Detroit is a city that is struggling to stay alive. Suburbanization, the decline of the auto industry, and economic and governmental neglect have hollowed large parts of the city out

One important way to advance the progressive cause is to ensure that candidates who share our progressive values win Democratic primary elections, especially in districts where the Democratic nominee is likely to win the general election. One great opportunity to do so is taking place in Hawaii right now, where House Progressive Caucus member Mazie Hirono is running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S.

President Obama started 2012 off well yesterday when he made a recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (‘CFPB’).

While President Obama’s signing statement, issued on December 31, 2011, confirms that the Obama Administration is not going to use the NDAA to indefinitely detain US citizens, that statement does nothing to limit the ability of future Administrations to use the detention authority provided in the NDAA.

2011 has been a banner year for the advancement of LGBT equality at the national, state, and local levels. Following are some of the highlights.

Illinois’ 10th Congressional District is a prime opportunity for a Democratic pickup. The district historically votes Democratic at the Presidential level, and is being made even bluer as part of the redistricting process

Desperate to turn the political discussion away from economic issues they cannot win on, Republican Presidential candidates have latched onto the claim that Islamic Shariah law is somehow overtaking the US.

For much of the time that President Obama has been in the White House, it has become fashionable among a vocal subset of progressives to attack President Obama as a failure who does not share our progressive values.

The U.S. Supreme Court has announced that it will hold oral arguments on March 26, 27, and 28 in the cases it has agreed to hear that challenge the constitutionality of President Obama’s historic health care reform legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Showing how out of touch they are with everyday Americans, conservatives have latched onto the news that the share of national income taken in by the top 1% fell from 23% in 2007 to ‘only’ 17% in 2009 to contend that the focus of Occupy Wall Street and others on economic inequality is somehow misguided.

Winning Progressive had the opportunity to see a movie called The Last Mountain, which is about the efforts of communities in West Virginia to challenge the most destructive form of coal mining – mountaintop removal mining (“MTR”).

With unemployment remaining far too high at 8.6% and underemployment hovering around 16%, President Obama and Congressional Democrats are correctly pivoting back to focusing on job creation.

The Obama Administration made the right call recently when the State Department announced that it would undertake a new environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and alternative routes for the pipeline.

Appearing in Osawatomie, Kansas on Tuesday, President Obama gave a speech that should make just about any progressive proud. In the speech, our President addressed the ‘raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity, restore balance, restore fairness.’

The GOP been on a decade-long effort to reduce and restrict voting, especially among the poor, young people, people of color, and other Democratic-leaning groups.

A significant challenge facing the Obama Administration as it gears up for the 2012 re-election campaign is that the President is not positively defined in the minds of many voters. A look at the entire record of President Obama shows that he has been a pragmatist who, while far from perfect, has led our country through daunting times and achieved significant progressive victories in the face of intractable opposition.

Over at the New York Times, Joe Nocera had a column entitled ‘We Can All Become Job Creators’ in which he praised Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz for two recent proposals regarding jobs and politics.

It has often been said that FDR saved capitalism from itself. What that means is that he took office at the lowest depths of the Great Depression, when it was clear that rampant uncontrolled capitalism had not only failed to benefit the more than one-third of Americans were ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed, but had also collapsed on itself due to the uncontrolled excesses that unregulated free markets had created.

In his recent New York Times column titled Things to Tax, Paul Krugman sensibly argues that increased overall taxes must be a key component to any plan to deal with present and long-term deficit issues.