RATIONAL RESISTANCE
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Biden is the clear choice when it comes to compassionate and decent leadership. In a battle of heart, mind, and character Joe Biden wins by a landslide. We n...
What’s The Deal With Trump Followers?
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Five years ago when Donald Trump road that escalator and announced his candidacy, everyone including most people who are now Trump-for-lifers, believed it was a stunt, and he was clearly unqualifie...February 23, 2016
Tonight on Facebook, Robert Reich posted an email he received from someone who is undecided between Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders. Yes, you read that correctly. But, we know these people exist. The question is, how?
January 3, 2015
On my way home, less than a mile before my neighborhood, I drive through a neighborhood at the bottom of the hill that I’ve heard passengers “affectionately” refer to as “the other side of the tracks.” Now, I would be lying if I told you this phrase, or the companion phrase, “the wrong side of the tracks,” never crossed my mind. And it quite literally is on the other side of a railroad track as well as a creek. But of course people aren’t talking about an actual railroad track, so you have to ask yourself, what makes it the wrong side of the tracks?
February 26, 2014
Someone needs to explain to me why there are so many Americans making average or even substandard wages who continue to defend the capitalistic status quo. I think this is where Robert Reich is correct, that people are simply afraid. In a labor market where employers have all the power, people just feel lucky to have a job.
January 29, 2014
Post war until roughly the 1970s, increases in income in all quintiles more or less moved together. The bottom quintile increased with the top quintile. Since the 70s, the top two quintiles continued to grow, with the top quintile actually accelerating (although to be fair, it corrected/adjusted during the Great Recession, but only modestly). But since the 1970s, the bottom three quintiles have been pretty much flat.
January 24, 2014
The phrase “clear and present danger” is the standard by which freedom of speech can be abridged. As the saying goes, nobody has the right to shout “fire” in a theater. The United States Supreme Court began citing this standard in 20th century rulings, reaffirming that freedom of speech stops at the point where it puts pubic safety in peril. The idea is controversial, but it should be understood that constitutional rights are not absolute. Whether you agree with this standard as it applies to freedom of speech, is of little importance here. It only matters that you understand what it means, because economic inequality is a clear and present danger to American democracy.
January 20, 2014
Conservatives will play the “class warfare” card if you dare mention a tax increase on the rich. And if you talk about income inequality, well, this means you are simply envious, and you are trying to “punish success.” But for this conservative “logic” to be rational, wouldn’t we have to consider the current progressive tax system to also be unfair? — Well, as it turns out, that is exactly what many conservatives say about progressive taxation, but it doesn’t mean their assessment is sound.
January 17, 2014
The latest piece by David Brooks in The New York Times is typical of conservative-think on issues of economic inequality. Because the free market is the most perfect system ever devised by man (yes, I’m laying the sarcasm on pretty thick), that means when we have an apparent failure of our revered capitalist system, that system is not to blame. Instead we should blame social issues. Oh, but only the social issues of the poor. Because the wealthy have reserved a special kind of guilt just for the poor.
January 8, 2014
At some point we as a society need to come to terms with the fact that economic status is not a good barometer for morality, and it certainly tells you nothing of the character of a human being. You are not in higher moral standing because you earn a larger paycheck. And a person should not automatically be assumed morally suspect because they are unemployed, or can’t pay their mortgage, or can’t keep food on the table.
January 2, 2014
Free-market capitalists, which apparently is just about any Republican these days, tell us government is too burdensome to businesses and we need to cut taxes. Their standard message for how to get the economy moving is to cut taxes and get government out of the way. There’s just one problem, the economy, at least as measured by the major stock indexes, finished 2013 with tremendous gains, and that means the personal economy of so-called “job creators” is doing quite well. How’s your personal economy coming along?
December 5, 2013
Would you like to make an extra $50,000, $75,000, or $100,000 dollars a year? I know I would. Would you like a yearly income of $75,000, $150,000, or $300,000? In reality, most Americans make far less than even the lowest amount I listed. In 2012, the median income in America was $51,017, which was down slightly from 51,100 the year before. The poverty rate was 15%, which is over 45 million people. For the bottom 90% of the country, wages have been flat for the past three decades compared to top percent earners who have seen their income double, triple and more.