Clearly, Rick Santorum is not. The cultural war religious conservatives are stirring up is about women’s freedoms, but it is also about equality, competency and economic opportunity. From Politico: “Look, I want to create every opportunity for women to be able to serve this country, and they do so in an amazing and wonderful way. [...]

Pres. Obama felt forced to compromise and personally address the furor surrounding his contraceptive mandate for all women, because religious conservatives wanted a fight about religious freedom where none existed and election year politics made it possible. He made a serious faith-based effort to solve an issue, without making women pay the price for religious [...]

**UPDATED** As Rick Santorum takes to the stage to give his speech, with Mitt Romney following close behind, the White House has scheduled their announcement, which I wrote yesterday would be coming before the end of Friday. It’s set for 12:15 p.m. [update] What is being reported and what I’m hearing is that the contraceptive [...]

Joyce L. Arnold: Liberal, lesbian, Independent, equality activist, writer. What this series has been about, in a broad, diverse and occasionally rambling sort of way: I think two parties = too few choices. I think the Two Party Front for the Oligarchy, the Duopoly, the Corporate Parties, whatever you want to call the Republican and [...]

Gasoline deliveries reflect recession and growth. The recent drop in retail gasoline deliveries is signalling a sharp contraction ahead. Mish recently posted some intriguing charts depicting a significant decline in gasoline consumption. Then correspondent Joe R. forwarded me this stunning chart of gasoline retail deliveries, from the U.S. Energy Information Administration: (EIA) As Joe noted, this data is interesting [...]

Bloomberg's hape-of-Earth-Differ Journamalism – Brad DeLong Reading the bump in inventories – macroblog Two Minutes Hate – Paul Krugman Wikipedia, Mitt, Barack, and a Hand Over the Heart – Shane Greenstein Jim Bullard chucks the Solow growth model! – Noahpinion Immigrants face challenges in finding jobs – Miles Corak Housing Markets in Transition – Ben [...]

Ezra Klein digs into Romney's budget proposal: Romney’s severely conservative budget promises, by Ezra Klein: In his speech to CPAC, Mitt Romney repeated a promise that he’s delivered repeatedly on the campaign trail. “Without raising taxes or sacrificing America’s critical defense superiority, I will finally balance the budget.” That sounds pretty good. It sounds really [...]

The claim from conservatives that collapsing middle class family values is responsible for rising inequality diverts attention from the true cause of stagnating middle class incomes: Money and Morals, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Lately inequality has re-entered the national conversation. Occupy Wall Street gave the issue visibility, while the Congressional Budget Office supplied [...]