In this new feature, we’ll share stories from around the Internet that we’re passing around here at Moyers HQ. Share your own “must reads” from today below in the comments section. We’d love to hear what you’d recommend!
Newspapers and magazines carrying pictures of President-elect Francois Hollande are seen in a bookshop in Paris Monday. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
Bloomberg Businessweek: How Europe’s Austerity Backlash Might Change US Politics
“The US Congress is hardly a bastion of Europhiles — remember all that nonsense about ‘Freedom Fries’? When politicians here do cite the Continent, it tends to be in the form of a derogatory political attack, e.g., Mitt Romney’s frequently invoked line about how President Obama wants to ‘Europeanize’ America. So the idea that US lawmakers might learn something from their foreign counterparts and adjust their views accordingly after the anti-austerity wave sweeping through France and Greece isn’t necessarily an obvious one.”
The New York Review of Books: How to End This Depression by Paul Krugman
“The depression we’re in is essentially gratuitous: we don’t need to be suffering so much pain and destroying so many lives. We could end it both more easily and more quickly than anyone imagines — anyone, that is, except those who have actually studied the economics of depressed economies and the historical evidence on how policies work in such economies.”
Mother Jones: ALEC Gets a Break From State Lobbying Laws
“On April 20, Common Cause submitted a whistleblower complaint to the IRS, claiming that the American Legislative Exchange Council is ‘a corporate lobbying group masquerading as a charity.’ The move was the latest salvo in progressive groups’ campaign to limit the influence of ALEC, a secretive nonprofit that brings together Republican state legislators and corporations to write and promote pro-business legislation.”
TIME.com: Will Black Voters Punish Obama for His Support of Gay Rights? by Touré
“They say the arc of history bends toward justice. If that’s true then as a nation we’re having a hard time bending on the issue of gay rights. But this week will be remembered as an historic turning point because President Obama threw political caution to the wind and came out as the man who can put principle over politics in announcing his support for marriage equality.”
The New York Times: Net Neutrality and Economic Equality Are Intertwined
“Imagine a network of private highways that reserved a special lane for Fords to zip through, unencumbered by all the other brands of cars trundling along the clogged, shared lanes. Think of the prices Ford could charge. Think of what would happen to innovation when building the best car mattered less than cutting a deal with the highway’s owners.”
