by Michael Blim There is something unforgivably lawyerly about Barack Obama. I don’t begrudge his question parsing or the clarity it brings when he answers the a-bomb lobs of press and public. I really enjoy how he exposes the contradictions in the logic and arguments of others. Most recently, he simply nailed the insurance industry…

by Michael Blim The bus Thursday night was late. I slumped back onto the bench as the four-hour trip to New York had just gotten longer. As I settled in, I noticed a young kid waiting too. He had a Sesame Street character sticking out of his pink backpack, and he wore pink tennis and…

Michael Blim The minutes of the night tick down as I write this column. Soon I will have my morning reward. My column will come out on 3QD, and I will hear the thud of the Boston Globe against the front door. My column will come out, but with the Boston Globe? Ask The New…

Michael Blim Banks have never been good to my family. My father’s father lost his life savings in a Depression bank failure. He lost his house shortly thereafter. Three of my uncles worked for banks. They were Irish, or Scots-Irish, and their parents were cops, postal workers, and telephone operators. They were Irishmen who wanted…

Michael Blim “This is America. We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset – and rightfully so – are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.” Barack Obama, February 4, 2009 Barack…

Michael Blim At six o’clock, if our neighbor Billy had set his alarm the night before, the daily Chicago Tribune would arrive on our doorstep, and after a quick snap of its binding rubber band, it was laid out on the kitchen table for morning inspection. My father was hawking oil to auto dealers in…

Michael Blim As Washington picked itself up and dusted itself off after the country’s most expensive inaugural ever, I searched myself to understand why my enthusiasm for Obama and his mission had slipped a notch or two. The event had been flawlessly executed, save for the faux pas of Chief Justice Roberts. The media had…

by Michael Blim In Washington, D.C., liberals are back, and so is J.M. Keynes. As financial panic has swept through the American economy, economists on the center-left who had drifted toward the doctrinaire neoliberalism of de-regulated markets and a state apparatus friendly to capitalist expansion have made a big course correction. Regulation is back, signaling…

Michael Blim “The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying “this is mine” and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race have been spared by the one who,…

Michael Blim Perhaps “the great crash,” to borrow the title from John Kenneth Galbraith’s study of the onset of the Great Depression, has been avoided. The seemingly irresistible fall in the American, European, and Japanese stock markets slowed a bit over the last week, and bits of commercial paper passed hands. The panic has spread…

Michael Blim Don’t let the good news fool you: the United States is bankrupt. We will be spending the next 25 years in a rolling Chapter 11. It will be painful. Because we are currently the center of the world economy, and our currency is king, we can continue to indebt ourselves by borrowing money…

Michael Blim For me, summer reading choices have always been something of the voice of the unconscious speaking. If I am lucky, I figure out why I devoted my summer to one topic or another before the next summer rolls around. Last year, as some of you may remember from a fall column, I spent…

Michael Blim I am printing here an advance copy of one half of Barak Obama’s upcoming convention acceptance speech. For the record, I obtained it through a family friend who labors in the bowels of Chicago’s Daley Democratic Machine. I am calling him Billy here so that his gift to me doesn’t bring down the…

Michael Blim America can’t be all one thing. Or rather it is a contradictory thing, swerving almost every two generations – and sometimes within generations – between expanding equal opportunity and equal protections under the law to punishing people who are failing a course in the American Dream. The rights of those who are failing…

Michael Blim It’s better to be rich – hardly a surprising claim. But it is devastating to be poor, and this period of economic crisis it is deadly to be poor. The effects of the crisis have been charted in many ways. There has been barely concealed panic on Wall Street. Big banks have wobbled,…

Michael Blim Americans gave away $300 billion dollars to charity in 2006. The amount is equivalent to twice the gross domestic product of Finland, three times that of the Philippines, and six times that of Morocco. Americans, in other words, give away a lot of money. By virtually any ethical code I can think of,…

Michael Blim Sometimes saving lives can be as simple as a six-dollar mosquito net, or a three-dollar drug treatment. Malaria infects between 350 and 400 million people a year. It kills a million people a year, most of whom are children. Studies in Africa are showing that protection from mosquito nets and from inexpensive drugs…

Michael Blim As I was entering my Massachusetts polling place on February 5, I encountered a Clinton supporter yelling out to prospective voters about how Senator Clinton was “the real liberal,” and how Mr. Clinton had brought the country eight years of economic growt and well being. I couldn’t hold my tongue. I responded that…

by Michael Blim George Wallace reflecting on his first and unsuccessful run for governor of Alabama in 1958 defeat, made a remarkable vow. “Well, boys,” he said, “no other son of a bitch will ever out-nigger me again.” Needless to say, no one did, as you might recall. Perhaps until now. Bill Clinton, self-proclaimed and…

Michael Blim Tears work in American politics, as events in New Hampshire last week show. But they didn’t always work, as a 1972 presidential contender Edmund Muskie learned in New Hampshire 36 years ago. They cost him his presidential bid, even as they propped up Senator Clinton’s. What has happened in America politics and public…