Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Saturday, November 06, 2010
Left-Center Political Parties Pay the Price for Bailing Out the Bankster's / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
James Petras writes: The November 2, 2010 electoral debacle of the Democratic Party in the US cannot be solely ascribed to the failed policies of President Obama, the Congressional leadership or their senior economic advisers. Nor is the demise of what passes for the American “center-left” confined to the US – it is a world-wide pattern, expressed in countries as diverse as Greece, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain and Japan.
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Saturday, November 06, 2010
ForeclosureGate Could Force Bank Nationalization / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
For two years, politicians have danced around the nationalization issue, but ForeclosureGate may be the last straw. The megabanks are too big to fail, but they aren’t too big to reorganize as federal institutions serving the public interest.
In January 2009, only a week into Obama’s presidency, David Sanger reported in The New York Times that nationalizing the banks was being discussed. Privately, the Obama economic team was conceding that more taxpayer money was going to be needed to shore up the banks. When asked whether nationalization was a good idea, House speaker Nancy Pelosi replied:
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Saturday, November 06, 2010
QE2 and U.S. China Politics, Shrewd as Serpents / Politics / GeoPolitics
Everyone has heard about the Prisoners' Dilemma before, I suppose. For those who don't know, here is the gist: It is about a situation between two players that if they cooperate, they will get the biggest benefit. However, if one decides to cooperate yet get betrayed later, he will suffer more than if he simply betrayed the other guy in the first place. Logically, the two players should simply cooperate, but sometimes when you are uncertain about the other player's sincerity, the situation becomes tricky.
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Friday, November 05, 2010
Russian's Forget What they Were Celebrating on November 4th / Politics / Russia
What is Russia celebrating on November 4th? According to sociologists, many of Russia's residents simply have no idea what the Day of National Unity is. And yet this is not a new holiday of the post-perestroika era designed to replace the October Revolution Day on November 7. The history of this day counts over three centuries.
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Friday, November 05, 2010
Democrats Prepare to Move to the Right / Politics / US Politics
On the eve of the Republican-dominated mid-term election, working people were told to vote Democrat to prevent a "truly dangerous" Republican party from taking power. There is an element of truth in this: the Republican Party has been sprinting to the far right for decades, to the point where they are incapable of speaking sensibly about political issues.
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Thursday, November 04, 2010
Taxing the Rich to Cure the Governments Debt Crisis? / Politics / Taxes
This week's episode of 60 Minutes featured a 13-minute segment on "taxing the rich" in order to cure the government's debt problem. In addition to being an outrageously biased story, the coverage was filled with more economic fallacies than I can address in a single article.
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Thursday, November 04, 2010
The World Looks at Obama After the U.S. Midterm Election / Politics / US Politics
The 2010 U.S. midterm elections were held, and the results were as expected: The Republicans took the House but did not take the Senate. The Democrats have such a small margin in the Senate, however, that they cannot impose cloture, which means the Republicans can block Obama administration initiatives in both houses of Congress. At the same time, the Republicans cannot override presidential vetoes alone, so they cannot legislate, either. The possible legislative outcomes are thus gridlock or significant compromises.
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Thursday, November 04, 2010
U.S. Midterm Elections Further Demonstrates The Need for Revolution / Politics / US Politics
The Obama referendum came in and he got what he deserved. When you run on change and leave the same criminals in positions of power and don’t hold anyone accountable for obvious crimes, and allow them to continue to commit those crimes, you deserve to lose your power. This is what happens when you put Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in charge of the economy, and support Ben Bernanke for reconfirmation as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
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Thursday, November 04, 2010
The Impotence of U.S. Elections, Democrats and Republicans One Party with Two Names / Politics / US Politics
In his historical novel, The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa writes that things have to change in order to remain the same. That is what happened in the US congressional elections on November 2.
Jobs offshoring, which began on a large scale with the collapse of the Soviet Union, has merged the Democrats and Republicans into one party with two names. The Soviet collapse changed attitudes in socialist India and communist China and opened those countries, with their large excess supplies of labor, to Western capital.
