A look back makes the outlook easier: A speculative boom in 1929 leads to a stock market crash and recession, the budget deficit increases, the austerity policies drive the economy into a depression. Tensions within and between countries increase, scapegoats are sought, anti-Semitism and protectionism are spreading.
The indispensable opponent (tags)
The West's hostility towards China has increased since China's engine began to stutter. At the same time, the US government is pumping massive amounts of money into the economy and has thus been able to prevent an impending recession for the time being, but is far from regaining its former role as a global engine of growth.
Is the USa Failed State with Michael Hudson (tags)
It’s a failed state because its economy is paralyzed and we’re in a debt deflation, an economic polarization, that is just transferring all wealth and income away from labor, away from industry, into really the financial sector and what I call the finance, insurance, and real estate sector.
Capial in the 2020s (with Thomas Piketty) (tags)
Inequality is not an accident. It’s not like the weather. It actually is being driven by the way capitalism is functioning. You know what we need? We need state intervention, we need government action, and we need that to be very, big. He proposes a wealth tax of 2 percent.
Against the cannabilism of capital (tags)
Total Competition or Repressive Administration of People (tags)
An awareness of the monstrosities of our glorious capitalist society is the first prerequisite for thinking beyond that society.:..The regularities of capitalist society are not laws of nature, so they can be abolished in principle. With such abolition, a new society can become possible.
Hysterical Populism and the Appetite of Leviathan (tags)
The relationship between economy and social order has been turned upside down: economy is no longer a function of an overarching culture, but conversely, "human society has sunk to being an accessory of the economic system" (Karl Polanyi). RK was founder of Exit & Krisis blogs.
Degrowth - not just Green New Deals! (tags)
We live in a time of many and accelerating crises. Climate breakdown is breathing down our neck. Biodiversity is collapsing in ecosystems around the world, and many natural safety nets – water cycles, soil fertility, fish stocks, microbial diversity – are unraveling.
“An injury to one is the concern of all.” The events of 1886 – powerful displays of solidarity and mass strikes for an eight-hour work day followed by absolute abuses of state power in executing innocent labor organizers – continue to inspire workers to demand fair, just workplaces & laws.
In the run-up to the founding of NATO, those responsible in the USA knew: The Soviet Union posed no military threat. The weakened power could not sustain an attack on Western Europe even if it wanted to: The Soviet Union's economy is largely destroyed and technologically obsolete.
Capitalist crisis policy is ultimately in a crisis trap... The central banks' billion-dollar "quantitative easing" may have prevented the collapse of the world financial system in 2020, but it is only a postponement of the crisis.
Toward a new economic policy paradigm (tags)
Over the years, the institutionally enshrined budget discipline has created a considerable investment backlog. Important investments in infrastructure, education and climate protection have not taken place.
Renaissance of the Social Market Economy (tags)
A social market economy is based on two political pillars: (1) taming the market dynamics via regulation and (2) mitigating its consequences in distribution policy. (3) The development and care of an economic culture of moderation and fairness in dealing with one another forms the third, the cultural pillar of taming and civilizing
Capitalism as the religion of indebtedness and debt (tags)
In capitalism, the fundamental social relation is neither exchange nor production. Rather, it is debt that dominates and supersedes every other way of recognizing and valorizing the measure between people. Those who have money are creditworthy, manifesting the sign of God's grace.
Housing and Public Employment (tags)
How does the interplay of supply and demand affect the housing market? What influence does the financial market have on housing prices? What happens when tenant protection in tenancy law is relaxed and the market is given more leeway?
Lessons from the First New Deal for the Next One (tags)
Chicago School Economists Got it Wrong. Strong Antitrust Policy Boosts the Economy (tags)
When mergers increase market concentration, we know that competition has been harmed even if to a small extent. Since this is the case, it makes sense to ask the merging parties to establish that the merger will provide benefits to the economy.
What moves the "Generation Greta"? (tags)
The global economy is in free fall. Social life and public debate are largely paralyzed, the usual protest and organizing formats of the social movements are completely blocked. Decisive decisions are made in the mode of emergency decrees and huge rescue packages. The politically unthinkable becomes possible,
Learning to Feel Collectively (tags)
The starting point of the upheavals are the anti-colonial movements that have been spreading across the globe since the end of World War II. With the Black Civil Rights Movement, they penetrate into the heart of the capitalist world system starting in the mid-1950s, where they politicize liberal students* and the beat culture.
Austerity's Hidden Purpose & From California Economics to Bidenomics (tags)
For governments pursuing austerity, spending cuts mean lower national income and fewer taxes. Unlike a household or a business, if the government cuts its spending during tough times, it is cutting its revenues, too.
Why Karl Polanyi Still Matters (tags)
In The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi explains why the economy must be embedded in society and society must not be embedded in the economy. He describes land, labor and money as "fictitious commodities" since they cannot be multiplied and created on the market.
Welcome to a `systemic risk' (tags)
In fact, the US has just passed one of the most progressive laws in its history. It departs from the economic strategies of the past few decades, which have favored capital income — of both ‘innovators’ and rentiers — and increasingly left the working class behind
Noam Chomsky Without Regrets (tags)
We learn more about human beings and their nature from 19th-century novels than we do from academic psychology. It’s a way we not only enrich our lives, but enrich our understanding and conception of what it is to live a good life. Literature, arts, music or painting are some of the most profound ways of understanding.
New Deal means The Courage to Conflict (tags)
What we can learn from Roosevelt's reform policies of the 1930s today From 1929 onwards, as in many other capitalist countries, the US economy plunged into disaster. Between 1929 and 1933, GDP halved and unemployment rose eightfold to 12.8 million.
What could change with Biden and Harris? (tags)
The next few years will be all about democracy in the U.S., about the social cohesion of a diverse population, about stopping environmental destruction, and about a successful structural change of the economy that goes hand in hand with the creation of sufficient, well-paid jobs and humane working conditions.
Privilege versus equality. "The central issue in the conflict between the government and doctors in Saskatchewan is not health insurance, but democracy," noted the Globe and Mail after the strike began. "The experts, no matter what their specialty, must always ultimately be subordinate to the laity."
The long struggle for a post-capitalist society (tags)
The (Corona) crisis has relentlessly exposed the inability of neoliberal capitalism and its political personnel to meet the elementary needs of the people. Even if it is not felt to the same extent in Germany due to the depressing political conditions: the neoliberal offensive is in a deep existential crisis.
The New Deal and Self-destructive Donald Trump (tags)
From 1929 to 1932 industrial production halved and in a chain reaction over 5000 banks went bankrupt. Farmers' incomes shrank by 70 percent, unemployment rose to 25 percent, and there were no welfare state measures to cushion the misery.
America: The Right Wave is Broken (tags)
Morales' return was made possible by the victory of his left-wing movement for socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) in the first democratic elections after a coup a year ago, on November 10, 2019. In his first speech after returning home, Morales affirmed that there was no fraud in the 2019 election.
"Don't let them take democracy away from you" (tags)
"United we can and will overcome the time of darkness in America," he said. After four years of Trump's presidency, the Biden-Harris team wants to reunite the country, overcome the Corona crisis and boost the economy with millions of new jobs.
Bernie Sanders in Las Vegas: Being free, being high and eminent domain (tags)
The proclamation of a national climate emergency, the ban on oil and gas exports and the import of cheap medicines from Canada are to be implemented by means of the so-called "Executive Order"
Impeaching a President and Impeachment and Corruption (tags)
Resisting "corruption" has occupied the American republic since its origin-along with the search for "virtuous leaders." The impeachment process was understood as a remedy for corruption. The violation of the people's trust is the reason for removal from office.
The Left is Not Obsolete (tags)
"Propaganda is always the other. We are the principled," said Norman Birnbaum. The left is rooted philosophically in the Enlightenment with its rejection of throne and alter. The left sought material redistribution for moral reasons-for the sake of transforming human nature.
Time for a Real Green New Deal w/Green presidential hopeful Howie Hawkins, Sunday Sept 22 (tags)
From Enlightenment to Counter-Enlightenment (tags)
Brilliant minds elevated "the market" into a "higher being" of the post-modern age to which we must submit. The primacy of the market replaced the primacy of politics. Dr. Schulmeister is an economic researcher in Vienna whose latest book is "The Road to Prosperity" (2019).
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the Wealth Tax (tags)
Warren's proposal earmarks a 2% tax on wealth between $50 million and a billion dollars and a 3% tax on wealth over a billion. Between 1930 and 1980, top incomes were taxed at 81% and top inherited wealth at 74%. Obviously, this did not destroy American capitalism.
