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By Eugene Jarecki
by Juan Cole and Nikki Keddie
$30.60
$23
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including another state legalizes gay marriage and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reveals how he’s trying to slim down.
Posted on May 7, 2013
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama got roughed up by the pundit class last week. The question is what lessons he draws from the going-over.
Posted on May 6, 2013
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Shutterstock photo of a man holding money.
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By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law —
The Financial Transaction Tax, or Robin Hood Tax, would generate more than $300 billion a year in revenue, thereby doing away with the need for the sequester currently forcing across-the-board budget cuts.
Posted on Apr 24, 2013
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Economist Michael Hudson attacks Obama’s proposed cuts. Also on the program: the fight to keep Monsanto from polluting Hawaii’s natural wonders, a college degree ain’t what it used to be, and a new movie documents the legal showdown over medical marijuana.
Posted on Apr 14, 2013
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Economist Michael Hudson attacks Obama’s proposed cuts. Also on the program: the fight to keep Monsanto from polluting Hawaii’s natural wonders, a college degree ain’t what it used to be, and a new movie documents the legal showdown over medical marijuana.
Posted on Apr 14, 2013
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The senator stood before a crowd of retirees, veterans and their supporters Thursday to point out that the president’s proposal for a “Chained CPI” adjustment to the calculation of retirement benefits would wreak destruction on the lives of elderly and disabled Americans.
Posted on Apr 13, 2013
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The new cost-of-living index proposed in Obama’s latest budget is really a means to push lower living standards on people who need Social Security, University of Missouri economist Michael Hudson says.
Posted on Apr 12, 2013
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AP/J. Scott Applewhite
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The president is following through on his intention to abandon the welfare of elderly and disabled Americans in a budget deal that would cut $130 billion from programs like Social Security over the next 10 years, and that could starve the system in the long run.
Posted on Apr 10, 2013
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This week, President Obama proposed to reduce the national deficit by adopting a new formula for adjusting for inflation in Social Security payments. Robert Reich points out that it would be “stingier than the current one.” Frankly, it would destroy Social Security over the next two decades as prices for goods and services rose and the program wasn’t allowed to keep up.
Posted on Apr 6, 2013
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AP/James A. Finley
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In case you haven’t yet heard of the so-called Monsanto Protection Act, it’s a horrific piece of legislation that is tantamount to a huge corporate giveaway to the agricultural biotech giant Monsanto.
Posted on Mar 28, 2013
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including Ted Cruz’s attempt to repeal Obamacare and why the debate on gay marriage may be over even before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a pair of cases on the issue this week.
Posted on Mar 24, 2013
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By David Sirota — The Republican budget endorses an economic war waged by the upper class against everyone else.
Posted on Mar 22, 2013
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including Sen. Rand Paul’s “news flash” for Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and Sen. Saxby Chambliss tells a reporter that “I’m not gay. So I’m not going to marry one.”
Posted on Mar 21, 2013
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By Robert Reich — If there was ever a time for the Democratic Party to champion working Americans and reverse these troubling trends, it is now — forging an alliance between the frustrated middle and the working poor.
Posted on Mar 21, 2013
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Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout —
Paul Ryan’s budget plan tells a story of savage violence that shows that those who occupy the bottom rungs of American society—whether they be low-income families, minorities of color or the young—are to be considered disposable.
Posted on Mar 16, 2013
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By Robert Reich — The biggest problems we face are unemployment, stagnant wages, slow growth and widening inequality—not deficits. The major goal must be to get jobs and wages back, not balance the budget.
Posted on Mar 14, 2013
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Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)
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By Joe Conason — Someone needs to tell Paul Ryan that his party—and the economic platform of austerity and plutocracy he crafted for it—lost a national election last year.
Posted on Mar 13, 2013
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By Robert Reich — The Republican Party makeover is breathtaking. Now, suddenly, instead of accusing Democrats of being “redistributionists,” the GOP is posing as defender of the middle class against corporate America—and it’s doing so by proposing to do away with the most progressive piece of legislation in well over a decade.
Posted on Mar 12, 2013
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Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Rep. Paul Ryan has figured out a way to balance the budget: Give corporations and wealthy people tax breaks they don’t need while aggressively cutting health and social programs that middle and lower-income Americans do.
Posted on Mar 12, 2013
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Flickr/Tony Alter
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By Robert Reich — Republicans lost the election but they still shape what’s debated in Washington—the federal budget deficit and so-called fiscal responsibility.
Posted on Mar 11, 2013
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Flickr/DonkeyHotey
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Just when our politics seemed destined to freeze into a brain-dead brand of partisanship, party lines started cracking up.
Posted on Mar 11, 2013
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By Joe Conason — The difference between a natural disaster and a disaster caused by politicians is that the latter will almost always hit the poor and the obscure most heavily.
