19 Articles

Friday, April 20, 2012
Obama v Romney: a choice or an echo?
(2 comments) There is a distubing similarity between Obama and Romney on military policy. But the difference between their tax proposals is stark.

Thursday, March 8, 2012
U.S. should step back from Iranian precipice
(1 comments) President Obama's ultimatum to Iran--that Iran should yield under pressure of his economic sanctions or he will use force--may back him into a disastrous military conflict. His ultimatum is as much a threat to American national security as it is to Iran's.

Thursday, February 16, 2012
Mitt Romney is the one percent's Captain America
(1 comments) In the year 2015, Romney's tax plan would raise taxes by an average of $157 for the bottom 20% of taxpayers, and $82 for the second quintile. The third (middle) quintile ("the folks that are really struggling") would receive a whopping $138 tax cut! And what about the "very rich" that Romney says he's "not concerned about"? The tax cut for those with incomes over $1 million would average $145,568.

Thursday, December 1, 2011
'Torture' has become a word in political and media Newspeak
(1 comments) As Orwell explained, the purpose of Newspeak was "to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc [the ruling party]." GOP Newspeak allows Republicans to reject "torture" while promising to reinstate waterboarding and other forms of what was called torture in 20th C. English. Obama's failure to prosecute Bush administration torturers empowers GOP Newspeak.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Do we want a capitalist dystopia? The GOP does.
(1 comments) The Republican mantra is: the more privatization of government functions, the better. Mitt Romney is part of a highly successful Republican campaign to make the word "public" curdle in the mouths of Americans. They want a society organized around and subordinated to the profit motive. Such a society would be a dystopia in which people would be treated as commodities in a labor market, as things rather than persons.

Friday, September 9, 2011
Does America still respect labor?
(3 comments) How long can we go on celebrating Labor Day? This holiday is supposed to be a celebration of labor and the labor movement. Yet the labor movement in this country is fighting for its life. The GOP's anti-union crusade attacks a basic human right specified in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Thursday, August 11, 2011
A budget for a dysfunctional national family
(1 comments) In the debt deal, the GOP got away with an act of political terrorism by cloaking it in the language of fiscal responsibility and family budgets.

Monday, July 11, 2011
The brain behind Republican strategy
(2 comments) The GOP has stubbornly committed to policies that are proven failures over three decades. As conservative columnist David Brooks said recently, Republicans "have no economic theory worthy of the name." American voters seem caught up in the irrationality of the moment, resigned to letting politicians damage their nation's future. There is a great paradox here, one that reflects a dangerous aspect of human nature.

Friday, June 10, 2011
The Mythology of Individualism
(18 comments) Individualists want a political system built around self-made, self-reliant and value-creating agents whose connections to other humans are purely voluntary or contractual. That's why they see the free market as society itself, as the natural environment for human nature. The self-made individual touted by Randian individualists is a fiction, a distortion. A society makes individuals just as much as individuals make a society.

Friday, December 24, 2010
Do the rich deserve their wealth?
(6 comments) It should have been political suicide for the GOP to threaten to block all legislation (including an extension of unemployment benefits) until Congress extends the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of American taxpayers. One reason for the lack of outrage is that many Americans at all income levels feel that the wealthy "deserve" their high incomes, and that the government has no right to redistribute this wealth to poorer,

Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Our torn social contract
(3 comments) In the face of very high unemployment, increasing poverty, homelessness and hunger, and growing numbers of people without health insurance, Republicans advocate cutbacks in social spending and repeal of Obama's universal health insurance plan. This destructive agenda is the culmination of a 30-year class war waged by the GOP and a wealthy elite against American working people. Let's reflect on how we got to this point.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Hiding in Plain Sight -- the Abysmal Record of the GOP
(1 comments) Republican denunciations of Obama's deficits make as much sense as someone suing the fire department for water damage from putting out the fire he started in his house. Under George W. Bush, the GOP did something to our nation just as irresponsible and harmful as that home owner. It launched two wars while enacting massive tax cuts.

Friday, September 10, 2010
Anti-Government Propaganda is Fueled by Ignorance
(4 comments) One of the foundational myths of right-wing ideology is that enterprise and creativity can be found only in the private sector. In fact, scientific, technological and economic progress are crucially dependent on government funding of research. The Internet is a striking case in point. If the anti-government and anti-tax tirades of the right were taken seriously, our society would be in dire straits.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The GOP wants to double down on trickle down
(7 comments) Republicans actually want to renew Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, at a cost of $680 billion over ten years, despite ballooning government deficits. They're clinging desperately to the failed supply-side economics that has been Republican dogma since 1980. Mitch McConnell says with a straight face that "There's no evidence Bush's tax cuts actually diminished revenue."

Thursday, July 15, 2010
Worker Cooperatives--a genuine Third Way
(2 comments) The structure of ownership and control in most American corporations is seriously flawed. It creates an adversarial relationship between workers and those who own or manage workplaces. Fortunately, a better alternative is emerging in the U.S. and elsewhere. This alternative is workers owning their work-places, especially in the form of worker cooperatives.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Denmark: Land of the Free
(1 comments) The lesson to be learned from Denmark is that you can have both a competi-tive free market economy and a comprehensive welfare state with a strong union role. As the Danish center-right government's Employment Minister said in a 2008 interview, "I think the idea that you have to starve the public sector to have a prosperous private sector is long out of date."

Saturday, February 13, 2010
Obama is the Establishment
There is a disconnect, some might say an abyss, between Barack Obama the presidential candidate and President Obama. The great intelligence, articulateness and eloquence are still there. But his transition to government has been a massive bait and switch. He (like most of Congress) serves the ruling class of what J. K. Galbraith calls the Predator State.

Sunday, November 15, 2009
Militarism is Distorting and Bankrupting America
Gen. McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has been publicly pressuring President Obama to send between 40 and 80 thousand more troops there. His unjustifiable request and insubordinate behavior are only the latest examples of a rampant militarism that has seriously damaged America at home and abroad.

Sunday, March 8, 2009
Employee Free Choice Act will rebuild economy, strengthen democracy
(1 comments) A principal cause of the current economic crisis is the growing gap between increasing worker productivity and stagnant worker compensation since 1980. Unless worker compensation keeps up with productivity increase, it isn't possible to sustain demand for the output of a growing economy. We must repair the economy by restoring long-runc consumer demand. One of the best ways to do this is the EFCA.