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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Want More Wars? Raise Taxes on the Rich

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Ted Rall
Tax Fairness Won’t Reduce Inequality Reacting to and attempting to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement, President Obama used his 2012 State of the Union address to discuss what he now calls “the defining issue of our time”—the growing gap between rich and poor. “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” Obama said. “Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” No doubt, the long-term trend toward income inequality is a major flaw of the capitalist system. From 1980 to 2005 more than 80 percent in the gain in Americans’ incomes went to the top one percent. This staggering disparity between the haves and have-nots has created a permanent underclass of underemployed, undereducated and alienated people who often turn to crime for survival and…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Occupy Sexual Freedom

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Ted Rall
Sympathy for Newt and Open Marriage You know the narrative. Right-wing family-values Republican gets caught doing secular-liberal totally-not-family-values stuff, usually involving sex: Cruising for manlove in an airport men’s room. Knocking up the maid. Sending dirty emails to young male pages. Hiring male hookers and smoking meth. Asking wife #2 for an open marriage. This kind of thing happens all the time. And it’s always red meat for leftie media commentators. Liberal pundits love to call fallen Republicans hypocrites. They point out that liberal politicians are often more heterosexual and monogamous than many so-called conservatives—and remain married to the same spouse for life. Now it’s Newt Gingrich’s turn. In her divorce filing Ms. Gingrich the Second claims that Mr. Gingrich asked her for an open marriage so he could stay with her while carrying on with Callista, who became Ms. Gingrich the Third after Ms. Gingrich the Second refused said request. (You may need to re-read the previous sentence.) Cue…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Corpse-Urinating Kids Are Alright

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Ted Rall
More Jobs for Our Valiant Marine Heroes “Eighteen, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often and that’s what occurred here.” This was the nuanced reaction of Rick Perry, governor of the supposedly important state of Texas, who has signed dozens of death warrants (at least one for an innocent man), who thinks he deserves to be president, to a video of Marines in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan peeing on dead Afghan resistance fighters. “Golden, like a shower,” says one. Nice. Amazing to watch how ten years and the catastrophic American military defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan have changed our views about the shock troops of American militarism. After 9/11 our sainted soldiers could do no wrong. They were inherently noble. They were heroes. Even liberals said so. Uneducated and ignorant, yes, but these brave young men and women deserved our gratitude for defending our freedoms against the Islamofascist hordes lest a land bridge somehow appear between the Old and New Worlds.…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Republican Socialists, Democratic Capitalists

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Ted Rall
GOP Pols Exploit Anti-Wall Street Rage Newt Gingrich made a name for himself as the right-wing ideologue who led the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” What a difference the wholesale collapse of international capitalism makes. Forget 9/11—everything changed on 9/14/08, when Lehman Brothers hit the skids. Millions lost their jobs. Millions more lost their jobs. And the government refused to help them. The government’s masters, the bankers, wouldn’t let them. They wanted all that taxpayer money for themselves. The system was finally exposed as the corrupt, inefficient, cruel pseudodemocracy that we on the Left had always known it was. More than three years have passed yet neither the political class nor its corporate bosses have found the wherewithal to sate the anger of America’s roiling masses with the traditional bundle of social programs. To the contrary, the powers that be are calling for austerity, for gutting what’s left of the safety net. They’re stealing the rope with which we will hang them.…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Our Suicidal Ruling Class

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Ted Rall
Why Won’t the Rich and Powerful Try to Save Themselves? I spent last week at Occupy Miami and Occupy Fort Lauderdale. One question came up several times: What if the system responds—or pretends to respond—to our demands? What if the political class agrees to create more jobs, help the unemployed, let distressed homeowners keep their houses? Then the Occupy movement (and American progressivism) will be out of business. “President Obama could finish us off over night,” I said. “A speech would be enough. He wouldn’t even have to do anything.” Obama could announce a big jobs bill, knowing full well that Congressional Republicans would kill it. It would probably increase his reelection prospects. But don’t worry. He won’t. He can’t. America’s corporate rulers and their pet politicians know that people are furious. They understand that their actions and policies are accelerating the pace of income inequality and creating a growing, permanently alienated underclass. They know history. Sooner or later, the…
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AL JAZEERA ENGLISH COLUMN: The Inevitability of Mitt Romney

