Portside

In a bleak year filled with bad news, people from Edward Snowden to Elizabeth Warren were brave enough to shake up the establishment. "Fighting the power," as people used to say, is no easy task. Victories are hard to come by and can quickly slide away because the power establishment of money, lobbying, lawyers, PR machines and out-and-out corruption are like Neil Young's rust: they never sleep.

The individual mandate was not necessary - the insurance companies like it because it does bring young, healthy people who aren't likely to get sick into the system.

The Republican Party last week quietly declared war on itself, in the process essentially confessing to a generation of failed governance and dumbed-down politics.

Buy less. Give five per cent of your earnings to others fostering change.

Activism brought changes in gay rights, marijuana laws, but guns, immigration, inequality and more stay unchanged. America’s ability to repair and renew itself rests, as ever, on the democratic spirit that burns within its citizenry.

Across the country, for the past several months, workers have been walking out of McDonalds, K.F.C.s and other fast-food companies, calling for a fifteen-dollar hourly wage. Fast-food companies say that this is unrealistic. Raise the hourly wage to fifteen dollars per hour, they argue, and local franchises, many of them operating with small profit margins, will either fail or have to lay off employees.

The rampant capitalism that has brought the market into every corner of society needs to be reined in

"Hopefully, it is not also trying to hide or obscure a distressing system or set of facts.”