November 22, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The spreading Occupy movement has seen one after another sit-in, protest camp or march brutally and inexcusably assaulted by paramilitary police actions, using chemical agents and other weapons of war, against unarmed, nonviolent citizens exercising their basic constitutional rights. The result has been a rash of unfettered violence across the world against pro-democracy advocates.
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October 2, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
The above video shows the altercations leading up to the unprovoked macing of two women by an NYPD detective inspector, identified by online activists as Anthony Bologna, a finding confirmed by the NYPD itself. The incident has raised serious questions about what the planned response to the protests was, and whether there were orders in place for officers to intervene to halt the peaceful demonstrations. In the video, there are numerous incidents where individual officers, apparently acting in a disorganized and spontaneous fashion, physically strike, tackle, drag or pepper-spray unarmed civilians on a public street.
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September 11, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
9/11 should, after this 10th anniversary, and in the aftermath of the deviation from and restoration of core values that we have undergone, become a national day of solemn recognition, collaborative restoration, and an affirmation of our civic space, in which citizenship is a sacred trust and human interest in the principal goal of our activity. It should be a day of national reflection and of the reaffirmation of the value of an open, democratic and voluntary civic space.
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August 18, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
As I go back and look over what was being written about the economy, and the federal budget, the lost Clinton surpluses, falling wages, and the property bubble, throughout George W. Bush’s second term in office, it is clear the signs were there throughout that a major financial collapse was coming. Many observers, some more astute than others, predicted a correction was in the offing, without having to depend on very complex analysis.
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August 13, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Today, three-term Texas governor Rick Perry announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, promising to foster innovation and enterprise. The speech offered no specifics, but Perry called for simplifying the tax code and promoting private business interests. In what may be the most striking and unusual phrasing of the speech, Perry promised, with passion: “I’ll work every day to make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your lives as I can.”
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August 13, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The debt crisis is attributable to “structural” causes, meaning the way the nation’s financing is structured over the next several decades, but also to political and economic causes, meaning the way we make policy and the way our marketplace for trade, credit and consumer purchases plays out. We need to implement policies that make serious, sustainable corrections on all three fronts.
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August 12, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
On Monday, the first day of trading after a credit downgrade of US Treasury bonds from Standard and Poors, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 624 points. On Tuesday, it gained 429 points. On Wednesday, it dropped by 509. And on Thursday, it gained 414. It is the first time in its history that the DJIA saw swings of 400 points or more for four consecutive days, swings that far out-strip some of the worst one-day declines in its history.
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August 8, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
With the objectivity and commitment to fact of S&P now seriously in question, and allegations now revived that it and other rating agencies were paid to give AAA ratings to junk securities derivatives, it is clear that we need a 100% not-for-profit (NFP) cooperative bond rating agency. The independent NFP agency could be one of several, staffed by top economists, stakeholders and public servants, and standing somewhere between the public and the private sectors.
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August 3, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Allegations that the so-called Tea Party caucus has degenerated into little more than a lobby for the wealthy interests that back them gain credibility when they support tax hikes on the vulnerable, and which will have a direct negative impact on the middle class. It should be well understood by all: the House Tea Party Republicans have pushed for and supported—the anti-student provisions in the failed Republican-only House bills were far worse—tax hikes that will make college more expensive and eat way at middle class wealth.
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August 1, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
The Republican House leadership today again reiterated the false claim that Democratic leaders and the president have been pushing for “job-killing tax increases”. It is obviously a deliberate rhetorical exaggeration, designed to make a case for tax cuts, in a mode of campaigning and fundraising. But it is also a lie: not one politician in either party has ever called for “job-killing tax increases”.
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July 31, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
The Tea Party movement was a grassroots rebellion of discontented, disenfranchised, fiscally conservative working people. It was wage earners and small-town conservatives who wanted reason and rationality in government. It ballooned into a pro-Republican juggernaut, financed by billionaire partisans, and managed to maneuver itself into a position of seemingly dictatorial control over the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
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July 30, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Speaker of the House John Boehner has insisted on enforcing a strategy whereby his party dictates all federal budget policy, no matter the law, no matter the makeup of Congress, no matter the risks to the future of the United States of America. Now, after a wasted week of partisan isolationism and refusal to negotiate, he has passed a radical one-sided plan that will hurt most Americans, while doing little to solve the debt crisis or stave off a credit downgrade.
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July 26, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
If the leadership of the House of Representatives does not craft a bill that can work as a bipartisan compromise that will pass both houses, and be signed into law, they will be knowingly imposing on the entire American economy a steep “tax”, in the form of rapidly escalating interest rates. Those interest rate increases [...]
