We're going to be rolling out a front page redesign this week at TPM. If you'd like to take a look, we'd love your feedback. Many of the changes aren't immediately visible on the front end. They involve greater flexibility we have to format the front page news in different ways depending on the news of the day -- bigger features, smaller features, depending on what the news of the moment is, more wires, fewer, etc.. But one major change is that TPMCafe contributor posts and TPMCafe reader posts will have their own permanent section on the front page. (Scroll down under the news section on the right side.) The reader posts will be selected based on the number of 'recommends' over a given period of time.

Take a look. Let us know what you think.

PRESIDENT OBAMA has acknowledged that "we can't talk forever" about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "At some point," he said recently, "steps have to be taken so that people can see progress on the ground." This attitude sheds a cautious ray of hope that the United States may be finally considering a policy shift gauged by facts on the ground instead of the number of meetings held to discuss a peace process. This is a wise starting point.

The 41 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinians works to neither side's advantage. It is clear the situation on the ground is a powder keg waiting to explode, yet again.

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Three is a nice long article in the New York Times by David Leonhardt, in which we learn, among other things, that Tim Geithner is actually an old China hand.  Which should come in handy as he tries to right the bilateral imbalance between the two countries that has clearly become unsustainable.

Most writing on this subject, the Leonhardt piece included, concludes that the Chinese end of the solution lies in stimulating consumption demand in China, and reducing that country's ridiculously high saving rate.  But the discussion typically ignores an important issue: the secret of China's growth is that it has made a rapid transition into producing tradables (mainly manufactures). 

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TPM readers were all a-flutter this week over President Obama's change of mind on whether or not to release thousands of photos of detainee abuse.

Astral66 notes that the foreign press is taking Obama to task for his position reversal - the Australian broadcast news showed allegedly "new" photos of abuse obtained in 2006 (though some look eerily familiar) and the British press published a 16-photo slideshow of them.

Ramona goes against the progressive and liberal grain by siding with Obama and military leaders over the photos: sometimes, she says, a picture just isn't worth a thousand words.

The Insolent Braggart agrees, noting that to those who gave their time and money to the campaign, Obama isn't just another shady politician - he's someone to trust with his thorough decision-making process. Deanie Mills, the mother of a Marine, has a compelling personal illustration of the argument that releasing these photos would put a target on the backs of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not all TPM readers - much like the media and the American public - are in agreement, however. C. James Thomas says the ultimate and inexplicable conclusion from Obama's decision is to reinforce people's belief that "torture never happened" and truthseeker77 wonders if people will simply support Obama, no matter what he decides.

The debate continues! Happy weekend discussing, TPMers.

The status quo lobby (SQL) is getting worried. Very worried.

It knew that President Barack Obama was determined to move aggressively on his Middle East peace agenda but never imagined that he would be this bold. He telephoned the Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi leaders on his first full day in office.

He did an extensive television interview with Al Arabiyyah to directly reach out to the Arab world. He appointed George Mitchell as his Middle East Special Envoy to put together a deal. He's going to Cairo to address the world's Muslims from the capital of the Arab world. And next week, he begins meeting in Washington with key Arab leaders (including the Palestinians) and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

And he has abandoned one-sided statements of enthusiastic support for everything Israel does (along with ritualistic condemnations of Palestinians), which has been the rather transparent stock-in-trade of all previous administrations since Grover Cleveland's. (Slight exaggeration). During the campaign he promised to be an honest broker, and he is living up to that promise. He is in no one's pocket.

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The inimitable Mark Shields says there are two kinds of political parties: those that seek out converts and those that hunt down heretics. Barack Obama - like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton before him - is a classic seeker of converts. He chose as his running mate one of his defeated rivals for the presidency. He reached out to Hillary Clinton, giving her one of the most important jobs in the world. Even as he pursues progressive policies, he continues to reach out to Republicans, independents and moderates.

