It’s fine to expect instant gratification when downloading an app to your smartphone or streaming a movie to your computer. But we can fairly expect our elected representatives to behave differently than the average consumer, by making choices that are less about short-run returns and more about building for the long-term. Most of the rhetoric…

We elect our state legislators with the hope that they will look out for the public. So it always is sort of a shock when legislators work to undermine government services which work best for people. It as if they want to say, “See, government doesn’t work.” And to emphasize their argument, they take apart…

It’s no surprise that President Obama continues to make missteps on economic policy — such as returning again and again to the “Grand Bargain”, more apt to result in a “Grand Take-Away”. It’s no surprise because of the people he has surrounded himself with to discuss and design economic policy. Take Christina Romer, past chairwoman…

The other day I needed some cash and went to the only ATM I could find. I took out $100 and got charged $3. Sort of an expensive way to access your own money, but the big boys at Chase have to get their slice of our pie. It got me thinking about the continuing…

How can I say goodbye to Aubrey Davis – my friend, my mentor, my leader, and my role model? I can’t. Because the lessons and wisdom that I have learned from Aubrey remains with me, challenges me, inspires me, and makes me a better person and better citizen. I was lucky to get to know…

When you work, you get paid. That’s just common sense. Indeed, if you don’t get paid for your work, you are little better than an indentured servant. And we got rid of that practice, along with slavery, over a 100 years ago. Our laws are quite clear: workers must be paid at least the minimum…

A friend of mine ordered a sandwich two weeks ago and by the following Saturday was down with the flu. How did that happen? The worker at the cash register was feeling lousy, sneezing and coughing. And contagious. So my friend was down with the flu for a week. Thanks to the flu shot she…

When my kids got their first jobs, I was happy that we in Washington had voted for a decent minimum wage. I knew that they couldn’t be completely taken advantage of, and that they would be doing better in Washington than in other states. Now we have reason to celebrate again, because just on Tuesday…

So that fiscal cliff wasn’t much of a ride, was it? We went over that cliff for a day and a half, and nothing much happened. Then Obama signed the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012,” and we are off and running to the next artificial crisis with even more escalating rhetoric, brought to us…

Hurray for the Republicans! They saved us from defeat by defeating themselves. Now President Obama holds all the cards. He should just hold onto them. What about the fiscal cliff? Indeed, what about it? It is a fiction of rhetoric, foisted on the American people by Wall Street and inside-the-beltway elites. Sort of like the…