What Do The 99% Want?
A note from the editor: David Prescott is a long-time friend and colleague; a retired businessman from Princeton, NJ; a big thinker and an ardent environmentalist now living in Santa Fe, NM; and a man of impeccable integrity. David sent me the following article for [...]
Go Big, Mr. President
Thomas Friedman wrote in a recent article published in The New York Times “I voted for Barack Obama and I don’t want my money back. Friedman continued, “[Obama’s] never gotten the credit he deserves for bringing the economy he inherited back from the brink of [...]
A Disingenuous Flair of Rhetorical Nonsense
In a disingenuous flair of rhetorical nonsense, the Chair of the House Budget Committee told the Heritage Foundation that President Barack Obama was “sowing unrest and class resentment… (and) preying on the emotions of fear…” In his October 25 speech before the ultra-right organization Paul [...]
San Francisco Journal
When I visit San Francisco— when I return “home”— a surging and vibrant energy fills, thrills and buoys my body, mind and spirit. All of my senses come alive as I immerse myself in The City’s eclectic mix of people, places, life styles, vehicles, sounds, [...]
Another Arizona Postcard: There You Go Again
Arizona, the home of my heritage, no longer feels like home. The high skies and endless horizons… the warmth of the desert sun in February… the sights, sounds and smells of a spring training game at the ball park… all make it a grand place [...]
A Postcard from Belgium: When Will We Ever Learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time passing… Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time ago… Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards everyone… When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn? (Pete Seeger, 1961) At the beginning of [...]
Protests, Lopsided Democracy, and a Warning to Women
No Wonder They are Protesting Do you wonder why the Occupy Wall-Streeters continue their protest? Well, here is just one possible cause: in a time of growing disparity between the rich and the poor; a time when millions of people have lost their homes to [...]
I Want to Take Kids to the Doctor
A Doctor Visit In a forum on the subject of child poverty in Asheville, North Carolina, a low income mother said” I don’t want to take my children to Disney World. I just want to be able to take them to the doctor.” It is [...]
More on Deficits and Dollars
Right on Governor Patrick In response to “Imagine the America Your Grandchildren Will Inherit” (see above) a friend sent me a Washington Post op-ed piece by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. It follows the same theme: “If the deficit is reduced by spending cuts alone and [...]
Warning to Democrats; Supercommittee Collapse; Republican Obstruction; Kyl Obfuscation
A Warning We Should Heed Nicholas Kristof offered good advice to Democrats who judge President Obama harshly and threaten to abandon him in the 2012 election: “Think back to 2000. Many Democrats,” he wrote, “feeling grouchy, were dismissive of Al Gore and magnified his shortcomings. We [...]
The Two Parties Live in Different Moral Universes
“Republicans and Democrats don’t just have different priorities; they live in different intellectual and moral universes” Paul Krugman wrote in his November 18 op-ed in The New York Times. Democrats, according to Krugman, see a world in which “up is up and down is down. [...]
Follow the Money
Leaders of American corporations publically embrace the idea of reducing tax rates in exchange for eliminating loopholes and deductions. But, as Adam Davidson reported in Sunday’s (November 13th) New York Times, 1,885 “corporations and interest groups… lobbied in favor of loopholes and tax breaks and [...]
Conflicted on Taxes
The Republican Party agenda on taxation is conflicted: Republicans are in favor of slashing taxes … unless the tax cut benefits people who are not wealthy, and is proposed by Barack Obama. The President has asked Congress to cut every workers payroll tax bill in [...]
Romney, the Environment, and Super Committee Shenanigans
Romney’s Absurd Proposal One of the planks in Republican Presidential Mitt Romney’s deficit reduction platform is to conform government salaries to those in private business. While he is probably referring to the salaries of those he calls “faceless bureaucrats,” take an absurd look at this [...]
There You Go Again, Mr. Speaker
The Republican majority in the House is again threatening a government shut down. The appropriations bills coming out of the Republican-controlled committees are filled with riders designed to change the face of American government. These riders would, among other things, block implementation of the Affordable [...]