In These Times

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• • 25 Jun 08
  • 1:22 pm

  Gregory Wonderwheel : '... Self-styled progressives like Ken Brociner leave me wondering if there is a political label that Democratic centrists won’t try to usurp? ....' "Left" and "leftist". The reason Obama, the Clintons, McCain and so forth can be polite with each other is that they are all basically on the same page. If leftists want to complain about what is wrong with their world view and politics, they have to use words like "war", "imperialism", "repression", "class" and so forth -- not at all nice. But the only thing the Left has is its truth. We certainly don't have …

  Posted to What Progressives Can Learn from Obama

• • 30 May 08
  • 9:24 am

  I haven't read these books, but the review discourages me. While I believe they probably chronicle the ills of the non-wealthy in America accurately, they don't seem to give any kind of logical analysis of these ills or their possible solution. For example, about the second book the reviewer says 'The problem isn’t education. It’s power. “Those who hold a privileged position in the economic power hierarchy,” he writes, “are able to steer the bulk of growth their way." ... To reduce inequality, Bernstein advocates federal full-employment policy, infrastructure spending, energy independence, national health insurance, broader social insurance, better control of …

  Posted to Main Street Squeeze

• • 21 Dec 07
  • 7:58 am

  This article doesn't explain why the normal processes of capitalism do not commodify bank services, that is, tend to drive down prices and drive up the quality of the product. Nor does it explain why people cannot obtain better terms for themselves by forming their own banks (credit unions) cooperatively. Instead, it seems to call for more regulation. As we already have a great deal of government regulation of the banking industry, I suspect the answers to these questions have something to do with that very regulation. And that as usual, begging the rich who own and operate the government to …

  Posted to Beware the Credit-Industrial Complex

• • 13 Oct 05
  • 11:35 am

  It seems unlikely that "we" are going to be able to put more safeguards and control devices on the tool of eminent domain, just as "we" are generally unable to put safeguards and control devices on government in general, when "we" are ordinary people and not prominent or powerful individuals or groups. In theory, at least in a democracy, an informed electorate could restrain the abuses of eminent domain, but an informed electorate would require an academic system and media which would do the informing, whereas in fact academia and the media are dominated by the same class of people who …

  Posted to Imminent Domination

• • 13 Oct 05
  • 6:58 pm

  _Libertarian_ has come to be a conventional term for people who would be better described as fundamentalist or conservative liberals, in that they believe in the old-time Lockean and Jeffersonian rights and in the minimization of government. However _liberal_ is now used to mean something very different and in many ways opposed to their views, so I think they should be allowed to use the word. _Progressive_ used to mean "leftist but afraid to say it" but now it doesn't seem to mean much of anything any more.

  Posted to Imminent Domination