Social Justice Magazine
In an admirable bit of reporting, Nelson Schwartz and Eric Dash of the New York Times did us all a favor by asking bankers, hedge fund and money managers what they think about the Occupy Wall Street protesters.Said one top hedge fund director who wished to remain anonymous: “Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.” A veteran bank executive … [Read more...]
The mainstream press has been predictably abysmal in its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of the “money honeys” over at the New York Times, looks at the demonstrators as anthropological curiosities, as if they’re from a remote tribe in Papua New Guinea. The Times’ Ginia Bellafante calls the protesters “ideologically vague and strategically baffling,” … [Read more...]
Corporate and financial elites have largely succeeded in seizing the current economic crisis of their own making to ram through attacks on social programs they’ve always despised. With the politicians and the Supreme Court in their pockets they apparently believe that now is their time to contort the institutions of American society into a consortium servicing their narrow class interests. But … [Read more...]
It was never a question whether or not President Obama can make a stirring speech. We’ve heard them before and I’ve tapped my foot to them. His failure lies in the delivery of those great-sounding items he outlines with inspiring rhetoric.We all know that in the Republican House of Representatives John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and the boys are going to tear apart Obama’s “American Jobs … [Read more...]
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. The principal aim of the speech will be to divert attention away from his administration’s failure to hold to account the Wall Street perpetrators of … [Read more...]
Back in 1980, on the campaign trail Ronald Reagan repeated an apocryphal story about an individual who personified the undeserving poor. There was a woman in Chicago he called a “welfare queen” who “had eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards” and “collected veterans’ benefits on four non-existent husbands.” He said her tax-free income was “over $150,000″. … [Read more...]
Largely lost in the media din in the closing 48 hours of the debt ceiling “debate” was the fact that the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street high rollers were urging their servants in Congress not to throw the nation into default because it was going to hurt their bottom lines. The last-minute lobbying by the titans of industry and finance shows that President Obama might have had more … [Read more...]
New York Representative Anthony Weiner literally got caught with his pants down. The Democrats lost a liberal stalwart who unlike most of the rest of the pusillanimous bunch actually has a pulse (hence his passion for racy photos of himself in cyberspace). And the Republicans won a twofer:The credibility of a loud liberal voice in the House of Representatives, who recently showed the … [Read more...]
Republican Supreme Court Sticks It to the Little Guy -- What's New? Once again the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has shown the nation it will always favor corporations over people even if it means conjuring new law out of thin air. Like Citizens United, the recent 5-4 ruling in AT&T’s favor gutting the power of consumers to file class-action lawsuits against … [Read more...]
The Republican House members who voted for Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand wet-dream budget are apparently getting an earful from their constituents. And the earful isn’t coming from people wearing Bradley Manning T-shirts, but from crusty old baby boomers who probably voted for the GOP in the last election.Too bad their angst isn’t being amplified a hundredfold through a gigantic echo chamber … [Read more...]
On April 13th California State University students and faculty are organizing demonstrations at all 23 CSU campuses across the state to protest the latest wave of brutal budget cuts. CSU students, faculty and staff, alumni and their families have a special obligation to make their voices heard in supporting pragmatic solutions to the state’s budget woes that have so adversely affected … [Read more...]
Even with Libya and Muammar Gaddafi dominating the news and journalists from MSNBC, CNN, and other news outlets each evening patting themselves on the back for their courageous coverage (leaving one to wonder why they checked out of Afghanistan and Iraq so quickly) our domestic politics are teeming with aggrieved Republicans and Tea Partiers whining and complaining about how their voices aren’t … [Read more...]
One of the biggest problems of allowing a chief executive like George W. Bush to run roughshod over the Constitution is that it sets precedents. Now, President Barack 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 … [Read more...]
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It’ll Be an All-Cuts Budget “Deal” (Just Like California)
For many years now in California we’ve witnessed an extremist Republican minority in the legislature hold the state budget hostage through manipulating the “two-thirds rule” that allows a legislative minority to dictate to the majority whether any new revenues can be raised.The debt ceiling gambit that Republicans in the House of Representatives have used to tie the U.S. government in … [Read more...]