By Robert Reich – The Constitution of the United States is clear: Article II Section 2 says the President “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint … judges to the Supreme Court.” It doesn’t say the President can’t appoint in the final year of his term of…
By Neal Gabler – Ah, the crescendo of complaint! The Republican establishment and the mainstream media, working hand in hand in their unprecedented, non-stop assault on the “short-fingered vulgarian” named Donald Trump, would have you believe that Trump augurs the destruction of the Republican Party. Former Reagan speechwriter and now Wall Street Journal/CBS pundit Peggy…
By Robert Reich – I’ve been reluctant to use the “f†word to describe Donald Trump because it’s especially harsh, and it’s too often used carelessly. But Trump has finally reached a point where parallels between his presidential campaign and the fascists of the first half of the 20th century – lurid figures such as…
The mainstream media is to blame for Donald Trump’s rise, but not for the reasons most people think – By Neal Gabler – It is more than a little ironic that the Republican Establishment and the mainstream media are both now in full panic mode over the possibility of Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination.…
By Robert Reich – Step back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred. A 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist, who wasn’t even a Democrat until recently, has come within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed…
By Robert Reich – 1. Cruz is more fanatical. Sure, Trump is a bully and bigot, but he doesn’t hew to any sharp ideological line. Cruz is a fierce ideologue: He denies the existence of man-made climate change, rejects same-sex marriage, wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, believes the 2nd amendment guarantees everyone a…
By Robert Reich – A few days ago, Neel Kashkari – now president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, who was the senior Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations helping to save the big Wall Street banks – said “I believe the biggest banks are still too big to…
By Eugene Robinson – The South Carolina Republican primary may well be Jeb Bush’s last stand. He described the situation — polls show him trailing badly, following weak performances in Iowa and New Hampshire — in typical Bushian syntax: “It’s all been decided, apparently,” he harrumphed this week in Summerville, a town near Charleston. “The…
By Robert Reich – I’m writing to you today to announce the death of the Republican Party. It is no longer a living, vital, animate organization. It died in 2016. RIP. It has been replaced by warring tribes: Evangelicals opposed to abortion, gay marriage, and science. Libertarians opposed to any government constraint on private behavior.…
By Robert Reich – In 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama promised progressive change if elected President, his primary opponent, then-Senator Hillary Clinton, derided him. “The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,†she…
By Edgar Wilson – America has another chance to learn from developing regions threatened by a dangerous virus. The mosquito-borne Zika virus, normally found across central Africa and Southeast Asia, has been turning up in more and more countries throughout the Americas, with its biggest footprint in Brazil. In roughly three-quarters of all cases, Zika…
By Michael Moore – When I was a child, they said there was no way this majority-Protestant country of ours would ever elect a Catholic as president. And then John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected president. The next decade, they said America would not elect a president from the Deep South. The last person to do…
By Robert Reich – The Democratic contest has repeatedly been characterized as a choice between Hillary Clinton’s “pragmatism†and Bernie Sanders’s “idealism†– with the not-so-subtle message that realists choose pragmatism over idealism. But this way of framing the choice ignores the biggest reality of all: the unprecedented, and increasing, concentration of income, wealth and…
By Walter Simon – We seem to be a society living in denial when it comes to a lot of things. It’s as if we are sitting there eating and drinking at a downtown restaurant, lost in the enjoyment of the immediate surroundings, but since our world is obviously become like the Twilight Zone we…
By Walter Simon – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The last time I was in the vicinity of the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham was in the winter of 2012 at the occupy camp we set up, wrapping around the corner sidewalk of 20th and 5th avenue north in front of the entrance to Regions bank. The bus…
Taking over a federal building at the point of a rifle gives protest a bad name – By John Kiriakou – The armed men occupying an isolated federal building in a remote Oregon bird sanctuary say they won’t leave until the federal government stops its “tyranny.” Yet it’s not clear what that tyranny is, exactly.…
By Robert Reich – If you haven’t yet seen “The Big Short” – directed and co-written by Adam McKay, based on the non-fiction prize-winning book by Michael Lewis about the housing and credit bubble that triggered the Great Recession — I recommend you do so. Not only is the movie an enjoyable (if that’s the…
By Robert Reich – Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good, but I’ll hazard a guess. I expect the U.S. economy to sputter in 2016. That’s because the economy faces a deep structural problem: not enough demand for all the goods and services it’s capable of producing. American consumers account for almost 70 percent…
By Curtis Seltzer – BLUE GRASS, Va. — Six months ago, I wrote that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would be the nominees for president in 2016. Those predictions seemed far-fetched at the time. Now, Trump seems nearfetched, and Sanders is running a stubborn second to Hillary Clinton. Both Trump and Sanders have gotten stronger…
By Robert Reich – What’s at stake this election year? Let me put as directly as I can. America has succumbed to a vicious cycle in which great wealth translates into political power, which generates even more wealth, and even more power. This spiral is most apparent is declining tax rates on corporations and on…