Posted on Mar 6, 2013
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — There are, believe it or not, grounds for hoping that the sequester, stupid as it is, might open the way to ending our nation’s budget stalemate.
Posted on Mar 6, 2013
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including the House votes to avoid a government shutdown and Gabrielle Giffords makes a plea for gun control at the place where she was shot two years ago.
Posted on Mar 6, 2013
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By Eugene Robinson — I hate the sequester, beginning with its name. “Sequester” is a verb, not a noun. This ridiculous exercise is not just unwise and unproductive, but ungrammatical as well.
Posted on Mar 4, 2013
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White House/Pete Souza
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Braced for automatic budget cuts that he described as “dumb” and painful, the president said Friday, “I’m not a dictator” and “if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say ‘I need to go to catch a plane,’ I can’t have Secret Service block the doorway, right?”
Posted on Mar 1, 2013
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Regardless of the fact that large numbers of Americans believe the best way to fix the budget crisis is to tax the wealthy and profitable corporations, Sen. Bernie Sanders says, $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts are taking effect Friday.
Posted on Mar 1, 2013
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By Joe Conason — Indebted America is in danger of turning into destitute Greece, or so congressional Republicans and conservative commentators have been warning us for years now. For many reasons, this is an absurd comparison—but it may not always be quite so ridiculous if Washington’s advocates of austerity get their way.
Posted on Feb 28, 2013
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Office of the Speaker of the House/Bryant Avondoglio
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Ever since they took control of the House of Representatives in 2011, Republicans have made journeys to the fiscal brink as commonplace as summertime visits to the beach or the ballpark.
Posted on Feb 28, 2013
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including California voters make an about-face on marijuana legalization and an Illinois lawmaker offers an interesting comparison on gun control.
Posted on Feb 27, 2013
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White House/Pete Souza
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On Friday, journalist and historian Jon Meacham said on HBO’s “Real Time” that President Obama should, like FDR and Ronald Reagan, ignore Congress and campaign directly to the American people. It appears that is what Obama intends to do.
Posted on Feb 19, 2013
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Flickr/401(K) 2013
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By Robert Reich — Part of the president’s State of the Union message and a portion of his second term agenda apparently will focus on public investments in education, infrastructure and basic R&D. That’s good news. But how do we fund these investments when discretionary spending is being cut to the bone in order to reduce the budget deficit?
Posted on Feb 12, 2013
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AP / Saul Loeb
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By Robert Reich — The President should make it clear that any Republican effort to hold the nation hostage to the GOP’s ideological fixation on the budget deficit and a smaller government will slow the economy, likely pushing us into another recession. And that those most imperiled are the middle class and the poor.
Posted on Feb 11, 2013
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Steve Sack, Cagle Cartoons, The Minneapolis Star Tribune —
Posted on Feb 10, 2013
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The New York Times columnist has consistently been a strong voice in the argument against making dramatic spending cuts in tough economic times. On Monday, Krugman was once again forced to defend his position during a discussion about the current financial crisis on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Posted on Jan 28, 2013
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Flickr/401(K) 2013
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By Robert Reich — It has become accepted economic wisdom, uttered with deadpan certainty by policy pundits and budget scolds on both sides of the aisle, that the only way to get control over America’s looming deficits is to “reform entitlements.”
Posted on Jan 7, 2013
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including the House vote on the fiscal cliff deal Tuesday night and President Obama marks the 150th anniversary of one of the most famous presidential proclamations. (UPDATED)
Posted on Jan 1, 2013
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TexasGOPVote.com
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By casting their ballots in favor of a deal that would avert the so-called fiscal cliff early Tuesday morning, senators overwhelmingly blocked a pay increase for themselves and members of the House that President Obama recently approved via an executive order.
Posted on Jan 1, 2013
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TexasGOPVote.com
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Looking for a job where being unproductive and ineffective won’t hurt your chances of getting a raise? Try being a member of Congress!
Posted on Dec 30, 2012
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The myth of NRA power, the fiscal “obstacle course” and your guide to surviving apocalypses real and imagined.
Posted on Dec 21, 2012
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The myth of NRA power, the fiscal “obstacle course” and your guide to surviving apocalypses real and imagined.
Posted on Dec 21, 2012
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dps (CC BY 2.0)
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By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt —
Taxpayers and governments that are pushed too far have been known to resort to radical policy measures, and there are some on the table that could fix the problem at its core.
Posted on Dec 20, 2012
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By Robert Reich — America’s children seem to be shortchanged on almost every issue we face as a society. Not only are we failing to protect them from deranged people wielding semiautomatic guns, but we’re also not protecting them from poverty.
Posted on Dec 18, 2012
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