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John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.
Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Outfoxed," and in the documentaries Joan Sekler's "Unprecedented," Matt Kohn's "Call It Democracy" and Robert Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in his Grave." The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA] and dozens of other organizations.
Nichols is the author of the upcoming book The Genius of Impeachment (The New Press), as well as a critically-acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (The New Press) and a best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (The New Press), which has recently been published in French and Arabic. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: "At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift--a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history--that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country."
With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books, It's the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories) and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.
Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."
(44 comments) SHARE Friday, August 10, 2012 Paul Ryan? Seriously?
Romney loves the prep-school fraternity that he has with Ryan, and every indication is that the former governor would be delighted to add the House Budget Committee chairman to his ticket. Vice presidential nominees are supposed to help tickets, not hurt them. Ryan would be a burden, not a booster, for a Romney-led ticket.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, April 27, 2012 Scott Walker's Austerity Agenda Yields 'Worst Job Losses in US'
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, over the past year, Wisconsin had the worst job losses in the United States. Indeed, Wisconsin was the only state in the nation to experience "statistically significant" job losses over the period. Wisconsin lost 23,900 jobs between March 2011 and March 2012, according to the BLS study. No other state lost more than 3,500 jobs.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 15, 2018 What the Hell Is Wrong With Paul Ryan?
What the hell is wrong with Paul Ryan? At a point when the whole world is demanding urgent action to end the Saudi-led bombardment and starvation of Yemen, the Speaker of the House has been scheming to prevent congressional debate on a resolution to get the United States out of a humanitarian crisis.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, December 12, 2011 The Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy
For the Koch brothers and their kind, less democracy is better. They fund campaigns with millions of dollars in checks that have helped elect the likes of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 27, 2018 GM's Plant Closures Confirm the President is a Liar and a Fool
Donald Trump campaigned for president on a promise to Michigan auto workers that "If I'm elected, you won't lose one plant, you'll have plants coming into this country, you're going to have jobs again, you won't lose one plant, I promise you that."
SHARE Sunday, November 29, 2015 The Deafening Silence of the Republican Field in the Wake of the Planned Parenthood Shooting
What of the Republican contenders who have had so very much to say against Planned Parenthood? Billionaire Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson, and the rest of the conservative crew that is usually jostling to be first and loudest went suddenly silent Friday night. For the most part, they remained silent into Saturday -- at least with regard to a violent incident that dominated the national news and kitchen-table discussions.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 16, 2011 How Socialists Built America
Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy were not socialists. But the nation benefited from their borrowing of socialist and social democratic ideas. Barack Obama is certainly not a socialist. But he, and the nation he leads, would be well served by a similar borrowing from the people who once imagined Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the War on Poverty.
(77 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 6, 2014 Bernie Sanders: "I Am Prepared to Run for President of the United States"
Vermont independent wants to talk to progressives about a 2016 run, about whether to do so as a Democrat. “If I run,†he says, “my job... is to build the kind of coalition that can win—that can transform politics.â€
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, October 5, 2012 Mitt Romney Debate "Win" Gives Obama a Winning Issue
While President Obama called his Republican opponent out on several of his more absurd abandonments of fact, and on his even more absurd attempts at repurposing himself, much of what Romney said went unchallenged.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 24, 2017 Democrats Need to Make Clear that Firing Mueller Triggers Impeachment
When a president creates a constitutional crisis, the difficulty of responding does not change the fact that the right response is the application of the constitutional remedy that the founders outlined. If Trump commits the most extensive injustice, Democrats (and responsible Republicans) should make it clear that his abuses of power will be met with the power of impeachment.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, December 14, 2015 The Discourse Suffers When Trump Gets 23 Times As Much Coverage as Sanders
Trump feeds the beast. With calculated and constant outrageousness, he dominates news coverage not just of the race for the Republican nomination but of the entire 2016 presidential competition. As veteran political observer Larry Sabato says, "It's Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump." All Trump all the time lets Trump define the discussion.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 15, 2019 Why Is It So Hard for Our President to Condemn White Supremacy and Islamophobia?
On one of the darkest days in history for Muslims worldwide, the president's initial response to the New Zealand killings failed to mention Muslims, Islam, Islamophobia, white supremacy, racism, bigotry or violent hatred that targets people based on their religion.
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 4, 2018 Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes Are Betraying the Constitution in the Service of Donald Trump
Ryan's abandonment of the Constitution began long ago. But it culminated with the speaker's decision to support Friday's release of a partisan memo produced by disgraced House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) to discredit law-enforcement agencies that have organized and supported inquiries into Trump-campaign and Trump-administration wrongdoing.
(11 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 30, 2015 6 Reasons Bernie Sanders Is a Better Candidate Than Hillary Clinton
No matter who else gets into the race, a Clinton-Sanders debate would be a lively, issue-focused exchange between two candidates who know and respect each other but are very different. While Clinton's first elective post was a US Senate seat, Sanders has been a mayor, a statewide candidate, a congressman, and a senator. But the issues are the heart of the matter.
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 2, 2012 Is Paul Ryan Making Americans More Favorably Inclined Toward Socialism?
There will always be reactionaries like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan who try to make ideas scary. But when one in four Republicans have a positive reaction to the word "socialism," it is pretty clear that the reactionaries are not doing any better in framing the economic and intellectual debate than they did on Election Day.
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 21, 2017 Donald Trump's FCC is a Clear and Present Danger to Democracy
The FCC was charged in 1934 with the clear mission of protecting the "public interest" from profiteers and propagandists. That mission was enhanced and extended over time. It was threatened, as well -- but never so aggressively, nor so dramatically, as it is now threatened. It is dangerous. It threatens the discourse that sustains democracy at the local, state and national levels.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, November 5, 2012 Lies, Damned Lies and Paul Ryan Lies
In the final days of a campaign that has taken the shine off his "golden boy" status, Ryan was going all-in on the Republican ticket's biggest lie: a claim that Obama's policies had somehow endangered the sprawling Jeep plant in Toledo, a critical battleground in the critical battleground state of Ohio. That's not true.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 14, 2018 The Koch Brothers Get Their Very Own Secretary of State
In the Republican wave election of 2010, when Charles and David Koch emerged as defining figures in American politics, the greatest beneficiary of Koch Industries largesse was a political newcomer named Mike Pompeo. After his election to the House eight years ago, Pompeo was referred to as the "Koch Brothers' Congressman" and "the congressman from Koch."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 18, 2019 The Republican Party Is Aggressively Repositioning Itself as the Party of Trump's Racism
With their votes on Tuesday, 187 Republicans, the overwhelming majority of the party's House caucus, chose loyalty to Donald Trump and the divisive politics of his miserable presidency over the heritage of Lincoln, the Republican president who taught that "We are not enemies, but friends."
(23 comments) SHARE Friday, April 17, 2015 If Clinton is Serious About Economic Populism, She Should Come Out Against Fast Track
No matter what anyone thinks about "free trade," as it is currently arranged to benefit multinational corporations that seek a race-to-the-bottom economics, or "fair trade," as it should be arranged to protect workers, the environment and human rights, no one who believes in openness, transparency and democracy should back Fast Track.
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 10, 2009 The Year of Same-Sex Marriage!
Iowa, Vermont, D.C., New Hampshire, Maine. Likely up next will be New York and New Jersey. Equal treatment for all our citizens is warming up in the East.
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 25, 2011 Why Nader, Cornel West, Jonathan Kozol Seek Primary Challenges to Obama
Some of the talkers have begun to walk the walk. They're outlining a plan to run a slate of six primary "challengers" to the president, with each focusing on issues of ideological concern. The point of this initiative is not so much to displace the president as it is to move Obama and the party toward the left.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 21, 2015 Scott Walker: Military Actions on Inaugural Day are "Very Possible"
Before negotiators finalized the agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program, Scott Walker was saying that he could not wait to rip it up. The 2016 Republican contender formally launched his candidacy last week with Dick Cheney -- echoing foreign-policy bombast, reaching a crescendo with his promise "to terminate the bad deal with Iran on Day One" of his presidency.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 1, 2014 The Senator Defending Your Privacy Is Fighting for His Political Life
Udall has been a genuine watchdog: calling for CIA director John Brennan to resign after it was revealed that CIA operatives had been spying on the communications of Senate staffers, challenging his colleagues to establish effective oversight of intelligence agencies, demanding meaningful checks and balances and criticizing President Obama for failing to end the excesses of the Bush-Cheney era.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, February 5, 2018 Donald Trump Just Got Everything Wrong About the UK's Health Care System
Donald Trump is an international ignoramus. He knows so little about what is happening in so many places that when he pulls out his cellphone to tweet an observation about developments beyond the borders of the United States, the expectation is that he will get something wrong.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 19, 2012 Wisconsin Recalls Finally Check and Balance Scott Walker
Lehman prevailed. And, on Tuesday, after he was seated, control of the Senate formally shifted to the Democrats, with progressive Mark Miller taking over from Scott Fitzgerald as majority leader and Fred Risser, the longest-serving legislator in the country and a progressive stalwart, as Senate president. Walker's resisting. He's not interested in governing if he has to work across lines of partisanship and ideology.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 7, 2012 For Obama, a Bigger Win Than for Kennedy, Nixon, Carter or Bush
It wasn't even close. That's the unexpected result of the November 6 election. And President Obama and his supporters must wrap their heads around this new reality -- just as their Republican rivals are going to have to adjust to it.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 28, 2012 Romney Promises LIBOR-Scandal Banksters He'll Score for Them
Romney met with at least 250 of the top bankers, speculators and financial manipulators in the world -- including representatives of Barclays, the bank that recently paid almost $500 million in fines after its officials were charged with providing false information to interest-rate regulators.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, January 27, 2014 The Farmer Who Took on Corporate Globalization
Bringing farmers together with workers and human rights activists, making all the connections and explaining that what is at stake in any trade agreement is more than just money: It is the quality of the food we eat, the water we drink and the lives we aspire to.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 11, 2011 AFL's Trumka on Pols Selling Out Workers: 'I've Had a Snootful of This S**t!'
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent his strongest signal yet about the labor movement's frustration with the dysfunctional politics of the moment -- where Republicans go to extremes on behalf of big banks and multinational corporations, Democrats compromise and working families are left out of the equation.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 1, 2012 Gore Vidal and the Unfinished American Revolution
Gore Vidal -- "Of course George Bush and Dick Cheney have committed acts that would merit impeachment. In a proper country, they would be tried as traitors. You don't lie to a country, get it into a war, waste a trillion dollars, kill a lot of people all because of your vanity and lust for oil and admiration for your corporate partners. If that isn't treason, I don't know what is."
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 8, 2015 Obama Is Right: This Unauthorized War Needs to Be Debated by Congress
Obama presumes he will get the authorization he seeks. And he may be right. But no matter what the decision by the House and Senate, Congress must take up this issue. The US Constitution is clear: The power to declare wars rests with Congress, not the president. Yet this president, like his predecessors, has waged war without adequate congressional authorization.
SHARE Sunday, January 10, 2016 Chris Christie Needs to Renounce the Endorsement of Maine's "Overtly Racist" Governor
A presidential candidate cannot be held responsible for every word said by every one of his or her supporters. But overtly racist remarks by a candidate's most prominent supporters must be rejected. If Christie wants to be taken seriously as an alternative to Trump, he should start by rejecting Paul LePage's comments -- and Paul LePage's endorsement.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 25, 2012 Two Blue Dogs Defeated in Pennsylvania Primaries
Congressmen Tim Holden and Jason Altmire, both members of the conservative "Blue Dog Coalition," were swept out of office by Democratic primary voters who opted for candidates who were more clearly critical of corporate abuses and right-wing policies.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 30, 2012 Mitt Romney Is Just Not That Into Federal Disaster Relief
How we respond to this disaster, and future disasters, is always up for interpretation. And the choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will send a strong signal with regard to how and when America promotes the general welfare and insures domestic tranquility.
(19 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 4, 2013 Detroit Bankruptcy Bankrupts Democracy
The voters of Michigan sent a clear signal last fall. They rejected emergency-manager authoritarianism. This has nothing to do with budgeting, debt or broader fiscal matters. Those issues should be addressed by an elected mayor and city council.
It has everything to do with allowing unelectable and unelected officials -- and the interests they serve -- to achieve political results that could not be secured at the ballot box.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 26, 2012 House Members Seek Answers From Scott Walker Amid New Evidence of Lying to Congress
There is new evidence to suggest that Walker's testimony to Congress about when he began preparing his anti-labor legislation--which sparked mass demonstrations and a recall movement that will culminate with a June 5 vote on whether to recall the governor--was not truthful.
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, December 15, 2017 Gutting Net Neutrality Is the Trump Administration's Most Brutal Blow to Democracy Yet
Those who would resist the Trump administration's most authoritarian and anti-democratic instincts -- on issues ranging from voter suppression to freedom of the press to civil rights and civil liberties -- have used a free and open Internet to organize throughout 2017. They will need to continue to do so in 2018 and beyond.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 24, 2011 Patriot Act Extension Scheme Sells Out the Constitution
US House and Senate leaders have reached a bipartisan backroom deal to push for approval of a four-year extension of the the most controversial components of the USA Patriot Act, in a move that rejects calls for responsible reform of the law by civil libertarians on the right and the left.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 19, 2017 Jeff Sessions Keeps Lying to the Senate
Jeff Sessions has proven himself to be unfit for office. He has, with deceptive responses to questions from senators, and with his involvement in the Comey firing, committed what the founders understood as "high crimes and misdemeanors." He should now be held to account, using the tool that the Constitution affords members of Congress to impose accountability on officials who lie in official settings: impeachment.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, June 27, 2016 What the Democrats Must Learn About Free-Trade Deals From Brexit
Wealth has been redistributed upward, wages stagnated, inequality has accelerated. And voters are saying "stop." They are not doing so only in Britain. In the United States, opposition to failed trade policies in general, and to the TPP in particular, played a critical role in helping Sanders secure big victories in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and other states where he was able to focus the debate of economic fundamentals.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 12, 2011 House Republicans Shred Constitution With Backdoor Proposal of Permanent War
The Madisonian impulse is kept alive today not by House leaders who claim to revere the Constitution while adandoning its principles but by those members of Congress who object to permanent war for the same reasons that the wisest of the founders did.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, September 21, 2012 Elizabeth Warren Wins the "Which Side Are You On?" Debate
Brown kept trying to suggest that a handful of reasonably moderate votes made him a paragon of bipartisan virtue who should not be seen as a Republican. In contrast, Warren, the Wall Street reformer and consumer champion who entered the Senate race with a real determination to change Washington -- even if it means standing up to her own party -- was clear and unequivocal.
SHARE Wednesday, May 22, 2013 "Our Liberty Cannot Be Guarded but by the Freedom of the Press"
Journalists do not need -- and should not seek -- an array of special protections to do their jobs. But journalists and their sources do need to know that information can be shared without the threat of unwarranted -- and self-serving -- government surveillance of necessary conversations.
SHARE Wednesday, August 7, 2019 Beto O'Rourke Is Doing What Donald Trump Is Simply Incapable Of
Trump is getting beaten this week by a better man. Beto O'Rourke is not going low in the way that Trump does. He is bringing more nuance, insight, and honest emotion to the dialogue. But he is waging the debate on all the platforms that Trump uses. And O'Rourke is winning.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 27, 2011 'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of Government'
Democrats and Republicans in Washington are entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we know it." There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of thousands of postal workers and gut the service. This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a "political" crisis.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 31, 2017 The 2017 Progressive Honor Roll
What began as a frightening and frustrating year ended with Alabama voters rejecting one of Trump's most vile allies in favor of a decent Democrat, Doug Jones, who claimed his victory in that state's senatorial contest by citing one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite quotations: "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 9, 2015 Nous Sommes Tous Charlie: Defend Freedom of Expression in France and Around the World
We who practice and appreciate the right to freedom of expression must stand now and always in solidarity with every journalist in every country who challenges corruption, abuses of power, violence and the intolerance that underpins violence. We must do so in the defense of freedom of expression.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 2, 2015 Bernie Sanders Backs Chuy Garcia and a "Political Revolution" in Chicago
The endorsement of Garcia by Sanders is drawing notice in Chicago and Washington. The endorsement mixes local and national political storylines, as Sanders is pondering a possible run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination -- perhaps as a progressive populist challenger to presumed Democratic frontrunner (and Emanuel-backed prospect) Hillary Clinton.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, May 7, 2018 The Troubling Part of Rudy Giuliani's Interview That Nobody Is Talking About
When President Clinton tried to assert a standard similar to Giuliani's distraction theory--arguing that forcing a sitting president to answer a civil complaint would unduly distract him from his duties as president--the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the suggestion. If Trump thinks Giuliani is right about broad presidential immunity from subpoenas, he could well end up making the case for his own impeachment.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, April 9, 2012 Don't Just Pressure ALEC's Sponsors, Name and Shame ALEC Legislators
Since the Center for Media and Democracy's "ALEC Exposed" project was developed last summer in cooperation with The Nation, millions of Americans have become aware that ALEC uses corporate money to craft one-size-fits-all "model legislation" that its member legislators then propose and pass in the states.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, March 4, 2019 Michael Cohen Just Started a Process That Should Lead to Impeachment
Cohen described the man who now serves as president of the United States as a crude and irresponsible man who acted in profoundly dishonorable and destructive ways during the years of their acquaintance, and who brought to the White House an awful politics built on lies and fearmongering.
(12 comments) SHARE Monday, August 7, 2017 America Has a Long and Storied Socialist Tradition. DSA Is Reviving It.
DSA got a big boost from the surge of interest in democratic socialism that grew from the Sanders campaign. Bernie upended decades of right-wing histrionics, Democratic Party caution, and media neglect that bordered on malpractice when he showed America that a national contender could embrace the "S" word and survive.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 26, 2019 Democrats Don't Need Mike Bloomberg's Kinder, Gentler Plutocracy
The prospect that Bloomberg, who is worth something like $54 billion, could buy a place on the debate stage has got the DC insiders and the billionaire class all atwitter. He offers them more of the politics they know.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 28, 2019 This Is How Democrats Can Start Winning Back Rural America
But Democrats need to offer more than criticism of Trump and "feel your pain" platitudes. They must talk about the real economics of rural America -- recognizing that farm policy is vital, but that it's also necessary to renew small manufacturing, small business, and infrastructure.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 21, 2019 Bernie Sanders Wins the Foreign Policy Debate
The Democrats had a brief but substantive foreign policy debate Wednesday night -- and Bernie Sanders gave it scope and meaning by centering Palestinian rights in a way major presidential candidates rarely do.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 19, 2017 ALEC Is Talking About Changing the Way Senators Are Elected and Taking Away Your Vote
The idea of reversing 104 years of representative democracy and returning to the bad old days when senators were chosen via backroom deals between wealthy campaign donors, corporate lobbyists, and crooked legislators, is not new. The John Birch Society peddled the proposal decades ago. But with the rise of the "Tea Party" movement, the notion moved into the conservative mainstream.
(8 comments) SHARE Monday, May 2, 2016 Sanders Fights On for "the Strongest Progressive Agenda That Any Political Party Has Ever Seen"
Sanders is talking about "putting together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen."
For Sanders and his allies, along with progressives who have backed Clinton, the effort itself is consequential -- not just in terms of framing the party's immediate agenda but also in terms of framing the future of our politics.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 28, 2016 Why President Obama and Tim Kaine "Feel the Bern"
Most speakers at this convention, even speakers who have for many years served in the House of Representatives and the Senate with Sanders, have failed to mention his name in their speeches to the convention. That is, of course, their rhetorical right. But it is not necessarily wise politics when so many of the delegates and alternates and guests at this convention arrived as Sanders backers.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 4, 2019 North Carolina Has Won a Huge Victory in the Fight Against Rigged Elections
Partisan gerrymandering is as stark an assault on democracy as you will find. And since Republicans used the advantage they gained in the 2010 "wave" election to lock in legislative majorities across the country, gerrymandering has proven to be the most damaging of their assaults -- especially in North Carolina.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, October 16, 2017 Donald Trump's Lies About the Iran Deal Reveal He Is Dangerously Out of Touch with Reality
In his televised speech to the nation Friday, the president said he wanted Congress to set new benchmarks that Iran would be required to meet in order to avoid nuclear-related sanctions. He bluntly declared that the deal "will be terminated" if no plan is reached to radically alter the agreement.
SHARE Wednesday, October 10, 2012 Biden Should Rip Ryan on Neglect of Hometown Workers
On Ryan's watch, the Janesville General Motors plant, which once employed more than 7,000 workers, was shuttered, the Kenosha Chrysler plant, which employed 16,000 workers when it was a crown jewel of George Romney's old American Motors Company, ended production. Joe Biden ought to be prepared to discuss this when he meets up with Ryan in a debate that can and should focus on the jobs and manufacturing issues.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, July 21, 2017 Paul Ryan Hands Donald Trump a Blank Check for Endless War
House Speaker Paul Ryan had an opportunity not merely to reassert the authority of the chamber he is supposed to lead but also to steer the United States away from the dangerous course of endless war and steady subservience to an ever-more-powerful military-industrial complex. Ryan squandered that opportunity.
(12 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 28, 2015 This Is Why Scott Walker Is Not Presidential Material
On Thursday, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Walker was asked how he would respond to ISIS, and the "radical Islamic terrorism" he had condemned in his speech to the group. Walker told the crowd: "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe." That was, by just about every measure, an unsettling statement.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 16, 2017 A Progressive Electoral Wave Is Sweeping the Country
A new resistance-and-renewal politics is sending a signal to conservative Republicans and cautious Democrats alike about the ability of bold progressive populists to win in every part of the country. That's why it is so worrisome that these electoral shock waves have been crashing against the wall of ignorance and indifference that surrounds a Trump-obsessed Washington media.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, February 14, 2011 A 'Dictator' Governor Sets Out to Cut Wages, Slash Benefits and Destroy Public Unions
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposal to strip public employees of most collective bargaining rights, cut pay and gut benefits without any negotiation the most radical assault yet by the current crop of Republican governors on the rights of workers has inspired outrage in a historically progressive and pro-labor state.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, January 13, 2017 Rex Tillerson's Jaw-Dropping Testimony Just Completely Disqualified Him
Rex Tillerson's testimony indicates that he does not begin to recognize the responsibilities that go with the position he seeks, let alone the unique challenges that will be associated with serving as Donald Trump's secretary of state. That's more than concerning. That's disqualifying.
SHARE Friday, December 13, 2013 Congress Chooses Austerity Over Job Creation and Economic Growth
Most members of Congress were pleased with themselves Thursday. They agreed to agree--crossing lines of partisanship and ideology--on an austerity budget that "won't create jobs, get the economy back on track, or meaningfully cut the deficit." The bill abandons 1.3 million Americans who desperately need unemployment insurance, and does nothing to promote economic growth or job creation.
SHARE Sunday, August 6, 2017 Scott Walker's Crony Capitalism
Walker is running for re-election and, as a career politician, he is perfectly happy to sacrifice fiscal responsibility on the altar of his own ambition. Never mind that, in doing so, he embraces precisely the sort of crony capitalism that sincere conservatives have long decried.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 15, 2009 Will Revelations About Dick Cheney's Secret Programs Spell His Downfall?
So serious are the charges against Cheney that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who for too long worked too closely with the Bush-Cheney administration on so many issues, appears finally to be accepting that an inquiry is going to be required.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 12, 2015 President Obama Is the One Who Is Wrong About Fast Track and the TPP
The people the president says are "wrong" -- a group that includes Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and most House Democrats -- are not unthinking protectionists or crude isolationists. They are supporters of workers, the environment, and human rights in the United States and abroad.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 10, 2018 Brett Kavanaugh Once Argued That a Sitting President Should Be Above the Law
Kavanaugh now serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is a rigid right-wing ideologue who, if confirmed, would move the court far to the right. "The president pulled Judge Kavanaugh's name from a pre-approved list concocted by radical, far-right special interests.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 30, 2012 Scott Walker's Recall Hypocrisy
As the United Wisconsin activists who organized and advanced the recall drive will tell you, the real emotion on display across Wisconsin as the recall petitions were gathered last year, and as the recall fight has played out this year, has been about hope for Wisconsin's future.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 25, 2019 Pelosi Announces an Impeachment Inquiry. Now Congress Has to Get It Right
Impeachment is not hard. The only thing that complicates the process is the penchant of politicians -- some well-intended but cautious, some cynical and scheming -- to weigh things down with too many strategies, dodges, delays, and compromises.
SHARE Monday, August 26, 2019 David Koch Got What He Paid For
David Koch was not a political mastermind. He was a failed candidate, a bit of a bumbler as a strategist, and a frequently inconsistent ideologue. But he knew what rich men who dabble in politics know: If you throw enough money around, two things will happen. First, the machinery of electioneering and governing will adjust to the cash flow. Second, the recipients of your largesse will take your calls.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, December 20, 2013 Liz Cheney's Husband Registers to Vote in Two States? Is That "Voter Fraud'?
When Perry registered to vote in Wyoming's Teton County, he did not indicate that he was on the voter roll elsewhere. Indeed, says Teton County Clerk Sherry Daigle, "He signed an oath saying he was not currently registered anywhere else." Oops. So we have a glaring case of double registration.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, June 17, 2011 Feingold to Netroots Nation: Call Out Corporate Democrats
If it is wrong for Republicans to fuel their campaigns with corporate cash, then it is wrong for Democrats to do so. That was the no-hold-barred message that Russ Feingold brought to Netroots Nation. If Democrats fuel their campaigns with corporate cash, the senator said, "we'll lose our souls."
(21 comments) SHARE Friday, November 30, 2018 The Mueller Investigation Is Closing in on Trump -- and the Next Congress Won't Protect Him
Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, has now acknowledged that he lied to a pair of congressional committees about the extent of the president's ongoing engagement with Russian interests during the 2016 presidential campaign.
(11 comments) SHARE Monday, March 21, 2011 Wars Should Be Declared by Congress, Not Merely Launched by Presidents
Unless the United States is immediately threatened, presidents aren't supposed to declare wars or launch them on their own. Of all the checks and balances outlined in the Constitution, none is more significant than the power to declare war. Yet, since World War II, presidents have launched attacks, interventions and wars without declarations. And now that has happened again.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 18, 2018 Bernie Sanders Wants to Tell the Story That Corporate Media Fails To Tell
For decades, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has objected to the failure of major media outlets to cover the growth of economic inequality in America. As a presidential contender in 2016, he used every opportunity that was afforded him in the media to address poverty, plutocracy and the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of "the billionaire class."
