This Week in The LA Progressive: March 22 to March 28

Avoiding the Greater Depression

New York, City of the Poor. This city that never sleeps, and others, will experience economic and social death without a vibrant middle class and viable opportunities to earn a living. –David A. Love

The Magical Mystery Majority Budget. The bills passed, the Republicans threatened to sue, the Governor announced he would veto any that reached his desk and everyone went back to square one. –Sheila Kuehl

The Auto Bailout: A Bad Deal. With the economy tanking and unemployment skyrocketing, you’d think the Obama administration would be doing all it could to save jobs. –John Paul Rossi

The Rich Countries’ Faltering “United Front.” During the 1930s, Europe and the U.S. were also unable to agree on a common strategy, which led to a worldwide trade war and the plunge into depression. –Carl Bloice

Media Matters

From Oxy to Encino: Making Friends and Creating Waves. The real news will come if we can report that we found ways to support the magazine financially and used it to help advance social causes that matter to us. –Dick Price

The Way We Were. What newspapering will become will be determined by the shifting notions of a new culture. But the way we were was special. --Al Martinez

“Word Cloud:” Your Brain On CNN. Any viewers of cable news, who doubted corporate media’s desire to fry the brain of its audience need only to have seen tonight’s bizarro ‘WORD CLOUD” on CNN. –Linda Milazzo

Media Cries “Deficit” to Defeat Progressive Agenda. Despite all of the economic history of the past 30 years, the traditional media is brushing off its old bogeyman – the budget deficit – to defeat Obama’s agenda. --Randy Shaw

AIG Bailout Blues

A.I.G. Bonuses: Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game. AIG’s executives climbed back aboard their private jets and Congressional members hopped into their taxpayer-funded vehicles headed to their evening fundraiser. –Jasmyne Cannick

Returning to the Rule of Law: Bogus Republican Complaints about AIG Bailout. Sessions & his Republican pals don’t want a government that obeys laws. Republicans know that if you don’t like a law, just ignore it (if you’re rich and white). –Tom Hall

AIG and the Undeserving Rich. The business elites in this country, no matter how hard they try, cannot create a fictional “Joe the Plumber”-type character to fool working people. “Joe the Derivatives Trader” just doesn’t cut it. –Joseph Palermo

Congress’s Potemkin Populism. Congress’s potemkin populism over AIG’s bonuses disguises business as usual when it comes to the really big stuff. –Robert Reich

Equal Opportunity

Black, Male, Released from Prison, and Unemployed: A Recipe for Social Estrangement. The tragedy of four police officers being shot on a routine traffic stop in Oakland offered a set of circumstances that we all must face up to at some point. –Anthony Asadullah Samad

Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons Making Thousands Psychotic. The U.S. houses tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement, a form of numbing mental torture that drives about one-third of them psychotic. –Sherwood Ross

The Obamas’ Working Marriage. Michelle’s use of the word “we,” rather than “I” suggests that, both she and the President are dedicated equally to making their marriage work. –Kristin Celello

Close Down Guantanamo? What About Our Own Hellholes? From Florida to California, America’s dehumanizing prisons confront President Obama and our governors with a challenge every bit as daunting as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. –Sherwood Ross

Progressive Politics

Beyond the Fields: Yes We Can! Beyond the Fields is a stirring account of how the UFW transformed people’s lives, instilling a lifetime commitment to social justice. –Sharon Kyle

Red California Death Watch. New data from last November’s election, however, suggests that “Red California” is becoming less and less relevant. –Paul Hogarth

Bringing the People Along: An Interview with Presidential Advisor Stanley Greenberg. The future Democratic Party started with Bill Clinton and this was kind of a post modern entity open to diversity and tolerance. That laid the groundwork for Obama’s success. –Denis Campbell

War & Peace

Warning from Bosnia for Iraq. Obama must threaten a complete and rapid U.S. pull out to shock the Iraqi groups into reaching an agreement to further decentralize the Iraq government. –Ivan Eland

Obama Offers Iran “A Promise of a New Day.” A little recognition, a little respect, goes a long way with a people who have had such a tortured history with the United States. –Joseph Palermo

Will Obama Be Influenced by the Latest Big Task Force on Latin America? It’s still far too early to tell what impact on Obama ’s hemisphere policy that the Inter-American Dialogue outlines in its “10 Challenges” report. – Don Bohning

Shutting Down the Army Experience Center. Video games offer the perfect segues between childhood innocence and institutionalized killing. That’s why the Army opened the Army Experience Center. –Pat Elde

Why Doesn’t Obama Make Iraq the 51st State? Iraqis would have our solemn promise we will never again lay their country to waste and we would ensure that their motorists could have any oil that’s left over. –Sherwood Ross

A Flawed Basis for Middle East Peace. What can we expect, with Mitchell once again thrust into the middle as Obama’s negotiator in the Middle East, from any peace agreement he might work out there? --Jonathan Goldstein

New Voices

A.I.G. Bonuses: Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game. AIG’s executives climbed back aboard their private jets and Congressional members hopped into their taxpayer-funded vehicles headed to their evening fundraiser. –Jasmyne Cannick