America's last half-assed attempt at a serious newspaper, the New York Times, is rapidly losing the last of its serious op-ed writers. Bob Herbert is the latest to say goodbye, and his final column is devastating. It starts like this: "So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home." Haha, and then it gets depressing. But it's good to see somebody in the NYT taking on the actual monsters in our nation -- our horrific income inequality, the Obama Administration's perfidy in letting G.E. chief executive Jeffrey Immelt run the White House's "Council on Jobs and Competitiveness" even as G.E. refuses to pay a nickel in corporate tax, statehouse wars against public-service employees, congressional wars against women and Muslims and the poor, etc.
The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely ....There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.
Wow, why is everybody going all communist all the sudden? Oh right, because it's time for Total Revolution. Anyway, good luck, Bob! Good luck, America! [NYT]
