Progressive Media Advocates
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a former executive with experience in health care, benefits, and risk management, finance, and information technology. He is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and hosts The Breakdown, which is broadcast on We Act Radio in Washington DC.
Richard worked for AIG and other insurance, risk management, and financial organizations. He was also a public policy and finance/economics consultant, in the US and over 20 countries. Past clients include USAID, the World Bank, the State Department, the Harvard School of International Public Health, the Government of Hungary, as well as corporations and investors. He has experience in financial and numerical analysis (of benefit plans, financial risk, corporate investments), systems design, and management.
Richard has worked on long-range health policy and forecasting. His predictions are included in the recently-released Rough Guide To the Future in it's review of "the hopes, fears, and best prediction of fifty of the world's leading futurologists."
Richard is also a freelance writer. He's a regular columnist for the science and culture blog 3 Quarks Daily and a Contributing Editor for Tricycle magazine. His reflections on blogging and spiritual principles were included in Best Buddhist Writing of 2008.
Richard's also an (occasionally) working musician and songwriter who appeared regularly at venues such as CBGB's, the Washington Folk Festival, and motorcycle shows throughout the American South from 1970 through the year 2000. His last appearance was as the "opening act" for Gen. Wesley Clark in 2007, but he may be available again for the right price - or the right cause.
He can be reached at "[email protected]" His Twitter ID is "@rjeskow."
RJ Eskow: Dimon isn’t the cause of our economic problems. He’s merely a symptom. He’s no more responsible for the wreckage he leaves behind than a surfer is responsible for the undertow of the wave he’s riding. Dimon may lack moral sensitivity, but then, that’s the character that got him where he is today.
Richard Eskow: Simpson and Bowles, those two hired pitchmen for budget-cutting hysteria, are still hawking an economy-killing product called “austerity economics,” a product that’s designed to benefit their wealthy patrons at everybody else’s expense.
Richard Eskow: The president and his fellow Democrats have agreed to a series of reckless budget-cutting measures instead of fighting for jobs and protecting the social contract, which has deepened and lengthened the lingering recession.
RJ Eskow: Will Kamala Harris hang tough in her new lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, the first to target individual bankers accused of defrauding the public? If so, it would be the first time in five years that executives at a major bank have personally paid a price for their misdeeds.
Richard Eskow: So, yes, repeal the sequester. Repeal deficit babble, from the President or anyone else. Repeal the Visigoth Party’s right to ruin the economy. And repeal Tom Friedman too, just on general principle.
Richard Eskow: Here’s the truth: Most minimum-wage workers are adults, the majority of them are women, and many are parents who are trying to raise their children on poverty wages.
RJ Eskow: But the killing ended there. The people of Boston walked the next mile, the 27th Mile. And after the smoke cleared they chose to walk it together, not alone. They looked into that handful of dust and saw hope, not fear.
RJ Eskow: Today’s new corporate-sponsored cost-cutting craze is merely the latest policy designed to enrich a powerful few at the expense of the many, and today’s anti-tax agenda is being used to make sure it succeeds.
RJ Eskow: And when the next crisis comes, “147 people” will react to it exactly the same way they reacted to the last one. You can almost hear them now, can’t you? You can’t blame us, they’ll say. Nobody could’ve seen this coming. How do we know that?
RJ Eskow: We’ve been saying for years that JPMorgan Chase is fundamentally a criminal enterprise, that “Obama’s favorite banker” Jamie Dimon is a fraud, and that “America’s best bank” is a nest of venality and criminality.
RJ Eskow: Politicians and regulators serve criminal banks for the very same reason that Willie Sutton robbed them: That’s where the money is. If these senators don’t figure that out pretty soon, they’re going to have to go to the people to raise money.
Richard “RJ” Eskow: There’s no quicker way to become completely untethered than to read economic reports, including the latest one from the Congressional Budget Office, and then watch the political debate go on as if reality didn’t even exist.
RJ Eskow: If great speeches could heal our economic wounds, if they could repair the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the rest of us, we’d be living in a different country today.
Richard “RJ” Eskow: Our health care system — guess we’ll need to call it that for lack of an alternative — is the worst in the developed world. It costs far more, provides much less, and has worse outcomes than any system that’s even remotely comparable.
Richard “RJ” Eskow: Our nation was gripped by so many fallacies and delusions in 2012, the whole Mayan calendar end-of-the-world thing didn’t even make the list.
Richard RJ Eskow: The “chained CPI” is an attempt to camouflage deep cuts to Social Security and other benefits, along with tax hikes on middle class wages (but not for high incomes), in a forest of numbers and terminology.
Richard “RJ” Eskow: DeMint’s performed one public service by abandoning his post: He’s given us a glimpse of a half-hidden Washington where leaders don’t lead, think-tankers don’t think, and the house always wins.
Richard “RJ” Eskow: Let’s stop hearing smart and insightful people say that Adelson and his pals “lost” millions on this election. That money, plus the GOP’s creepy gerrymandering, bought them the House of Representatives.
RJ Eskow: The CEOs of America’s largest corporations have banded together to lecture us on the importance of debt reduction. And despite their lack of qualifications and their very obvious self-interest, the media can’t get enough of them.
Richard “RJ” Eskow: On the same day that Goldman Sach’s CEO issued his “balanced” demand for Social Security and Medicare cuts, a Wall Street-funded group published a poll precisely reflecting the wishes of Goldman Sach’s CEO. Coincidence? I report, you decide.
Richard “RJ” Eskow: Roughly two-thirds of Americans who make $10,000 per year or less are women. The gender balance only reaches 50/50 status as it approaches the income levels we commonly think of as ‘middle class.’
Richard “RJ” Eskow: This phony crisis is a lot like this scene in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, where Cleavon Little as The Sheriff pretends to take himself hostage to escape an angry crowd.
Richard “RJ” Escow: The voters have asked President Obama and his fellow Democrats not to “shirk a fight” over economic issues. We look forward to seeing the democratic process unfold as a much-needed fight against economic injustice is played out in the public arena.
Dick Price: Thursday, a hundred or so veteran agitators gathered in Will Rogers Park on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills to protest the conjectured sale of the Los Angeles Times to Charles and David Koch, plutocrat owners of the $115-billion-annual-revenue Koch Industries, who have expressed interest in using the paper to spread their drown-government-in-the-bathtub invective.
Walter Brasch: The failure to maintain records in an easily searchable method continues to allow the DEP to withhold public information from the public by burying the requested data within piles of irrelevant documents, most of which need interpretation from scientists.
Brent Budowsky: Let’s escalate the effort to eliminate the backlog of benefits due to wounded warriors and disabled vets by devoting whatever resources are necessary to complete this mission, and enlisting a major business leader.
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