From the Left
/Politics
Finding Reasons for Progressive Optimism
From corporate polluters to political bosses, power elites try to create a myth of inevitability, trying to make workaday people feel helpless, too small to change the injustices of the system. "Don't bother" is their message.
But the feisty residents of Boxtown, Tennessee, definitely did bother when they learned that a couple of profiteering ...Read more
Why Should Work Be Life-Sucking?
"Work your fingers to the bone -- whadda ya get? Boney Fingers."
This 1960s folk song mocking the vaunted virtue of working hard is being sung today with new meaning by all kinds of employees -- from those in construction to high tech, food service to education, health care to media. And it's not just manual labor and frontline employees ...Read more
Pro-Golfers Dirty Themselves By "Sportswashing"
When a golfer hits an errant shot that might bonk an unsuspecting spectator on the head, the proper cry of warning is: "Fore!" But what do they shout when they hit a bad shot that boomerangs right back and bonks the golfer on the noggin?
In the polite world of golf -- where there's a rule of etiquette to cover every contingency -- this ...Read more
How a Clerical Error Made Corporations 'People'
There's a historic date, which our country ought to mark every year, that has had as great an impact on the world as the July 4 birth of American democracy itself. The date is May 10, 1886 -- the day corporate supremacy was born. It came about through a court case that breathed life into these artificial, antidemocratic entities -- a move that ...Read more
The Sunshine State's Dark Bully
Many members of the extremist establishment have a new darling in Ron DeSantis. For example, the editor of the far-right National Review recently gushed that, second only to Trump, the Florida governor is "the hottest thing" in GOP politics: "Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party."
Interesting, because what characterizes Ron's tenure (and ...Read more
Beware: The GOP Has Chosen to Embrace the Crazy
In the 1990s, the sharp-witted Texan and renowned progressive writer Molly Ivins regaled (and appalled) readers with her reports on the tragicomic awfulness of George W. Bush's two terms as the Lone Star State's governor. His tenure was notable for his deep ignorance, frat-boy arrogance and flagrant servility to corporate interests. But those ...Read more
From Lame President to Lame Duck
Former President Donald Trump's criminal use of lies and mob violence to steal the 2020 election failed, but it's not the only recent coup attack on our democracy. In the last few years, a cabal of right-wing zealots have plotted to seize control of the U.S. Supreme Court. By hook and crook, they've installed a six-judge majority, and now they'...Read more
The Health Care Industry's Medical Debt Rip-Off
While our doctors, nurses and technicians are among the best in the world, our health care system itself is not even designed for care, but for the constant expansion of profits for insurance giants, drugmakers, hospital chains, system managers, financiers and other voracious components of the medical industry. As one doctor angrily said of ...Read more
Education is Opportunity
In constitutional terms, America must be educated as broadly as possible "In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice ... (and) promote the general welfare." While a high-school diploma once was enough to do that, providing a ticket out of unskilled drudge work, that diploma now needs an upgrade if people are to escape a life of low...Read more
How Can Democrats Save the Party From Their Leaders?
President Joe Biden recently flew off to Taiwan to assure our allies there that he will fight for them. And a couple of weeks later he was winging off to Saudi Arabia, intending to "repair ties" with that repressive monarchy.
In terms of international realpolitik, this flurry of foreign travel might be strategically important, but there's a ...Read more
The Corporate Conspiracy on The Court
Usurping the fundamental rights of women to control their own bodies.
Authorizing corporate giants to buy our elections.
Nullifying the right of organizers to talk to workers about unionizing.
Who is rigging America's legal system against workaday people? The Supreme Court's right-wing extremists, that's who. Just a handful of aloof, ...Read more
In the Roberts' Court, The People Be Damned
Today's six-member supermajority on the Supreme Court has surrendered all claim to being an impartial moral force for blind justice. Instead, the GOP's small network of corporate and right-wing operatives has painstakingly fabricated and weaponized the court as its own political oligarchy. In only a couple of decades, backed by a few ...Read more
The Court's New Clothes
Public opinion of the Supreme Court's job performance is plummeting: Only 40% of Americans give the current court a passing grade, down 18 points (!) from just a couple of years ago, and the six members of the court's right-wing majority claim to be baffled by the plunge. To understand why their reputations are crashing, the Alito-Barrett-...Read more