Dick Cheney is a heretic hunter. On Face the Nation he essentially declared that Gen. Colin Powell is no longer a Republican. Granted, Powell committed a serious act of apostasy: he endorsed Barack Obama for President. But Joe Lieberman not only endorsed John McCain, he was a constant presence on the campaign trail, a featured speaker at the Republican convention and someone who was willing to stick a knife in Barack Obama. But after the election, Barack Obama and Harry Reid welcomed him back to the Democratic caucus.

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I'll be more discreet than usual because it is my organization that took out this full page ad in the New York Times.

I'll let the New York Jewish Week's premier reporter, Jim Besser, explain why this ad is so amazing and groundbreaking.

IPF and J Street have changed the terrain. But none of us could accomplish anything without President Obama. This is our moment.

For the other side, here's Steve Rosen (no longer under indictment for espionage) predicting that Bibi and Obama will see eye-to-eye. He's worth a read. He has always had amazing sources,

As the usual rationalizations for U.S. torture (it works, it's not so bad, we didn't do it anyway) have come under increasing attack in recent days, a relatively new defense has emerged, from GOP members of congress, columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fox News' Jim Angle, and many others: Waterboarding can't be torture because we used it on "thousands" of our own troops as part of their training!

Of course, some have questioned the degree of waterboarding (was it the lite version?) and, of course, none of the military personnel were subjected to it 83 times. But the argument remains out there.

This week, I received a letter from a woman from Florida, mother of a young Marine, who has corresponded with me before about her military background and her son joining up, at Editor & Publisher. Her latest letter was extremely disturbing and also extremely relevant to the latest torture excuse. Here is it is, with her name omitted for obvious reasons.

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Many of this week's posts about Kim Bobo's impressive book, Wage Theft, have understandably focused on the importance of increasing regulation to stop such theft. Indeed, the importance of stepped-up regulation seems clear, considering all the problems that the G.A.O. found in the Bush Labor Department.

A G.A.O. study released in March found that the department's Wage and Hour Division had mishandled 9 of the 10 cases brought by a team of undercover agents posing as aggrieved workers. In the most egregious case, wage and hour officials failed to investigate a complaint that under-aged children in California were working at a meatpacking plant, not only during school hours, but with dangerous machinery. And when an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid any overtime for 19 weeks, the division's Miami office failed to return his calls for four months, and when it finally did, an official told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case.

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Thanks for all the insightful comments this week on wage theft. Everywhere I speak I have folks, like T.A. Frank did, admit that they too were victims of wage theft. Three radio interviewers live on-air said, "Hey, I'm paid as an independent contractor." (Radio interviewers are employees not independent contractors.) During one editorial board meeting, an editor confessed that she thought the newspaper drivers were all paid as independent contractors.

Young people have almost always experienced wage theft. Even students at prestigious colleges tell me about their experiences working off the clock or not getting their last paycheck. One student from Brandeis described how her employer always took a percentage of the wait staff's tips, but if the restaurant had a particularly "good" night, the employer took a higher percentage, claiming that the wait staff didn't need so much money.

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This is a guest post that Steve Clemons is sharing at TPMCafe written by Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lawrence Wilkerson is also Pamela Harriman Visiting Professor at the College of William & Mary. This piece also appeared at The Washington Note.

Last night I was on Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC at the top of the hour. But before I came on, through the earpiece I listened to the five minutes that Rachel sketched as a lead-in. Most of it was videotape from the last few days of former Vice President Dick Cheney extolling the virtues of harsh interrogation, torture, and his leadership. I had heard some of it earlier of course but not all of it and not in such a tightly-packed package.

Let's just say that five minutes of the Sith Lord was stunningly inaccurate.

So, when I got home last night, I thought long and hard about what I knew at this point in my investigations with respect to the former VP's office. Here it is.

