Robert Reich: If successful—either in Congress or in the courts—a Republican victory could turn into a Phyrric one by opening the way to the alternative model, based on the system Americans seem to prefer: payroll taxes and public insurance.
Jerry Brown’s Karma
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Tom Hayden: It’s possible that Brown will take to blaming Washington’s priorities for California’s ills, but not any time soon. For now, he wants Californians to see themselves in the mirror.
The Party of “NO” Is About To Get Their Chance
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Anthony Samad: We know the Republicans will claim to support education, and jobs, and home ownership, and families but will dump them in a heartbeat for business tax credits and budget cuts.
Arctic Turkey: My New Year’s Resolution
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Tina Dupuy: 40% of Americans actually make New Year’s resolutions. Sure, I did it once – five years ago this week I reluctantly quit smoking. How did I quit? Arctic turkey. I simply didn’t smoke. People who have never smoked think this is the moment of triumph. I went from heavy smoking to heavy sobbing.
The Tea Party Conservative Strategy for 2011
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Robert Reich: Next week starts the new Congress, and with it the Tea Party conservatives. What are they going to do about government spending? Knowing they don’t stand a chance of getting a direct repeal of the healthcare mandate, they’ll try to strip the federal budget appropriation of money needed to put the healthcare mandate into effect. This could lead to a standoff with the White House over government funding in general, and a possible government shutdown.
Ask Not for Whom the Drug Tolls
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Wendy McElroy: A new slate of drugs now addresses a wide range of so-called disorders, or dysfunctions, that former generations considered environmental problems or lifestyle choices: from obesity to attention deficit, from erectile dysfunction to social anxiety (shyness), from menopause to alcoholism.
Health Care as a Human Right — in South LA and Nationwide
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Diane Lefer: In South LA, the pressures of gentrification and loss of income now have two and three families sharing apartments that would be a tight squeeze for one. Even so-called “affordable housing,” is beyond the reach of most when you consider that Los Angeles considers a living wage to be $12/hour.
Black America Still Sees AIDS as a Gay Disease
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Irene Monroe: If black America were its own country, standing on its own like Haiti or Nigeria, black Americans would rate 16th with the epidemic in the world. And the epidemic is heavily concentrated in urban enclaves like Detroit, New York, Newark, Washington, D.C and the Deep South.
Governor Jerry Brown Will Aggressively Push Change
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Randy Shaw: Brown’s history shows that he likes to shake things up soon after taking office, and he now has the perfect opportunity. The public desperately wants a solution to California’s longstanding budget crisis, and Brown’s political capital is as high as it will ever be following an election where Democrats won every statewide race and maintained all their Congressional seats.
Seeking Republican Patriots
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Paul Loeb: Do Senators like Olympia Snowe, Scott Brown, Susan Collins, and Mark Kirk really want to open themselves up to unlimited anonymous attack ads, where they can’t even turn the mud potential primary opponents will be slinging into a potential electoral liability?
4 Ways Healthcare Reform Will Affect Your FSA
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Manisha Thakor: Other cancer screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies as well a pre-natal care visits, vaccinations, and routine infant and childcare checkups may also be provided as part of your baseline insurance – thus requiring no additional out-of-pocket cost.
Republicans Beware!
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TEd Vaill: The Republicans should remember that the vote in the 2010 elections, especially in Middle America, was not a vote of support for them, as their approval rating is worse than the Democrats, but it is a sign of huge discontent: a house that is underwater, with no relief from their crushing mortgage debt in sight, a job that has vanished or is in danger of being shipped overseas, diminishing hope that they will be able to afford to send their kids to college, and a feeling that their government has turned a blind eye to their problems.
Obama Can Learn From FDR
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Tom Degan: Is the president serious when he tells us that he plans on “working with” the opposition party in the next two years? Part of me has to believe that he’s not, that he’s merely taking on the guise of the good loser, holding his cards close to his vest.
What’s the Matter with America? The Big Disconnect
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Charles Hayes: If America is going to have a better future, we need to put our Stone Age feelings of exceptional identity aside and intellectually guard ourselves against emotional manipulation while reasoning our way forward.
Republican House Threatens Latin America
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Tom Hayden: As a result of the Republican takeover of the House, hard-line right-wingers like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Connie Mack will lead key committees and sub-committees for the next two years. Any hopes to improve US relations with the new nationalist and democratic regimes of Latin America have dimmed sharply.
The Fight to Save Social Security Begins Now
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Shamus Cooke: Obama’s Deficit Reduction Commission attacks Social Security and Medicare. The retirement age would be raised from 67 to 68 (for those born after 1959) and from 68 to 69 (for those born after 2006). But current retirees will be affected too. The social security cost of living adjustment will be unhinged from the inflation index, meaning, payments will decrease via inflation.
Can Dubya Reinvent His Presidency?
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Ivan Eland: Although Bush can’t change his domestic catastrophes, such as the federal response to Hurricane Katrina or the horrendous financial crisis and the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, if Iraq and Afghanistan eventually reach some stability, he may be regarded as the man who threw out the despotic regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.
A “Good Sign” For My Old Kentucky Home
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Berry Craig: A Somali man’s request for a permit to establish a place of worship in a small town in Kentucky was turned down because the townspeople claim there wouldn’t be enough parking spaces.
Heretics, Humanism, and the Hood
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Sikivu Hutchinson: The mental health crisis amongst African Americans is a devastating indicator of racial and social inequity, of which the prayer as therapy epidemic is an insidious symptom. Frederick Douglass once wrote, “I prayed for twenty years and received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” What would Douglass, a trailblazing male feminist, have made of the brutal ironies of twenty first century black America?
Needed: A Competency Test for Elected Officials
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David Love: Where do they find these people? I’m talking about those crazy-talking Tea Party types, ultra-conservative Republicans posing as legitimate lawmakers and politicians, some of them even passing themselves off as senators, members of Congress and governors.
A (Mostly) Thoughtful California Electorate
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Ron Wolff: Voters demonstrated sophistication and thoughtfulness, first, because they failed to allow the onslaught of money to purchase their brains.
Do We Have Common Ground?
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Steve Hochstadt: If we tune out the shouting, we might find that we American voters are not at war with each other. Tuesday’s results included several messages about national policy that most Americans agree on.
What Center?
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Joseph Palermo: The political “center” of American politics is a moving target. And for the last thirty years it has moved in only one direction: Rightward.
Attention Congress: Fix the Potholes
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Tina Dupuy: A politician who is against government is like an actor who is against entertainment. It’s ridiculous. Because we hate politicians so much, the only way we can stand inking a bubble next to their name is to pretend they really don’t want to do their job.
American Midterm Candidates Pandered For Pro-Israel Money and Votes
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Linda Milazzo: It’s time to right this wrong. Holding office in America is not for the purpose of serving Israel. It’s for the purpose of serving America, the American people, and America’s honor in the world.
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Europe Ponders U.S. Election Results
Steven Hill: Europeans are puzzled by the success of the populist Tea Party movement, which seemingly wants to roll back the last two years and return to how things were at the end of the Bush-Cheney years.