Blog

  • Sorry, Census. Poverty Really Did Increase in 2009.

    Between 2008 and 2009, unemployment increased from 5.8 percent to 9.3 percent, the largest one-year increase on record (which goes back to 1948). Over the same period, the number of Americans without health insurance coverage rose by more than four million — from 46.3 million in 2008 to 50.7 million in 2009 — and low-income…

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  • Bruce Reed Appointed Biden Chief of Staff Today

    In light of his prominent role in deficit reduction and the ‘end of welfare’ in the 1990s, Reed’s appointment sends a clear — and troubling — signal about the administration’s domestic policy priorities in the years ahead. Alice O’Connor is author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy and the Poor in Twentieth Century U.S.…

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  • A Statement from Former Prisoner Omar Deghayes on the 9th Anniversary of the Opening of Guantánamo

    Two years ago, President Barack Obama pledged to bring an end to the anomaly that is Guantánamo within a year, and to thereby restore America’s moral standing in the world. Yet today, on January 11, 2011, we are marking the beginning of the tenth year since the first prisoners were transferred to Camp X Ray…

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  • The Referendum in Sudan

    KHARTOUM, Sudan — Just days before the historic referendum on southern independence Khartoum is experiencing temperate weather and what may turn out to be a deceptive calm. In fact, everybody is either worried or excited, depending on their circumstances. Southerners are resolute that they will not accept second class citizenship in their own country, otherwise,…

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  • The End of New Deal Liberalism

    By William Greider We have reached a pivotal moment in government and politics, and it feels like the last, groaning spasms of New Deal liberalism. When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government’s extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must…

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  • Chomsky’s initial reaction to WikiLeaks’ latest

    I took a quick look at [“U.S. embassy cables: Hillary Clinton woos prickly Egyptians“].  It’s interesting that Israel does not appear, only Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon.  I found only one entry of any interest, in US Embassy to Clinton: “Soliman brokered a half-year-long truce last year, which Hamas broke in December, leading to the Israeli…

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  • The Katharine Gun Case

    Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the “crime” of telling the truth. She was charged with leaking an embarrassing U.S. intelligence memo indicating that the U.S. had mounted a spying “surge” against U.N. delegations in early 2003 in an effort to win approval of the Iraq war…

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  • Bush and Blair: A Partnership of Deception

    British Prime Minister Tony Blair is back in Britain now facing an ever-widening scandal involving the distortion of evidence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, but his recent trip to meet with President Bush underscores the partnership the two leaders have shared as both face growing evidence that they knowingly used faulty intelligence to…

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  • Bush in Africa: “A Cruel Hoax”?

    President Bush’s recent tour of Africa to tout his $15 billion pledge to fight the continent’s AIDS epidemic and promote trade was met with skepticism by critics who charged that his administration is attempting to mask regressive policies with staged public relations events. Bush’s trip to Africa appears to represent, more than anything else, an…

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  • Responses to Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address

    Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished citizens and fellow citizens, every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead. You and I serve our country in a time of…

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  • 84-Year-Old Nun Among Activists Sentenced While “Real Crime” of Nuclear Arms Ramps Up

    “Judge Thapar has tried to strike a compromise that reflects the nature of this nonviolent action but satisfies the government’s demand that Megan, Michael and Greg’s sentence send a deterrent message to the wider community. For now, their bodies remain in prison. But their voices are free, reminding us that the central issue of this…

  • Venezuela: Is U.S. Backing Destabilization?

    “Of course we all know who the U.S. government supports in Venezuela. They don’t really try to hide it: there’s $5 million in the 2014 U.S. federal budget for funding opposition activities inside Venezuela, and this is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg — adding to the hundreds of millions of dollars of overt…

  • Iran: Is Obama Set to Continue the “Manufactured Crisis”?

    “The Obama administration has introduced the subject of ‘posssible military dimensions’ into the nuclear negotiations that will begin Tuesday. That means that the United States will be demanding an explanation for ‘evidence’ that the book shows was fabricated. That is a decision that could threaten the conclusion of a final agreement with Iran.”

  • Comcast’s Revolving Door

    “In an already uncompetitive market with high prices that keep going up and up, a merger of the two biggest cable companies should be unthinkable. This deal would be a disaster for consumers and must be stopped…This deal would give Comcast control of more than a third of the U.S. pay-TV market and more than…

  • * Carbon, Climate Worsening * WV Spill, Again

    “As oil and gas have proven unexpectedly abundant and affordable, major energy consumers are planning to rely on them more — and on renewable sources of energy less — to meet their future requirements. As a result, the promises we once heard of a substantial decline in fossil fuel use (along with a corresponding boom…

  • “Misrepresenting Putin, Sochi and Ukraine”

    “The Department of State is trying to influence Ukraine to side with the West. It is trying to shape the form of a possible new government in Ukraine. While the State Department depicts these efforts as reconciliation, they constitute interference in internal affairs. These efforts provide justification to Russia for trying to turn events in…

  • NSA “The Day We Fight Back”

    “American democracy has been turned on its head. Rather than citizen oversight of a transparent and accountable government, we have government conducting secretive surveillance of every aspect of our lives,” said Schade, from the Defending Dissent Foundation. “Something is very wrong and it is our civic duty and responsibility to act. Today is the Day…

  • Drone “Death by Metadata” — And Imprisonment by Activism

    “The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes — an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.”

  • Left-Right Grassroots Efforts to Cut the NSA’s Juice

    “It took activists from across the political spectrum to develop the OffNow model legislation. And we see Fourth Amendment Protection Acts that have been introduced in over a fifth of the states in the union reflect this unique approach. Unconstitutional government spying is both an individual privacy issue and a social justice matter. By working…

  • CBO Numbers: Will Obamacare Help Reduce the “Job Lock”?

    “[T]he CBO finds that… ‘The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in business’ demand for labor’ (page 117). These are purely voluntary labor supply decisions, not people being laid off from jobs they’d rather keep, or…

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