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July 25, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
At least 80, possibly as many as 120 House Republicans have now vowed they will vote against raising the debt ceiling, no matter what the makeup of the compromise reached, no matter the consequences for the economy, for national security, or for America’s future. Speaker John Boehner is caught between a rock and a … well, the smart thing would be for him to work with Democrats, so he can pass something serious and save the country from an economic disaster of his own making.
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July 23, 2011 :: The Editors :: 16 Comments
Ron Paul gave Fox News’ Neil Cavuto the latest in a series of Republican presidential campaign advertisements, posing as interview, today as the nation waited to see Congressional leaders gather with Pres. Obama in the White House Cabinet Room. While Cavuto labored to spin the issue toward a Tea Party interpretation of reality, Mr. Paul made the astonishing claim that the least damaging outcome of the debt ceiling negotiations would be a national default.
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July 21, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
When comedians are keeping watch over the deliberate falsehoods dispensed by “mainstream media”, there is something rotten in the culture of our free press. Not because comedians shouldn’t do that work—all citizens should—but because the mainstream media should be committed, at every level, to truth-telling and citizenship. Fox News, in light of the bribery, spying and coercion, scandal engulfing its parent company, has definitively shown how far from that mission its news operation is.
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July 17, 2011 :: The Editors :: One Comment
The Wall Street Journal is an historic and storied publication, known for top-quality journalism and meticulous reporting of facts relevant to financial markets and economic activity more broadly. It is a mainstay of American print media, and has long been known for honoring the bright line that must be drawn between editorial viewpoints and news reporting. Since 2007, however, it is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and not all of that legacy remains certain to everyone.
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July 16, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
We will not fall magically into a rising tide of job creation, just by depriving ourselves of services and privileges we have built into our way of life and on which our prosperity depends. And we will not create jobs by privileging those industries that are doing the least to innovate. Innovation is the American way; it is what the nation has always struggled to accomplish, and it must be the cornerstone of a new job-creation boom.
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July 16, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Anyone who wants to drive the nation to default, in order to “hurt Obama” or promote some narrow ideological interest, hates this country. There is no other way to see it. People who lust after, and joke about, and court and urge and instigate, the failure of their nation, with the idea that doing so might elevate their faction in the resulting chaos, harbors a deep and pervasive resentment against the majority of the people who will suffer as a result.
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July 15, 2011 :: The Editors :: 2 Comments
The Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has made himself into a lightning rod for criticism from all quarters, in the debt ceiling negotiations at the White House, by obstructing substantive negotiations two days in a row. Cantor has now taken a hard line that no tax increases of any kind will be contemplated, [...]
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July 5, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: The Tea Party movement, which claims it is driven by a resistance to taxation, is really motivated by a widespread sense of economic disenfranchisement, that is now reaching everyone except the superrich. The populist urgency that underscores all of the Tea Party’s energy is not inherently linked to Grover Norquist’s anti-American “Club for [...]
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June 28, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The view taken by some in Washington that major reductions in the United States’ national debt can be achieved without addressing revenues is essentially a pledge to do nothing serious about the debt or deficit. The reason: the ideology of supply-side tax-cut-only social policy not only requires, but admires “deficit spending”.
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June 16, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Spain’s May 15th movement is often called the revolution of the indignados, indignant at the failure of elective government to solve the problems that increasingly define the lives of ordinary people. The complaint, succinctly, is that the powers that be are collaborating in a systemic failure to live up to the rigors of a healthy, legitimate social contract.
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May 20, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama upset many in Israel yesterday, when he called for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the idea, saying it would not allow Israel to effectively defend itself, and conservative opponents of Obama are now actively trying to vilify him as having abandoned Israel. This [...]
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May 5, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There is a simple response to the GOP hardliners who say bin Laden’s demise justifies waterboarding and other torture techniques used under the Bush administration, and that is: if it had worked, it would not have taken 10 years to locate bin Laden. What “led” the US intelligence community, and SEAL Team Six to bin Laden’s fortified compound was long-running, diligent intelligence work of the kind that is hampered and obstructed by irrational fits of violence, torture and vengeful behavior.
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May 3, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Now is the time for Republicans to lay down their arms and help Pres. Obama build a better, safer, more cooperative American future. In just a few short days, they have lost the birther issue, the budget issue, and, more importantly, the national security issue. They have no candidates with any military or command experience, and Barack Obama has just accomplished what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, with all they did to alter US and world politics to empower their administration, could not do in seven: he killed Osama bin Laden.
