Harry Truman surprised Americans with his call for European-style government guaranteed health care for all, Johnson with the extent of the Great Society reforms, and even Nixon with the avalanche of regulatory legislation and social spending he approved, outperforming Johnson on a number of “Keynesian” fronts. Hillary Clinton will offer no such surprises. Her consistent record in the context of …
Robert Parry – The Coming Democratic Crackup
If the Democratic Party presses ahead and nominates hawkish Hillary Clinton for President, it could recreate the conditions that caused the party to splinter in the late 1960s and early 1970s when anti-war and pro-war Democrats turned on one another and opened a path for decades of Republican dominance of the White House. This new Democratic crackup could come as …
Why Poor White Males Are the Core of Trump’s Support
This is not hard to understand. Wages for working class white males peaked in 1968, forty-eight years ago. Coincidentally, I was born 1968. I am not young. For their entire working lives, conditions for working class males have been getting worse. “Free trade” has not worked for them. China joined the WTO in 2000. So, for damn near 48 years, poor whites …
ARUN GUPTA – What Became of Occupy Wall Street?
One of the more puzzling aspects about Occupy Wall Street is not that there was a moment when millions of people hoped or feared it might overthrow the rule of the banks, but that so little is said about it four years on. Its anniversaries come and go without comment: Occupy’s founding on September 17, 2011, the high-water mark of …
Chris Floyd – Dung Bettles: Pope Denounces Davos Dominionists
*This is an edited version of my latest Counterpunch Magazine column.* We are living in a world gone through the looking glass when the most strident, unequivocal — even scatological! — denunciations of capitalism and its discontents are coming from … the Bishop of Rome. While Bernie Sanders pushes centrist notions as “radical” reforms and Britain’s so-called Labour Party tries …
“The Holy Business” in America, End-Times Buffoonery in a Modern World, Bizarre Sects and Cults, Christian Zionism
The United States has long been the home of a wide assortment of bizarre and eccentric sects and cults, most being harmless, or at least lacking the ability to do any serious harm outside of their immediate proximity without large-scale followings nor serious political access. But there are always exceptions, and one of the more prominent and influential ones is …