What are the Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization? (tags)
Capitalism seemed to have a more social or civilized face for a time. After Roosevelt's New Deal and the defeat of fascism, gradual development of the social state occurred in Europe. Unions were accepted. The rulers were forced to political and social concessions.
"We live in a time of radical counter-enlightenment" (tags)
Political struggle always means the struggle over the definitional power and appropriation of the world. For decades, neoliberalism has carried out a redistribution project against the majority of the population. This neoliberal project is only possible when
The Criminality of the Elites (tags)
The offenses of the upper classes are hardly publicized. People wait in vain for strong interventions in the economic realm. Financial criminality harms the state, the community and economic growth (e.g. high-frequency trading, shadow banking, financial products)
Neoliberalism or New Freedom for Corporations (tags)
"The interests of merchants always differ from public interests. As a rule, they are interested in deceiving and misusing the general public" (Adam Smith). Keynes established that the market alone cannot ensure the prosperity of everyone.
The systemic reasons for the crisis are more important than a sudden fall in prices. Stocks are held on average 22 seconds, not 6 months or ten years. Real-capitalism is a plus-sum game. Financial capitalism is a zero-sum game.
Video: "Frasnklin D. Roosevelt," 1 hr 17 min (tags)
Historian Robert Dallek examined the political acumen of President Franklin D. Roosevelt throughout his four presidential terms.
Segregation in the City of Angels: A 1939 Map of Housing Inequality in L.A. (tags)
Endorsed by New Deal-era federal housing policy, "redlining" encouraged housing inequality in US cities.
PBS POV "The Uprising of 1934" Textile workers in the SE challenge unjust order (tags)
PBS POV has come out with a while ago ago the 1934 textile strike in 5 SE states with many mills and hundreds of thousands of whait workers who were not protected by New Deal legislation during a hard Great Depression. According to Clooney thosands were blacklisted a 7 murdered
Private Enterprise Committed to Social Interests (tags)
Social needs like energy- and water-supply, the waste industry, education, senior pensions and health care can be solved better publically than privately.
Who Says It Can't Happen Here? (tags)
We have endured 40 years of creeping authoritarianism and it now appears that it may run right over democracy. We must resist and act in solidarity.
US Economy: False Diagnoses and False Solutions (tags)
Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's economic plans are too simplistic. Innovations and ideas are lacking. Many people despair. Washington did not always ignore the middle. FDR's New Deal built 165K public buildings.
Propaganda: Making Alternatives Disappear (tags)
The main responsibility of a government in a "democracy" is protecting the minority of the ownership class against the majority of the non-owners...The neoliberal indoctrination systems serve in the manufacture of ignorance.
The Works Progress Administration created 651K miles of highway, 124K bridges, 8K parks and 125K public buildings including 41K schools. In the US of Amnesia, corporate subsidies are called public necessities and public welfare unnecessary Orwell warned us of this inversion of language.
NPR sees the two the same because they have a similar style.
Hillary Clinton: War Goddess, Corporate Shill, Anti-Populist (tags)
Clinton
Thoughts on Independence Day Weekend (tags)
Independence Day
Obama Wants Regime Change in Ecuador (tags)
Ecuador
Free collection of articles.
The poorest and weakest persons must pay the price for misguided political decisions. Political-economic decisions decide over the life and death of persons. The New Deal stands for an effective debt reduction. Germany has been an active driver of austerity.
What is the American Left? (tags)
The Black Congressional Caucus and the Progressive Caucus, and a handful of old and new Senators (Warren of Masschusetts and Sanders of Vermont) represent continuity in articulating the traditions of the New Deal and the Great Society. So do a number of Governors...
TheInheritance of Inequality and Rethinking Growth (tags)
The economy exists for people, not vice versa. Economics should be pluralist, not a monolith. The economy should be embedded in society; society should not be embedded in the economy. Thomas Piketty and alternative economics emphasize inequality and mass unemployment.
Learning from Roosevelt: HIs "New Deal" (tags)
The Civilian Conservation Corps helped overcome the basic pessimistic mood in society. Within a few months, 500,000 young persons had hope again. The government should intervene in case of an economic emergency.
The "Great Transformation" of the 21st Century (tags)
An end of the Great Crisis is not insight at the beginning of the 21st century... The regime of finance-market driven accumulation has not brought forth any new formation of capitalism capable of development.
Ukraine's Fascist Roots (tags)
Ukraine
Neoliberalism has brought us back to Rockefeller's best times. Bill Gates is 1.4 million times as rich as the average American. A "feudal lifestyle" is made out to be worthwhile and in no way negatively described. Thus "re-feudalization" is dulled as a polemical term.
Supreme Court Rules for Big Money (tags)
money power
Rejecting TTIP, AFDL-CIO's Trumka Calls for "Global New Deal" (tags)
The demonization of anyone who talks about the dangers of concentrated wealth is based on a misreading of both the past and the present. Such talk isn’t un-American; it’s very much in the American tradition. So who will be this generation’s Teddy Roosevelt? (Paul Krugman)
The Free Trade Agreement TTIP - New Version of the "Golden Age" (tags)
Lobbyists and think tanks of transnational corporations dreamt of a global market without limits. With enticing slogans like more economic growth or creation of new jobs, the population should accept the trade-and investment agreement.
Obama's Fake Economic Recovery (tags)
class war
Corporate Taxes in America (tags)
taxes
Venezuelan v. US Budget Priorities (tags)
Venezuela
hunger
Washington Brinksmanship Resolution (tags)
class war
Politics Serving Free Financial Markets Creates False Incentives (tags)
Stable exchange rates, a strict regulation of (financial-) capital transactions, a transactions tax and low interest rates should make financial speculation so unattractive (“euthanasia of the profiteer”) that real investments would quickly expand to maintain full employment.
Ten Theses on the Crisis and its Solution (tags)
Problems don't disappear when they are ignored. Deregulation is a collective and political crisis. Language and democracy are endangered when arsonists are called firefighters, when private losses become public losses and crime in the suits is normalized as a business model.
Alternatives to Stagnation and Depression (tags)
Politics has fought the symptoms of the great crisis with banking- and economic packages while its systemic causes remain untouched… The hardest phase of the great crisis is ahead of us, not behind us. All sectors try to safeguard their position through spending cuts...
Supreme Court Guts Voting Rights Act (tags)
police state
liar
Obama's Anti-Populist Agenda (tags)
class war
LA Election Results Commentary (tags)
nobody says nothing
Regime Change Begins at Home (tags)
fascism
Obama’s Still Shopping for a Grand Bargain (tags)
President Obama’s recent closed-door sessions with Republican congressmen to reach a “grand bargain” has roused suspiciously little attention in the mainstream media. What scant reporting has occurred presents the following narrative: President Obama is a “middle ground” politician attempting to breach political divides with erstwhile Republican opponents. In reality these meetings are not between political opposites, but kindred spirits; perfectly matched ideologies that differ only in implementation, and only by degrees.
Supreme Court Authorizes Lawless Wiretapping (tags)
tyranny
America's Deplorable State of the Union (tags)
class war
Why Organized Labor Must Stand Against the Keystone XL Pipeline (tags)
Spurred by real urgency over the corporate driven ruin of the environment, a growing social movement is taking shape that will be on display this Sunday, February 17, when tens of thousands descend on the streets of Washington, D.C. in a show of power titled “Forward On Climate.”
Obama
Fiscal Cliff Postmortems (tags)
class war
The "Fiscal Cliff" Is a Hoax ... and a Mel Brooks Routine (tags)
The "fiscal cliff" comedy routine in Washington DC is a staged act where Democrats play the "good cop" who want to tax the rich and cut social welfare programs vs. the "bad cop" Republicans who don't want to tax the rich and promise heavy cuts on social welfare programs. Where is the voice of reason that says maybe this so-called fiscal cliff isn't really such a big deal after all?
A Pretty Good Election, but the Right Still Rules (tags)
The November 6, 2012 election turned out fairly well for progressives — from Barack Obama retaining the presidency to a true Left-wing Democrat like Bob Filner winning for Mayor of San Diego — but the Right is still strong. The issue agendas and terms of discussion continue to be dictated by an increasingly militant Right wing and America's pathetic, ill-organized remnant of a Left no longer has the power to put pressure on the political system for progressive reforms the way it did in the 1890's, 1930's and 1960's.
