Progressive Media Advocates
Shamus Cooke: At the end of the day a so-called progressive Democrat is still a Democrat, and the Democratic Party has re-made its image to reflect the interests of its new big donors from Wall Street, who now feel as comfortable buying Democrats as they do purchasing a Republican politician.
Walter Moss: From the Reagan years to the present, conservatives have been fond of quoting Friedman and Hayek. Their influence can be seen in such documents as the Republican Party’s 1994 “Contract with America.”
It would seem to me in recent weeks that President Obama’s week-kneed moderation is starting to give way to a bit of moxie. This has been welcome news indeed. This guy needs to engage in some serious political ass whupping.
Jerry Drucker: The strongest answer to date in stopping the GOP onslaught is to replicate the wonderful and wise voters of Wisconsin.
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.
Ed Rampell:: The wait is over, and Theatre West’s revival of Clifford Odets’ Waiting For Lefty is the most important play currently being presented in L.A., and possibly the best production of 2010.
Norman Solomon: With unemployment so common that it’s widely seen as a long-term fact of life, a tacit fatalism has seeped into political discourse and the mass media. In short, what should be unacceptable has gained acceptance.
Tom Degan: It’s highly unlikely that any serious reform is going to be put forward until the Republican presence on Capital Hill has been significantly diluted if not eradicated. I do not believe that it is a given that they are going to gain major ground come Election Day. In fact there is every reason to believe that they will only continue to self-destruct between now and then. They can’t win without the section of the electorate who describe themselves as “moderate”. The moderates are taking a good look at the train wreck that is the modern GOP and by all accounts they’re becoming more and more disgusted by what they see.
The question is whether today’s conservative Republicans understand that they cannot save their party by destroying it. Too many on the right have tried to conciliate a base that craves ideological purity. But ideological purity does not lead to victory. It leads to irrelevance.
Obama’s desire to find a common ground was part of his attraction. This is not what most progressives find troubling. Rather, it is Obama’s reluctance to use the vast powers of the presidency to drive the enactment of his top domestic priority that many of his longtime supporters simply cannot understand.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that the test of our nation was “not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger might be married to a Kennedy but his governing philosophy is pure George W. Bush [...]
July 26, 2009 marks the 60th anniversary of President Harry S. Truman signing Executive Order #9981 ending racial segregation of the United States military. 2009 also marks the 16th anniversary of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law passed by Congress mandating the discharge of openly gay, lesbian or bisexual military servicemembers. According to Servicemembers Legal [...]
by Eileen Boris, Lisa Levenstein, and Sonya Michel President-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan has provoked comparisons with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Like Roosevelt, Obama is promising to pull the country out of a depression with massive job creation through infrastructure spending. But, like FDR before him, it looks as if Obama is on [...]
by Robert Brent Toplin – Customers at my local Barnes & Noble store are likely to get the impression that books about Franklin D. Roosevelt are all the rage these days. When they stand in line to pay the cashier, they come upon a large display of volumes dealing with FDR and the Great Depression. [...]
by Ira Chernus – Looking back on Barack Obama’s first post-election interview with “60 Minutes,” no one should be surprised that he admitted he’s reading about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office. In fact, the president-elect — evidently taking no chances — is reportedly reading two books: Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment: FDR’s [...]
by Sherwood Ross – As the anniversary of the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor rolls around, critics of President Franklin Roosevelt will again claim he had advance knowledge of the strike and allowed it to happen. That would be treasonable on FDR’s part, of course. A rational examination of events, though, shows [...]
The United States is in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The question is: How close are we to another Great Depression? The answer is: Very close. Here’s why. The Great Depression was the result of the combination of the 1929 financial crisis and serious structural problems in the American [...]
The Republican death wish for the U.S. government almost came to their hoped-for fruition. Kill Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and replace it with Reagan’s New Steal of privatization and corporate control. It’s not what our founding fathers or our U.S. Constitution had in mind. “Death and fear’ was the message from the Republicans when [...]
Herbert Hoover converted a mundane recession into the greatest economic disaster in modern history—the Great Depression. Unfortunately for all of us, George W. Bush is headed down that same path.
America needs a Democrat in the White House who can transform our country for years to come the way Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy once did. We believe Barack Obama can best unite, inspire, and transform America and here’s why. Since the advent of Ronald Reagan’s “Smell the Coffee” Administration nearly three decades [...]
Victoria Defrancesco Soto: The issue trifecta of Benghazi, the IRS audits, and the AP investigations has resuscitated the near moribund Tea Party. While each of these issues deals with different agencies and actors they share the common denominator of heightening distrust in the government.
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.
Randy Shaw: Garcetti kept the progressive base he earned from this City Council record and combined it with conservative San Fernando Valley voters angry at the Valley-based Greuel for her campaign receiving million of dollars from unions representing Department of Water and Power workers.
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The Modern Union versus Workers’ Rights
Wendy McElroy: The raging controversy in Wisconsin over eliminating collective bargaining “rights” for government employees cast a bright and harsh light on public-sector unions.
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