It’s not freely available online at the moment (although it may be in the relatively near future), so you might have to do something crazy like actually buy the magazine. Here’s an excerpt:

One day in late 2000, I got a call from Monsignor John Egan, a labor priest and civil rights activist who had marched with Saul Alinsky. When he hit old age with his bad heart, he’d try to get people to join committees by saying, “Oh, Sue”—or Bill or Jean or Tom—“it’s probably the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.” He made these requests for years. But in what was really the last time, he wanted me to help him fight a new kind of loan—payday loans at rates of 100 percent or 500 percent or 700 percent, which were increasingly on offer in Illinois. I was astonished. For a guy like Jack Egan, who had marched with Walter Reuther and Martin Luther King Jr., this seemed like such a minor issue. Who’d even take out a payday loan?

Now, years later, when there are well over a thousand of these loan agencies in Illinois, and Jack Egan has long since died, I wish I could say: “O Monsignor, you were right.” He could see, years before the rest of us: this fight against the banks was like the fight to unionize, it was like the civil rights movement. He knew, as the rest of us did not, where an Alinsky, a Reuther, a King would be—they’d be marching on the banks.

For those of you who’d prefer an 800 word distillation of one of the article’s main points, you can always check out yesterday’s Krugman article.

I know this phenomenon isn’t entirely Ronald Reagan’s fault, but nonetheless:

I also know that nobody has time to read a damn 9 page article about Wall Street. But it’s easy to read.

1. which some of you may recall from Hupton–I do, because it was my favorite line

Puking out his soul

US Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) reacts to almost heading the wrong way off the stage after shaking hands with Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) at the conclusion of the final presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 15, 2008.

Do your part, dammit!

Since we like to pretend that your voice matters, dear fans, we’ll let you vote on this. And because DYM democracy is better than US Constitutional democracy, we’ll even allow for Instant Run-Off Voting… you can vote for up to three songs!

Which means we’ll get to post a BRAND NEW SONG on the site! And since I have approximately three millimeters of critical distance from all of our songs, I decided I’d open this up to a vote. I narrowed it down to four songs that A) people seem to enjoy, and B) are somewhat representative of the kind of shit we pull. There’s nothing from Roboctopus, because I have this idea that the album as a whole is better than any of the individual songs. Just in case I suck at picking decent songs, I added a write-in vote.

And no, “Djerzi’s Theme” is not an option.

1. Right now, we’re kicking the collective asses of Leonard Cohen, REM, The Doobie Brothers, Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Richie, and ELO, among many, many others.