What You Dig

Here are the five most-read stories of the last seven days, including Chris Hedges on America’s moral meltdown and Robert Scheer on the economic incompetents who find easy employment in the Obama administration.

Note: Two of these items were actually published earlier, but were so popular they still made it into the top five of the last seven days.

1. Chris Hedges on Education’s Role in Capitalist Abuses
“America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout” — The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. Our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.

2. Robert Scheer on Obama’s Lousy Economic Team
“Obama’s Toxic Advisers” — Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who is independent in spirit as well as party label, has placed a hold on President Obama’s nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Sounds like a minor issue to get worked up about, but I see this appointment as further evidence that the president has entrusted his economic policy to the wrong people.

3. Robert Scheer on the AIG Swindle
“Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses” — There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York’s top lawman is on the case. The collusion to save this toxic company in order to salvage the rogue financiers who conspired to enrich themselves by impoverishing millions is being revealed as the greatest financial scandal in U.S. history.

4. Scott Ritter on the Climate Crisis
“Obama’s Plan to Save the World” — Forget about terrorism for a moment. The potential catastrophe that climate change could unleash on America makes every other national security crisis pale in comparison. President Obama cannot secure the homeland without addressing this global emergency.

5. The Truthdig Book Review Edited by Steve Wasserman
“Jacob Heilbrunn on Alger Hiss” — Susan Jacoby’s lucid new book reminds us that the Hiss case offered a vengeful postwar right a golden opportunity to tar the New Deal as a crypto-communist conspiracy—and why it still matters.