The 1960s, when incomes rose for almost all workers, ended with a massive wave of strikes. Since the 1980s, the incomes of most Americans have fallen, working hours have risen massively, and job security has become a foreign word. But strikes have been extremely rare.
The Business of Water: Privatizing an Essential Resource (tags)
Water is life, not a commodity
R.I.P. Ted Kennedy: The Senate’s Last Liberal (tags)
The mainstream media’s eulogies for the late Senator Ted Kennedy predictably focused on his success as a deal-maker, pushing a liberal agenda but in ways that compromised and often won the support of Republicans and conservatives. But Kennedy’s deals were based on the existence of a Republican party that, despite its different priorities from the Democrats, still believed in government as a force for the public good. Today’s nihilistic, Right-wing dominated Republican Party no longer believes in government as anything but a repressive instrument for benefiting the rich and enforcing the discipline of “the Market” on working people both domestically and abroad who dare to challenge the imperatives of lassiez-faire capitalism. What the times call for are tough, no-nonsense progressive resistance to the bipartisan Market agenda, not support of capitalist politicians promoted as “pragmatists” in the corporate media.
Ronald Reagan: Betrayer of Main Street America! (tags)
William Kleinknecht takes the gloves off in his new book,”The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America.” He shows that the so-called “great communicator,” was, in fact, the “great enabler of corporate greed.” The Vulture Capitalists were set loose on the people by “Reaganism.” I say: Take Reagan’s name off that airport in D.C. Let his Fat Cat cronies pay for his memorials, not the taxpayers.
PANIC DECLARED Empty store shelves, gas pumps, ATMs ahead. (tags)
Who am I to declare a panic? Don't worry about that yet; just stock up on a little cash and canned goods. When everything the feds do JUST MAKES THINGS WORSE -- we are in a panic. Not just grandpa's Depression, but a good old-fashioned running-scared panic when the shelves go bare ...
Fiddling while Rome burns (tags)
America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage. In a major investigation that took him from the Salton Sea in California to Crooked Creek in Florida, Matthew Engel reports on how America is ravaging the planet