Make Wall St. Pay to Play—President Obama’s proposed tax on big Wall Street banks, to recover $117 billion taxpayers lost on the bank bailout, is actually a fee. It’s revenue neutral, sets out to recover a specific amount of money lost in the bailout, and ends in ten years. In contrast, two hundred economists have […]

Read more

Long Time Passing“The other day, I asked a young, but combat-experienced, sergeant where he was on 9/11. And his answer, ‘Getting my braces removed,’ reminded me that it has been more than eight years since 9/11.” General Stanley McChrystal —December 8, 2009 The day after the Fort Hood shootings, a soldier’s wife told National Public […]

Read more

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN golpes de estado—military coups—seemed as common in Latin America as elections. A president would lose the support of the army, the business oligarchy, American corporate interests, Washington, or any combination of the foregoing, and golpistas would depose the president—always promising to restore constitutional government as soon as the domestic tranquility […]

Read more

Another Bush Legacy “In allowing the Israelis and Palestinians to have it out on the ground, and not giving them a diplomatic alternative, thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have lost their lives. And the whole edifice of a peace process that began with Henry Kissinger was destroyed.” —Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk WHEN […]

Read more

The Afghan Dilemma—House Armed Services Committee Chair Ike Skelton (D-MO) describes President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan strategy as “not new” but the “first strategy” in a war that has been under-resourced and “forgotten” since the Bush administration initiated it in 2001. The Afghanistan assessment that General Stanley McChrystal presented to the president reportedly calls for an […]

Read more