Five Best Ideas of the Day: July 30

1. The bipartisan deal on VA reform is a good first step, but more must be done to fix this badly broken system.

By Jesse Sloman at the Council on Foreign Relations

2. Notes from an intervention: What went wrong in Libya.

By Nathan Pippinger in Democracy

3. An independent Kurdistan could reshape the middle east – if we let it.

By Jonathan Foreman in Newsweek

4. Amtrak doesn’t need a writer’s residency; it needs to deliver affordable on-time transportation.

By Christopher Kempf in Jacobin

5. “Our nation’s baby steps towards political, social and economic inclusion could be stalling.“

By Maya Rockeymoore in Huffington Post

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C.