Robert Scheer from Creators Syndicate

Elections Are for Suckers for 02/09/2012

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Elections are for suckers. Let's just dip our fingers in purple ink and pose for photos now that voting has the same significance for us as it had for those Iraqis who got conned into thinking they were participating in some grand democratic experiment.

Our own elections — the ones our government has modeled for the world — are a hoax. What other word should we use to describ ...

Updated: Thu Feb 09, 2012

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The Democrats Who Unleashed Wall Street and Got Away With It for 02/02/2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

That Lawrence Summers, a president emeritus of Harvard, is a consummate distorter of fact and logic is not a revelation. That he and Bill Clinton, the president he served as Treasury secretary, can still get away with disclaiming responsibility for our financial meltdown is an insult to reason.

Yet, there they go again. Clinton is presented, in a fawning cover story in the current editio ...

Updated: Thu Feb 02, 2012

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Obama's Faux Populism Sounds Like Bill Clinton for 01/26/2012

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I'll admit it: Listening to Barack Obama, I am ready to enlist in his campaign against the feed-the-rich Republicans ... until I recall that I once responded in the same way to Bill Clinton's faux populism. And then I get angry because betrayal by the "good guys" for whom I have ended up voting has become the norm.

Yes, betrayal, because if Obama meant what he said in Tuesday's ...

Updated: Thu Jan 26, 2012

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There's Hope for Republicans Yet for 01/12/2012

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

There is a full-blown debate going on in, of all places, the Republican Party about the failings of the governing, corporate-sponsored kleptocracy. Not so on the Democratic side. Spared a primary battle, the incumbent president need not defend his economic record, which is basically a redo of the save-Wall-Street-first stance initiated by his Republican predecessor.

That bipartisan estab ...

Updated: Thu Jan 12, 2012

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Arms Dealer Obama Will Win by Default for 01/05/2012

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Barack Obama will be re-elected not as a vindication of his policies but because the Republicans are incapable of providing a reasonable challenge to his flawed performance. On the central issue of our time — reining in the greed of the multinational corporations, led by the financial sector and the defense industry — a Republican presidential victor, with the possible exception of ...

Updated: Thu Jan 05, 2012

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Marginalizing Ron Paul for 12/29/2011

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

It is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration. According to a New York Times editorial, "Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the ...

Updated: Thu Dec 29, 2011

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On to the Next ‘Bubble Fantasy' for 12/22/2011

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Few journalists have greater influence on U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding the Middle East, than the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. But his tortured obit of a column this week on the official end of the neocolonialist disaster that has been the Iraq occupation reminds one that the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner often gets it wrong.

Was the U.S.-led invasion of Ira ...

Updated: Thu Dec 22, 2011

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Christopher Hitchens: Reason in Revolt for 12/16/2011

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Hitch is dead. Not, obviously, his brilliant body of work, or the stunning examples of a grand and unfettered intellect that will forever survive him, as will the indelible record of his immense wit and passion. But, sadly, a life force that I had assumed as an indissoluble part of our political and literary landscape, as well as my own close circle of friends, has ended, and with it an indispe ...

Updated: Fri Dec 16, 2011

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There Goes the Republic for 12/15/2011

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Once again, the gods of war have united our Congress like nothing else. Unable to agree on the minimal spending necessary to save our economy, schools, medical system or infrastructure, the cowards who mislead us have retreated to the irrationalities of what George Washington in his farewell address condemned as "pretended patriotism."

The defense authorization bill that Congre ...

Updated: Thu Dec 15, 2011

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Government-Sponsored Sinner for 12/08/2011

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Who would have thought that Republican voters would prove so accepting of sin? At least when it's committed by a white guy, like the serial philanderer Newt Gingrich, who betrayed not one but two wives while they were enduring serious medical difficulties.

In the latest New York Times/CBS poll of Iowa Republicans, alleged philanderer Herman Cain's once impressive support shifts to the ne ...

