On Sunday, South Africans will lay to rest the remains of Nelson Mandela.
The legacy left by the activist and political prisoner who transformed a nation and became president is being remembered by politicians, historians and artists.
Among them is Thabiso Mohare, a young South African spoken word artist who performs under the name Afurakan. He wrote a poem for NPR about Mandela called "An Ordinary Man."
President Obama's oft-repeated promise that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" is 2013's "lie of the year," according to the fact checkers at the Tampa Bay Times' nonpartisan PolitiFact project.
PolitiFact says that:
"Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.
"For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,' the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice."
In his youth, Nelson Mandela cut a dashing figure. He was a revolutionary, an outlaw — by the early 1960s, he was living underground. And he had a nickname to match: he was known as the Black Pimpernel.
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The citrus industry is facing a crisis. It's called citrus greening — a disease that has devastated orange production in Florida since it first showed up eight years ago. Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced a new effort to try to control the disease before it destroys the nation's citrus industry.
Citrus greening is carried by psyllids, tiny insects no bigger than a pinhead. It is caused by a bacterium that makes the fruit bitter and unmarketable. In California, Texas, and especially in Florida, where it first took root, many fear the disease could wipe out America's production of oranges, grapefruits and lemons.
It's a disease imported from Asia. Since its was first discovered in Florida in 2005, citrus greening has cost the industry $4 billion and 6,000 jobs, says Jack Payne, the senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources at the University of Florida. Payne says all of Florida's citrus groves are infected.
"We have so many growers now in a $9 billion industry just hanging on by their fingernails, literally, trying to get a cure for this terrible disease," he says.
In Florida, because of the disease, USDA says the orange crop will be off 9 percent from last season. It's the second straight year that production has declined and the lowest citrus harvest in Florida in nearly 25 years.
Scientists are trying to develop disease-resistant trees. They're experimenting with different rootstocks and genetically modified trees. But so far, there hasn't been a breakthrough.
To help the effort, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Thursday that several agencies within USDA are coming together to coordinate research and the fight to stop citrus greening. He said, "We felt it was necessary for us to have a more coordinated effort with the state and local partners and with the industry."
Vilsack says USDA has already spent $250 million combating citrus greening. With this announcement, he says, the agency is making an additional $1 million available for research immediately. And $9 million more in research funding is in the farm bill that's currently before Congress.
A spokesman with Florida Citrus Mutual, a grower's group, said they welcome the additional funding and the new coordinated approach to citrus greening. But a priority for Florida growers is the creation of a federal Citrus Research Trust Fund that could provide $30 million in funding to stop greening before it wipes out the industry.
North Korea announced Friday that Jang Song Thaek, the uncle of leader Kim Jong Un and formerly the second most powerful man in the country, has been executed after being found guilty of treason by a military tribunal.
"The accused Jang brought together undesirable forces and formed a faction as the boss of a modern day factional group for a long time and thus committed such hideous crime as attempting to overthrow the state," North Korea's official KCNA news agency said.
North Korean media called Jang, who had been helping Kim consolidate power in the wake of his father's death two years ago, "worse than a dog."
The news comes just days after Jang was dramatically and unceremoniously removed by armed guards from a Communist Party meeting in the capital, Pyongyang.
Reports first surfaced early this month that Jang was suddenly on the outs and that two of his top aides had been executed. Earlier this week, he was accused in state media of womanizing, drug abuse, being "affected by the capitalist lifestyle," pretending to "uphold the party and leader," and for "dreaming different dreams."
As NPR's Krishnadev Calamur has reported: "Jang, until recently, was seen as close to Kim Jong Un and was seen in many photographs with his nephew."
Jang was reportedly a supporter of Chinese-style economic reforms and he was also a key liaison to Beijing, one of North Korea's few allies.
Back in 2010, NPR's Mike Shuster reported that then-leader Kim Jong Il had elevated Jang to the No. 2 spot in the government.
And, as NPR's Louisa Lim reported last year, Jang had been dispatched to China to win an agreement for two new special economic zones between the two countries, only to return home empty-handed.
There's been a lot of talk about meningitis B lately. That's the type of responsible for outbreaks at Princeton and the University of California in Santa Barbara.
And it got us thinking. How come this form of the illness isn't fazed by the vaccines given routinely to most young people in the U.S.?
This week, Princeton is administering an imported vaccine not approved for general use in this country, with special permission from the Food and Drug Administration.
The vaccine, called Bexsero, is fairly new. Swiss drug giant Novartis, which manufactures the vaccine, completed clinical trials early last year, and got approval to sell the vaccine in Europe last November.
Shots - Health News
To Fight Meningitis Outbreak, Princeton Tries European Vaccine
There's been a lot of talk about meningitis B lately. That's the type of responsible for outbreaks at Princeton and the University of California in Santa Barbara.
And it got us thinking. How come this form of the illness isn't fazed by the vaccines given routinely to most young people in the U.S.?
This week, Princeton is administering an imported vaccine not approved for general use in this country, with special permission from the Food and Drug Administration.
The vaccine, called Bexsero, is fairly new. Swiss drug giant Novartis, which manufactures the vaccine, completed clinical trials early last year, and got approval to sell the vaccine in Europe last November.
Shots - Health News
To Fight Meningitis Outbreak, Princeton Tries European Vaccine
There was a year when I had a student, Ryan, who went home and shared the dollar word challenge with his father. I guess his father was a computer programming man, or certainly involved with computers, and sat down and did this thing with his computer one night. So, my student Ryan came back into school the next day with this piece of paper, double-sided, with all of the dollar words from the dictionary, listed in alphabetical order. He sort of entered the classroom waving this piece of paper back and forth. "Hey, Mr. Buyea, here's your dollar words!" And I saw that and [said] "Oh my gosh, Ryan! That's not what you were supposed to do for the assignment. Let me see that."
And so I took that piece of paper and I kept it. I kept it, and I had it in my writing folder. And as I was working on the story, whenever it felt like it was time for a dollar word, I would pull out that cheat-sheet that I ended up with thanks to Ryan and his father. I would scan that cheat-sheet, and sure enough, I would find the perfect word that worked. ... I had lots of fun with that part of the story.
On his most rewarding classroom project
Every project that Mr. Terupt tries is a project that I did at one point or another. ... [I had] my students visit a classroom that we had in our school — a classroom for children with special needs. Of all the things that I did with my teaching, that project was maybe the most rewarding. And so I was excited to have that as part of the story. ... I guess that's one message in the book, is to really try to take time and understand how much children in a classroom like that have to offer and how much love they give to the world and to the people that are a part of their life.
On how he became a writer
Read an excerpt of Because of Mr. Terupt
Somewhere between a food pantry and a traditional grocery store lays an opportunity to help feed those in need.
