These tax rates have been in place for ten years. It’s been the worst time for job growth in postwar history. Let’s not pretend they’re so central to economic growth.

God bless you, Alice B. Toklas.

I joined about 37,500 students and activists at USC with Antonio Villaraigosa, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, Jamie Foxx, Kal Penn, the Trojan Marching Band, Ozomatli and President Obama. It was one of the several Moving America Forward rallies happening on college campuses across the country.

Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan, is a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago’s business school and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Readers familiar with Chicago school economics will see that the crisis has not led to a fundamental reevaluation of that school’s policy recommendations. The title of his book captures his thesis – Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures still Threaten the World Economy. Rajan writes clearly and his book is intended for the intelligent lay reader. His book contains no charts, graphs, or equations, doubtless at the urgings of the Princeton University Press. It is an ambitious book, for it seeks to explain the global crisis and different trends in the real economy and the financial sector in many nations.

I’m happy to see Juan Williams and his crappy analysis gone from NPR. But the whole ruckus over Juan Williams’ firing from NPR over his admission that he does a double take when he sees people dressed in obviously Muslim garb is missing a key point.

In a major piece, the New York Times tracks down the corporations funding the US Chamber of Commerce and find them to be very few indeed. Despite claiming hundreds of thousands of participating members, the US Chamber mainly gets their funding from a handful of giants. While that information was previously kept secret, the Times ferrets it out, discovering that half of the contributions come from just 45 donors.

The past practice of Fannie and Freddie shows they have every intention of keeping foreclosures churning through the system and government regulators appear to have no intention of slowing that churn. Signing this title insurance agreement is part of that same process.

Seizing the occasion of NPR firing Juan — but I’m so perfect to fill that slot on Fox All Stars — Williams, the entire Republican Wurlitzer is calling on Congress to defund the evil NPR, and while they’re at it, why not just take out the last vestiges of public funding for public radio and television, the perceived bastion of liberal –by which they mean rational, non-Christian– journalism.

As I watch the “It Gets Better” videos, I can’t help but remember one of the best concerts I ever attended – the gay a cappella group The Flirtations. The most powerful moment of an incredibly wonderful evening came near the end, as the Flirts sang a lullaby to the audience: “You can be anybody that you want to be, you can love whomever you will . . .”

It gets better. Especially when we hear — and sing — lullabys like that.

The New York Times tells how a U.S. soldier intervened to stop the torture of an Iraqi prisoner by Iraqi police. Except that never happened, and the New York Times own document proves it. Why does the Times feel it has to lighten this tragic tale? Because the truth is so awful: the U.S. countenanced wide-scale torture by its puppet government, and still does.