WORTH REPEATING: The Fix Is In

SYDNEY GREENBERG: When presented with vivid descriptions of income inequality in America, people are deflated, rather than empowered to bring change. In surveys, they tell me that they think the politicians and the chief executives are “piggybacking off each other.” They think that the game is rigged and that the wealthy and big industries get policies that reinforce their advantage. And they do not think their voices matter.[…] What should Democrats do? The Democrats have to start detoxifying politics by proposing to severely limit or bar individual and corporate campaign contributions, which would mean a fight with the Supreme Court. […]

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HAIL YUMA: The Most Unemployed City In America

THE DAILY: With more than 350 cloudless days and less than 3 inches of rain per year, this boiling-hot border town is often billed as the driest, sunniest city in the nation. Now Yuma can add a grimmer distinction to the list: America’s most unemployed city. Local joblessness stands at 27.9 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics — worse than the nationwide rate at the depth of the Great Depression in 1933. “This isn’t something you just see in the paper,” said Julie Engel, president of the city’s economic development corporation. “There isn’t a person in Yuma that hasn’t […]

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SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: There Will Be Blood

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Well, congratulations to the filthy richest 1% of Americans and their right wing Republican representation in Congress. And, much as it pains me to say it, if you didn’t phone, email or otherwise convey your feelings on the matter to your own Washington reps, you’ve gotten exactly what you deserve. Never before have those representing such a money-gluttonous immoral minority so thoroughly sodomized a moral majority of the working class. Never in the history of the Republic has the majority had to suffer such cowardly leadership on an issue so critical to their and the nation’s […]

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BOOKS: Blessed Is The Blasphemy Of Catch 22

“And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways,” Yossarian continued, hurtling over her objections. “There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He […]

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COLD CASE: What Ever Happened To D.B. Cooper?

NEW YORK TIMES: It was in November 1971 that Mr. Cooper bought a $20 plane ticket from Portland to Seattle. (He used the name Dan Cooper, believed to be an alias, but a reporter heard it as D. B. Cooper, and that name has stuck.) With bomb in hand, Mr. Cooper ordered the plane to land in Seattle, where he allowed the three dozen passengers to exit in exchange for four parachutes and $200,000. Then he and a skeleton crew took off again. He demanded the plane fly south, but not above 10,000 feet. Somewhere over the Cascades in southwest […]

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CONTEST: Win Tickets To See Death Cab At The Mann

[Illustration by ALEX FINE] We have pair of tickets to see Death Cab For Cutie this Friday night at the Mann Music Center with special guest Frightened Rabbit for the first Phawker reader that can tell us the origin of DCFC’s name. (Hint, it’s the title of a song written by another band) Email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM, be sure and include a day time phone number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed! UPDATE: We have a winner! Thanks to all for playing and stay tuned for more groovy giveaways.

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WORTH REPEATING: Profiles In Cowardice

DICK POLMAN: Never before had a cadre of partisan zealots sought to drive the nation into default and crash the economy. Raising the debt ceiling had always been a bipartisan imperative; it had never been used as a bargaining chip in a game of chicken. But in response, Obama essentially said: “Let us reason together. If you will vote to raise the debt ceiling, I will agree to cut lots of government spending. But I am drawing a line in the sand. To close the budget deficit, we also need to raise a lot of new revenue. The rich should […]

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PAUL KRUGMAN: Man Up, Mr. President

PAUL KRUGMAN: In fact, Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here. Did the president have any alternative this time around? Yes. First of all, he could and should have demanded an increase in the debt ceiling back in December. When […]

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