Enter so-called "social supermarkets," a European model that offers discounted food exclusively to those in poverty. The stores have grown in popularity across the continent and this week, the U.K. opened its first. Dubbed Community Shop, the store is located in an impoverished former mining town in South Yorkshire.
Part discount grocer, part social service agency, the supermarkets are for members only. Membership is free, but it is limited to those who can prove they receive some form of welfare benefits. Members can save up to 70 percent on food that has been rejected by grocers because it might be mislabeled, have damaged packaging or be nearing an expiration date. That food is still edible, though, so instead of getting thrown away, it's donated with a waiver of liability.
Christina Holweg is a professor who studies social supermarkets at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria. Unlike food pantries, she says, the stores are designed for people who might have their own house and a job, but are still struggling to make ends meet.
"We're talking about a target group that really needs it, and a target group that is really proud and eager to stay on their own feet," she tells The Salt.
She calls the stores a "win-win-win" for everyone involved: manufacturers and retailers, customers, and the nonprofits that typically run the social supermarkets. The environment also benefits, since less food ends up in landfills.
"I've never seen any disadvantage if it's implemented the proper way," she says. "It also helps society to reduce its welfare costs."
The social supermarket model has flourished in Europe since the 2008 economic downturn. Holweg says there are now about 1,000 stores spread across Europe, including France, Austria, Belgium, Luxemborg, Romania and Switzerland. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, Holweg thinks a key reason the model works so well is that the stores don't give away food. Customers have a choice while shopping, even if the prices are symbolic.
"They are still treated as a customer. They can even return or exchange a product if it's not good," she says. "And this, to me, makes a major difference."
In addition to cutting down their grocery bills, customers can take classes on cooking, budgeting, resume writing and more. Stores periodically review memberships, and Holweg says the goal is to help get customers out of poverty and on their way back to shopping at traditional grocery stores.
The social supermarkets themselves are not designed to be one-stop shopping in the first place: Because of how they stock their shelves, selection could differ widely from one visit to another. For example, oil, butter and flour can be hard to come by.
The U.K. store — Community Shop — is a subsidiary of the British Company Shop, a commercial firm that redistributes surplus food and goods, and will be stocked with donations from major retailers and manufacturers. Sarah Dunwell, Company Shop's director of environment and social affairs, says the stores are a way to be kind to both people and the environment.
"Industry surplus is hard to avoid, but what Community Shop shows is that if we all work together, we can make sure that surplus food delivers lasting social good," Dunwell said in a statement.
If the location in South Yorkshire proves successful, Company Shop hopes to replicate the social supermarket model in London and other cities next year. And with 4 million people without enough food in the U.K., there may be plenty of opportunity.
The leader of massive anti-government protests in Thailand says the chiefs of the country's military branches and police force have agreed to meet and hear him out on "political reforms," — a move likely to spark concern over a possible coup similar to the one that overthrew the prime minister in 2006.
The Bangkok Post reports that Suthep Thaugsuban, who has already declared a self-styled parallel administration and called for Thailand's elected government to be replaced with an appointed council, told a crowd of supporters that the supreme commanders of the army, navy, air force and police would meet him on Saturday. He said they had agreed to hear his ideas for political reform in the country of 65 million.
The report comes on the same day that "yellow-shirt" supporters of Suthep's People's Democratic Reform Committee stormed Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's office in the capital, Bangkok, and shut off the electricity to the building. Yingluck, who has said she will not use force against the protesters, was outside the capital when the takeover occurred.
"I thank the supreme commander and the armed force leaders for allowing [yellow shirt] leaders to represent the people and to directly clarify the will of the masses and to explain why they have risen up to fight for changes in the country, instead of communicating with them through the press," Suthep said.
The latest round of unrest in Thailand heated up last month when the lower house of parliament passed an amnesty bill that would have paved the way for the return of Yingluck's self-exiled billionaire brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in the 2006 coup and still faces corruption charges.
Yingluck's government later withdrew the amnesty bill and earlier this month dissolved parliament and called for early elections to be held on Feb. 2 in what has so far been an unsuccessful attempt to quell the mass demonstrations. She has also issued a call for talks with the protesters.
On Thursday, Suthep told a business group in the capital that he would "do everything to stop the next election," according to the Post.
"I'm confident that I can do it," he reportedly said.
The legacy of Thaksin, a telecom tycoon who served as premier for five years beginning in 2001, roughly splits the country roughly between middle- and upper-class urban Thais who opposed his populist policies and poorer, rural Thais, from the country's north and northeast rice-growing regions. The yellow shirts accuse him of corruption in both his government and business dealings and oppose rice subsidies and a low-cost health scheme for the poor enacted during his tenure.
Protest leader Suthep, who as deputy prime minister oversaw the police and army in a 2010 crackdown on pro-Thaksin "red shirt" protesters that left about 90 dead and more than 2,000 wounded, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to murder charges related to the crackdown. The prime minister at the time of the crackdown, Abhisit Vejjajiva, also faces murder charges.
Ireland is about to become the first European country to emerge from an international bailout in the wake of the financial crisis. Like other European countries, Ireland has been in a period of austerity — higher taxes and more cutbacks.
The nation's technology sector has been protected, however, as Ireland makes a concerted effort to attract foreign businesses through tax incentives and development programs.
But Ireland's methods have also been criticized — locally and internationally.
Apple In Ireland
The government's heavy hand in growing its tech industries has raised some eyebrows around the world. One tech company with offices in Ireland drew the watchful eye of the U.S. Senate earlier this year: Apple.
Apple has been in Ireland for 30 years. But it drew attention in May when it came to light that Apple kept 70 percent of its profits under the umbrella of its Irish subsidiary.
Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent, compared to more than 30 percent in the U.S. Ireland has loopholes that make it possible for companies like Apple to pay almost nothing.
In May, Apple CEO Tim Cook was grilled by Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Cook chafed at accusations that Apple's offices in Ireland were simply a shell for profits.
"The relationship between Apple and the Irish government is still there today, and we built up a sizable population," he insisted before McCain jumped in.
"With all due respect," he told Cook, "given the tax rate that you are paying in Ireland, I'm sure you have a very close relationship."
In October, in the wake of growing international pressure, Ireland announced it was closing a loophole. Off the record, at least a few company executives told me that it was the low rate that kept them in Ireland.
Grants And Pub Crawls
Yet Ireland's efforts to draw more tech companies to its shores go beyond tax incentives.
A few weeks ago, the NASDAQ moved its opening bell to Dublin to kick off Web Summit, the largest tech conference in Europe. With financial support from the government, the tech conference brought business leaders and journalists — including me — to Ireland.
Enda Kenny, Ireland's prime minister, rang the bell. He proclaimed to conference attendees that Ireland is "the most open economy in the Western world. And we celebrate our pro-business ethos and environment without hesitation."
Tech entrepreneurs say Ireland's low tax rate is just one item on an appealing checklist that includes an army of Irish officials ready to help foreign companies set up — usually with Ireland's Industrial Development Agency, or IDA.
"Our engineers, they love them because they take them out for whiskey crawls and pub crawls and these different things," says Mikkel Svane, the CEO of customer-support software company Zendesk.
Zendesk has its headquarters in San Francisco, and it just chose Ireland to be its European headquarters.
"There's just a lot of experience here because they have attracted over the years so many tech companies," Svane says. "They have the machine rolling, and they're prepared for companies like us. They know what we need."
Barry O'Dowd, head of the IDA's emerging business division, spoke with me while taking some American entrepreneurs on a pub crawl.
"We help the companies when they're here, and we get them sort of locked into the economy," O'Dowd says. "We work with them on [research and development] agendas, for instance. We've got a grant and aid support program where we can give them support financially."
According to O'Dowd, the development agency's recent efforts to attract newer companies, like Zendesk, have created between 2,000 and 3,000 new positions. O'Dowd says the companies' presence helps spawn other local jobs — although two-thirds of the jobs by foreign firms go to people who aren't Irish.
Investment From Silicon Valley
Ireland competes with other European countries to draw tech investment: Amsterdam, Berlin, London. But Jennifer Schenker, editor-in-chief at Informilo — a magazine that covers the global tech industry — says Ireland stands out.
"They are, bar none, the most proactive government in Europe in trying to attract tech companies of all sizes," she says.
But beyond that, she says, Ireland is creating an ecosystem. The country's workforce is highly educated and young — 50 percent of the population is under 35. Young Irish techies often start work at a foreign company and then leave to do their own start-up.
"Some of Silicon Valley's most famous angel investors are investing in very early-stage companies based in Dublin that have been founded by Irish entrepreneurs," she says.
Certainly the country hopes that, someday, a company the size of Google or Apple will emerge from its startup scene.
But Chris Horn, an Irish former entrepreneur-turned-angel investor, says homegrown businesses face a steeper tax bill than foreign ones. If a company goes public, Irish entrepreneurs face a capital gains rate of more 30 percent on their profits.
"And what drives places like Silicon Valley and indeed Boston and New York," he says, "is the growth of companies and then their sale and then the reinvestment of those profits and proceeds into the next companies."
Still, despite the criticism, Irish officials say the combination of low tax rates and government support is building a tech industry that's helping to lift it out of the economic doldrums.
Unless Congress acts very quickly, some 1.3 million workers will lose their extended jobless benefits on Dec. 28.
Democrats were scrambling late Wednesday to include an extension of benefits in a budget deal that is expected to get a vote as soon as Thursday. But if the effort fails, they will come back at it in 2014.
"We're going to push here after the first of the year for an extension of emergency unemployment insurance when the Senate convenes after the new year," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on Wednesday.
And House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, did not slam the door shut on the possibility of renewing the jobless benefits eventually. When asked whether he would consider allowing an extension of the funding, he said he told President Obama he would keep such a plan on the table.
"I said we would clearly consider it, as long as it was paid for and as long as there are other efforts that will help get our economy going once again. I have not seen a plan from the White House that meets those standards," he said.
The White House, along with Democratic leaders, had hoped to extend the benefits before they expired this year. But those plans seemed to diminish on Tuesday, when Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., unveiled their bipartisan budget deal that did not include any last-minute reprieves for the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.
Because the House plans to leave on Friday, the vote on the budget package is expected very soon.
Reid said the deal should have included an extension of jobless benefits, but "neither side got everything it wanted in these negotiations."
The White House had wanted the benefits included in the budget, saying that besides the 1.3 million people who will lose their benefits on Dec. 28, an additional 3.6 million people will fall out of the unemployment insurance program in the first half of the year without an extension.
Democrats, along with a few Republicans, want to have a chance to renew the jobless benefits. "For goodness sakes, let the people's House have a vote on these issues," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said Wednesday on MSNBC. "Let us have a vote right now on extending unemployment compensation."
A group of moderate House Republicans sent a letter to their leaders saying: "We respectfully request that the House consider a temporary extension of emergency unemployment insurance to protect an essential safeguard that has aided Americans who have endured through a weak economy." It was signed by Rep. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y., and six other Republicans.
The benefits extension program was a key element of the government's response to the recession, which sent the unemployment rate up to 10 percent in 2009. Congress poured in money to keep benefits available for up to 99 weeks — far longer than the typical 26 weeks provided by states. Most economists said those checks would help prop up the economy by providing unemployed people with about $300 a week to keep up with the cost of food, shelter and gas.
But in the past couple of years, the unemployment rate has been coming back down and federal extended benefits have been reduced to a maximum of 47 weeks.
The jobless rate is 7 percent now, and many conservatives say the extra spending is actually discouraging many people from trying harder to get back into the workforce. They say the economy will strengthen when government cuts spending and workers make the necessary adjustments to find new jobs, such as moving or accepting lower wages.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that continuing benefits for another full year would cost taxpayers about $26 billion — but it also would boost economic growth by about 200,000 jobs.
The fight over taxes, entitlements and income inequality has clearly been reignited in the Democratic Party, sparking questions about whether, and how hard, to push economic populism as the party approaches the 2014 midterm elections and beyond.
The latest flare-up came between centrist Democrats at the Third Way think tank and liberals who view Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as their champion.
Two Third Way co-founders panned Warren's approach — more specifically, her call to expand Social Security and raise taxes on the wealthiest. That their op-ed ran on the conservative opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal didn't help matters.
Was it a sign of things to come, another intraparty tug-of-war reminiscent of the mid-1980s when the now-defunct, centrist Democratic Leadership Council was formed to pull a very liberal party to the political center?
Steve McMahon, a Democratic political strategist with Purple Strategies, doesn't think it will get to that point in 2016.
"I don't think Elizabeth Warren is going to run for president, and Hillary Clinton is more a centrist than a Ted Kennedy liberal," McMahon said in an interview. "I don't think we're going to have that" 1980s-style fight between liberals and centrists.
"People on the left understand that pragmatism wins elections," he said. They have two two-term Democratic presidents as proof of that proposition.
"Hillary Clinton is progressive but pragmatic, as President Obama and President Clinton both are and were," McMahon said. "And that's what wins."
Clinton hasn't announced that she's running in 2016, but she's widely expected to and already has a commanding lead among Democrats in preference polls.
One thing the economic populists have going for them is that the issue set resonates with many voters. Last April, Gallup polled this question: "Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country today is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?"
Fifty-two percent of respondents supported redistribution. More than a quarter of Republicans agreed with that. That suggests the existence of a healthy audience out there for a message of economic populism.
President Obama has teed up economic fairness issues for the 2014 and 2016 elections with his vow to address income inequality and social mobility for the rest of his time in office.
Obama's support for raising the minimum wage and closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy and corporations, backed by most congressional Democrats, is part of that economic populist push.
Yoga clothier Lululemon began the year with an embarrassing problem — pants that allowed way too much of women's bottoms to be seen through their sheer fabric.
As 2013 approached its close, the company had to cope with another public relations challenge: chairman and founder Chip Wilson's comment that "quite frankly, some women's bodies just actually don't work" in Lululemon's pants because of "rubbing through the thighs."
Along the way, its product chief stepped down and CEO Christine Day announced she too would be leaving.
Now, it's with the hope that the company can move ahead that it has announced that:
— Wilson "is resigning from the position of non-executive chairman. Mr. Wilson will step down from the role effective prior to the company's annual meeting in June 2014. The Board has selected Michael Casey, lead director of the board of directors, as the next chairman of the board."
— Laurent Potdevin, who most recently has been president of TOMS Shoes, will succeed Day as CEO in January.
According to The Financial Times, "industry analysts welcomed the appointment of Mr. Potdevin as the new chief executive of Lululemon. The team at Credit Suisse said Mr. Potdevin, 46, was a solid hire given his strong brand management and consumer engagement."
Lately, robots have been taking over all kinds of jobs that humans used to do on the farm — from thinning lettuce to harvesting spinach.
Three brothers in Minnesota are betting that robots could compete with machines on the farm, too: the huge, and often inefficient, fertilizer applicators made by John Deere and the like. The brothers' Rowbot, in comparison, is so small it can move between rows of crops and fertilize plants one at a time.
"We joked about it being the Roomba of the cornfield," says one of the brothers, Kent Cavender-Bares, referring to the autonomous vacuum cleaner.
The motivation for creating a fertilizer robot is simple: Many farmers overuse fertilizer, and that's costly and bad for the environment. But farmers don't have many tools to help them cut back.
The Salt
Putting Farmland On A Fertilizer Diet
Amid a solemn atmosphere, the body of Nelson Mandela lay in state Wednesday at an amphitheater in South Africa's capital of Pretoria, the exact spot where he was sworn in as the country's first black president in 1994, reconciling a land that had been torn by racial divisions for centuries.
Mandela's coffin, draped in a South African flag, was transported by a hearse from a military hospital through the streets of Pretoria and then to the hilltop Union Buildings, the seat of South Africa's presidency.
South Africans lined the route, many holding posters of Mandela, as the cortege traveled past the courthouse — now known as the Palace of Justice — where he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for sabotage. Mandela ultimately served 27 years before his release in 1990.
A military honor guard wearing black armbands delivered the coffin to Mandela's grandson Mandla Mandela. It was then placed inside a protective marquee built for the occasion at the outdoor amphitheater overlooking the sprawling grounds of the Union Buildings.
Family members, government officials and foreign leaders paid their respects Wednesday morning. Mandela's former wife Winnie wiped away tears after she passed through the marquee and walked away.
Among the mourners was F.W. de Klerk, the country's last white president and the man who freed Mandela and then lost his job to Mandela four years later in the country's first democratic elections.
The amphitheater was being opened to the public in the afternoon. South Africans began lining up at 5 a.m. for one last chance to see Mandela.
The mood was formal and somber, in contrast with the spirited and joyous memorial service on Tuesday, when tens of thousands of South Africans and dozens of foreign leaders gathered at the country's largest soccer stadium in the black township of Soweto.
South Africa's white leaders ruled from the Union Buildings for decades before Mandela's extraordinary journey that took him from a rural village to anti-apartheid leader to the world's most famous prisoner to president of a democratic South Africa.
Mandela will lie in state through Friday in an open coffin sheathed in a glass cover. He will then be transported to his home village of Qunu in the southeastern part of the country, where he will be buried in an ancestral grave on Sunday morning.
The fight over taxes, entitlements and income inequality has clearly been reignited in the Democratic Party, sparking questions about whether, and how hard, to push economic populism as the party approaches the 2014 mid-term election and beyond.
The latest flare up came between centrist Democrats at the Third Way think tank and liberals who view Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as their champion.
Two Third Way co-founders panned Warren's approach — more specifically, her call to expand Social Security and raise taxes on the wealthiest. That their op-ed ran on the conservative opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal didn't help matters.
Was it a sign of things to come, another intra-party tug-of-war reminiscent of the mid-1980s when the now-defunct, centrist Democratic Leadership Council was formed to pull a very liberal party to the political center?
Steve McMahon, a Democratic political strategist with Purple Strategies, doesn't think it will get to that point in 2016.
"I don't think Elizabeth Warren is going to run for president and Hillary Clinton is more a centrist than a Ted Kennedy liberal," McMahon said in an interview. "I don't think we're going to have that" 1980s style fight between liberals and centrists.
"People on the left understand that pragmatism wins elections," he said. They have two two-term Democratic presidents as proof of that proposition.
"Hillary Clinton is progressive but pragmatic, as President Obama and President Clinton both are and were," McMahon said. "And that's what wins."
Clinton hasn't announced that she's running in 2016 but she's widely expected to and already has a commanding lead among Democrats in preference polls.
One thing the economic populists have going for them is that the issue set resonates with many voters. Last April, Gallup polled this question: "Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country today is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?"
Fifty-two percent of respondents supported redistribution. More than a quarter of Republicans agreed with that. That suggests the existence of a healthy audience out there for a message of economic populism.
President Obama has teed up economic fairness issues for the 2014 and 2016 elections with his vow to address income-inequality and social mobility for the rest of his time in office.
Obama's support for raising the minimum wage and closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy and corporations, backed by most congressional Democrats, is part of that economic populist push.
House and Senate negotiators working to finish a farm bill say it is unlikely their work will be completed before the end of the year. The House is only in session for the rest of the week, and according to one of the negotiators, this week's snowy weather has delayed some numbers-crunching needed to figure out how much elements of a possible deal will cost.
"We're going to pass it in January," said Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., as she left a closed-door meeting to negotiate details of the five-year farm bill.
Her House counterpart, Frank Lucas, R-Okla., stood next to her, nodding.
"I believe that's the scenario that you'll see," said Lucas.
They didn't get into details about where differences remain, but funding for SNAP, formerly called food stamps, and the structure of the crop insurance program have been sticking points.
One reason they were rushing to get it done before the end of the year is what's known as the "dairy cliff," a risk of soaring milk prices. Without a farm bill, dairy policy will revert to 1949 law, and wholesale milk prices could double. But Stabenow insists it won't happen immediately.
"I'm confident, talking with the secretary of agriculture just a little while ago, that we have no impacts on dairy in January," said Stabenow.
Lucas is planning to introduce a short-term extension of the 2008 farm bill that would last through the end of January. But he said he'd only want the House to vote on it if it looked like the two chambers were still too far apart in negotiations as this week comes to the close. And Stabenow says a short-term extension won't fly in the Senate.
At the same time, Kaaberbol and Friis take the migration theme in a fresh, feminist-inflected direction. They don't revel in the usual stereotypes — you know, vulgar Russian gangsters with diamond-studded teeth or tragic, long-legged prostitutes. Instead, books like Death of a Nightingale focus on the most powerless, and thus the most endangered, of migrant newcomers: women and, especially, children. Working with victims, not criminals, Nina encounters kids threatened with all manner of ghastliness and the desperate mothers who'll do anything to save them. We understand why Nina's driven to get involved.
Yet her boundless sympathy with the dispossessed, born of childhood trauma, also makes her a real pain. She's both heroic and frustrating, the kind of person who judges other people for not caring enough — even as she forgets to care about her own family. She routinely fails in simple maternal duties, like picking up the kids from school, because she's so busy helping somebody else's children. She's on "a one-woman crusade to save the world," complains her estranged husband, Morten, a crusade that sucks their own children into what he calls her personal "war zone."
Still, even as Nina knows that she goes too far — often putting herself in harm's way — she can't rein herself in. And as Death of a Nightingale makes clear, the world of Red Cross work doesn't help her out. Like Gombrowicz on the beach, she keeps coming across suffering beings who need to be rescued. But unlike him, she keeps on rescuing. For Nina, compassion fatigue isn't a real syndrome. It's merely an excuse.
Read an excerpt of Death of a Nightingale
Another day, another GOP primary fight.
This time, it's John Cornyn of Texas, the number two Republican in the Senate, who's receiving a challenge from the right in 2014. Rep. Steve Stockman, a conservative firebrand, made the surprise move to enter the March 4 race Monday evening just before the state's filing deadline.
The Lone Star State is now poised to become the latest battleground — and the first Senate test — in the ongoing civil war between the Republican Party's establishment and Tea Party wings.
Six other GOP senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are facing reasonably competitive primary challengers next year. But the race in Texas is the only one where a GOP congressman is taking on an incumbent senator.
Stockman is no insider. After serving in the House for a single, controversy-filled term in the mid-1990's, he was returned to Congress in 2012 to represent the newly-created, East Texas-based 36th District. In his second tour, Stockman has picked up where he left off.
He has called for President Obama's impeachment, compared him to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and established a brash Twitter presence. More recently, he came under fire for not properly disclosing his financial information.
Stockman's bid against Cornyn, who's seeking a third term, appears to be a fairly steep uphill climb. For starters, his fundraising hasn't been up to par for a statewide hopeful: At the end of September, his campaign had just $32,000 on hand and was $163,000 in debt. Cornyn, on the other hand, had nearly $7 million in his campaign coffers and no debt.
Stockman's hopes will depend on his grassroots support, and he'll likely need some assistance from influential conservative outside groups — the kind that have already backed primary challengers to veteran GOP senators elsewhere this year.
One of those organizations, the Club for Growth, released a statement Tuesday saying it would not get involved in the Texas primary battle. The Tea Party-aligned Senate Conservatives Fund, which has expressed dissatisfaction with Cornyn in the past, and Madison Project have yet to announce their plans.
Another factor working against Stockman: time. Texas scheduled its primary for the first week of March, making it the first Senate contest of 2014. That means he has less than three months to organize a campaign infrastructure, raise a hefty amount of cash and make his name known statewide.
But Stockman's campaign may have the Tea Party faithful thinking back to Sen. Ted Cruz's rise in 2012, when he earned conservative grassroots support and defeated the favored establishment candidate in the GOP primary. For his part, Cruz has declined to back Cornyn's re-election effort.
Chaos is visiting the Christmas season in Argentina, where police in many regions have refused to work until they get a pay raise. The lack of law enforcement has spurred looting that has killed at least five people and injured hundreds more. Some shop owners are taking up arms to defend themselves.
In Chaco province, the casualties include police deputy superintendent Cristin Vera, who died after being shot by looters in a supermarket, reports Data Chaco.
Photos of the looting depict stores with broken windows; along one strip, metal security bars were wrenched open. Some stores have been forced to close ahead of the upcoming holiday.
"The violence has spread to 19 out of 23 provinces, and local news describes shocking scenes: A shop owner was killed when looters set his store on fire," NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports. "Banks, supermarkets, retail businesses and public transportation have shut down in many cities."
Lourdes says that other workers in the public sector are now considering staging strikes of their own, "in order to get a bigger paycheck that will give them what they say is a living wage."
And here's more background from journalist John Otis, who filed a report for NPR's Newscast unit:
"The looting first broke out in Cordoba province last week, leaving two dead and more than 100 people injured before the local police agreed to a deal that doubled their monthly salaries to about $1,900.
"Police are demanding pay raises to keep up with the country's 25 percent annual inflation. One person died when he tried to defend his supermarket that was set afire. Other victims were killed while inside stores that were being looted.
"President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has sent federal police and border patrol officers to hot spots where people have armed themselves in fear of mobs. The unrest takes place as Argentina prepares to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the country's return to democracy."
Standing in a steady drizzle at dawn, Lerato Maphanga took a black marker to a whitewashed wall that's serving as a condolences board outside Nelson Mandela's old home in Soweto, South Africa.
"Thank you, Tata [father], rest in peace," she wrote Tuesday. Then she signed it, "Born Free," a reference to the black South Africans born after apartheid ended in the 1994 election that made Mandela the country's first black president.
South Africans piled flowers on top of flowers at Mandela's modest, red-brick home in Soweto, the huge black township where Mandela lived before he was sent to prison for 27 years. His many admirers also packed buses and trains as they headed to the country's biggest soccer stadium to honor him at a memorial service. And once there, they sang and shouted and ululated, with some making themselves hoarse before the event began.
The country paused to bid farewell Tuesday, but there was nothing somber about it. South Africans have had plenty of time to mourn Mandela, who stepped down as president in 1999. He last appeared in public three years ago and was on his deathbed for months before finally succumbing Thursday at age 95.
"I don't think we should mourn, we should celebrate," said Maphanga, 19, a first year accounting student at the University of Johannesburg.
She was accompanied by her mother, Flora Maphanga, who was pregnant with her daughter when she went to vote in that historic 1994 election. Flora Maphanga says she has told her daughter many stories about the apartheid era, such as the 1976 student riots in Soweto that delayed her final high school exams for months.
"I also tell her she has it so good now," said the elder Maphanga, who works in the police department. "You can go to good schools and choose any career you like. I didn't have those options."
The daughter replies: "I believe her because I study history."
Apartheid is now a history lesson for South African college students. However, the traditions on display for Mandela's memorial haven't changed at all over the years.
On a standing-room only bus headed to the service at FNB Stadium, Matthew Mkhud led the passengers in a spirited series of tribute songs, such as "Mandela Is Calling."
"I was supposed to be at work today, but my colleague said we had to go to be part of history," said Mkhud, who works in information technology. "We can work tomorrow."
After leading several foot-stomping songs while simultaneously filming the scene on his iPad, Mkhud needed a break."Sorry comrades, I'm out of breath," he said.
Soon the singing resumed, lasting all the way to FNB Stadium, the 95,000-seat soccer arena that has played a prominent role in South Africa's recent history.Mandela packed the place in 1990 when he held his first rally just two days after he was released from prison.
The circular stadium, which is covered with earthen-colored panels to resemble an African gourd often used for cooking, also hosted soccer's 2010 World Cup. Mandela made his final public appearance at that event.
And Tuesday, Mandela was the reason that dozens of world leaders, including President Obama and three former U.S. presidents gathered in a steady rain on an unseasonably chilly summer day.
The South African government and media had predicted the stadium would be overflowing and barred private cars from the venue, requiring the crowd to arrive by train or bus.
The warning may have discouraged some, along with the rain that was forecast to last throughout the day. In addition, Tuesday was not declared a holiday, and many opted to go to work, as evidenced by the usual morning traffic jam from Soweto into nearby Johannesburg.
The stadium was a little more than half full when the service began at 11 a.m.local time.
That didn't dampen the enthusiasm of Eugene Kobuwe, 34, who had driven 150 miles from the small town of Zeerust to attend with a friend.
"I came to honor a man who took the country in the right direction at a time when things could have gone badly wrong," Kobuwe said. "I'm not sad. I'm not going to cry. I just wanted to pay respect to a man who did a remarkable job."
He then recalled his favorite Mandela story. It took place in 1990, shortly after Mandela had been released and when Kobuwe was just 10 years old.
Political unrest had sent black families fleeing to Zeerust. Mandela showed up in an effort to calm the tensions and reassure the displaced families.
"I really didn't know anything about him, but I could just feel the vibe from all the adults," Kobuwe said. "You just knew this was an important man. That's when I began reading everything about him."
Time was when business-suited Santas would spend December roaming the corridors of Congress, bestowing all sorts of goodies upon their elected friends, prospective friends and staffers: baskets of food, bottles of booze, even high-priced tickets to sports events.
That last item is the kind of thing that sent uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison. It also brought the House of Representatives a new set of ethics rules — stern and often complex limits on accepting gifts.
And so every December, the House Ethics Committee sends out its "Holiday Guidance on the Gift Rule," an ethics memo known in Capitol Hill parlance as a pink sheet.
This pink sheet has seven pages of rules ("Generally, Members and supervisors may not accept gifts from their subordinates") and exceptions ("a common-sense exception" for voluntary gifts during the holidays).
Seven pages of rules – and one page with a poem. About congressional ethics rules.
It's the holiday season, so be of good cheer,
For soon there'll be recess and very few here.
So let us remind you, as gifts come your way,
Please check with Ethics so you don't go astray.
France's Chateau of Versailles has pulled out all the stops for one of its favorite sons, gardener Andr Le Ntre, who designed the palace's famous gardens. This year, to mark the 400th anniversary of Le Ntre's birth, several of the garden's fountains are being restored and the chateau is hosting an exhibit on his life through February 2014.
Experts say Le Ntre's work was so groundbreaking, it continues to influence contemporary urban architecture.
'The Interlocutor Of Kings'
Andre Le Ntre was born in 1613 into a family of royal gardeners, but he would take the profession way beyond a trade. That's according to Jacques Moulin, Versailles' current gardener — or architect — the 30th since Le Ntre.
"Le Ntre transformed the profession of gardener into a high-level royal service and turned his trade into a grand art," Moulin says. "He became the interlocutor of kings and princes across Europe and built a huge art collection."
Le Ntre was 25 years old when Louis XIV was born. Despite the generation gap, the two men worked together to transform Versailles and Paris, where Le Ntre designed the Champs-lyses and the Tuileries Garden. Architect Georges Farhat helped put together Versailles' Le Ntre exhibit.
"This was the time when, at an unprecedented scale, planning was addressed in royal and manorial domains," Farhat says. "People were trying to address issues such as how to cope with long distances and extensive surfaces when you want to deliver a coherent spatial composition."
To do that, Le Ntre developed new solutions, such as anamorphosis and collimation, an optical principal that plays on relationships between levels, heights and distances.
"On a very flat terrain, such as what we have at Versailles, if you want to show something along a 3-km-long axis, you have to find optical solutions in order to compensate for the shortening of all the different elements in the sequence," Farhat says. "So the farther they will be, the larger and longer you will have to make them. But you need a rule for this. Anamorphosis and collimation is a very good device for this."
From Marshland To 'Disneyland'
Fahrat says the roots of modern urban planning can be found in the gardens of Versailles, with its avenues and allies radiating to infinity.
To see Le Ntre's genius for yourself, you can board a small train at the palace. It makes stops deep within the grounds at the two mini palaces where French kings kept their mistresses. Versailles guide Pamela Grant says this was all marshland until Le Ntre got hold of it.
Europe
Versailles Takes On A New Role: Luxury Hotel
Twenty years ago, millions of Americans were cocking their ears — waiting to hear a "giant sucking sound."
They feared Mexico would begin vacuuming up U.S. manufacturing jobs as soon as President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, on Dec. 8, 1993.
"There's our ship!" says Officer Lisa Sacco.
We're standing at the Port of Miami, where Sacco works for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Our ship, the Hansa Kirkenes, left Cartagena, Colombia, about a week earlier carrying all 6,078 of the Planet Money women's T-shirts.
Interactive Documentary
New York's health insurance marketplace has been running relatively smoothly, compared with healthcare.gov, the site the federal government is running for 36 states.
But that's a low bar, and even though about 50,000 New Yorkers had signed up in the first two months, almost every day still brings complaints and glitches. Donna Frescatore, the head of the New York State Of Health, says there are no serious patterns of trouble, just individual issues that the state and its contractors address one by one.
"We try to listen to everything — to social media, to customer service, to our navigators — and work every day to make it better," Frescatore says.