Barack Obama must stimulate the economy with state spending. The astonishing example of Europe could convince republicans who in the past blocked everything... The monetary policy of a central bank cannot replace fiscal policy,
Supreme Court Spurns Justice (tags)
injustice
The strength of the democrats is the folly and mean-spiritedness of republicans. Programs to support the economy were rejected every time with the sole goal of bad economic data. Romney/Ryan rely on the short memory of voters who blame only Obama for the faltering economy Obstructionism should be the issue.
media
Iran's NNC News Interviews Lendman (tags)
interview
Is Capitalism Collapsing? (tags)
One of the causes for the obvious helplessness of the governments is that they function as simple receivers of orders of the financial industry. The financial industry has no interest in a policy that would make it liable for its inflicted disaster..
America's Right-Wing Reinterprets the Crisis (tags)
A state is not a hardware store. It must contract debts in crisis times. Four years after the collapse of the US economy, the republicans send a former investment banker into the race who stands for a policy that got us into the real messThe right-wing was very successful in changing the discourse.
Hypocrisy not Democracy in America (tags)
tyranny
The economic crisis, the massive indebtedness of the country and Obama's election have radicalized politics and voters. Ryan's budget proposal was recently described as a fairy tale that would in no way stop the economic decline. Others call his plan a joke.
VIDEO: "The Servant Economy" - Jeff Faux (tags)
Propaganda from the right has blown away cooperation. Since Reagan, the future has disappeared from American politics. The idea of planning for the future was embedded in the New Deal and lost completely with Reagan. Reagan photoshoped the future.
Obama v. Romney on Issues Mattering Most (tags)
elections
Ryan, Akin: Two More Reasons to Vote for Obama (tags)
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, two stories — Mitt Romney's choice of arch-conservative Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan as his running mate and Missouri Congressmember and Senate candidate Todd Akin's comment that women almost never get pregnant from "legitimate rape" — highlighted the vast differences between the two major parties. No progressive can possibly still believe that it makes no difference whether the Republicans or the Democrats win this year's election in the face of the overwhelming evidence that the Republicans plan (and, if they win, will enact) a sweeping change in U.S. government that will eliminate ALL business regulation, environmental protection and civil rights for women, people of color and Queers.
Austerity Hastens Economic Decline (tags)
class war
Big Win for Predatory Healthcare Giants (tags)
class war
The Supremes and Health Care: Second "Switch in Time" (tags)
In April 1937 Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts switched sides, stopped voting that minimum-wage laws and the New Deal programs were unconstitutional and got on board with the Roosevelt administration's program to save the court from progressive political attacks. Likewise, current Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act largely to preserve the court's reputation and neutralize Democrats' attempts to make the court's Republican majority and partisan 5-4 decisions like Citizens United an issue in the 2012 campaign.
Scoundrel Media Support for Obama (tags)
Obama
The Taft-Hartley Act: ‘Neutrality’ as a weapon (tags)
All the new rules put into place by the act were directed against employees, despite the neutral-sounding language.
The Left, Labor and Occupy (tags)
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel "black bloc" anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against "ultraleftists" in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle.
Health Care and the Supremes (tags)
When the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act in late March, the vicious hostility of their comments signaled their intent not only to rule so-called "Obamacare" unconstitutional but to fundamentally recast the Court's jurisprudence. It's clear from the health-care hearings and from previous decisions like Citizens United that the Court's five-member Right-wing majority wants to return to the days before and during the New Deal when the Court quite consciously saw its mission as protecting the 1 percent by ruling any meaningful attempt at regulating the economy unconstitutional.
Viktor Bout: Victimized by US Injustice (tags)
injustice
The Criminal Class in Washington is Bipartisan (tags)
politics
BTL:In 2012 GOP Primary Campaign, "Racist Dog Whistle" Sounds Like a Bullhorn (tags)
Interview with Kevin Alexander Gray, writer and activist, conducted by Scott Harris
Whatever we think of the Democratic Party, like it or not, in the current political emergency, we are going to HAVE to align with them and vote for every Democrat on the ballot over every Republican — not because the Democrats are that progressive but because the Republicans plan a sweeping Right-wing revolution comparable to the changes Germany went through when Hitler took power in 1933, and the Democratic Party is one essential vehicle we will need to use to stop them.
"The illegitimate debts must be cancelled" (tags)
A neoliberal tax policy followed for twenty years drastically lowered the taxes paid by private corporations on their profits, above all by big business. The debts are not an incomprehensible plague but the result of a conscious and completely unjust policy.
Beyond the Homo Economicus (tags)
The Homo economicus is a kind of calculating machine on two legs that incessantly calculates personal benefits and profit. His conduct follows the model of rational expectations. Incursions of the state will make possible more social equality.
Learning from Roosevelt (tags)
Harry Hopkins, head of WPA under Roosevelt, created 4 million jobs in 2 months. How many jobs in health care, education, bridge repair, community centers and journalism could be created today? Solutions are not lacking, only political will. Viva sharing and redistribution!
fascism
Election 2012: Unemployment Drop a Sham According to Socialist Party Ticket (tags)
The Alexander/Mendoza campaign calls for a real jobs program, as well as protecting public sector jobs which have been faltering since the economic crisis began. They say that spending billions of dollars on incentives for businesses doesn’t get the job done – rather they call for the government to create jobs directly.
America's Unequal Heritage (tags)
Though a lot of the Tea Party's pretensions to be representing the original intent of the authors of the U.S. Constitution are wrong and even silly, there's one issue on which the Tea Party is right. The authors of the U.S. Constitution really did intend this country to be a limited republic, governed by an elite representing the large landowners who were the 1 percent of their day. The Constitution's principal author, James Madison, called "an equal division of property" one of the "improper or wicked projects" the Constitution was designed to prevent.
Oakland General Strike a Success, but Cops Seriously Injure another Vet (tags)
With over 50,000 people protesting in the street in three major protests through the course of the day, massive labor participation, and a shut down of the Port of Oakland, there is no question that the general strike was a success. Yet the corporate media is now blowing up the importance of a few acts of vandalism by protesters and agent provocateurs.
Obama's Legacy of Shame (tags)
class war
Occupy Wall Street and its sister movements, including Occupy San Diego, have dramatically changed the terms of political and economic debate in the U.S. Before they arose, it looked like the only choices the American people would be given to understand the disaster that has befallen them in this nation's economic collapse was the mild pro-corporatism of the Democratic Party and the ardent, Ayn Randian pro-corporatism of the Republicans and the Tea Party. What's more, so far the Occupy protesters have shown an ability to learn from the Left's past mistakes, pattern their movement after the American Revolution (as the Tea Party did) and junk the hideously unworkable process of consensus decision-making.
Obama?s Continued Failures on the Environment and Jobs (tags)
[Photo: Bridge in Felton, California built by workers in the Works Progress Administration which employed 3.8 million people from 1935 to 1941 and built 11,000 schools, 122,000 public buildings, 77,000 bridges, 285 airports, 24,000 miles of sewer, and 664,000 miles of road. Photo by Liberation News]
Video: Massive Jobs Program Only Way Out (tags)
Economics changes with the times as states and individuals change. Once savings was the elixir and then spending was the elixir with John Maynard Keynes. Speculative investment only leads to exploding inequality and atrophy of public spirit.
economy
class war
Bipartisan Debt Deal Betrayal (tags)
class war
class war
Social and Economic Inequality in Israel (tags)
rights
Before we can determine if America has succumbed to fascism, we first must have a good definition and understanding of what fascism really is
Creating a New Deal for Today: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (tags)
The American political process is threatened by corporate power on a scale we haven't seen since the Gilded Age?when big money became so powerful that we nearly lost our democracy. restricted the influence of money in government.
financial terrorism
Targeting Professor Terri Ginsberg's Academic and Speech Freedoms (tags)
persecution
Mountaintop Removal: Environmental and Human Destruction for Profit (tags)
predation
Obama Plans Gutting Regulations for Corporate Favorites (tags)
deregulation
Republicans Win Without a Shutdown (tags)
The first fight over the federal budget in 2011 is over, and the Republicans have won. For at least the past 30 years Republican ideas — that government is bad, that the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector, that wages and benefits need to be cut to make America's workers "competitive" with the rest of the world, and government spending needs to be cut even if it risks turning the current recession into a full-fledged depression — have ruled. Progressives need to understand the depth of the Republicans’ triumph in order to begin the task of reversing it.
An Expansion of Terms Used in the Coffee Party Article by RP (tags)
I apologize for the weak structure in this article. I was hoping to write something that explained some of the material in the story, but ended up going a bit afield with the information. This article attempts to be neutral and nonpartisan, or at least not shrill, and avoids too much analysis. The nature of the Great Recession is difficult to sum up in a few pages, because it's a failure of a complex system with many parts, and many related behaviors, that led to the near-collapse of capitalism.
