Robert Kuttner

Congress is back at work for a brief session before the full-time electioneering begins. It will return after Election Day for a “lame-duck” session, where the outgoing Congress — with many members repudiated by the voters — have one last chance to do damage. This year’s legislative politicking is particularly fraught, because Republicans […]

Labor Day was created by the machinists union in New York in 1882 as a “workingmen’s holiday.” Unions all over America adopted the idea. By 1894, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day an official holiday. The day also celebrated the act of organizing, politically and in the workplace, to improve livelihoods and lives. Today, the […]

George W. Bush has been faulted in some quarters for taking an extended vacation while the Middle East festers. It doesn’t much matter; the man running the country is Vice President Dick Cheney. When historians look back on the multiple assaults on our constitutional system of government in this era, Cheney’s unprecedented role will come […]

Wal-Mart is usefully becoming the symbol of an America where tens of millions of hard-working families cannot make ends meet. Its wages and health benefits are so dismal that in several states Wal-Mart displaces worker healthcare costs onto tax-supported Medicaid for the poor. Wal-Mart batters down wages not just in the United States, but in […]

A minimum wage increase, the first in nearly a decade, got sidetracked yet again on Thursday when Senate Republicans tied its passage to a permanent estate tax cut for the wealthiest one percent of American families. Democrats refused to take the bait, and both measures failed. The Republicans seem to be going out of their […]

Shed no tears for the recent collapse of the trade talks, widely portrayed as a big setback for the trading system and developing nations. The suspension opens the door to a more realistic agenda. The current round of trade talks was launched in 2001 at Doha, Qatar, an authoritarian location conveniently off-limits to protesters. It […]

The latest violence in the Middle East demonstrates the bankruptcy of the Bush administration’s grand design for the region. The Iraq war was going to display American power, promote democracy, strengthen moderates, and secure Israel. Instead, the quagmire has demonstrated the humiliating limits of U.S. military power, fomented anarchy, recruited Islamist extremists, and strengthened a […]

Ridiculing the feckless Democrats for their fragmentation on the Iraq War is an easy spectator sport. On the lonely left advocating withdrawal is Senator Russ Feingold, lately joined by Senator John Kerry (did somebody say flip-flop?). On the right Joe Lieberman is defending his Senate seat in dovish Connecticut, while a hawkish Hillary Clinton seems […]