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Ted Rall
“Conventional wisdom” has kept other GOP candidates at bay and ensured Romney remains the likely Republican nominee. “Why don’t they like me?” Time magazine asked on the cover of its December 1, 2011 issue, next to a face shot of a bushy-browed American politician Mitt Romney. According to that nebulous vapour that accompanies conventional wisdom, the former governor of Massachusetts will inevitably emerge as the Republican Party’s nominee to challenge President Barack Obama in November. The wise white men of the media also posit that the GOP isn’t happy about it. The pundits say that Republicans feel that it’s Romney’s turn in a party that traditionally hands its top spot to the guy (Dole, Reagan, Bush, etc.) who’s been patiently waiting. The pundits also say that Republicans also feel that Romney is too liberal, too squishy, and too Mormon for a party that has been hijacked by its right-wing Tea Party faction and right-wing Christian fundamentalists based in the South…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: How To Talk To An Obama Voter (If You Must)

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Ted Rall
In 2012 Politics Is In The Streets—Not the Voting Booth The Occupy movement is lying low. The Tea Party has been completely absorbed into the Republican Party—just another interest group. The only politics anyone talks about is the presidential horserace. Don’t be fooled. This is temporary. Spring will come. Robins will sing. The Occupations will return, bigger, energized and more militant. Don’t be surprised if movements more militant, further to the Left than Occupy, begin to emerge. What passes for politics—Democrats, Republicans, vacuous debates over mini-issues (flag burning, taxes, deficits, gays) as the big issues go ignored (jobs, income inequality, militarism)—will be finally, totally and irreversibly exposed as the irrelevant, distracting farce they are. Politics is about to move into the streets. Where they belong. Where they live in countries whose citizens are engaged in the fight over their destinies. There will be primaries and party conventions and debates. All part of a ridiculous sideshow. Get ready. 2012 is set…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Who Polices Political Cartooning?

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Ted Rall
An Art Form in Crisis Ignores the Rot Within “Ted Rall, mop-headed antiestablishment political cartoonist, has abundant talent, a 1,400-drawing portfolio, seven years’ experience, the acclaim of peers and the approval of newspaper editors who, every so often, print his work. What he lacks is someone who will hire him full-time.” That’s from The New York Times. In 1995. Editorial cartooning, a unique art form whose modern version originated in 18th century France and has become more pointed, sophisticated and effective in the United States than any other country, was in big trouble back then. Newspapers, the main employers of political cartoonists, were closing and slashing budgets. Those that survived were timid; cowardly editors rarely hire, much less retain, the controversial artists who produce the best cartoons, those that stimulate discussion. Things are worse now. Much worse. Hard numbers are difficult to come by but the number of full-time professional political cartoonists now hovers around 30. In 1980 there were…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama’s “Mission Accomplished”

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Ted Rall
Wars and Prisons Move, Wars and Torture Never Ends Most Americans—68 percent—oppose the war against Iraq, according to a November 2011 CNN poll. So it’s smart politics for President Obama to take credit for withdrawing U.S. troops. As it often is, the Associated Press’ coverage was slyly subversive: “This, in essence, is Obama’s mission accomplished: Getting out of Iraq as promised under solid enough circumstances and making sure to remind voters that he did what he said.” Obama’s 2008 campaign began by speaking out against the war in Iraq. (Aggression in Afghanistan, on the other hand, was not only desirable but ought to be expanded.) However, actions never matched his words. On vote after vote in the U.S. Senate Obama supported the war. Every time. As president, Obama has claimed credit for a December 2011 withdrawal deadline negotiated by his predecessor George W. Bush—a timeline he wanted to protract. If the Iraqi government hadn’t refused to extend immunity from prosecution…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Democrats Occupy Occupy

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Ted Rall
MoveOn Co-opts OWS Rhetoric, Dilutes Its Message If Democrats were doing their jobs, there wouldn’t be an Occupy movement. The last 40 years has left liberals and progressives without a party and working people without an advocate. The party of FDR, JFK and LBJ abandoned its principles, embracing and voting along with Reagan and two Bushes. Clinton’s biggest accomplishments, NAFTA and welfare reform, were GOP platform planks. These New Democrats were indistinguishable from Republicans, waging optional wars, exporting jobs overseas and coddling corrupt CEOs while the rest of us—disconnected from power, our needs repeatedly ignored—sat and watched in silent rage. Barack Obama is merely the latest of these phony Democrats. He’s the most recent in a line of corporate stooges going back to Jimmy Carter. The Occupiers revolted under Obama’s watch for two reasons. The gap between the promise of his soaring rhetoric and the basic indecency of his cold-blooded disregard for the poor and unemployed was too awful to…
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