Congressmen and their "Constituent services" (tags)
Congressmen use "Constituent services" to get 5 to 10 percent of their votes
The word crisis describes a turning point where a decision about direction must be made. A dramatic turning point where business as usual is not an option does not correspond to our picture of an ordered world.
Wisconsin: Ground Zero to Save Public Worker Rights (tags)
worker struggles
Obama's Anti-Populist Budget (tags)
neoliberalism
The Two Roads Out of Recession (tags)
Recent events in Washington, D.C. should provoke fear and outrage in the average American worker. As the jobs recession staggers on, politicians and labor leaders alike seem bizarrely distanced from reality, unable to advance any ideas that remotely correspond to the basic demands of those tens of millions of unemployed, under-employed, or poorly paid workers. Instead, what we get is President Obama's recent groveling to the corporate-dominated Chamber of Commerce, pleading with them to hire workers. The President's recent speech to the Chamber implied many dangers, which neither labor federation-- AFL-CIO and Change to Win -- bothered to point out. In fact, the AFL-CIO applauded sections of the speech, rather than condemning its sinister motives. If labor unions align themselves with the President's and the Chamber's pro-corporate path out of the recession, a workers’ road to recovery will be bypassed.
Briana Waters: Victimized by Green Scare State Terrorism (tags)
persecution
Field Notes on American-Style Democracy (tags)
imperialism
BTL:Obama and Democrats' Surrender to the Right Could End FDR's New Deal Programs (tags)
BETWEEN THE LINES - A four-time winner of the Connecticut Associated Press Broadcast Award for Best Feature in the non-commercial category, this syndicated, half-hour program provides a platform for individuals and spokespersons from progressive organizations generally ignored or marginalized by the mainstream media. Between the Lines covers a wide range of political, economic and social topics.
The End of the "Golden Age" of Capitalism and the Rise of Neoliberalism (tags)
"The central point is that the financial sphere has the potential of developing into an autonomous subsystem of the whole economy with an enormous capacity of self-expansion..Like cancer, it has no internal control mechanism. It can only be brought under control by external interventions"
responsible banking
Hail to the Chief: Spinning Obama's Presidency (tags)
spinning betrayal
Chavez Given Enabling Law Power (tags)
legal in Venezuela
Corporate Media's Version of Economic Justice (tags)
middle class destructions
More on Obama's Capitulation and Betrayal (tags)
capitulating to Republicans
Challenging Obama's Anti-Progressivism (tags)
Obama serves wealth and power
Worldwide Economic Crisis 2.0 or the Collapse of Neoliberal Finance Capitalism (tags)
The present crisis is a consequence of the fact that exploding business profits found inadequate investment opportunities in the productive sector and turned instead to financial speculation. Deregulation created "law-free" spaces" with the abrogation of all political controls.
Video: FDR's New Deal: Social Security Act and National Labor Relations Act (tags)
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the enactment of the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act, the FDR presidential library hosts a public forum to explore in depth the year that Roosevelt transformed the mission of the New Deal.
Obama Team's Deficit Cutting Proposal: Benefit the Few, Harm the Many (tags)
Obama's Robin Hood economics
Obama/Democratic Abandonment of Senior Citizen Voters Politically Stupid (tags)
Recognition finally coming in MSM that Obama has made a major political blunder in alienating senior citizens.
Democrats or Alternative Parties? SUF Debates the Question (tags)
Work within the Democratic Party or start alternative parties of our own? It’s a debate American progressives have been having since the 1890’s (though until the 1930’s there was the option of working within the Republican Party as well) and the progressive disappointment with the Obama administration was pervasive when San Diego’s Socialist Unity Forum (SUF) met to discuss the question Sept. 19. But so was fear of the “Tea Party” movement — ostensibly independent but supporting and invigorating the Right wing of the Republican Party — and concern that abandoning the Democrats now is unnecessarily divisive and harmful.
foreclosuregate one of many examples
U.S. SUPREME COURT CONSERVATIVE JUSTICES FOLLOW ELITE CABALS CONSERVATIVE TARP $ AGENDA$ (tags)
WIN AT ALL CO$T$ CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ELITE POLITICS HAS INFECTED OUR U.S. SUPREME COURT
The October 2 "One Nation" demonstration in Washington DC is a call for government job creation in the face of mass unemployment and human pain. FDR's creation of 4 million jobs within 4 months is an example of government responding to crisis.
BTL:Corporate-Funded Tea Party: Repeal New Deal Government Programs (tags)
BETWEEN THE LINES Syndicated Radio Newsmagazine
THE FICTION OF FREEDOM IN AMERICA (tags)
The servants of these investors and money "managers," like corporate executives and our elected - excuse the expression -representatives, look from the side, taking a payoff, as we get economically raped. This is designed to prevent wage "inflation" (that's a raise in the minimum, or any other, wage) by keeping unemployment high,
Competing Ideologies: G20 v. US Social Forum (tags)
state terror on Toronto streets
Court destroying our rights and welfare
Child Homelessness in America (tags)
worsening because Washington ignores it
VIDEO: Supreme Power-Franklin Roosevelt and the Supreme Court (tags)
The state can and must corrupt jobs when the private sector is corrupted, fears for the future and speculates on foreign currencies.
Next Supreme Court Justice to Solidify Right Wing, Neoliberal Control (tags)
Obama likely to shift the court more to the right
America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution (tags)
America governs lawlessly
Selling Out America to Wall Street (tags)
pillaging American wealth
20 Theses against a Green Capitalism (tags)
Is a Green New Deal possible? These theses were published in an English translation in: Prager Fruhling (Prague Spring) in December 2009.
Climate Justice, Not Growth Mania (tags)
"In green capitalism, the bio-crisis is at the center of the growth strategy. The Green New Deal represents a kind of ecological inversion of Kennedy's famous sentence: Ask not what you can do for the environment but what the environment can do for you..."
All Cards on the Table: For a Social Ecological New Deal (tags)
The neoliberal and fossilist finance market capitalism has become a discontinued model. With his New Deal, Roosevelt introduced state pensions, unemployment insurance and the minimum wage, reduced working hours and strengthened unions.
A New Paradigm: The New Deal of the 1930s (tags)
The New Deal that led out of the worldwide economic crisis in the 1930s was based on the combination of a new technical-economic model with a new socio-economic model. Obama's achievement is not turning the necessity of overcoming the crisis against the social principle
IF Stone: An Iconic Radical Journalist (tags)
one of America's greatest
Sweatshop Conditions in US Cities (tags)
vicious labor exploitation
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.
Sep 2nd, 2009 9:09 PM Despite the sweeping Democratic victories in the elections of 2006 and 2008, the Republican party in general and the radical Right in particular have reasserted themselves with a vengeance, especially regarding the health insurance reform proposals of the Obama administration and Congress. They’ve been able to tap into the same reflexive anti-government sentiment that has powered American politics at least since Ronald Reagan’s election (and arguably earlier) to block the reform proposals and set the stage for a Republican return to power that will render Obama as irrelevant historically as Carter and Clinton -- and without a mass progressive movement to push Obama and the Democrats back to the Left, the Right will succeed and triumph.
Capitalism is the Problem: System Error (tags)
The chaos that we now witness is only the latest crisis of the global economic system. The system has not succeeded in keeping profits at the level of the postwar years. What is good for one capitalist is not necessarily good for the system. Triple-digit billions have been pumped into system
Review: Karl Polanyi-How the State Created Capitalism (tags)
In "The Great Transformation" (1944), Karl Polanyi deconstructs the myth of a free market economy that develops naturally and spontaneously and the idea of the state as a counter-pole to capital. The transformation of labor and land into commodities was a painful process.
Economic Policy after the Financial Crisis: Keynes (tags)
Keynes saw political control of markets and a distribution and social policy in favor of lower income groups as essential prerequisites of a stable long-term macro-economic development.. Three-hour workdays or a 15-hour week would be enough.
HR 2749 - A Stealth Agribusiness Empowerment Act (tags)
Obama targets small farmers for destruction
Another New Deal May Offer Arts a Needed Boost (tags)
Correspondent Spencer Michels reports on the prospects for a modern New Deal to help artists weather the recession. This PBS documentary was broadcast May 13, 2009.
Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt:" Part II (tags)
Part II of Brown's superb book.
