Washington Post

With Congress ready to spend $700 billion to prop up the U.S. economy, enacting health-care reform may seem about as likely as the Dow hitting 10,000 again before the end of the year. But it may be more doable than you think, provided we dispel a few myths about how health care works and how much reform Americans are willing to stomach.

1. America has the best health care in the world.

Let's bury this one once and for all. The United States is No. 1 in… more

The Washington Post assembled a team of artists, architects, engineers and developers to think creatively about what to do with spaces once occupied by big box stores -- our most common, underrated and increasingly available major buildings. Below are some of their ideas.

Build A Town in a Parking Lot

 

As a developer, what Leinberger hates about parking lots is that they just sit there not making him any money. Fortunately, that… more

For the purposes of this morning's discussion, the amazing thing about the Spam Museum -- as in the meat product -- is not that it exists. It's that it was created out of an abandoned Kmart. "The renovation of the Kmart building into what you see here today has the drama of a great epic," says Julie Craven, publicity representative for Spam in Austin, Minn. "We are going to be in this building for a long, long time. . . . We love it here."

Let us consider for a moment those people being blamed for destroying the economy because they heedlessly bought houses that "they knew they couldn't afford."

I for one have nothing but sympathy for this all-too-human behavior. For more than 30 years, I have noted the absolute lack of connection between mathematics and money. For lo these many decades, I've never understood how I manage to make my mortgage payments. Or my tax payments, for that matter. In my experience, these things never add up.

Not that I haven't… more

The profit-making model was the main cause of the failures, said Sascha Meinrath, technology analyst for the New America Foundation, a District-based research organization. "These communications systems should not just be solely about profit margins . . . It's more about providing a public service," he said. "Look at what cities pay for landscaping and street lights. It's a shame this hasn't been made a higher priority." LINK

These days, Californians may be forgiven for feeling as though they are playing host to a dinner party whose guests keep arguing in nastier and nastier terms.

Proposition 8 -- the statewide initiative that seeks to add a ban on same-sex marriages to the California constitution, reversing this spring's court decision legalizing such unions -- has turned into a bitter and expensive campaign, even by this sate's standards. Money has been pouring in on both sides of the issue, from churches, businesses and human rights groups around… more

As the financial crisis takes down Wall Street, the regular folks on Main Street are biting their nails, watching the toxic tsunami head their way. But for all our nightmares of drowning in a sea of bad mortgages, foreclosed homes and shrunken retirement plans, the truth is that the effects of this meltdown won't be all bad in the long run. In one regard, it could offer our society a net positive: Forced into belt-tightening, Americans are likely to strengthen our family and community ties and to… more

"Right now, we're really seeing the risks come home, and people are recognizing the extent to which their retirement savings are on the line when the stock market goes down drastically," said Jacob Hacker, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley who chronicled the advent of 401(k) plans in "The Great Risk Shift." LINK

After a nerve-rattling week in which the U.S. financial system was shaken to the core, here's a simple question: Why on Earth would anyone want to be president right now?

Even in the best of times, it's a grueling job. But the problems of 2008 seem unusually intractable, and despite the fine talk one sometimes hears about reconciliation, the electorate will be divided no matter who wins in November. Even Bush's snarkiest critics would have had trouble predicting all the rough weather of the second term, from… more

The first thing you see as you approach the campus of the University of Mississippi, in the town of Oxford, is a 100-year-old statue of a Confederate soldier that stands in front of a grand, columned building know as the Lyceum. This is the university's administration building and the heart of "Ole Miss." It is also the spot where, 46 years ago, a riot broke out when James Meredith became the first black student to enroll in the university.

Now, this coming Friday, Ole Miss will… more