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Pope Benedict XVI is not a man to feel sorry for himself, or even think his pronouncements just those of a man. Yet it is hard not to extend him some sympathy for braving a trip to Jerusalem this week. The mission was delicate from the start, stepping as he was into the middle of a blood feud between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims. As the world's most famous neither-of-the-above, he was bound to be seen as a some kind of proxy for the conscience of the world--something like what the stately Notre Dame complex has come to represent among the buildings of Jerusalem: a neutral place where Israelis and Arabs go for "dialogue," while Christians listen, encourage--remind. The Pope's silence would have been interpreted, not as tactfulness, but as cowardice. Who in the middle of a quarrel does not imagine, well, an audience?

At the same time, of course, the Pope represents the great rival tradition whose dogmas and power have inspired both ghettos and crusades. Both sides want him in a state of apology, or at least vaguely official regret. And here is where missions become impossible. Dwell on Jewish suffering from European anti-Semitism, and you invite a reprimand from Palestinian nationalists and Muslim clerics that you are implicitly justifying the Naqba. Dwell on the occupation of Palestine, and you are inviting a reprimand from Zionists and Rabbis that you are justifying attacks on the national home. Fail to dwell on either, however, and you are accused of not assuming the church's indirect responsibility for both catastrophes: the Jews will say you are cavalier about the Holocaust, the Muslims ditto about colonialism. Both will say the old suffering of Jews led to the new suffering of Palestinians. Who in the middle of a quarrel does not also wish for a third party to blame? Habemus Papam, no?

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I'm happy Kim Bobo has written a full book about wage theft, because I've experienced the phenomenon myself, and I didn't much enjoy it. Years ago, before I went into journalism, I had an employer who would give us hourly workers more assignments than we could complete in eight hours. We knew we had to finish the work, but we also know that reporting overtime would get us fired, so we'd typically clock out and then stay on to finish the job.

I learned a few things from this.

One was that wage theft seriously erodes workplace morale, no matter how well compensated the employees are overall. I was earning well above minimum wage ($15 an hour, if I recall), but, boy, were my colleagues and I angered to be pressured into working off the clock. A company may superficially benefit from creating this sort of atmosphere (it keeps immediate costs down), but whether it's healthy over the long term is another matter. A lack of morale saps employees of energy. They also tend to look for ways to get even--by legal means (like class-action lawsuits, as was the case with my company) or illegal means (like pilfering, as is often the case in retail).

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Wage theft is illegal. Yet rightwing politicians largely dismiss the problem and most systematically oppose laws to increase enforcement of wage laws. Yet at the same time in recent years, those conservative politicians have been attacking undocumented immigrants as undermining wage standards for native workers. The hypocrisy is palpable, but here's a lesson: state legislators standing up against wage theft have been able to expose that hypocrisy.

At Progressive States Network, we've worked with community groups, advocates and legislators to promote wage enforcement directly as a counterpoint to anti-immigrant rhetoric and promote a policy agenda that builds support for all workers, native and immigrant alike. In states like Kansas, Iowa, and Connecticut, anti-immigrant legislation has been derailed once the issue of the failure to enforce broader wage laws entered the discussion. For example (see below the fold):

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Gordon Hanson has set up a Shadow Committee on U.S. Trade Policy, and has asked several economists to respond to specific questions.  Here is the one I was charged with:

Rightly or wrongly, some have interpreted Krugman’s recent Nobel address, which has gotten considerable play in Washington, as implying ambivalence about the benefits of trade for the U.S. What does trade theory tell us about the initiatives the US should make a priority in its trade policy agenda?

And my answer:

A society's gains from trade liberalization in different sectors depend on a lot of things, but as a rule of thumb, it is useful to focus on three things. (Here I will look at only U.S. policies, leaving aside the question of which initiatives should be pursued abroad.) 

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The usually reliable David Carr pulls his foot off the pedal and guns the engine in his Monday NYT column. He's so dismayed by the horrendous business decisions made by major newspapers in recent years that he's prepared to see them go down in flames, serious reporting along with them, sooner than let the government come to the rescue of independent journalism.

