Archive for December, 2009

In April 1962, when U.S. Steel and five other steel corporations unilaterally decided to jack up their prices and squelch an intricate set of compromises that the Kennedy Administration had expended a great deal of effort in negotiating, President John F. Kennedy responded with an aggressive counter attack that shocked the Washington press establishment. He… »

Paul Krugman recently penned an insightful article where he argues that the 1999-2009 decade should be called the “Big Zero” decade because over the course of ten years there was no real job growth or notable “progress” in tackling any of the nation’s problems. But Krugman’s view, I’m afraid, is overly optimistic. What we had… »

On the 30th anniversary of the ill-fated Soviet invasion of Afghanistan another lesson in armchair military sophistry graces the op-ed pages of the New York Times. This time around it’s not Benny Morris who is calling for military aggression against Iran to stop its nuclear program but another armchair general from the academy, Alan Kuperman…. »

A forty-vote Republican minority in the United States Senate controls the destiny of all legislation aimed at addressing the nation’s most pressing needs after eight miserable years of Republican misrule and malfeasance. Welcome to California America! Here in Sacramento only thirteen Republican state senators control legislation relating to the state’s finances. In Washington it’s the… »

President Barack Obama’s Nobel lecture last Thursday in Oslo shows he understands that “peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict.” “Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting,” he said. Hearing a president say this is mind blowing and illustrates the side of… »

Fanciful prescriptions for “success.” Voters who value peace demoralized. Siding with war hawks to triangulate against progressives. Another $30 billion the American people will have nothing to show for.
As Kurt Vonnegut used to say, “So it goes.”
President Barack Obama has decided to prolong the debilitating American military commitment to Afghanistan. He is sending another thirty… »

Like the GI Bill that gave access to a college degree for the first time to a generation of Americans, the creation of the California State University system fifty years ago did the same for Californians. In the decades that followed there was an explosion of innovation in all fields and an era of unprecedented… »