Social Justice Magazine
Until they realized they were committing political suicide and changed their minds about rejecting a Senate bill extending the payroll tax break and jobless pay, Republican House members once again expressed their disdain for compromise. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson have recently written on the necessity of political compromise and will have much more to say in their forthcoming book, The … [Read more...]
It’s no secret that Republicans don’t like the idea of President Obama exercising his power to make recess appointments. As we noted earlier this year, they’ve repeatedly used a procedural move to block the president from making this sort of temporary appointment, even though it’s a presidential power laid out in the Constitution. (Of course, the tactic isn’t specific to Republicans -- … [Read more...]
As President Obama and Democrats battle during this holiday season to enact a tax cut for the 99 percent of Americans who constitute the heart of the nation, House Republicans are making a seismic political blunder reminiscent of the self-destructive overreaching of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) that rejuvenated the Clinton presidency during the 1990s.The GOP House should pass the … [Read more...]
Dear DEAR President Obama,Now that you have signed the National Defense Appropriation Act into law giving yourself the power to arrest and imprison any American indefinitely, I want to tell you how very very very very very sorry I am for all those nasty things I wrote about you. Name-calling is never appropriate and I should have known better, especially when I compared you to Benito (“Three … [Read more...]
For progressives, the first eight months of 2011 were the worst of times. Not since the Reagan tax cuts and slashing of domestic programs in 2001 have progressives been so left out of the national debate, and the 2011 exclusion occurred with Barack Obama as President. Obama got the year off to a terrible start with his agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy for two years in exchange … [Read more...]
Not since the cowboy ‘W’ Bush and his race to invade Iraq in ’03 has more of my commentary time been spent explaining to news outlets the current state of affairs in the US Republican/Tea Party. While the consensus is FOX is more comedy than serious news, it seems bizarrely suited for this ‘theatre of the absurd’ drama known as the GOP primary season.Less than a month away from the … [Read more...]
The events of the day have caused us to confuse what is real and what is important. It seems some people frame what's important to them and forget what's important to us all. There are things going on in "our" community that are significant and the people who say they "speak" for "us" or "represent" us, don't seem to think so...or don't seem to care.The absence of conscience is a reality that … [Read more...]
"Start with the following two facts: Really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash' - unless it's illegal." --Newt Gingrich, December 1, 2011 as quoted yesterday in Charles Blow's New York Times … [Read more...]
During the late '90s, Village Voice Media, where I toiled, was sold to a vulture capital group that included Goldman Sachs. The buyers didn't care about the newspapers (aka "the product") or the people (aka "the head count"). What mattered was the "exit strategy" -- how many years it would take until the company could be "flipped" to maximize ROI (aka "return on investment").For Republican … [Read more...]
Herman Cain Is Not Ready For Prime Time But Is Likely To Get A Prime Time Gig The fact that a significant segment of Republicans support for president a man whose economic plan is a slogan that makes no economic sense and who makes it a point of pride that he knows nothing about foreign affairs says far more about the sorry state of the GOP than about Herman Cain.In the wake of the latest … [Read more...]
Republicans Hate Social Gains of the 1960s Washington is a mess. The barriers separating bureaucracy, commercial lobbying, and elected officials are gone, and the same small elite of the rich and well-connected trade jobs and favors and money.Overpaid and coddled federal bureaucrats pretend to manage expensive programs which don’t work. They tell ordinary Americans what to do and how to do … [Read more...]
The cult and power of the American presidency has become so great that the election campaign has become a full-fledged circus that focuses on everything — for example, memory lapses, gaffes, or alleged past sexual harassment — except the potential policies that the candidates would actually promulgate if they ever got elected. True, there are debates about such issues. But few voters actually … [Read more...]
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 oligarchic rule. Crosby’s … [Read more...]
Occupy LA’s greatest opportunity to impact the policies and actions that are responsible for eviscerating the middle class, for destroying our economy, for unleashing predatory greed and for selling political access to the highest bidder is to mobilize voters at the polls on election day.In LA, that’s yesterday in Council District 15 as the seat that was occupied by Janice Hahn is filled, … [Read more...]
Yesterday, CBS News’ 60 Minutes aired a segment with infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Abramoff, released from prison and promoting a new book, expressed remorse for his role in buying and selling public policy. During his interview with Lesley Stahl, Abramoff talked about how he used gifts, campaign contributions, and other legal and illegal bribes to influence members of Congress.In a … [Read more...]
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