Thanks To A Deal Finalized In 2008,

There Are Few Things In Politics More Annoying Than The Right's Utter Conviction That It Owns The Patent On The Word 'freedom' That When Its Leaders Stand Up For The Rights Of Banks To Be Unregulated Or Capital Gains To Be Untaxed, That It Is Actually And Obviously Standing Up For Human Liberty, The Noblest Cause Of Them All.

In America, We No Longer Have An Institutionalized, Organized Way Of Calling Business To Task - Of Taking Them To Account For What They've Done - And This Is Especially True In The Cultural Realm.

In The Subprime Mortgage Industry, Bankers Handed Out Iffy Loans Like Candy At A Parade Because Such Loans Meant Revenue And, Hence, Bonuses For Executives In The Here-and-now.

Vibrancy Is So Universally Desirable, So Totemic In Its Powers, That Even Though We Aren't Sure What The Word Means, We Know The Quality It Designates Must Be Cultivated. The Vibrant, We Believe, Is What Makes Certain Cities Flourish.

The Great Fear That Hung Over The Business Community In The 1970s Was Death By Regulation, And The Great Goal Of The Conservative Movement, As It Rose To Triumph In The 1980s, Was To Remove That Threat - To Keep Osha, The Epa, And The Ftc From Choking Off Entrepreneurship With Their Infernal Meddling In The Marketplace.