Brent Budowsky: True conservatives such as William F. Buckley and Edmund Burke must be mourning in heaven the collapse of modern conservative thought.
The GOP’s Crippling Fascination with Neo-Hooverism
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Charley James: Democrats generally, and the President specifically, must forget trying to do deals with a party that has no interest in making one and shout from the rooftops that it’s time to spend money and put America back to work.
Mitt and Paul’s Ponzi Pizza Recipe
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Jerry Drucker: Mitt apparently now wishes to HARVEST THE UNITED STATES, as he would for a food crop. So in the spirit of Romney’s interests in cooked books, here are some recipes:
The United States Is Not a Business
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Jerry Drucker: About as important as re-electing President Obama is a strong effort to drive out the Republican money changers, also known as Tea Partiers, who all knew to just say NO, as did all the lock-step majority in the House and the Senate.
The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America
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Robert Reich: Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conservative what we have. It’s to take us backwards.
Victory! Transforming Occupy Wall Street From a Moment to a Movement
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Peter Dreier: If the Occupy Wall Street activists join forces with the unions and community groups, they could catalyze a massive nationwide movement to resist foreclosures and block evictions.
Inside Govt’s Cuckoo’s Nest: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ or Voter Middle Finger Salute?
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Denis Campbell: Welcome to Herbert Hooverville, global financial chaos edition where the US and UK governments think the way to change the situation is to… carry on and do nothing differently.
Is Obama the Best Republican President Since Lincoln?
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Tina Dupuy: Historians agree the best Republican President was also the first: Abraham Lincoln. Who’s second runner up? Which President has represented Republican values best? Easy. President Barack Obama.
Say It Ain’t So, O!
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Stanley Kutler: Our problems with governance lie far beyond the character of Obama, or with the Lilliputians who run Congress. Our “leaders” will not lead; worse yet, they refuse to honestly confront the nation’s interest or needs.
Famine Strikes Again: Will America Respond?
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William Lambers: East Africa is in the throes of famine. U.S. relief efforts over the past century show that we have always been willing to respond to humanitarian crises.
Voters Rejecting Obama’s Rightward Shift
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Randy Shaw: As dysfunctional as the Republican presidential contest is likely to be, when presidential elections are framed around Republican issues like deficits rather than Democratic issues like jobs, the Republican candidate nearly always wins.
The Devil Is in the “Debt”
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Ira Chernus: When Republicans gather for their national convention in 2012, they’ll have to decide whether to imitate the Democrats of 1932 and focus on social issues — which are, to so many, issues of sin — or on the dollars and cents of the debt.
Who Says Republicans Have No New Ideas?
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Robert Reich: Republicans haven’t come up with a single new idea in almost 60 years. Herbert Hoover was the last Republican president to introduce a new Republican theme back in 1952 at the Republican National Convention. Since then they’ve repeated the message. Of course, Herbert Hoover, you may remember, didn’t have a sterling record when it came to the economy. As president, he presided over the Great Crash of 1929 and ushered in the Great Depression.
The Republican Recipe for An Anemic Economy Through Election Day 2012
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Robert Reich: The real message from voters was “Fix this stinking economy.” But Republicans have no intention of doing so. With Republicans in control of the House, forget spending increases or tax cuts to stimulate the economy.
What Obama and the Democrats Have Not Done
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Stanley I. Kutler: For the past year, the media, reflecting disenchantment with Barack Obama, their very own rock star, have “predicted” huge Democratic losses for 2010. Like blackbirds who fly off the line (as Eugene McCarthy once said), the media follows in lockstep.
Republican Economics as Social Darwinism
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Robert Reich: John Boehner, the Republican House leader who will become Speaker if Democrats lose control of the House in the upcoming midterms, recently offered his solution to the current economic crisis: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life.”
Attack of the Dingbats
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Tom Degan: Glenn Beck – The louse that roared. Does the FCC have any rules about incitement to violence? If they don’t, they really should. The other day on his nationally syndicated radio program Beck made the claim that America can expect violence in the very-near future — and that the president of the United States will be the instigator!
Washington May Be Broken Now, But the Future Is Up for Grabs
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Michael Sigman: But lest the healthy anger of progressives during the Bush years curdle into full-blown, hide-under-the-covers depression, it’s worth asking: When did Washington work, anyway?
Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Herbert Hoover
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Robert Reich: Both Greenspan and Rubin are deficit hawks. So was Herbert Hoover and so was Hoover’s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. And look what Hoover and Mellon got us into. When we least need him, Hoover is being exhumed.
We’re in a One-and-a-Half Dip Recession
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Robert Reich: The President should stop talking and acting on anything else – not the deficit, not energy, not the environment, not immigration, not implementing the health care law, not education. He should make the whole upcoming mid-term election a national referendum on putting Americans back to work, and his jobs bill. Are you for it or against it?
It Is As Bad As The 1930s
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So much for the Republican chant of “stimulus is bad” and “we need a balanced budget.” Nobel Prize winning columnist Paul Krugman points out on his New York Times blog yesterday that the world economy right now is more or less at the point John Maynard Keynes described in his essay The Great Slump of [...]
Obama’s Opportunity to be a Transformational Leader
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The election of Barack Obama has generated speculation that he can—and will—emulate the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the manner in which he manages the problems that overwhelmed George W. Bush in his second term. In The Politics Presidents Make, Stephen Skoronek argues that presidents who come into office opposed to an existing vulnerable [...]
The GOP Floats Out To Sea, Alone on a Shrinking Iceberg
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There isn’t much point showing the Republican Party that they’ve lost it completely and are floating out to sea, alone and abandoned on a shrinking iceberg like an aged bull walrus driven from the herd. After all, new party chairman Michael Steele doesn’t know that when you work, you have a job and vice versa, [...]
Retro-Hooverites All
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We’re lucky the Democrats have large majorities in Congress because every Republican member of the House of Representatives voted against the $825 billion stimulus bill today. The vote was 244 to 188, with 11 like-minded Democrats joining in the betrayal. Even a face-to-face meeting with the President on Capitol Hill failed to sway any of [...]
Economics 101: Who’s Up, Who’s Down
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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. [...]
Another Great Depression?
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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 [...]
Is It 1932 or 1952?
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by Colleen Doody – In the wake of Barack Obama’s historic victory, the question arises of whether we are witnessing a fundamental realignment in American politics. Does 2008 mark the “end of the conservative era” as Pat Buchanan claimed? Or will this election, like Bill Clinton’s before it, be a Democratic interlude in the midst [...]
Obama’s Challenges Are Unprecedented in U.S. History
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Few incoming presidents have been left by their predecessors with as many challenges as Barack Obama. In fact, with the daunting terrain facing the incoming president, one wonders why Obama and John McCain even wanted the office. Other presidents facing an uphill task when taking office were (clockwise from upper left): George Washington, who had [...]
This Year’s Equation: 1920 + 1932 = 2008
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We often hear that the election that takes place next Tuesday will be one of the most important in American history. Such statements, however, are often little more than hyperbole. To make the case that an election is momentous, you need to compare it with previous critical ones. The most important elections are those in [...]
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