American Infrastructure Initiative: Latest Publications

Healthcare Can Get America Working

Erin Drankoski — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:03:00 -0400

With official unemployment in the US hovering around 10 per cent, and actual levels much higher when the underemployed and discouraged are counted, the most urgent priority is job creation. But efforts to get America working again must be informed by the striking fact that most employment growth in the past decade has been concentrated in three sectors: healthcare, education and government, mostly state and local public services.

Uninsured Like Me

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:04:00 -0400

Now and then a moment occurs that clarifies the nature of American politics like a flash of lightning over a prairie landscape. Such a moment occurred on Sept. 9 during President Obama's televised address to a joint session of Congress about healthcare. As the president explained that illegal immigrants would not be eligible for benefits under the plan he supported, Joe Wilson, a conservative Republican member of Congress from South Carolina, shocked the chamber and the television audience by shouting, "You lie!"

Who Are The Wealth Creators?

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:54:00 -0400

Today is Labor Day, when we celebrate the wealth destroyers--at least if the libertarian right is to be believed.

Can Obama Give 'Em Hell Before It's Too Late?

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:25:00 -0400

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering," President Franklin Roosevelt told an audience in Madison Square Garden in 1936. "They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they

Liberalism Without Labor Unions?

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:46:00 -0400

Can there be liberalism without labor? Can a progressive movement exist in a country in which organized labor has lost its political influence? My friend Mark Schmitt, the executive editor of the American Prospect, asks that question: