Harold Pollack

Conventional wisdom is that American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) didn’t do much. That’s wrong. ARRA did much good, especially in some very practical, low-tech activities in public health and other areas. One of its less-noticed contributions was made within the domain of safety-net care. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius just announced […]

It’s a bad sign for American punditry that George Will’s latest column slams Elizabeth Warren in such disgraceful fashion. It’s a good sign for American politics, though, that the dean of patrician conservative columnists felt the need to do so. I’m not the first to the party here–Yom Kippur intervened–but I still want to weigh […]

Many of my friends are discussing Taylor Branch’s fantastic Atlantic piece indicting the NCAA. David Brooks offers a sentimental defense of the amateur ideal today. I wouldn’t compare college sports to a plantation, as Branch and his sources occasionally do. Yet it’s clear that the NCAA is a cartel that presents self-serving rationalizations for policies […]

Georgia killed Troy Davis by lethal injection earlier this week. He might have been innocent; he certainly should not have been executed. One thing seems clear to me regarding the Troy Davis case, the Cameron Todd Willingham case, and others: The fact that judges and others believe the defendant to be guilty allows them to […]

I haven’t always agree with MoveOn’s take on things or its media approaches. But my hat is off to the organization regarding the below video. This video demonstrates once again that the most powerful political advertising isn’t a soundbite gotcha or some piece of juvenile street theater, either. The most powerful advertising is often an […]

I spoke with a lobbyist yesterday about some new regulations established under health reform. Despite high-level political gridlock, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is issuing critical rules and regulations required under the Affordable Care Act. Lobbyists are thus descending. I should talk with them more often. Not surprisingly, lobbyists and their clients have […]

I started this piece in O’Hare Airport. ORD was pretty normal yesterday. Traffic was a bit lighter at the American terminal, but not much. That’s good. The light of a full moon illuminated the skyline below on a beautiful clear flight. Still, my wife was somewhat relieved to get my text that the flight had […]

Governor Perry considers Social Security to be a Ponzi scheme. I am baffled by this assertion when the program’s unfunded liability out to 2080 is in the neighborhood of 1.2 percent of GDP. Apparently Perry uses the words “Ponzi scheme” to mean “any pay-as-you-go program operated by the federal government.” Although Perry’s charge is misdirected, […]

I thought President Obama did a beautiful job in this speech yesterday. He showed some fight. He needs to. Oh yeah. Here is my op-ed about Chicago’s economic challenges in the New York Times. I interviewed Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others. A little excerpt: [Jackson] had choice words for banks and for Tea Partiers, whom […]