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    abraham lincoln

    U.S. flag, gavel, and Constitution.

    Advice From the Balcony: Don’t Abandon the Rule of Law

    When the drama becomes heated and intense, with new and surprising events unfolding moment by moment, it can be easy to lose sight of the shared agreements that make the story possible.

    Steve Kaagan
    Feb 12, 2025

    Is the Rule of Law one thread that might draw Americans together? Here is a perspective drawn from recent conversations among four elders from different backgrounds—one over 90, two in their early 80s, one in his mid-70s.

    We are at present a divided nation, although an elder account might identify many divisions that have been overcome, some against great odds. The advantages of being old are distance from the demands of public life and the privilege of looking at it with a wide lens. Elders can take the long view, sitting in the balcony, looking at a story unfolding on stage now. No dispute, it is one that causes much sorrow and concern.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    rule of law
    Kamala Harris speaks after meeting with Netanyahu.

    Can Kamala Harris Be the Unlikeliest of Heroes?

    If the study of the past teaches us anything, it is that history is often driven by unlikely heroes who rose to the occasion in an hour of dire need.

    Bill Blum
    Aug 03, 2024

    At first glance, Kamala Harris may seem an unlikely savior of democracy. As a career prosecutor, including stints as the district attorney of San Francisco and the attorney general of California, she specialized in sending people to jail and prison, adding to the nation’s crisis of mass incarceration. As a senator and failed 2020 presidential candidate, she was often accused of opportunism. As vice president, she operated largely out of public view for three years, and was saddled with disapproval ratings that rivaled and sometimes exceeded those of President Joe Biden.

    But if the study of the past teaches us anything, it is that history is often driven by unlikely heroes who rose to the occasion in an hour of dire need. Abraham Lincoln, born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky, ended chattel slavery and defeated the Confederacy in the Civil War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, born into wealth and privilege, oversaw New Deal programs that rescued the American working class from the Great Depression and a world war that defeated the Nazis.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    kamala harris
    Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers celebrate passage of their tax-cut bill

    Americans Are Wising Up to the GOP’s Tired Trickle-Down Scam

    Trump and other Republican politicians are trying their best to revive their nonsensical horse-and-sparrow supply-side rationale so the rest of us can pay to make the rich far richer.

    Thom Hartmann
    Jun 13, 2024

    They’re at it again. And it’s not even original: The trickle-down economics that two-dozen Republican governors and former U.S. President Donald Trump are reviving as you read these words has a long history.

    “Trickle down,” of course, was the theory advanced by former President Ronald Reagan that if America only made rich people massively richer with staggering tax cuts, ending anti-trust regulation, and government subsidies for their industries, they would use all that extra free money to build new factories, hire people, and the abundance would trickle down to the average worker.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    trickle-down economics

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