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It sounds like hype to say it, but underwater homeowners can change the course of history. It's not me saying that - it's the numbers. People who owe more than their homes are worth have the power to become the a powerful new political and economic force.

They've got the numbers, they've got the votes, and - if they can get organized - they've got the economic clout. And we can prove it.

There were rumblings that Thursday's Netroots Nation keynote address by Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general and the head of an Obama administration task force on Wall Street fraud, was going to be disrupted by protestors.

I'm at the Netroots Nation 2012 conference in Providence. The weather has been pretty good, a brief rainshower but otherwise sunny and pleasant day. There are panels all day, breakout sessions on various topics, state caucuses, parties, lunches, dinners, parties, receptions, parties, conversations in the hotel bar, late to bed, up early, jet lag, and another day of the same...

Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.

There is some good news in the fight for homeowners and against the big banks. Homeowners who are facing foreclosures because of unfair and often illegal practices by the major financial Goliaths are learning how to organize, how to shame bank executives and how to get local media attention.

Appeared in the June 25, 2012 edition of The Nation.
Co-written with Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Democracy lost in Wisconsin. Gov. Scott Walker kept his job only after outspending the recall movement 8 to 1. And that doesn’t even count the millions spent by secretive third-party groups.

Ray Bradbury, whose death at the age of 91 was announced today, played an important role for an entire generation of kids like me. Important? You might even call it "lifesaving." When things around us seemed unbearable, or incomprehensible, or soul-killing, his books opened a doorway - an escape hatch - through which we could leave "real life" and enter other worlds.