Outsourcing government not only leads to poor services -- it's killing the middle class, an expert tells Salon
The wrangling between the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) had two main goals. In its election campaign the SPD had tried to sound leftish so as to keep or win back the votes of union members and at least some progressive voters. But now, to become part of a "grand coalition" government, it had to tone down such escapades and sooth the fears of big biz bosses.
Twenty years since its passage, NAFTA has displaced workers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, depressed wages, weakened unions, and set the terms of the neoliberal global economy.
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.
Will Rahm Emanuel's effort to establish a privatized neoliberal outpost in Chicago succeed? Not if the ongoing uprising brushfires turn from kindling wood into a contemporary Chicago fire of political resistance. Kari Lydersen, author of "Mayor 1%," tells Truthout Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is representative of the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party, and he's getting significant pushback in his efforts to expand privatization and limit protests.
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
Reader Comments - German Election; Average American Family Pays $6,000 a Year in Subsidies to Big Business; Monsanto and GMO Labeling; Pope Francis;
Announcements - Political Economy of the Environment -- URPE Conference in Brooklyn - Oct. 5; A Message from Cynthia Nixon - Curriculum of Change Celebration - New York - Oct. 17; New Populisms and the European Right and far Right Parties (new resource)
Fixing Old Markets With New Markets; America's Descent Into Madness; Rotting Entrails of the Intellectual Right; Elysium - Just Flip the Switch; Hardhats and Hippies
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