SHARE Wednesday, August 21, 2019 Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan to Finish What FDR Started
Just as the New Dealers responded 80 years ago with a big plan for rural electrification, Warren is responding with a big plan for rural broadband. Warren is barnstorming across the first caucus state of Iowa with a promise to develop an $85 billion federal grant program for nonprofits and local governments that seek to build independent fiber networks and provide low-cost broadband Internet services.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 13, 2015 Congress Has to Get Serious About Railroads and Infrastructure
The Federal Railroad Administration's Office of Safety Analysis has seen a steady rise in Amtrak derailments in recent years. In the first two months of 2015, there were at least nine derailments. But it is the latest Amtrak Northeast Corridor derailment, with at least seven dead and roughly 200 hurt, that is renewing talk about how this country's rail system is in serious need of repair.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 8, 2018 Meet Katrin Jakobsdottir, Iceland's Left-Wing, Environmentalist, Feminist Prime Minister
In the past, Jakobsdottir was always very happy about organizing rallies and election campaigns and speaking truth to power. But now that she's the one in power, she's hoping to apply that work ethic not merely "to change something" in Iceland but to set an example of how politics could evolve in the 21st century.
SHARE Wednesday, September 20, 2017 Trump's First Speech Before the UN Was an Absurd, Bombastic Disaster
After Trump's recent Twitter storms and his stormy speech to the United Nations, the need for Congress to intervene grows more urgent. The Constitution rests the power to declare war with Congress. Congress must make it clear to the president that he cannot act alone, based on his whims, furies, and fantasies. This should not be a partisan issue. There should be no ideological divide on this one.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Texas Progressive Laura Moser Is Beating Democratic Insiders
Moser now has the support not just of Our Revolution but also of other progressive groups, such as Justice Democrats and Democracy for America. DFA chair Jim Dean is already framing the fight as a contest between the failures of the past and a future where Democrats stand clearly on the side of economic and social justice.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, August 11, 2017 Congress Is Pushing Back Against Trump's Dangerously Ignorant Nuclear Threats
Donald Trump swore a parallel oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Congress should remind him of that by outlining clear limits on the use of force -- especially with regard to to preemptive and unilateral nuclear strikes. If, in the end, Trump chooses to disregard his oath, then he should be impeached and removed from office.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 18, 2011 Wisconsin Recall Calculus: $5 Million Dirty Dollars Versus 500,000 Angry Citizens
Walker is more of a fool than even his most consistent critics imagine if he thinks that money, especially money raise in substantial portions from out-of-state interests that see his governorship as an investment in anti-labor, anti-public education and anti-democratic policies, will be sufficient to trump a popular movement that has already attracted the support of half a million Wisconsinites.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, March 30, 2015 It Is Very American to Ask if the Presidency Should Be Passed Between Entitled Families
In fairness to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush -- while both have benefited mightily from family ties, and the campaign-treasury largesse that extends from them -- neither of these prospective contenders is formally staking a purely hereditary claim on the presidency. Both have records to run on.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 17, 2009 Democrats to Obama: Get Out of Afghanistan
In place of a continuing U.S. military presence, the California Democrats are urging Obama "to oversee a redirection of our funding and resources to include an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid."
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 11, 2012 John Boehner Has No Mandate
House Speaker John Boehner has grown increasingly belligerent in his "fiscal cliff" fight with the Obama administration. Struggling to hold together a caucus that never really respected his "leadership," Boehner is trying to rally his troops by ripping President Obama's supposed disregard for Republican control of the House of Representatives.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, February 28, 2020 The President Poses a Clear and Present Danger to the First Amendment
Donald Trump has gone so over the top with his "enemy of the people" ranting about the free press of the United States that there are those who may imagine he is merely making idle threats. But the president and his authoritarian cabal upped the ante Wednesday when they lobbed a libel suit at The New York Times.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 29, 2015 Bernie Sanders Readies a "Which Side Are You On?" Presidential Bid
As a presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders can force the debate that the Democratic Party, and America, needs to have -- on fast track, the TPP and a long list of issues that the "billionaire class" would have preferred to keep off the table.
SHARE Friday, November 24, 2017 Trump Greets Thanksgiving With an Unhealthy Serving of Xenophobia
It is surely true that presidents and citizens do not always rise to the challenges of our times. But the 45th president really is the worst of the lot. His inability to recognize the cruel irony of attacking refugees at Thanksgiving time illustrates just how disconnected Trumpism is from the arc of American history that bends toward justice.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 12, 2015 The TPP Fast-Track Vote Wasn't About Obama, It Was About Failed Trade Policies
The president will, undoubtedly, continue to advocate for trade agreements, but he cannot succeed merely with the support of Wall Street, Paul Ryan, and ALEC. The way to succeed is with a fair trade model that puts workers, farmers, the environment, human rights, and democracy ahead of the corporate interests that want only a race to the bottom.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, February 21, 2020 Democrats Must Reject Not Just a Billionaire but the Billionaire Class
Warren and Sanders targeted a newly arrived debater, free-spending billionaire Michael Bloomberg, while at the same time framing an argument that the Democratic Party must not barter off its future to the highest bidder.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 23, 2011 Wisconsin's Political Crisis Is a Good Deal More Serious Than Its Fiscal Crisis
Bottom line: this is not about the money. This is not a fiscal crisis. This is a political crisis. And Governor Walker has the power to resolve it by refocusing on fiscal issues, as opposed to pursuing the political goal of breaking state-employee and teacher unions.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 9, 2017 Sean Spicer Is Lying About Trump's Health-Care Debacle
Apart from the fact that the plan proposed by Trump and Ryan makes things worse (as opposed to saving the system), and that Trump ran on roughly a dozen different health-care platforms (flirting with everything from single-payer to survival-of-the-fittest, but always promising to make things "great"), there is no truth to the statement that "this is the Obamacare replacement plan that everyone has been asking for."
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, April 27, 2015 No Joke, Cheney Was the Worst President
Cheney, whose presidential ambitions were dashed in the mid-1990s by disinterest and distrust on the part of his fellow Republicans, engineered his selection as George Bush's vice president in order to secure the power he craved. But, once he wedded his ambitions to the hapless "legacy" president, Cheney did indeed pull so many strings that he was understood by savvy Washingtonians as a virtual commander in chief.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 2, 2009 The 'New GM': Layoffs, Factory Closings, Offshoring
Nothing about the old way of doing business made sense, and it made a wreck of GM. After decades of closing factories, laying off workers and shifting production overseas, the company now finds itself with $172.8 billion in debt. This massive de-industrialization plan -- with its rapid offshoring of work once done in the United States -- will be paid for by the federal government.
(24 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 2, 2015 Bernie Sanders Lays Down 2016's New Electoral Math
No one expected the DNC members, many of whom have already endorsed Clinton, to immediately embrace Bernie Sanders' message as it was delivered Friday. But it is reasonable to expect that Sanders got a good many of them thinking -- and that fresh poll numbers will have them thinking even more.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, August 28, 2017 Paul Ryan Debated a Nun and the Nun Won
Paul Ryan, with his proposals to gut the Affordable Care Act, and with his long history of looking for ways to undermine Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and nutrition programs, has got the calculus exactly wrong. Despite the evidence that federal, state, and local action to address poverty works, he wants to weaken those programs.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, November 18, 2019 Yang Doesn't Add Up
Yang has earned his moment. But Yang still hasn't quite reached the solutions stage of the debate.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 25, 2015 On "the Preponderance of the Evidence," Bernie Sanders Is a Democrat
Sanders ran and won his races for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for the US House and for the US Senate as an independent. And though he has caucused with Democrats in the House and Senate since arriving in Washington in 1991, he has always identified as an "I" rather than a "D." Even as he began to ponder a president run, the senator weighed whether to campaign as an independent or a Democrat.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, July 17, 2017 Keith Ellison Just Beat Back a Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom
Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the House, recalled historic instances of racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination. and warned that "when we single out a group of people and treat them differently, shameful and regrettable abuses and mistreatment follow."
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, July 5, 2013 America's Most Dynamic (Yet Under-Covered) Movement: Overturning Citizens United
Just imagine if the movement to amend big money out of politics got as much attention, say, as the wrangling over IRS "targeting" -- a classic money-in-politics controversy. Imagine if all Americans knew that calls for an amendment are coming not just from traditional progressive reformers but from Republican legislators and honest conservatives at the state and national levels.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, March 23, 2015 The "Draft Elizabeth Warren" Campaign Gets a Big Boost from The Boston Globe
The Globe made it clear, as do supporters of the "Draft Warren" movement, and of other potential contenders such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, that this is about more than Clinton's strengths and weaknesses. This is about core issues, and fundamental questions regarding the future of the Democratic Party and the country.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 6, 2015 Mike Huckabee Is a Little Bit Populist, and That Could Be a Big Problem for Bush and Walker
If the man from Arkansas offers working-class evangelicals in states such as Iowa the right combination of social conservatism and support for Social Security and fair trade, he could prove that even Republicans are sick of austerity. That won't make him the nominee. But it could prevent other candidates from being nominated.
(10 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 27, 2013 Darrell Issa's Got a Plan to Put the Postal Service in a Death Spiral
The full House is now set to consider a plan that would, among other things, phase out door-to-door mail delivery by 2022. Instead of the traditional and highly popular delivery model that now exists, mail would be left in so-called "neighborhood cluster boxes" that would serve multiple residences.
The Issa plan also sets the stage for the elimination of most weekend mail service.
(23 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 27, 2012 A Mandate to Raise Taxes on the Rich? Election Numbers Say 'Yes'
Aanyone who paid attention to the messages of the 2012 campaign -- from Obama's explicit declarations that he would ask the rich to "pay a little bit more" to Romney and Ryan's "makers versus takers" meme -- knows that a referendum was held on whether to hike taxes for millionaires and billionaires. And a lot more voters said "yes" than said "no."
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 28, 2020 This Is What an Opposition Party Is Supposed to Sound Like
Republicans are using the coronavirus outbreak as an excuse to do the same thing they did during the financial meltdown of 2008: wage class war against working Americans. This time, Bernie Sanders is refusing to let them get away with it.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 8, 2015 Chicago's Chuy Garcia Lost an Election, but Won a Movement
Chicago did not elect a new mayor this year. But it has shaken things up for an old mayor. And it held out hope for a new politics not just in one city but nationwide. It may not be that Garcia will run again. That is not the point. The point is that someone, many someones, will run against the money power in the elections to come. And they will run from a position of greater strength than existed before.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 3, 2011 Why a Wisconsin Sheriff Refuses to Serve as Governor Walker's 'Palace Guard'
As the governor and his aides have attempted to limit access to the state Capitol -- which the Wisconsin constitution says must remain open to all citizens -- Sheriff Mahoney has steadily argued that he and his deputies are present both to maintain public safety and to defend the right of citizens to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 6, 2015 Scott Walker Controls Wisconsin's Executive and Legislative Branches. Now His Minions are Gunning for the Judicial
Since his election in 2010, Walker and his legislative cronies have grabbed every opening to secure and advance their authority. They have employed ambitious gerrymandering schemes, reorganized the election calendar, rewritten voting rules and invited the wealthiest men in America to flood the state with special-interest money. They have disregarded rules and regulations designed to maintain transparency and fairness.
SHARE Tuesday, April 7, 2015 Rand Paul Loves Big Government
Paul reveals himself as an rather too predictable contemporary Republican. He is not interested in winning the battle of ideas. He is simply interested in winning -- and if that means using the power of big government to thwart the legitimate and honorable democratic aspirations of citizens, so be it.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, September 18, 2017 Honor the Constitution by Impeaching Jeff Sessions
Jeff Sessions is a crudely intolerant political careerist whose enthusiastic talk about scrapping DACA provided a reminder of how he uses his ill-gotten position to divide Americans against one another. Jeff Sessions has no business heading a department named "Justice." He should be impeached and removed.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 4, 2019 If Democrats Pull Their Punches, Donald Trump Will Knock Them Out
Don't let anyone tell you that the back-of-the-polls Democrats who are trying to distinguish themselves by calling for a more tepid approach to the 2020 presidential race are calling the party back to its roots. They are proposing a strategy that Truman correctly identified as a recipe for defeat
SHARE Tuesday, March 31, 2015 Even Indiana Republicans Are Telling Mike Pence His Discrimination Law Is Wrong
There has been an enormous backlash to the governor's decision to sign what the Human Rights Campaign condemns as "a sweeping bill allowing individuals to use religion as an excuse to discriminate against LGBT people and other minorities."
SHARE Thursday, March 12, 2015 Bold Progressive Donna Edwards Enters Key Senate Race
Edwards has often made the connection between grassroots activism and congressional action. After the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, when most Democrats were talking about tepid reforms, Edwards proposed a constitutional amendment to restore the ability of citizens and their elected representatives to enact meaningful campaign finance laws--and to prevent the bartering off of elections to the highest corporate bidder.
SHARE Friday, April 3, 2015 Chicago's Chuy Garcia Has a Vision: Progressive Mayors Fighting for Public Education
To a greater extent than a lot of Democrats, including Rahm Emanuel, "Chuy" Garcia gets that the fight for public education is about democracy -- and about the rights that are essential to democracy. A mayor waging that fight would earn national attention and, perhaps, usher in a whole new debate about public education.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 27, 2015 Harry Reid's Replacement Must Be Progressive and Effective
The selection of a new Senate Democratic leader need not be a contest of senators who simply happen to be senior, predictable choices or compromise candidates. It's an opportunity for Democrats to think bigger, and better, about leadership. And if ever the party needed to do that, it's now.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 18, 2017 Actually, No, Bob Corker and John McCain Are Doing Nothing to Hold Trump Accountable
Corker is correct in his concern. But being correct is not enough. The senator needs to do more than simply issue warnings about a president who is in need of "adult day care." He has a duty to join the members of Congress who are seeking to place limits on Trump's ability to steer the world toward a planet-obliterating World War III.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 27, 2011 Upwards of 125,000 March in Madison, as Activists Rally Nationwide to Back Wisconsin Workers
Energized by the images of Wisconsinites night after winter night -- and filling the state Capitol with chants of "What's disgusting? Union busting!" -- unions across the country are beginning to outline clear and uncompromising agendas for defending public services and the rights of public workers.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 11, 2015 National Nurses United Union Backs Bernie Sanders
National Nurses United, an activist union with a history of bold political moves and issue-focused campaigning, has endorsed Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination. This is the first endorsement from a major union for Sanders, who has worked closely with NNU on a number of issues over the years.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 15, 2017 The CIA Director Just Bullied Harvard Into Throwing Chelsea Manning to the Curb
Manning blew the whistle on what would come to be understood as military and diplomatic scandals because she felt Americans had a right to know what was being done in their name but without their informed consent. Mike Pompeo, a secretive and conflicted politician, has no such instinct; he serves wealth and power without questioning whether the dictates of the privileged are right or honorable.
SHARE Thursday, May 14, 2015 Russ Feingold Is Running Again for the Senate and for Economic Fairness
Feingold says his focus in 2016 will be on the restoring the "economic well-being" of a state and a nation hard hit by the austerity agendas of Republicans in Washington -- including Wisconsin's Paul Ryan and the senator Feingold is challenging, Tea Party favorite Ron Johnson.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 29, 2015 Elizabeth Warren Is a More Interesting Late-Entry Prospect Than Joe Biden
Biden is well-liked, to be sure, but he is not a movement politician and his stands on a host of issues tend to mirror those of Clinton. Warren, on the other hand, has taken stands on a number of issues that are closer to those of Sanders -- on trade policy, raising wages to $15 an hour and cracking down on banks and Wall Street, to name but a few.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 11, 2011 Pro-Worker Movement Power in Wisconsin: What's Next?
Ultimately, the movement politics that has developed since February 12 will seek to replace three Republican senators, and in so doing to restore the system of checks and balances that is so sorely needed in a state that is now being battered by the worst excesses of one-party rule.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 11, 2017 Why Do Republicans (and Some Democrats) Vilify Single Payer?
Single payer is a bad idea for senators whose political survival is based on their ability to bank checks from health-care profiteers and billionaire speculators. But it is a very good idea for America. The money power, and its feudal serfs in the Senate, will keep fighting against the common good.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 14, 2012 Paul Ryan's Rapid Rewrite of Election History
Ryan rejects the notion that his ideas lost. Indeed, he still claims he's promoting "popular ideas." And he says of the Republican ticket: "It was a well-run campaign. We made this campaign about big ideas and big issues, which is the kind of campaign we wanted to run, so we ran the kind of campaign we wanted to run."
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 24, 2018 It's Getting Lonely on Scott Walker's Sinking Ship
The governor who dreamed of being president is stuck in Wisconsin, slogging his way through another run for the job he tried to put behind him. It is not going well. The Real Clear Politics survey of recent polls has Democrat Tony Evers, the state's mild-mannered superintendent of public instruction, leading Walker by four points.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 27, 2013 Scott Walker's 'Unintimidated' Grab for Presidential Consideration
Scott Walker's not producing a memoir. He's writing a manifesto for his 2016 presidential run. And as the country's No. 1 proponent of austerity, he will remain entirely "unintimidated" by the frustrating fact that--if it is the "nation's challenge" to put Americans back to work in good-paying jobs with secure futures--his answers are not a campaign promise. They're a threat.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 11, 2016 Donald Trump Just Summed Up His Totalitarian Vision for America in 4 Words
The first minutes of Sunday night's clash between Trump and Clinton produced a slimier and more depressing scene: that of a candidate for the presidency of the United States proposing to use the position to encourage a "special prosecutor" to investigate his opponent and suggesting that his election would lead to her imprisonment.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 25, 2013 Glenn Greenwald Is "Aiding and Abetting" Democracy
When Glenn Greenwald appeared Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press to discuss his reporting on leaks detailing National Security Agency programs that monitor phone calls and digital communications, he was asked by host David Gregory whether he was the bad guy.
(18 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 5, 2015 Why Grassroots Democrats Don't Have a Problem With Democratic Socialism
An October 2015 YouGov poll shows a growing divide, with Democrats favoring socialism over capitalism by 12 percentage points. Among young people and people of color, socialism polls significantly better than among the general population.
SHARE Wednesday, April 11, 2012 It's Romney, the GOP Candidate Opposed by 59 Percent of Republicans
The story of the 2012 Republican presidential race was of a desperate search by most Republicans for Anyone But Romney. They never trusted the independent who gave money to Democrats turned liberal Republican turned moderate Republican turned sort of conservative turned right-wing ranter.
SHARE Wednesday, August 23, 2017 What "The Village Voice" Taught Us About Speaking Truth to Power
For decades, The Village Voice was a Manhattan-based weekly newspaper with national reach and an outsized influence on American journalism. Tuesday's announcement that it would cease print publication inspired "End of an Era" headlines across the country.
(10 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 10, 2019 Trump Absolutely Failed to Make a Case That His Border "Crisis" Is a National Emergency
The president failed on Tuesday evening to deliver an even minimally credible case to support his claim that there is "a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border." Nothing that he said in a rambling eight-minute recitation of talking points and applause lines from campaign rallies could justify his use of emergency powers to build an unnecessary and unworkable border wall.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, March 20, 2015 Danny Schechter Was Our News Dissector
Dissecting the news was Schechter's thing. He reported to listeners what was happening, then he explained why it was happening, and then he revealed why other media outlets did not tell the whole story. It was bold and daring, and the word of what Danny Schechter was doing on one progressive-rock station in Boston spread far and wide.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 28, 2011 The Chapter That Went Missing From Dick Cheney's Book
Where's the chapter on Cheney's heroic service in Vietnam? Of, that's right, he had "other priorities" than responding to draft notices. Cheney has always positioned himself as an arch militarist. But when he had a chance to get on the front lines, he instead got deferments. A lot of them.
SHARE Wednesday, August 29, 2012 His Supporters Treated "Atrociously," Ron Paul Refuses to Back Romney
Not that many years ago, coming second in the convention vote might have guaranteed Paul a convention speaking slot. At this convention, it guaranteed him -- and his supporters -- treatment so rough that his supporters, the largest dissident block on the floor, openly accused party chair Reince Priebus and his team of "corruption."
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 1, 2017 A Resolution for 2017: Keep Reminding Trump That He Has No Mandate
Claiming a mandate when no mandate exists is the real attempt to delegitimize the election -- by denying the reality that most Americans did not vote for Trump or for the Republican Senate that will soon attempt to rubber-stamp his nominees for Cabinet posts and the extreme agenda advanced by Ryan in the House.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, April 13, 2012 What Allen West Does Not Know About Communists and Congress
The vast majority of Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) members are run-of-the-mill progressive Democrats, very much in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson when it comes to domestic policy and to their support for civil rights and economic fairness. As for Marxists, they're in short supply in this current Congress.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, April 13, 2015 Hillary Clinton's Soft Populism Is Not Enough
Organizing must continue on behalf of alternative candidacies and a competitive race for the Democratic nomination. Clinton is way ahead in the polls, but it would be political malpractice for progressives to be satisfied with a few good turns of phrase at this point. The frontrunner must be pressed to make real commitments on real issues.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, September 16, 2016 A Lesson for Trump From Scott Walker: If the Election Is Close, Cry Fraud
Charges of "voting fraud" and "election fraud" are peddled for purposes of "messaging" and to advance a cynical agenda that seeks to limit and undermine voting rights and respect for the political process. Walker has been criticized throughout his governorship for promoting that agenda with advocacy for restrictive election rules.
SHARE Monday, November 20, 2017 The Surest Way to Keep Roy Moore Out of the Senate Is by Electing His Opponent
The Alabama contest meets the ethical standard, and the practical standard. A few wise Republicans recognize this. Asked last week if he would support a Democratic candidate over Moore, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake replied: "If the choice is between Roy Moore and a Democrat -- the Democrat, no doubt."
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 18, 2013 Scott Walker Goes All 1798: Arrests Elected Official, Editor in Wisconsin
Madison Alder Mark Clear, the former president of the city council, was arrested for joining in the singing of "This Land Is Your Land." Then, just a few minutes later, Progressive magazine editor Matt Rothschild was detained when he attempted to record what was happening. Rothschild informed the arresting officers that he was a journalist and that he had every right to cover the story.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 24, 2018 A Governor Renews Net Neutrality Protections With the Stroke of a Pen
In Montana, Governor Steve Bullock picked up a pen. On January 22, the Democratic governor signed an executive order requiring Internet service providers that operate in the state to embrace net neutrality principles in order to obtain lucrative state government contracts. Bullock, whose order goes into effect July 1, is urging other governors to join him in pushing back against the FCC.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 17, 2015 Barbara Lee Does Not Want Congress to Write Another Blank Check for Perpetual War
Lee is pleased that President Obama has come to Congress seeking a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) for the fight with Islamic State (ISIL), as she has for years complained about the failure of the White House to bring Congress into the deliberations about questions of war and peace. But she is not satisfied with what Obama is proposing.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, February 3, 2020 The DNC's Move to Accommodate Bloomberg Stirs Outrage in Iowa
Bloomberg is spending heavily -- almost $200 million by the end of 2019 and much more since then -- on a national advertising campaign (including a $10 million Super Bowl ad) that aims at upping his poll numbers in time for later contests in delegate-rich states.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 26, 2012 Wisconsin 'John Doe' Probe: What Did Walker Know? When Did He Know It?
The investigation is still in the early stages of sorting through mountains of information obtained in FBI raids and related investigations of Walker aides and donors. That means that the steady flow of charges and complaints could extend the recall campaign that Walker is all but certain to face, after one million Wisconsinites petitioned for his ouster.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 8, 2015 Bernie Sanders Speaks
Two months into the campaign, everything about the Bernie Sanders candidacy -- the crowds, the poll numbers, the buzz -- is bigger than expected. That says something about Sanders. But it also says something about the prospects for progressive politics.
SHARE Monday, March 9, 2015 Making Investigations of Shootings by the Police Open, Transparent, Independent
this past weekend, when many gathered in Selma to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a great turning point in the struggle for racial justice in America, an Alabama legislator was interviewed on MSNBC about where the struggle stands today. She spoke of fights over voting rights and so many other issues. Yet she also spoke, hopefully, of efforts to pass legislation to provide for independent review of officer-involved deaths.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 10, 2020 Sanctions Are Economic Warfare
The sanctions put in place by this Administration against Iran are nothing less than economic warfare.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 2, 2015 Mr. Spock Was a McGovernite: Remembering Leonard Nimoy's "Live Long and Prosper" Politics
Nimoy did not mind trading on his "Star Trek" celebrity to appeal for McGovern. He even joked at campaign stops that, "I'm at a disadvantage. I've spent most of my previous life on Vulcan, so I don't know too much about the people in this country." But, of course, he did know a lot about the country and its politics.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 23, 2011 Mitt Romney, Dark Prince of Oligarchy, Battles the Demons of Democracy
Romney has, with his "corporations are people" comment, disqualified himself from serious consideration as a contender for any position of public trust. Romney's statement has clarified the urgent need for a constitutional amendment that renews the supremacy of "We the People."
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 13, 2013 Candidate or Not, Elizabeth Warren Has the Right 2016 Message
Warren recognizes something that too many prominent Democrats -- not just in the Clinton camp but across the leadership ranks of the party -- have a hard time fathoming. The problem is not that Democratic party is too populist. The problem is that the party is too cautious when populism is called for.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 12, 2017 Net Neutrality Is About Much More Than the Internet
Because our lives are now so digital, and because they are becoming so automated, the fight over net neutrality is really the fight over the whole of the future. It comes down to a simple question: Will that future be defined by civic and democratic values? Or will it defined by commercial and entertainment values?
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 14, 2019 Here's an Idea: Don't Pay Them
After someone at the State Department -- presumably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- blocked congressional testimony by a key witness to the president's scheming to strong-arm the Ukrainian government into investigating former vice president Joe Biden, Pocan pushed back with a proposal to withhold the salary of the obstructionist. Or obstructionists.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, August 3, 2015 Jeb Bush Admires a Really Lousy President -- And It's Not His Brother
It is no secret that Jeb Bush faces a challenge when the subject is presidents named "Bush." Of course the former governor of Florida has regard for his father and his brother. But he has faced frequent questioning about whether he would wage wars, neglect the economy, or otherwise manage things as did Bush 41 and Bush 43.
SHARE Thursday, November 30, 2017 Donald Trump's Most Vile Tweets Yet Deserve Global Condemnation
It actually takes some serious provocation to get the British government to call out the president of the United States. But Donald Trump brought the wrath of No. 10 Downing Street upon himself Wednesday by retweeting anti-Muslim videos posted by a leading figure in one of the most notorious far-right groups in the world.
