Columns
Overall and Core CPI Up 0.1 Percent in May; Overall Index Up 1.8 Percent Over Last Year
By Dean Baker / CEPR. Core inflation, excluding shelter, rose at an annualized rate of just 0.1 percent over the last three months. Inflation remained well-contained in May, with no evidence of serious inflationary pressures outside of rent. The overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose just 0.1 percent in May as the sharp rises in…
Driving Financialization
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Michael Lim Mah Hui / IPS News. KUALA LUMPUR and PENANG, Jun 11 2019 (IPS) – The emergence and growth of financialization from the 1980s has been driven by several factors operating at various levels – national and international, ideological and political, and of course, technological. The 1971 collapse of…
Why an “Apology Tour” Is Needed: An Open Letter to Joe Biden
By Norman Solomon Dear Mr. Biden: News outlets are reporting that you’re determined to prevent your campaign from turning into an “apology tour” this summer. But your only other option is a campaign of denial — sinking deeper into a quagmire of unsustainable pretense. After your flip-flop late last week that finally renounced your 40…
Loyal to their Class, Unhinged from Democracy
By Mike Ferner “Commerce defies every wind, overrides every tempest, invades every zone.”– Chiseled above the entrance to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce As stunning as it may sound, an argument can be made that neither the Nazi Party’s rise to power nor even WWII itself could have happened without the backing of U.S. industry…
Why Joe Biden Was Afraid to Face California’s Democratic Party
By Norman Solomon Joe Biden’s glaring absence from the California Democratic Party convention has thrown a national spotlight on his eagerness to detour around the party’s progressive base. While dodging an overt clash for now, Biden is on a collision course with grassroots Democrats across the country who are learning more about his actual record…
Oppose Doug Ford’s Ontario Schools Budget
By Dudley Paul / Socialist Project. When it comes down to it, the question is what do we want for our schools? The government of Doug Ford is actually quite clear about this. It wants to cut money from schools as well as their neighbourhoods, setting them back on their heels and making them more…
The (Small-d) Democrat’s Dilemma
By Andrew Levine / Counterpunch. The Trump presidency has been a disaster for the country and the world; a second Trump term would be calamitous. The menace must be stopped. The sad fact is, though, that for Trump to lose in 2020, a (big-D) Democrat will have to win. This means that the responsible thing…
Trump’s Trade War With China Is Waged to Make the Rich Richer
By Dean Baker / CEPR. Donald Trump seems determined to double down and keep pressing forward on his trade war with China. He promises more and higher tariffs, apparently not realizing that U.S. consumers are the ones paying these taxes — not China’s government or corporations. While tariffs clearly impose a cost on people in…
Will Biden’s Dog Whistles for Racism Catch Up with Him?
By Norman Solomon In a party that officially condemns dog-whistle appeals to racism, Joe Biden is running on Orwellian eggshells. Whether he can win the Democratic presidential nomination may largely depend on the extent of “doublethink” that George Orwell described in 1984 as the willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.” It is…
Springtime for Biden and Democrats
By Andrew Levine / Counterpunch. Summertime is coming; the “debate” season is near. It will not taper off on until the primaries and party caucuses get underway. What a dreary prospect! Take heart, though, in the fact that, in this post-midterms world, with the Zeitgeist moving boldly and unashamedly to the left, some good could come…