 27th May 07 - Al Gore, The Guardian (UK) The pursuit of "dominance" in foreign policy led the Bush administration to ignore the UN, to do serious damage to our most important alliances, to violate international law, and to cultivate the hatred and contempt of many in the rest of the world. The seductive appeal of exercising unconstrained unilateral power led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that brought to life the worst nightmare of the founders. Any policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the US and recruits for al-Qaida, but also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating terrorists who wish to harm and intimidate America. Instead of "dominance", we should be seeking pre-eminence in a world where nations respect us and seek to follow our leadership and adopt our values. |
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21st April 07, World Public Opinion.org Majorities Still Want US to Do Its Share in Multilateral Efforts; Not Withdraw from International Affairs; Mixed Views on US Overseas Bases. |
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 19th April 07 - Rick Wolff and Max Fraad Wolff, MRZINE
The macro march backward of domestic income and wealth distribution has become remarkable. At least we thought so enough to pen the following remarks. In 2006 the corporate profits share of the national economy retouched its 1929 high. Wage and salary income broke its 8 decade low watermark. Our new economy increasingly replicates the distributional landscape of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the relation of taxes and income of the richest among us. In their widely published research, Parisian professor Thomas Piketty and his colleague at UC Berkeley, Prof. Emmanuel Saez, have documented how far the progressiveness of the federal income tax has collapsed.1 Using their work, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) in Washington produced Figure 1 below.2 |
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4th April 2007, Book Revew Economist Dean Baker Provides an Insightful Narrative of U.S. Economic and Political History
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 4th April 07 - Paul Krugman, New York Times
I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now, finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising income inequality. Let me explain. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people. |
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 4th April 07 - Jesse Jackson, The Chicago Sun-Times Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a pretty good working definition of insanity. But that is the state of America’s failed policy for poor children. For the last 25 years, we’ve basically been following the punitive ideas coming from the right side of our politics. We’ve chosen to invest in punishment on the back side rather than hope on the front side. And the results are now in: Poverty is up; prison populations are up; costs are up. It doesn’t work. Consider Alabama, four decades after the march from Selma to Montgomery. Legal segregation is no more. African Americans have the right to vote. But equal opportunity is a dream yet deferred. In Alabama, poverty is still pervasive. One in four children is raised in poverty; 44 percent of all blacks and Latinos live in poverty. Nearly one-third of the jobs in Alabama pay a poverty wage. Alabama ranks near the bottom of every public-health category. It is 47th in infant mortality. It does badly in families headed by a single parent, in percent of children living in poverty. |
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 28th March 07 - Godfrey Hodgson, openDemocracyThe quarter ending on 31 March 2007 promises to blow away all previous records for political fundraising in the United States. Never has so much been raised, so early. And never has money dominated coverage of a presidential campaign, almost to the point of extinguishing discussion of such less exciting matters as the collapse of the housing market, the politicisation of the federal-justice system, prospects for healthcare and the war in Iraq. A few days ago two Washington Post journalists, after diligent research, reported that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had raised over $1 million in a single evening twice in three days: once in the lush technology-manured pastures of the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley , and then among the lawyers and the lobbyists in a gigantic Washington conference hotel (see Anne E Kornblut & Chris Cillizza, "Candidates Stress Early Fundraising" Washington Post, 21 March 2007). |
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