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April 3, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The United States Supreme Court is preparing to hear oral arguments in a landmark campaign finance case, in which a wealthy candidate who chose not to use public matching funds alleges those funds amounted to an illegal enhancement of his opponent’s speech. That assisted speech, the argument goes, was an unconstitutional government intrusion into the [...]
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April 3, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Grover Norquist infamously said he wanted to shrink the size of government till it could be drowned in a bathtub. That is, remember, the American government, the revolutionary democratic republic set up by George Washinton, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and company. Not an enemy government, but the government that protects and serves the interests of [...]
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March 27, 2011 :: The Editors :: 2 Comments
Today, Juan Cole published an open letter to the political left, asking them to understand the humanitarian urgency of the situation in Libya, and to balance their desire for an end to war and foreign interventions against the need to protect human life and ensure that a viable democracy movement is not put down through massive slaughter of thousands or tens of thousands of civilians. Cole is right. Though military action is never the best of all possible outcomes, it is sometimes the only way to protect innocent human life against plans of deliberate mass murder.
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March 22, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
In a stunning insult to the American people and to the world community, the national Republican party has adopted a new propaganda attack against Pres. Obama: they now argue Pres. Obama is too talented at doing too many things and that the American people cannot comprehend such a complex job description. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, [...]
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March 15, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Nuclear power plants, like the one at Fukushima Daiichi, contain 1,000 times more radioactivity to leak than the Hiroshima bomb. Nuclear scientists estimate 1,000,000 people would be killed or injured in a major accident, were one to occur at the San Onofre plant in southern California. But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Monday compared the [...]
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March 12, 2011 :: The Editors :: 3 Comments
Republican governors have unabashedly joined in their party’s national campaign to undermine the economic recovery and marginalize their people in a concerted effort to harm Pres. Obama and derail his re-election bid. In Florida, the new Tea Partyist governor has refused to accept any federal funding for a high-speed rail project that would have stimulated economic growth and job creation in his state, despite Florida being granted $2.4 billion out of the $2.6 billion needed, and the previous governor having explicitly requested the funds.
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March 10, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Last night, the Republican party is Wisconsin decided to shirk the law, ignore a direct warning from the Assembly minority leader that their actions were a flagrant violation of the law, ignore established process and pass a fiscal proposal as if it were not a fiscal provision. The Senate majority leader, responsible for staging and carrying out this maneuver, said openly that the ban on collective bargaining was intended to make it more difficult for Pres. Obama to win re-election.
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March 10, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In Wisconsin last night, the Republican state Senate stripped public employees of nearly all collective bargaining rights in a hastily called vote, in a dubious parliamentary maneuver. They did not notify the public or the minority party of their actions with adequate time for debate, and in just 13 minutes, they erased 50 years of progress on labor rights in Wisconsin.
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March 3, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The United States of America is a nation of immigrants. It is a nation that has wrestled with vicious undercurrents of racism and xenophobia, and has emerged ever more democratic, generally trending toward a more perfect union representing the foundational ideals that were, in the 18th century, so far out of reach, but so necessary as core aspirations. And over time, it is a nation that has become richer, stronger and more democratic, by getting closer to those foundational ideals.
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March 3, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Mike Huckabee is a (retired?) Christian minister. He has long sought to present himself as moderate, reasonable and trustworthy. But he has now shown himself to be a flagrant liar, determined to manipulate his audience in order to provoke visceral, race-based reactions he can exploit. The evidence for this is his repeated telling of the outright lie that Pres. Obama “grew up” in Kenya. The president NEVER lived there.
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February 28, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Wisconsin’s Republican governor, whose attack on the rights of public servants has sparked the most persistent and widespread public protests seen in the state’s history. After two weeks of protests, the governor’s abject refusal to negotiate in any way with opponents to his bid to strip public workers of their rights has brought over 100,000 peaceful demonstrators to the state capitol complex this weekend. Gov. Walker is now seeking to bar any further protest in a desperate bid to impose his will on the people.
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February 26, 2011 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Tea Party movement is famous for its persistent expression of rage. It has been elevated by partisans who want to channel that rage to harm their opponents, and it has been misinterpreted by progressive politicians as a result of ignorance and poor anger management. Those superficial qualities are symptoms; the movement is an alarm bell that neither party seems equipped to respond to.