SHARE Saturday, July 27, 2019 Puerto Ricans Are Fighting for the Democracy That They've Been Denied
The demonstrations are about more than just replacing a scandal-plagued governor. They represent a cry for what every American should want: government that reflects and represents the will of the people. The answer to that cry must extend beyond the resignation of Rosselló.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 6, 2017 Why Workers Everywhere Should Be Scared by Kentucky's Assault on Unions
With just two weeks to go before Donald Trump is inaugurated as president, Kentucky Republicans are providing a powerful reminder of the threat to working families that arises when Republicans gain "trifecta control" (taking charge of the executive branch and both legislative chambers) of the governing process. Union busting is on a fast track in Kentucky.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, July 24, 2015 For Republicans, the Real Nightmare Is a Third-Party Trump
America is a politically divided country. No Republican presidential nominee has won more than 51 percent of the vote since George H.W. Bush in 1988. If measurable numbers of the Republicans (and Republican-leaning independents) who now say they support Trump were to follow him out of the party, that could easily tip the political balance against the GOP in 2016.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 3, 2018 Donald Trump's Supreme Court Pick Can Be Blocked
While Pence can break ties, he cannot vote to create a tie. If the opposition can get a 51-49 vote against the president's nominee, the nominee is blocked. If one Republican does not vote (presumably Arizona's ailing Senator John McCain), then the opposition could combine 49 Democratic votes and one Republican vote to prevail on a 50-49 split.
SHARE Wednesday, August 12, 2020 Kamala Harris Will Shred Mike Pence in the Vice Presidential Debate
Vice President Mike Pence just got some very bad news. He's going to lose the vice presidential debate this fall, and that loss is going to do serious damage to the already diminished 2020 election prospects of the Republican Party.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 4, 2018 Donald Trump Lies About Everything, Including Steve Bannon
For the better part of three years, Steve Bannon framed Donald Trump's politics, prodding the political newcomer to embrace the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim stances of the Breitbart's alt-right community, serving as a very hands-on leader of the Republican nominee's fall campaign and then taking a place at the center of the new administration.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Bernie Sanders Is Back
The question of whether his campaign will transcend the questions about health and age that debate moderators will keep asking is going to be resolved by the voters. But on Tuesday night, it was clear that Bernie Sanders was ready, once more, to stake his claim on their serious consideration.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 3, 2014 Bernie Sanders' Bold Economic Agenda to Transform Politics
Sanders said he is convinced, after visiting not just Iowa and New Hampshire but Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Carolina, Mississippi, California and other states, that "there is a real hunger in grassroots America for a fight against the greed of the billionaire class, which is wrecking havoc on our economic and political system."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 9, 2018 Rashida Tlalib Is Running for Congress on a Mission to Expand Civil-Rights Protections
Tlaib will fight hard in the House, as she has on the campaign trail, for "Medicare-for-All that guarantees health care as a right, not a privilege," for "Debt-Free College and Vocational Training, for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, for strong unions, for ending corporate welfare and for overturning Citizens United."
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, October 8, 2012 Bernie Sanders: Obama and Biden Need to Get Specific About Social Security
Romney and Ryan can't be allowed to spin their way around this issue. Romney, with his selection of Ryan as his running-mate, identified the GOP ticket with proposals to shred the safety net. He'll have to renounce Ryan if he wants voters to imagine that Social Security would survive on his watch.
SHARE Tuesday, April 14, 2015 Hillary Clinton Is Still Too Cautious on Campaign Finance Reform
As she begins to frame out the themes of her 2016 presidential run, Hillary Clinton says she will make reform of the nation's "dysfunctional" campaign finance system a focus of her campaign. She is right to do so. Like most prominent Democrats, Clinton is too cautious on this issue. Until she gets clearer on it, she will face plenty of skepticism.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 12, 2014 Against Austerity in Detroit: "Water Is a Human Right"
Congressman John Conyers, D-Detroit, has aligned with the Detroit Water Brigade, a grassroots movement that is organizing to stop the shutoffs and to get water to families. They've drawn international support. Canadians living across the river in Windsor have been organizing to deliver water to Detroiters.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 18, 2015 Unlike Trump, Rand Paul Actually Made Some Sensible Points During the Debate
Rand Paul's great contribution to the debate was to offer an alternative to the bombast and bluster that came Wednesday night from many of the other contenders -- and that, frankly, comes on a regular basis from prominent figures who position themselves across the political spectrum.
SHARE Friday, March 13, 2020 Free Tests, Free Vaccines: Remove the Wealth Barriers to Fighting COVID-19
If we commit to provide the very best care and support for those who are most vulnerable, those who are most threatened physically and economically by the coronavirus outbreak, threads of human decency and common sense intersect to the benefit of the whole of society.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 29, 2012 The Battle for Congress
This year's campaign is about a lot more than an increasingly confident Barack Obama versus a bumbling Mitt Romney. Races for control of the House and Senate will determine the character of the next presidency -- no matter who sits in the Oval Office.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 27, 2012 Paul Ryan Takes a Side in the War on Poverty: He's Against What Works
Paul Ryan has a right to be wrong. He can believe that anti-poverty programs don't work. But he does not have a right to foster the fantasy that his opinion is grounded in reality. Unfortunately, media reports on the Republican vice presidential candidate's "big" speech on how to address poverty, focused on Ryan's glib one-liners rather than the fact that his basic premises are false.
SHARE Wednesday, June 10, 2015 Hillary Clinton and the New Politics of $15
This is the context in which Clinton's statement comes. Fast-food workers are organizing, and they are winning. Retail workers are organizing, and they are winning. Home-care workers are organizing. A movement has taken shape. It is real. And it has specific "asks" of candidates. The movement for wage hikes is changing American politics. Presidential candidates are taking notice.
SHARE Wednesday, January 15, 2020 Bernie Sanders Won't Play Your Game
Instead of accepting Trump's trade deal and compromises on saving the planet, Sanders said in Tuesday's debate, "We need some corporate responsibility here."
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 1, 2017 What Keith Ellison's Defeat Says About the DNC
Ellison had the bolder vision for merging the "demonstration energy" of the resistance to Trump with the "electoral energy" that Democrats must muster in 2018. His approach extended from the left-wing, small-donor-funded, millennial-energizing presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, which Ellison backed -- and which Perez, and most of the party establishment, opposed.
(21 comments) SHARE Monday, November 12, 2018 If Trump and Whitaker Undermine the Mueller Investigation, That's an Impeachable Offense
The impeachment power was established to prevent lawless presidents from abusing their authority in order to place themselves above justice. Donald Trump has been abusing his authority since the day he took office. But any attempt to remove Mueller would represent a next stage of abuse that could not be neglected or denied.
(23 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 4, 2009 Why Single Payer Advocacy Matters Now More Than Ever
The worst mistake that progressives could make in August would be to put their time and energy into getting members of Congress to agree to back a barely-acceptable compromise that could end up being unacceptable by the time the lobbyists and their political handmaidens finish with it.
Better to get representatives and senators to commit to back single-payer bills.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, November 2, 2015 "Make No Mistake About It, This Is a War"
Americans should be brought into this discussion, and the way to do that is by raising the issue in Congress. The House and Senate should reject the flimsy excuse of a 14-year-old AUMF and vote on whether to authorize the growing intervention that the administration is now implementing across Iraq and Syria.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 7, 2016 Donald Trump Is the Anti-Labor Day Candidate: Running Against Fair Wages, Worker Rights, and Unions
Unfortunately, this year's Republican Party ticket is composed of a pair of unreconstructed reactionaries -- and the Republican Party's platform is a litany of foolish dreams and ugly thoughts regarding the rights or workers and the trade union movement that defend those rights.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 21, 2012 Alexander Cockburn and the Radical Power of the Word
Alex, who has died too young in Berlin at age 71 after a two-year battle with cancer, loved writing--so much so that he missed just one deadline even as his illness progressed toward its final stages. His commitment to the craft--to the radical power of the word--extended far beyond his own contribution. He poked, prodded and inspired the rest of us.
SHARE Monday, January 8, 2018 A President Who Attempts to Ban Books That Expose Him Should Be Impeached
With his attempt to cause an author and a publisher to "immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination" of a book that does not meet with his approval, Donald Trump has shown a callous disregard for the First Amendment to the Constitution. This is what tyrants do, not American presidents.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 21, 2016 Sonia Sotomayor's Epic Dissent Explains What's at Stake When the Police Don't Follow the Law
While Justice Thomas struggled to excuse unlawful behavior by the police officer, and in so doing to upend the Fourth Amendment's so-called "exclusionary rule" (which has been accepted by the High Court for more than a century and which, historically, has prevented the admission of illegally obtained evidence at trial), Justice Sotomayor was absolutely clear in her dissent.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 8, 2017 Let's Talk About Paul Ryan's Scorching Duplicity on Gun Violence, Mental Health, and, Well, Everything
The most unsettling thing about Ryan's consistently dishonest responses to the issues that Congress should be addressing -- from gun violence, to access to health care, to tax reform, to matters of war and peace -- is that many in the media still treat the speaker as a credible commentator rather than a crudely manipulative politician.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, May 7, 2012 Wisconsin turns against Scott Walker
There is genuine, broad-based and statewide opposition to this governor in every region of Wisconsin -- especially in the western and northern parts of the state. Even as he has spent $21 million so far on the recall campaign, that opposition is growing.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 18, 2012 The Senate Can, and Should, Save the Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is not broke. It does not need to be downsized. Post offices do not need to be closed. Sorting centers do not need to be shuttered. Saturday service does not need to be scrapped. And hundreds of thousands of jobs in rural regions and urban neighborhoods do not need to be cut in a time of economic instability.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 3, 2020 AOC Tells Democrats How to Get It Right in 2020
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, luckily, has recognized this threat contained in the coded language about "purity tests" and countered it with a masterful defense of the politics of principle that will be essential to upend Trump and Trumpism.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 24, 2014 Thank Postal Workers by Fighting to Save the Postal Service
Congress failed to take what the unions representing postal workers identify as the most necessary immediate step to aid the postal service: initiation of "a one-year moratorium on a reduction in service standards and plant closings." Congress also failed to reach an agreement on a stand-alone postal bill.
SHARE Thursday, November 9, 2017 "I'm Everything Trump Hates," Says the New Mayor of Hoboken
If there is an American elected official who is the opposite of Donald Trump, it could well be Ravinder Bhalla. A Sikh-American lawyer with a record of fighting discrimination, Bhalla says, "I'm everything that Trump hates. A brown man wearing a turban, and a proud American with the know-how to stop his assaults on our country's values."
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 19, 2015 Bernie Sanders Has a Plan: Tax Wall Street and Make College Free
What has distinguished Sanders's Senate service and his presidential bid is a refusal to buy into the lie of austerity. Instead, the senator is identifying problems that need to be solved and identifying where the money to solve them can be found.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 20, 2017 The Supreme Court Takes Up the Question of Whether Gerrymandering Is Unconstitutional
Because the Electoral College can upset the results of the popular vote for president of the United States, it is possible for a Donald Trump to lose by almost 3 million votes and still end up in the Oval Office. That's unfair and dysfunctional. And that is not the only example of unfairness and dysfunction in American electoral politics.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 17, 2020 Sunday Night's Debate Failed the Coronavirus Test
Both Sanders and Biden gave the coronavirus debate too little time and, even when they were discussing issues such as bankruptcy law, they failed to circle back to the topic with which most Americans are justifiably obsessed.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Thomas Geoghegan Campaign. An Idea. A New Political Paradigm
Has support of Dr. Quentin Young, the Chicago physician who has led the charge for national health care; former Chicago Councilman Leon Depres, the "liberal conscience of Chicago" who took a young Tom Geoghegan on as a law partner decades ago; brilliant Chicago political strategist and activist Don Rose, who with Geoghegan recognized the promise of Harold Washington's transformative Chicago mayoral campaigns.
SHARE Wednesday, February 26, 2020 Democrats How to Talk About Public Education
Elizabeth Warren enlivened and enlightened the 10th Democratic presidential debate with a soliloquy on supporting public education that reminded everyone who was paying attention that she is not just ready to govern, she is excited by the prospect.
(20 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 6, 2013 Progressives Push Back Against Obama's Social Security, Medicare Austerity
Obama proposes to squander his mandate in pursuit of a "grand bargain" with House Republicans -- a bargain that would replace the current approach to calculating cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients with a "Chained-CPI" scheme. The change will harm not just seniors, children and people with disabilities but a fragile economic recovery.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 3, 2014 With McCutcheon Ruling, An Activist Court Opts for Full-On Plutocracy
By going to the next extreme when it comes to questions of money in politics, the justices who make up the court's activist majority have opted for full-on plutocracy -- and it is unimaginable that this week's ruling will be the last assault by the justices who make up that majority upon the underpinnings of democracy.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 21, 2015 David Koch on the 2016 GOP Nominee: "It Should Be Scott Walker... But"
Despite David Koch's show of bravado on Monday, Walker may not be the strongest Republican contender against Clinton. And what matters most to the billionaire brothers in 2016 is not the race for the Republican nomination. It's the November race for control of the White House. To think otherwise is to imagine that the Kochs are starry-eyed idealists rather than focused and serious partisans.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 29, 2015 Lincoln Chafee Adds a Proposal to the 2016 Debate: "Let's Bring Edward Snowden Home"
Instead of trying to calculate which candidate might be advantaged and which candidate might not be advantaged by adding debates and opening up the process, it's better to simply recognize that the Democratic Party and America would benefit from more debates on edgier issues. Such as -- it is time to bring Edward Snowden home.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 27, 2016 Hillary Clinton Just Made History
There are those who say they want a woman president, just not this woman. There are those who say that this woman is the most uniquely qualified contender in history. In the latter category was Bill Clinton, who on Tuesday night hailed his wife as "a natural leader," "a good organizer." the best darn change-maker I've ever met in my life."
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, July 10, 2017 Donald Trump's Proposal to Partner With Putin on Cybersecurity Is a Joke
A response to cyber threats -- both external and internal -- is necessary. So, too, is a response to broader threats to the integrity of elections across the United States. Those threats go far beyond concerns that have arisen following allegations of Russian hacking. Trump's tweets are, at best, distractions from all of these issues.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 9, 2011 As Unemployment Spikes, Obama's Got a Bigger Problem Than the Debt Ceiling
The issue that Americans have been following closely, and will continue to follow straight through the 2012 election cycle, the issue that tops the polls on the list of concerns, is the jobs crisis. Americans are worried about unemployment and underemployment.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, December 19, 2014 What Bernie Sanders and Dwight Eisenhower Have in Common
A Congress that argues about whether the country can afford to pay for Food Stamps and nutrition programs just approved a Department of Defense bill that authorizes $585 billion in Pentagon spending for the 2015 fiscal year. If history is any indication, the actual spending total will turn out to be a good deal more than that once all the supplemental appropriations have been added.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, July 23, 2018 Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez Rally Kansas for a Working-Class Politics That Stands Up to the Kochs
When Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez stumped for congressional candidates James Thompson, a civil-rights lawyer from Wichita, and Brent Welder, a labor lawyer from Bonner Springs, they were not talking about outflanking ideological rivals or moving pieces on a political chessboard. They were talking about issues that matter to working Americans.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 26, 2014 Barbara Lee Was Right in 2001. She's Still Right Now.
It has been 13 years since Congresswoman Barbara Lee cast her lonely vote against authorizing President Bush to launch what she warned could be an ill-defined and endless war. Lee says Congress should have been in session on Capitol Hill. Instead of debating and voting on issues of war and peace, as the the Constitution requires, Congress fled Washington for the 2014 campaign trail.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 5, 2016 A Contested Convention Is Exactly What the Democratic Party Needs
A muscular appearance by Sanders and his delegates at the convention doesn't have to lead to bitterness. Historically, contested conventions--not carefully choreographed coronations--have led parties and their nominees to take more audacious positions and to excite broader electoral coalitions.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, February 6, 2017 Senator Tammy Baldwin Just Destroyed Scott Walker on Twitter
Walker has met his match in Baldwin, who answered the governor's round-the-clock repetition of Washington-insider talking points with a simple message: "This Wisconsin Senator is standing up for the people of Wisconsin, not powerful interests in DC."
SHARE Monday, August 27, 2012 Paul Ryan Struggles With the Inconvenient Demands of Democracy
The Ryan-Zerban debate has the potential be every bit as good as the Biden-Ryan debate. The question is whether Paul Ryan respects his Wisconsin constituents enough to join the debate -- and to actually ask for their votes. Such demands are inconvenient when you are a Republican "rock star" jetting around the country. But democracy can be inconvenient. And Ryan owes more to his constituents than photo opportunities.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 14, 2014 VIDEO: Elizabeth Warren Blasts Citigroup From the Senate Floor
One speech is never enough. One candidate is never enough. Before real change comes, politics must matter -- clearly and unequivocally for all Americans. And before politics can matter, parties must define themselves as more than mere treasuries for corporate campaign donations.
(12 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 21, 2018 If Nancy Pelosi Is the Most Progressive Candidate, She Should Be the Next Speaker
Pelosi is an able liberal who knows how to count votes -- at election time and on the floor of the House. She's often, though not always, on the right side of history. Yet even those who may disagree with Pelosi recognize that she was a strikingly effective speaker during Barack Obama's first two years in office.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 26, 2017 A Scrooge Walks Among Us
Dickens imagined that spirited prodding from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future would change Scrooge -- just as there are those today who imagine that a bit more enlightenment might cause even a Paul Ryan to reconsider his disregard for the unemployed, the underemployed, and the never employed.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, April 10, 2020 Bernie Sanders Changed Our Politics
Progressives did not get a President Sanders. But, as he suggested six years ago, they have changed the dynamic of politics for years and years to come.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 29, 2015 Russ Feingold Warns Against "Yet Another Rush Toward a Full-Scale Ground Invasion" of Syria and Iraq
It is possible to respond in rational and effective ways to even the most daunting of global challenges. It is possible to keep Americans safe while maintaining basic liberties. Feingold has always recognized this reality. The key is to bring this recognition to the fore -- not just in the 2016 campaign but in the policies that must be about a lot more than repeating old fantasies and making old mistakes.
SHARE Wednesday, December 7, 2016 Keith Ellison Is No Anti-Semite
The suggestion that Ellison, a Muslim who has been in the forefront of efforts to promote international dialogue and understanding, is a divisive figure who would have trouble working with Jewish Democrats is as absurd as it is unsettling.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 13, 2019 Jorge Ramos Was the Best Debate Moderator Yet
Jorge Ramos delivered a master class in how to make a presidential debate meaningful as the Democratic contenders clashed in Houston Thursday night. The Univision anchor asked tough questions and got unexpected, revealing, and instructive answers from presidential candidates whom he pushed beyond their comfort zones.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 24, 2016 The Democratic Platform Committee Now Has a Progressive Majority. Thanks, Bernie Sanders.
Win or lose in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders said, "we intend to win every delegate that we can so that when we go to Philadelphia in July, we are going to have the votes to put together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen."
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, August 31, 2015 Martin O'Malley Declares That the Democratic Debate Schedule Is "Rigged"
Calls for more debates are common from candidates who are trying to catch up with a front-runner -- in this case former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. But O'Malley upped the volume at the DNC meeting when he made the demand for more debates central to his remarks -- and central to an argument that the Democratic Party will be harmed by constricting the discourse.
SHARE Saturday, February 1, 2014 An Austerity Storm Hammers Georgia
Reasonable people can, and do, disagree about the role of government. But when we have politicians to make basic emergency preparations by saying they didn't want to be accused of harming commerce, the austerity mindset has taken hold. And it is not just trumping common sense, it is failing citizens, communities and the very businesses that misguided politicians say that they seek to serve.
SHARE Wednesday, January 3, 2018 Wisconsin-born Marcus Raskin shaped progressive politics of two centuries
Raskin drew leading intellectuals into the process of establishing a "rational program" for postwar liberalism that might "serve as a basis for writing a suggested Democratic Party platform for 1960 and as a campaign text for liberal candidates." They produced "The Liberal Papers," an ambitious agenda that Commentary magazine described as an "indication of a resurgent citizenry in America."
(14 comments) SHARE Friday, October 7, 2011 Should Obama Face a Challenge in the Democratic Primary?
It is not just unmet expectations that lead roughly a third of Democratic voters to tell pollsters Obama should face a primary challenge; it is also a sense that the president cannot energize the Democratic base and win in 2012 unless he is forced to define himself as a dramatically more progressive candidate.
(13 comments) SHARE Monday, February 13, 2017 Congressional Democrats Are Already Warning Trump About Impeachment
The Trump White House is rattled by any criticism, any expression of dissent. So it should come as no surprise that Trump aides have attacked the very mention of "impeachment" as "extreme rhetoric from a completely out-of-touch party." But there is nothing extreme about noting that impeachment was fashioned as a tool for holding members of the executive branch to account.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 30, 2015 Get Ready for Scott Walker ... and the Ruthless Politics of Walkerism
Walker likes to present himself as mission-driven ("I really think there's a reason why God put all these political thoughts in my head"), yet his approach to public service has always been robotically focused on the next campaign -- as opposed to a grand vision.
SHARE Thursday, August 20, 2015 Lincoln Chafee Keeps Ripping "Delusional" Neocons and Democrats Who Compromise With Them
Chafee is an internationalist. He's not advocating for an isolationist approach. An outspoken backer of the Iran nuclear agreement and a supporter of broader diplomatic initiatives, Chafee argues that the United States has a responsibility to work with international organizations to promote peace and justice in the Middle East and globally.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 15, 2018 These Members of Congress Are Trying to Visit Gaza -- Israel Should Let Them Do So
Mark Pocan (D-WI) said that he and his colleagues had yet to receive a response to the letter to the Israeli government. But, as the Gaza death toll was reported, the congressman said he was more determined than ever to press for permission to visit the Palestinian region. "We're still doing everything we can to get to Gaza," said Pocan. "It's more important now."
(11 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 29, 2016 Don't Ever Say Michelle Obama Didn't Warn You About Trump
There is no better Trump waiting to emerge at a critical point in the campaign. There is no nicer, more humane and responsible Trump waiting to take the oath of office. This is the Trump we've got. And, were he to be elected president, this is the Trump America would be stuck with. Don't say that Michelle Obama didn't warn you.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, March 2, 2012 Rush Limbaugh Owes Democracy an Apology
Limbaugh attacked Fluke for speaking up before Congress on an issue of national concern. Fluke stepped into the limelight not as an entertainer or a political player. She did not seek fame or fortune. She spoke up as a citizen. And that's what is so unsettling about Limbaugh's crude language and cruder stance as this controversial incident has exploded.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, May 4, 2018 Nurses Have a Prescription for the Democratic Party: Back Single Payer
Ohio's Dennis Kucinich has established a record of taking bolder and more controversial stances than most prominent Democrats. That unsettles some Democratic strategists, who worry openly about his electability. But the nurses like what they're hearing from the candidate on health-care issues -- and they're betting that a lot of Democratic and independent voters feel the same way.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 29, 2011 Supreme Court Removes Another Barrier to Corporate Ownership of Elections
After the Court's McComish ruling, citizens might ask: "And do you support the opinion that those corporations should always and in every instance be allowed to shout down citizens and candidates with whom they disagree?"
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, May 22, 2015 No Debate Equals No Democracy: Fast Track is a Crime
The vote Thursday by the Senate to shut down debate on a measure to provide Obama with this authority was the first step in the deconstruction of the democratic processes by which citizens can influence not just trade but economic policy.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 5, 2016 Trump and Ryan Deserve Each Other
Ryan had never represented southeast Wisconsin's first congressional district well because he has always chosen Wall Street over Main Street. As such, he has voted for trade deals that have been devastating for workers and communities in a district that has seen factory after factory close. He has voted for Wall Street bailouts while refusing to support basic investments in workers and communities in his district.
(23 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 30, 2014 Senate Plans Vote on Constitutional Amendment to Counter "Plutocracy" Politics
The most under-covered yet dynamic grassroots movement in the United States seeks to restore the right of citizens and their representatives to organize elections so the votes of the great mass of American citizens matter more than the dollars of billionaire campaign donors and multinational corporations.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 30, 2015 Martin O'Malley Attempts a Politics of Moral Duty
O'Malley says, "We are still capable of acting like the compassionate, and generous, and caring people our grandparents expected us to become and that our children need for us to be." That is a morals message, a values message, and it has appeal -- not just with Democrats but with a lot of Americans who might vote Democratic.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 19, 2012 Why Democrats Must Break With Obama on Social Security Cuts
Nancy Altman, founding co-director of Social Security Works--"They will cut Social Security not openly but by stealth--through a cruel cut known colloquially as the chained CPI." This is what Democrats--and most Republicans--said during the campaign they would never do. If Obama cuts the deal, he will, in the words of CREDO political director Becky Bond, be engaging in a "massive betrayal" of his own campaign commitments.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 26, 2014 An Inconvenient Political Truth: That St. Louis Prosecutor Is a Democrat
Long criticized for failing to adequately investigate complaints about the police, and for failing to demand accountability in cases of officer-involved shootings, McCulloch's approach to the grand jury inquiry was the subject of concern from the start. And the prosecutor sparked anger at the finish by delaying the announcement of the grand jury's decision deep into Monday evening.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, July 8, 2016 As Long as We're Taking Note of Trump's Anti-Semitic Tweeting, Shall We Address His Mussolini Messaging?
Instead of simply apologizing for sending messages that end up being celebrated by white supremacists, Trump invariably doubles down in defense of terrible tweets. On Wednesday, for instance, the Republican candidate made things worse when he announced that his critics were "sick" and suggested they had "bad tendencies."
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 25, 2012 Bernie Sanders (and 2 Million Angry Americans) Versus the Billionaires
The sense of urgency regarding money in politics was heightened Tuesday as petitions signed by 1,959,063 Americans who want Congress to act to "restore the democratic promise of America" were delivered by a broad consortium of groups that favor a constitutional amendment.
SHARE Wednesday, December 11, 2013 Nelson Mandela's Universal Declaration of Human Rights
At a time when the United States is engaged in an archaic debate over whether to even try and provide universal access to health care, most other countries well understand the absurdity of conditioning access to basic human needs -- including access to healthcare, housing and education -- on the ability to pay. That understanding was championed by Nelson Mandela.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 16, 2012 RNC Goes All In to Defend Wisconsin's Walker, but Where's the DNC?
If the Wisconsin recall is defeated, not because Walker or his austerity agenda was appealing but because he and the RNC and the Koch brothers were more committed, then the Democratic party will take a hard hit. Not just in Wisconsin but nationally. And there is a bottom line: if the DC Democrats don't "get" it, Wisconsin will only be the first of their frustrations in 2012.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, December 8, 2014 Bogus Bipartisanship: Congress Cooperates in the Service of Corporations
The problem with bipartisanship as it is currently understood is that, for the most part, cooperation in Congress serves the elites that already are living large thanks to federal tax policies that redistribute wealth upward. That was certainly the case this week, when the US House voted 378-46 for the so-called "Tax Increase Prevention Act."
