Archive
Remembering Studs Terkel
What bitter irony. Studs Terkel, who gave voice to working people throughout his life, passed away yesterday, just days before a potentially historic presidential election. Should Sen. Barack Obama win on Tuesday, his victory would be a sweet vindication for Terkel,...
Pre-emptive Strike for Dem Détente
As David Sirota observed earlier, there are right-leaning forces within the Democratic Party looking to throw cold water on bold progressive ideas. And I also noted the possibility of averting such debilitating intra-party strife by building on a growing consensus...
Concentrating the Wealth, Pt. 2
A funny thing happened on the way to the bailout. A number of the members of the bucket brigade — that's us, taxpayers — realized that for all the billions of dollars worth of bailing we're doing, we still appear to be sinking. Our task seems to be keeping things...
Will A Dem Civil War Be Averted?
David Sirota astutely analyzed the tensions within the Democratic party yesterday, keying off of a Wall Street Journal piece. Rightly critical of counterproductive public infighting, he concludes: ...what that inappropriately anticipatory behavior suggests is 1) that...
Amity, Meet Eric
Amity Shlaes clearly doesn't like that my recent post called out that her revisionist history of the New Deal is based on misleading numbers. She responded on the National Review blog The Corner: (emphasis added) Scher says that The Forgotten Man has been “found to...
A Heartbeat Away: Hazardous Health-Care Policy
The health care plan advocated by presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is hazardous to your health. That is the point of this 30-second video by Health Care for America Now that succinctly hits its key flaws: It taxes the health benefits people get from their jobs,...
Conservatives: Not even trying to be serious
The email came from GOPUSA, whose mission is to “spread the conservative message throughout America.” The editorial, “Barack Obama’s Dream Cabinet”, caught my attention. I’m curious and thought they might have insight to offer. So I indulged a click. Here then are the...
Sinking Economy Shakes Denial
Today's news that the economy is sinking further into recession—gross domestic product growth decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the third quarter—is making it clearer that there is only one correct response to the current economic crisis: A robust...
There Is No Debate: Clean Energy = Strong Economy
For almost the entire history of the environment movement, its opponents framed the debate as "Environment vs. Jobs." Now, Robert Borosage optimistically asks if we'll soon see "a 21st-century Green New Deal" effectively connecting the environment and job growth as...
Concentrating the Wealth, Pt. 1
Last week I ventured into the "spreading the wealth" discussion with a post attempting to unpack one aspect of why even some people who might be helped by the kind of economic policies Obama is proposing are against them anyway. It was a rather long post, so...
