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 Progressivefor 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
 |
Views Monday, December 21, 2020 This Last-Minute Congress Stimulus Package Is Terrorism by Austerity 900 billion dollars is a big amount, Apparently one trillion is a whole order of magnitude greater. Or at least the number is so terrifying that politicians bend heaven and earth to avoid being connected with trillion dollar expenditures. And this allergic reaction is bipartisan. In the early... Read more |
 |
Views Wednesday, December 09, 2020 Where’s the Second Relief Act? The US Safety Net Is Working, but There Are Capitalists Who Don’t Want It To Why can’t our political leaders learn to live with success? In an era marked by cynicism about politics, both parties managed to enact an initial COVID-19 relief package that if anything exceeded expectations. Last June Jason DeParle , summarized academic research on this act by quoting Columbia... Read more |
 |
Views Wednesday, December 02, 2020 Why Do We Wage Decades-Long Futile Wars in the Middle East but Refuse to Declare War on the Looming Climate Crisis? The United States is engaged in forever hot wars. The war in Afghanistan now nears the end of its second decade. Why US history is so saturated—some would say polluted—by war has recently become an object of both academic and activist interest. University of Hawaii at Manoa International Relations... Read more |
 |
Views Monday, November 02, 2020 Whoever Wins the Election Will Face Severe Eviction Crisis, as 30 Million Brace for Homelessness Whoever wins Tuesday’s election is virtually certain to be confronted by a severe foreclosure and eviction crisis as state and local governments face acute budget shortfalls. These crises interact with each other and in ways that intensify the economic damage they inflict. The harm is also... Read more |
 |
Views Monday, October 12, 2020 Ask Amy Coney Barrett If Bosses Should Be Free to Fire Workers at Will What is at stake in the battle over the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett? For most commentators the immediate answer is women’s control over their reproductive health and maintenance of the affordable care act. That is surely true, but excessive focus on those issues can obscure consideration of... Read more |
 |
Views Monday, October 05, 2020 End the Corporate-Sponsored Presidential Debates The organization most responsible for the debacle of the first Presidential debate offered an implicit apology and a promise. “Last night’s debate made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues. The CPD [... Read more |
 |
Views Monday, September 21, 2020 The Many Ugly Faces of Climate Science Denial In the midst of a global pandemic, forest fires now take unprecedented area of West Coast real estate, and several hurricanes have battered the East and Gulf Coasts. The continuing and intensifying episodes of climate crisis may provide the sort of shock Naomi Klein has identified as tools to... Read more |
 |
Views Tuesday, September 15, 2020 In Praise of Public Debt Even as California burns, the states of the Gulf of Mexico brace for another hurricane, a global pandemic rages, an influential segment of DC political opinion wants the populace to focus on the national debt. Employing arguments that go back at least as far as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s... Read more |
 |
Views Monday, August 24, 2020 The Triumph of Monopoly Capitalism is Hurting American Workers’ Life Expectancy As summer comes to an end the economic news is strangely bipolar. Business Insider reported that From March to June 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw his wealth rise by an estimated $48 billion. The journal might also have added that 40 million workers had filed for unemployment compensation and... Read more |
 |
Views Monday, August 03, 2020 Republican Senators Commit Political Suicide by Holding Up Stimulus in Election Year Be thankful for small favors. When the Covid-19 depression hit like a brick, almost no one advocated austerity as a cure. For the first time since Richard Nixon proclaimed that we are all Keynesians, budget deficits and a burgeoning national debt were accepted as crucial to mitigate the extent and... Read more |