Angela Merkel’s 16-year German chancellorship has finally come to an end. Though she presented herself as the sensible and stabilizing force in Europe, her tenure was characterized by economic neglect, obstruction, and brutal austerity.
The nation’s original failure to “build back better” was Reconstruction, the attempt to radically remake society in the wake of the Civil War. Then as now, the most powerful people in the country went out of their way to maintain the status quo.
Global pharmaceutical companies sell their medications in every country around the world. But only in the US do they get away with charging the extortionate prices Americans have become familiar with.
If people like Joe Biden and Marco Rubio actually cared about Cuban lives, they would lift the crippling blockade and end the 62-year-old US war against Cuba.
Twenty years ago, Barbara Lee cast the lone vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force — the blank check for endless war Congress gave George W. Bush after 9/11. She's been vindicated by history. Those who pushed the "War on Terror" have not.
Presidents Obama and Biden yukked it up this weekend in a video celebrating the Affordable Care Act. But the real thrust of Obamacare was always finding ways to pretend to address the health care crisis while protecting the health insurers fueling it.
True, the parameters of American liberalism have clearly shifted. But Joe Biden’s actions in his first 100 days have revealed an administration whose most fundamental objective is to restore the Republic to its pre-Trump state — not to undertake its reconstruction along totally different grounds.
Filmmaker and entrepreneur Tyler Perry is a billionaire. His Atlanta studios receive massive tax write-offs, premised on the idea that his success will inspire others. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a liberal version of trickle-down economics.
As Israel continues to raze Gaza, Biden has set two aims for his administration: to provide unconditional support to Israel and prevent a regional war. It will be hard for the US to achieve both aims.
Talk of Joe Biden as a transformational president is getting ahead of itself. Historically, labor law reform has triggered some of the fiercest battles from business — and Joe Biden has shown no evidence he’ll go to the mat for the PRO Act, the most transformative piece of labor legislation in decades.
National electoral campaigns are mainly staffed by political junkies from elite universities — exactly the opposite of much of the US public. No wonder they’re so bad at reaching working-class voters.
Bernie Sanders is absolutely right to insist we should ignore the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling against a minimum wage increase. Reducing poverty is far more important than adhering to fusty, old Senate rules.
Don’t count right-wing populism out. While technocrats have seen their fortunes rise under lockdown, the sense of national decline and disarray that first brought leaders like Donald Trump to power still has a bright future.
The Republican Party is frozen in place, unable to move beyond Donald Trump but unsure of what to do even if it could. The Democratic establishment is firmly in charge of their party. We’re stuck in a bankrupt interregnum — with little chance of breaking free one way or the other anytime soon.
PAYGO, which requires legislation to be funded by either tax increases or spending cuts, is one of the worst legacies of Nancy Pelosi’s speakership. It needs to be abolished, along with the disastrous austerity politics that underpins it.
It hasn’t taken long for Joe Biden to get down to the business of preparing to assume the presidency — by drawing staff from hawkish think tanks financed by arms companies.
In last week’s election, the Democrats performed terribly, despite running during a period of unprecedented crisis against a uniquely unpopular president. Donald Trump’s four years of demagoguery and corporate giveaways should have been easy to run against — but the Democratic Party is unwilling and unable to pose an alternative.
With the Trump presidency thankfully in its death throes, Joe Biden and the Democratic leadership are in thrall to a dangerous illusion that they can take the country back to the political world of 2015 as if nothing happened. They’re about to learn that they’ve won a Pyrrhic victory.
The US political system was intentionally set up to thwart popular democracy. To win Medicare for All or any other transformative measures, we’ll need to push for radical political reform that finally democratizes the country’s institutions.
Bloodred skies. Entire towns torched. The West Coast wildfires are the latest proof that we have no alternative to a Green New Deal — and that the urgency, in the face of increasingly apocalyptic conditions, is mounting rapidly.