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George Washington’s eerie foresight – History – Salon.com

23 Sep

When George Washington wrote of an American “Union” with “a government for the whole,” his vision was radical, perhaps foolhardy. Such a thing had never existed among a diverse people, across a vast continent, with no established royal or military authority. The Union of politically empowered citizens that Washington described was an aspiration more than a reality. It was a dream after two difficult decades of revolution, war, and reconstruction.

Washington’s vision was prophetic. He was ahead of his times. His contemporaries, especially in Europe, expected tyranny, anarchy, or the return of foreign empire in North America after the British defeat. …

George Washington’s eighteenth-century radicalism evolved into the twenty-first century’s conventional wisdom. The success of the American experiment in building a prosperous and democratic Union discredited other options. … Representative government for a large, diverse, and united population living in a dispersed but discrete territory — that became the contemporary standard for the modern “nation-state.” It was almost nonexistent during Washington’s lifetime.

via George Washington’s eerie foresight – History – Salon.com.

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Can a Movement Save the American Dream? | The Nation

22 Sep

Tahrir Square erupted in revolution in January, but America actually suffers greater inequality than Egypt. Instead of an American dream, we have an American nightmare: a government, as Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has written, of the top 1 percent, by the top 1 percent and for the top 1 percent.

This is not an accident; it is a defeat. It is the casualty of class warfare, waged and won, as Warren Buffett has noted, by the wealthiest few. Economists evoke globalization, technology and education as causal factors in our era’s extreme inequality. In fact, it results from policies that have weakened workers, liberated CEOs, starved social protections and savaged the middle class.

via Can a Movement Save the American Dream? | The Nation.

Tim O’Reilly – Google+ – I just went down to check out the scene at the…

21 Sep

I told him that I run a company with about $100 million in revenue, and that it isn’t just kids who think that Wall Street bankers got away with a crime. There are a set of people who constructed a set of financial products with intent to defraud. They took our country to the brink of ruin, then got off scott free, even with multi-million dollar bonuses. I’ll be interested to see if Fox runs my comments anywhere.

It seems so odd to me that the Tea Party isn’t out in force at this protest. It seems so odd that government largesse aimed at rich corporations seems to be OK with them, while government largesse aimed at the disadvantaged ought to be cut. I would have loved to see blue collar Americans out in force at this protest, not just college students.

via Tim O’Reilly – Google+ – I just went down to check out the scene at the….

Real Class War Is Working to Keep Those Below You Down | Truthout

20 Sep

We live in a country where most people believe their opportunities are limited only by their innate talents and appetite for hard work, but over the last four decades, while decrying a wholly imaginary class war from below, conservative policies have undermined many of the ladders by which working people once achieved a middle-class lifestyle. Taking pot-shots at another class isn’t war, nor is imposing a modest tax increase on those who have been showered with tax cuts for the last decade. Genuine class warfare is those at the very top working to keep everyone else far beneath them.

via Real Class War Is Working to Keep Those Below You Down | Truthout.

America’s Costly War Machine | Common Dreams

19 Sep

There are many reasons for the current parlous state of the USofA. But none are so wasteful and unnecessary as adolescent military adventurism. Ron Paul has consistently opposed this, and for years. Does that not count for something?

Recent congressional investigations have shown that roughly 1 of every 4 dollars spent on wartime contracting was wasted or misspent.

To date, the United States has spent more than $2.5 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon spending spree that accompanied it and a battery of new homeland security measures instituted after Sept. 11.

How have we paid for this? Entirely through borrowing. Spending on the wars and on added security at home has accounted for more than one-quarter of the total increase in U.S. government debt since 2001. And not only did we fail to pay as we went for the wars, the George W. Bush administration also successfully pushed to cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003, which added further to the debt. This toxic combination of lower revenues and higher spending has brought the country to its current political stalemate.

via America’s Costly War Machine | Common Dreams.

Thousands Cheer Bernie Sanders’s Appeal to Obama, Super-Committee: Make the Rich Pay for Deficits | The Nation

19 Sep

Declaring that “Social Security is the most successful government program in our nation’s history,” and decrying threats to Medicare and Medicaid that would punish Americans who did not cause the current economic crisis, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders brought thousands of progressives from across the Midwest to their feet Saturday, as they cheered his message to President Obama and the Congressional “super-committee”: “We can deal with deficit reduction in a way that is fair and responsible.”

“Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable,” Sanders said, “it is time to ask the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in this country to pay their fair share.”

via Thousands Cheer Bernie Sanders’s Appeal to Obama, Super-Committee: Make the Rich Pay for Deficits | The Nation.

A real Wall Street takeover threat – Wall Street – Salon.com

19 Sep

The hundreds of young people who converged on the New York Stock Exchange this weekend are calling their demonstration against Wall Street greed an “American Tahrir Square.” While they have a long way to go before they create the tremors that brought down the Mubarak regime, their passion was clearly on display on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.

The protestors were gathered in the square at the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street, after police blocked them from the epicenter of American finance a couple of blocks away. Many had spent the night in sleeping bags and insisted they were prepared to spend many more to make their point.

via A real Wall Street takeover threat – Wall Street – Salon.com.

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Leadership Crisis – NYTimes.com

18 Sep

A solid majority said creating jobs should be the highest priority for the government now and that payroll taxes should be cut to help with that. A whopping 8 in 10 think building bridges, roads and schools is important, which means — gasp — spending money.

Many Democrats are so gun shy that they don’t dare even to talk about raising taxes on the rich. But 71 percent of those polled said any plan to reduce the budget deficit should include both spending cuts and tax increases. And Americans understand that there are choices to be made; 56 percent said the wealthier should pay higher taxes to reduce the federal deficit.

via Leadership Crisis – NYTimes.com.

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House GOP Rejects Tax Cuts For Middle Class | ThinkProgress

17 Sep

Meanwhile, a payroll tax holiday is one of the few types of tax cuts that do actually stimulate the economy, precisely because they mostly affect working- and middle-class people, who need the money more and thus spend it right away.

via House GOP Rejects Tax Cuts For Middle Class | ThinkProgress.

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The GOP’s unremarkable special election stunner – War Room – Salon.com

14 Sep

Are the Democrats sharp enough and resilient enough to Wake Up?

But if you can get beyond the fact that it technically played out within the confines of New York City, there really isn’t much that’s remarkable about the victory that Republican Bob Turner achieved on Tuesday night.

Mainly, it tells us what a simple look at President Obama’s job approval numbers (or the economic indicators that are largely responsible for them) would tell us: Voters are frustrated and eager to register their displeasure with him and his party. This is true everywhere, but particularly in areas like the 9th District, where voters already had clear reservations about Obama even before he did anything as president — back when his approval ratings were still stratospheric.

via The GOP’s unremarkable special election stunner – War Room – Salon.com.

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