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, November 23, 2012 Recognizing the Long Arc of Jesse Jackson Jr's Congressional Service
Jesse Jackson Jr. served his constituents and his conscience through 17 of the most demanding years in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives. He cast more courageous votes and stood on principle more consistently than the vast majority of his colleagues. His career has ended on a sad note.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 18, 2015 Oregon's Radical Innovation: Make Democracy Easy
According to a Brennan Center review last year, almost two dozen states have since 2010 enacted laws making it "harder to vote." And that is only the beginning of the story; The Nation recently reported that "From 2011 to 2015, 395 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 49 states." Lots of bad news for democracy, to be sure.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 8, 2015 Wisconsin Straw Poll: Clinton 49 Percent, Sanders 41 Percent
Since Sanders formally launched his campaign late last month with a Burlington, Vermont, event that drew an estimated 5,000 enthusiasts, the senator has attracted large crowds in New Hampshire, Iowa, and Minnesota. Most polls now have him running second to Clinton.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 24, 2016 Keith Ellison Says He Is Ready to Fight for Democracy in North Carolina -- and Across America
Ellison is not just another top Democrat. As a contender for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, he is signaling that he wants the DNC to take the lead in fights to write rules that favor (rather than thwart) democracy. Ellison makes a vital point when he argues that this battle must be at the very heart of the renewed mission of the Democratic Party.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 16, 2011 Supreme Court Blocks Rick Perry's Texecution of Inmate 'Based on the Color of His Skin'
Despite appeals to Perry -- and to the state's notorious Board of Pardons and Paroles -- Buck got no reprieve. Perry's "very thoughtful, very clear process" was about to kill a man sentenced to death at least in part because of his race. Perry could have granted the stay, but he refused.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 1, 2018 After a Dismal State of the Union, "We're Going to Shake Off Trump's Dark Shadow"
The president's address was a long and listless repetition of the right-wing themes that have defined his presidency: saber-rattling militarism, rejection of environmental sanity, neglect of domestic needs, and cruel stereotyping of immigrants. Trump's "nativist lies about immigrants" were reprehensible, and anyone who suggests this speech was "presidential" is lying to themselves. It was heartless and harmful.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 26, 2015 The Dickensian Politics of Trump and His Fellow Scrooges
Dickens imagined that spirited prodding from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future would change Scrooge -- just as there are those today who imagine that a bit more enlightenment might cause even the most rigid Republican to reconsider his disdain for the unemployed, the underemployed, and the never-employed.
SHARE Wednesday, September 4, 2013 "Nobody Wants This Except the Military-Industrial Complex"
The president has done a pretty good job of selling his plan to congressional leaders. He has not, however, sold it to the American people. Reflecting on the proposed intervention, Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Florida, allowed as how "nobody wants this except the military-industrial complex."
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, September 3, 2012 Paul Ryan's Labor Day Promise to American Workers: Candy and a Sports Schedule
A man asked, "Should I have to work the same wages as in China? Should I have to work for $1 an hour?"
Ryan tried to brush him off. But when the man persisted, Ryan said, "C'mon, we're all here to have a good time." When he was reminded that it was Labor Day, an appropriate time to discuss unemployment and the condition of workers, Ryan offered something: "Would you like some candy?Would you like a Packer-Badger schedule?"
SHARE Monday, March 13, 2017 Federal Court Rules Texas Gerrymandering Unconstitutional
Paul Ryan, who holds his seat thanks to gerrymandering in Wisconsin, won't approve of the court decision. But Americans who want sound policy on issues such as health care will. That's because there is a dawning recognition that gerrymandering is the enemy of responsive and responsible governance.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, January 18, 2016 Outcry Over the Austerity Crisis in Flint Grows
The first duty to Flint is immediate and thorough action to address the crisis. The second duty is a long-term commitment to care for all who have been harmed. The third duty is an allocation of federal and state resources to repair the damaged infrastructure of the city's water system. But there is a duty to hold Governor Snyder to account for choosing austerity over humanity.
SHARE Wednesday, July 23, 2014 Detroit's Fight for Water Rights Is Showing How to Battle (and Beat) Austerity
Last week, protests by Detroiters and allies from across the country focused local, national and international attention on the Detroit Water and Sewage Department's program of shutting off water service for thousands of low-income families that have fallen behind in paying bills.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 8, 2017 Paul Ryan's Pronouncements Are Not Enough; Congress Must Censure Trump and Confront White Supremacy
It is clearer than ever that the Trump administration will not lead. The president and his attorney general continue to use the politics of prejudice to divide Americans against one another -- most recently with the assault on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections for immigrants who were brought to this country as children.
SHARE Friday, September 13, 2013 How a Koch Brothers "Business League" Spent $236 Million to Frame the Debate
There's not much question that wealth rules the day. While banks and Wall Street insiders get bailouts, great American cities are driven into bankruptcy. There's not much question that money trumps intellect. What else could explain the focus of official Washington on billionaire-backed schemes that would "fix the debt" by lowering tax rates for billionaires while imposing "chained-CPI" cuts on retirees with fixed incomes?
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 8, 2014 This Is What Dollarocracy Looks Like
Democracy requires real campaigns between candidates and parties advancing distinct positions. It doesn't work when the process is manipulated by big money, when candidates and parties try to tailor their messages to deceive rather than inspire voters. Nor does it work when journalism is so weak, so dysfunctional, so deferent to the money power that it facilitates a narrow and unsatisfying debate.
SHARE Monday, May 18, 2020 Democracy Dies in Dysfunction
This president thrives on chaos and fear, and the Covid-19 pandemic has created plenty of both. The virus that led 16 states to postpone primaries this spring could resurface in time to disrupt the November elections.
SHARE Friday, July 10, 2015 What Is Scott Walker Trying to Hide?
Walker danced around questions about whether he or his aides were involved in the ham-handed attempt to make it dramatically harder for citizens and journalists to review his official actions at a point when he is stepping onto the national stage. That's understandable. Getting caught out on an attempt to undermine open government is not usually considered the right move on the eve of announcing one's presidential candidacy
(24 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 20, 2013 This President Can -- and Must -- Claim a Mandate to Govern
After a 2012 election campaign that his Republican foes portrayed as a referendum on the role of government, Obama has a mandate to make government work again for the American people. His inaugural address should claim that mandate with all the passion and all the determination that FDR brought to the mission 76 years ago.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 29, 2013 Holiday in Austerity Land: 1.3 Million Americans Lose Jobless Benefits
Because Congress accepted Ryan's crude calculus, 1.3 million jobless Americans were abandoned on December 28 by a government that could, and should, have assisted them. And if Ryan continues to get his way, unemployment benefits will end in coming months for an additional 1.9 million Americans. In other words, this is cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, May 29, 2020 Trump's Social Media Executive Order Shows Just How Low He'll Go to Win
To get the votes he needs, Trump has to be able to convince a wider portion of the electorate that factual reports of his wrongdoing and incompetence are part of a media conspiracy to dislodge him from the White House.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, August 13, 2012 The Republican Right Gets What it Wanted: A Ryan-Romney Ticket
The Ryan selection moves the Grand Old Party harder to the right than at any time since 1964, when the true believers got a nominee, a platform and 39 percent of the vote. Democrats are no longer running against Romney and a ticket mate. They are running against a pairing that, definitionally if not officially, would better be described as the Ryan-Romney ticket.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 7, 2015 The TPP Prioritizes the "Rights" of Corporations Over Workers, the Environment, and Democracy
Congress will have a chance to vote on the TPP. There will be immense pressure from corporate lobbies and the White House to simply say "yes." There will be immense spin. The bottom line is as it has always been: A trade agreement that rests power with multinational corporations, rather than with the people and their elected representatives, is a bad deal.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 14, 2019 The House Judiciary Committee Approves Articles of Impeachment
The people of the United States have every reason, and every right, to expect to be fulfilled by members of a legislative branch that is supposed to check and balance the executive branch.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 2, 2018 There Is an Alternative to Brutal Austerity in Puerto Rico
The legislation that Sanders is promoting will not solve every problem facing Puerto Rico. But it is a dramatically more humane and democratic response than the pain imposed by Paul Ryan's disastrously irresponsible austerity board.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 13, 2017 An Article of Impeachment Based on Trump's Obstruction of Justice Is Now Circulating in the House
Congress has sufficient grounds to hold President Trump to account for obstruction of justice. The proper means for holding him to account is an impeachment process, one that is informed by lessons from the Congress that sought to hold Richard Nixon to account after his Watergate-era wrongdoing was revealed.
SHARE Thursday, October 26, 2017 Trump's FCC Chair Moves to Undermine Journalism and Democracy
Pai announced that the FCC would vote as soon as November on a proposal to eliminate the cross-ownership rules and usher in a new era of media monopoly. The assault on cross-ownership rules is the ultimate government intervention, as it will clear the way for large corporations to gobble up media outlets, consolidate newsrooms and diminish competition.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, December 7, 2012 GOP, Koch Brothers Sneak Attack Guts Labor Rights in Michigan
In the state where workers sat down in Flint General Motors plants 75 years ago and emboldened the industrial labor movement that would give birth to the American middle class, Republican legislators on Thursday voted to gut basic labor rights. The determination to fight for labor rights runs deep in Michigan. It's a part of the state's history, and UAW President King says it is far from finished.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 20, 2015 Justin Trudeau Just Showed American Democrats How to Win the Next Election
American Democrats can learn from the new politics and the new economic messaging seen in a neighboring North American country that faces many of the same challenges confronting the United States. And they should recognize that Justin Trudeau was right when he echoed Abraham Lincoln in his Monday evening victory speech and declared: "You can appeal to the better angels of our nature and you can win while doing that."
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, August 19, 2011 Bernie Sanders: America Needs a Bold Jobs Plan
Sanders used the convention address to outline a bold, progressive agenda for addressing it. That agenda begins with a commitment to "rebuilding the nation's crumbling infrastructure, transforming our energy system, and rewriting our trade policy so that American products -- not jobs -- are our number-one export."
SHARE Sunday, April 22, 2012 Not Just Labor Rights; Scott Walker Is Also Dismantling Women's Rights
Because Walker signed anti-choice laws enacted by legislative Republicans who do not believe women can or should make decisions regarding their own bodies, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has decided to suspend providing certain basic health services to women.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 23, 2020 Ron Johnson's Ready to Wreck the Postal Service
Everyone in America is angry about the dismantling of the Postal Service by Donald Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Except, of course, for Ron Johnson.
SHARE Thursday, January 15, 2015 Obama's Right to Embrace the Public Option for Closing the Digital Divide
In this digital age, for the maintenance of meaningful communications and robust debate -- need to recognize that this debate is about more than Internet infrastructure. What the president is talking about is developing and maintaining the democratic infrastructure of the United States in the twenty-first century.
SHARE Friday, February 24, 2012 Scott Walker's Koch Connection Goes Bad
It is no secret that Koch and his billionaire brother, Charles, have long been Walker supporters. Their Koch Industries PAC was the second-highest donor to Walker's 2010 campaign, donating $43,000. The PAC also gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which streamed spending into Wisconsin on behalf of Walker's election.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 15, 2012 Paul Ryan: Dick Cheney With a Smile
Cheney moved to Washington as soon as he could and became a political careerist, working as a Capitol Hill aide, a think-tank hanger on and then a member of Congress. Ryan followed the same insider trajectory. Cheney's a hyper-partisan Republican with a history of putting party loyalty above everything else. Ryan's an equally loyal GOP mandarin.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, June 18, 2012 Paul Ryan (and Mitt Romney) Versus the Nuns
On the day after Romney and Ryan visit Janesville, Catholic nuns will come to town as part of a national "Nuns on the Bus" tour organized to highlight efforts to ease the conditions of low-income Americans. Ryan has tried to suggest that his proposals are in keeping with Catholic social-justice teaching; the nuns do not agree.
SHARE Wednesday, May 28, 2014 Maya Angelou's Civil Rights Legacy
Dr. Maya Angelou was one of the wonders of the world. Her personal story was so rich, so varied, so remarkable in its diversity of experience that Walt Whitman must have imagined her when he spoke of the poet containing multitudes. Her artistic accomplishments alone would have been more than sufficient for a lifetime.
SHARE Wednesday, February 8, 2012 'Anybody But Romney' Wins Everywhere, as GOP Turnout Tanks
Rick Santorum may have won beauty contests Tuesday in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, but he won't even be on the ballot for delegate-rich contests in states such as Indiana and Virginia. He's still running for vice president, or maybe a cabinet post.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 13, 2021 The Senate Has Failed America
Forty-three Republicans voted against finding Trump guilty, preventing the Senate from achieving the two-thirds majority needed to hold the most dangerous and destructive president in the country's history to account for his seditious acts.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 9, 2016 For Sanders Supporters the Struggle Has Always Been About Issues -- and the Struggle Continues
Sanders supporters are weighing in -- offering proposals on everything from military spending to fracking to fundamental campaign finance reform and Middle East peace. They want a drafting committee made up of progressives, some aligned with either campaign and others unaligned, to produce what Sanders suggests can be "the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen."
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 12, 2018 How Did the Supreme Court Give a Green Light to Massive Voter Suppression?
On Monday, the Court released its ruling in the case of Hustad v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, an essential test of the Court's stance regarding voting rights. With the critical 2018 election just months away, the Court's activist majority gave Republican secretaries of state a go-ahead to resume the antidemocratic practice of purging fully qualified voters from registration rolls.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 5, 2020 Stop Playing Games With the Mangled Iowa Caucus Count
If it were caucus night and results were being released as they arrived at the party headquarters, few people would jump to conclusions before the count was final, because built into expectations about election nights is the possibility that a reported result will be corrected. But caucus night has passed.
(16 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 29, 2013 Meet Ron Johnson, the Randiest of the Ayn Rand Republicans
There is ample evidence to suggest that leading Republican members of the House and Senate are more familiar with the fiction of Ayn Rand than with the self-evident truths of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or Abraham Lincoln. Rand's books are an ideological touchstone for Republicans who have built their politics around her cold delineation of distinctions between idealized "makers" and disdained "takers."
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 19, 2019 Kirsten Gillibrand Has Led the Fight to Maintain Civilian Control of the Military
Gillibrand makes a big deal about the importance of maintaining strict civilian control of the military, as it is outlined in a Constitution that sought to chain the dogs of war by requiring that the Congress declare the intent of the United States to engage in military conflicts and by empowering an elected president to serve as commander in chief.
(13 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 25, 2018 These Are the Worst of Times for American Journalism
A decade ago, in what was not a particularly great time for the newspaper industry, newsrooms employed more than 71,000 people. Today, they employ barely 39,000. And, as author Thomas Frank says, "The newsroom layoffs never end." The key word there is newsrooms.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 12, 2009 David Simon, Arianna Huffington and the Future of Journalism
Nation Editor's Note: John Nichols testified before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy at its April 21 hearing on "A New Age for Newspapers: Diversity of Voices, Competition and the Internet."
(14 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 2, 2017 If Jeff Sessions Will Not Resign, He Should Be Impeached
Jeff Sessions disrespected the basic premises of that experiment and disregarded the Constitution. He did so in pursuit of a position: that of attorney general of the United States. He obtained that position under false pretenses. It is now time to relieve him of his responsibilities as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer.
SHARE Tuesday, February 3, 2015 People Power Is Winning Net Neutrality
No one should be naive. Net neutrality is not being guaranteed as a gift to citizens and consumers. It is being won by citizens and consumers. That win must be assured in the weeks to come. And it must be defended in the months and years to come.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 26, 2017 "The Economist" Just Downgraded the US From a "Full Democracy" to a "Flawed Democracy"
The resistance to Trump and Trumpism begins with opposition to immediate threats to civil rights and civil liberties, and to the dismantling of safety-net policies, programs, and protections. But it must also address the threat posed by an ongoing decay of democracy that has as its consequence the empowerment of a Donald Trump and the rise of Trumpism.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 28, 2013 On Syria: "Congress Must Accept Its Responsibility, Not Abdicate It"
For too long, Congress has been a bystander as successive administrations have involved the United States in conflicts that should be carefully considered. Democratic Congressman Peter Welch, who came to Congress as an outspoken critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has for a number of years argued that "it is time for the United States to return to a responsible foreign policy."
SHARE Thursday, November 7, 2013 The Scott Walker Effect: Helping Democrats Win and Republicans Lose
Walker was not invited for a final weekend surrogate swing in New Jersey to campaign for Republican Governor Chris Christie. Though he campaigned for Walker in 2010 and 2012, Christie did not appear to be seeking to associate himself with the Wisconsinite as Christie was organizing a re-election run that was managed with an eye toward jump-starting the New Jersey governor's own Republican presidential bid.
SHARE Thursday, December 27, 2018 The Trouble With Patrick Shanahan
Donald Trump finished out the year by doubling down on what many in Washington saw is his most unsettling act of 2018: a break with Secretary of Defense James Mattis. That required Trump to name an acting Secretary of Defense, and he chose Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. if there was a living, breathing embodiment of the military-industrial complex, it was Patrick Shanahan, a 31-year Boeing employee.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 21, 2011 A War Powers Challenge to Obama's Libya Project
Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, swear to defend and abide by a Constitution that gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare wars. That oath demands that they reassert the role of the House and Senate in maintaining the system of checks and balances that the founders outlined "to chain the dogs of war."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 6, 2018 Beto O'Rourke Is an Antidote to Donald Trump's Bigotry
Just hours after Donald Trump played the cruelest card of the 2018 midterm election season -- announcing that he would try to use an executive order to overturn the constitutional guarantee that people born in the United States are US citizens -- Beto O'Rourke called the president out for again injecting bigotry into American politics.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 25, 2014 Secret $700,000 Donation Has Scott Walker Scrambling to Address "Appearance of Corruption"
In Wisconsin, a state that historically took great pride in its clean elections and high ethical standards, voters have a right to ask, based on records and revelations, whether it really is all that ridiculous to find in them "an appearance of corruption."
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, October 23, 2015 Not Everyone on the Benghazi Committee Was an Embarrassment
The Republicans, Cummings said, "are squandering millions of taxpayer dollars on this abusive effort to derail Secretary Clinton's presidential campaign." And to confirm his point, the congressman recalled the admissions of partisan intent and manipulation by Republican majority leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican Congressman Richard Hanna, and the conservative Republican investigator for the committee.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 5, 2013 Constitution? What Constitution? Paul Ryan Refuses to Provide for the General Welfare
It is difficult to imagine a recent crisis that more precisely fit the definition of "calamity" than Superstorm Sandy and its aftermath, which has left hundreds of thousands of Americans with destroyed or damaged homes and made it impossible for thousands of businesses to operate along the East Coast of the United States.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 19, 2018 President Body Slam Needs to Be Checked and Balanced
America needs a Congress that will challenge this president when he attacks freedom of the press, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 26, 2013 Three Strategies to Block the Gerrymandering of the Electoral College
It's time for state attorneys general who have track records of supporting democracy initiatives, such as New York's Eric Schneiderman, and state elections officials, such as Minnesota's Mark Ritchie, to start looking at legal strategies to challenging the Priebus plan in particular and gerrymandering as it influences national elections. This really is an assault on the one-person, one-vote premise of the American experiment.
SHARE Wednesday, November 8, 2017 Donald Trump's Best Day Was a Year Ago -- Sad!
Trump proved in 2016 that it is not enough to run against him. Instead, it is necessary to run on policies that are diametrically opposed to Trumpism: for taxing the rich and busting up monopolies, for higher wages and Medicare for All, for averting wars and addressing climate change -- and for reforming a political system so corrupt that it produced a President Donald Trump.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 4, 2014 Darrell Issa's Cruelest Cut: A Seriously Cynical Attack on the Postal Service
Ending mail delivery of the weekend would dramatically undermine the ability of the postal service to meet the demands of modern shipping and communications. The likely result would be a rapid shift of traffic to private firms, which contribute heavily to politicians but which do not provide the universal, low-cost service that is the hallmark of the postal service.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 7, 2014 Voters Say "Yes" to the Republican Who Said "No" to Wall Street
House Speaker John Boehner and his cronies removed North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones from the House Financial Services Committee in late 2012. Jones, who had opposed bank bailouts and favored Wall Street regulation, did not go quietly. He spoke up about the purge and made little secret of his sense that his biggest "sin" in the eyes of the party leadership was his refusal to bow to the demands of big campaign donors.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 30, 2015 Paul Ryan, R-Wall Street
In 2008, Ryan rounded up Republican votes for the Wall Street bailout, which responsible conservatives recognized as crony capitalism at its worst. Ryan begged Republicans to back the bailout, warning that the United States might be "standing at the edge of this abyss" if Congress did not immediately steer tax dollars to the bankers who were crashing the economy.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 20, 2020 The Next Voter Suppression
Democrats need to channel the anger of Wisconsinites forced to choose between voting and safety into a clear warning that Trump and his allies will stop at nothing in their deadly pursuit of power.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, June 15, 2015 Magna Carta Said No Man Is Above the Law, but What About Corporations?
If we respect the notion that the rule of law must apply to all -- the most generous interpretation of the premises handed down across the centuries from those who on June 15, 1215, forced "the Great Charter of the Liberties" upon King John of England at Runnymede -- then surely it must apply to corporations.
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 11, 2014 A "Fast Track" to Less Democracy and More Economic Dislocation
In recent decades, Congress has frequently surrendered its authority when it comes to the shaping of trade agreements. By granting so-called "fast-track authority" to the White House, Congress opts itself out of the process at the critical stage when an agreement is being struck and retains only the ability to say "yes" or "no" to a done deal.
SHARE Wednesday, September 13, 2017 "Single Payer Is a Rational Health-Care System": Exclusive Interview With Bernie Sanders on his "Medicare for All" Plan
There should be no question about this, Republicans and the insurance industry and the drug companies will be spending a fortune to try and confuse the American people... Our task is to counter the money that is spent, to counter the confusion...with a plan that responds to the needs of the great majority of the American people. That's what single payer does.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 30, 2018 Birthright Citizenship Is in the Constitution
On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Yet, this week, as part of his ongoing campaign to divide and conquer the country he is supposed to serve, the president is claiming that he has the power to override the Constitution with an executive order.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 1, 2019 Bernie Sanders Is Hitting Donald Trump Where It Hurts
What Sanders and his supporters are doing is sly. They won't neglect the primaries and caucuses that are essential to winning the nomination. But instead of focusing exclusively on the competition with other Democrats, they are messing with Trump -- with an eye toward exposing the president's lies and reframing the fight for the battleground states.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 3, 2011 With Osama Found, a Congresswoman Asks: Where's the Afghanistan Exit Strategy?
Wasn't the point of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden? And if that was the point then, isn't it time -- with the news that Osama has been tracked down not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan -- to bring the troops and the war dollars home?
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 19, 2012 The Genius of McGovern's "Come Home, America" Vision
Forty years on, McGovern's vision that America might come home to the ideals that had nourished it from the beginning is less a matter of hope than necessity. The United States can no longer afford the madness of the defense and security spending that, according to the National Priorities Project, have cost this country $7.6 trillion since September 11, 2001.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 28, 2018 Breaking a Promise, Tom Perez Puts His Thumb on the Scale for Andrew Cuomo
Perez articulated a high standard -- no thumbs on the scale -- which was exactly what was needed. Then, on Thursday, Perez put his own thumb on the scale in a spirited primary -- in fact and in perception. In so doing, the DNC chair undermined confidence in the Democratic Party at a point when it simply cannot afford to be seen as a party that maintains high standards of fairness except when it doesn't.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 23, 2020 Want to Fight Covid-19? Save Local Journalism.
In states across the country, governors who are ordering people to shelter in place as part of the response to the coronavirus outbreak have recognized that journalists working for newspapers, community radio stations, and other media outlets provide essential services in a time of immense uncertainty.
SHARE Friday, February 3, 2017 Donald Trump Cannot Manage a Phone Call With a Longstanding Global Ally
There is no reason to believe that Turnbull was looking to rumble with the new president of the United States. That's not this prime minister's style. A savvy political veteran who knows how to keep things cool, he is comfortable debating with people from across the political spectrum; and he is skilled at engaging in civil discourse with dissenters and critics of his policies.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 14, 2014 Bernie Sanders Is Beating the Austerity Hawks
The austerity hawks who are so good at thinking up reasons to go to war but so bad at paying for them -- and so very bad at meeting commitments to those who serve -- will keep raising objections. House Republicans are making predictable demands for "offsets" equaling the cost of the VA initiative, peddling the fantasy that other programs must be cut in order to find the money to aid veterans.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 19, 2015 Will Rahm Emanuel Buy Another Term as Mayor of Chicago?
Emanuel won it all in February, 2011. He's spending heavily -- nearly $1 million for TV ads in the last week of the campaign -- to win it all once more in February, 2015. That would shut the debate down at the mayoral level and free Emanuel up to steer his considerable energies and considerable resources into securing a City Council super-majority that would rubber-stamp his every demand.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 29, 2017 Only One House Republican is Taking a Stand Against Devin Nunes' Tainted Investigation
If Ryan took his duties as speaker seriously, he would remove the compromised chair from the Intelligence Committee. But Ryan, the Republican political careerist from Wisconsin who bid for the vice presidency in 2012, has made it clear that party loyalty in general, and loyalty to Trump in particular, takes priority over his constitutional responsibilities.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 17, 2015 After One Good Debate, Democrats Need to Schedule a Lot More of Them
Democrats have a lot to debate, and they can do so in a way that is potentially beneficial to front-runner Hillary Clinton and to the candidates who would seek to displace her. The great danger for the Democratic Party is not more debates, more engagement; it is that so much of the energy and the focus of the 2016 campaign seems to be on the Republican side.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 10, 2020 "Mass Unemployment Is a Policy Choice"
The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression, as most businesses shut down or severely curtailed operations to fight the deadly coronavirus. The unemployment rate doesn't reflect the millions still working who have had their hours slashed or their pay cut.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 27, 2017 Neil Gorsuch's Own Testimony Clearly Disqualifies Him
Even those who might be inclined to approve Gorsuch under different circumstances cannot accept the illicit manner in which his nomination has been advanced. The politics of obstruction and lying that Republicans -- including Donald Trump -- employed to block Merrick Garland's nomination corrupted the process.
SHARE Monday, April 9, 2018 Donald Trump Actually Thinks He's Popular
Trump may experience temporary fluctuations in his approval ratings, but they are never great -- or even all that good. In fact, when it comes to approval ratings, it certainly looks like Trump's best days were back in November of 2016, when he was on the losing end of a 54-46 measure of popular sentiment.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 6, 2018 The Right Way to Talk About Impeaching Donald Trump
As long as the constitutional crisis that Trump has already created remains unaddressed, it will be difficult to focus forward on addressing the real issues facing America, argues Ing, who says: "Democrats can flip the House in 2018. When that happens, our first order of business should be impeaching Trump and Pence, so we can begin to take America back to the future."
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 24, 2012 High Court Produces a Politics of, by and for Corporations
Strengthening the hand of unions maintains the commons. And it maintains democratic control over decisions made in our name as citizens. Strengthening the hand of corporations fences in the commons--and ultimately increases the prospect that they will be sold off to the highest bidder. This Court's majority is, by every measure, on the side of the highest bidder.