FDR's New Deal v. Obamanomics in Their First 100 Days (tags)
stark mirror opposites
Lessons from 1929: Christina Romer (tags)
Roosevelt's debt-financed spending packages were historically unique since balanced state budgets were the norm..Roosevelt's New Deal led to an increase of nine to thirteen percent in the real GDP between 1934 and 1938. Charlie Rose's interview with Ms Romer is life-giving.
Harvard Law School Professor Employee Free Choice Compromise Don't Work! (tags)
Professor Benjamin Sachs Harvard Law School on the Employee Free Choice Act: To address the labor-business impasse, I suggest two alternatives to card check and for changing the Employee Free Choice Act.
Disarm the Markets! New Attac Basis Text (tags)
The therapy depends on the diagnosis. Mechanisms, instruments and actors can be identified whose action and teamwork led to the crash. The age of a unipolar world was very short. An historical chance is opening against finance capitalism.
Obama's Mistake in Reasoning (tags)
The accumulation of capital in fewer and fewer hands first made possible the worldwide economic crisis. For Obama's economic policy to be successful, he must reverse the assets disparity and force the 10% with two-thirds of the assets to solidarity through higher taxes.
Systemic Failure: Capitalism "Lays an Egg" (tags)
deepening economic crisis
Instead of borrowing trillions and sticking future generations of taxpayers with the cost of bailing out a corrupt and ineffective financial system, the federal government should use the bailout money and charter a bank of its own,one that could offer loans directly to individuals and businesses and thereby stimulate the economy by providing capital to people who can't get it now from the private banks.
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.
The Blood of the Black Sheep (tags)
Crisis and Catharsis. Capitalism begins its great self-purging to remain what it is. The Wall Street boys and girls have not forgotten how to make money amid crisis. The speculation bubbles burst. The fictional wealth dissolves in thin air thanks to falling home prices and stock prices.
Obamanomics: Why the Stimulus Plan Will Not Revive the Economy (tags)
This article was published in: The Independent, Dec 12, 2008.
From Real Estate Speculation to Collapse of Global Deficit Economy (tags)
Joy to the world, the world of fallen idols and bubble transfer. The truth will set us free but the truth is a process, not a cudgel or stimulus. After the dot-com bubble, trillions were "invested" in real estate speculation. The crisis of the work society is the background for low interests.
The State Invests and Memorandum 2008 (tags)
When the state invests, it ensures that the economy will grow faster tomorrow than today: new streets, better schools and new eco-techniques. In a few years we will all earn more. Even German bank president Axel Weber urges a state economic program.
Excess Debt and Deflation = Depression (tags)
the worsening economy
The capitalist system does not make a mistake; it is the mistake. Capitalism is the problem. The solution would be an independent-socialist social order whose highest principles are mutual aid, respect for nature and a nonviolent rule-free humanly just world.
After the Bankruptcy (Jurgen Habermas) (tags)
The privatization mania has ended. Politics is necessary for the public interest, not the market. A tension always exists between capitalism and democracy because the market and politics are based on opposite principles.
We Are Already In The Future! (tags)
At election’s denouement, to the Right the outraged, self loathing of the loser & the losers, including one dude standing mutely in Michigan, a Republican delegate, in a Klan suit, describing Obama as an “Islamic communist”. To the Left, the self important drears who had urged us to throw our votes away, as they objectively, in the name of their “principles”, gave votes to John McCain.
The New Deal - in the US and Germany (tags)
A radical rethinking, a New Deal, is on the agenda. The worldwide depression can only be countered with stronger economic regulation, increased public spending and fiscal measures. This means an end to privatizations and rebuilding the essential infrastructure.
Obama and the Crisis of Expectation (tags)
With Obama elected President but not yet inaugurated, the question on everyone’s mind is, “what’s going to happen next?” Millions of people around the world are hoping that a Obama presidency will radically change the course of US politics, and with it, world politics. This is especially true for the huge numbers of mostly young volunteers working for Obama’s campaign, most of whom had never been involved in politics before. And while it is impossible to predict the future precisely, one can make an educated guess as to Obama’s future actions, based on answering two fundamental questions: which social class is Obama and the Democratic Party going to represent while in office, and what are the current interests of that class. For example, if Obama were to act in the interests of the working class, a number of measures would be immediately taken, such as increasing wages, improving healthcare, funding schools, ending war, etc. If, on the other hand, Obama is going to represent the ruling class, we can expect policies similar to the Bush Presidency, who long ago proved himself to be a puppet for the banks and corporations.
A reality check.
The deepening economic crisis.
Fannie Mae Lie:SEC Chris Cox,Agora Inc.,James Dale Davidson, Lord Rees Mogg,LOM Bermuda (tags)
Now why does Chris Cox and his SEC (U.S.Securities Exchange Commission)allow Scott Lines and his LOM(Lines Overseas Management) of Bermuda Bahamas Isle of Man,etc.whose massive U.S. penny stock frauds and manipulations in collusion with disgraced Florida Democrat Rep.Tim Mahoney's vFinance and Charles Schwab has been covered up by the SEC itself to buy and sell Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac,etc. shares ? And how can anyone know just how many they really buy and sell or short,(dump),over time ? Could these types of offshore hedge fund and securities fraudsters be what caused the collapse of Fannie Mae shares and NOT the lie Chrisopher Cox about 'naked shorting' Cox has sold to the public ?
More from the Front Lines of the Financial Crisis (tags)
The worst is yet to come.
Studs Terkel: The Passing of An Icon (tags)
He's irreplaceable.
E-Book of Tarpley's "Obama: Postmodern Coup The Making of a Manchurian Candidate (tags)
This book exposes Obama, but it does so from a standpoint that is fundamentally different from almost all other critical studies seen so far. The basic thesis shared by the authors of this book is that Obama is a right-winger, an elitist, a creature of Wall Street, and a deeply troubled personality, running far to the right of his main opponent, Sen. Clinton, on all major issues, including the two critical areas of economics and foreign policy.
The wages of sin have come due.
2008 Pre-Election Message from Stewart A. Alexander (tags)
Every 75 years the capitalists ruling class devise an economic crisis which is always followed by a conflict between nations or a major war. We must end this cycle and support socialism and socialist candidates.
Pese a sus crisis, el capitalismo no se derrumbará ... (tags)
La crisis financiera que, en realidad, había comenzado a mediados de 2007 con las primeras quiebras de los fondos especializados en las famosas subprimes, no ha cesado de aumentar hasta llegar a tomar en este verano su forma más aguda.
Pre-Election Message from Stewart A. Alexander (tags)
Every 75 years the capitalists ruling class devise an economic crisis which is always followed by a conflict between nations or a major war. We must end this cycle and support socialism and socialist candidates.
The Philosophies of Deregulation and Neoliberalism are Dead in the West (tags)
"The patient suffers massive internal bleeding and is given a blood transfusion. The banks lent money and accepted inflated assets as security. This bubble burst..Those who pocketed profits for years want to pin the losses on the taxpayers."
The Fleecing of America (tags)
Public and private looting.
The U.S. Economy on FIRE (tags)
The current U.S. economic crisis didn't start a few years ago when banks and financial institutions started selling "subprime" real estate loans to high-risk borrowers and then repackaging them as "mortgage-backed securities." It began in the early 1970's as a result of a long-term plan by America's major corporations and business leaders to drive down workers' wages and extract more surplus value — and the workers' response, which was to take on more debt. Any real solution that benefits working people cannot be instituted until the power of the corporate rich over the political system is broken.
An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi (tags)
Why I am glad that the bailout failed - for now, at least.
Pacifica Los Angeles KPFK Listeners Ask:Will Censorship of Socialist Perspectives Continue (tags)
With candidates of socialist perspective taking the lead on issues in the 2008 election, listeners of self-proclaimed Pacifica "Revolutionary Radio" KPFK wonder if the station will continue to censor their candidates and positions and ignore their core point that, as a matter of empirical fact, liberal reform has failed and shows no prospect for success with an Obama election.
The Corporate State and the Welfare State (tags)
The idea of a "minimal state" may be passe. The author's two theses are: Liberalism is inconceivable without a strong state and liberalism undermines its own conditions of success. The modern welfare state is a child of democracy and can't be drowned in the bathtub.
William Greider Raps Predatory Usury Schemes (tags)
How did the country get into this unholy financial mess? Think usury! Acclaimed author William Greider points the finger at banks, and people of great wealth, “taking advantage of poor people by lending them money on terms that are sure to fail.” He blames others, too, like “The Fed,” under the reign of Alan Greenspan, the U.S. Congress, and Wall Street. Mr. Greider charges that these parties worked to “castrate” the watchdogs.
Alexander Dismisses Economic Plans of Obama and McCain (tags)
There is no easy fix for the ailing U.S. economy, and Barack Obama and John McCain are not prepared to make the necessary changes that will protect the interests of working people. Comparing the economic plans of the two candidates, it does not matter whether McCain or Obama is elected in the 2008 Election; the economic programs that have been outlined by both candidates will only produce minor differences to the present Bush White House.
Robert McChesney's The Political Economy of Media - Part II (tags)
Part II of McChesney's tour de force
Jaque con Obispo al anti-imperialismo bolivariano (tags)
Lo más probable es que Chávez ratifique su visión de que el anti-imperialismo bolivariano tiene sus días contados luego de entrevistarse con nuestro pescador de hombres al servicio de Washington, proveniente de una idílica burguesa república prolífica en fantoches a troche y moche.
While Suppresing Voices from UCLA ISSE Students, Jim Lafferty States Their Message Well (tags)
Suppressing Voices from UCLA International Students for Social Equality (ISSE) Students on the Station Listener Web Forum, KPFK General Manager Jim Lafferty Nonetheless Articulates Their Message Well.
Frances Fox Piven's "Challenging Authority" (tags)
Advancing disruptive social protests for change.
Sandbox Liberals Practice Damage Control: World Bank and IMF (tags)
The IMF and the World Bank are not self-critical. With their conditions on developing countries, these two institutions crafted the economic structures that led to today's disaster. The world economy functions according to the rules of power and profit logic.
Green Scare State Terrorism (tags)
Targeting environmental and animal rights activists.
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice (tags)
Police state America witch hunt persecutions
Regime Change: An American Addiction (tags)
I would like to blame the Neocons for America’s sordid record of “regime change” around the globe, but I can’t! For Iraq, yes! But, sadly, the U.S. has been in the dirty business of “regime change” for at least 110 years going back to the days that it unlawfully seized Hawaii. Author Stephen Kinzer’s book, “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change,” tells the story of how 14 countries, many in Central America, came under our hegemony.
The Downhill Plunge Speeds Up (tags)
The state has a social nature and cannot only be power and security state. In crisis, we are all Keynesians. Taboo for a long time, the New Deal program slowly sounds promising again. The 1933 "Home Owners Loan Act" was created in the first 100 days of Roosevelt's presidency.
The Legal Criminality of Finance Capitalism (tags)
The market mechanism, the Keynesians say, is not efficient or balanced. Charles Ponzi was one of the greatest swindlers of American history. Instead of the capitalist economy holding the strings of politics, politics could use economic power to create new realities.
Financial Meltdown A "Gigantic Fraud"! (tags)
Leading Economic Writer: Financial Meltdown A "Gigantic Fraud" - Says Americans "duped" by "serpent-tongued" elite!
Liberation News Voting Recommendations (tags)
Every four years the American people are subjected to the farce of bourgeois democracy, a “democracy” where only the candidates chosen by the very wealthy have any chance of being elected. That season of nicely dressed pathological liars and false hopes is now upon us. Since the corporate media of the United States has long ago abandoned any semblance of reporting on anything of substance about candidates such as voting records and actual political views, it is up to the journalists of the left press and Indy-media to do so.
Federal Tax Relief Package is Welfare for Billionaires (tags)
President Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal that began to release the nation from the grips of the Great Depression. America is now in the Bush Recession, and to implement effective economic solutions it will be necessary to take a page from the socialists' book. One-time checks are not the answer, and the federal stimulus package is already doomed to failure.
A Slippery Slope?
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade - A Profile in Courage, Honor and Hope (tags)
The story of anti-fascist freedom fighters.
Morgan Stanley Issues Full US Recession Alert (tags)
Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy, warning of a sharp slowdown in business investments and a perfect storm for consumers as the housing slump spreads. Under the conservative definition, man is the servant of money. Long live alternative economics!
Space 1999: San Francisco's Mission Yuppie Eradication Project (tags)
A critical re-examination of an ultra-left effort against the gentrification of San Francisco in the late 1990's.
Reforms and the System Question (tags)
According to Marxist perspectives, capitalism develops with crises and ruptures. Possibilities of revolutionary social upheavals open up in these crises. The old wisdom of the Fordist age that cars cannot buy cars has lost all value to the elites.
Is Dennis Kucinich an Alternative for U.S. Workers? (tags)
Millions of U.S. workers and youth have come to reject the inhuman conditions the crisis of capitalism is producing: the War on Iraq, the Katrina disaster, attacks on immigrants, stagnant wages, cuts in social services, the health care crisis, and on and on. On the basis of events, consciousness is changing, starting with the most advanced and active layer of the workers and youth, and is increasingly directed toward a break with the capitalist system and its representatives. It is in this context that Dennis Kucinich, a six time congressional incumbent from Ohio, who is now in his second run for U.S. president, has generated interest among those disaffected with the “business as usual” politicians. Kucinich presents himself as a “progressive alternative”, and to his credit he stands out favorably on many issues when compared to the rest of the mainstream candidates. He has been a vocal and consistent opponent of the War on Iraq from the very outset, calling for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops. He has said that if he wins the presidency, his “first acts in office will be to cancel NAFTA and the WTO”. He is also the only presidential candidate who openly opposes for-profit health care in favor of a national single-payer system.
The shameful awarding of the Peace Prize to a war criminal
Greenspan's Dark Legacy Unmasked (tags)
Alan Greenspan's true record of public disservice.
Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" and the policy of Disaster Capitalism (tags)
"Shock and Awe" is what the media and pentagon called the bombardment of Baghdad by U.S. forces at the start of the 2003 Persian Gulf War. We remember the horrible visuals well, just as we remember, in graphic detail, our own shock and awe event on September 11, 2001, when we were treated to the first in a series of psychological trauma for the new the "War on Terror" PR campaign. All of these horrible events were designed to turn us, and Iraqis, into pliable infants, willing to let our government do whatever they want in order to "protect us."
The War on Working Americans - Part II (tags)
Part II of how American workers are losing out.
America Before a New "New Deal" (tags)
The laissez-faire capitalism as practiced in the US turned out to be a flop. The New Deal and the welfare state built by Roosevelt and his direct successors was systematically slandered, delegitimated and then destroyed.
Reviewing Michael Parenti's "Democracy For the Few" - by Stephen Lendman (tags)
America's democracy serves only the privileged.
Green Candidate Brezenoff Criticizes New Energy Bill (tags)
"The energy bill now before the Senate, far from being any kind of solution to our economic and environmental crises, represents exactly the kind of thinking and legislating that has brought us to the point of crisis in the first place," says Brezenoff.
Presidential Candidate Wants to Supplement Social Security (tags)
The Social Security Administration was established in 1937 under the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it was an important part of Roosevelt’s New Deal to America; now 70 years since the system was introduced, Stewart Alexander, Candidate for President, wants to give more to an aging America.
Economist Milton Friedman dies at 94 (tags)
Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died Thursday at age 94.
THE SHAME OF THE NATION: A COLLECTIVE PERVERSION (tags)
THE COLLECTIVE PERVERSION OF THOSE IN HIGH PLACES IN THE US
THOM HARTMANN'S NEW BOOK - SCREWED: THE UNDECLARED WAR AGAINST THE MIDDLE CLASS (tags)
HOW DEMOCRACY AND THE MIDDLE CLASS ARE BEING DESTROYED
Politics of Oil and Money (tags)
How the Bush Empire controls America and its elections
Dissecting the war on terror (tags)
After five years of post 9/11 government, U.S. foreign and domestic policy continues to be dominated by the all-encompassing ‘war on terror’. Events have since exposed this so-called war for what it is: a gross propaganda campaign used to suppress civil liberties and launch global war.
Pro-War Diane Feinstein, What Are The Alternatives? (tags)
Feinstein herself has directly profiteered from the U.S. imposed misery she voted for in Iraq. Her husband, Richard Blum, is a billionaire investor that together with CEO Ronald Tutor own investment companies that hold 75% of the voting stock in a company called Perini. On March 12, 2004 Perini was awarded a $500,000,000 contract for rebuilding the electrical infrastructure of southern Iraq. So Feinstein is profiting from the U.S. bombing of the Iraqi infrastructure as well as its inefficient rebuilding by private U.S. contractors.
