Robert Reich: We’re now witnessing what happens when all of the economic gains go to the top, and the rest of the population doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going.
Rites Versus Rights
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Tina Dupuy: Religion has the charm of conforming to one’s opinion. Christendom has been splintered since the moment it was dubbed Christendom. The reason? Religion is subjective.
A Modest Proposal to House Republicans: Cut the Nuclear Weapons Budget
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Lawrence Wittner: How many nuclear weapons are needed to “deter” another nation from attack? In short, the vast and enormously expensive U.S. nuclear weapons production complex is a Cold War dinosaur.
Fiscal Cliffing In America: The Dramatic Realities of Insincere Politics
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Anthony Samad: “Cliff hanging” allows Republicans to be relevant to the conversation, while at the same time be irrelevant to the solution.
GOP Too Nuts for Obama’s Debt Ceiling Gambit
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Robert Reich: So it must be that he’s counting on public pressure — especially from the GOP’s patrons on Wall Street and big business — to force Republicans into submission.
Now the Battle Over the Debt Ceiling
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Robert Reich: The White House’s and Democrats’ single biggest failure in the cliff negotiations was not getting Republicans’ agreement to raise the debt ceiling.
The Top 12 Political Fallacies of 2012
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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.
Stalking the Last Swing Voter
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John Peeler: A middle-aged, middle-income white voter from a town that is not quite urban but really not rural either, Squishy is unemployed since being laid off two years ago when his employer, Central Squeegee Co., Inc., moved its manufacturing operations to Squalidia.
The Biggest Economic Challenge of Obama’s Second Term
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Robert Reich: Middle-class consumers won’t and can’t spend because their savings are depleted, their homes are worth a fraction of what they were five years ago, their wages are dropping, and they’re worried about keeping their jobs.
The Future of Local Government
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Steve Hochstadt: When Romney and the Republicans talk about cutting back on government, they mean much larger cuts in local government spending than what has happened so far.
Promoting Middle Class Populism, Downplaying Military Issues
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Tom Hayden: Carville and Greenberg differ from many liberal Democratic advocates, however, in arguing that deficits are a real problem, not ones invented by Republican skinflints and gold bugs.
MO Bitter Blues in the Jeff City Rotunda or Rush Limbaugh’s Big Head
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Kathleen Peine: It’s not the Hall of Universally Loved Missourians,” House Speaker Steven Tilley told the Kansas City Star in regard to the placement of the Rush Hudson Limbaugh III bust in the Missouri Capitol. “It’s the Hall of Famous Missourians.”
A New Conversation about Public Spending Needed
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Tanya Acker: People who can’t read, however, are very easy to divide and even easier to command. No demagoguery can save us from that.
The Money Delusion
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Mark Dempsey: Why does the Finance, Insurance, Real Estate sector, whose frauds caused the current economic meltdown, get trillions at the drop of a hat, and social safety net programs and revenue sharing with states, whose needs are far more modest, get the “one-finger salute”?
War Nation: Military Keynesianism’s Iron Grip on Washington
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John R. Moffett: Our world-spanning military, paid for by American taxpayers, serves the interests of defense contractors and the government officials that funnel the money to them but it does not serve the American taxpayer.
Keynes and Hayek, Obama and the Republicans
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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.”
A Vote for Newt, Willard, and Chums Is a Vote Against the Unemployed
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Julie Driscoll: In their zeal to see that President Obama is a one-term president, it does not behoove Republicans to roll out anything that would actually improve the economic outlook for the unemployed. They barely pay lip service to it.
Three Ideas to Fix the Economy
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Judith Stein: The chances of immediate action on jobs are remote, but analyzing the causes of the crisis, devising and promoting a program that can restore growth and jobs, and constructing a politics that can effect change is crucial because there will be future political openings.
How Austerity Is Ushering in a Global Recession
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Robert Reich: Chalk up a big part of Europe’s slowdown to the politics and economics of austerity. Europe – including Britain – have turned John Maynard Keynes on his head. They’ve been cutting public spending just when they should be spending more to counteract slowing private spending.
Why Obama Can’t Pivot to Jobs
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Robert Reich: The nation and Oba,ma remain hostage to the ideology of right-wing Republicans who won’t let the government spend more money. Yet if the government can’t spend more – at least this year and next, until the pump is primed and the economy is growing again – we won’t see job growth. And without job growth, the economy will remain anemic.
Vicious Cycles: Why Washington Is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse
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Robert Reich: The only way out of the vicious economic cycle is for government to adopt an expansionary fiscal policy — spending more in the short term in order to make up for the shortfall in consumer demand.
We Need to Rethink the Morality of the Economy
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James Livingston: Why can’t the liberal Left answer the Right when budget deficits are the issue? Why are Democrats, Obama included, so eager to reduce spending on so-called entitlements?
Private Prisons Spend Millions to Put More People in Jail
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Andrea Nill-Sanchez: In Arizona, 30 of the 36 legislators who co-sponsored the state’s controversial immigration law that would undoubtedly put more immigrants behind bars received campaign contributions from private prison lobbyists or companies.
Why Washington Isn’t Doing Squat About Jobs and Wages
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Robert Reich: The silence is deafening. While the rest of the nation is heading back toward a double dip, Washington continues to obsess about future budget deficits. Why?
“Give to Israel or Lose God’s Hand”
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Lee Fang: Rather than making a policy-based argument to back up his firm belief in giving billions in foreign aid to Israel, Webster said the money is necessary to ensure “God’s hand” stays with America.
Across-the-Board Spending Cut Proposals Go Mainstream
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Ivan Eland: Deep down, both Republican and Democratic politicians believe something needs to be done about the monstrous and dangerous deficit and debt, but they are scared to do anything because, unfortunately, the American people want their government handouts but are unwilling to pay for them.
The Battle for the Soul of the GOP
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Robert Reich: Tea Partiers have almost as much contempt for big business and the Street as they do for government. After all, the Tea Party was born in anger over the Wall Street bailout. This is the heart of the civil war in the GOP.
The Fake Budget Debate
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Shamus Cooke: This two-party big lie is not an accident, but an expression of a deeper held belief: that the U.S. government must be directed to meet the needs of the super wealthy who own U.S. corporations.
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The Myth That Japan Is Broke
Ellen Brown: The Japanese government’s debt is the people’s money. They own each other, and they collectively reap the benefits.