(19 comments) SHARE Monday, July 25, 2016 Debbie Wasserman Schultz Had to Go
Replacing this DNC chair had become a priority for a growing number of Democrats -- for Sanders backers, who believed she used her position to undermine the senator's candidacy; and for many Clinton backers, who were coming to see Wasserman Schultz as a divisive figure.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 20, 2017 Donald Trump Has No Mandate -- Sad!
Trump and his surrogates constantly claim a "landslide" victory that never happened and tear into critics who note that this emperor has no clothes. There is an ugly, authoritarian tenor to Trump's obsession with mandates and legitimacy. His overreactions are unsettling, even frightening.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, June 6, 2014 A Crisis to Address: Why the Senate's Discussing a Democracy Amendment
Big money creates a constrained and dysfunctional politics. The national circumstance is bad, and it will get worse. That's why citizens have been demanding dramatic change: a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's activism on behalf of a high-spending, low-turnout politics that shifts more and more power to economic and electoral elites.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 18, 2015 Bush and Cruz Want to Use Religious Tests to Bar Refugees From the US
More than two dozen Republican governors (and at least one Democrat) are now saying that their states do not want to accept Syrian refugees. Top congressional Republicans want to upend programs that have been developed to assist in the resettlement of refugees. And Republican presidential contenders are openly calling for an official policy of discrimination.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 28, 2018 Bernie Sanders Wants the Senate to End "Unauthorized and Unconstitutional" US Aid to the Saudi Assault on Yemen
With increased global attention to the metastasizing crisis in Yemen -- where the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs now says that "an alarming 22.2 million people in Yemen need some kind of humanitarian or protection assistance" -- there have been signs that US officials are growing uncomfortable with the excesses of the Saudis.
SHARE Thursday, December 6, 2018 The Republican Party Has Become "a Conspiracy to Seize Power"
The Republican Party has stopped progressing. Indeed, it has regressed so thoroughly that it is now anathema to its founding self. The Republican Party is no longer "the party of Lincoln."
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, October 12, 2015 The Presidential Debate Question No One Is Asking: "Are You a Capitalist?"
Despite the best efforts of political and media elites to dismiss and diminish socialist ideas, polls show that Americans are increasingly open to the ideology. Polls of millennials in recent years have found slightly higher levels of approval for socialism than capitalism.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 27, 2016 Hillary Clinton Prepared for the Debate, and Showed She Is Prepared for the Presidency
The dialogue turned to Trump's undisclosed tax returns and unpaid bills, his divisive response to racial justice and policing issues, his birther fantasies and his unsteady approach to matters of war and peace, Trump could not get his groove back. He kept interrupting and grimacing and grumbling and sniffing.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 13, 2012 A clarion call for renewal of democracy
Vermonters went to their town meetings last week deciding to take on the corrupt campaign system that is steering the republic toward catastrophe. And they have done so in a voice loud enough to be heard all the way to Washington.
SHARE Monday, February 29, 2016 Bernie Sanders Just Won Three of His Biggest Endorsements in a Long Campaign
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich announced his support for Sanders, writing that the senator is "leading a movement to reclaim America for the many, not the few. And such a political mobilization -- a 'political revolution,' as he puts it -- is the only means by which we can get the nation back from the moneyed interests that now control so much of our economy and democracy."
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 27, 2013 CISPA Is "Dead for Now," Thanks to a Left-Right Coalition for Online Privacy
Described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as "Digital Big Brother," CISPA is a sweeping proposal to bypass existing privacy law to enable corporations to spy on personal communications and to pass sensitive user data to the government.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 23, 2019 Bernie Sanders Does Not Need to Apologize for Opposing Wars
Sanders used his Meet the Press appearance to present himself as a candidate whose inclination is to prevent rather than initiate wars. That does not make Sanders a pacifist; he has not opposed every call to arms. But he has generally been on the side of diplomacy as opposed to armed conflict.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 20, 2013 Bernie Sanders Might Just Have to Run for President
Whether Sanders runs or not, the prospect of such a speak-truth-to-power presidency is an appealing one. And the senator from Vermont is right: Americans do not just deserve such an option. In these times, they need a serious progressive alternative to the ugly politics of austerity -- and the empty politics of compromise.
SHARE Monday, August 6, 2012 Shootings at Sikh Temple Test the Founding Faith of America
Though the Sikh faith is the fifth-largest religion in the world, its followers are sometimes confused for Muslims and targeted with the same sorts of discrimination and violence that has afflicted followers of Islam.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 15, 2009 The Case for Kenosha
Historians say it was in Kenosha, not Detroit, that cars began "to look like cars."
"Very few Obama appointees have ties to the country's core productive sectors: manufacturing, agriculture, energy. Veterans of investment banking, academia or the public sector, they seem to see the economy more in terms of making media, images and trades--as opposed to actually making things."
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 3, 2013 Educator Who Challenged Scott Walker's Vouchers Agenda Wins 61-39 in Wisconsin
Complaining that the previous Walker budget had cut $1.8 billion from public schools, Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers argued that it was wrong for the governor to use his 2013-15 state budget plan to essentially freeze public school funding while hiking spending for private voucher school students by as much as $1,400 each. Voters responded by giving Evers a 61-39 victory statewide.
SHARE Monday, June 1, 2015 NSA Reform? No Way! Scott Walker Wants "Something Closer to the Patriot Act"
The debate about domestic spying has evolved a great deal since just one senator, Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, voted against the Patriot Act in 2001. Now, there is broad concern about mass surveillance, in the Democratic and the Republican parties. But there is one throwback candidate, Scott Walker, who "would prefer to have something closer to the Patriot Act intact."
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, November 4, 2013 Chris Christie's Bully Politics: "I Am Tired of You People"
It is striking that, as the election comes closer, and as Christie dramatically increases his spending and campaigning, his numbers are declining. Maybe it has something to do with treatment of teachers. Since becoming governor in 2010, Christie done a lot of yelling at teachers. Christie can't control his urge to bash teachers.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 29, 2014 A Kentucky Objection to McConnell's Pandering to Millionaires and Billionaires
Within hours after the revelation of McConnell promising a room full of millionaires and billionaires that he would block minimum-wage increases, the extension of unemployment benefits and student-loan debt relief, his Democratic challenger was signaling that the senator would be held to account at home.
SHARE Friday, March 16, 2018 The One Thing Democrats Should Learn From Conor Lamb
At precisely the point when strong unions are needed to address mounting inequality and injustice, Republicans such as Ryan and Walker have positioned their party on the side of virulently anti-labor extremism of the Kochs. Unfortunately, too many Democrats have continued to mount only lukewarm defenses of unions. That's a mistake that has cost the party politically.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 11, 2013 Why Bernie Sanders Objects to Obama's Treasury Nominee
Sanders, who has a history of breaking with Democratic and Republican presidents on economic-policy issues, says Jack Lew is the wrong candidate for the Treasury post being vacated Tim Geithner, whose bias in favor of Wall Street was such that his 2009 nomination was opposed by Sanders, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold and West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 25, 2018 The Most Important Story This Month Was Not the Government Shutdown
For all the tumult over the shutdown, a more significant story was taking place far from the Beltway -- in communities where the resistance has been gaining strength and focus before a midterm election that could hold the president and his allies to account.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, August 1, 2016 Sherrod Brown Teaches Democrats How to Demolish Trump's False-Prophet Populism
There is a good case to be made that Sherrod Brown is the steadiest and most effective critic of the TPP in Congress. As such, he brings absolute clarity to debates about trade policy, worker rights and income inequality. Sherrod Brown is the real deal. And that makes him an exceptionally authentic and effective critic of Donald Trump.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 11, 2016 The Republican Party Just Crashed and Burned in California
GOP leaders had plenty of explanations for why they could not get their act together in California. But the fact is that the party has been in decline for a number of years. The national party's sharp right turn has not helped. But there's also a local factor with national consequences--especially in this year of Trump.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 2, 2016 Hillary Clinton Just Delivered the Strongest Speech of Her Campaign -- and the Media Barely Noticed
In this absurd campaign season, when media outlets devote hours of time to arguments about which Republican candidate insulted which wife, about violent and irresponsible campaign aides, about whatever soap-opera scenario comes to mind, thoughtful discussions of issues get little attention. And deep and detailed discussions of issues get even less coverage.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 6, 2011 A Top Democrat Actually Gets It: Biden Makes a Stand With Labor
Condemning Republicans for launching what he described as an anti-worker "onslaught," the vice president shouted: "The middle class is under attack, but labor is under the most direct assault in a generation!" Without organized labor, Biden said, the fight for working America is lost.
SHARE Monday, February 23, 2015 Scott Walker Says He'll Sign ALEC-Echoing "Right to Work" (For Less) Legislation
What the statement from Walker's office reveals is what the governor would not say when he was running for re-election in 2014 but what he will say as a 2016 Republican presidential prospect. Walker is what he has always been: a longtime supporter of this agenda "who co-sponsored right-to-work legislation as a lawmaker and supports the policy."
SHARE Monday, June 25, 2012 Supreme Court: More Elections for Sale
The US Supreme Court may still retain some familiarity with the Constitution when it comes to deciding the nuances of cases involving immigration policy and lifetime incarceration. But when it comes to handing off control of American democracy to corporations, the Court continues to reject the intents of the founders and more than a century of case law to assure that CEOs are in charge.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 9, 2012 The Wisconsin Uprising
The grievances imposed upon Wisconsin over the past year by Scott Walker and his cronies represented way stations on the road map to ruin, not just for one state but for an American experiment that has always been more fragile than those Paine derided as sunshine patriots would have us imagine.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 2, 2014 When the Republicans Really Were the Party of Lincoln
The tragedy of the Republican Party is that when Democrats began to do the right thing, key figures in the GOP welcomed Thurmond into its fold and began to craft not just a "Southern strategy" but a politics of reaction. This anniversary belongs to both parties -- to Democrats who recall Johnson's leadership, to Republicans who recall the role played by congressional Republicans.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, September 4, 2015 Scott Walker Is Trying to Save His Failing Campaign by Bashing Unions
Walker's agenda, which was always based on economic fabulism, has been revealed as political fantasy as well. He has no story to tell from Wisconsin. His "reforms" did not work. His approval rating has fallen to 39 percent in statewide surveys, and 75 percent of Wisconsin Republicans tell pollsters they are not backing Walker for their party's 2016 nomination.
SHARE Monday, February 24, 2014 UAW's Challenge To Republican Political Interference Is About More than VW Vote
At a time when Republican governors and legislators across the country are using the authority of government to undermine union organizing and to weaken existing unions, it is entirely appropriate -- and increasingly necessary -- to raise objections to obvious abuses of power and the public trust. The Volkswagen vote provides a glaring example of the extremes to which anti-union politicians will go.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, November 14, 2014 Here's a 2014 Mandate: Pass an Amendment to Remove Big Money From Politics
America is destined to repeat from election cycle to election cycle the sordid process by which our politics and our governance are bartered off to the highest bidders in ever-more expensive auctions for the souls of elected leaders and both major parties.
SHARE Tuesday, March 14, 2017 This House Republican Just Endorsed a White Nationalist
King has surely discredited himself, and as a sitting congressman he has discredited -- and diminished -- the US House of Representatives. He merits, at the very least, the response from his colleagues that Democratic and Republican US senators directed toward Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy when they finally held the disreputable hatemonger to account in 1954.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 14, 2013 As Feds Review Martin Case, NAACP Seeks DOJ Action and Targets State 'Stand Your Ground' Laws
Zimmerman, who faced charges only after a national outcry forced a review of the case, did not mount a specific "stand your ground" defense. But the issue remained a bone of contention before and during his trial; notably, the jury heard from a witness who recalled teaching about Florida's law in a college course that the defendant completed in 2010.
(18 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 3, 2019 Rashida Tlaib Calls for Taking Immediate Steps Toward Impeachment on Her First Day in Congress
When Donald Trump glibly announced in mid-December that he would shut down the federal government in order to promote his border-wall fantasy, Rashida Tlaib responded appropriately. As a lawyer with a firm grasp of the Constitution, she asked: "Can we please start the impeachment process now?"
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, October 9, 2015 Kevin McCarthy's Exit Proves What We Already Know -- the GOP Is Completely Dysfunctional
McCarthy should never had risen as high as he did in the House caucus, and he could never have been an effective leader. That's why he is out before he got in. Boehner, though hardly a giant in congressional terms, is a different story. He is a more consequential figure than McCarthy, and his surrender reveals the extent of the chaos and the crisis that the GOP is now experiencing.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 12, 2016 The Sexual Predator Who Would Be King
Donald Trump is a son of privilege with regal aspirations, a well-dressed grifter who has taken advantage of every loophole to avoid paying taxes, avoid paying contractors, avoid his responsibilities as an employer, and avoid accountability for his abuse of women. Americans who disbelieve Trump do so at their own peril, and at peril to the Republic.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, January 26, 2015 Bernie Sanders Won't Be Entering the Koch Brothers Primary
"Americans used to think Iowa and New Hampshire held the first caucus and primary in the nation every four years. Not anymore,"explains Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders."Now the 'Koch brothers primary' goes first to determine who wins the blessing and financial backing of the billionaire class. This is truly sad and shows us how far Citizens United has gone to undermine American democracy."
SHARE Monday, July 15, 2013 Ending the Tyranny of the Mitch McConnell Minority
But McConnell has so exaggerated the filibuster power that it has effectively allowed him to thwart not just Senate votes but the operations of federal agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board. He and his allies have gone so far as to block the confirmation of nominees for cabinet posts, such as Department of Labor nominee Tom Perez.
SHARE Monday, November 3, 2014 The Most Cynical Political Ploy of 2014
In the tight North Carolina US Senate race between Democrat Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis, the American Future Fund is spending heavily to circulate ads that explicitly say, "Don't even think about voting for Kay Hagan. She doesn't share our values. You want legalization of marijuana, she's against it.
SHARE Tuesday, August 18, 2015 Julian Bond Built Coalitions, Practiced Solidarity, and Showed Us the Future
The man is gone. But the truth of Julian Bond remains: He wanted a new politics, and he showed us what was possible. He was the wave of the future. That future is today. We honor Bond best by making the movements and the politics he proposed the reality that it should have been long ago -- and that it must now be.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 2, 2012 Scott Walker's Billionaire Boys Club: Big Money Backs Anti-Labor Agenda
Walker, who faces a recall election on June 5, is fighting for his political life in a state where close to 1 million citizens signed the petitions that forced the governor to face the voters. The Wisconsinite's political star has become so tarnished that his only hope for prevailing is to overwhelm the opposition with massive spending.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 17, 2018 What James Comey Gets Wrong About Donald Trump
To assure that presidents did not become elected despots, and to guarantee that unfit leaders could be removed when necessary, George Mason argued at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that "No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 4, 2016 Now Is the Time to Express Solidarity With "Our Arab-American Brothers and Sisters"
Trump has mainstreamed deliberate ignorance and crude bigotry. He has called for banning Muslim immigration. He had stoked resentment against Syrian refugees of all backgrounds. He has entertained the idea of compiling a national database of Muslims living in the United States. In times like these, "solidarity" must become the watchword of a more humane and progressive politics.
SHARE Friday, August 22, 2014 When Dick Cheney Swatted an "Annoying Mosquito" Named Paul Ryan
Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman paints a dim picture of fellow Republicans who get weak in the knees whenever he starts prattling on about dismantling Social Security as we know it. Needless to say, he is even more relentless in his criticisms of President Obama and the Democrats on this issue.
SHARE Tuesday, October 3, 2017 The Most Serious Challenge to Gerrymandering in Modern Times Reaches the Supreme Court
The democratic disconnect has strengthened the argument that the gerrymandering of district lines denies voters their right to participate in fair and competitive elections. And jurists have begun to accept that something must be done to make elections more reflective of the popular will. Change this monumental will not come without a fight.
SHARE Wednesday, September 26, 2012 Romney on Teachers and Their Unions: Silence Them!
Romney is the most consistently and aggressively anti-union candidate ever to be nominated for the presidency by a major American political party. His disdain for organized labor has been consistently and aggressively stated. He's an enthusiastic backer of moves to bust public sector unions, he supports so-called "right-to-work" laws as a tool states can use to bust private-sector unions.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, March 9, 2012 What America Lost When Dennis Kucinich Lost
A Congress without Dennis Kucinich will be a lesser branch. It's not just that the loss of the former leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus will rob the House of its most consistent critic of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and one its steadiest critics of corporate power.
SHARE Monday, September 17, 2012 After 225 Years, It's Time to Respect Constitutional Rights of Workers
Trade unionists in the United States have basic rights that must be respected. That is a point that should not have to be made. But, at a time when union rights are under assault by corporate Republicans (and even some corporate Democrats) who seek to tip the economic and political balance of the republic entirely in favor of their Wall Street paymasters, it needs to be restated -- frequently.
(29 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 14, 2014 Scott Walker Thinks $7.25 Is a Living Wage -- He's Wrong
There are many matters on which Scott Walker has broken faith with Wisconsin. But few are so chilling, so deeply unsettling, as his disregard for the condition of the Wisconsinites who work full-time but live in poverty.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 14, 2012 A Red State Rebuke to Religious Fear-Mongering
Mitt Romney -- who once spoke with relative eloquence about the importance of religious diversity and tolerance -- now declares without cracking a smile that "I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama."
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 21, 2013 The Austerity Agenda: An Electoral Loser
Voters are all for balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility, but they have no taste for an austerity agenda that benefits billionaires and burdens working families. By a 73-18 margin, those polled said that protecting Medicare and Social Security from benefit cuts is more important than bringing down the deficit. Fully 84 percent opposed reducing Social Security benefits.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 27, 2015 Jorge Ramos Challenged Both Trump and an Increasingly Absurd Debate
The point Ramos has been making -- that the debate as it now stands is not just crude but exceptionally unrealistic -- represents a challenge to Trump and the other Republicans who are seeking the party's nomination. But it is also a challenge to a discourse that is straying toward absurdity.
SHARE Monday, February 16, 2015 The State Where Even Republicans Have a Problem With Busting Unions
Republicans who side with unions are rare these days. But Illinoisans in particular have reason to expect more of the Grand Old Party than Rauner's anti-labor obsession. After all, it was an Illinois Republican who said, "Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." His name was Abraham Lincoln.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, May 18, 2009 Auto Bailout Blues: Spin, Lies and Layoffs
Instead of spending billions to steer America toward fewer jobs, fewer factories and fewer dealerships, the Obama administration should stop spinning and start investing in the workers, the small businesses and the communities that have always been the heart and soul of America's auto industry.
SHARE Thursday, May 28, 2009 Judge Sotomayor's Diabetes: Not a Weakness But a Strength
Sotomayor's most important service as a role model may be as a Type 1 diabetic -- someone who has, since the age of eight, had to deal with what has variously been referred to as "childhood", "juvenile" or "insulin-dependent" diabetes.This is another piece of the diversity puzzle, an essential piece that ought not be underestimated.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 14, 2015 Scott Walker Campaigns Against Unions, Wages, and Weekends
Scott Walker has, since taking office in 2011, been perhaps best known for his anti-union stance. He does not run from the image. In fact, he has made his anti-labor fights a central theme as he prepares for the 2016 presidential race.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 29, 2018 Ben Jealous Is Ready to Make Maryland America's Laboratory of Democracy
Few gubernatorial candidates in Maryland or nationally have gone as deep as Jealous has with his run. His campaign, with strong backing from Sanders, the Working Families Party, and unions representing teachers and nurses, has issued detailed position papers outlining progressive policies on health care, education, and building a 21st-century economy.
(11 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 23, 2014 Elizabeth Warren May Not Be Ready to Run for President, but Her Book Is
apart from any political calculus, Warren has written a good book. It's appropriately biographical, relatively frank and quite strong with regard to the pathologies of our politics and our economics. The book is at its best when it explores those pathologies, as when Warren recounts her effort to establish and lead what would become the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
SHARE Friday, April 9, 2021 Betsy DeVos Takes Her Assault on Public Schools Back to the States
The Wisconsin fight is the first statewide test of popular sentiment since Democrat Joe Biden replaced Republican Donald Trump as president, in a shift that moved DeVos out of the Department of Education.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 23, 2013 What Causes Distrust of Government? Surprise! Mitch McConnell Blames Unions
According to the Real Clear Politics summary of recent polls, only 14 percent of Americans approve of how Congress is doing its job. The disapproval rate is 78 percent. Notably, when voters in states across the country were polled regarding their congressional representatives, the senator with the lowest net job approval rating was ... Mitch McConnell.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 6, 2018 When Bobby Kennedy Proposed a Radical Rethink of the Measures of American Progress
Speaking of the millions of Americans who were "living in the hidden places, whose names and faces are completely unknown," Kennedy said it was vital to engage in a national discussion not just about the Vietnam War -- the issue that had drawn another insurgent, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, into the race -- but about poverty amid plenty, racial disparities and misguided national priorities.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, May 16, 2014 The Next Four Months Will Decide the Future of the Internet
FCC chair Tom Wheeler, a former industry lobbyist appointed last fall to a Democratic seat by President Obama, created a firestorm when he proposed to establish an Internet fast lane that would favor free-spending corporations and special-interest groups, while discriminating against those who cannot pay to play.
SHARE Wednesday, August 12, 2015 We Need Activists to Make Politicians Better
Politics, real politics as opposed to the game show that most of the media perpetuates, involves pressure and it is the response to that pressure that gives us the measure of candidates. No contender for the presidency has ever ended a campaign as he or she began. Campaigns are, and should be, critical pivot points in higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationships.
SHARE Monday, December 29, 2014 Bill de Blasio Is Not the First New York City Mayor to Clash With Police Unions
New York is different from the city it was in the late 1960s, just as it is different from the city it was in the 1990s. The media landscape has changed, as has the political landscape. And de Blasio is different in many ways from his predecessors. But that does not mean that this mayor cannot, or will not, learn the lessons of the past and apply them in the future.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 4, 2011 To Win in 2012 'Democrats Are Going to Have to Distinguish Themselves From the President'
Progressives and populists have begun to argue that Democratic congressional candidates can and should run on issues that work for them -- including tougher-than-the-president positions in support of job investments, taxes on financial speculators and the defense of Medicare.
SHARE Monday, November 7, 2016 Don't Tell Trump: Minnesota Is About to Elect a Pioneering Somali-American Muslim Woman
Minneapolis voters are expected to endorse the candidacy of the first Somali-American woman to hold elected public office in the United States -- Ilhan Omar. It matters that Ilhan Omar will be elected to the Minnesota state legislature on the day that Minnesota rejects Donald Trump and the racism and xenophobia that is at the foul core of Trumpism.
SHARE Monday, October 26, 2015 Bernie Sanders Is Actually Quite Serious About This "Political Revolution" Thing
Most pundits saw evidence that Sanders is finally engaging in some compare-and-contrast campaigning with Clinton -- and there was some of that. But the fight in Iowa (and the rest of the country) is not so much against other candidates, says Sanders, as it is for "a political revolution" that engages citizens who would not otherwise participate in caucuses, primaries or even the 2016 general election.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 12, 2012 Ron Johnson's Pompous Assumptions: Voters are Ignorant, Colleagues Need Tutoring
Ron Johnson swears, against all economic evidence to the contrary, and against all political evidence of opposition on the part of the American people, that there is only one way to address the challenges facing America: tax cuts for rich people like him and benefit cuts for everyone else.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 31, 2015 And the Most Disturbing Presidential Candidate of 2015 Award Goes to...
When inquisitors such as ABC's Martha Raddatz asked basic questions, the Scott Walker's lack of background and preparation became painfully obvious. Yet it was not just ignorance that damaged this "mainstream" Republican. It was his bizarre and unrelenting disdain for public employees in particular and union members in general.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 28, 2020 Make McConnell Pay for Amy Coney Barrett
Amy Coney Barrett has begun her tenure as an illegitimate justice on the Supreme Court, which has been diminished by the antidemocratic charade that saw Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell elevate a right-wing judicial activist in a mad rush to avoid electoral accountability.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 7, 2016 MoveOn Members Are Voting on a Presidential Endorsement That Matters
In 2008, MoveOn backed Barack Obama. Will the group endorse in the 2016 Democratic race? Now MoveOn members are voting again, in online balloting that began Thursday and will extend through Sunday. Because the MoveOn endorsement is a consequential one, the threshold to secure it is high.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 1, 2012 Bloomberg Backs Obama: For Precisely the Right Reason
Obama he argues "gets" it that climate change matters. Romney does not -- or, at the least, does not want to say it matters because he fears the climate-change deniers in his own Republican Party. With his endorsement of Obama, Bloomberg has done something vitally important. He has called for an issue-based vote, a science-based vote.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 23, 2013 Sequestration Sacrifices Jobs to Save Billionaire Tax Breaks
America is not broke. America has broken priorities. That's what the billionaire proponents of cuts-at-any-cost economics won't acknowledge as they advance a "Fix the Debt" agenda that imposes austerity on everyone else, while stacking the deck in their favor. Sequestration is the start, not the finish, of a process that undoes economic recovery and causes job losses to spike by even greater numbers.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, July 16, 2018 Jamie Raskin Just Delivered a Devastating Takedown of GOP Hypocrisy
"This hearing has been a circus and a kangaroo court run in banana-Republican fashion," said Raskin. It was even more true that Raskin had risen above the chaos and shined, as the rare member of Congress who is capable of combining sharp insights and a wry sense of the absurd to devastating effect.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, January 2, 2012 Iowa's $200-Per-Vote Caucuses Reward Negatives, Nastiness, Narrow Thinking
Huge amounts of money are spent to influence a very small percentage of the electorate -- less than 20 percent of Iowans who are likely to vote Republican in November will participate in Tuesday's caucuses, and most of them will leave after the balloting finishes.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, February 14, 2014 Merging Cable Giants Is "an Affront to the Public Interest"
The point of the free-press protection that is outlined in the First Amendment is not to free billionaire media moguls and speculators to make more money. When media conglomerates merge, they do not provide better service or better democracy. They create the sort of monopolies and duopolies that constrain America's promise.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 9, 2018 Anthony Bourdain Knew There Was Nothing More Political Than Food
The globetrotting chef was invariably a clearer commentator on geopolitics than the pundits who seem always to be conspiring against understandings of our shared humanity. Bourdain's deepest fascination was with diverse cultures and the human experience reflected in them. That involvement was professional, and personal, and political.
SHARE Friday, January 20, 2012 Forget Romney, Gingrich Is Running Against 'Liberal Media'--and It Might Work
It's no secret that running against the media can work, especially in an era when so-called "legacy media" -- traditional networks and newspapers -- have become so dysfunctional that they make for the easiest of targets. And no GOP contender has made the bashing of "liberal media" so central a campaign theme as has Gingrich.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, September 16, 2013 The Populist Rebellion That Tripped Up Larry Summers
The Fed is a staggeringly powerful institution, with the resources and influence to define the direction of the US economy, the character of the nation's "too-big-to-fail" banks and the extent to which unemployment issues are addressed. Unfortunately, the Fed has a long history of serving Wall Street while neglecting the rest of the country.
