Section: Institute for Policy Studies (USA)
Republican ‘Solutions’ Will Make Inflation Worse
My wife and I recently had the tremendous misfortune of needing to buy a car. Car prices, you may know, reached an all-time high between this year and last. There are now rumblings of a gradual decline, but rising interest rates will likely offset any savings. So with our beloved but rickety 2006 Altima facing another cruel Midwestern winter...
Is Putin in a Corner?
When a country starts casting around for 60-year-old veterans to send to the front, you know that something’s wrong. All hands don’t go on deck unless the ship is foundering. It’s not yet clear whether the Russian ship of state is taking on water. But its military effort in Ukraine is obviously at the SOS stage. Last week,...
Report: Billionaire Enabler States
Billionaire Enabler States: How U.S. States Captured by the Trust Industry Help the World’s Wealthy Hide Their Fortunes Kalena Thomhave | Chuck Collins Introduction: After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine’s allies zeroed in on a possible weak spot for the attacking country: the hidden fortunes of Russian elites. Russian...
Learning from Gorbachev’s Failures
Last year in Moscow, at a performance of the play Gorbachev, the audience gave a standing ovation to the two remarkable performers who played Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa Gorbacheva. The applause became even more thunderous when the performers identified the frail old man in a box seat. A spotlight illuminated Gorbachev as he acknowledged...
The Weaponization of Food
When Russia bombed the port in Odesa last week, it was not an auspicious beginning to the new deal on grain exports. If anyone believed that this agreement between Moscow and Kyiv would have some positive spillover effect on the war grinding on elsewhere in Ukraine, the Russian military surely destroyed that wishful thinking. International outcry...
The Fateful Fist Bump
The fist bump has been the default method of person-to-person contact in the COVID era. Shaking hands is too intimate and bumping elbows is too awkward. But the brief collision of fists has been deemed just about right to avoid the risks of both mutual contamination and mutual embarrassment. Perhaps Joe Biden’s advisors thought that a fist...
What’s Really Going On with the War in Ukraine?
Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, joined a panel hosted by The Progressive to discuss what’s really going on with the war in Ukraine. Co-sponsors of the panel include: Code Pink, Madison Veterans for Peace, Madison Working Group on Peace in Ukraine, Physicians for Social...
Pentagon Increases in 2022 Could Almost Fund Build Back Better
Remember Build Back Better? Way back in December, President Biden and advocates across a wide spectrum of issues fought to fund the president’s signature plan, which included major new investments in clean energy, child care and preschool, health care, and financial help for struggling families. It ultimately failed due to one...
China Will Decide the Outcome of Russia Versus the West
In its attempt to swallow Ukraine whole, Russia has so far managed to bite off only the eastern Donbas region and a portion of its southern coast. The rest of the country remains independent, with its capital Kyiv intact. No one knows how this meal will end. Ukraine is eager to force Russia to disgorge what it’s already devoured, while the...
Only in Top Gun Can the Military Solve All Our Problems
Somewhere at a theater near you, Top Gun: Maverick is serving up a feel-good drama about a plucky U.S. Navy pilot who dispatches some unnamed bad guys before he gets the girl. Meanwhile, a real-life drama is unfolding in Washington around the massive resources we put into the real U.S. military, where the stakes are much different than in the...
