Joseph Palermo: Our political leaders and courts are clearly incapable of providing the needed “check” on the inevitable abuses that will occur when the government chooses to keep a domestic spying behemoth behind a veil of state secrecy.
About Joseph Palermo
Joseph Palermo is Professor of History, California State University, Sacramento. Professor Palermo's most recent book is The Eighties (Pearson 2012). He has also written two other books: In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Columbia, 2001); and Robert F. Kennedy and the Death of American Idealism (Pearson, 2008). Before earning a Master's degree and Doctorate in History from Cornell University, Professor Palermo completed Bachelor's degrees in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Master's degree in History from San Jose State University. His expertise includes the 1980s; political history; presidential politics and war powers; social movements of the 20th century; the 1960s; and the history of American foreign policy. Professor Palermo has also written articles for anthologies on the life of Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J. in The Human Tradition in America Since 1945 (Scholarly Resources Press, 2003); and on the Watergate scandal in Watergate and the Resignation of Richard Nixon (CQ Press, 2004).
Reagan, Genocide and Guatemala
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Joseph Palermo: Now that a Guatemalan court has convicted General Erfrain Rios Montt of “genocide” maybe we can better come to terms with the history of the early 1980s when the Reagan Administration was determined to vanquish communism in Central America.
Ten Years Since Mission Accomplished: Let’s Review the Imagery
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Joseph Palermo: In U.S.-occupied Iraq, every car bomb, every I.E.D., every suicide bomber, and every sectarian killing that followed that sunny day in May off the San Diego coast made a mockery of Bush’s premature spiking of the proverbial football and brought deserved derision from the rest of the world.
Getting College Wrong: Pedagogy of the Depressed
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Joseph Palermo: It’s as if the baby boomers, having gotten their own quality schooling for a fraction of the price students pay today, are kicking the ladder out from under their children and grandchildren and substituting it with a shoddy, privatized product to which they, in their youth, never would have succumbed.
Iraq: A Ten-Year Anniversary We’d Rather Forget
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Joseph Palermo: And after throwing away so many lives and so much money we’re now being told (by many of the same people who sold us the Iraq War) that we have no resources left to ensure that our children get a good education, or that our elderly can retire in dignity, or our poor people are given hope for a better future.
President Hugo Chavez and America’s “Backyard”
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Joseph Palermo: The simple fact remains: Chavez, who died of cancer at the age of 58, was the only president of Venezuela in modern memory who did ANYTHING for the poor people of that country who make up the vast majority of its nearly 30 million citizens.
The Sequestration Snooze: Californians Know It by Heart
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Joseph Palermo: Many of the same Washington “journalists” who ten years ago failed us miserably in their foreign policy reportage leading up to the Iraq war by serving as stenographers for those who hyped the WMD scare are now failing to report accurately on domestic policy. Now they’ve become stenographers for the deficit scolds, most of whom are Republicans.
Kerry, Hagel: Vietnam, Iraq
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Joe Palermo: Kerry and Hagel (like Colin Powell) missed their historical moment. Had they opposed Bush’s war they might have made a difference. Now perhaps they can use their cabinet posts to implement a policy or two of atonement.
Desiline Victor and Black History Month
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Joseph Palermo: Desiline Victor’s travails in trying to vote last November bring to mind Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964 when white vigilantes tortured and killed Micky Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney who had volunteered to register black voters.
Flaccid Filibuster Reform Throws a Wet Blanket on “Audacity”
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Joseph Palermo: For the U.S. Senate, after a hard-fought election where a Democratic president won re-election and Democrats picked up seats, this cloakroom deal ensures that Obama will be forced to govern like a lame duck.
The “Gun Wage”
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Joseph Palermo: Like the old Jim Crow “race wage” the “gun wage” allows lower middle-class white men to feel a little less besieged by immigrants, feminists, blacks and Others.
‘Right-Wing Social Engineering’ Still Strong Despite Democratic Gains in 2012
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Joeseph Palermo: President Obama and the Democrats’ willingness to accept cuts to Social Security in the form of the gimmicky “chained CPI” right after an election where no candidate for federal office campaigned on it shows that the Right’s long-term project of undoing the New Deal marches on despite the electorate’s wishes.
