Gun Shy Democrats
(From The Progressive Populist)Some Democratic members of Congress aren’t ready to sign off just yet on the gun control package supported by President Obama and Democratic leaders. Sen. Dianne...
View ArticleSave the Postal Service
From The Progressive PopulistThe announcement that Postmaster General Patrick Donahue plans to stop delivery of first class mail on Saturdays, starting in August, marks the latest turn in a long-term...
View ArticleThe Debt Alarm Sham
From The Progressive PopulistDemocrats and Republicans alike depicted a hellscape if the federal budget “sequester” was allowed to take effect on March 1. The only difference is that Republicans were...
View ArticleToo Timid to Nail
From The Progressive PopulistAttorney General Eric Holder thinks the biggest banks on Wall Street are not only too big to fail, but also too big to jail, even when they are caught laundering illicit...
View ArticleEditorial: Truth in a Time of B.S.
From The Progressive PopulistOn the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, it’s easy to forget how uncritical the corporate media were of the Bush-Cheney administration’s claims during the runup to...
View ArticleDems Should Fear Left
From The Progressive PopulistIt is useful for working people to know they cannot trust President Obama to protect Social Security and Medicare as he pursues a “Grand Bargain” with Republicans to...
View ArticleStop Business As Usual
From The Progressive PopulistWest, Texas, is a pleasant small town with about 2,800 residents about 20 miles north of Waco in Central Texas. Until April 17 it was best known for the Czech heritage of...
View Article'Scandals' Don't Stick
From The Progressive PopulistRepublican attempts to gin up controversy over last year’s attacks at Benghazi and IRS targeting of Tea Party groups were helped by sloppy reporting by the corporate...
View ArticleSpy Business Scandal
From The Progressive PopulistThe scandal in the revelation that the National Security Agency is scooping up data from millions of phone calls and emails daily is not so much that the surveillance...
View ArticleLighten College Costs
From The Progressive PopulistFederal student loan interest rates doubled on July 1 because Republicans would not agree to a proposal by Democratic Senate leaders to keep the loan rates at 3.4%. The...
View ArticleBig Business Drives ‘Stand Your Ground’
From The Progressive PopulistRacial divisions exposed by the trial of George Zimmerman for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida plays into the interests of the corporate sponsors of the Stand...
View ArticleBust the Privatizers
From The Progressive PopulistAttorney General Eric Holder is on the right track with his order for federal prosecutors to stop seeking draconian sentences on run-of-the-mill drug cases, but efforts in...
View ArticleStand Up to Bullies
From The Progressive PopulistWhen we were children, we were told we had to stand up to schoolyard bullies, and sometimes the only thing that would cause a bully to back off was to bloody his...
View ArticleDeath Panel’s Last Stand?
From The Progressive PopulistSenate Democrats agree to job-killing austerity budget cuts, but it’s not enough for Republicans in the House.In his professed crusade to derail Obamacare, Sen. Ted Cruz,...
View ArticleGOP: Saboteurs or Morons?
From The Progressive PopulistIt would be amusing if it weren’t so maddening that Republicans blame President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the federal government shutdown and House...
View ArticleObamacare Survives
From The Progressive PopulistJohn Boehner’s miserable performance as the nominal head of the House of Representatives during the recent showdown over the budget and debt ceiling has enhanced his claim...
View ArticleWhose Credibility Gap?
From The Progressive PopulistDid President Obama tell a whopper when he told voters in 2012, “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health care plan”?The White House clearly knew that some...
View ArticleSwindlers Get Reprieve
From The Progressive PopulistConservatives are betting big on the failure of the Affordable Care Act. They seem to think that if they can sabotage the health reforms, not only will it cause the general...
View ArticleNo ‘Fast Track’ for Secret Trade Deal
See The Progressive Populist.The Obama administration, its corporate partners and a dozen Pacific nations have been negotiating behind closed doors on a massive trade agreement that, among other...
View ArticleLearn From History
From The Progressive PopulistIf, as the French poet Baudelaire once wrote, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist, the greatest trick that plutocrats ever...
View ArticleCorporate Chemical Spills
From The Progressive PopulistOn Jan. 9, the US House of Representatives passed HR 2279, which would gut the nation’s hazardous waste regulations. This bill, called the Reducing Excessive Deadline...
View ArticleFood Fight Fizzles
From The Progressive PopulistThe $956 billion farm bill that President Obama signed into law on Feb. 7, after three years of wrangling and brinksmanship between the House and Senate, got mixed reviews...
View ArticleMake Businesses Pay Their Way
From The Progressive PopulistPresident Obama got the ball rolling on a much-needed increase in the minimum wage with his Feb. 12 executive order that federal contractors pay at least $10.10 an hour....
View ArticleGOP Needs 'Obamacare' Backlash
From The Progressive PopulistThe Big Lies Republicans tell about “Obamacare” may have helped Republicans hold onto Florida’s 13th Congressional District in a special election March 11 as right wingers...
View ArticleDon't Skimp on Climate
Conservatives have made a fetish of cutting domestic spending in the federal budget in their professed desire to reduce the national debt. The Republican obsession with debt is a relatively recent...