Well, he wouldn't put it that way. But here are his actual words, speaking of last week's Senate hearings on what to do about the sinking ship of journalism:

Steve Coll, a former managing editor of The Washington Post and now a writer for The New Yorker, suggested that Congress should look at easing the restrictions of journalistic institutions trying to morph into nonprofits and begin replacing lost reporting by financing a beefed-up Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

After watching the previous administration treat the C.P.B. like a cat toy, it's hard to imagine that government would do any better job as publisher than many of the other state-controlled news media around the globe.

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Nancy MacLean, historian and author of a wonderful book called Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace, has written a terrific review of the book we've been discussing here.

About Hilda Solis and the possibilities for today's Labor Department, MacLean says almost the opposite of what I said yesterday, so I recommend it for a more cheering interpretation. Nancy MacLean is also intrigued by the Christian perspective Kim brings to the issue, and by the potential for an upsurge in faith-based labor activism. I am too (though I'll admit I'm not at all religious myself). But there was another dimension of this that interested me.

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What are we to make of yesterday's report from the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds that Social Security will run out of assets in 2037, four years sooner than previously forecast, and Medicare’s hospital fund will be exhausted by 2017, two years earlier than predicted a year ago?

Reports of these two funds' demise are not new. Fifteen years ago, when I was a trustee of the Social Security and the Medicare trust funds (which meant, essentially, that I and a few others met periodically with the official actuary of the funds, received his report, asked a few questions, and signed some papers) both funds were supposedly in trouble. But as I learned, the timing and magnitude of the trouble depended a great deal on what assumptions the actuary used in his models. As I recall, he then assumed that the economy would grow by about 2.6 percent a year over the next seventy-five years. But go back into American history all the way to the Civil War -- including the Great Depression and the severe depressions of the late 19th century -- and the economy's average annual growth is closer to 3 percent. Use a 3 percent assumption and Social Security is flush for the next seventy-five years.

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The AIPAC show came and went. But it left as its legacy the Steny Hoyer/ Eric Cantor letter urging President Obama to let the Middle East fester.

If the past is prologue, 400 House members will sign it. Phones on Capitol Hill are ringing off the hook.

The letter's purpose is to thwart the President's efforts to ameliorate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to send a clear message to Obama. "When it comes to the Middle East, our guy is Netanyahu, not you. Don't even think about leaning on him when he comes to Washington next week."

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Don't confuse the Republican Party's right-wing lunatic fringe with corporate America. When it comes to key legislation that challenges corporate priorities and moves America in a more progressive direction -- on health care, global warming, labor law reform, tax reform, and banking and housing reform -- the business community knows it can't just ally with the lunatic Limbaugh wing of the GOP. It has to persuade moderate Democrats in Congress to resist supporting a liberal agenda.

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Not long ago, I was in the same boat as Kim Bobo, having no idea how prevalent wage theft was.

In the summer of 2001, a lawyer phoned me about an off-the-clock lawsuit she had brought on behalf of several Wal-Mart workers on Long Island. A Wal-Mart worker I interviewed in Suffolk County told me that after her store closed in the evening, she and other employees were sometimes forced to work an extra hour for free, after they had clocked out, to help straighten up the store. That worker also told me the store's managers used to lock the front doors so employees working off the clock couldn't even leave if they wanted to.

Perhaps I was naïve at the time, but I was surprised that managers for a big, respectable company like Wal-Mart would be doing such dastardly things.

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I don't like to work for free, but that's, of course, why I feel the issue of wage theft is so important! Thus I cheerfully agreed to read Kim Bobo's important book and participate in this discussion. I'm glad Bobo opens this conversation by asking whether Hilda Solis and her Labor Department will be able to address wage theft, as that was exactly the question on my mind as I finished reading the book. Frankly, I'm worried that Solis won't be able to do much of anything - until the administration feels much more public pressure.

