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Jobs and Deficits: Obama Squares the Circle
| Barry Finger September 10, 2011 |
President Obama outlined his new American Jobs Act before a packed Congress, more than half of whom believe the poor and jobless are undertaxed moochers and that the government does not create jobs. The Democrats will have their hands full.
Talking about race and Haiti
| Lois Weiner September 10, 2011 |
Though these two pieces about education, one about the terrible way the US is destroying any possibilities for a real system of public education in Haiti, the other reasons the author is NOT talking about race, do not make this connection, they point to the fact that education in the US has to be seen in the context of international policy, and in particular US imperialism, in which racism is pro
Means-testing Social Security: The kiss of death
| Betty Reid Mandell September 8, 2011 |
MEANS-TESTING SOCIAL SECURITY is a proposal that some policy-makers are considering. That would be the beginning of the end for the program. When Social Security was first begun, in 1935 during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, some people proposed means-testing it as they means-tested Aid to Dependent Children (now TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). Roosevelt resisted it, knowing that would make it politically vulnerable. In order to protect it, Social Security needed to be universal. The rich as well as the poor would receive it.
The Working Families Party: Stumping for Jesus
| Michael Hirsch September 7, 2011 |
An isolated Assembly race in underserved North central Brooklyn in an election off- year wouldn't normally attract much interest -- witness grudging coverage in The New York Times on the Saturday of the Labor Day weekend.
The Attack on Ohio's Working People: What's the strategy to fight back and win?
| Dan La Botz September 7, 2011 |
Ohio's working people—both those with jobs, the unemployed and their families—are under attack as they have not been for decades. And this is not just in Ohio. From Wisconsin to Florida, from California to New York, employers, the media and politicians are working 24/7 to lower our wages, reduce our benefits, postpone our retirement, cut social services such as health and education, and in many other ways large and small to take away hard-won gains from working people in order to increase profits for the corporations and dividends for the wealthy.
Labor Day and school reform
| Lois Weiner September 5, 2011 |
This Labor Day, I’m hoping that teachers will press labor to fulfill its responsibilities to kids, by breaking with any politicians who don’t “put kids first” by creating jobs.
Hyperactive Deficit Attention Disorder: the economic dyslexia of the Right
| Barry Finger September 4, 2011 |
Many on the left find it difficult to understand the right wing arguments against countercyclical activity. And I suspect no source of clarification will originate among the knuckle dragging idiots contesting the field for the Republican presidential nomination. Their pronouncements are as exasperating as they are primitive and self-contradictory. But to understand the mindset of the modern reactionary—to impart to it a coherency that it normally cannot do on its own, one cannot avoid plumbing the depths of gold bug-ism.
New Politics 2.0
| Scott McLemee September 2, 2011 |
New Politics is passing quite a milestone – or two of them, come to think of it. The first issue of its original series appeared in the fall of 1961. After it suspended publication in 1978, our founding editors, Phyllis and Julius Jacobson, still had the itch to foster radical ideas and debate, resulting an anthology, Socialist Perspectives (1983). They relaunched New Politics in 1986, which means that we can now celebrate both its 25th and 50th anniversaries.
Why a former teacher union president goes over to the dark side
| Lois Weiner September 1, 2011 |
The LA Times reports that AJ Duffy, who just this spring stepped down as President of the second largest teachers union in the US, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), is opening his own charter school, which will use all of the union-busting techniques UTLA has long opposed. LA's political establishment, most notably the former UTLA staffer who is now Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is, no doubt, chortling in glee at this act of treachery.
Matt Damon, Diane Ravitch, and scapegoating teachers
| Lois Weiner August 6, 2011 |
Several thousand teachers and their supporters rallied in Washington July 30, for the SOS (Save Our Schools) march, a grassroots effort organized by an Oakland CA science teacher.