Actively helping people is fun. Coping with power structures directly isn’t.

What is the future of progressive politics? What is the world that we are trying to build? In some ways these are the wrong questions. There’s so much in terms of low-hanging fruit that needs to be accomplished. From mass unemployment, to climate change, to immigration reform, to slowing the power of the military-industrial complex, to shepherding and building on complicated financial and health care packages, there’s no lack of things that need to get accomplished.

But, as Gar Alperovitz’s America Beyond Capitalism notes, the means of politics by which left-liberal reform happens is breaking down, and it can only be rebuilt by changing the long-horizon vision of what justice will look like on the left.

Dayen’s news roundup from the past weekend, including stories about Rush Limbaugh, BP Gulf Spill Settlement, recess appointments, bank mortgage settlement, Joe Stieglitz, Mike Konczal, ocean accidification, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, and much more.

Whatever S&P’s agenda, it has nothing to do with avoiding default risks or putting the US on sound fiscal footing. It’s time the media and Congress started asking them what their political agenda is and whom it serves.