Health insurance exchanges are in the middle of their version of the holiday shopping crunch. Millions of Americans who want coverage in place for the start of 2014 have to buy it by Dec. 23. At the nerve center of New York state's exchange in Albany, staffers hope not to repeat the chaos of early October when the website launched.
The call center for the New York state marketplace, operated by a contractor called Maximus, is located in an office park on the edge of the state capital, Albany. Joey Cappuccitti is one of more than a hundred customer service specialists taking calls. He specializes in helping small businesses, and he says things have calmed down since the exchange debuted.
On launch day, Oct. 1, top state health officials gathered several miles away, in a small windowless conference room at the main computer hub in a converted shopping mall. Contractor Chris Harmer remembers that, based on months of passing stress tests, everyone was confident the system could handle what was coming. But that day the site was overwhelmed by the traffic. "That was a spike no one could've planned for," said Harmer, a project manager from Computer Sciences Corporation, which largely operates the state exchange. "It was a load beyond any reasonable modeling, given the population of the state."
Harmer said, technically, the system didn't crash. It was just running very, very slowly.
But many customers couldn't get past the home page, and many of those who did get through only got a screen or two into the application process before it froze.
The state realized they had to do two things. First, they tackled the technical problems. They expanded the servers immediately and went to work revamping the website. Frescatore, the exchange chief, recalls that the online application initially required people to check a box early, on the top of one of the Web pages, if they wanted financial assistance, but people didn't see it.
"They'd get to the end and say, 'I thought I'd qualify for some, and I didn't. Why is that?' And we'd go back and look, and they'd missed it," she says.
So, Web designers eliminated the check box and made that fork in the road much more clear-cut for applicants.
The bigger, more abstract challenge is trying to adjust people's expectations – not over how quickly Web pages should open, but over what it means to shop for subsidized, government-brokered health insurance online.
On Oct. 1, President Barack Obama said, "You can compare insurance plans side-by-side, the same way you'd shop for a plane ticket on Kayak or a TV on Amazon."
It's a message state and federal officials have been promoting for years, since the health law passed in 2010 – much to the chagrin of contractor Harmer.
"I don't think it's the correct analogy for a marketplace," Harmer said.
The complexity of the Affordable Care Act means the whole application process is complicated, too. It's a little like applying for financial aid for college: You have to put in a lot of personal financial informationbefore you figure out how much you'll have to pay.
"It does depend on the household, the ages," says Harmer. "It depends on all these factors, instead of just saying, 'Here's a quote,' which may or may not be correct."
Despite improvements, most days bring new complaints to the exchange's Facebook page, where Maryann Manelski, a New York City-based filmmaker and writer, wrote: "I've spent over 6 hours trying to navigate the site only to get spinning rainbow wheels and the site not responding."
At the New York State of Health, traffic has been steadily increasing over the past two months. And as with retail stores at this time of year, the call center has been increasing staff – by 10-to-15 percent – to meet the growing demand. Officials say they're confident the system can handle a rush of insurance purchasers before the Dec. 23 deadline.
The state's goal is to enroll about 300,000 people by the end of next year.
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes WNYC, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
A U.S. company is taking what it hopes to be a small step toward eventually mining the moon.
Moon Express, based in Mountain View, Calif., just unveiled the design for a small robot spacecraft about the size of a coffee table that it says could move about the moon's surface powered only by solar panels and hydrogen peroxide.
The company hopes to build the robot and send it to the moon by late 2015, win the $30 million Lunar X Prize from Google for the first privately funded moon rover, and eventually get around to putting on the moon an operation capable of extracting valuable minerals.
Even if all goes as planned, that's a long way off, says Bob Richards, co-founder of Moon Express. It would take repeated moon missions over the next decade before any mining could begin.
"Everything we fight about on Earth, all the resources are available in infinite quantities in space," says Richards, pointing out the moon has platinum and other rare Earth elements. "The moon is the first shopping market next door to us."
But Moon Express isn't the only one eyeing the potential business opportunities on the moon. China's recently-launched lunar probe also will look for natural resources. And Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology is aiming for the Google Lunar X Prize with space exploration, tourism and resource-harvesting in mind.
There are others in the game, as well. And the United Nations' Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says anyone is free to harvest resources on the moon, a bit like the high seas.
But Tony Milligan, a teaching fellow of philosophy at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, argued in a recent paper that the moon shouldn't be mined unless there are much larger stakes at risk, such as survival of the human race.
"If something tremendously valuable were to be found under the pyramids or under the Sphinx we would think of it as a bad idea to go in and shift or remove or destroy these objects in order to get at it," Milligan says. "I think we should look towards asteroids rather than churning up the moon or Mars."
As the holiday season approaches, the TV cupboard may seem a bit bare; the industry winds down like everything else, filling cable and broadcast networks with holiday specials, reruns and also-ran reality shows.
But there are bright gifts, too: TNT offers Mob City, a three-week, lavishly produced noir-ish TV show about cops and crooks vying for control of 1947-era Los Angeles, airing Wednesdays.
On Dec. 8 and 9, A&E presents a four-hour miniseries on Bonnie and Clyde, retelling the story of the Depression-era outlaws and lovers.
If you miss The Walking Dead, the Sundance Channel has The Returned, a French series airing on Thursdays and Sundays about dead people returning to life in a town, unaware that they are dead and looking like they did right before death (with subtitles, it feels like a well-made, eight-hour foreign film).
Fans of NBC's singing competition The Voice can check out The Sing-Off, which returns Monday as a competition of a capella groups, and if you must see a reality show, try Discovery's Dude, You're Screwed, a series starting Sunday that snatches up a survival expert from his everyday life (all of the contestants in the first series are men) and plops him into an unforgiving environment with 100 hours to get back to civilization.
I think I'd take the cameraman hostage, myself.
This story is part of the Planet Money T-shirt project.
Jeff Steinberg had a maroon and white lacrosse jersey that he wore for years. It said "Denver Lacrosse" on the front and had his number, 5, on the back.
Then, one day, he cleaned out his closet and took the shirt to a Goodwill store in Miami. He figured that was the end of it. But some months after that, Steinberg found himself in Sierra Leone for work. He was walking down the street, and he saw a guy selling ice cream and cold drinks, wearing a Denver Lacrosse jersey.
"I thought, 'Wow, this is pretty crazy,' " Steinberg says. Then he looked at the back of the shirt — and saw the number 5. His number. Steinberg tried to talk to the guy about the shirt, but he didn't speak much English and they couldn't really communicate.
This story is part of the Planet Money T-shirt project.
Jeff Steinberg had a maroon and white lacrosse jersey that he wore for years. It said "Denver Lacrosse" on the front and had his number, 5, on the back.