Updated: Thu Dec 08, 2011

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You Can Arrest an Idea for 12/01/2011

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The bankers slept well. Their homes in Beverly Hills were not spotlighted by a noisy swarm of police helicopters, searchlights burning through the sanctity of the night, harassing the forlorn City Hall encampment of those who dared protest the banks' seizure of our government. I live within sight of the iconic Los Angeles City Hall, and at first I thought it was being used once again as a movie ...

Updated: Thu Dec 01, 2011

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The Villain Occupy Wall Street Has Been Waiting for for 11/17/2011

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

In the pantheon of shameless billionaires, Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street banker-turned-business-press-lord-turned-mayor, is now secure at the top. What's so offensive is that someone who abetted Wall Street greed and benefited as much as anyone from it has no compunction about ruthlessly repressing those who dare exercise their constitutional "right of the people peaceably to assemble ...

Updated: Thu Nov 17, 2011

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California Refuses to Accept Obama's Banking Sellout for 11/10/2011

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

There's no three-strikes law for crooked bankers. There's not even a law for a fifth strike, as The New York Times reported in the case of Citigroup, cited last month in a $1 billion fraud case. Unlike the California third-striker I once wrote about whom a district attorney wanted banished forever to state prison for stealing a piece of pizza from the plate of a person dining outdoors, Citigrou ...

Updated: Thu Nov 10, 2011

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Too Big to Jail for 11/03/2011

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Can we all agree that a $1 billion swindle represents a lot of money? Can we also agree that the fact that Citigroup last week conceded to pay a $285 million fine to settle SEC charges for "misleading investors" demonstrates a damning admission of culpability?

So why has Robert Rubin, the onetime treasury secretary who went on to become Citigroup chairman during the time of the ...

Updated: Thu Nov 03, 2011

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30 Years of Unleashed Greed for 10/27/2011

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

It is class warfare.

It was not begun, however, by the tear-gassed, rain-soaked protesters asserting their constitutionally guaranteed right of peaceful assembly. Rather, this war was sparked by the financial overlords who control all of the major levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is they who subverted the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders in control of their ...

Updated: Thu Oct 27, 2011

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Let Them Eat Keller for 10/20/2011

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Funny, he doesn't look like Marie Antoinette. But when former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller asks his readers if they are "bored by the soggy sleep-ins and warmed-over anarchism of Occupy Wall Street," it displays the arrogance of disoriented royal privilege.

Perhaps his contempt for anti-corporate protesters was honed by the example of his father, once the chairma ...

Updated: Thu Oct 20, 2011

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If a Republican Were President … for 10/13/2011

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

If a Republican were president, there would be millions of properly coiffed middle-class Democrats and independents at those Occupy Wall Street marches, and no questions asked as to what they really want. With 25 million Americans unable to find full-time work, 50 million whose homeownership dream has turned into the nightmare of foreclosure, and an all-time high of 46.2 million — includi ...

Updated: Thu Oct 13, 2011

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What Do They Want? Justice for 10/06/2011

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

How can anyone possessed of the faintest sense of social justice not thrill to the Occupy Wall Street movement now spreading throughout the country? One need not be religiously doctrinaire to recognize this as a come-to-Jesus moment, when the money-changers stand exposed and the victims of their avarice are at long last offered succor.

Not that any of the protesters have gone so far as t ...

Updated: Thu Oct 06, 2011

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The Men We Trusted to Lead Us Have Failed for 09/29/2011

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Now he tells us.

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke referred to the nation's unemployment rate as a "national crisis," a depressing if obvious fact of life for the 25 million Americans who have been unsuccessfully attempting to find full-time employment.

But to finally hear those words from the man George W. Bush and Barack Obama both appointed to lead u ...

Updated: Thu Sep 29, 2011

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Murder Is Good Politics, Bad Justice for 09/22/2011

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

I don't know if Troy Davis, who was executed Wednesday by the state of Georgia, was innocent. But I do know that the evidence demanding a re-examination of his conviction, including the recanted testimony of most of the witnesses against him, was overwhelming.

Of course, that's now beside the point, which is exactly what is so wrong about the use of the death penalty. No matter what evid ...

Updated: Thu Sep 22, 2011

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