Once again, we stand poised on the precipice of economic calamity because the Republican-led House is intent on creating crises to push their agenda.  Unfortunately, too many pundits add to Americans' cynicism by trying to find a way to blame both sides. This week, The Washington Post tried by saying that Democrats hope Republicans will fight to shut down the federal government in hopes of gaining advantage when people figure out the Republicans are to blame.  Playing to cynics also plays well in portraying this as a school yard fight, which, in the age of reality TV and voyeurism, is a sales pitch. It however does no one well if the experts and thought leaders do not play honest umpires to call the balls and strikes as they see them.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Census Bureau issued its annual report on income and poverty in the United States. It revealed what has been obvious in the five years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the Great Recession; something is really broken in our country. Since 1980 we have seen a steady climb in the share of income going to the top 5% of American households, except the downturns of 2001 and 2008. During those downturns, financial bubbles burst and the top lost income share. In both cases, the Federal Reserve System acted aggressively to save the financial sector and stave off further contagion from the sector of finance and speculation into the sector of goods production and employment—the real economy. The restoration of the financial sector restored the incomes of the top 5%, and the recovery after 2001 and the current recovery restored the steady growth of inequality.

This week, the AFL-CIO held its quadrennial constitutional convention in Los Angeles. The convention had committees that included many nonunion partners to create an agenda directing the AFL-CIO toward a movement that can include the voices of all working people—those covered by collective bargaining agreements, those who are retired, those who are unemployed and those who work without the benefit of a union contract. Shared prosperity, the goal of the AFL-CIO, must be inclusive.

To many people, it is almost obscene that the CEO of McDonald’s, for instance, gets a compensation package worth $13.8 million a year; a giant raise from his 2011 pay of $4.1 million, a pay level that equals 915 full-time, full-year minimum wage workers at McDonald’s. If pay truly reflected the productivity of workers, then presumably if 915 McDonald’s workers went on strike, he would be able to fill in and do their work.

The current tracking of Congress’ popularity shows that only 15% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. Now, House Speaker John Boehner struck another tone deaf moment at a political fundraiser in Idaho when he warned that when Congress returns in September, he will lead Republicans in holding up the government’s business to pick a fight with President Obama over the nation’s debt ceiling. More than 11.5 million Americans are out actively looking for work, while the economy languishes with 2 million fewer jobs than at the end of 2007, more than five and a half years ago. Median family income remains thousands of dollars below the level it reached in 2007. And thousands of America's workers are staging strikes this week to raise their low-wage pay to something respectable. Americans want more jobs and a raise in pay now. How does a showdown on the integrity of the United States of America and paying its bills help address jobs and pay now? They don’t.

In August 1963, as was the case 100 years earlier when the cemetery for the heroes of Gettysburg was dedicated, many speeches were delivered; but one stood out as a galvanizing moment to redefine and repurpose a movement. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered in November 1863, clearly defined the issue of the Civil War to be whether states’ rights could trample the rights of anyone. Similarly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech came to define the civil rights movement of a century later. It has come to be interpreted as a call for a colorblind society, instead of a call to end racial injustice. His vision was more powerful than the sanguine, “not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” interpretation that has seen right-wing conservatives quoting Dr. King’s speech to justify racial disparities; in the same way that tea party members embrace Lincoln’s “government of the people,” to somehow mean no government at all.

This week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder issued new directives to his U.S. attorneys in the field to use prosecutorial discretion and stop pursuing low-level drug possession cases that carry high minimum mandatory prison sentences. While state prison populations are finally slowly going down, the federal prison system continues to grow with non-violent drug convictions. Also this week, Judge Shira Scheindlin, a federal district judge in New York, ruled that New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy was clearly biased in stopping black and Latino people out of proportion to the initial behaviors that made police instigate their searches. Thousands of innocent young black and Latino men were being prejudged by the police, losing their Constitutional rights and liberties based more on their race than on evidence.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest report on the job market on Aug. 2. It had some good news for African Americans: The black unemployment rate in July dipped to 12.6%, its lowest level since January 2009. The BLS also reported that since August 2012 the unemployment rate for adult black men (those older than 20) remains below its 14.4% level in January 2009 and was reported at 12.5% in July. More importantly, the share of black men holding jobs continues to rebound from its record low of 56.5% in 2011 to 59.2%, almost equal its level of 60.4% in January 2009. That was the good news.

President Obama continued his visits to different parts of America to discuss the economy. This is his attempt to use the Bully Pulpit of the Presidency to direct a national dialogue. The president said, “There are no simple tricks to grow the economy. What we need is a serious, steady, long-term American strategy that reverses the long erosion of middle-class security and gives everyone a fair shot to get ahead.”

This week, President Obama kicked off a series of talks to America's working families on the economy. He started in Galesburg, Ill., where he succinctly described a solution to our economic troubles: making the middle class the engine of American prosperity. Obama said:

I care about one thing and one thing only, and that’s how to use every minute of the 1,276 days remaining in my term to make this country work for working Americans again.