As the recession that began in late 2007 drags through its sixth year, people are finally starting to ask if maybe inequality is to blame. After all, slow growth throughout the 2000s was associated with rising inequality, and inequality today is greater than it has ever been. Perhaps America’s falling growth rates and rising poverty rates share a single cause: inequality. Truth-Out
Submitted 12 hours ago

A senior adviser to President Obama mounted a combative defense of the administration on Sunday, saying the controversies enveloping the White House were the result of Republican lawmakers’ trying to “drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped-up hearings and false allegations.” New York Times
Submitted yesterday

On "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart captured the frustration that many of President Obama's supporters have felt over the past week as one scandal after another cascaded into the White House. After starting with a predictable riff accusing Bill O'Reilly of ignoring facts when attacking the Obama administration, Stewart turned to the IRS story, banged on his desk, and yelled out curses. CNN
Submitted yesterday

In the more than 20 years this magazine has been in print, we have responded to numerous articles surrounding the incentives debate. In fact, we have written about the "debate" so many times that we started to add to the titles, such as "Incentives Debate: Part II, III, IV," etc. Well, I hope this is the final "incentives debate" article I write because the last one in the Summer of 2007 was titled, "The Incentives Debate, Part IV: STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT! There is no debate!" Either I had a stroke while writing or what someone else had written that quarter hit my last nerve. Speaking of: Recently, The New York Times came out with a widely read story about corporate and industrial incentives titled, "As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price." The piece, in short, was condescending -- specifically to the South -- pompous, deprecating, certain, yet so misinformed. Southern Business & Development
Submitted 4 days ago

That headline represents the first eight words to the song titled "Mexican Radio" by the band Wall of Voodoo. The big hit from 1982 (No. 58 U.S. and No. 18 Canada) that was played about a dozen times a day on MTV in the music video era is awesome. The song was popular with the creative class (before anyone knew what the creative class was until Richard Florida told us), is often heard today on some of the most listened-to Internet stations such as Radio Paradise. Go ahead and buy some Mexican Coke at Sam's (that would be Mexican Coca-Cola), sit back, bring up "Mexican Radio" on YouTube and enjoy. I do "feel a hot wind on my shoulder" and it's coming in the form of competition from Mexico. The South hasn't placed second to any region or country in North America in the economic development game in three decades. Yet, in lap two of a 10-lap reshoring race, the South is looking at Mexico's backside and eating dust. Raise your hand if you've lost a deal to Mexico in the last two years. Okay, now put them down and let's figure out a way to fight back hard. Before we do that, let's try and understand our new, old competitor again. Southern Business & Development
Submitted 4 days ago

The U.S. shale boom will send “shockwaves” through the global oil trade over the next five years, benefiting the nation’s refiners and displacing OPEC as the driver of supply growth, the IEA said. North America will provide 40 percent of new supplies to 2018 through the development of light, tight oil and oil sands, while the contribution from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will slip to 30 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA trimmed global fuel demand estimates for the next four years, and predicted that consumption in emerging economies may overtake developed nations this year. Bloomberg.com
Submitted 7 days ago

Let’s start with the obvious. Those IRS employees who singled out conservative groups for scrutiny over their tax-exempt status were wrong, wrong, wrong. Any whiff of politics at the agency is unacceptable, and this is far more than a whiff. In time, we shall see how far up the agency food chain the scandal goes. But this unsavory episode should also shine a light on the law that gives tax-exempt status to political groups of all ideological stripes, often described by the code section that grants their exemption—501(c)(4)s. That is especially true since one outcome of this scandal will be to give these partisan groups even more freedom to operate outside of at least the spirit of the law. TIME.com
Submitted 7 days ago

Advances in 3D printing, new human-robot interactions, extreme customization and shale energy are just some of the elements that will shape the future of manufacturing. As Yogi Berra said, “the future is no longer what it used to be”. But he also said that sometimes it is just “deja vu all over again”. The future of manufacturing, like its past, involves astonishing changes. After all, etymologically, the term literally means handmade or handicraft. The word stuck, even though production processes changed to mean almost its opposite. These changes, while unpredictable in their detail, seem to follow certain broad directions. ScientificAmerican.com
Submitted 8 days ago

On April 14, 1789, George Washington was walking through the fields of Mount Vernon, his Virginia home, when Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress, rode up on horseback, to deliver Washington a letter, telling him that he had been elected president of the United States by the newly created United States Senate. Truth-Out
Submitted 8 days ago

As the Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings on the bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration reform bill, Alabama's Sen. Jeff Sessions is ready to derail it in any way possible. And as a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Sessions will have a high-profile bully pulpit to do his bullying. Even before seeing the bill, Sessions was against it. All that's happened since the bill was released is Sessions has gotten louder. He's getting all the attention he needs (wants) as he prepares to run for re-election next year. al.com
Submitted 14 days ago