Progressive Media Advocates
Joseph Palermo: With new evidence mounting each day that the system is as broken as it was before the meltdown of September 2008 and will likely require another colossal taxpayer bailout at some point, the public might be able to compel even the isolated 1 percenters among Washington’s policy elite to take heed.
Joseph Palermo: Nixon’s Checkers speech has since entered the American political lexicon as denoting any corny political oration designed to tug on Americans’ heartstrings while serving to shore up a faltering campaign.
Joseph Palermo: The CSU faculty union, after nearly two years of bargaining in good faith to reach a labor agreement with the university’s management, has voted overwhelmingly to authorize the California Faculty Association (CFA) to call for rolling strikes.
Joseph Palermo: Why should CSU administrators be paid more than the Governor of California, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and even the President of the United States? Why isn’t the Chancellor termed out like California legislators and most other public officials?
Joseph Palermo: The amazing thing about Mr. Smith’s decision to break the code of omertà at Goldman was the fact that an employee existed there at all who was still capable of making a moral or ethical judgment and could even express something resembling remorse.
Joseph Palermo: At about $10 billion a month, and an increasing number of American casualties in an environment more volatile than ever, the American people need to take long, close look at whether staying in Afghanistan until December 2014 is worth it.
Joseph Palermo: The Republicans think they believe that with enough SuperPAC money and stoking up the base, along with relatively high unemployment and gas prices and millions of underwater mortgage holders, they can win a close election.
Joseph Palermo: After telling his readers he isn’t going to blame the poor for being poor because of their bad behavior, David Brooks plows right ahead and blames the poor for being poor because of their bad behavior.
Joseph Palermo: If someone like Todd who represents a “liberal” network can’t see Colbert’s parody for what it is then it truly illustrates how disconnected the corporate media have become.
Joseph Palermo: These powerful right-wing political obstacles that must be sidelined if progressive change can have any chance of success, whether Obama is at the helm or any number of the string of future presidents he now tells us we’ll probably need.
Joseph Palermo: Despite the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq, during this dismal period of “austerity” the public isn’t likely to see any discernible difference in the government’s misplaced priorities.
Joseph Palermo: Apparently for the captains of industry and high finance it’s not enough for Obama to be a faithful servant of their narrow class interests, they also want him to bend down and kiss their rings.
Those loud right-wing voices in our political discourse that are trying to make Occupy Wall Street look like something “foreign” to American culture are barking up the wrong tree. When David Crosby and Graham Nash recently showed up at Zuccotti Park for an impromptu sing-along with the protesters they linked OWS with the long American tradition of resistance to [...]
Joseph Palermo: Out in the real world people are showing a spirit that hasn’t been around since the 1930s; a genuine feeling of solidarity like we’re all in it together and to hell with the elites that stand in our way. The illegitimacy of a rigged economic system is beginning to sink in.
Joseph Palermo: Prosperity never “trickles down.” And people are finally catching on. The housing bubble went too far. It destroyed too many lives and livelihoods to go unquestioned and unpunished, as Wall Street (and Washington) would like it.
Joseph Palermo: If JPMorgan Chase and the rest of the money cartel cared one whit about people perceiving them as being slightly more tolerable corporate citizens, they would have long ago voluntarily offered a lifeline to underwater mortgage holders and to local governments.
Joseph Palermo: Even hardcore capitalists are displaying a lack of faith in U.S. economic leadership, compounding the legitimacy crisis that has already engulfed millions of less exalted members of the global community.
Joseph Palermo: Obama and the Democrats are in trouble politically not because they did too much to help hurting Americans, but because they did too little.
Joseph Palermo: President Obama’s much anticipated speech outlining his jobs agenda for the 2012 election year will sound a lot like a tiny mouse trying to make a loud roar. Instead of clarity, we’ll get hedging; instead of “bold,” we’ll get wishy-washy.
Joseph Palermo: By not speaking about the poor and poverty in America President Obama allows the Reagan era “welfare queen” construct to go unchallenged and, even worse, creates a vacuum that’s already being filled by right-wing pseudo-scholars.
Joseph Palermo: The last-minute lobbying by the titans of industry and finance shows that President Obama might have had more leverage over the Republicans in the debt ceiling “negotiations” than he chose to exercise. We now breathlessly await the arrival of the “Super Committee,” the tragedy that follows the farce.
Joseph Palermo: The credibility of Anthony Weiner’s loud liberal voice in the House of Representatives, who recently showed the temerity to take on Justice Clarence Thomas for his conflict of interest in Citizens United, is now toast
Joseph Palermo: It’s kind of funny when we see Republican presidential candidates like Mitt Romeny, Tim Pawlenty, and Newt Gingrich pandering to the “little guy” denouncing “elites” who are trampling on their rights only to remain mute on the fact that their beloved Republican Supreme Court never, ever rules in favor of the “little guy.”
Joseph Palermo: The “conservatives” and “Tea Partiers” are quite convincing at playing the aggrieved victims, but what, exactly, do they have to be “aggrieved” about?
Joseph Palermo: Obama believes that as commander-in-chief he has the power to order the U.S. military into battle. By attacking Libya he has greatly expanded the unchecked executive powers that Bush’s excesses and overreach established.
Randy Shaw: Now that cities offer walkable, bicycle-friendly, public transit-available neighborhoods with desirable restaurants and a high quality of life, the poor are being shunted to car-dependent suburban areas in economic decline.
Julie Driscoll: Call me crazy, but I believe firmly that the statutory laws are in place for a reason – to prevent the exploitation of young men and women who don’t have the ability to make informed decisions, who don’t have the ability to “consent.”
Lauren Steiner: Please help us spread the word across Los Angeles! Come with signs that say “Bruce Karsh, please don’t sell the LA Times to the Kochs” and “Bruce Karsh, our democracy is not for sale” We are gathering Thursday, May 23 for a rally and march.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Ross Douthat’s Hit Job on JFK
Joseph Palermo: Douthat practices the weird tactic, common among contemporary right-wingers, of criticizing whatever Democrat or “liberal” who is in their crosshairs from both the right and the left at the same time.