Kim's chapter on Frances Perkins, the visionary Labor Department head under FDR, details many of Perkins' qualities as an individual - her commitment to workers, administrative skills, connection to worker advocacy groups -- and argues that we need someone like this to run the department today. I am sure Hilda Solis has many of those qualities. In fact, she seems pretty terrific. But I'm not convinced it matters who's in that job, because we have neither the political will from the top (the president), nor the organization at the bottom (the working public), to force workers' rights onto the agenda.

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Josh and others are reporting on neocon, Michael Goldfarb's, attack on a former McCain campaign aide for going to work for an environmental organization.

"He's dead to me," said Goldfarb.

But here is the moment Goldfarb became dead to the McCain campaign. It was in October. Goldfarb was on CNN accusing Obama of running around with an anti-semite.

Rick Sanchez demands that he name the anti-semite. Goldfarb is flummoxed. McCain has banned mention of Rev. Wright's name. But that is who Goldfarb is talking about. What to do? What to do? Sheer Quayle-like terror! What if McCain is watching?

Enjoy yet again one of the worst moments any campaign apparatchik has ever endured on national television.

It is said that afterward McCain told his staff, "Goldfarb is dead to me. Who is he anyway."

Okay, I made that up. But I didn't make up this excruciatingly glorious clip.

A lunch time talk by Niall Ferguson suggests a grim picture.  Even if the world economy is not headed towards a 1930s-style catastrophe, it will remain mired in a "depression" like that experience in the 1870s, argues Ferguson, with long-term stagnation and deflation.  This will be a bad time for everyone, except for populists and those who like to demonstrate in the streets. 

The biggest winner?  Ferguson suggests it may be China, who will supplant the U.S. as the global hegemon, as the U.S. replaced a similarly heavily-indebted Britain at the end of World War II.

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It is great to see Kim Bobo's book on wage theft drawing attention on TPMCafe and elsewhere. It is outrageous that millions of workers have their earnings stolen from them by their employers. Hopefully, this book will help to ensure that enforcement is stepped up so that this practice is brought to an end.

However, one aspect to this issue has intrigued me. Wage theft is often seen as an issue of regulation. The idea is that we need an effective regulator at the Labor Department to ensure that employers do not steal wages from their workers.

This is intriguing because there is no reason to view this as a question of regulation: it is a question of law enforcement. Would anyone call the prevention of shoplifting a problem of regulation? How about the prevention of bank robbery?

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The United States has roughly two million people in jail or prison-- and almost none of them are there for stealing wages from their workers, despite the fact that as Kim Bobo highlights in her book, millions of people have wages illegally stolen from them. In fact, customers of businesses go to jail for shoplifting -- 360 people are in jail for life in California for shoplifting under that state's three strikes law -- but low-wage employers steal thousands of dollars from individual poor employees in violation of minimum wage and hour laws with almost zero chance of jail time.

I would ask why a crime involving millions of people and tens of billions of dollars stolen each year is so poorly enforced and so widely ignored in the media. But the answer is unfortunately obvious. Rich people stealing from the poor is just not considered a serious crime. White collar criminals go to jail for stealing from middle class and other rich people, but the working poor may be stolen from pretty much at will, with at most a tiny monetary fine at stake even if wage theft is actually investigated in court. That is the scandal that Bobo's book outlines-- and will never get the same coverage as the crimes of Madoff or others who steal from the middle class and other rich.

Ten years ago, I had no idea wage theft was such a crisis -- though I suspect it was just as prevalent then as it is today.

Wage theft is the failure of an employer to follow the law by paying a worker for all of his or her work. Two to three million workers aren't paid the minimum wage required by law. Three million, perhaps more, are misclassified as independent contractors when they are really employees, a maneuver that steals both from workers and from the public coffers. Untold millions aren't paid the overtime premium the law requires. Billions of dollars are stolen each and every year from workers. This is not a small or isolated problem of a few bad employers. It's a systematic theft of wages from the nation's workers.

