John Buell
John Buell has a PhD in political science, taught for 10 years at College of the Atlantic, and was an Associate Editor of The Progressive for ten years. He lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine and writes on labor and environmental issues. His most recent book, published by Palgrave in August 2011, is "Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age." He may be reached at jbuell@acadia.net
Articles by this author
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Views Wednesday, June 26, 2019 Trump Is Deregulating the Nation Toward Disaster While Trump’s xenophobic and protectionist agenda, thankfully often blocked by the courts, has received the lion’s share of media attention, his henchmen have enacted a whole series of game changing initiatives in the area of federal regulation. Deregulating such domestic concerns as transportation... Read more |
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Views Thursday, June 06, 2019 From Guatemala to Moscow to Washington, Neoliberalism and Privatization Driving Our Crises To the corporate media, history goes back only as far as yesterday. Thus the media portray the chaos and violence in Central America as though this is just a case of stuff happens. Or all of a sudden millions decided to come north in search of a better life. And these exculpatory views survived... Read more |
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Views Friday, April 05, 2019 “Free” Markets and the Attack on Democracy Many US citizens take comfort in the conviction that progress toward democracy has been steady even if stalled or even periodically reversed. History is on our side. Early in the post Revolutionary period the right to vote was extended to all white men, even those who held no property. Women... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 06, 2019 Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Back: Why We Need a New Peace Movement MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is truly mad. At the height of the Cold War some military analysts and planners maintained that parity in weapons that would destroy civilization prevented either side from resort to those weapons. Parity, however, is a slippery concept, especially in an... Read more |
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Views Friday, February 08, 2019 Labor Strikes, Once Blunted by GOP and Corporations, are Back and Shaping Public Policy If President Trump does try to start back up the government shutdown this month, he may face an insuperable obstacle. Just days before the (temporary?) ending of the government shutdown long time left scholar and activist Barbara Ehrenreich and former Teamster organizer Gary Stevenson urged TSA... Read more |
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Views Thursday, January 10, 2019 Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Right that Tax Justice is Key to our Democratic Prospect? There is surprisingly widespread support for higher taxes on the rich. Americans have typically felt that one should keep what one earns. Many are also convinced that they will one day become rich, hence the popularity of lotteries, which reflect and help sustain that belief. Dean Baker, co-founder... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 11, 2018 The Yellow Vests Rise Up Against the Elites and Neoliberal Austerity While Americans have been preoccupied by the nostalgic reminiscence and burial of a former president, French citizens have been engaged in mass civil disobedience enacted by the gilets juanes or “Yellow Vests,” the roadside safety vests French drivers are required to have. This action reflects and... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, November 20, 2018 Defeating the Fasc-Lican Party After the election I received a provocative letter from my friend and mentor Bill Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins and author of Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism. Bill has had a long and distinguished career in... Read more |
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Views Friday, October 12, 2018 After Mitch McConnell’s Coup: Democratizing the Court, Democratizing America Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell treats the exercise of the democratic right peacefully to assemble as mob rule. This exercise in democratic liberty that McConnell abhors has been necessitated because our democracy is seriously flawed—thanks in part to the anti-democratic coups McConnell’s... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, September 19, 2018 Men’s Bodies and the Politics of Abortion Regardless of one’s evaluation of his overall performance, Judge Brett Kavanaugh merits an A for his ability to sidestep or evade questions on any controversial issue. I get the impression that he spent hours practicing non-answer answers to a familiar battery of anticipated questions. Whether... Read more |