Tag: New Deal

  • How a Fed Overhaul Could Eliminate the Federal Debt Crisis, Part II: Curbing Fed Independence

    There has been considerable discussion in recent years about reforming, modifying, or even abolishing the Federal Reserve. Proposals range from ending its independence, to integrating its functions into the U.S. Treasury Department, to dismantling it and returning monetary policy to direct congressional or Treasury oversight. The Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act (H.R. 1846 and S. 869, 119th […]

  • Democracy or Plutocracy?

    Democracy or Plutocracy?

    Despite much lofty rhetoric portraying the United States as a democracy (in which the people rule), this nation, in fact, has often resembled a plutocracy (in which the wealthy rule). The confusion owes a great deal to the fact that the United States, at its founding, was somewhat more democratic than its contemporaries.  In the […]

  • Civil Workers, Uncivil Problem: The 1934 Civil Works Administration Strike in Utica, New York

    The history of the labor movement in the Mohawk Valley is an extremely rich yet untapped field. This is not to say that there’s no labor historiography of the region, but it seems lacking compared to other areas of New York. Utica itself has experienced or been adjacently involved with a number of strikes since […]

  • Expanding the Possible, from Below

    Expanding the Possible, from Below

    The Green New Deal has been largely blocked at the national level, but it is thriving in communities, cities, and states. Jeremy Brecher’s new book is both an urgent call to action and proof of concept. Starting where we’re at Less than one week after Trump was re-elected to the single most powerful political office […]

  • Are We Having an Election in November?

    With an important US presidential election — we are told — only months away, but one posing two repugnant, disheartening choices, it may be a good time to explore where we are and how we got here. What we can agree is that most of us, when asked, believe that things are going badly: an […]

  • By the Dawn’s Early Light

    The Baltimore bridge that collapsed on March 26th was named for Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the American national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1814. His inspiration was the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in the critical port of Baltimore during the War of 1812. The British had just burned the U.S. Capitol and the […]

  • Cliodynamics

    Cliodynamics

    Clio, Muse of History, Charles Meynier (1768–1832) Peter Turchin, author of End Times: Elites, Counter-elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, (2023), is one of the founders of the new ‘science’ of cliodynamics, a discipline which coalesced in the 1990s, statistical juggling ‘facts’ from the past, stitched together from bare bones (literally) of archeology, climate, geopolitics, crimes, […]

  • Greater of Two Evils

    Greater of Two Evils

    I’m reposting this article about the Democratic Party five years after it was published because after re-reading it, I wouldn’t change a thing. In addition, the Democratic Party has become even more right-wing since it gained power in 2020. At the end of the article I will name the many ways it has gotten still […]

  • Postliberals Against the Common Good

    “The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history,” says Noam Chomsky. It seems like a ridiculous statement. “Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth? Not that I’m aware of.” He has a point. Even the […]

  • Native Son: Big Bill Haywood

    [The] barbarous gold barons do not find the gold, they do not mine the gold, they do not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belongs to them. — Big Bill Haywood, addressing commencement of miners’ strike, Colorado, 1903. Work taught him of injustice early and converted him to socialism. His […]

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