Mark Schmitt, the executive editor of the American Prospect, has a column in the August 18th issue about “Big Picture Power," in which he talks about the Three Faces of Power. His column offers a good summary of the three faces and how progressives can benefit from a multidimensional approach to power.

For your late summer reading list, I recommend the upcoming issue of Social Policy, which should be posted around August 21st. Called “Regime Change Begins at Home,” this issue features articles from a number of social change organizers, activists and leaders who argue that we may be in a ‘movement moment’ in US history. Significant numbers of people are being galvanized by the possibilities for change in a post-Bush world.

Our good friend and scholar S.M. “Mike” Miller at Commonwealth Institute published an article in the May/June 2008 issue of Poverty and Race about polling and race.

Last week we witnessed a flurry of activity around the mortgage crisis. The President agreed to sign mortgage relief legislation in exchange for Congressional approval of a rescue plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The good news is that Congress was able to leverage the Administration’s fears about Fannie and Freddie to get the President to sign the housing bill, including nearly $4 billion to rehabilitate vacant properties. The not-so-good news is that Congress is getting ready to hand the Administration a blank check for Fannie and Freddie.

Members of the Senate left for the holiday break without passing a bill that would provide relief to 400,000 homeowners who are facing foreclosure. For all the talk about doing something for homeowners, we go into this holiday weekend with the status quo intact: a deregulated financial industry and government inaction in the face of market failure.

In today’s housing crisis, what do renters and low-to-moderate-income homeowners have in common? Both groups have been preyed upon by the financial and real estate interests behind the subprime mortgage scandal. Each group is stigmatized in some way: low and moderate income homeowners are being branded as irresponsible, while people who don’t own their homes often are treated as second-class citizens. And yet, homeowners and renters are being pit against each other in the battle over how the government should respond to the current housing crisis.

“Generous hope is embedded in the national landscape, waiting to be remembered.” (from A Great Amnesia). While we wait out the final days of the Bush Administration, it is good to be reminded of times in our social history when we were bold and generous. To stir our imaginations, Marilynne Robinson recalls the Second Great Awakening -- a time of big ideas and social experiments spanning the years before, during and just after the Civil War.

I look forward to the day when it will be unremarkable for a woman to run for, and win, the Presidency. At the conclusion of Senator Clinton’s long campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, I cannot help wondering whether or not her candidacy has brought us closer to that day.

In an essay called ‘A Great Amnesia,’ Marilynne Robinson observes that our society has winnowed thoughtful language out of public life. We expect our politicians to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which, as Robinson argues, is very low indeed. Robinson’s observations came to mind as I watched Barack Obama speak in Saint Paul on Tuesday night. I wondered, are we turning a corner, towards more thoughtful language in politics?

Here’s a story about the subprime mortgage crisis that has gotten very little attention: Sometime in 2002, attorneys general in a number of states started noticing dramatic increases in predatory lending activities. When these states tried to enact laws to rein in subprime mortgage lenders, the Federal government issued a ‘pre-emption’ rule that nullified all state-level predatory lending laws.