Pro-War Diane Feinstein, What Are The Alternatives? (tags)
Feinstein herself has directly profiteered from the U.S. imposed misery she voted for in Iraq. Her husband, Richard Blum, is a billionaire investor that together with CEO Ronald Tutor own investment companies that hold 75% of the voting stock in a company called Perini. On March 12, 2004 Perini was awarded a $500,000,000 contract for rebuilding the electrical infrastructure of southern Iraq. So Feinstein is profiting from the U.S. bombing of the Iraqi infrastructure as well as its inefficient rebuilding by private U.S. contractors.
COMMENTS ON HELEN CALDICOTT'S NEW BOOK NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER (tags)
A POWERFUL INDICTMENT OF COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR POWER AND WHY ITS USE MUST END.
Impeachment as a System Remedy (tags)
The thief came to steal, kill and destroy, the Son came that we might have life in abundance.. If faith can move mountains, it can move an accidental president to retirement and save the planet.
The Second American Revolution : Capitalism, Proverbs and Parables (tags)
I will speak to them in parables (sound bites). I will reveal to them mysteries and the secret things which have been kept hidden from them for long ages past. A revolution is a propaganda war and it the decisive battles are not fought with guns.
Major candidates in Mexican election offer no solution to the social crisis (tags)
On Sunday, July 2, Mexican voters will elect a new president and a new Congress. The election takes place under conditions of mounting class tensions, as hundreds of thousands of teachers, miners and other workers have taken to the streets. None of the major candidates in the presidential election genuinely addresses the needs of the masses for decent-paying jobs, improved living standards and social programs.
Comments on Greg Palast's New Book Armed Madhouse (tags)
PALAST EXPOSES US ELECTION FRAUD, CRIMES AGAINST IRAQ AND LOTS MORE
Green Party endorses three candidates (tags)
Green Party of Los Angeles County makes endorsements
Those Who Can't be Fooled (tags)
At the Corretta Scott King funeral African-Americans spoke out against Bush's policies right to his face. They are the only group of Americans who never shy away from speaking the abosolute truth.
Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, Dies (tags)
ormer Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.
Returning Money to the People (tags)
Please share this with those you know who are tired of being a financial slave because they have been duped into accepting a fraud!
Why Ted Koppel Shouldn’t be Compared to Murrow (tags)
For 25 years, the boring Ted Koppel was the anchor on ABC TV’s “Nightline” program. He toed the Establishment line! Now, David Zurawik, a media critic for the Baltimore Sun, wants us to believe that Koppel is leaving behind “a legacy of innovation and integrity.” This is pure nonsense! Koppel, among other faults, failed to challenge the serial lies of the Bush-Cheney Gang, and the Neocons, too, that led us into the Iraqi War. That is his real legacy!
Battered by Katrina, Gulf Coast workers stand up (tags)
NEW ORLEANS — Gail Andrews, a quiet, unassuming African American woman from New Orleans East, found her mother two weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Six weeks later, she lost her again. This time forever. At age 68, Andrews’ mother died.
An honest appreciation, not uncritical, of the late Ed Roybal and his major contributions to coalition building and grass-roots politics.
"The Market Has No Heart": Paul Samuelson (tags)
A post-Katrina economics must emphasize parallel worlds, solidarity and human dignity to safeguard long-term necessities and creativity. If all countries only become more competitive, mass unemployment will result. What is public must remain public.
"The People are Boiling with Rage" (tags)
Hurricane Katrina had blown the problems in GW Bush's face that he wanted to be rid of with churches and caritas. The chaotic emergency relief was also a consequence of a policy of state dismantling and deregulation
Free Market Idiocy and Easy Money in the Big Easy (tags)
The federal government is paying $200 billion to bring in outside companies to rebuild New Orleans, while hundreds of thousands of the city’s evacuees languish in shelters across the country, jobless and penniless. What’s wrong with this picture?
9/5 Hurricane Katrina Alert: Calls For Progressive Emergency Supports! (tags)
ActionLA Coalition and several other progressive organizations, will launch a national call for a donation drive to supports New Orleans areas progressive agencies for the humanitarian-aid efforts. Detail will coming soon and please donate generosity!
A Revolutionary ‘Sound bite' (BKH) (tags)
Bring revolutionary clarity which is required to overcome and destroy counter revolutionary mass confusion, the product of the propaganda attacks and deceits of this current ruling system.
The Web: The growing threat of spyware (tags)
Yet another bale out for failed capitalism - fed try to shore up online banks.
THE DEATH OF PENSIONS? by Mumia Abu-Jamal (tags)
Everybody wins -- except the workers.
The G8 and Africa's unreported famine conditions (tags)
To close off the final day of the G8 summit, a special report I was saving for the end, and perhaps take my cue from the media to spread some wild rumours and maybe scare some people. Behind the scenes at Live 8 and the G8.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH IS NOW IMPEACHABLE (tags)
This is from the Portland IMC: author: Joseph Hillier The evidence of brutality, torture, murder, corruption, conspiracy, and complete contempt for all standards of human decency that is certain to come out during the impeachment of Bush and his high administrative officials will forever discredit the evil neo-con, capitalist, corporate, militarist ideology.
Onward, Christian theocrats: the Yankee Taliban on the attack (tags)
“Our goal is a Christian nation,” says Terry Randal. “We are called by God to conquer this country.”
New President of Iran 'is a terrorist' (tags)
And we all know what that means...
Speculations on Future US Policy (tags)
Without any concessions, Condoleezza Rice suggested that gulfs could be bridged and cooperation with Europe promoted. Her sneer made it seem: cooperation on our conditions. Many factors will stop the "arrogance of power" (Sen Fulbright).
The Myth of the Fiscal Crisis (tags)
The first step that must be taken if we are to reverse the cuts and prevent the destruction of the New Deal’s gains is to understand in our own minds that there is no fiscal crisis.
Bush ‘means test’ would wreck Social Security (tags)
WASHINGTON — Defenders of Social Security charged this week that a “means test” on Social Security as proposed by President George W. Bush would inflict huge benefit cuts for 70 percent of recipients, clearing the way to destroy the system vital to Americans’ economic security.
Bush Has Grasped the Third Rail; It's Time to Turn on the Juice (tags)
Now that Bush has admitted his plan is to cut Social Security for the middle class, it’s time for progressives to take him down. No compromises, no cutbacks, and a call for the rich to pay Social Security taxes on all income, not just the first $90,000. ---------------------
Vietnam and Cuba - Thirty Years After Liberation (tags)
Thirty years ago today Vietnam fell...into the hands of the Vietnamese. Actually, it was taken by the Vietnamese after decades of struggle. Cuba was there to support Vietnam all the way. A discussion of Vietnam and Cuba's links to it.
Bush seems to have learned the same thing as former president Reagan from the histori-cal experience of the 1930s.. What helps are tax cuts and cuts in social spending.
Weapons of Mass Distortion: The President's New Campaign of Lies About Social Security (tags)
Like a man shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater, like a charlatan trying to create a run on a bank, the president is trying to create a panicky run from Social Security among younger people with this new WMD-like campaign of lies.
Gay Bashing: Its the Collaborators, Stupid (tags)
The necons, directed by Karl Rove and the Bush Faith-based Initive federal money, is wooing black preachers willing to be puppets in their homophobic campaign against 'gay marriage'
Hang on to Your Waqllet! Don't Let Them Touch Social Security! (tags)
The administration and congress are pushing a huge scam, claiming Social Security is in trouble and needs to be destroyed in order to save it. Don’t believe a word of it. After all, when’s the last time you can remember a Republican doing anything nice for a poor person voluntarily?
Bush's Hidden Majority
CNP? Religious Right and Bush (tags)
Who Is The Council For National Policy And What Are They Up To? And Why Don’t They Want You To Know?
CNP - The Greastest Danger Behind The Bush Agenda (tags)
Who Is The Council For National Policy And What Are They Up To? And Why Don’t They Want You To Know?
County Fed gears up for offensive (tags)
L.A. labor council holds historic congress building labor community unity for progressive issues. .
Gag and Bear It: Why We Lefties Have to Vote for Kerry (tags)
It’s time to face some hard realities—Nader is not going to bring us a third party, but too many votes and he could bring us Bush and the Republicans, and these days, that could mean we’re on the road to a real one-party state, not just a state with two parties that seem pretty indistinguishable.
Cuts to Social Security (tags)
Greenspan warns cuts to Social Security may be “abrupt and painful”
Why Latinos are anti Bush. Its the issues.
The People's Media Reaches More People Than FOX Does (tags)
While Big Media is "simply in the business of selling products, the people's media reaches more people than FOX does.
