The United Nations’ decision last week to authorize a no-fly zone and to bomb Libyan army positions in support of rebels battling the regime of Moammar Gadhafi marks the entanglement of the United States military forces in yet another Islamic country. Emotionally, I fully understand the sentiment to want to bomb and punish ruthless dictators, […]
carlin
Posted inNews
Myth-busting Social Security’s alleged dire state
For many years now, we’ve been hearing dire warnings about the long-term problems facing Social Security. And polls consistently show that, despite Americans’ strong support for the program, a majority of respondents fear that it will be unable to meet its obligations by the time they retire. For example, according to a CNN poll from […]
Posted inNews
Through Wisconsin’s fight over workers’ rights, a lens to view the nation
In Wisconsin this past week, Democratic legislators fled the state to deny the quorum necessary for newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker to push through laws that scale back public sector workers’ rights. These dramatic events have brought significant attention to the already festering issue of public sector workers’ pensions and the impact of those […]
Posted inNews
The wealth gap: An embarrassment of riches
Most Americans realize that the United States has become more unequal over the past three decades or so. But it’s unlikely that most Americans fully grasp the magnitude of the change in the distribution of wealth since the end of the 1970s, or how that change has negatively affected ordinary Americans. A lot of the […]
Posted inNews
The return of voodoo economics
With Congressional Republicans insisting that we have to attack the sickness of spending that, in Speaker John Boehner’s words, is afflicting Washington, it’s worth recalling some recent history. In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s budget director David Stockman admitted to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat from New York, that running up “strategic deficits” was a useful […]
Posted inElections
At the Iowa caucuses, populist candidates court the middle class
DES MOINESThere has been a lot of talk over the past couple of weeks about the degree to which populism and populist candidates have stolen the show here in Iowa. To be sure, three of the front-running candidatesDemocrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and Republican Mitt Romneycould hardly be called populists, though Clinton in particular […]
