Why Public Debt Does Not Equal Credit Card Debt

The Article: Why Public Debt Is Not Like Credit Card Debt by Robert Kuttner in Reuters.

The Text: One big part of the well-financed campaign for economic austerity is the contention that the public debt is like a national credit card. If we keep charging on it, the argument goes, we’ll get overwhelmed with interest costs, suffer a reduced standard of living and, pretty soon, go bankrupt.

As David Walker, a prominent budget hawk and the former head of the billion-dollar Peter G. Peterson Foundation, has contended, “Both Republicans and Democrats in Washington have charged everything to the nation’s credit card, including tax cuts and spending increases, without paying for them.”

The Peterson Foundation is the leading sponsor of this brand of bogus economics. It is a spurious metaphor on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin.

Continue Reading

SCOTUS: Off With Their Robes!

One septuagenarian’s dying request: take off the robes, Supreme Court. Fair enough, but let’s do our best to keep Antonin Scalia fully clothed.

The Absurd Contradictions Of Capitalism

And yet, even in light of these facts it’s still unfair for us to ask the über-elite to pay a little more into the system from which they’ve benefited inordinately.

Revolutionary Language

The Article: Revolutionary Language by Charles M. Blow in The New York Times.

The Text: Listen closely.

That sound you hear is the sound of a cultural paranoia by people who have lost their grip on the reins of power, and on reality, and who fear the worst is coming.

And they are preparing for it, whatever it may be — a war, a revolution, an apocalypse.

Continue Reading

What’s The Greatest Threat To America? It’s Not A Bomb

Tavis Smiley on the paralyzing levels of poverty that have American democracy in a chokehold.