policy - LA Progressive

A Good Neighbor Policy

Steve Hochstadt: Hiding behind internet anonymity, Internet trolls try to use their anger to prevent the rest of us from discussing politics like friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens.

Obama’s Jobs Plan: Will He Offer Policy Miniatures or Give ‘em Hell?

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich: The winner of the 2012 presidential election will be the person who comes off as the toughest fighter for average Americans. Earth to Obama: Remember Harry (Give ‘em Hell) Truman.

Fed Policy Needs a U-Turn

By Brent Budowsky

Brent Budowsky: America needs new thinking for monetary and fiscal policy. Fed policy has failed. Government policy is inadequate. Ron Paul has advanced an important debate.

David Love: Corporate greed on the part of arms manufacturers has turned an obscure and anachronistic amendment dealing with militias into a license to kill, literally, on a massive scale. The result is a gun for every American, with no system of licensing, registration and background checks.

American Drug Users Fund Deadly Cartels

By Andrea Christina Nill

Andrea Nill: Over the past couple of weeks, thousands of Mexicans have taken to the streets to protest the bloody drug war that has ravaged Latin America and left 35,000 people dead since 2006 in Mexico alone.

Wheels Falling Off DHS’s Immigration Enforcement Wagon?

By Seth Hoy

Seth Hoy: Instead of defending the Administration’s enforcement strategy, however, maybe Secretary Napolitano should take a serious look at the egregious enforcement actions taking place right under her nose.

U.S. Policy Toward the Koreas Is Unrealistic

By Ivan Eland

Ivan Eland: The United States could undermine Chinese support for North Korea by giving South Korea five years notice that it will abrogate the U.S.-South Korean security alliance.

Losing the Drug War

By Adam Eran

Adam Eran: Criminalizing drug consumption, rather than bad behavior, leads to enormous corruption–both domestic and international–and disrespect for the law.

Marijuana Initiative Challenges Costly, Bloody Drug War

By Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden: I support the November ballot initiative because our country’s long drug war is a disaster and there is an alternative that is better for our health, safety and democratic process.

The Great Collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange

By Patrick Henningsen

Patrick Henningsen: Plagued by a free fall in carbon emissions prices and the perennial failure of Washington to pass any binding Cap and Trade Bill, it seems that the Chicago Climate Exchange is on its last leg, announcing that it will be scaling back its operations.

U.S. Policy in Iraq Urged Indiscriminate Shooting of Civilians, Say Three Former Soldiers

By Sherwood Ross

Sherwood Ross: Three former U.S. soldiers involved in the infamous “Collateral Murder” helicopter gunship attack on Baghdad civilians in July 2007, say that attack was nothing out of the ordinary.

How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste

By Michelle Alexander

Michelle Alexander: The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades — they are currently are at historical lows — but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs.