This essay documents Hillary Clinton’s history and record as an agent of Wall Street, war, racial violence and inequity, economic inequality and conservative ideology. While Clinton’s early Republican Party history is well documented, it is unfair to judge her (or anyone) based on the political views of her youth. Like Clinton, all people are heavily influenced by the beliefs and …
Thomas Frank – The Life of the Parties
Although it’s difficult to remember those days eight years ago when Democrats seemed to represent something idealistic and hopeful and brave, let’s take a moment and try to recall the stand Barack Obama once took against lobbyists. Those were the days when the nation was learning that George W. Bush’s Washington was, essentially, just a big playground for those lobbyists …
Economic Update – Seeds of Fascism? – 03.06.16
Updates on injustice of Argentina’s default settlement, on Pope Francis’s rejection of “exploiters,” and on stagnating real median incomes in US. Major discussions of (1) what Sanders’s support proves about Occupy Wall Street, and (2) economics of fascism.
Tom Engelhardt – Failed States and States of Failure
One of the charms of the future is its powerful element of unpredictability, its ability to ambush us in lovely ways or bite us unexpectedly in the ass. Most of the futures I imagined as a boy have, for instance, come up deeply short, or else I would now be flying my individual jet pack through the spired cityscape of …
David Frum – The Great Republican Revolt
The angriest and most pessimistic people in America aren’t the hipster protesters who flitted in and out of Occupy Wall Street. They aren’t the hashtavists of #BlackLivesMatter. They aren’t the remnants of the American labor movement or the savvy young dreamers who confront politicians with their American accents and un-American legal status. The angriest and most pessimistic people in America are the …
Leid Stories – 11.30.15
Laquan McDonald Killing: Protest, Yes, But Political Punishment Is Needed
Prosecuting Egregious Police Crimes: When the Law Is Out of Order
The indictment last week of Chicago Policer Jason Van Dyke on first-degree-murder charges for shooting to death 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on Oct. 20 last year has ignited a renewed groundswell of grassroots protest against police brutality and the double standard of justice that favors rogue cops when prosecuting such cases. Leid Stories in a commentary explains why vigorous protest not only is appropriate, it should include organized political punishment—of the Democratic Party in particular.
Jury selection begins today in Baltimore City Circuit Court in the trial of Officer William Porter, the first of six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, 26, who died on April 19, a week after suffering traumatic injuries while being transported to a stationhouse in a police van. “Attorney at War” Alton H. Maddox Jr., who has litigated several precedent-setting police-brutality cases in New York, discusses key issues with the prosecution of Porter and Gray’s other alleged killers.
Henry A. Giroux – Terrorizing Students: The Criminalization of Children in the US Police State
Violence has become the problem of the 21st century. This claim is indebted to W. E. B. Dubois’ much quoted notion that “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of color line.”[1] For Du Bois, racism was one of the most pressing problems of the time and could not be understood outside of the gross inequities of wealth, power, …
David Anderson – An End To American – And Global Oligarchy
A worldwide revolution is about to begin. It is too early to tell whether it will be sudden and painfully crushing or gradual and peaceful, but it will come. It will be a battle between the dispossessed and the very rich. We saw one of the early signs in the US with the Wall Street protests. Since then the societal …
Liberalism’s Death Bell Tolls, Part 3: J’accuse la gauche liberale
Liberalism’s Death Bell Tolls, Part 3: J’accuse la gauche liberale Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, March 6, 2013 It is past the time for liberalism to continue to function without a human face. It is time for it to stand accused alongside the conservative and religious right as an ideology dedicated to disaster capitalism, ecological demolition, …
Want to Rebuild the Left? Take Socialism Seriously
As the sun set on the Occupy Seattle encampment in December 2011, the question “What next?” hung in the air, as it did over Zuccotti Park in New York City. The tents were gone, our spirits were dampened, but an awakened sense of empowerment prevailed. The movement had given voice to a widespread fury at big business and a recognition …