Every Good Morning

You Can Listen Here: He is the great President of my lifetime. His Bills rescue the economy from collapse, introduce banking regulations to try to prevent it from occurring again, and extend health insurance to millions of Americans. He protects additional wilderness lands for future generations, takes us out of Iraq, saves the US auto industry, ends the use of torture as American policy, and negotiates the Iran Nuclear Arms Agreement. He does all […]

You Can Listen Here: 9/11, the Great Recession and the war in Iraq did something to the American public that it will take decades to figure out, but in a heartbeat I would argue they felt a terrible falling away of control over and confidence in the staying power and progress of their own lives. Those three global events were also intensely personal and psychologically harmful. It has been seventeen years, and that does […]

You Can Listen Here: I cannot think of Reagan without grimacing, the first Republican to practice what my friend has called “smash and grab economics,” whereby the wealthiest begin their looting through tax cuts and sweet deals and the public good is given short shrift. Reagan continues the transformation of his party into white revanchists. He speaks of “welfare queens driving cadillacs”, and in a 1976 described “young bucks” using welfare money to “buy T-bone steaks .” With […]

You Can Listen Here: When Nixon was running in ‘68 and then elected, I watched him with fascination, a stingy respect and a deep wariness. This was a very smart guy, very tough, resourceful, resilient, and a true rags to power story. No one had handed him a thing — he was not raised in wealth, he worked hard at everything, he received no million dollar loans, he did not evade service during WWII […]