Portside

The "Budget Deal." abandons the unemployed, while increasing the military budget, and ignores massive job creation. Reducing projected sequester cuts will save jobs, but half the mindless across-the-board sequester cuts continue in fiscal year 2014 and three-fourths in 2015. The deal provides relief from some destructive sequester cuts. But it sustains Washington's focus on deficit reduction and its commitment to austerity. Thanks to the Campaign for America's Future.

Reader Comments - Nelson Mandela; Republic Windows - CEOs Going to Jail; Minimum Wage; Healthcare - Single-Payer; Syria; India homophobia; Austerity; Living Wage - Low wage workers; Books to read (or to give; or both); Announcements - Suggestion for Year-end Giving - Davis-Putter Scholarship; Shostakovich For The Children Of Syria - Carnegie Hall, New York - January 13

Zealots for neoliberalism have created a humanitarian tragedy across the continent. It is our destiny to fight back

Review of George Packer's "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America." This American life is a mess. As responsible as they were for instigating the Great Recession, Wall Street and the securities industry were not the business centers solely at fault for the lead-up to the collapse. An outsized military budget, imperial wars, the decline of unions as counterweights to corporate excesses and the flight of manufacturing overseas played their parts, too.

Here's how the capitalist scam works: let government borrow for crisis bailouts, then insist cuts pay for them. Guess who loses.

Today, Ireland is under a different sort of tyranny, one imposed by the banks and the troika--the EU, ECB and IMF. The oppressors have demanded austerity and more austerity, forcing the public to pick up the tab for bills incurred by profligate private bankers.

Clone Wars in Taiwan; Casino Man Hedges Bets - Calls for Nuking Iran; R.I.P. Dark Knight Lou Reed; Busted for Shopping While Black; Teaching Economics Needs to Catch Up

Shutdown: 'Not Some Damn Game'. Robert Johnson -- Crossroad. Our Story in Two Minutes. Pete Peterson's 'Grand Bargain' Hoax. Flashmob in Madrid Unemployment Office. Movie: Let the Fire Burn.