Tag Archives | Obama

Income inequality: a new look

By on March 7, 2012 in Economics, General Discussion

From an article in The Economist on the sidebar (‘Income Inequality: Growing Apart), there is commentary and a link to new research by Emmanuel Saez): http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf which gave me some new insights on our current inequality (mostly due not to rentier income as in the Gilded Age but compensation to valued employees as well as [...]

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Obama’s Unprecedented War on Whistleblowers

By on February 9, 2012 in General Discussion, Politics

Most people here are probably already familiar with some aspects of the Obama administration’s obsessive fight against government transparency.  For example, his Justice Department has brought more prosecutions against people on espionage charges for mishandling government information than all prior administrations combined.  He locked up one alleged whistle-blower for over a year, in conditions that [...]

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The Terror of Cowards

By on February 1, 2012 in General Discussion, International affairs, Politics

I recently read a piece by John Yoo about Obama’s decision to defy the War Powers Resolution in order to wage his undeclared war on Libya.  Yoo was the Bush administration’s go-to lawyer for pushing the idea that the president should be able to do pretty much anything he feels like doing, as long as [...]

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Bruins Goalie Refuses to Visit White House

By on January 26, 2012 in General Discussion, Human Behavior, Politics

The goalie for the world champion Boston Bruins, a right-wing whack-job named Tim Thomas, recently refused to join his teammates for the traditional trip to meet with the president.  He made no secret about the fact his refusal was due to his personal dislike of the president and his policies.  You’d be hard-pressed to find [...]

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Krugman and Obama

By on January 25, 2012 in Human Behavior, Politics

I reread the last couple of chapters of  “That Used to be Us” by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, because I realized I couldn’t remember how the book ended. There is a chapter with some forgettable recommendations and a final 9-page summary. The summary chapter “Rediscovering America” is interesting in that one can find, with [...]

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The Monster in the Oval Office

By on January 24, 2012 in General Discussion, Human Behavior, Politics

I want to like Barack Obama.  Really I do — if only because the realistic alternatives are so horrible.  But he does more than any figure I can think of to make me focus on the term “evil” in the cliche “the lesser of two evils.”  He is a terrible human being — among the [...]

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Maybe Obama isn’t quite as bad as he seems

By on October 30, 2011 in General Discussion, Politics

Far from being merely a continuation of Bush’s second term–which can be seen most obviously in the financial bailouts and the continuation/expansion  of Bush’s wars and tax cuts, Mettler tries to make the case that Obama did attempt some fundamental reforms of what she calls the ‘submerged state’: little known subsidies for the rich and [...]

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