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Thursday, November 04, 2010
Northern Rock Remutualisation or Privatisation? / Politics / UK Politics
Today Compass calls on the Government to launch an investigation into the feasibility of remutualising Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. A Compass commissioned YouGov poll yesterday showed nearly twice as many people favoured remutualisation of Northern Rock as opposed to a private sale. This follows on from Ed Miliband's recent support for remutualisation of the bank.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
The U.S. Mid-Term Elections are Over… Yet it Ain’t Over / Politics / US Economy
Our financial system and our economy nearly collapsed over two years ago. With proper management we should have recovered, but we haven’t. Unemployment, the one thing that voters see and feel, front and center, remains the highest it’s been for decades and voters are justifiably angry.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
U.S. Mid-term Elections 2010, Learning From Defeat / Politics / US Congressional Elections
Eric Walberg writes: In the US mid-term elections, Republicans picked up approximately 65 seats in the House for a 237-198 majority, and six seats in the Senate — including the Illinois seat formerly held by President Obama and that of liberal icon Russell Feingold of Wisconsin — for a 49-49 tie in the Senate, where two independents will hold the Democrats ransom. Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio will succeed Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California as speaker of the House. Republicans gained eight governorships, but Democrats hold the two biggest states: Andrew Cuomo beat Republican Carl Paladino in New York, and Jerry Brown returned to the governor’s job in California, defeating former eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
American Democracy: Despair Follows Delusion / Politics / US Politics
Despite all the hype and rhetoric, only one impact of the midterm elections is assured. Notwithstanding power shifts from Democrats to Republicans in Congress there will not be any deep, sorely needed true reforms of our corrupt, dysfunctional and inefficient government. The culture of corruption in Washington , DC will remain. Hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate and other special interests will assure that.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Global Monetary System in Crisis, Currency War Is Leading to Trade War / Politics / Global Financial System
The UK, Europe, the US and Canada are different degrees of welfare states. By way of regulation, government controls via taxation. The states and their inhabitants send taxes to Washington, which takes its cut and sends funds back to the states with strings attached. You either do what we want you to do, or we cut off your funds. The states and the people are subject to extortion with government using their funds to do so. By using regulations, welfare and extortion, the federal government creates dependency.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
How to Bully a Country into Bankruptcy / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
Cristian Gherasim writes: We are all familiar with the power gained by trade unions in present-day Europe. Lately, it seems that they have also gained the privilege to turn to violence each time their demands aren't met. It's safe to say that a union's decision has become as important as a governmental decree.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
U.S. Revolution Coming Against State Handouts / Politics / US Politics
Almost nobody these days likes to call a spade a spade in public. In fact, calling a spade a spade in public is a form of political incorrectness. The Establishment puts negative pressure on all those who identify a spade as a spade, if that identification might cost the government a loss of power.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
With the Republicans in Power, What About The U.S. Economy? / Politics / US Politics
The Election is over. The Dems were thumped. They lost the House, even if they still have the Senate by a hair. Barney Frank will be back but not Alan Grayson or Russ Feingold. WSWS offered the key reason: “intractable and deepening economic crisis and the evident inability of the Obama administration to develop any policies to overcome it.”
Is that crisis likely to go away after an emboldened army of the righteous (and well-financed claque of self-styled “economically responsible” free market boosters) won more nominal power?
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Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Al-Qaeda Unlucky Again in Cargo Plane Bombing Attempt / Politics / Al-Qeeda
The Oct. 29 discovery of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) inside two packages shipped from Yemen launched a widespread search for other devices, and more than two dozen suspect packages have been tracked down so far. Some have been trailed in dramatic fashion, as when two U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft escorted an Emirates Air passenger jet Oct. 29 as it approached and landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. To date, however, no other parcels have been found to contain explosive devices.
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Tuesday, November 02, 2010
U.S. Saudi Arms Deal is About Iran / Politics / Middle East
This month the US Administration notified Congress that it intends to complete one of the largest arms sales in US history to one of the most repressive regimes on earth. Saudi Arabia has been given the green light by the administration to spend $60 billion on some 84 new F-15 aircraft, dozens of the latest helicopters, and other missiles, bombs, and high-tech military products from the US weapons industry.
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Tuesday, November 02, 2010
US Myth Of The Two Party Political System / Politics / US Politics
Cindy Sheehan Would America look much different if Republican John McCain had beaten Democrat Barack Obama to become president?
"The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts."—Eugene J. McCarthy, 1978
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