Dr. King Spanks Obama: Part 6

Beyond merely complaining about what is wrong with our world, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. insists that we must begin now to imagine and actively create a new one. A short excerpt from chapter 5 of his last book appears at the end of this article to outline his overall vision for abolishing poverty by providing either jobs or incomes or both. This excerpt  has been widely published and analyzed by individual blogs and reputable news sources throughout the Internet over time. But it is worthy of repeating here for a number... Read article

Dr. King Spanks Obama: Part 5

In an interview with Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell asked a key question: “Every year, you watch as Martin Luther King is commemorated in the media and otherwise, is there something that we habitually miss in the way we frame this every year when we come back to examining his legacy and what he means to us today?” Melissa’s response was as simple as it was profound: “The short answer is we miss everything after 1965. In other words, the King that turned to issues of economic... Read article

Mommy, Mommy! Why Am I Fat?

Malnutrition comes in a delightful assortment of colorful flavors nowadays. But poverty and obesity are a correlation that Americans find hard to swallow. “Genetics and family history can predict whether you will become obese but then so can your ZIP code,” says Adam Drewnowski, world-renowned leader in innovative research approaches for the prevention and treatment of obesity, and Director of the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Washington in Seattle. In December of 2003, Drewnowski said,... Read article

Dr King Spanks Obama: Part 4

Some months ago, at the 23rd Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Celebration in San Francisco, attendees were asked to answer the question, “What would Dr. King want to say to Barack Obama?” [1] This article series is an effort to provide Dr. King an opportunity to answer that question for himself from the pages of a book he wrote in 1967 entitled: “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”. But more than a mere contrast between two persons, this article series seeks to compare recent... Read article

Health Care and the Free Market

“With millions unemployed, and health care costs rising through the roof, and the only answer ever given to unemployment is ‘go back to school’, why are there still so few medical schools that 1/3 of our doctors are imported and Americans who want to be doctors frequently have to resort to joining the military in order to be trained? We should have a doctor on every corner, competing with each other.” [1] The above quotation is an excerpt from a recent article regarding the economics of health care... Read article

Dr. King Spanks Obama: Part 3

“In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character. We must begin to ask, “Why are there forty million poor people in a nation overflowing with such unbelievable affluence?” Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God’s military agent on earth, and intervened recklessly in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our... Read article

Dr. King Spanks Obama: Part 2

At the 23rd Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Celebration in San Francisco attendees were asked to answer the question, “What would Dr. King want to say to Barack Obama?” But Dr. King actually provides the best answers to this question in his book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” For example, in chapter 3 he states: “The Washington Post has calculated that we spend $332,000 for each enemy we kill. It challenges the imagination to contemplate what lives could transform... Read article

Good Luck With That

Popular insistence upon prosecuting George W. Bush stems from at least two faulty assumptions: 1) that our political and economic systems function in the general interest, and 2) that the crimes of the Bush administration are isolated violations of those systems. “Now, that man over there — he’s the prosecuting attorney — and he couldn’t be happier today. He’s a happy man today, because today he’s going after a judge [President]. And if he gets him — if he gets him —... Read article

Dr. King Spanks Obama: Part 1

It seems ridiculous to speculate about what Dr. King might say to Barack Obama when we have a published record of what King actually did say to his government immediately before they had him assassinated. [1] “Humanity is waiting for something other than blind imitation of the past. If we want truly to advance a step further, if we want to turn over a new leaf and really set a new man afoot, we must begin to turn mankind away from the long and desolate night of violence. May it not be that the new man the world needs... Read article

Natural Adversaries

In any debate regarding the current economic crisis, the antagonistic relationship between workers and investors seems most conspicuously missing from discussion. Everyone seems to have a solution for fixing the economy, and every theory is a little bit different. The best ones suggest placing purchasing power directly into the hands of consumers, which actually makes the most sense in terms of “fixing” the economy. But even this approach naively assumes a prevailing desire to actually “fix” or stabilize... Read article

Economic Withdrawal

“Good God, what suffering, what martyrdom all this involves! To be occupied night and day in planning to please one person, and yet to fear him more than anyone else in the world; to be always on the watch, ears open, wondering whence the blow will come; to search out conspiracy, to be on guard against snares, to scan the faces of companions for signs of treachery, to smile at everybody and be mortally afraid of all, to be sure of nobody, either as an open enemy or as a reliable friend; showing always a gay countenance... Read article

SURPRISE!!

This is supposedly what everybody shouts at a “surprise birthday party” when the guest of honor enters a room filled with his best friends and family who have gathered to celebrate the fact of his/her existence: “Surprise!!” — and then everybody sings “Happy Birthday” or “Auld Lang Sine” or some crap. Has anybody ever actually attended one of these parties, or do they only happen in the movies or on television? If you’ve ever had one — were you “surprised”?... Read article