Rania Khalek Dispatches from the Underclass
/ May 9, 2011 / Leave a comment

Republicans in Liberal Clothing

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 as evidenced by the recent South Carolina debate.  Candidate after candidate, with a few minor exceptions,  recycled the same old slogans to rally the troops.  In short it was the typical calls for “smaller government, deregulation, lower taxes, blah blah blah.”  As I watched on, I couldn’t help but wonder: What exactly distinguishes the policies these GOP candidates want to enact from those of the Democrats? Read More

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/ May 5, 2011 / Leave a comment

With Liberty and Justice for…Corporations?

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 allowing companies to use arbitration clauses to prohibit consumers from joining class actions against the companies.

The case involved a California couple, Vincent and Liza Concepcion, who were charged $30.22 sales tax on the full retail price of a cellphone that was advertised as “free.”  They filed a lawsuit against AT&T for deceptive practices on behalf of a class of consumers who had also overpaid.  But the couple, along with their fellow plaintiffs, had signed a contract with AT&T that contained a “mandatory arbitration clause” which required them to settle any disputes through arbitration (a private legal proceeding) and barred them from seeking class-action treatment with other consumers, whether through arbitration or in a lawsuit brought in a traditional court. Read More

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/ April 29, 2011 / 11 Comments

News Media Too Busy Covering Spectacle to Do Its Job

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 to the frantic rantings of an ego obsessed real state tycoon, take priority over middle east turmoil, vicious attacks on labor, and deadly tornadoes ripping through the country.

I assume you haven’t heard–since there has been little to no coverage–that Wikileaks has released the Guantanamo Files, which include classified files on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees.  These documents shed new light on the six-year long persecution of a journalist because he worked for Al-jazeera, the unreliable evidence used to justify due-process free detentions, and the capture of children and men as old as 89.  Of course, I wouldn’t expect such large and important outlets to be bothered with such silly, insignificant revelations. Read More

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/ April 26, 2011 / Leave a comment

Today Detroit – tomorrow, every city in America

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 is a tragedy.  It is also an opportunity to radically reform the educational system.”  Soon after, Friedmonites rushed into New Orleans for the chance to implement what Friedman had long envisioned. With the help of the Bush administration, they dissolved the public school system and in its place built a network of publicly funded charters run, not by educators, but by private entities that made their own rules.

At the time, New Orleans residents alerted the rest of the country, that what was happening to their city was only the beginning and it wouldn’t be long before it spread to our neighborhoods.  In 2006, Bill Quigley, a local lawyer and activist warned:

We know that what is happening in New Orleans is just a more concentrated, more graphic version of what is going on all over our country. Every city in our country has some serious similarities to New Orleans. Every city has some abandoned neighborhoods. Every city in our country has abandoned some public education, public housing, public healthcare, and criminal justice. Those who do not support public education, healthcare, and housing will continue to turn all of our country into the Lower Ninth Ward unless we stop them. Why do we allow this?

If only we had listened.  Soon after New Orleans came the drastic transformation of the Chicago school system by Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan, New York City schools by Mayor Bloomberg, and Washington DC schools by Michelle Rhee. Which brings us to Detroit. Read More

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/ April 25, 2011 / Leave a comment

Cognitive Dissonance Is Fueling Conservative Denial

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 the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gases.  It is remarkable that in 2011,  a majority of Republicans in Congress reject the indisputable,  scientific consensus that human activity is altering the climate.

Why are conservatives, despite the mounting evidence, so unwilling to accept that climate change is a serious threat caused by greenhouse emissions?  It seems climate change is now part and parcel of America’s “culture wars.”  Similar to abortion and other social issues, climate change has become a partisan issue, with liberals backing the science, and conservatives denying it.  Often times, when pondering the reasons for climate change denial, we immediately blame the media for allotting disproportionate airtime for industry backed psuedo-scientists to sow doubt in the minds of viewers, in their quest for “balance.”  Of course this analysis is correct, but incomplete. Read More

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/ April 24, 2011 / Leave a comment

Dear Media: Where the hell are you?

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 Medicare. But, unlike the tea-partiers shouting down democratic congress-members back in 2009, today’s outraged constituents seem unworthy of the media’s attention. Read More

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/ April 24, 2011 / Leave a comment

The media's false depiction of the budget debate

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 that Obama’s “liberal” plan does not seriously tackle entitlements, while Paul Ryan’s “conservative” plan fails to consider raising taxes. Read More

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/ April 19, 2011 / Leave a comment

Corporate Coup d’état Coming Soon to a City Near You

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 as exciting market opportuinities, “disaster capitalism.”

Disaster capitalism is on display around the country, as legislators use the debt crisis afflicting their states as an opportunity to hollow out the public sector.  In Michigan it’s being packaged as “emergency financial management” by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who is looking to exploit an economic crisis that has left his state with a severe budget deficit.  In March, Snyder signed a law granting state-appointed emergency financial managers (EFM) the ability to fire local elected officials, break teachers’ and public workers’ contracts, seize and sell assets, and eliminate services, entire cities or school districts, all without any public input.  He claims these dictatorial restructuring powers will keep Michigan communities out of bankruptcy. Read More

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/ April 18, 2011 / Leave a comment

In Beltway Land Progressives Do Not Exist

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” has overlooked a budget proposal submitted by the largest Democratic Congressional Caucus, when the most intense national story for the past month has centered around budget proposals.  At least the Washington Post devoted one article to the People’s Budget, even though the author, Dana Milbank, chose to write a scathing review of lunatic progressive ideas, without any factual evidence to back his claims.

The lack of reporting on the People’s Budget lies in stark contrast to the extensive, ’round-the-clock coverage of the right-wing Paul Ryan plan.  Commentary on the Ryan plan has by no means been objective analysis.  Instead, it has been infested with admiration for it’s “seriousness” and “bravery” in tackling the budget deficit.  As Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) recently revealed, in the face of genuine analysis that demonstrated the many flaws in Ryan’s plan, the beltway media continued to report on it favorably. Read More

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/ April 14, 2011 / Leave a comment

Dana Milbank's False Equivalency

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 version of the Paul Ryan Plan. Read More

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