To run a competitive campaign for a seat on Columbus city council, which consists of 7 members elected citywide (i.e., “at large”), a minimum of $250,000 is necessary. To raise that kind of money, political contributions are needed from big-money donors, who almost always want something in return. Partly because of these relationships between candidates for municipal office and wealthy contributors, almost all academic research on the at-large model of governance finds that it unduly strengthens the influence of well-funded and well-organized constituencies at the expense of regular citizens. It is historically and widely considered a mechanism of control by the power elite of a community.

In a close, 5-4 decision, the Supreme court voted to uphold the entire Affordable Care Act - including the controversial individual mandate, which was preserved as a tax.

Firedoglake writers and activists have worked tirelessly on health care rights and were instrumental in the fight for the public option and women's' right to choose. We've taken that wealth of knowledge and put together a resource page at Firedoglake with fact sheets, in-depth analysis and more.

Head over to our Affordable Care Act Resource Page for more information on today's Supreme Court ruling

So what happened with this ruling?

Chief Justice Roberts found that even though it is not a constitutional use of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper clause, the individual mandate is a tax and therefore constitutional because of Congress's taxing powers.

Poverty has always been the shadow of prosperity, but now we have an advancing global depression creating more of it — pulling in more and more of the middle class, the folks who aren’t used to it. This is where the headlines are.

Oh, the drama. A suicide epidemic manifests in struggling Europe:

"On March 28, Giuseppe Campaniello set himself on fire in front of the Equitalia office" — Italy’s tax-collection agency — "in Bologna after he received a final notice about the doubling of a fine he could not pay," Newsweek reported last week. "He died in a burn ward nine days later."

Economics is a cruel game. The stakes are life and death. The driving theory is simplistic, mechanical, with a cauldron of emotion and judgment bubbling just below the surface.

"Today many people want much bigger government and still more handouts; these freeloaders want others to pay for their sloth," writes Richard M. Salsman in Forbes. "‘Soak the rich,’ they cry, for the rich allegedly have no right to the wealth they’ve actually earned, but the freeloaders supposedly have a ‘right’ to the wealth they didn’t earn."

Fifteen months on, the short Syrian spring of 2011 has long since morphed into a harsh winter of discontent. Syria is close to full-scale civil war. If the conflict escalates further, it will have ramifications far outside the country itself. As former UN Secretary-General and current envoy of both the UN and the Arab League Kofi Annan put it, “'Syria is not Libya, it will not implode, it will explode beyond its borders."

Like so many other times before, the human cost of this conflict is incalculably high. It’s not surprising that the normal human reaction is “we’ve got to do something!” But exactly what any army or air force might do that would actually help the situation isn’t very clear. U.S./NATO military intervention didn’t bring stability, democracy or security to Libya, and it certainly is not going to do so in Syria.

Barring a CIA drone strike on the Ecuadorian embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's sudden appeal for asylum there may spare him a prison stay in Sweden or possibly the United States. Assange's freedom now depends largely on Ecuadorian President Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado, a new breed of independent-minded leader like Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Correa has been a harsh critic of U.S. behavior toward Ecuador and its Latin American neighbors as well as an outspoken fan of WikiLeaks. Atypically for the region, Ecuador is not a major recipient of U.S. economic or military aid, so Washington's leverage is limited. This suggests that the Ecuadorian government may decide to defy Washington, accept Assange's request for asylum, and have him flown to Ecuador pronto.

In which case, most British "justice" officials will probably say good riddance and breathe a sigh of relief — literally. They have been holding their noses for weeks against the odor of their obeisance to U.S. diktat, after the British High Court rejected Assange's argument that he should not be extradited to Sweden.