View ArticleGOP Wrong Again on Affordable Care
From The Progressive PopulistAfter the frenzied finish of the first enrollment period under the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration on April 1 triumphantly announced that more than 7.1...
View ArticleKeep the Internet Open
(From The Progressive Populist)The Federal Communications Commission is considering a controversial proposal that would allow major Internet service providers, such as Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T...
View ArticleSelective Outrage on VA
From The Progressive PopulistThere is bipartisan outrage over charges that veterans seeking health care at Veterans Health Administration clinics were forced to wait much longer than two weeks to be...
View ArticleLet's Clear the Air
From The Progressive PopulistPresident Obama rightly took the initiative in imposing limits on carbon pollution from power plants. Fossil fuel producers are screaming bloody murder, but the consensus...
View ArticleNext Stop Single Payer
From The Progressive PopulistThe infamous Hobby Lobby decision satisfied nobody. On June 30 five old men on the Supreme Court decided that corporate owners can overrule physicians and insurance...
View ArticleLet the Kids In / Defund the Gangs
From The Progressive PopulistReports that approximately 60,000 children have made the trek north from danger-plagued barrios in Central America to the Texas border have really brought out the...
View ArticleStill Cleaning Up After W
From The Progressive PopulistPresident Obama has sensibly resisted attempts to draw him into the civil war in Syria and to militarize confrontations with Iran and Russia, but former Vice President Dick...
View ArticleObama Should Rediscover His Inner Roosevelts
From The Progressive PopulistKen Burns produced another excellent documentary series for PBS with his seven-part biography of the Roosevelt family which helped mold the government of the modern United...
View ArticleHealth Obstruction Breeds Contagion
From The Progressive PopulistThe best thing Americans can do to eliminate the threat of the deadly Ebola virus in the United States would be to hasten the implementation of the Affordable Care Act so...
View ArticlePublic Needs Facts, Nurses Need Union
From The Progressive PopulistRepublicans and corporate media have sown fear with rampant misinformation on the Ebola threat. They blame federal authorities for failing to prepare local hospitals to...
View ArticleDems Need Populist Pitch
From The Progressive PopulistGive the Republicans credit: They did a much better job of focusing the rage of the American electorate than Democrats did. Republicans have succeeded in their strategy of...
View ArticleWhose Butt Gets Kicked?
When Republicans gained the Senate majority in the recent midterm elections to consolidate congressional leadership under the GOP, it became apparent that, come January, either President Barack Obama’s...
View ArticleLeft Needs Sanders
From The Progressive PopulistAs we start to consider prospects for the 2016 presidential race, progressive Democrats who are unsettled at the prospect of Hillary Clinton sweeping to the Democratic...
View ArticleCongress Heads for Trouble
From The Progressive PopulistIn the first week of the 114th Congress, the new Republican overlords acted to undermine the Affordable Care Act; set up a Social Security funding crisis; require President...
View ArticleWhose Good Old Days?
From The Progressive PopulistWhen Republicans — particularly teabaggers — say they want to go back to the good old days, you have to question what they mean. After all, the greatest period of...
View ArticleDerail Trans-Pacific Pact
Democratic members of Congress need to stiffen their spines and, when it comes to vote on fast-tracking consideration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they must say no to President Obama. Principled...
View ArticleReaping the Whirlwind
From The Progressive PopulistPresident Obama has been opposed almost entirely down the line by Republicans ever since their leaders met at the high-dollar Caucus Room restaurant the night of Obama’s...
View ArticleTreacherous Opposition
From The Progressive PopulistThe letter written by freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), which seeks to undermine President Obama during sensitive negotiations with Iranian officials over their nuclear...
View ArticleDems Need Prez Race
From The Progressive PopulistSome progressive Democrats are starting to freak out that Hillary Clinton might have a clear route to the Democratic presidential nomination without a serious...
View ArticleSteer Left with Sanders
From The Progressive PopulistWith the entry of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination for president, it’s time for progressive populists to show their game.Sanders, 73, is a...
View ArticleStop TPP in the House
From The Progressive PopulistPresident Obama finally got the bipartisan deal of the sort he has been pursuing for over six years on May 22 when the Republican Senate approved a “fast-track” process to...
View ArticleObamacare Assassins
From The Progressive PopulistRepublicans are prepared to blame President Obama in case the Supreme Court strikes down subsidies for 6.4 million Americans who get their health insurance from exchanges...
View ArticleDon't Cry Crocodile Tears on Healthcare Mergers, Open a Public Option
From The Progressive Populist.Republican misleaders were disappointed on June 25 when Obamacare survived another right-wing challenge, as the Supreme Court on a 6-3 vote ruled that an apparent drafting...
View ArticleObama Earns His Nobel
From The Progressive PopulistPresident Obama finally earned the Nobel Peace Prize he was given in 2009 and it’s driving Republicans crazy.Secretary of State John Kerry also deserves credit for leading...
View ArticleAnger Babies Roil GOP
From The Progressive PopulistDonald Trump has staked out a so-far successful campaign to attract American xenophobes, white supremacists and low-information voters who form an increasingly large base...
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