this video.

With energy prices in an endless upward spiral, green building practices to LEED standards have finally come of age and become more and more popular. The LEED standards are tough and the  LEED Platinum Award is one of the cerftications that green builders aspire to. … [Read more]