Your Independent Journal from the Heartland

Welcome to the online edition of
The PROGRESSIVE POPULIST,
the People's Voice in a Corporate World.

Check Out Our ‘Progressive Populist Today’ Blog

Google


Search WWW Search populist.com

Selections from the May 1, 2024 issue

COVER/Hal Crowther
Tar Heel trauma: Strange times, stranger candidates

EDITORIAL
Throttle Bibi to beat Trump

JIM HIGHTOWER
Why big corporations get special tax breaks and you don’t.
How many dead firefighters does it take to ban asbestos?
Should we be polite as the GOP stomps on our democratic rights?
How oily is Big Oil’s latest PR campaign?

FRANK LINGO
State of the planet 2024

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Oxymorons and why the Dems need ‘em after all

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
CAFOs slim down, but that’s not good news is rural areas

DISPATCHES
US is still at ‘full employment,’ ‘crisis at border’ appears to have little impact on natives.
Immigrants are pretty law-abiding people.
Supermajority of Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama file for UAW vote.
Economy has done better under Democrats for 75 years, report finds.
RFK Jr. official admits goal is to elect Trump.
Campaigners cheer FCC plan to restore net neutrality rules.
New Biden plan for student debt relief ...


ART CULLEN
Back from the spiritual desert

ALAN GUEBERT
Another $1 billion to refinance status quo won’t stop ag pandemics


ASHLEY DINES
Rents are unaffordable nationwide. A renter’s tax credit would help.

JOHN YOUNG
If Donald Trump is a Christian

JAMES EGGERT
We are all socialists (and capitalists too)

DICK POLMAN
If you or I depicted the president kidnapped and hog-tied...

LES LEOPOLD
Can you slam Wall Street and still win an election? Ask Sherrod Brown

DAVID McCALL
A new shipbuilding era

SAM PIZZIGATI
Meet the secretive rich funding efforts to keep others poor


ROBERT KUTTNER
How Republicans screw workers

BRIAN CARSS
Making ends meet is hard enought without a penalty for coming up short

SONALI KOLHATKAR
Corporate profiteering destroyed the Baltimore bridge


THOM HARTMANN
The early days of Fox: Losing money to gain political power


HANK KALET
Ill-defining antisemitism: IHRA definition will chill speech and academic freedom

MARIAH MONTGOMERY
‘Gaslighting and greed’: How Uber overcharges riders and underpays drivers

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Opill: A victory for women (and their male partners)

SAM URETSKY
Be very afraid of Republican ‘reforms’

PAUL ARMENTANO
State-level marijuana legalization has been a stunning success

WAYNE O’LEARY
Democrats bite the bullet

JOEL D. JOSEPH
The end of recessions in the United States?

GENE NICHOL
The arrogance of unaccountable power

JUAN COLE
Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen accuses Israel of “targeted attack” on 7 of its aid workers

JASON SIBERT
Détente again

JAMIE STIEHM
A key to Baltimore’s broken heart

BARRY FRIEDMAN
Leaving home

SETH SANDRONSKY
Walk this way: Reviewing Anne Braden’s letters, speeches and writings

RALPH NADER
Is the same old Democratic Party ready to correct course? In time?


STEPHEN TRIMBLE
Culture wars and an embattled Utah monument

ROB PATTERSON
Bradley Cooper’s Bernstein

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Golden boy


FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell
New left ex-fugitive lived underground after prison shootout

The next issue of The Progressive Populist will be published on or before April 27.

If you would like to get The PROGRESSIVE POPULIST in your mailbox you can order a subscription anytime at our secure website.

If you subscribe online, you will be given the option of getting auto-renewed at a discount of $3 off the basic rate of $45 per year (22 issues), until you ask us to stop.

If you have any questions, e-mail prgcs@magserv.com or call 1-818-286-3104 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central time.

Subscription Information:

Prices:

The Progressive Populist is available for subscribers at low rates: Individuals in the United States may subscribe at $45 for one year (22 issues) or $80 for two years (44 issues). If you'd like to check us out for six months, we offer an $24 introductory 6-month subscription.

We also publish a daily email supplement featuring some of our most popular writers who write weekly columns, which we don't have the space to run in our twice-monthly newsprint edition. The Daily Progressive Populist is available to subscribers of the twice-monthly versions at an additional $10 per year.

Subscriptions are available for our regular newsprint edition or email version available in PDF format.

Gift Subscriptions:

If you subscribe at the regular rate of $45 or $80, or if you currently have a subscription at the regular rate, you may buy a gift subscription for an additional $20 for six months or $40 for a full year. Prescribe The Progressive Populist for a friend, a relative, your public library, cafe, barbershop, or local, state or federal legislators.

