Mark Trahant
Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is trying to change the national debate about the deficit, the role of government and the impact of those policies on the day-to-day economy.
“There are principled ways of cutting the deficit … putting Americans back to work,” the Columbia University professor recently said in a speech, as quoted in the Nieman Watchdog. He said this is essential in a country where economic inequality is growing and where one percent of the population controls 40 percent of the wealth and takes one-fourth of the nation’s income every year.
He says remember: “The deficit didn’t cause the downturn. The downturn caused the deficit.”
I wish this was the official line from the Obama Administration. Instead both Republicans and too many Democrats are proposing policies of contraction. We should be shouting: Invest in people! Invest in infrastructure! Invest in ourselves!
Instead there is an unfortunate consensus supporting the policy of shrinking government without purpose; no one knows what the end game is supposed to look like, only the foggy notion that government should be smaller.
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Tags: deficit, Mark Trahant, Trahant Reports, tribal foreign policy
By Phil Mercer BBC News, Sydney:
The Australian government is to fund emergency measures to help combat suicide in Aboriginal communities in the remote Kimberley region.
It has seen a sharp increase in the number of indigenous people taking their own lives.
Young Aborigines are four times more likely to commit suicide than their non-indigenous counterparts.
A special summit is to bring together politicians, social workers, and community elders in July.
In the Kimberley region of Western Australia there has been a cluster of deaths, and many more cases of self-harm.
There has been one suicide every week on average since the end of December.
Tribal elders fear the indigenous community is falling apart and say it is “screaming out for help”.
Wastelands
Most of the victims are aged under 30. The exact reasons why they take their owns lives are unclear.
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