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  • 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 people lost insurance at a greater rate than Americans overall. Thus, it isn’t surprising that the Census Bureau’s official poverty estimates show that the number of people who were impoverished in 2009 increased by 3.74 million, and the poverty rate increased from 13.2 percent in…

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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. History and professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

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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 — and Guantánamo remains open, Obama’s promise in ruins. This past December 19th just marked three years to the day that I tasted freedom again and was released from Guantánamo to the warm embrace of my family and the community who fought so hard for…

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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, what was the long and horrific civil war fought for? Most, but not all of the people in the north feel that a part of their patrimony is being ripped away, and refuse to yield on the dominant theme of an Islamic Arab identity, 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 be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson. Political events of the past two years have delivered a more profound and devastating message: American democracy has been conclusively conquered by American capitalism. Government has been disabled or…

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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 invasion of Gaza.” It’s next to inconceivable that the Embassy didn’t know that Israel broke the truce in November, that Hamas was calling for it to be reinstated, and that Israel rejected the offer – almost certainly because Israel (and the US) preferred bombing to…

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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 resolution. The leaked memo was big news in parts of the world. England has no First Amendment that might have protected Ms. Gun. It does have a repressive Official Secrets Act, under which she was being prosecuted by the Blair government. Background on the Gun…

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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 promote their case for war with Iraq.

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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 opportunity to present a photo-op for the upcoming November 2004 elections,” said Bill Fletcher, president of TransAfrica Forum. Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, called Bush’s commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa “a cruel hoax,” adding that Bush “has virtually sidestepped the Global Fund…

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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 great consequence. During this session of Congress, we have the duty to reform domestic programs vital to our country, we have the opportunity to save millions of lives abroad from a terrible disease. We will work for a prosperity that is broadly shared, and we…

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  • Chuck Schumer: “Friend Of Wall Street and War”

    “It’s not surprising that Schumer would be able to collect so much support in such a short period of time. Recall that he was head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and helped recruit as many as one-third of the current Senate Democratic caucus — and that he was the one who set about raising…

  • Netanyahu’s “Disastrous” Appeal and “Obsession with Jewish Identity”

    “Together with his March address to the U.S. Congress on an unprecedented mission to destroy President Obama’s Iran negotiations, Netanyahu is forcing re-examination by American Jews of the sympathy they’ve maintained for Israel because Israeli Jews are co-religionists. Netanyahu’s behavior, the 48-year military occupation ruling over non-Israelis, and increasingly reported instances of Jewish extremist violence,…

  • Obama Climate Change Action Goes “Nowhere Near Far Enough”

    “With the release of the final Clean Power Plan — this administration’s landmark climate action — it’s abundantly clear that President Obama’s climate policies won’t be enough to protect us from the threat of a radically warmed world. It’s time to create our own power plan: a plan to build the political power in every…

  • Urging Bernie Sanders to “Speak Out” on Foreign Policy, Petition Gathers More Than 8,000 Signers in First Day

    “So far,” RootsAction says, “Bernie’s stump speech hardly mentions the huge military budget — and does not talk about how it is a massive roadblock for the scale of public investment in education, infrastructure and jobs that he is advocating.”

  • Afghanistan’s “Most Formidable Warlord”

    “The U.S., with its history of waging aerial attacks, using helicopters and weaponized drones, and engaging in constant aerial surveillance, along with its continued night raids and detention of civilians, effectively carries itself as the most formidable warlord in the region. Throughout June, according to the New York Times, ‘American drones and warplanes fired against…

  • Shooting of Sam DuBose: Are Cams on Police the Answer?

    “Cams on cops are a good thing but that does not mean citizens need to stop recording because when the footage is in the hands of police, there is never a guarantee it will not be manipulated, destroyed or simply never released. There have been numerous examples, but one that sticks out is the recent…

  • 70 Years After U.S. Nuked Japan: Calls for Nuclear Abolition

    “I strongly feel that, in order to build society where my sons and grandchildren can live in peace, it is the duty of us survivors to share our experience with as many people as possible to help them identify with it. I sincerely hope that we are the last generation of people who are tormented…

  • “Kayaktivists” Attempt to Stop Shell’s Damaged Ice Breaker from Departing for Arctic

    “Scientists are sounding the alarm, telling us we need to keep most of our known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. This makes Shell’s extreme extraction adventure in the Arctic the definition of insanity. We’re talking about putting humanity, our entire planet’s livability at extreme risk. Portland is going to be taking a stand to…

  • Medicare’s 50 Years of Low Overhead vs. ACA’s Increasing Bureaucratic Bloat, “Merger Mania”

    “Between 2014 and 2022, the ACA will add $273.6 billion in new administrative costs over and above what would have been expected had the law not been enacted. That’s equivalent to $1,375 per newly insured person per year, or 22.5 percent of total federal expenditures for the program…Were the 22.5 percent overhead figure associated with…

  • U.S. Approval of Turkey’s Bombing: Disaster in the Making?

    “The U.S. had been helping the Kurdish group in Syria — the YPG. That group is basically another branch of the PKK, which Turkey just bombed in Iraq — a sovereign country — with an apparent U.S. green light. There certainly hasn’t been a condemnation by the U.S. government of the bombing.”

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