SHARE Saturday, July 8, 2017 Democrats Must Become America's Anti-Gerrymandering Party
The Republicans, with tremendous support from billionaire campaign donors such as the Koch brothers, have mastered the art of making elections noncompetitive. Americans hate the current system. They tell pollsters it is too owned by special interests, too mangled by money, too deferential towards political careerists, and too disrespectful toward voters.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 22, 2015 Union Busting Was a Bust for Scott Walker's Presidential Run
Walker promised he would rip up the nuclear agreement with Iran on his first day in office. Walker promised he would rip up Obamacare on his first day in office. Walker said he might have to start a war on his first day in office. When none of that worked, Walker simply announced his intention to "wreak havoc" in Washington.
SHARE Friday, November 1, 2013 Chris Christie's No Moderate, and Barack Obama Ought to Say That
It is good that Obama and Christie worked well together following a natural disaster. But that does not make Christie a moderate. He has fundamental differences with Obama and the Democrats, and those differences will come into stark relief if Christie is re-elected, as the Republican will immediately begin positioning as a contender for his party's 2016 presidential nomination.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 3, 2014 The Democratic Vistas of 2014: Five Reforms to Make Our Politics Matter
Americans need to explore this country's democratic vistas in 2014, breaking beyond narrow partisan and ideological lines of division to develop the vibrant politics that realizes the promise Whitman imagined when he wrote that he considered the American experiment "far less important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come."
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 1, 2012 Bernie Sanders, Nurses: We Still Need 'Medicare for All'
What Sanders says about Thursday's Supreme Court decision upholding the ACA provides important insights for progressives as they respond to a complex decision that, in the words of the National Nurses United union, "should not be seen as the end of the efforts by health care activists for a permanent fix of our broken health-care system."
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 15, 2014 From the Left, From the Right: Calls to Demilitarize Ferguson, and America
The American people are ready for a demilitarization of policing, as the positive response to Captain Johnson's initial approach in Ferguson suggests. They are ready, as well, for policing that strikes a right balance of guaranteeing public safety while preserving civil liberties.
SHARE Wednesday, December 31, 2014 Steve Scalise's Problem Is the Republican Party's Problem
It will be hard for Republicans to suggest that they are on the side of the future when, at this point in American history, they have someone in a top leadership position in the House facing questions about his appearance at a white-supremacist event and who opposed the King holiday. For so long as Scalise remains in leadership, it is not just the congressman but his party that has a lot of explaining to do.
SHARE Friday, October 18, 2013 Beware of Paul Ryan's Lose-a-Battle, Win-a-War Strategy
Ryan cast his "no" vote on the deal in order to begin organizing his troops for a fight that will set up the next shutdown and debt-ceiling struggles. The committee has a deadline of December 13. That makes its report--or the lack of one--the first deadline on a schedule toward new continuing resolution and debt-ceiling votes in January and February. That creates tremendous pressure for a deal, and Ryan's at the ready.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 28, 2015 Please, John Kasich, Make This Debate Matter by Calling Out Trump and Carson
if Kasich were to call Carson, Trump, Bush and, yes, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and former CEO Carly Fiorina and the rest, out for their extreme stances, if he were to say bluntly and without apology that what the other contenders propose is bad craziness, he would not just help his own candidacy. He would restore a measure of common sense to a race for the Republican nomination.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, June 20, 2014 Why Scott Walker Will Never Be President
There is no question that Walker is a hero to some Republicans, and to some conservatives. But Republicans and conservatives who want to win back the White House have to be realistic enough to recognize that Walker has a paper trail that is unlikely to read well on the 2016 campaign trail.
SHARE Thursday, April 5, 2018 A Stunning Victory Against the NRA in Wisconsin
"We beat the NRA!" Judge Rebecca Dallet announced as she claimed her pattern-breaking win in a contentious race for a position on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, April 16, 2018 Congress Needs to Cancel Trump's Blank Check for War
In one of his darkest moments as speaker, Ryan blocked consideration in 2017 of a bipartisan amendment to renew the role of Congress as a check and balance on presidential war making. As he did on so many issues, Ryan chose to hand a blank check to Donald Trump.
SHARE Friday, February 10, 2017 An Appeals Court Rejects Trump's So-Called Argument for a Muslim Ban
The appeals court decision was not a close call. The judges were absolutely clear in their rejection of the absurd argument, made by Trump's lawyers, that the president's abuse of his executive power could not be reviewed by the courts. Sally Yates was right. Donald Trump was wrong.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 25, 2018 Ben Jealous Shakes Up Maryland Politics
Senator Bernie Sanders, on whose behalf Jealous delivered a stirring 2016 Democratic National Convention address, has endorsed and campaigned for the Maryland contender -- as have California Senator Kamala Harris and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.
Jealous also enjoys the backing of The Baltimore Sun, which surprised a lot of Maryland political observers in mid-June when it rolled out an endorsement of Jealous.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 24, 2011 Newt's Cruelest Campaign: Replace School Janitors With Child Labor
With his assault on child labor laws -- and, make no mistake, he is specifically referring to provisions that protect children as young as 9 as "truly stupid" and speaking of eliminating them -- Gingrich is assaulting the underpinnings of the Progressive Era reform movement that sought to end the worst abuses of the robber barons.
SHARE Wednesday, August 31, 2016 Arizona Voters Had to Wait As Long as 5 Hours to Cast Their Primary Votes
In 2008, Maricopa County had 400 polling places for the state's primary (winners: Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican John McCain). In 2012, Maricopa County had more than 200 polling places (winners: Democrat Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney).
In 2016, Maricopa County opened just 60 polling places.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 17, 2012 Rage Against Paul Ryan
Morello says "I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta 'rage' in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions."
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, May 3, 2013 Austerity Is "Suffocating the Economy"
The sequester cuts are only now beginning to hit. Austerity is driving Europe deeper into recession. China is slowing. US exports will suffer. And Washington is about to descend into new self-manufactured crises around next year's budget and the debt ceiling. The government should be targeting investments to spur job growth.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, February 8, 2010 Sarah Says It's "Absurd Not to Consider" A Palin Presidency
While anyone who is familiar with Palin's track record might be amused by the notion that a woman who quit her executive position as governor to write a fine Alaskan whine of a book would dare accuse someone else of falling short in the leadership department, the delegates to the National Tea Party Convention cheered on cue.
SHARE Friday, November 11, 2011 Occupy the Home Front: Why Veterans Are Deploying With the 99 Percent
The United States has not learned much about avoiding unwarranted wars.
And it has not learned much about respecting the veterans of wars. Just as in the aftermath of World War I veterans were abused when they made reasonable demands for economic justice at home, so veterans are today abused when they make the same sort of demands.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 29, 2015 A GOP Debate Without a Winner -- Or Much of a Point
Donald Trump lost interest mid-way through the third Republican presidential debate. It's a bad night for Trump when his most memorable line is a closing-statement claim of credit for negotiating a shorter debate: I got it down to two hours so we can get the hell out of here.
SHARE Friday, January 17, 2014 Christie's Jam Is Also the GOP's
Christie was given a pass by too many Democrats and too many pundits in his re-election campaign last year. That casual approach to questions regarding the abuse of power should not apply in 2014, as governors like Corbett, Deal, Kasich, LePage, Scott and Walker face re-election. Voters deserve a higher standard of ethics from the politicians who serve them -- and an alternative to the politics of reward and revenge.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 10, 2014 Why Dick Cheney Is Wrong About the CIA Torture Memos
Doubling down in defense of what can only be described as "Cheneyism," the former vice president is justifying waterboarding and other tactics as "absolutely, totally justified" and claiming that those who engaged in tactics that have long been identified as torture "ought to be decorated, not criticized."
SHARE Tuesday, November 10, 2015 Rand Paul Should Make Tuesday's Debate About US Troops in Syria and Undeclared Wars
It is not necessary that Americans be enthusiastic about Rand Paul or his candidacy--and he has certainly taken plenty of positions that will argue against that candidacy--to recognize that there is a need for more debate on war issues. The growing US presence in Syria ought to be a central issue when Republicans debate, just as it ought to be a central issue when Democrats debate.
SHARE Wednesday, February 27, 2019 Bernie Sanders Is Making a National Issue of This Strike
What distinguishes Sanders is a determination to steer into the struggle. He has a history of joining picket lines and did so during his 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination. He's actually been to Erie and has appeared with UE union officials and members.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, October 22, 2012 A Real Foreign Policy Debate Should Talk Trade and Human Rights
The candidates should not be allowed to get through tonight's debate without devoting significant time to a real debate about how bungled trade policies encourage outsourcing and, yes, about how those same bad trade policies undermine the cause of human rights.
SHARE Friday, March 30, 2012 Adrienne Rich's Touch Was Political
Dead now, at age 82, Rich will speak on -- well and wisely -- through her poetry and through the myriad interviews she gave about writing and radicalism. Intensely committed to the causes of civil rights, socialism, feminism, lesbian and gay rights, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, she wrote poems about being an observer, but she was an eternal participant.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 6, 2012 Bill Clinton Forms Barack Obama's More Perfect Union
Never has the ex-president dichotomy been better summed up than in the past two weeks. Bush did not have a ticket to the stadium. Clinton was calling the plays -- for the Obama campaign and, perhaps, for America. Clinton had the crowd, as Obama will have to have them -- not just Thursday night but through November.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 26, 2013 SCOTUS Voting Rights Act Decision Means We Need "Right to Vote" Amendment
The Court has not gone so rogue as might immediately seem to be the case in a nation that our civics teachers tell us is committed to democratic values. Rather, the Court's conservative majority has taken advantage of a gap in the Constitution that must be addressed.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 10, 2013 A Petition That Just Might Save the Post Office
The USPS cannot take many more cuts. Nor can it shoulder the financial burden that's been imposed on it. This is a time for urgency. And Peter DeFazio, with his White House petition, has figured out how to focus the energy that is needed to beat the proponents of privatization and to save an essential public service.
SHARE Tuesday, December 28, 2010 Dick Cheney's $250-Million 'Get Out of Jail Free' Card
The revelation that Halliburton and KBR paid tens of millions of dollars directly, and hundreds of millions indirectly, to get Cheney and his associates off the hook, has not set well with Nigerians who have campaigned for transparency and accountability.
SHARE Friday, October 24, 2014 Chris Christie's Latest Terrible Idea: Let GOP Governors Control Voting for 2016
Christie wants to elect governors who will stop all this talk about raising the minimum wage. Yes, Christie wants to elect governors who will "start offending people"--like school teachers and their unions. Among the reasons he mentions for electing Republican governors, says Christie, is a desire to put the GOP in charge of the "voting mechanism" of likely 2016 presidential battleground states.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 8, 2011 The Only Constitutional Crisis In Wisconsin Is the One the Governor's Consigliere Is Creating
Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald would have Wisconsinites -- and Americans who continue to watch developments in the Midwestern state where an uprising against Walker's bill has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets -- believe legislative rules give him the authority to override the constitution.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 2, 2021 $15 an Hour Is the Compromise
For the first 40 years after President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, the national minimum wage rose in step with productivity growth." Unfortunately, it did not continue.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 3, 2013 Did Scott Walker Really Compare Himself to Franklin Roosevelt? Yes, Yes, He Did
Roosevelt did not want strikes to disrupt public safety and public service. But he recognized the "logical place" of public employee unions as representatives of federal workers. And it was in no small measure because of his pro-labor sentiment that the National Federation of Federal Employees exists to this day.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 26, 2013 Yuck! The Senate Won't Clear the Way for States to Label Genetically Modified Food
While 64 countries around the world require labeling of foods with genetically engineered ingredients, while the American Public Health Association and the American Nurses Association have passed resolutions supporting this sort of labeling in the United States, the Senate voted 71-27 to keep Americans in the dark.
SHARE Saturday, December 25, 2010 Christmas, Congress and the Times That Try Men's Souls
Republican senators did not react by declaring their pride at being able to further the mission of the Prince of Peace by limiting the likelihood of nuclear war. Instead, they grumbled that any Senate Majority Leader who messed with their Holiday shopping schedules must be a very poor Christian indeed.
SHARE Tuesday, November 4, 2014 Why Tonight Is Not Just About Senate Control
The results from gubernatorial races will tell us a great deal about where the country is really at after the most expensive midterm election campaign in American history.
If a significant number of these Republican governors lose, the results from their races will be as instructive as the results from the competition for control of the Senate.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 30, 2011 Cheney's Alternative History of Hurricane Katrina Response Concludes: 'Heck of a Job, Bushie!'
The only problem for Cheney is that there are still a lot of people in New Orleans, Gulfport and the rest of American who remember what really happened when a self-absorbed president failed to recognize the urgency of a crisis on the home front, and a supposedly more competent vice president couldn't be bothered to care.
SHARE Sunday, May 10, 2009 A Democrat Calls for Executive Accountability
Essential to the American struggle from the start was an understanding of the necessity of constraining the executive branch so that no president -- be he (or she) good or bad -- could serve as what Jefferson referred to as an "elected despot".
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, January 14, 2013 RNC's Priebus Proposes to Rig Electoral College so Losing Republicans Can "Win"
Already, there are moves afoot in a number of battleground states to "fix" the rules to favor the Republicans in 2016, just as they have already fixed the district lines for electing members of the House. There are many reforms that are needed to expand democracy in the United States. But gaming the Electoral College is not one of them.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 14, 2015 Elizabeth Warren Says She Won't Run, but "Draft Warren" Activists Plan to "Change Her Mind"
For now, it makes sense for the "Run Warren Run" initiative to continue. The caucuses and primaries are a year off. There are no looming filing deadlines. This is the clearest window of opportunity for activists who would draft a candidate into the presidential competition of either party. An honest draft always begins with a candidate who says "no."
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, November 21, 2014 When Networks Snub a Presidential Address, Democracy Is "The Biggest Loser"
ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox -- four major broadcast networks -- all declined to interrupt prime-time programming to air President Obama's Thursday evening address on immigration policy. Though cable news channels, public television stations and Spanish-language stations cleared time for the president's speech, the big broadcast networks stuck with fare such as The Biggest Loser.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 13, 2014 Misdirected Mail: White House Budget Proposes Damaging Postal Service Cuts
Among the very worst ideas for "reforming" the United States Postal Service are proposals to end Saturday delivery and to shift from at-the-door delivery of mail to a scheme that would force Americans to go to collect letters and packages from central delivery spots. Both approaches would diminish the scope and character of the postal service while increasing the likelihood that private firms will move in to fill the void.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 5, 2019 The Process of Holding Trump Accountable Has Finally Begun
A president and his associates can be the subject of an inquiry by a special counsel, such as Robert Mueller, or by the able federal investigators and prosecutors of the Southern District of New York. If half of the inquiries that Cohen discussed come to fruition, there is every reason to believe the Donald Trump will face many days of reckoning.
SHARE Thursday, June 18, 2015 A Civil-Rights Champion Was Lost in the Attack on Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where a young white man reportedly shot and killed nine people Wednesday night, is one of the largest African-American congregations in the region, it is referred to as "Mother Emanuel" because of the central role this faith institution has played in the lives and the history of a city, a state, a region, and a nation.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 6, 2013 Postal Cuts Are Austerity on Steroids
The current frontline of the austerity agenda is the assault on the US Postal Service, a vital service that is older than the country. The Postal Service announced that Saturday first-class mail delivery is scheduled for elimination at the beginning of August--the latest and deepest in a series of cuts that threatens to so undermine the service that it will be ripe for bartering off to the private delivery corporations.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 25, 2015 Pope Francis Elevates Dorothy Day's Call For Economic Justice
When Pope Francis talked about Dorothy Day before the Congress of the United States, in one of the most anticipated speeches by a religious leader in modern times, he signaled an understanding that it is necessary to move the debate about economic justice away from kind words and toward genuine deeds.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, March 4, 2013 If Switzerland Can Crack Down on CEOs, Why Not the US?
In 2010, as the United States emerged from the depths of the Bush recession, a study by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez found that the top 1 percent of Americans captured 93 percent of the growth in income. Worse yet, CEOs use their money to game the system so that they get richer while the great mass of Americans are squeezed.
SHARE Monday, July 29, 2013 If You're Not Singing Along With Scott Walker, You're Under Arrest
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is an exceptionally ambitious career politician who loves the sound of cheering crowds in the presidential primary states where he hopes to be a 2016 contender. But he's does not care for the sound of dissent.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 12, 2015 A Billionaire, Some Millionaires, and a No-Show Senator Debate How Best to Block Wage Hikes
Several of the contenders grumbled about the absolutely worst excesses of crony capitalism and too-big-to-fail banking. Yet, for the most part, it was a night of billionaires, millionaires, and no-show senators refusing to even imagine that America might be a fair and functional nation where all citizens share in the promise of the future.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 15, 2015 Barbara Lee Is Still Right to Object to the Blank-Check Endless War in Afghanistan
"I opposed the authorization for this war because it empowered any President to wage endless war without the Congressional oversight mandated by the Constitution. Fourteen years into this war, this endless war continues and Congress continues to abdicate its Constitutional responsibility. It is past time to end this costly and bloody war and restore Congress's constitutional duty to debate matters of war and peace," Lee said.
SHARE Wednesday, January 4, 2017 House Republicans Dive into the Swamp
The president-elect's cabinet picks suggest he has experienced a change of heart with regard to his promise to crack down on special-interest corruption of the governing process. Instead of draining the swamp, Trump is stocking it with bottom feeders.
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, April 18, 2014 With 8 Million and Counting ACA Sign-Ups, Sebelius Could Bid for Senate
The only sure way to lose an election is not to run. If Kathleen Sebelius were to bid for the Senate this year, she would challenge not just an often inaccurate conventional wisdom but the Democrat Party's tendency toward an excess of caution. And that, in turn, could reshape the debate about healthcare and a whole lot more.
SHARE Monday, July 1, 2013 Wendy Davis for Governor?
Political strategists in both parties know that one of the best ways to speed up the process is with a dynamic candidate who has the potential to raise enough campaign cash to give Rick Perry -- a particularly prodigious fund-raiser -- a run for his money.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 12, 2014 Bernie Sanders Versus Citizens United
The "Democracy is for the People" amendment, sponsored by Sanders and Congressman Ted Deutch, D-Florida, is one of several proposed by members of Congress in response to the national outcry over the Citizens United decision -- an outcry that, so far, has seen 16 states and close to 600 communities demand that the Constitution be amended to address the crisis created.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 4, 2015 Scott Walker Objects to "the Search for Truth"
The Wisconsin Idea has always been about the search for truth, at the University of Wisconsin and beyond.
When Scott Walker attacks that search, he attacks not just the UW but Wisconsin; not just public service, but the pursuit of truth in service to the public.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 11, 2013 A Recommitment to the American Ideal That Labor Rights Are Human Rights
For generations, Americans accepted the basic premise that labor rights are human rights. When this country counseled other countries on how to forge civil and democratic societies, Americans recognized that the right to organize a trade union -- and to have that trade union engage in collective bargaining as an equal partner with corporations and government agencies -- must be protected.
SHARE Monday, August 20, 2012 With Romney-Ryan, GOP Becomes Grand Old Private-Equity Party
Paul Ryan, like Mitt Romney, is politically committed to the aiding the masters of the universe who run the private-equity empires that now so dominate the US economy. The "Roadmap for America's Future" budget plan that Ryan wrote in 2010--the document that, arguably, launched into orbit as a Republican star--pledges to change tax policies to create "an enhanced investment climate."
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 19, 2013 Sequestration Is Austerity, but Not Enough for Simpson and Bowles
Sequestration would impose "automatic brutal spending cuts" to job creation, infrastructure and education initiatives. It would, as well, slash funding for air traffic control, federal prosecutions and Federal Emergency Management Agency grants that make it possible for states and local governments to hire needed firefighter and emergency personnel.
SHARE Friday, July 20, 2012 Romney "Goes for the Gold" in London's Libor Village
Romney's international fundraising operation -- and, yes, he does have one -- scheduled two major events to coincide with the opening of the Olympic Games. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee calculated that it might be a good idea to take a trip across the pond to highlight his (somewhat less controversial) management of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 24, 2015 Green Jill Stein Is Fighting for Open Debates and Real Democracy
Americans of every partisanship and ideology must support open debates. Like initiatives to protect voting rights and limit the influence of big money, efforts to assure that voters have access to diverse choices and a robust discourse are not just about the mechanics of election campaigns. They are essential to establishing vital and meaningful democracy.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 16, 2015 How Absurdly Arbitrary Choices About Debates Are Shaping the GOP Race
The Republican National Committee and the media "partners" with which it is managing debates stand amid the wreckage and pretend that the old order is pretty much in place. In so doing, they are warping the character and content of debates that have proven to be increasingly critical to a competition that is--at least at this point--more defined by free media than advertising strategies.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 31, 2018 Puerto Rico Matters More
Media attention is essential. It can influence the debate, stir a public outcry, charge hearts and minds, and perhaps change policies. But when there is insufficient attention to horrifying news about the deaths of thousands of US citizens, the likelihood increases that the response from federal officials to an American tragedy will continue to be insufficient.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, October 13, 2014 This Year's Nobel Peace Prize Winners Are Radicals -- and That's a Good Thing
Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai are engaged activists who have not hesitated to challenge the most powerful political and economic elites in their own countries -- and to challenge international leaders. It is worth noting that other recipients of the Nobel Prize for Peace have made statements that were heard at the time -- and even now -- as radical.
SHARE Wednesday, August 22, 2012 GOP Convention Will Formally Endorse the Todd Akin Platform
Ryan and Romney, who will be nominated for president Monday, have tried to distance themselves from Akin. But if the platform committee gets its way -- and that is a virtual certainty, as Schlafly and her crew have made sure that the membership is in agreement with the Akin position -- the same convention that will nominate the Romney-Ryan ticket will endorse the Akin abortion policy.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 4, 2015 Senate Blocks Attack on Planned Parenthood, But the Political Assault Continues
Though the videos are getting the attention, Cecile Richards points out that what is really at stake in the defunding debate is access to care for millions of American women who rely on the services they receive from Planned Parenthood clinics. "The vote (Monday was) about denying women access to birth control, cancer screenings, testing and treatment for many women where Planned Parenthood is their only doctor," she said.
SHARE Monday, October 27, 2014 How a Divided Senate Could Threaten Social Security
Not all independents are alike. And this reality could have critical consequences for debates over the future of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a whole lot more, consequences that ought to understood by everyone who is playing the Senate-control numbers game.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, December 16, 2013 Judge Rules Against NSA Spying; Congress Should Do the Same
The Justice Department has continued to argue that plaintiffs in lawsuits against the spying program lack standing because they cannot prove their records were examined. But Judge Leon suggested that the old calculus that afforded police agencies great leeway when it came to monitoring communications has clearly changed.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, December 11, 2015 Cowardly and Inept Republican Elites Play Into Trump's Hands
If Trump is not what the Republican Party is about, then Republicans should be saying, publicly rather than in the backrooms of swank DC restaurants, that they do not want him as their party's nominee. And that, if Trump is nominated, they will not back him. Yes, Trump will threaten to run as an independent. But that threat has always existed, and it will always exist unless the party nominates Trump.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, November 11, 2013 A Doctor With a Cure: "Medicare for All"
Gene Farley, who died Friday at 86, was an internationally renowned physician who believed that the establishment of the principle of "healthcare as a right" is not just a medical mission, not even an economic or social responsibility. It is, Gene said, "about morality."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 15, 2015 Scott Walker's Economically (and Politically) Wrongheaded Scheme to Destroy Unions
In Walker's imagination, if he can just be anti-labor enough he will be able to renew his candidacy. The problem for Walker, and for anti-union zealots in general, is that few Americans -- be they Democrats or independents or Republicans -- are so fiercely opposed to the right to organize and collectively bargain that all other issues become secondary.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 14, 2011 GOP Debate: Michele Bachmann and Six Guys
Indeed, if there is anyone who can remind Republicans that they have an enthusiasm gap to fill, it is Bachmann. Unfortunately for her -- though fortunately for her party and the country -- she is not going to be the candidate who fills it.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 28, 2015 The Republicans Have Been Trumped; Democrats Can Organize Better Debates
Having more candidates on stage can make things more contentious. Chafee is ready to go after Clinton on foreign-policy concerns in ways that Sanders and O'Malley might not. O'Malley might well press Sanders on gun-control and immigration issues. But challenges and pressure are good.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 12, 2014 Congress Needs to Assert Checks and Balances on Any New Iraq Mission
There is a mistaken notion that the system of checks and balances threatens the authority of the presidency. In fact, it can, and often does, provide necessary definition for a commander in chief. When a president seeks the advice and consent of Congress for military intervention, the process itself conveys authority--along with a broad understanding of the mission that is being proposed.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, February 15, 2013 Senator Harry Reid, D-Fool Me Twice
Reid could have implemented filibuster reform with a simple majority in January--as the Senate is allowed to make changes in how it operates at the start of each new Congress. Now, he needs 67 votes, and he won't get them. So he's stuck, as is the Senate, as is the republic that voted in November to end the dysfunction in Washington. "Fool me twice...shame on me."
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 3, 2014 Let's Tell Congress to Raise the Minimum Wage ... Right Now!
As members of the House return to Washington, Democrats should take up the call -- not as an election issue but as an immediate demand for action. As Nader has illustrated, it is possible to turn the volume up on this issue quickly, and effectively. Congress should put politics aside and raise the minimum wage. Now!
SHARE Thursday, May 5, 2011 Cheney Refuses to Admit He Was Wrong on Obama's Approach to War on Terror
The Obama administration changed course, and Cheney was a critic of the new approaches. Now that Obama's approach has achieved what the Cheney approach could not, the former vice president is playing his favorite game: rewriting history in his favor.
SHARE Friday, December 6, 2013 Nelson Mandela: Union Man
Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader, Nobel Prize winner and first president of the new South Africa, who died Thursday at age 95, recognized the organization of workers as a part of the freedom struggle and of the formation of a just society.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 17, 2013 Outrage Is Rising Against Stand Your Ground
Florida's "stand your ground" law has from the beginning been a part of the controversy over the February 26, 2012, killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman was not charged for 44 days following the shooting of the youth. Only after national protests led Florida Governor Rick Scott to appoint a special prosecutor was Zimmerman charged with second-degree murder.
SHARE Wednesday, January 16, 2013 How Obsequious Media Coverage Perpetuates NRA Mythology
The NRA continues to be treated by much of the media as something more than it ever was, and something far greater than it now is: a definitional political player. This is a "Wizard of Oz" circumstance, where the fantasy of power actually creates the power. If it really had the power, the man it poured its resources into defeating--Barack Obama--would not be the president of the United States.
