John Peeler: In the midst of a massive recession, the conservative argument for balancing the budget by cutting government spending is manifestly perverse.
How Inequality Kills Growth
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Claude Fischer: To the extent that facts matter in such a politicized debate, it is becoming increasingly clear that equality rather than inequality is a better policy for economic growth.
George Will: Always Right, Occasionally Correct
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John Peeler: Obama, if he could free himself of the Wall Street crowd, is the likelier buyer of Will’s prescription of breaking up financial institutions that are “too big to fail”.
Shiftless Moochers: The 47% Charge in U.S. History
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Claude Fischer: Whatever the facts may be, the charge that huge numbers of shiftless moochers live off hard-working taxpayers feels true to many Americans – and has felt true to many Americans for centuries.
Progressives Must Move Beyond Occupy
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Cynthia Alvarez: Occupy is actually impeding Progressives’ outreach to the general public. Progressives need new organizations based on the successful planning and leadership strategies of the civil rights movement to create an army of volunteers.
Atomic Energy Agency Holds Up Iran Cooperation Pact
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Gareth Porter: The Iranian proposals for change indicate Tehran believes that the IAEA draft is intended to keep Iran under suspicion for an indefinite period as part of a larger negotiating strategy by the United States and its allies.
How Europe’s Double Dip Could Become America’s
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Robert Reich: Republicans have become the U.S. party of Angela Merkel, demanding and getting spending cuts at the worst possible time – and ignoring the economic and social consequences.
Republicans to Veterans: No Thanks
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Hans Johnson: Provoking some of the growing anger against Tea Party Republicans is the tone of callousness toward people of color, women, and the sacrifice of veterans who voice frustration at the toll of cuts and barriers in the democratic process itself.
Progressive Canaries in a Political Mine
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Norman Solomon: After more than 20 months of White House insistence that the only useful role for progressive canaries is to keep singing the president’s tune, the electoral coal mine is filled with the political equivalent of carbon monoxide and methane.
Don’t Succumb to Deficit Hysteria
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The only item worth looking at is the part of the report that predicts the government will have nearly a $1.6 trillion deficit in the fiscal year that ends this September 30 — but not because that number is alarmingly large. It strikes me as alarmingly small.
Freedom Isn’t Free – We Still Aren’t Free of Sarah Palin
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Happy Independence Day, on the eve of which we’ve been reminded that we are FAR from declaring our national independence from the Sarah Palin addiction. After watching her rambling, disjointed “W-T-F Moment” as she announced she’s not only not running for reelection as Alaska’s governor but she’s bailing out now, I guess what I’m doing [...]
Exclusion, Inclusion and Change: Is Rick Warren Today’s Ebenezer Scrooge?
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by Tom Hall – Do you remember what Scrooge did when he woke after that terrible night with the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to be? He flung open his window and told a boy in the street to run around to the butcher shop and buy the prize turkey hanging in the [...]
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Why Keith Left
Mike Price: Everybody seems to have a theory about the “real” reason for Keith Olbermann’s sudden departure from MSNBC. Mine, not that anybody asked, is that it had something to do with his insistence upon reading James Thurber to us every Friday at the close of his show.