The Oligarchs’ Coup in Michigan
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Joseph Palermo: With the stroke of a pen Michigan Governor Rick Snyder reduced the earning potential of millions of people, lowered the quality of the state’s schools and government services, and set up the next fiscal crisis when, lo and behold, they discover that low-wage workers have little means to pay taxes adequate to meet the basic needs of the state.
Republican “Bubble” — Yet to Pop
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Joseph Palermo: The rubbish that House Speaker John Boehner and other congressional Republicans keep dishing out about the federal budget shows the multimedia “bubble” that envelops the GOP and its mouthpieces is pretty durable.
Begun the Drone Wars Have
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Joseph Palermo: We need to put the pressure on the Obama administration to reel in the drone program and put the United States on the side of common decency in calling for a United Nations-brokered ban on these pernicious weapons.
Kudos to Jerry Brown
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Joseph Palero: Working hand-in-hand with California’s teachers, nurses, students of all ages, and the state’s labor unions, Governor Brown rallied the troops, and in doing so helped save from fiscal ruin not only the state’s public schools but also the nation’s biggest and most important system of public higher education.
Time to Bench Mitch McConnell and His Cronies?
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Joseph Palermo: Ending the filibuster is within the realm of possibility if only the Democrats had the guts to do it.
Super-Storm Sandy’s Teachable Moment
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Joseph Palermo: The dominant ideas of any society are those that benefit its ruling elites. Nothing signifies this fact more clearly than the pathetic “debate” we’ve had on global climate change over the last decade or so.
Iran and the Cuban Missile Crisis
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Joseph Palermo: As the United States tries to assess the danger of Iran becoming a nuclear power the lessons of JFK’s dealing with the Soviets over the change in the nuclear status quo is more relevant than ever.
The Real Reason for the Right’s Wrath Against Candy Crowley
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Joseph Palermo: The hate brigades have taken aim at Ms. Crowley not because she showed “bias” or was “wrong” about the facts or exceeded the role of moderator, but because she performed a genuine act of journalism in front of 65 million viewers.
The Debate We Never Had
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Joe Palermo: It has become clear by now that the Republican candidate for president, Mitt Romney, views American society as an aggregate of atomized individuals each seeking to maximize personal gain
The “Sam Bacile” Election
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Joseph Palermo: The destruction that “Sam Becile’s” little Youtube movie caused could in comparison to the potential damage that outside groups could do to American politics.
Occupy Wall Street: A Year Later
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Joseph Palermo: The thoughtful stand against rigid hierarchy and ideological purity might have inoculated OWS against the maladies that afflicted the earlier Left movements, which is a good thing.
Chicago Teachers Union Vs. Mayor Rahm Emanuel (The Democrats’ Scott Walker?)
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Joseph Palermo: The 29,000 striking Chicago teachers are sending the message to Emanuel that their teacher bashing and privatization schemes for public education have become so onerous and destructive to the teachers’ mission and profession that they have no choice but to fight back.
Republican Convention: Where Social Darwinism Meets Theocracy
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Joseph Palermo: The trick thus far for the Romney-Ryan ticket has been to pretend to want to “save” Medicare even while putting forth Ryan’s “voucher” plan that would end Medicare, not only “as we know it,” but end Medicare PERIOD.
California’s Public Higher Education Must Be Protected
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Joseph Palermo: I have been astonished to see how fast and careless some baby-boomer administrators and ambitious faculty members can be when aggressively pushing “reforms” that would virtually gut the university system their parents’ generation built.
The Romney Campaign’s Situational Demagoguery
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Joseph Palermo: Worse than Swift Boating, worse than Willie Horton, Mitt Romney is running the most craven, dishonest, and hypocritical campaign we’ve seen in contemporary American politics.
LIBOR and Super PACs: A Heck of a Way to Run Capitalist Democracy
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Joseph Palermo: Everybody seems to know (whether they’re willing to admit it or not) that the 2012 elections are going to be the most corrupted elections by corporate money than any held in this country since the Gilded Age.
The Supreme Court and the “Broken Middle”
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Joseph Palermo: By striking down the Montana campaign finance law that dates back to 1912, the Supreme Court steams ahead on its long-term project of turning our political system over to giant corporations.
Welcome to the New Normal America
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Joseph Palermo: Wall Street banks should be pouring money into Obama’s reelection since he’s been so good to them, and the neocons should be rejoicing in his establishing precedent for more unchecked executive power.
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