Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Last week, President Barack Obama delivered his first address before the United Nations General Assembly. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," he insisted. "We have sought in word and deed a new era of engagement with the world."

Yet, there remains one obvious exception to this new era of engagement with the world: our continuing embargo of Cuba.

... 9.2 million people with household incomes of $75000 and up lacked health insurance, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ...

But it’s likely the state’s plans will be enough, said Jennifer Cohen, a policy analyst with the Education Policy Program at the Washington-based nonprofit think tank New America Foundation. ...

... Congress is focused on expanding health care coverage, which could ultimately bring them more business, said Len Nichols, a health economist and director of the health-policy program at the New America Foundation, a research group in Washington. ...

Among others seeking to instill a sense of urgency is the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan group whose directors include former Office of Management and Budget directors Alice Rivlin, who served during the Clinton administration ...

“The president … understands the critical importance of fiscal discipline,” the group’s policy director, Marc Goldwein, said last week. “Now we need to see some action.”

The F-22 Raptor combat aircraft is in the middle of a pitched battle for its existence. Georgians are paying close attention because the main assembly plant is in Marietta at Lockheed-Martin.

Supporters say canceling will cost jobs and national security. However, the reality is that the F-22 is at the top of the list of Cold War weapons that should be eliminated.

Weapons programs should not be about jobs; they should be about security. And on this front the F-22 wins low… more

28, according to an analysis conducted by New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. Georgia has about 1.6 million public schools students. ...

The home foreclosure crisis slamming into the nation's neighborhoods is having the effect of about "one Hurricane Katrina per month," James K. Galbraith, an economist with the University of Texas at Austin, said Friday at a forum examining the credit crisis.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005, nearly 275,000 Gulf Coast residents were forced to move into group shelters, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Economists who recently completed a study for the… more

It’s all the suburbs’ fault. You know, everything -- traffic congestion, overweight kids, social alienation. Oh, and lest we forget, global warming and rising energy costs, too.

That latest knock against the burbs has caught on widely. With their multiplying McMansions and exploding Explorers, the burbs are the reason we’re paying so much for gas and heating oil and spewing all those emissions that are heating up the atmosphere --or so a host of urban proponents tells us. It’s time to… more

The value of saving is finally making a comeback. After years of over consumption and accelerating debt -- and more than two years with a negative personal savings rate -- Americans are finally beginning to fret over their empty coffers and negative balance sheets. As headlines profile subprime borrowers going into default around the country, the average American’s sense of economic security has jumped from unease to panic. As policymakers scramble to develop new policies to bolster working families, echoes… more