Few political battles have waged as intensely as the campaign to raise the minimum wage. Proponents insist raising the wage is critical to lifting working families from poverty while opponents insist that an increase could devastate small businesses. Yet one can sometimes feel detached by the apparent impossibility of having real impact on the debate and moving the issue forward. But it turns out that normal people can in fact have a effect real change. The key is to go local.

It’s July in an election year which means that, among other things, it’s convention time. In the lead up to the conventions, parties are in a flurry of preparation, trying to get every element of their respective events together in time for the opening gavel. Amid all these preparations, however, there is one which stands above the rest. Before there can be a party convention, there must be a party platform.

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.  -- John F. Kennedy

In modern politics, since Harry Truman, every American president has been a college graduate, with our last three presidents all holding post-graduate degrees.

In college I took an Art History class in which the Professor asked “Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?” It’s a interesting question to consider because often in life, especially in politics (and especially this year), truth is stranger than fiction. Here are just three examples of times in political fiction when the line between art and life got a little blurry: