Michael Josephson: Character Counts: Leading by inspiration

  Why are negative management practices so prevalent?

  They include yelling, cursing, insults (sometimes masked in sarcasm or masquerading as jokes), criticizing subordinates in front of others, threatening demotion or termination, and talking to adults as if they were children.

  Why are so many managers insensitive to the demotivating impact of focusing almost exclusively on weaknesses and shortcomings without properly acknowledging successes and accomplishments?

Gadi Dechter: The Legitimate gripes of the other 99 percent

  The Occupy Wall Street protests spreading Arab Spring-style across the land are an inspiring display of civic engagement, finally giving popular voice to the entirely valid complaints of ordinary Americans frustrated as their quality of life stagnates or declines while the prosperity of the superwealthy metastasizes beyond all proportion. Like any major rally, these have also attracted elements reminiscent of the extreme Tea Party variety (the guy wielding an “Osama bin Bernanke” poster). But there’s no question that the bottom 99 percent have something to complain about and that this movement is giving voice to their valid grievances.

Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: Consolidating power in the Alabama Legislature

  The 2011 Legislative Session has been in the books over four months and the 2012 Session begins in just under four months. The dust has now settled on this year’s session and the results have been allowed to permeate. The conclusion has to be that it might have been one of the most remarkably productive legislative sessions in state history.

  The new Republican majority legislature has definitely put their mark on Alabama state government. When they ran last year they promised a political platform entitled a “Handshake with Alabama.” It was a conservative agenda. They were not just whistling Dixie. They delivered on all their promises.

Eleni Towns: Christian leaders today support gay and transgender equal rights

  Today gay and transgender advocates and allies celebrate National Coming Out Day. Despite conventional wisdom that tends to see religion as opposing equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, in fact many religious leaders and lay people consider moral equality for gay and transgender people as key tenants of their faith.

  In the past few years, Protestant denominations have been among those making significant progress in this area. Today, four of the seven-largest denominations allow the ordination of gay clergy and more people of faith than ever support marriage for gay and lesbian couples. Here are five ways in which religious communities and their leaders have come out in support of equality this year.

Sheldon Richman: Is this any way to run a republic?

  The assassination by drone of American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen raises questions that should disturb anyone who holds the rule of law as essential to protecting individual rights and limiting the arbitrary power of government. The Obama administration alleges that al-Awlaki committed a variety of bad acts, but the key word is “alleges.” We are taught that no one may be jailed, much less executed, on the basis of mere allegations. This goes back at least as far as the Magna Carta in 1215 and is echoed in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

  Yet al-Awlaki was targeted for assassination by the executive branch of the U.S. government without indictment, trial, or showing of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. President Obama acted as cop, judge, jury, and executioner all in one.

Cameron Smith: The Politics of the immigration shame game

  This week, The New York Times ran an editorial entitled "Alabama's Shame" which provided a unique perspective on Alabama's immigration law. The piece suggested that the law is Alabama's attempt to make illegal immigrants "isolated, unemployable, poor, defenseless and uneducated."

  The Times' piece on Alabama's immigration law calls for President Obama "to show stronger leadership in defending core American values in the face of the hostility that has overtaken Alabama and so many other states." Other commentaries have likened Alabama's immigration enforcement to the Jim Crow era where the evils of racism were given the force of law.

Ian M. MacIsaac: What holds Algeria back?

  Over the past nine months, the Arab Spring has made waves across the entire Muslim world, from Morocco to Pakistan. One country that has remained conspicuously off the revolutionary radar sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East, however, is the nation of Algeria.

  Apart from a brief period of political turmoil which concluded in early April with the lifting of Algeria’s nineteen-year state of emergency and token reductions in the power of the country’s president and quasi-dictator Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria has remained remarkably quiet—until the past few weeks.

Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: GOP's attack on public servants

  As the last minutes ticked away on the 2011 Legislative Session last June the last major bills were getting final approval. In the waning hours the legislature finalized the state’s education and general fund budgets. Along with these budgets were accompanying acts that increased state government employees’ retirement contributions across the board.

  These bills will save the state $100 million and save 1500 jobs. However, state employees will see their contributions climb from 5 to 7.5 percent of their paychecks. In most cases this will cost the average teacher and state employee about $1,500 per year in take home pay. In other words, all state government workers are taking a significant pay cut. This cut in pay went into effect October 1.

Seth Hanlon, Michael Linden: Ronald Reagan, Father of the ‘Buffett Rule’

See also: Video: Reagan Called For An End To ‘Crazy’ Tax Loopholes That Let Millionaires Pay Less Than Bus Drivers (Think Progress)

          We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that's crazy. It's time we stopped it.

  That was the president, making the case for why our tax code—riddled with unfair breaks, loopholes, and subsidies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy—requires fundamental reform that ensures the wealthy pay their fair share.

Gary Palmer: Liberals call for less democracy

  Is it time to ditch the Constitution? Does representative government or “democracy” really impede progress?

  Peter Orszag, President Obama’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, believes it does. His recent article entitled “Too Much of a Good Thing” makes his case for a more powerful administrative state that will function outside of election politics. What Orszag suggests is that when it comes to the most important decisions regarding the power and influence of the federal government, we need to make elections irrelevant.

  Orszag wrote, “During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country's political polarization was growing worse—harming Washington's ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. To solve the serious problems facing our country,” Orszag continued, “we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.”