(Informed Comment) – Many US citizens take comfort in the conviction that progress toward democracy has been steady even if stalled or even periodically reversed. History is on our side. Early in the post Revolutionary period the right to vote was extended to all white men, even those who held no property. Women achieved the […]
Nuclear Brinkmanship is Back: Why We need a New Peace Movement
(Informed Comment) – MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is truly mad. At the height of the Cold War some military analysts and planners maintained that parity in weapons that would destroy civilization prevented either side from resort to those weapons. Parity, however, is a slippery concept, especially in an environment where science and engineering are continually […]
Resetting the Nuclear Doomsday Clock
(Informed Comment) – Earlier this year the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset its famous doomsday clock to 2 minutes to midnight. Though the journal’s concerns about nuclear war and/or climate catastrophe were well taken, they received little media attention beyond some discussion of the perils of pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. And […]
Labor Strikes, once Blunted by GOP and Corporations, are Back and Shaping Public Policy
If President Trump does try to start back up the government shutdown this month, he may face an insuperable obstacle. Just days before the (temporary?) ending of the government shutdown long time left scholar and activist Barbara Ehrenreich and former Teamster organizer Gary Stevenson urged TSA workers to go out on strike. Days later Sara […]
Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Right that Tax Justice is Key to our Democratic Prospect?
There is surprisingly widespread support for higher taxes on the rich. Americans have typically felt that one should keep what one earns. Many are also convinced that they will one day become rich, hence the popularity of lotteries, which reflect and help sustain that belief. Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy and […]
Why isn’t anyone Asking *Why* the French Yellow Vest Protesters are Rallying?
(Informed Comment) – While Americans have been preoccupied by the nostalgic reminiscence and burial of a former President, French citizens have been engaged in mass civil disobedience enacted by the gilets juanes or “Yellow Vests,” the roadside safety vests French drivers are required to have. This action reflects and exposes social divisions barely recognized and […]
Defeating the Fasc-Lican Party
After the election I received a provocative letter from my friend and mentor Bill Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins and author of Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism. Bill has had a long and distinguished career in academia—and in activism. As a graduate student at Michigan he helped […]
After Mitch McConnell’s coup: Democratizing the Court, Democratizing America
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell treats the exercise of the democratic right peacefully to assemble as mob rule. This exercise in democratic liberty that McConnell abhors has been necessitated because our democracy is seriously flawed—thanks in part to the anti-democratic coups McConnell’s party and its allies have orchestrated. The Supreme Court, though still the most […]
Men’s Bodies and the Politics of Abortion
(Informed Comment) – Regardless of one’s evaluation of his overall performance, Judge Brett Kavanaugh merits an A for his ability to sidestep or evade questions on any controversial issue. I get the impression that he spent hours practicing non-answer answers to a familiar battery of anticipated questions. Whether these evasions will continue to work in […]
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