Steve Hochstadt: The Republican dream is a libertarian nightmare – the “free market” is free to watch you all the time. Big Brother isn’t a government camera. It’s a corporate cookie right in your computer.
Herb Engstrom: At this time of TEA Party hysteria, Fox News mendacity, and GOP hypocrisy a government guarantee of universal employment might seem like a radical idea, although it seemed not to be so to Franklin Roosevelt.
Steve Hochstadt: In 2011, the Republican strategy has been crowned with total success. They have managed to make the US government into a laughing stock, a global symbol of incompetence. Public confidence in government is at an all-time low.
Robert Reich: Republicans are using what would otherwise be a routine, legally technical vote to raise the debt limit as a means of holding the nation hostage to their own political goal of shrinking the size of the federal government.
Richard M. Mathews: Unless you are wearing 100% cotton made on the plantation you have had in the family for generations without the benefit of outside seed or fertilizer, the clothes have got to go.
John Peeler: Disillusioned liberals ought to know that if this effort takes off, it is very likely to siphon votes away from Obama and facilitate a complete Republican takeover of the federal government.
Walter Brasch: If the federal government demands health warnings on cigarette packs, why doesn’t it also demand similar warnings on other products that also carry known health risks, like liquor?
Marian Wang: Also unclear is whether the federal agencies in charge of changing the food safety system will be adequately funded. Republican proposals to cut the FDA’s budget and the USDA’s inspection budget could cut into efforts to update the system.
Sherwood Ross: Instead of investing in a framework to help blacks advance by their own initiative, the Federal government has flushed billions down the toilets of friendly foreign strongmen such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarek.
Andrea Nill: People are free to waste their money on whatever they want, but Arizona probably won’t be able to turn around and use those donations to build its own fence.
Robert Reich: The President should ban all political activity by companies receiving more than half their revenues from the U.S. government.