Then, one day, he cleaned out his closet and took the shirt to a Goodwill store in Miami. He figured that was the end of it. But some months after that, Steinberg found himself in Sierra Leone for work. He was walking down the street, and he saw a guy selling ice cream and cold drinks, wearing a Denver Lacrosse jersey.
"I thought, 'Wow, this is pretty crazy,' " Steinberg says. Then he looked at the back of the shirt — and saw the number 5. His number. Steinberg tried to talk to the guy about the shirt, but he didn't speak much English and they couldn't really communicate.
Here's something you haven't heard in years: The U.S. economy had a great week.
In recent days, government and industry reports have showed auto and new-home sales are surging, manufacturing is strengthening and the trade deficit is narrowing. And the U.S. growth rate shot to 3.6 percent in the third quarter — much better than the 2.8 percent originally reported.
'Here & Now': Marilyn Geewax Discusses The Jobs Report
Here's something you haven't heard in years: The U.S. economy had a great week.
In recent days, government and industry reports have showed auto and new-home sales are surging, manufacturing is strengthening and the trade deficit is narrowing. And the U.S. growth rate shot to 3.6 percent in the third quarter — much better than the 2.8 percent originally reported.
'Here & Now': Marilyn Geewax Discusses The Jobs Report
Twenty years ago, millions of Americans were cocking their ears — waiting to hear a "giant sucking sound."
They feared Mexico would begin vacuuming up U.S. manufacturing jobs as soon as President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, on Dec. 8, 1993.
The national debate about income equality and low-wage labor ramped up this week as fast-food workers across the country rallied for better pay and President Obama assailed the nation's growing income gap as the "defining challenge of our time."
Meanwhile, an $11.50 minimum wage bill was approved in the nation's capital, and giant discount retailer Wal-Mart opened its first Washington stores — accompanied by a flurry of ads defending the company's often-criticized pay and benefits practices.
(Protesters showed up outside the new Wal-Marts, but inside there were bargain hunters and busy cash registers.)
To paraphrase a well-worn weather aphorism, everybody's talking about poor pay and the perils of a growing gap between rich and poor — even Pope Francis weighed in — but no one can agree on what to do about them.
Raise the federally mandated minimum wage of $7.25 to $10.10 ($404 a week), as Democrats and the president have advocated?
Impose stricter rules on Wall Street, which critics say is riding government largesse and bailouts to high-flying profits that benefit a tiny percentage of Americans?
Close tax loopholes? Rethink interest deductions? Tax financial transactions? Just leave wages, banks and money movers alone and let the market decide the path forward?
There are arguments for and against all of the above, some more persuasive than others, others not.
We turned this week to economists and financial analysts for perspective on what brought us to this point, and whether and how it should be addressed. Not surprisingly, their disparate takes mirrored the conflicted national discussion on minimum wages and the wealth gap.
Here's who we heard from, who we've been reading, and what they had to say.
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Baker, an economist at the liberal-leaning research center, pointed to Wall Street as a driver of the wealth gap.
"We have done almost nothing to rein in Wall Street, which means great fortunes will be made scamming the productive economy in various ways," he said.
Baker pointed to the government's recurrent "too-big-to fail" subsidies to the nation's 10 largest banks, an annual payout that Bloomberg View has estimated at $83 billion — and that has shielded investors from losses.
"This is effectively payment from the government to the big banks," Baker says. "The government is providing enormously valuable insurance for which it is not charging."
That, and tax code loopholes "just invite gaming," he says.
His top proposals to address problems he's identified: impose a modest tax on financial transactions including trades of stocks, bonds and derivatives to raise money and discourage "flipping" or the quick reselling of assets for profits; break up the big banks so they aren't too big to fail; and limit interest deductions to prevent private equity companies "from showing big profits by loading companies with debt."
Says Baker, "These are all reasonably straightforward, and would go a very long way."
Scott Frew, Rockingham Capital Partners
Frew, general partner of the Connecticut-based hedge fund, says he views the phenomenon of the growing income inequality as arising out of globalization and the nation's response to it.
"Globalization and the various free trade agreements that have accompanied it [including NAFTA] were sold as win-win arrangements, but have proved to be a lot closer to zero-sum," he said. "The rising standard of living in the developing world has its mirror image in the falling ones here."
Policymakers who have attempted to stanch the flow of wealth from the U.S. to the developing world — encouraging easy credit, for example — have ended up instead exacerbating the problem, Frew says.
Their actions, he says, "most certainly widened the gap [in the U.S.] between the extremely prosperous upper echelons and everybody else."
The wealthy have profited from the migration of American jobs overseas — from Wall Streeters selling IOU's to the developing world, to company owners outsourcing overseas. It's a practice Frew characterized as a "highly profitable form of labor cost arbitrage."
He also notes that U.S. businesses additionally benefit from their reliance on the government to provide welfare benefits to working Americans being paid poverty-level wages.
Since taxes aren't levied on businesses to specifically offset the costs of those government benefits, which help boost their profits, "these corporations and their owners benefit twice over."
The Financial Times' FTAlphaville, financial markets blog
In a post this week, the blog's Cardiff Garcia laid out the arguments for raising the federal minimum wage (job stability, less reliance on government benefits, workers spending more, etc) and those against (potential to depress employment, not clear if lower turnover a good thing, not as cost-effective as other ideas), and came up with this:
"So what's the right stand to take on the minimum wage in the absence of a better idea that's politically feasible? Honestly, we don't know."
The post prompted a spirited conversation in the blog's comments section.
The conservative Heritage Foundation also weighed in this week with an analysis bolstering its opposition to minimum-wage increases; and the Brookings Institution's Gary Burtless laid out the minimum wage's depleted purchasing power over time.
Income inequality. Minimum wages. Corporate welfare. The future of the middle class. We end the week with myriad questions, elusive solutions, politics beyond complicated, but a real national conversation begun.
In the new drama Out of the Furnace, a young man (Casey Affleck) gets involved with a group of criminals and then goes missing. Determined to find him, his ex-con brother (Christian Bale) grabs a shotgun and sets off.
Actor Woody Harrelson, perhaps best known for his role as the bartender on Cheers, steps away from comedy to play a member of that group of criminals, a viscous meth addict and bookie named Harlan DeGroat.
Harrelson spoke with NPR's Rachel Martin about the movie and preparing for a role that required letting loose a lot of anger.
"I would say tapping into rage is a pretty unbelievably facile kind of thing," he says. "I got those resources in there and so, you know, I'm ready to go with that."
Twenty years ago, millions of Americans were cocking their ears — waiting to hear a "giant sucking sound."
They feared Mexico would begin vacuuming up U.S. manufacturing jobs as soon as President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, on Dec. 8, 1993.