SHARE Friday, June 8, 2018 Democrats Have Now Flipped 42 State Legislative Seats From Red to Blue
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, taking encouragement from the pattern of wins in special and off-year elections for state House and Senate seats, has launched a new "Let's Flip Everything This November" campaign -- featuring a video by New Jersey US Senator Cory Booker.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 2, 2016 Resolution for 2016: Let's Have Lots More Presidential Debates
The Commission on Presidential Debates, a joint project of Democratic and Republican party insiders, currently has control of the fall presidential debates -- along with the television networks. The commission has a history of narrowing the number of debates, limiting the number of candidates who can participate and selecting moderators and panelists who constrain rather than expand the range of debate.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 19, 2017 Trump's Plan to Eliminate Public Broadcasting Would Hurt Listeners in Trump Country
The president's first federal budget proposal seeks to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting -- zeroing out the $445 million annual allocation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the not-for-profit entity created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to keep local public radio and television stations on the air.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 19, 2014 Americans Really Do Not Want to Be Part of Another War in Iraq
while Cheney is busily repurposing his pro-war rhetoric of 1991 and 2003 -- while at the same time accusing President Obama of "betraying" US freedom, "abandoning" Iraq, being a "very very weak president" and generally failing to follow the neocon playbook -- Americans are remembering what happened the last time the war hawks had their way.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 2, 2019 Lots of Politicians Preach Civility, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Practices It
Ocasio-Cortez is signaling that she does not believe that she must destroy those who differ with her, or that she must divide people against one another in order to gain an advantage in the battle of ideas. She places her faith in information and insights.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 30, 2013 The Pope Versus "King Money"
Pope Francis argues in a newly circulated apostolic exhortation that "as long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems."
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 30, 2013 Instead of Paul Ryan's "Robin Hood in Reverse," Why Not a Robin Hood Tax?
No one should rule out the prospect that the Budget committee will entertain proposals for roll-the-dice experiments with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid voucher schemes, hiking retirement ages, establishing means tests and reducing protections against inflation. At the same time, Ryan would reduce the corporate tax rate and eliminate the alternative minimum tax.
SHARE Tuesday, January 20, 2015 Joni Ernst Will Provide a Koch Brothers Rebuttal to the State of the Union
hen Joni Ernst responds to President Obama's State of the Union address tonight. She probably won't mention the Koch brothers or the other billionaire donors she praises in private for putting her in this position. But she will be sounding the themes favored by her elite donors and setting the stage for their grab at the presidency in 2016.
(13 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 21, 2015 Obama's Ambitious State of the Union Address Rejects Lame-Duck Status
The major initiative from the president's sixth State of the Union address that most excites newly empowered Republicans -- granting the president "fast track" authority to negotiate corporate-friendly "free trade" agreements -- is the major initiative on which both the president and the Republicans are most wrong.
SHARE Wednesday, August 7, 2013 Democracy Disenfranchised: Detroit's Next Mayor Won't Be Allowed to Govern
What happens when elections are held but those who are elected are not allowed to govern? Can we tell ourselves that democracy has been maintained if it is not respected in any realistic sense by state and federal officials? That's a question that the voters of one of America's great cities, Detroit, are in the process of answering.
SHARE Tuesday, December 11, 2018 The Impeachment of Donald Trump Is No Longer "Off the Table"
Trump now stands accused of what is, by historical definition, an impeachable offense. To deny this fact is to deny the reality and the intent of the Constitution to which members of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate will swear their fealty when the 116th Congress is constituted in January.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 19, 2014 Did the UK Media Push Scotland's "No" Vote?
English commentator George Monbiot ripped into media coverage that frequently referred to "the threat" rather than the prospect of independence, compared the democratically elected Salmond to a dictator and dismissed Scottish complaints about austerity as a demand for a "something for nothing society." Monbiot's important essay was headlined, "How the media shafted the people of Scotland."
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 25, 2013 Fake-Blustering Ted Cruz Has a Plan to Get the America He Wants: Minority Rule
Ted Cruz trying whatever comes into his head -- like an all-nighter talkathon (a "fake-buster") that saw him reading Dr. Seuss and Ayn Rand as Tuesday gave way to Wednesday. At best for Cruz, it's a delaying tactic. At worst for Cruz, it slows action just long enough to assure that "crisis" votes will have to be taken by House Republicans on the eve of a government shutdown.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 23, 2013 Dick Cheney's Transcendent Cynicism
Despite the chaos it has unleashed within and around the party for which the 72-year-old former vice president serves as a grouchy grand old man, Cheney declared: "I don't see it as a negative. I think it's much better to have that kind of ferment and turmoil and change in the Republican Party than it would be to have it outside."
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 10, 2014 Democracy Over Disenfranchisement: High Court Blocks Voter ID in Wisconsin
In an emergency ruling, the High Court's 6-3 decision vacated the appeals court ruling, preventing the law from going into effect before it can be reviewed. (The only dissents came from rigidly conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.)
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Eric Cantor Defeated by a Conservative Who Rips Crony Capitalism
Dave Brat, who defeated the number-two Republican in the House by a 56-44 margin, tore into big business almost as frequently as he did the incumbent. "I am running against Cantor because he does not represent the citizens of the 7th District, but rather large corporations seeking insider deals, crony bailouts and a constant supply of low-wage workers," declared the challenger.
SHARE Friday, March 1, 2013 Gotta Sequester? Or Was Cheney Right That "Deficits Don't Matter"?
For Cheney's political heirs to claim now that the United States is in crisis, or at a "tipping point," is absurd. For them to refuse to govern until they get their way, throwing one tantrum after another, is irresponsible. For them to see value in sequester cuts that impose real pain on real people is not just crude, it's economically senseless.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 25, 2014 Paul Ryan's Faux Populism Isn't Going to End Poverty or Reduce Inequality
This is the same Paul Ryan who, when Congress took its August break in 2013 jetted home to Wisconsin via Arizona--where he was a featured speaker at the annual retreat for billionaire donors organized by the Koch brothers.
SHARE Friday, February 13, 2015 David Carr Was Our Guide Through a "Dead-Bang Ugly" Media Moment
The New York Times columnist on all things media, who died Thursday night at the absurdly young age of 58, waded into the greatest debates of our time with a warmth, humor and humility that belied his amazing ability to get to the heart of the matter -- as he did in his final interview, just hours before his death, with Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Edward Snowden.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 19, 2014 Rand Paul Is Wrong: Why the GOP Should Be Moving Backward, Not Forward
Rand Paul says "you can transform a party," and he notes, correctly, that "the parties have switched places many times throughout history." But the transformation that the Republican Party needs -- and that the United States needs the Republican Party to make -- is not toward something "new." It is toward something older, and better, than its current incarnation.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 22, 2013 Paul Ryan's Choice: Constituents or Koch Brothers?
Ryan has been among the prime beneficiaries of the money-in-politics moment ushered in by the High Court. As the House Budget Committee chairman, he has collected millions of dollars from individuals and groups that stand to benefit from initiatives such as Social Security privatization and the development of voucher schemes to "reform" Medicaid and Medicare.
SHARE Wednesday, August 17, 2011 Wisconsin Democrats Score Two More Recall Wins as Voters Reject a GOP Governor's Anti-Labor Agenda
For all the talk of Republican "wins" this year, the reality is that the Democrats have the far better record of winning competitive races. That's a significant shift from 2010, when the Republicans had the advantage. And it has Democrats in Wisconsin and across the country celebrating.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 24, 2014 The Infrastructure of American Democracy Is Dysfunctional
Core challenges facing voting in America are not necessarily technological. Americans could vote on paper ballots quickly and efficiently, as do voters in many other countries. And if they did they might well be more confident in the count. There is an insufficient level of commitment on the part of local, state and federal agencies to creating the infrastructure and the mindset that fosters high-turnout elections.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 22, 2015 Paul Ryan Was Already Rejected for a Leadership Position -- by the Voters
Ryan has not just demanded that the many caucuses and factions into which House Republicans have grouped themselves agree to give him unwavering support. Rejecting the politics of persuasion, he has created a new set of requirements for House Republicans, and warned them not to push back.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 19, 2013 An "Affront to Democracy" Steers Detroit Toward Austerity
In tough times, under pressure from lenders and taxpayers, cities often make cuts. They even privatize services and sell off public facilities. But under Snyder's emergency manager law, Detroit's voters and their elected leaders aren't making the choices that will determine Detroit's direction. A Republican governor, and his appointed manager, are calling the shots.
SHARE Wednesday, September 10, 2014 As Obama Prepares Iraq Talk, Massachusetts Democrats Nominate an Antiwar Vet for Congress
As President Obama was preparing to outline his strategy regarding Iraq and Syria, Massachusetts Democrats turned out a sitting congressman and nominated an Iraq veteran who is absolutely opposed to deploying ground troops in the region -- and absolutely determined to avoid the incremental missteps that lead back toward war.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, October 6, 2014 Hillary Clinton's Midterm Schedule Makes It Clear: She's Running
It is time to drop the pretenses and accept that Hillary Clinton is an all-in, touching every base, dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" candidate for president. To suggest differently would be to deny political history, political reality and the rapidly-evolving dynamics of a 2016 presidential race that has already begun and that will be fully engaged on the morning of November 5, 2014.
SHARE Monday, October 28, 2013 Lou Reed's Politics
Reed was an artist who understood and engaged in the political struggles of his times. No one who followed the remarkable career of the Velvet Underground co-founder and iconic solo artist over the better part of five decades failed to recognize his determination to speak up -- and to show up.
SHARE Tuesday, July 24, 2018 Abdul El-Sayed Is Running for Governor of Michigan on a Platform That Embraces the Future
Establishing and maintaining digital democracy should be at the top of every candidate's agenda. Unfortunately, while most Republicans have sold out, most Democrats are unwilling or unprepared to entertain visionary plans for putting technology on the side of the people rather than the profiteers. Abdul El-Sayed sees the future coming, and he wants to make it work for all of us.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, April 22, 2016 The Most Focused and Effective Democratic Messenger We Have Is Elizabeth Warren
Of all the Democrats in positions to make their voices heard at this point, Warren is the most awake. Wide awake. And she is saying what needs to be said about the conservatives who would be president. What's important is that, while she notes their whining and their failures, Warren attacks the Republicans with a focus on the issues and the ideals that are the most effective tools for countering right-wing extremism.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Imagine How President Donald Trump or Ted Cruz Would Respond to the Brussels Attacks
The horrific terror attacks in Brussels on Tuesday morning inspired expressions of sympathy, solidarity, and, from the two leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, painfully predictable scapegoating and torture talk. Ted Cruz, the most steadily shameless of the contenders for the Republican nomination, moved immediately to his default positions: attacking President Obama and promoting himself.
(10 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 2, 2019 William Barr Is Acting as Trump's Defense Lawyer, Not Attorney General
Wednesday's hearing was an empty exercise characterized primarily by Barr's attempts to obscure his own wrongdoing with regard to the Mueller report: "I'm not really sure" and "I cannot recapitulate" and "I would analogize it" and "What do you mean by receptive?" Barr actually claimed that the memo he wrote to "summarize the principle conclusions reached by the Special Counsel" was not a summary.
SHARE Wednesday, December 16, 2015 Rand Paul Got It Right: Trump "Would Defy Every Norm That Is America"
Paul, the senator from Kentucky whose candidacy has never quite gotten off the ground, used his time on the debate stage to focus on the fundamental threat posed by Trump's disregard for civil liberties. Paul said "the basic liberties that define America, the truth is still as Benjamin Franklin described it: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 28, 2016 Sanders Has Always Wanted to Debate Trump -- or Any Other Representative of the "Billionaire Class"
It was a given that Sanders would embrace the idea of debating Trump -- after the billionaire told Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday that he would be willing to debate the dissident Democrat. Sanders, who has tried without success to get one more debate with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton before the June 7 California primary, jumped at the prospect of stirring things up with Trump.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 27, 2012 Labor's Got to Get Serious About Amending to Overturn 'Citizens United'
"This Supreme Court says you cannot do anything to hamper the First Amendment rights of corporations," argues Trumka. "But when it comes to workers, they haven't seen a detriment to the First Amendment that they haven't liked yet." Trumka says "Citizen United has ushered in a new era of elections and it's not a pretty picture."
SHARE Wednesday, April 17, 2013 A Robin Hood Response to the Austerity Lie: Tax Wall Street
Transfers of wealth are not taxed in the same way as the work of American nurses, carpenters, bus drivers and shop clerks. As a result, the federal government struggles to balance budgets, and a yawning gap, between a super-rich 1 percent and the great mass of everybody else, keeps growing.
Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, wants to do something about that.
SHARE Tuesday, June 18, 2013 Congress Checks and Balances on Afghanistan -- Will It Do So With Syria?
The position of the Republican leaders does not bode well for a broad shift in the approach of Congress to questions about military adventures abroad. That's especially unfortunate at a time when the Obama administration is ramping up US support for Syrian rebels -- a move that should be checked and balanced by Congress.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, January 19, 2009 Most Valuable Progressives: Code Pink's Transition
Those of us who watched Code Pink evolve into the Most Valuable Progressive organization of the Bush years would expect no less of this amazing group in the Obama years.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, December 21, 2012 Speaker Boehner Loses It
Boehner's boneheaded "Plan B" scheme, which crashed and burned Thursday night after his own House Republican Caucus refused to provide the needed votes, will rank as one of the greatest failures ever by a House Speaker. The trouble with Boehner is that he lacks the external and internal legitimacy that is required for a "leader" to lead.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 3, 2018 The Real Problem With Sinclair
With their consolidation of ownership, and the dumbing down of newscasts, Sinclair's very conservative and very bottom-line-oriented owners are undermining local television stations in communities nationwide, providing less content and more doublespeak from the corporate headquarters in Maryland. It constantly puts profiteering ahead of the public interest.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 20, 2015 Can Democratic Socialism Pass the Electability Test? It Already Has
Roosevelt did not win on the Socialist Party line, however -- he won as a Democrat. And so we still face the question that Cooper was raising about whether democratic socialists can be elected in the United States. It's a fair one. And it has an answer: Yes.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 11, 2012 Scott Walker Promised $500K Donor He Would 'Divide and Conquer' Unions
Walker promise a billionaire campaign donor that the attack on collective-bargaining rights for public-sector unions -- which sparked demonstrations and the movement that has forced the recall election -- was only "the first step" in a grand plan.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 4, 2012 Who Got the Most Votes in Tuesday's Primaries? Not Mitt Romney
The president won more than 10 times as many District of Columbia votes as all the Republican contenders combined. That's not exactly shocking, as the district is a Democratic stronghold. But in Maryland, a state that sends Republicans to Congress and that has elected a Republican governor in recent years, Obama won substantially more votes than all the Republican presidential contenders combined.
SHARE Friday, October 12, 2012 Richard Milhous Ryan: No Specifics, Just a "Secret Plan"
But in the end, it was not Biden who made Ryan the Nixon of the night. It was Ryan. On what he says is the most important issue of the campaign, the "fiscal cliff" issue that brought him to national attention and a place on the GOP ticket, Ryan had no details, no specifics, just a "secret plan."
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, February 25, 2013 To Beat Austerity, Obama Must Campaign for Democracy
So long as the "money power" is able to use its resources to reanimate and reassert failed ideas, the United States will fail to consider a proper range of responses to economic issues. The balance will tip too far toward those who pay for campaigns, and for the lobbyists who seek to undo the results of lost elections.
SHARE Friday, September 11, 2009 Afghanistan Election Fraud and the High Price of Empire
US officials are finding it increasingly difficult to construct a rationale for allowing the man they put in charge of Afghanistan to remain in charge of Afghanistan. The United States, a country founded with the purpose of breaking the chains of empire, has gotten into the dirty business of constructing and maintaining them.
SHARE Monday, June 4, 2012 Scott Walker Tries to Buy an Election -- and a State
If Walker does prevail, he will provide essential evidence not of his own appeal but of the power of money to define our politics. On the other hand, if Walker is defeated, a template will have been developed for a people-power, message-power politics that might be able to challenge big money.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 4, 2011 An Answer to 2011's Austerity Arguments: 'We Won't Pay For Their Crisis'
Republicans in Congress and even some Democrats were all saying that the country was broke and that it was going to be necessary to put Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs at risk to balance the books.
That's right. They want working Americans to sacrifice in order to pay off the debts they ran up on their wars and bailouts?
What's the proper response?
"We Won't Pay For Their Crisis."
SHARE Friday, July 6, 2012 Vetoing Voter ID Is the (Historically) Republican Thing to Do
The history of the Republican Party when it comes to voting rights has been a proud one. But it has been diminished in recent years, as the party's governors and legislators have moved in states across the country to enact anti-democratic Voter ID laws that are, as the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and other groups suggest, nothing more than crude voter-suppression schemes.
SHARE Wednesday, January 7, 2015 Edward Brooke and the Republican Party That Might Have Been
Brooke decried the party's "southern strategy" courtship of segregationist Democrats as "not just morally wrong, but politically wrong." And he counseled that the conservative "programs and political philosophy that presently controls the Republican Party" were a barrier to attracting the votes of African-Americans and young people.
SHARE Sunday, November 8, 2015 The Republican Debate Fiasco Is About to Get Dumb and Dumber
The networks want debates with fewer candidates on stage. They want a good visual image, and perhaps better theater, not the clash of ideas that should determine the direction of a nomination contest. The Republican National Committee and television networks that have shown no respect for the idea that real debates have a role to play in shaping real democracy.
SHARE Monday, April 2, 2012 Wisconsin's Recall Elections Are Set for June 5
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will be the first chief executive of an American state to face a recall election because he attacked the rights of working people to have a voice in their workplaces and in the public life of the land.
SHARE Friday, August 31, 2012 Mitt Romney: His Party Is the Problem
The Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, of Dwight Eisenhower and George Romney, of Gerald Ford and, yes, of Ronald Reagan, never moved so far from the mainstream that it would not cooperate and compromise when it came time to do right by America.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, April 24, 2009 Feingold on Torture Judge: "Grounds for Impeachment"
"The idea that one of the architects of this perversion of the law is now sitting on the federal bench is very troubling," Feingold argues. "The memos offer some of the most explicit evidence yet that Mr. Bybee and others authorized torture and they suggest that grounds for impeachment can be made," says the senator.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, September 8, 2014 This Is a "Pivotal Moment" for the Movement to Remove Big Money From Politics
Constitutional amendments become viable when support for them grows so overwhelming that traditional partisan and ideological boundaries are broken. When this happens, the divide becomes less a matter of Republican versus Democrat or left versus right and more a matter of a broken present versus a functional future.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 4, 2013 Wendy Davis: Yes, She Can
Can the woman who this spring excited tens of thousands of Texans enough to get them to come to the state capitol to back her filibuster of an assault on reproductive rights now excite hundreds of thousands who don't usually cast ballots in off-year elections to come vote?
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 27, 2012 Don't Eliminate the Filibuster, Restore It
What Reid is considering is not an attack on the filibuster. It is a renewal of the filibuster as it was portrayed in the classic 1939 film. Senators would still be free to go to the floor to keep debates about major bills and nominations open. They could launch filibusters to prevent the end of debate on a matter of consequence -- to block a final vote on a piece of legislation.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 2, 2013 Why Tom Harkin and a Handful of Other Progressives Opposed the Deal
The agreement compromised on what was supposed to be a hard-and-fast principle: that tax rates on Americans making $250,000 or more must go up to at least the rates that were in place when Bill Clinton was president. Instead, the deal only ends Bush-era tax cuts on those with incomes above $400,000.
SHARE Friday, November 22, 2013 Honor JFK By Renewing His Constitutional Commitment to Extend Voting Rights
Fifty years after his assassination, Kennedy can be honored in many ways. But a renewal of his liberal commitment to voting rights would surely be a fine place of beginning. The 24th amendment to the Constitution, which eliminated the poll tax, was placed on the national agenda by Kennedy, who made it his personal mission to eliminate the wealth barrier to voting.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 7, 2013 Yes, Federal Workers Are Essential
Government workers form the human infrastructure that underpins a great deal of what is good and necessary in the American experiment. We the people care for one another, we take on great challenges, we achieve great things, and we do this by forming a more perfect union and asking some of our fellow citizens to do perform the tasks that are necessary to its maintenance.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 3, 2013 Congress Will Be Diminished by the Departure of Dennis Kucinch
The Kucinich who came to Congress in the 1990s was every bit as incorruptible and uncompromising on principle as the "boy mayor" who fought Cleveland's crony capitalists in the 1970s. He opposed trade deals, deregulation schemes and, most notably, the wars of whim of Democratic and Republican presidents. Congress will be diminished by his absence.
SHARE Tuesday, March 26, 2013 Austerity's Cruelest Cut: Democracy Denied in Detroit
When a city's voters reject a Republican governor and his agenda, and that governor is still able to shove aside local elected officials and impose his personal appointee to make all the calls regarding how the city is run, democracy is denied. And that denial attacks the most fundamental premises of the American experiment.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 20, 2016 New York to Ted Cruz: Drop Dead
The city's Republicans saw through the Cruz charade, and dismissed his candidacy. Bashing de Blasio got him nothing. That does not mean that New York Republicans have embraced their city's mayor -- or his progressive politics. But hating on de Blasio did nothing to advance Cruz's standing.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 8, 2013 Our Elections Really Are Rigged -- by Gerrymandering and Districting Abuses
Americans who favor representative democracy don't have a choice. Along with all the reforms that are needed -- overturning Citizens United, eliminating the Electoral College, establishing a constitutionally defined right to vote -- working to make congressional elections genuinely competitive is necessary to curing what ails the political process.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 12, 2015 Democrats Really Want a Contest for Their Party's Presidential Nod
When likely Democratic voters are presented with information about Warren and her populist positions on the issues ranging from trade policy to banking regulation to student loan debt, they become more enthusiastic about her running -- and about backing her in a race that also includes Clinton.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 3, 2009 Don't Mourn for Daschle
No one -- or, at least, no one who is invested either in securing real health care reform or seeing an Obama presidency succeed -- should mourn Daschle's departure.
SHARE Monday, June 11, 2012 Tight Race for Giffords Seat Sends Big Signals About November
The special election to fill the Giffords seat, which takes place Tuesday, has seen massive outside spending (by GOP groups and by "independent" allies such as Karl Rove and Dick Armey) on behalf of a Republican who hopes to grab it for his party. Democrats have fought back aggressively in the closing days because they know they cannot afford to lose the seat.
SHARE Friday, October 11, 2013 Shutdown Politics: Support for Democratic Takeover of House Spikes
Republicans are starting to feel the heat. And if the numbers keep moving in the Democratic direction, those Republicans will begin -- despite all the pressures from the Tea Party and its wealthy benefactors, despite the very real threat of primary challenges -- to start angling for negotiations and compromise.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 18, 2009 Lowery's Preaching, Not Warren's, Will Illuminate Inaugural Day
On Inauguration Day, it is a sound bet that the pastor who challenged George Wallace's bigotry and George Bush's war-making will challenge the backward thinking of Rick Warren and all those who would presume that the storehouses of God's justice run low when it comes to the rights of gays and lesbians.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 5, 2012 The Secret of Bernie Sanders's Success
Sanders took the money he raised for his re-election campaign and put it into an energetic door-knocking project. The point wasn't to build name recognition; through 40 years of losing and then winning elections, Sanders has been to virtually every town in the state. At the roughly 20,000 doors knocked on by the legions of Sanders volunteers during this campaign, it was for them to come out and spend a few hours with Sanders.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, November 17, 2014 What to do About Record Low Voter Turnout? Call a Holiday!
According to United States Elections Project estimates, just 36.3 percent of eligible voters bothered to participate in elections where members of the US House and Senate, most governors and most state legislators and thousands of local officials were chosen. The nation's most populous states, all of which had full federal and state ballots, saw dismal turnout.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 15, 2013 Obama's Chained-CPI Social Security Cut Is Smart Politics... for the GOP
Cynicism works. Pointing out -- loudly -- that a Democratic president and his allies are abandoning historic Democratic commitment does not turn Democratic voters into Republican voters, it turns Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents into non-voters.
SHARE Monday, October 5, 2015 A Union Leader Who Always Knew Which Side He Was On
When Wisconsin rose up against Walker's economically and socially destructive policies, Marty Beil was old enough to retire. But he stayed on for the fight. More than that, Beil fought on the front lines. He marched, he picketed, he spoke up and he showed up. He battled for his union in particular and unions in general. And he battled on behalf of that fabric of Wisconsin.
SHARE Thursday, February 18, 2010 Senator Mellencamp?
ould Mellencamp perform in the U.S. Senate?
Could he be the right replacement for retiring Senator Evan Bayh, D-Indiana?
Forget the blah-blah-blah about celebrities in politics. We crossed that bridge decades ago.
The question is whether this celebrity makes the right connections with this state.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, January 21, 2013 Barack Obama Charts an Arc of History That Bends Toward Justice
Significantly, in a time of debate about the future of governing commitment to those whose dreams have been so long deferred, Obama completed the arc from FDR and LBJ to today, not just mentioning but defending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, December 31, 2012 Harry Reid Finally Settles It: Social Security Is Off the Table
Preserving Social Security should never have been all that difficult. But it took Harry Reid to settle the issue -- at least as regards the miserably long and absurdly inappropriate debate of 2012. Reid's firm rejection of any cuts actually moved the negotiations forward -- making clear to the Republicans that they would get no deal on Social Security.
SHARE Sunday, March 24, 2013 Congress Has a Constitutional Duty to Preserve and Promote the Post Office
The only question is whether members of Congress will side with the public interest in maintaining a strong and innovative postal service, or with the campaign donors and lobbyists who want to carve up the USPS and replace service with profiteering.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 12, 2013 Not Just the NSA: Politicians Are Data Mining the American Electorate
The political players who have mastered television and radio and direct mail, the Karl Roves and the David Axelrods, as well as the thousands of consultants you've never heard of, are deep into a process that they believe will allow them to master the Internet. The reality is that the consulting class no longer views the Internet as a "new frontier" or a tool that needs to be understood.
SHARE Monday, January 11, 2021 Impeach Trump Immediately
The president incited his supporters to invade the Capitol and disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. That is too high a crime to ignore.
SHARE Monday, September 30, 2013 Amid Shutdown Scrambling, a Powerful Reminder that DC Should Be a State
Ultimately, this crisis within a crisis provides a reminder of the absurd circumstance of the District of Columbia. Residents of Washington are taxed. They are subject to federal laws. They serve in America's wars. Yet, they have limited control over their own affairs and--despite Norton's best efforts--a constrained voice in Congress. The remedy is not complicated. The District of Columbia should become an American state.