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Kim Bobo, Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, joins us this week for discussion of her book Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid - And What We Can Do About It. Senator Ted Kennedy has said the book offers "bold, practical, and progressive solutions for how policymakers and advocates can end the growing crisis of wage theft in America."

From Kim's opening post:

I didn't set out to write a book on wage theft. I set out to write more of a monograph on what a visionary Department of Labor might look like. But to do that I had to explain why we needed a visionary Department of Labor. A friend in the church choir I direct admitted he didn't even know we had a Department of Labor. (So much for its visibility in people's lives!) I began by explaining the breadth of the crisis of wage theft. Then I explained how wage theft occurs. Next I explained why it happens. As an organizer, I had lots of suggestions for what people could do to help stop and deter wage theft. Consequently, before you knew it, I had a book on wage theft.

Joining the discussion are Liza Featherstone, Nation journalist and author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart; Bill Fletcher, author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice and longtime labor and international activist; Steve Greenhouse, New York Times labor reporter and author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker; Nathan Newman, Policy Director for the Progressive Legislative Action Network; T. A. Frank, Consulting Editor at The Washington Monthly; and Dean Baker, Cafe regular, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The only troubling thing about the President's statements today concerning health care reform was what he did not say: that he wanted a any health plan that emerges from Congress to include a public insurance option for Americans who do not want to buy private insurance. But without this option, there will be no pressure on private insurers to adopt all the other reforms to control costs or give all Americans access to affordable care.

Every other reform proposal announced to date -- electronic medical records, comparative effectiveness research, prevention of chronic disease, payments for services rather than for outcomes, and so on -- has been talked about for years. The reason none have been adopted is health providers and insurers can make more money without them. Only with a government plan that competes with private insurers, and offers Americans lower costs if the providers and insurers fail to reform themselves, will the system be genuinely reformed.

Hopefully, the President's failure to mention a public insurance option today was not intended to signal to Congress that the White House is no longer especially interested in it. The Administration should quickly inform policymakers how important this option is as a spur to real change.

Many observers have suggested that Obama's foreign policy agenda has abandoned the Bush Administration's emphasis on promoting democracy, including human rights. Much was made of President Obama's statement in his inaugural address: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." Others have pointed out, critically, that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton did not raise objections to China's deplorable human rights record during her first visit to that country as an Obama administration official.

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Progressives should be feeling good right now. There is clear evidence that we are winning on two really big issues.

Starting with the smaller of the two, Sallie Mae, the largest private issuer of student loans, is now proposing to accept a plan in which the government is the sole issuer of government guaranteed loans. Sallie Mae's plan is that it continue to be given the opportunity to originate these loans, picking up fees in the process.

This proposal is in response to the Obama administration's plan to get the private sector out of the government guaranteed loan business. There is ample evidence that the involvement of private firms just adds costs -- approximately $90 billion over ten years according to the Congressional Budget Office. Sallie Mae's compromise proposal is a recognition of the fact that it cannot stop the Obama plan.

If this story is good, the news on health care is even better.

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I have written about Ezra before and have not hidden my admiration. He is a tireless human rights activist, who has established unique connections, and affections, with the villagers in the South Hebron hills. I have often sat in the back of his truck, being ferried to stand watch over fields that would not be plowed were it not for his courage and resourcefulness. I have seen Ezra stand, dignified, against settlers who regard him something the way Klansmen regarded Jewish northerners who came to bear witness against Jim Crow. He has been the subject of a poignant film. He is also my plumber, as it happens, and he does no t overcharge his customers.

Ezra is now facing jail: "His 'crime,'" writes Neve Gordon, in a comprehensive report, "was trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region. These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services and are continuously harassed by Jewish settlers and the military - two groups that have united to expropriate Palestinian land and that clearly have received the government's blessing to do so." You can read and watch what you need to know here, but you can also read more about Nawi from David Shulman here.

Attention Washington press corps: If you do not ask Benjamin Netanyahu about Ezra Nawi when the Prime Minister visits Washington, you are not doing your jobs.