Obama is a refreshing change from the past administration and at least it appears that the government has moved away from the brazen corruption and corporatocracy engendered by Bush / Cheney.

Really? How, exactly? Was it when he appointed a Treasury Secretary who owed over $100,000 in delinquent back taxes?

Imagine: a Chicago politician being utterly, utterly corrupt. I'm sure we're all shocked. Google "University of Illinois clout list" for the latest news from the city that serves as the nation's premier fertilizer bed for career politicians like Obama to be grown, chopped and sauteed in dirty money.

After reading the initial and expected first page of shrill, reactionary replies to this piece (a chorus of "no abortion is ever wrong, under any circumstances"), my first reaction was to simply click off this website and go read The Onion.

But I have to tell the author how much I appreciate this article. Although I have never been to any protests, written any letters to Congress, or even so much as signed a petition regarding the issue of abortion, I am of the "pro-life" opinion. I am totally unconvinced that civil compromise cannot be reached on this issue, someday. To that end, this article was a true breath of fresh air. It is the first "pro-choice" perspective I have heard in a long time that did not immediately put me in a defensive/confrontational frame of mind.

This is also the first time in quite a while that I have found anything beside Glenn Greenwald, Tom the Dancing Bug and the K Chronicles that inspired me on Salon.

Thanks again.

As in he gets paid to edit written work? And he misspells "narrow" and uses words like "entrepreneurialism"? No, Spell-Check, I do NOT want to add that to my dictionary. Leave the red underline.

Some sort of recovery may occur if and when We the Faceless Rabble of this representative democracy actually sit and think about these questions for a while.

Economy, which can be totally unrelated to currency or finance, refers to the most efficient use of resource(s).

Money, which is supposed to facilitate economy in societies which enjoy division of labor, is a more mysterious concept.

Does it make a difference that our currency is monopolized by a "private" body of bankers, appointed by politicians, un-audited and un-accountable to any member of the public or our representatives, who can and do alter its value and use by merely printing it out of thin air at their own discretion?

When the Chinese finally solve the problem they've been working on--how to dump their dollar holdings without taking too big of a hit on their current investment--then these questions will quickly come to the forefront of a collective American conscious that will be angry and panicked, when they walk into the grocery store and a loaf of bread suddenly costs $20.

No doubt the Federal Reserve board, along with their Magical Money Printing Press and the Robert Reich's, Dick Cheney's, and Hank Paulson's of the world, will be safe in an undisclosed location when the riots begin. Maybe Obama will give us some great Oratory and smooth everything out.

Because public education in America is crap, weighted down (like an increasing number of vital functions in America) by bureaucracy and the regrettable ethos of contemporary American statism/"liberalism."

Pretty simple.

....reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer, acting as Mr Burns' assistant, reads Burns his messages, one after the other:

"You have twenty minutes to move your car or it will be towed."

"Your car has been towed."

"Your car has been crushed into a cube."

"You have twenty minutes to move your cube."

Thanks for the economic heads up, Robert Reich.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1207

"To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes

Ben Bernanke has basically threatened no less than the destruction of the entire US economy if the peoples' representatives in Congress dare to examine the Federal Reserve's dealings:

“My concern about the legislation is that if the GAO is auditing not only the operational aspects of the programs and the details of the programs but making judgments about our policy decisions would effectively be a takeover of policy by the Congress and a repudiation of the Federal Reserve would be highly destructive to the stability of the financial system, the dollar and our national economic situation.”

The banksters are demanding that they be accountable to absolutely nobody, and they will very likely get their way unless we all raise a real clamor somehow.