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Robert Scheer is editor in chief of the progressive Internet site Truthdig. He has built a reputation for strong social and political writing over his 30 years as a journalist. He conducted the famous Playboy magazine interview in which Jimmy Carter confessed to the lust in his heart and he went on to do many interviews for the Los Angeles Times with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and many other prominent political and cultural figures. He is currently a clinical professor of communications at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Scheer has written nine books, and his latest, "The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street" (Nation Books), was released on September 7, 2010. Scheer was raised in the Bronx, where he attended public schools and graduated from City College of New York. He studied as a Maxwell Fellow at Syracuse University and was a fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where he did graduate work in economics. Scheer is a contributing editor for The Nation as well as a Nation Fellow, and is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He has also been a Poynter Fellow at Yale, and was a fellow in arms control at Stanford.
SHARE Thursday, May 17, 2012 Obama Can't Knock the Hustle
The best and the brightest in this case are the bane of the nation because their genius lies in outwitting all efforts to hold them accountable. Dimon, the most recent in a parade of now-disgraced Wall Street golden boys, was nonetheless just awarded $24 million in compensation for 2011 by JPMorgan.
SHARE Thursday, May 10, 2012 Hope and Hesitation in Obama's Sudden Conversion
Young voters have returned to the sanity of the nation's Founders and are unwelcoming of the government's imposing its will on their pursuit of happiness. Surely Obama was mindful that the gay marriage issue is trending sharply in that direction, and certainly his response is a reason for optimism among those fighting against second-class citizenship for gays.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 3, 2012 Imitation Outrage: Faking Concern for the Chinese Masses
We all know that the rulers of China now have the clout to mess up our economy overnight by shedding their holdings in U.S. debt. Our leaders are no more serious about human rights in China than they are about such conditions in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, for the simple reason that we need what those nations have more than they need us.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 26, 2012 Halfway Through the Lost DecadeHalfway Through the Lost Decade
This enormous mess did not have to happen. It is a man-made disaster, the result of capricious Wall Street bankers who have no regard for the national interest. Perhaps that is to be expected, but what is shocking is the inability of leading politicians of either party to mount a challenge to the unfettered greed that has come to dominate our political process.
SHARE Thursday, April 19, 2012 For He's a Jolly Good Scoundrel
How evil is this? At a time when two-thirds of U.S. homeowners are drowning in mortgage debt and the American dream has crashed for tens of millions more, Sanford Weill, the banker most responsible for the nation's economic collapse, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 12, 2012 You're on Your Own, Kids
The death of American liberalism as a significant moral force can be traced to the point in 1996 when President Bill Clinton signed legislation that effectively ended the main federal anti-poverty program and turned the fate of welfare recipients, 70 percent of whom were children, over to the tender mercies of the states.
(15 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 5, 2012 Obama By Default
Without a militarily sophisticated enemy anywhere on the planet, the United States, thanks to the Bush-bloated budget, now spends almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Yet the GOP honchos dare claim they are for small government even as their chosen candidate chomps at the bit to go to war with Iran.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 29, 2012 Five Hypocrites and One Bad Plan
Obama's health-care reform should have simply extended Medicare and Medicaid coverage to all who wanted and needed it -- no individual mandate -- while allowing others to opt out for private insurance coverage. That's an obvious constitutional solution that even those die-hard Republican justices would have a difficult time overturning.
SHARE Thursday, March 22, 2012 Voters Have Two Candidates, No Choice
I can't wait for the moment in a presidential debate when Romney talks about the need for even more advanced US weaponry to counter the emerging military threat from Communist China and Obama ever so coolly points out that Bain Capital, the company that Romney co-founded, has been supplying those Red tyrants with surveillance equipment to better monitor their citizenry.
SHARE Thursday, March 15, 2012 At Last, Some Decency on Wall Street
Smith's charge about Goldman "routinely ripping their clients off" resonated widely on the Internet because of prior exposures of suspect derivatives deals in which Goldman explicitly bet against the products it was selling. Slightly less than two years ago the Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud charges against Goldman that resulted in a $550 million fine over such double-dealing.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 8, 2012 Dennis Kucinich: Conscience of the Congress
Dennis early on made a choice to rise politically by faithfully representing his people rather than betraying them, as is the norm in politics. He has been a national symbol of resistance to excessive government power and waste. He also has been a champion of social justice.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 1, 2012 The Ayatollah Is Right About One Thing: Nuclear Weapons Are Sinful
It is obvious, in a week when the U.S. welcomed North Korea's renewed commitment to inspections, that even the most recalcitrant of nations can be induced to reason. The treatment of Iran is complicated by this being a U.S. election season, during which the Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, have been beating the war drums over what they claim is Iran's nuclear threat.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 23, 2012 The Gang That Couldn't Bomb Straight
Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, have returned to the elixir of warmongering to once again sway the gullible masses. The shouting match over which GOP candidate most wants a war with Iran is in sync with the last Republican president's 2003 invasion.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 16, 2012 Apple's China Comes Home to Haunt Us
If the habits required of Apple's workforce in China are to be emulated, the U.S. military, or perhaps our outsized prison system, should become the essential schooling system for American workers to better compete with the properly disciplined assemblers of iPhones in China.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 9, 2012 Elections Are for Suckers
Our own elections, the ones our government has modeled for the world, are a hoax. What other word should we use to describe this year's presidential election, whose outcome will turn on which party's super PACs gets the most generous bribes from billionaires?
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 2, 2012 The Democrats Who Unleashed Wall Street and Got Away With It
That Lawrence Summers, a president emeritus of Harvard, is a consummate distorter of fact and logic is not a revelation. That he and Bill Clinton, the president he served as treasury secretary, can still get away with disclaiming responsibility for our financial meltdown is an insult to reason.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 26, 2012 Obama's Faux Populism Sounds Like Bill Clinton
If Obama meant what he said in Tuesday's State of the Union address about holding the financial industry responsible for its scams, why did he appoint the old Clinton crowd that had legalized those scams to the top economic posts in his administration? Why did he hire Timothy Geithner, who has turned the Treasury Department into a concierge service for Wall Street tycoons?
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 12, 2012 There's Hope for Republicans Yet
The issue in this campaign is the economy, and on that, by the time of the general election, there will be no serious substantive difference between the two major parties' candidates. Both will squarely be on the side of the financiers who created this crisis.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 5, 2012 Arms Dealer Obama Will Win by Default
Barack Obama will be re-elected not as a vindication of his policies but because the Republicans are incapable of providing a reasonable challenge to his flawed performance.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 29, 2011 Marginalizing Ron Paul
Paul marshaled bipartisan support to pass a bill requiring the first-ever public audit of the Federal Reserve. That audit is how readers of the Times first learned of the Fed's trillions of dollars in secret loans and aid given to the banks as a reward for screwing over the public.