Rania Khalek Dispatches from the Underclass

Author / Rania Khalek

I can’t understand why the GOP is always so angry at the President.  After all, Obama has shown himself to be a committed conservative.  What’s that?  He is a Democrat you say? Well he had me fooled. With 2012 just around the corner, the election season for the GOP primary candidates is in full swing […]

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On April 27, 2011, while the media was distracted by Donald Trump and royal matrimony, the Supreme Court of the United States once again ruled in favor of big business.  In the highly anticipated case of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, the Roberts led conservative block of the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that federal law trumps state law in […]

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Dear Media: Since you have been busy this week with non-stop coverage of the royal wedding and the spectacle that is Donald Trump, I thought I would take it upon myself to fill you in on the less newsworthy items that you missed.  Clearly, the royal wedding of a country that is not your own, in addition […]

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If Milton Friedman, father of the free market, were alive today, I imagine he would be jumping with joy at the prospect of the abandonment of public education for private, for-profit charter schools. Back in 2005, following the devastation of hurricane Katrina, Friedman wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal where he said “This […]

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On April 6, all but one of the Republican members of the US House of Representatives rejected a Democratic amendment that would have put the chamber on record backing the widely held scientific view that global warming is occurring and humans are a major cause.  The following day the GOP-led House voted 255 to 172 to strip […]

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Remember the nonstop, 24/7 coverage of the coordinated disruption at town hall meetings by tea-partiers in the Summer of 2009 during healthcare reform?  Of course you do, since the media gave it wall to wall coverage for months.  Now fast forward to this month, when angry constituents are loudly protesting Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposal to privatize […]

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Each week, it’s like deja vu.  The media continues to promote the false narrative that the spectrum of the budget debate consists of Obama’s proposal on the left, with Paul Ryan’s plan on the right. They are using this narrow vision to suggest that the practical answer lies somewhere in the middle.  The new line is […]

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In her book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein demonstrates how wealthy elites often use times of crisis and chaos to impose unpopular policies that restructure economies and political systems to further advance their interests.  She calls these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters […]

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A search for articles in the New York Times that reference the “People’s Budget” resulted in nothing but readers’ comments.  Perhaps it’s a positive sign that a few Times readers are familiar with the progressive budget plan, even if the newspaper has neglected to cover it.  Although, it’s rather puzzling that the “newspaper of record” […]

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Dana Milbank has an article in the Washington Post titled “If Progressives Ran the World“, where he condescendingly portrays The People’s Budget, unveiled by the more than 80-member Progressive Caucus, as naive.  He actually uses the term “starry-eyed” to describe what he believes is an unrealistic, far-left proposal.  Milbank even likens it to the left’s […]

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