On July 5 through July 31, LaborFest celebrates the SF general strike with movies, theater, art, poetry and forum. This is the 70th Anniversary of the strike and the struggles of working people continue.
Acting on principle: John Randolph’s life and legacy (tags)
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – John Randolph, a great light of stage and screen, was laid to rest here Feb. 24 at age 88. Actor and activist, Randolph shined his light through the anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthyite 1950s.
News Article from August 1st, 1944 (tags)
Abolish the welfare state (tags)
In their own ways, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, provided the institutional frameworks for middle-class growth. Now, radical ideas are necessary to prevent a return to feudalism.
How Will Bush Deal With the Deficits? Connecting the Dots to Iraq (tags)
Bush administration's perpetual war and attendant defecit spending responsible for illusory economic prolificacy.
CHILLING DEJA VU: The Original, Eerily Premonitive Bush:Hitler Comparison from July 2001 (tags)
When this essay comparing Hitler's rise to power with Bush, and the tactics of the present GOP with the 1930s Nazis and Stalin's communist regime was first published in July, 2001, I was the recipient of a flood of hate mail and even a couple of death threats from militant rightwingers. But the comparison hit home: the article has been been circulating all over the world, reprinted in at least five languages. Unlike the lame, even bizarre comparisons rightwingers try to make between Clinton, Dean, et al. and Hitler, the similarity between Bush's regime and the rise of the Nazis is REAL and has evoked a shock of recognition in readers - or, as the title says, a "Chilling Déja Vu."
Western Culture, Opera, and Cultural Marxism (tags)
Opera allowed me to relax, sit back, and soak in my culture -- until last summer. That's when I realized operas were stocked with old fashioned Marxist critiques of capitalism and snide attacks on Western civilization -- and rotten to the core.
Betrayed by Bush, GOP's anger is moot (tags)
Small-government Republicans have been stirred up by conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. But when the election comes, the libertarian faction's anger will be "almost irrelevant... Are they going to vote for Howard Dean?"
Did Reagan win the cold war? A myth exploded. (tags)
Before I disprove this myth, I want to point out the childishness, crassness, and just plain ignorance of the propagandists who make this claim. Such a massive global struggle, and one guy who stumbled in after 90% of it was over decides to claim all the credit?
The Democrats don’t deserve our support (tags)
There is no reason to assume, as many do, that a Gore presidency would have avoided war after September 11. Clinton oversaw UN-sponsored sanctions against Iraq that led to the deaths of more than 1 million Iraqis, and U.S. warplanes dropped bombs on Iraq almost daily during his time in office. And Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, calling for the U.S. "to seek to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein." Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admits in a recent Foreign Affairs article, "I personally felt [Bush’s new Iraq] war was justified on the basis of Saddam’s decade-long refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions on weapons of mass destruction."
How the poor can win elections (tags)
It's been done before, and it's happening now.
Smoking Out Big Tobacco (tags)
By means of their settlement with the States, the tobacco people have achieved something else that is absolutely invaluable to them -- complacent Americans think that the tobacco problem is solved.
Long Queues At US Drive-In Soup Kitchens (tags)
George Bush's America while American's lose their jobs, their homes, and their dignity. OK you neocon appologists...lets hear from YOU.
The silence in America concerning Jews is simply deafening (tags)
"The silence in America concerning Jews is simply deafening, isn't it?
Dean! No, Kucinich! No, Clark! (tags)
I feel compelled to interrupt this endless stream of electoral politics and inject a few words of reality into the debate.
The Sage of Imperialism: Harry Magdoff (tags)
This conference report was published in: Monthly Review Newsletter, Summer 2003. "Neoconservative hawks should be seen as frustrated outsiders involved in a desperate gamble to shore up declining US power by throwing legitimacy to the winds."
Affirmative Action for Whites? (tags)
Do our white American brothers and sisters really want to end Affirmative Action (for them)? As this author reassesses his life in comparison to an African-American colleague, one might gleam that while reaping the benefits of racism has entered its most insidious stage whites must ask themselves "Might I actually be racist?"
Another 'Tour de Force' Article from Ann Coulter (tags)
California: The Democrat's Laboratory. The host organism dies.
Impeachment Is Not Enough (tags)
By now its clear to everyone, that Bush lied to congress about weapons of mass destruction. He lied to the American people. He had aides lie to the Untied Nations. He lied about the connection between Iraq and bin Laden. He lied about Nigeria. He lied about chemical and biological weapons. He lied about the underlying reasons to wage war. He lied blaming others for his lies. He lied about his staff; they are all a bunch of convicted felons and retreads from his daddy’s administration. He lied and good men died because he lied.
Global Power Elites and the New Wars (tags)
"A representative republic was transformed into a plutocracy. Privatizing public property was a continuous tendency during the whole modern age." The average net worth of the 400 richest Americans rose tenfold by 1999..The Bush administration has martial plans, not a Marshall plan." From the German
The New Domestic Order: What Has Changed, Why It Changed, and How It Matters (tags)
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The 9-11 Hoax, the Federal Reserve and the World Bank (tags)
Scientific calculation shows that the amount of time and energy invested by nature to produce one gallon of petroleum converted into kilowatt-hours at the present commercial rates at which electricity is sold amounts to approximately $1 million per gallon....
Democratic Party History: a Revealing Rap Sheet (tags)
A history of the Democratic Party's role in co-opting and diverting independent political movements, while advancing the agenda of the global capitalist police state. This and similar pieces can be found at
What's Happening? Boron Interviews Chomsky (tags)
So one day, Bush and Powell would claim that "the single question," as they put it, is whether Iraq would disarm and the next day they would say it doesn´t matter whether Iraq disarms because they will go on and invade anyway. And the next day would be that if Saddam and his group get out then the problem will be solved; ... When people give you contradictory reasons every time they speak, all they are saying is: "don't believe a word I say" . So we can dismiss the official reasons.
Only SLAVES and CORPORATIONS need to use capitalization of their names. Better check your ID to make sure they haven't used capital letters, otherwise your a slave without any rights... yes thats right!! check Roman Law
Duped and Betrayed: "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape." (tags)
Will "moderates" - the people formerly known as "conservatives" - ever learn? Today's "conservatives" - the people formerly known as the "radical right" - don't think of a deal as a deal; they think of it as an opportunity to pull yet another bait and switch.
A PNAC Primer: How We Got Into This Mess (tags)
In the early-1990s, there was a group of ideologues and power-politicians on the fringe of the Republican Party's far-right. The members of this group in 1997 would found The Project for the New American Century (PNAC); their aim was to prepare for the day when the Republicans regained control of the White House -- and, it was hoped, the other two branches of government as well -- so that their vision of how the U.S. should move in the world would be in place and ready to go, straight off-the-shelf into official policy.
Neo-liberalism (by Latuff) (tags)
Copyright-free artwork by Brazilian cartoonist Latuff.
CONSERVATISM AS EXORCISM (tags)
Conservatives have lost their mind. Not their minds, but their mind. What the late Russell Kirk called “the conservative mind” seems to have disappeared from our political landscape.
The Curious Case Of 'Neoconservative' (tags)
"How can something exist and not exist both at the same time? The answer: by being neoconservative." How can one be a Trotskyite and claim to be a Conservative at the same time. Why by being a NeoCon.
Carving Up the Homeland Security Pie (tags)
Only to the most naive did the Department of Homeland Security sound promising. To seasoned observers of government, the idea of a new $40 billion DC bureaucracy means only one thing: billions for those who somehow manage to get their hands on the cash.
Ah, shucks! Now the ADL-Mossad will threaten to burn down my apartment again. Well, I'm getting used to death threats and financial harassment. It builds character....
The Most Dangerous President Ever (tags)
I miss Ronald Reagan.
Hey Teachers! Leave them kids alone! (tags)
Professors Protest as Students Debate
Abe Magil: A tribute to a working class, Marxist journalist (tags)
Marxist journalist and pamphleteer. Devoted family man and friend. Poet. Editor. Political leader. All of these describe Abe Magil, who died in January.
9/11 In Context: Plans and Counterplans (tags)
The Global Fascist Terror State has arrived, the fruit of decades of planning, propaganda and provocation. September 11 was its coming-out party, and for us, the last wake-up call.
20 Things learned after 9-11 (tags)
Twenty Things We've Learned Nearly A Year After 911
Saving and improving Social Security: The Communist Party’s solution (tags)
Marx’s observation that the task of a movement goes beyond mere interpretation of events was never more apt than when it comes to the struggle to defend – and improve – the Social Security system.