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February 20, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
What is democracy? That is the first question that is always asked by pro-regime elements, whether in 18th-century Britain or France or 21st-century Egypt or Bahrain, because their aim is to muddy the waters and oppose the spread of democratic freedom. Free and open access to factual information is the cornerstone right of all citizens of a free society. Journalists are the “Fourth Estate” —in the words attributed to Edmund Burke, by Thomas Carlyle—, the watchdogs of the people’s access to truth.
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February 20, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party has revealed the near total lack of economic foundation for its proposed fiscal policy. ‘Reaganomics’ was based not on tax cuts, but on “deficit spending”. The logic was that deficit spending is a “multiplier” that will so produce new sources of wealth in the investor class that they will be induced to spend billions creating new jobs, that entrepreneurship will result from the “investment” inherent in deficit spending, and government revenues would increase.
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February 18, 2011 :: The Editors :: 4 Comments
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is struggling to get control of the House of Representatives, now filled with a freshman class of rogue Republican lawmakers who are refusing to follow his leadership and splitting the party’s majority on one after another vote. Yesterday, conservatives in the Republican House caucus joined progressive Democrats in handing Boehner a loss and Pres. Obama a victory, in voting to cut funding for an unnecessary duplicate engine for the F-35 fighter jet.
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February 16, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Lara Logan —a courageous CBS News reporter who was abducted by the Mubarak regime, falsely accused of being an Israeli spy and held without charge, for reporting on the protest movement in Egypt— is now reportedly recovering from a sexual assault she suffered while covering the demonstrations. She reportedly was attacked by a “dangerous element” on the very day Hosni Mubarak left power.
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February 15, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Public broadcasting in the United States is not like state-run television in other countries, where the ruling party often influences the editorial stance and the quality of reporting. In the United States, there is an absolute wall of separation between politicians for elective office and the editorial process that shapes what is produced by public broadcasting.
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February 14, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Esperanza means hope, in Spanish. One year ago today, we posted Esperanza Spalding’s enrapturing performance of “Tell Him” at the 2009 White House poetry jam, and today we bring her back to the front page, to honor her for winning “best new artist” at the Grammys. But with all that’s taking place in the world, why write about Esperanza Spalding? Because her win is a sign there is hope we can be more thoughtful about how we make music and why.
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February 13, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
What took place in Egypt between Jan. 25 and Feb. 11, 2011, was a revolution, but it was non-violent and it joined together disparate ideological factions, rich and poor, old and young, Christian and Muslim. It gave the lie to the notion that moderation in politics cannot be a revolutionary force for transformative change.
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February 13, 2011 :: Eva Scherson :: No Comment Yet
Rick Santorum, onetime Republican senator from Pennsylvania, threw in his lot with Hosni Mubarak, criticizing Pres. Obama for siding “too soon” with the pro-democracy movement that was calling for the ouster of a brutal authoritarian dictator who ruled for three decades through a relentless campaign of abduction, torture and disappearances.
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February 12, 2011 :: Eva Scherson :: No Comment Yet
On a day of joy for the people of Egypt, Republican presidential hopeful, Gov. Tim Pawlenty shamed himself and his nation by criticizing Pres. Barack Obama for siding with Egypt’s pro-democracy movement, and suggested that from his point of view, the dictator Mubarak is “our friend”. He also said “with bullies, might makes right”, and suggested US foreign policy should degenerate into the adolescent dysfunction of the bullies.
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February 12, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There is a fallacy at the heart of the political discourse of late 20th and early 21st century America: that conservatives and liberals are diametrically opposed, unable to work together, and committed at their very core to one another’s destruction. Certainly, when ideology comes into the debate, there are hotly contested arguments to be had. But honest conservatives and honest liberals have a lot more in common than we normally admit.
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February 12, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Across the middle east region, hardline regimes with more or less favorable relations with Washington are reportedly expressing concern about how the United States “abandoned” Mubarak after a 30-year relationship. These complaints show three crucial facts about the situation they find themselves in: 1) they are not evolving psychologically to keep pace with events; 2) they do not understand what gives them legitimacy; 3) they need to institute credible democratic reforms immediately, if what they want is “certainty” about US support.
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February 8, 2011 :: Eva Scherson :: No Comment Yet
The new Republican plan to amend the Affordable Care Act to institute a form of “backdoor ban” on abortion procedures would give legal protection to doctors who let women die without needed treatment, and impose a severe tax on any business that seeks to provide full health coverage to its employees. The original language of the plan specified that only in cases of “forcible rape” would a woman be entitled to treatment where abortion might be the only way to save her life.
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