SHARE Tuesday, February 10, 2015 Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner's War on Workers
There is also a bottom-line contention when it comes to undermining the strength and flexibility of unions -- no matter what the state, no matter what the sector. Attacks on labor organizations represent what Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery decries as "brazen, out-of-touch attacks on the middle class and the unions who give them a collective voice."
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 2, 2016 Clinton Wins a Lot -- But Sanders Holds His Own
The senator can still make a case that he has a path to the nomination, but it is an uphill path. if the of young people who continue to show up for his rallies are any indication, his supporters are more than ready to fight on. If he hopes to level things out, Sanders must broaden his appeal to African-American and Latino voters, who will be a factor in many of the states where he must win in the weeks to come.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 11, 2012 Victorious Romney Rallies GOP for Bain Capitalism
Republicans don't have much taste for Romney. But they nurture a dramatic distaste for Obama. If Romney can suggest that attacks on his record as a rapacious capitalist help Obama, that might do what he has not been able to do on his own: energize a Republican Party that has not to this point been inclined to settle on his candidacy.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, May 20, 2013 The Peculiar Politics of Karl Rove's 'Outrage' Over the IRS Flap
The threat to democracy that the president described would be complete -- as sincere activists on the right and the left would be shunted to the sidelines of a new political landscape where corporate cash decides the day and the boss is not a CEO but a cynical political operative named Karl Rove.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 2, 2015 Not So "Fresh": Political Careerist Scott Walker Has Been Running for a Quarter-Century
Scott Walker is a political careerist who has sought office -- as a winner and loser -- more times that Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz combined. Walker has a lot more experience contending for public office than most of the other Republicans who are preparing to run in 2016.
SHARE Friday, November 13, 2015 Postal Workers Endorse Austerity-Foe Bernie Sanders
Sanders has for years been an ardent congressional advocate for postal workers and the United States Postal Service. Long before he considered presidential politics, the senator from Vermont was arguing against the austerity economics that seeks to balance the books by cutting public services.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 9, 2009 Double-Digit Unemployment Poses Political Danger for Obama
But there comes a time when a president "owns" his recession.
If the country is socked with a double-digit unemployment rate, and if the actions of the administration that is in charge are seen as feeding the increase in joblessness, that's the political point of no return.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 28, 2009 A Liberal Democrat Returns to the Fold
Major unions, pro-choice, pro-gay rights and environmental groups, as well as supporters of scientific research have backed him over the years. It was not just that Specter voted right now and again, he maintained amiable relations with these groups, as well as with civil liberties organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 17, 2016 Republicans Are Now Waging a War on Facts, Precedent, and the Constitution
No one expects Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to be anything less than ruthless partisans. And if the 2016 race has confirmed anything, it is that the senators from Texas and Florida are as unfamiliar with the facts about Supreme Court nominations as they are with basic premises of the Constitution.
SHARE Saturday, June 28, 2014 What Democrats Can Learn From Thad Cochran: Turnout, Turnout, Turnout!
Thad Cochran has proven that focusing on turnout -- with resources, organizing and a targeted message that highlights the threat posed by austerity-prone Republicans -- can significantly increase voter participation in critical races. And that participation can change the electoral calculus.
SHARE Tuesday, July 7, 2009 McNamara Was "Wrong, Terribly Wrong" About Vietnam
Almost a decade later, in the documentary Fog of War McNamara would admit to a many more failures. Most importantly, he expanded on his earlier acknowledgment that, "We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, July 22, 2013 Cities Really Are Too Big to Fail
There are already plenty of politicians stepping up to say what Washington can't do in response not just to Detroit's needs but also to those of hundreds of cities and counties nationwide. But that's austerity talking, not common sense. Common sense says that the federal government, which has played a part in undermining the economic prospects of American cities, needs to start playing a useful role.
SHARE Wednesday, December 28, 2011 Gingrich's Iowa Crash Has GOP Base Hunting for Next Anti-Romney
The real story of the last week in Iowa may be not of Gingrich's campaigning but of where the anti-Romney sentiment that briefly rested with his candidacy will shift next. If it goes, for instance, toward Santorum, this race could yet see another twist. And Gingrich will be watching from the sidelines.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 11, 2013 Democrats Have a Unique Constitutional Duty to Check, Balance the President
Checking and balancing the Obama administration on its use of drones is also a matter of principle. That is why it is not just appropriate but necessary for Democrats to ask the right questions, raise the right concerns and mount the appropriate constitutional challenges to administration policies.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, January 4, 2016  What Do the Bundy Brothers Have Against Wildlife?
The faux "patriots" who have invaded Oregon are confronting not merely the government but the rule of law, and they have as their stated goal an extreme restructuring of the approach of the United States to the physical environment, to western lands and to nature itself.
SHARE Friday, August 30, 2013 Not Another Undeclared War: UK Parliament Votes, Why Not US Congress?
Seventy-nine percent of Americans surveyed for the latest NBC News Poll say that President Obama should seek congressional approval before taking any military action. According to NBC: "nearly seven-in-10 Democrats and 90 percent of Republicans say the president should be required to receive congressional approval before taking any action."
SHARE Wednesday, March 6, 2013 Rick Snyder's Detroit Takeover Plan Is Not What Democracy Looks Like
Detroit runs the risk of losing democracy. Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican who led the charge for Michigan's enactment of an anti-labor "Right-to-Work" law last year, is targeting Detroit for a state takeover that will disempower the elected mayor and city council and give authority over the city's finances, service delivery and direction to an appointed "emergency manager."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 9, 2015 Working Families Party Urges Elizabeth Warren to Enter 2016 Race
Warren says she is not running. But an energetic "Draft Warren" campaign has taken shape in Iowa, New Hampshire and other states. National groups such as MoveOn.org and Democracy for America are pouring energy into the effort. And the WFP move turns up the volume.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, February 4, 2013 Skeeters Bit by Image of President Who Opposes Violence -- Not the 2nd Amendment
The White House released a photo of the president firing what looks to be a 12-gauge Browning. The whacked-out fantasists of the moment are "skeeters" -- Obama critics so unhinged that they have trouble imagining that a president who promotes gun safety would ever actually touch a gun. That's got the gun lobby rattled. They're claiming that the skeet-shooting pictures are "a ploy" to advance the cause of gun control.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 12, 2012 Michigan Adopts the ALEC Model for Diminishing Democracy
This is about warping democracy so that corporations have a consistent upper hand, with the result being that those politicians who are willing to do the bidding of corporations and wealthy donors are more likely to prevail. The end result of the assault on labor rights is the same as a direct assault on voting rights: a diminished democracy.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, February 26, 2016 The Hyper-Partisan Hypocrisy of Senator Chuck Grassley
The problem is with partisan hypocrites like Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who this week signed a letter (along with the other Republicans on the committee) vowing to "not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next president is sworn in on January 20, 2017."
SHARE Wednesday, August 6, 2014 By John Boehner's Logic, a Lot of Presidents Should Have Been Sued
In issuing executive orders that respect workers and advance civil rights, President Obama is doing what past presidents have done. The only difference is that he faces a lawsuit from a Congress that, in addition to failing to act on its own, wants to prevent the president from acting to get things done.
SHARE Thursday, October 1, 2015 Sanders Is Crowdfunding a Campaign, but That Doesn't Diminish the Need for Campaign Reform
The Sanders campaign's approach to fund-raising suggests an alternative model for crowdfunding presidential campaigns. He has attracted 1.3 million small donations (from 650,000 individual donors) and, in the context of contemporary politics, they really are small: In the previous quarter, the senator's average donation was $33.51. Ninety-nine percent of the donations came in amounts under $250.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, February 1, 2013 What We Will Lose When Tom Harkin Leaves the Senate
Harkin has repeatedly bucked Republican tides and prevailed when more moderate Democrats have been defeated. He came to Congress to get things done. His electoral success confirms the progressive premise that voters are more likely to back a determined Democrat than a compromising centrist.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 26, 2009 Obama Pick Sonia Sotomayor Reflects America
Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the high court, was made at the White House this morning, with the president hailing her as "an inspiring woman who I think will make a great justice."
SHARE Tuesday, August 9, 2011 Recall FAQ: Everything you need to know about Tuesday's elections
Democrats have no real ability to check and balance Walker at this point. If Democrats win three seats in the state Senate, they will shift control of the chamber and loosen the governor's iron grip on state government that extends to the judicial branch, where Walker's allies have used their narrow control of the state's seven-member Supreme Court to support legally dubious gubernatorial and legislative moves.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 16, 2012 How ALEC Thwarts Honest Debate About Gun Violence
As the Center for Media and Democracy's "ALEC Exposed" project has revealed, the group has a long history of seeking to undermine meaningful public discourse with regard to violence. ALEC does not merely oppose gun control, it seeks to prevent communities, states and the nation from even discussing gun control.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 29, 2013 Bridges Shouldn't Have to Collapse for Congress to Get Serious About Infrastructure
What Congress can't do is deny the necessity of action. And what they shouldn't do is neglect the insights that can be garnered from the unions that have been saying for years that the United States must get serious about investing in infrastructure.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 6, 2013 The Senate's Next Feingolds Must Step Up to Defend Privacy Rights
Senator Lindsay Graham, R-SC, has declared himself "glad" that the National Security Agency is obtaining the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. And key Democrats, such as Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-California, have adopted a "what's-the-big-deal?" stance that says the spying is old news that senators should have been aware of.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, November 30, 2015 Which Democrat Will Pass the Working Families Test?
The Working Families Party is preparing to endorse a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. Because the party is closely aligned with labor, environmental, and community groups in a number of key states, and because it is building grassroots operations in 2016 background states such as Wisconsin, the WFP endorsement is coveted by Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, February 10, 2014 Meet the Happy (Class) Warrior: Joe Biden Tries Out a 2016 Persona
The vice president is savvy enough to present himself as a happy class warrior. That doesn't mean he's better on the issues than Senator Elizabeth Warren or Senator Bernie Sanders or any other "dream" candidate. But if no prominent progressive populist runs, Biden is suggesting that he would be willing, make that delighted, to fill the void.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, December 4, 2015 The Importance of Saying "No" to Donald Trump
When they should be calling Trump out, the other Republican candidates instead embrace the worst of his politics. Trump's fantasies are facilitated by supposedly "mainstream" Republicans, who seek to advance themselves by being even more outrageous than the man who continually sets new standards for political outrageousness.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 1, 2013 A "Stark Choice" Election on the Future of Public Education
In Wisconsin, where Republican Governor Scott Walker has attacked teacher unions and hacked away at education budgets, and where Walker now proposes a sweeping expansion of a controversial vouchers scheme to shift public money to private schools, voters will have a chance to register their response Tuesday.
SHARE Friday, January 2, 2015 Mario Cuomo Was So Very Right -- Especially on the Death Penalty
Long after he left office, Cuomo remained consistently outspoken in his opposition to the death penalty, and it can he argued that this consistency played a role in shifting Democrats and the country as a whole toward a more enlightened view. But even if he had been required to stand alone on the issue, Mario Cuomo would have done so.
SHARE Thursday, July 16, 2009 Klobuchar's Contribution: Talking Law With Sotomayor
"I was influenced so greatly by a television show in igniting the passion that I had as being a prosecutor, and it was 'Perry Mason'," Judge Sotomayor acknowledged in response to a question from Klobuchar, adding a human note to the routine give-and-take of the past several days.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 9, 2013 Want Pentagon Cuts? Make Barney Frank a Senator
Just days ago having finished serving 32 years as one of the most outspoken and engaged members of the US House of Representatives, Barney Frank is actively campaigning for appointment to Kerry's seat. Frank was a serious player during the wrangling that followed the Wall Street meltdown and bailouts of 2008, and he gets high marks from no less a figure than US Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 30, 2013 In an Economic Democracy, Stiglitz & Reich Would Be Contenders for Fed Head
Urging the selection of Stiglitz or Reich might not lead to the actual choice of a progressive-populist as Fed chair. But it could turn the tide against Summers. It might help Yellen. And it would almost certainly create pressure on whoever takes charge of the Fed to recognize and embrace the full potential of the Federal Reserve.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 29, 2014 Governor Cuomo Should Debate Primary Challenger Zephyr Teachout
Teachout lacks Cuomo's name identification and campaign treasury. But she is a uniquely credible challenger in this race, and for this debate. As the first national director of the Sunlight Foundation, which has been in the forefront of advocacy for increased transparency and accountability government and politics, she's an actual expert on corruption issues.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 18, 2013 As He Runs for President, Scott Walker Runs From His Record
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker says the next Republican nominee for president "should either be a former or current governor." After all that shutdown trouble, the party's candidate is going to have to be "somebody who's viewed as being exceptionally remote from Washington." Scott Walker thinks the Republicans are going to need to turn to someone like, um, Scott Walker.
SHARE Sunday, July 21, 2013 Obama Uses a Teaching Moment to Challenge "Stand Your Ground" Laws
The key is to speak to reasonable Americans, some of them Democrats and some of them Republicans, some of them liberals and some of them conservatives, who have a creeping suspicion that laws permitting the use of deadly force even when it could be avoided might not be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we'd all like to see.
SHARE Thursday, July 17, 2014 Standing Up to Disaster Capitalism in Detroit
As the Detroit Water and Sewage Department is drawing international criticism for shutting off water service for low-income families, activists are asking why the people are being forced to pay while the Wall Street banks live large. On Friday, members of the National Nurses United union and local, state and national groups will march and rally in downtown Detroit to say the priorities are out of whack.
SHARE Thursday, February 27, 2014 The Legacy of Chokwe Lumumba Must Not Be Buried With the Man
Cities are the places where radical reformers can still break the political mold and make real change, where the politics of concession and compromise can be replaced with the politics of people power and renewal. Chokwe Lumumba proved that, and the best way to honor his accomplishment is to elect more mayors who are as determined as he was to be transformative leaders.
SHARE Friday, August 9, 2013 Mass Protests Put ALEC Under National Scrutiny
ALEC is still very much what ALEC has been for decades: a key player, perhaps the key player, in advancing the corporate agenda on a host of issues in statehouses across the country. What has changed for ALEC is that a lot more Americans are now paying attention to its advocacy. New national campaigns to get corporations and foundations to quit ALEC are ramping up.
SHARE Thursday, April 2, 2009 House Members to Obama: Rethink Afghanistan Surge
Congressional Democrats and Republicans are signing on to a letter urging President Obama to reconsider his plan to surge tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan.
SHARE Wednesday, January 29, 2014 State of the Union: Right on Wages, Wrong on Trade
A president can do a great deal to restore balance and fairness in America -- and around the world. Obama is taking some important steps, on the minimum wage and a host of other issues. But he has to recognize that he cannot restore balance and fairness by proposing new free-trade deals that extend the worst practices of old free-trade deals.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, January 28, 2013 Priebus Is What Happens When a Party Loses Its Self-Respect
Priebus was not reelected to build a multiracial, multiethnic party that embraces diversity and seeks to deliver a message of opportunity for all. The whole point of his chairmanship has been to combat the politics of inclusion that Republicans decry Barack Obama for practicing.
SHARE Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Paul Ryan's 'Spinal Tap' Tour
Ryan's a rock star in Washington. But he's not playing so well at home, in southeast Wisconsin's 1st district. His spring recess tour on the towns was supposed to be a triumphal return of a hometown hero turned sudden celebrity. Instead, the tour has the feel of those dismal dates played by the aging rockers in the movie Spinal Tap.
SHARE Wednesday, February 13, 2013 Obama Demands That Congress Do "the Work of Self-Government"
Obama will press Congress to act, as he must. After decades of neglect, not just by NRA-tied Republicans but by Democrats who were willing to put political expediency ahead of principle, Barack Obama engaged in the work of self-government. And he reminded Americans that their Congress has a responsibility to do the same.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 10, 2014 Christie’s Access Lane Onto the Presidential Trail Gets Gridlocked
Wednesday's revelations about the emails circulated by the governor's aides and allies won't just hurt Christie in New Jersey. They are quite likely to hurt him in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. The usually unapologetic Christie recognizes the threat -- in his home state and nationally -- that is posed by the suggestion that his office engaged in the politics of retribution.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 31, 2009 Good Riddance to Decade That Began With Theft of the Presidency
It was the U.S. Supreme Court's unprecedented meddling in the presidential election process -" an intervention that would have horrified the founders of a republic that was supposed to enjoy a separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers -" made the Bush-Cheney interregnum possible.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 17, 2015 "The Politics of Higher Purpose": An Interview With Martin O'Malley
As one of three remaining Democratic contenders -- with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders -- O'Malley gets good reviews for debate performances and speeches. Yet the former Maryland governor's poll numbers are modest. Undaunted, he tells John Nichols that "the politics of higher purpose" can prevail."
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 8, 2015 It Is Time for Responsible Republicans to Say They Won't Back a Trump-Led GOP
There are points where Republicans can and must reject extremist candidates and extremist politics. That standard is not met when Republicans call Trump "unhinged" or suggest that they are prepared to offer Americans a kinder, gentler version of Trumpism. That standard is met when Republican presidential candidates and party leaders declare that they cannot and will not support a national party ticket led by Donald Trump.
SHARE Monday, March 28, 2016 With 3 Wins, Bernie Sanders Claims the Momentum Is On His Side
Dan Cantor, the executive director of a labor-backed progressive party with deep roots in New York politics, says he is convinced that "The political revolution is growing. Every day, Bernie Sanders is inspiring Americans to take the brave step of voting for the future we want to see, and not just what the political and financial elite tells us we're allowed to have."
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Barack Obama Refuses to Be a Lame-Duck President
While Obama detailed the successes of his presidency, he also laid out a fresh vision. At the heart of this State of the Union address was an argument that America can meet the challenges posed by a technological revolution, globalization, climate change, and threats to domestic and global security by recognizing opportunities to change and grow as a nation.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 22, 2015 With Lindsey Graham's Exit, a Dismal Republican Race Is Diminished Further Still
Lindsey Graham was the loudest -- and often the loneliest -- Republican challenger to the absolute absurdity of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and to the willingness of other candidates, congressional leaders, and party bureaucrats to aid and abet the blowhard billionaire's vile rhetoric. Graham dared to say what other Republicans would not, ripping Trump as a "race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot."
SHARE Monday, April 4, 2016 Sanders and Clinton Are Campaigning Hard in Wisconsin -- Against Scott Walker
As Wisconsin's April 5 primary approaches, Sanders is still running against Walker -- and against the anti-labor, anti-public education, anti-public services austerity agenda of a Republican Party so toxic that it has become a host for the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
SHARE Wednesday, December 2, 2015 An Accountability Moment for Chicago
No matter how things play out for Mayor Emanuel in the current crisis, Illinois officials should recognize the inadequacy of existing election laws and provide Illinoisans with a clearly defined power (similar to that which is afforded citizens in states across the country) to recall state, county, and local elected officials--including the mayor of Chicago.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 24, 2013 Exit of Wall Street-Friendly Max Baucus is No Loss for Democrats
Baucus frequently split with progressive Democrats on critical issues. For instance, he voted to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq and provided high-profile support to President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001. A frequent defender of corporate tax breaks, he was criticized for his tepid response to efforts to crack down on abuses of overseas tax havens.
SHARE Friday, May 17, 2013 Dems to DOJ: "Very Troubled," "Inexcusable," "No Way to Justify This"
Our Constitution outlines a separation of powers between the branches of government. The separation was not designed to encourage partisan division but to assure that there would always be a checking and balancing of power--regardless of party affiliation or allegiance. Rarely has the partisanship been more intense, more bitter, than now.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 27, 2009 GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness
Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: "Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 21, 2015 Democrats Debate in the Shadows of a Saturday Night Before Christmas
The Democratic debates do not have to be as theatrical as the Trump-dominated Republican debates. Democrats have proven they can disagree without being overly disagreeable. But they have not proven it on nights when viewership is robust and coverage is serious. Saturday-night debates are rarely, if ever, a good idea. The DNC needs to schedule more debates on more nights when more Americans are watching.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 14, 2009 GOP Senator Says Attacks on Sotomayor "Mainly About Politics"
...the signal from Graham at Monday's session suggested there is a good chance key elements within the "party of no" will say yes to Sotomayor. That should allow her nomination to be sent from the Judiciary Committee to the full Senate with a strong recommendation that it be approved.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 10, 2015 How Paul Ryan Aids and Abets Donald Trump
Ryan does not think that Trump is advocating for conservatism. And Ryan does not think that Trump represents what the Republican Party stands for. But Ryan would back Trump for president of the United States. That mixed message, criticism followed by a commitment to support a "not what this party stands for" nominee, aids and abets Trump.
SHARE Wednesday, July 3, 2013 Oh, Right, the Jobs Crisis
In general, young people are having a hard time finding jobs, and that is especially true in urban centers that have been hard hit by long-term deindustrialization that's linked not just to an absent industrial policy but also to wrongheaded "free-trade" agreements such as NAFTA and the extension of permanent most-favored-nation trading status to China.
SHARE Wednesday, November 6, 2013 Don't Get Too Excited About Christie's Politics of Style, Not Substance
Christie won with 60 percent of the vote Tuesday. The minimum-wage increase that Christie rejected won by just as wide a margin. The calculus cannot be denied: hundreds of thousands of New Jersey voters who cast ballots for Christie also cast ballots for a policy shift he opposed. The governor won on style points, not substance.
SHARE Monday, July 8, 2013 Eliot Spitzer: Great Policy, Arrogant Politics
Even those who support Eliot Spitzer will recognize that he is not the only wealthy contender -- or the only contender who might use big money to win a big election. If Spitzer is serious about using the New York City comptroller's office to audit our public policies -- and to propose real fixes -- he should not be so arrogant as to casually dismiss attempts to address and constrain the money power.
SHARE Tuesday, December 15, 2015 A Brave GOP Congressman Refuses to Back Trump and Sets an Example for Tonight's Debaters
Wisconsin Republican Reid Ribble is saying absolutely and unapologetically that he does not back Trump -- and, more importantly, that he will not back Trump. "I am not obligated to support a bad candidate from any party," says Ribble. "I will not support Donald Trump for president of the United States, no matter what the circumstances."
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 28, 2010 War Opposition Grows As 102 House Dems, 12 Republicans Oppose Obama's Afghan Surge
More than 100 Democratic House members and a dozen Republicans voted against funding the Obama administration's Afghan war surge Tuesday, offering one of the strongest shows of opposition to presidential warmaking since the Vietnam War era.
SHARE Monday, May 6, 2013 America Can't Cut Its Way To Prosperity
Only 165,000 new jobs were created in April -- far fewer than are needed to address existing unemployment and create positions for the millions entering the workforce. More than 11.7 million active job seekers cannot find work. And that figure does not include millions who have given up looking or are severely underemployed. Add them in and real unemployment is at 13.9 percent.
SHARE Wednesday, February 1, 2012 Tom Paine Would Not Have Approved of Mitt Romney
If Toryism has a contemporary face, it is that of Mitt Romney. Everything about this millionaire son of privilege says he would have chosen the security of King George III and the British Empire over a dangerous alliance with the radicals who rejected the divine right of kings and declared "all men are created equal."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 19, 2013 Not Just Hillary Clinton: Why So Many Republicans Are Embracing Marriage Equality
Cheney's daughter is an out lesbian, and Mehlman's son is an out gay man. But Americans of all partisan and ideological backgrounds have come to support LGBT rights because of personal connections and experiences. That does not detract from the significance of their commitment to marriage equality. As Cheney says with regard to his support for same-sex unions: "Freedom means freedom for everyone."
SHARE Monday, January 7, 2013 When the Great Judgment Call Came, Hagel Handed Bush a Blank Check
Hagel has, to his credit, grown even more skeptical about military adventurism abroad. He even went so far as to oppose Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan, saying, "I'm not sure we know what the hell we are doing in Afghanistan." Of the Afghanistan intervention, which he will be charged with dialing down if he is confirmed as defense secretary, Hagel says: "We have lost our purpose, our objective."
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 21, 2013 It Really Should Not Matter That Ted Cruz Is Canadian
Despite the fact that seven of the 39 men who signed the US Constitution in 1787 did not meet the "natural-born citizen" standard, there was just enough fear at the time that a foreign-born monarch would take charge of the newly formed United States to cause the clause to be added. It is time to get over the fears of 226 years ago and embrace the Enlightenment vision.
SHARE Wednesday, November 9, 2011 Labor Rights, Abortion Rights, Immigrant Rights, Voting Rights Prevail
The lesson from 2011 is clear: The Republican/Tea Party moment of 2010 was just that: a moment. The new politics of 2011 is progressive. Progressive ideas are winning: in Ohio, in Maine and, yes, in Mississippi.
SHARE Monday, April 15, 2019 Beto Talks About the Costs of War
The role of Congress has been severely diminished as successive presidents have claimed ever-greater authority to order bombing raids and drone strikes, dispatch ground troops to distant lands, and spend billions of dollars without clear declarations of war or meaningful oversight.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 26, 2012 No Senator, Republican or Democrat, Should Serve by Appointment
No member of Congress should serve without having been elected by the people of the district or state they represent. Unfortunately, the new Senate will have at least three members who serve not as representatives but as mandarins--appointees assigned to positions by governors who have assumed unreasonable authority.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 9, 2009 Save the Solis Nomination
Barack Obama made the right pick when he chose Hilda Solis to serve as his Secretary of Labor. The president should not be dissuaded by the silly spin that would equate the circumstances of a Tom Daschle with those of Hilda Solis. Obama and his allies in the Senate need to inject a measure of perspective....
SHARE Monday, March 5, 2012 Mitt Romney's "Cut-and-Paste" Fantasy Candidacy
The endorsements of Romney invariably come with a caveat indicating that, like Republicans in general, the newspaper editorial boards are not really that into Mitt. What's a candidate to do when all his endorsements recite his many failings? Cut-and-paste himself to credibility -- and the Republican presidential nomination?
SHARE Tuesday, March 31, 2009 Auto Gets Tough Love, While Wall Street Feels the Love
Will this president ever tell brokers and bankers that they are going to feel more pain than just the paper cuts from opening their bailout checks and bonuses?
SHARE Thursday, February 19, 2009 What Took So Long? Finally, Some Help For Homeowners
The president proposes to take administrative actions to spend $75 billion of the Financial Stabilization Fund on facilitating modifications in existing loans and he wants to require lenders that are accepting tax dollars to adopt foreclosure prevention protocols to prevent unnecessary foreclosures.
SHARE Tuesday, January 31, 2012 Romney's 50 Percent Hurdle
What Romney does have is money. Lots of it. More money in campaign accounts and Super PAC cash flows than the rest of the candidates combined. And he is spending it, wildly.
SHARE Wednesday, March 14, 2012 Gritty Defeats Highlight Romney's Authenticity Deficit
Romney did not close any deal. He just confirmed his absurdity. And his inability to beat a washed-up former senator from Pennsylvania and the disgraced former speaker of the US House of Representatives means that he will be performing in the theater of the absurd that the Republican primaries have become for weeks, perhaps months, to come.