Sample issues:

We will send a free sample issue to addresses in the United States, if you request one. Just send us your address or the address of others who might be interested in a sample copy. We'll send a free sample of our email edition to addresses outside the United States.

Meet the Cartoonists

Cartoonists and columnists whose work you see in The Progressive Populist are featured in this podcast produced by the Cagle Cartoons Syndicate.

 

More on our features:

Featured in the Essays section are collections of articles and resources on Health Care, Social Security and Voting Security, among other topics. Also see our collection of resources on 9/11 and the aftermath of terror attacks on the United States.

We mainly cover current events, but in an effort to provide historic background, our Populist Reader offers texts such as the Preamble to the People's Party Platform, which formed the rhetorical underpinning for the Populist movement, the People's Party Platform of 1896, which represented the Populist demands at the peak of the agrarian/labor revolt, and more. And Mark Twain's "War Prayer," written in response to the Spanish-American War, is as relevant as ever.

Also featured in the Essays section is "Democratic Money: A Populist Perspective", with Lawrence Goodwyn, William Greider and Tom Schlesinger of the Southern Finance Project discussing the Populism of the 1890s and how those historical lessons relate to the prospects for financial reform today.

Also see reminiscences by two former Alabama journalists about the late George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who transformed American politics with his combination of racism and populism. Claude Duncan remembers the good George Wallace in "George Wallace Joins the Ghost Brigade", while Peggy Roberson reminds us of the bad George Wallace in "Remembering George Wallace"

We also offer Eugene J. McCarthy's remarks on his career in politics on the event of his 80th birthday, as well as his remembrances of Chicago as the Democrats returned to the scene of the crime in 1996 after 28 years. See James McCarty Yeager's remembrance of McCarthy, some notes on McCarthy by Sam Smith and a short film on McCarthy, "Sorry I was Right," at Free Speech TV. Also see a website devoted to McCarthy's legacy.

Another feature that we hope you will check out is Dan Yurman's Samizdat: Militia News from Idaho; Blood Oaths and Fish Stories Swim in Political Waters. This collects a series of dispatches, analysis and commentary by Yurman on militias, wise-use and white-supremacist movements in Idaho and the Rocky Mountain states. Please tell us what you think.

 

See previous postings in our weblog archives:

 


"We believe people are more important than corporations"

If you would like to receive Progressive Populist News Updates
Click to subscribe to populist-news

 

If you would like to help us defray the costs of providing this website as a free resource, please consider subscribing via our secure PayPal account. Just click on the button below. Any help is appreciated.

If you'd like to contribute to The Progressive Populist, send your donation by PayPal to populist@usa.net.

Note: Subscriptions and/or contributions to The Progressive Populist are not tax deductible.

Progressive Populist Privacy Policy:

The Progressive Populist web site does not identify browsers or monitor your activity on this web site, other than to count how many people visit individual pages. Since we don't collect any information from you, your browser or your computer, we can't sell it or give it away or produce it under subpoena or search warrant or any other sort of coercion or blandishment to governments, corporations, organizations, cabals or busybodies. You don't get cookies from The Progressive Populist site, though occasionally we offer the milk of human kindness.

However, if you click on ads served on our site, the advertisers or websites linked to this site might collect information from you. Google is implementing interest-based advertising that will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user's previous interactions with the Google content network, such as visits to an advertiser's website and interests. For more information see Google's Adsense Blog

Site Meter


Copyright © 1995-2024 The Progressive Populist

By the way, the name is Progressive Populist, not populous, populace, papalist or populisp. And Donald Trump is not a populist.

Buy shirts, caps, bibs, baby garb, nightshirts,
shopping bags, cups, steins and other stuff at CafePress.com

The Progressive Populist is an independent newspaper that reports from the Heartland of America on issues of interest to workers, small business people and family farmers and ranchers.

We produce our newsprint edition and PDF versions twice monthly with updates and resources online.

We also produce a daily supplement, delivered by email, with additional columns by our writers, such as Joe Conason, Amy Goodman, Alan Guebert, Froma Harrop, Jim Hightower, Jesse Jackson, Robert Kuttner, Gene Lyons, Ralph Nader, Robert Reich, Mary Sanchez, Jamie Stiehm, John Young and others, as well as features such as OtherWords.com and other news and commentary. The daily service is available to regular subscribers who want more of their favorite writers.

We hope you enjoy our website, which includes the blog below as well as other resources, including samples of articles from our current newsprint issue, recent editorials, online essays and resources you might find useful and a summary of what we're all about.

We also hope you'll try a subscription to our twice-monthly tabloid newspaper or email version of the paper under our special discount introductory rate of $24 for six months (11 issues). That rate is good for addresses in the US as well as our email version. And if you're not satisfied with the first three issues we'll refund the entire $24.

