We HAVE lost our way. We have allowed the economic inequity in this nation to continue expand. As Herbert writess

But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.

In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.

Herbert reminds us that the traditional post World-War II pattern of income distribution was the top 10% receiving one third with the rest receiving 2/3, a pattern that is far more generous to most of us than what we are currently experience. This of course leads to an exaggeration of the inequality in wealth, as those who already have accumulate more.

Herbert uses the recently reports of GE paying NO income tax on its record billions in corporate profits to further hammer home this point. He reminds us that its CEO Jeffrey Immelt is President Obama's choice to lead the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. He rightly notes how this might make some workers cynical, then adds:

Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home. New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.

new ideas and new leadership - perhaps that points out why so many of us are so disappointed in this administration. On fiscal policy we are getting recycled ideas that we criticized when Republicans held the reins of administration. On matters of financial regulation the voices of the financial sector continue to dominate government policy - thus we have Geithner at Treasury rather than someone of the ilk of a Krugman or a Stiglitz who understand the damage the policies being advocated are doing to the rest of the country. When we have a former top economist of the administration Christina Romer criticizing the President's lack of focus on job creation as "shameless" perhaps the meaning of Herbert's words come more into focus.

New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.

We continue the massive spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the latter case to little effect. The President had asked for multiple options on Iraq yet the generals gave him only one, what Petraeus wanted to do. So billions more are spent each week, we continue to outrage the populace with our policies, more Americans and Afghanis die needlessly, and our economic situation at home worsens.

New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed. - Yet we continue to maintain Gitmo. And what passes for new ideas in the Justice Department include misusing the World War I era Espionage statute to seriously go after those who would expose the wrong-doings in our continued folly of how we approach the issue of terrorism. The President says that the Army assures him that Bradley Manning is being treated appropriately rather than demand an independent investigation- perhaps by the International Committee of the Red Cross - of the conditions under which we hold because of actions we deem as a threat to our national security. We are treating them as if they are being held for intervening with our war effort - whether that officially makes them prisoners of war, the principle of the ICRC ensuring proper treatment still seems applicable.

We now have a pattern of downward mobility. I see it in the communications on Facebook among those of my students now out of college and struggling to make livings. I see it in the ever increasing percentage of students who forgo other opportunities to attend campuses of the U of Maryland system to avoid debt after graduation. I see it in the economic data, where the number of jobs created - still far too low for a meaningful recovery from the Great Recession - masks the fact that these new jobs usually pay significantly less than those destroyed as a direct result of the financial depredations imposed upon us by the pattern of unregulated activities that destroyed the wealth of millions of people, yet the perpetrators of such activities not only were not prosecuted, they profited from their original actions, then profited again from the government bailouts. And still there is no real relief for those whose homes are moving into foreclosure, despite the fact that laws were not followed in the handling of their mortgages. And Wall Street continues to pay obscene bonuses, and the profits from hedge fund operators and others of their ilk somehow do not even get fully taxed at the obscenely low top rate of the Bush era tax cuts.

We will miss Bob Herbert's twice weekly voice- on economic justice, on racial justice, on so many topics.

I will miss him provoking my thinking, sometimes my anger, often my words.

I wish him well with his future endeavor, the book he plans to write.

Thank you, Bob Herbert, for the powerful voice you have offered on behalf of so many whose voices were being suppressed, whose conditions are still not address.

Peace.