 

Do your gift shopping with us:

See our Progressive Populist Gift Shop with items for men, women and children.

Read a Good Book:

If you can't find the book you're looking for at your local independent bookstore, Powell's Books is an indy bookseller in Portland, Ore., with whom we have partnered. Get your book there and help support our website. See our book page for more suggested titles.

 

A Few Good Weblogs
to keep you from getting your work done:

The American Prospect
Center for American Progress
Juan Cole's Informed Comment on Middle East politics, history and religion.
Common Dreams
Crooks and Liars
Daily Kos (Democratic politics)
Democratic Strategist journal of public opinion and political strategy by William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira.
Digby's Hullabaloo.
Eschaton by Atrios (politics)
Media Matters for America
Mother Jones
Charles P. Pierce's Politics blog at Esquire.
Progressive Review Undernews
Political Wire by Taegon Goddard
Raw Story
Poynter Media News (journalism scuttlebutt)
Salon
Greg Sargent's Plum Line at WashingtonPost.com.
Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall
Talk Left, the politics of crime.
This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow
Campaign for America's Future, progressive insights
Washington Monthly Political Animal
Washington Spectator
Economic Policy at WashingtonPost.com.

For international news which the US media such as the Chicago Tredibune, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post might not see fit to print:

From Canada
Globe and Mail of Toronto, for Canadian news and perspectives on its southern neighbor.
Toronto Star, a liberal Canadian newspaper.

From Britain
The Guardian, a liberal newspaper in London (formerly the Manchester Guardian). See also its US-oriented website, Guardian America.
The Independent, a liberal newspaper in London
Daily Mirror, liberal tabloid in London.
New Statesman, British Socialist weekly.
• BBC World News

From Elsewhere:
Al Ahram, English-language weekly based in Cairo, for Arab perspective on Mid-East
Dawn, of Karachi, centrist English-language Pakistan daily.
The Frontier Post of Peshawar, Pakistan, for news from the front lines of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.
Haaretz, Israeli liberal daily with English language edition
International Herald Tribune, Paris-based daily operated by the New York Times.
Le Monde Diplomatique, English language monthly digest of the French daily newspaper.
Mail and Guardian, daily web edition of South African liberal weekly.
Mexico City News, the English language daily in our neighbor to the south.
South China Morning Post, independent Hong Kong and Pacific news (registration required).
Spiegel, English version of
German newsweekly.
Sydney Morning Herald, for news from Down Under.
Watching America, links to articles in foreign press about the USA, with translations of articles originally written for foreigners about the US. Updated daily.
World Press Review, a monthly magazine with analyses and English translations of articles in the international press, as well as an excellent directory of publications by nation, with ideological leanings.

--------------------------------

They say a picture is worth a thousand words; well, here are some good cartoon sites:

Jules Feiffer

Jeff Danziger

Mark Fiore

Forever Dada, an animated political cartoon created by California artists Louis Dunn & Steve Campbell.

This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow. (And he has a pretty good links page.)

Ted Rall, our cartoonist/columnist.

Tom the Dancing Bug, by Ruben Bolling

Matt Wuerker

Also see our Links to Independent Media

See links to health care reform

--------------------------------

See our recent editorials at The Progressive Populist Today blog, and older editorials at our editorial archives page. And like us on Facebook.

--------------------------------

This World Wide Web site not only features selections from the newsprint edition of the Progressive Populist, to which we hope you will subscribe. It also gives you another crack at selected articles from back issues as well as texts of populist speeches and essays on populism that we could not otherwise fit into our printed edition.
Watch our Global Trade site for information on the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and citizen efforts to check the globalization of corporate power. And after you have bookmarked our site, go to the Links for pointers to other web sites that you might find of interest.


The Progressive Populist started in November 1995 as a monthly newspaper with editorial offices in Austin, Texas, and business and production offices in Storm Lake, Iowa. In October 1999, after four years, The Progressive Populist switched to twice-monthly publication. Our editorial offices moved to Manchaca, Texas, just south of Austin, in 2005.

We aim to make the Progressive Populist the antidote to the monopoly daily news, throw a lifeline to progressives who feel like they are stranded in a sea of conservatives, and maybe play a role in reviving political and economic debate. We hope this web site is useful to you.


If you would like to hear more about our project, or if you would like to comment on our web site or receive a sample copy of the Progressive Populist, drop me a line by email or regular post.

Also, register below to receive email updates on news and features or to donate to our enterprise.

-- Jim Cullen, Editor

E-mail populist@usa.net
PO Box 819
Manchaca TX 78652