Richard Eskow

Richard (RJ) Eskow is Senior Advisor for Health and Economic Justice at Social Security Works and the host of The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow on Free Speech TV. Follow him on Twitter: @rjeskow
Articles by this author
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Views Monday, February 08, 2021 Note to Democrats: $1400 + $600 Does NOT Equal $2000 Under the current Democratic proposal, eligibility for COVID relief will be based on last year's income. That's like prescribing medicine today based on your temperature last April. That's not the only problem with the Democrats' cumbersome plan for what have come to be known as "stimulus checks."... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 15, 2020 After One Hundred 9/11's, Here Are 9 Life-Saving Actions Progressives Must Demand Now We have reached a deadly milestone: 300,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States. That's one hundred times as many people as died on 9/11. More people died from Covid-19 last Wednesday, in fact, than died on 9/11. Friday, too. "To stop the dying, we must act as if each of our lives depended on it... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 01, 2020 How a Rahm Emanuel Appointment Would Hurt Biden and the Democrats The skies above Washington D.C. are restricted airspace for low-flying aircraft, with one major exception. The inception of a new presidential administration fills the air with trial balloons, as job seekers and administration officials test the public reaction to possible appointments. One trial... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, November 03, 2020 In a Fearful Moment, We Are Honored by History Like many other Americans, this weekend I encountered a cavalcade of slow-rolling, flag-waving pickup trucks and other vehicles on my local highway – which, in my case, was the Beltway surrounding the nation’s capital. They weren’t American flags. They were blue-and-white Trump banners, an... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, October 28, 2020 Freedom Dreamers: The Faces of Student Debt In a recent Instagram discussion about student debt for the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Ilhan Omar quoted Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza as saying, “We’re not freedom fighters, we’re freedom dreamers.” Rep. Omar, who has student debt of her own, went on to say: “We can all dream, and... Read more |
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Views Friday, October 23, 2020 The Sunset Gun: One Nation, Under the Influence of Hate I recently found myself re-reading Walker Percy’s 1970 novel, Love in the Ruins, a deeply problematic work by a writer with extraordinary gifts. Lately, I’ve found myself repeating these lines as I follow the news: "Either I am right and a catastrophe will occur, or it won’t and I’m crazy. In... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, October 07, 2020 Trump Is the Grotesque Id of the Ruling Elites. His Disease Is Theirs – and Ours Wall Street donors, corporate CEOs, “Never Trump” Republicans, “Lincoln Project” consultants, “National Security Professionals for Biden”: many have expressed revulsion for Donald Trump, the man and the president. It’s certainly understandable. Just this week, Trump minimized his own illness, an... Read more |
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Views Friday, September 04, 2020 David Graeber, 1961-2020: History is a Living Weapon When I was a teenager, I overheard my bass teacher commiserating with some other jazz musicians over the premature death of a colleague. “Yeah,” one said, “he was a soulful cat.” Of all the memories that might have resurfaced all these decades later, that was the one that came to mind when I... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, August 12, 2020 A Message to the Left About Kamala Harris—And Us Millions of people have worked for change in this country in recent years. An incomplete list includes the Occupy movement, Standing Rock, the Sunrise movement, the Bernie Sanders campaigns, Black Lives Matter, the Red State teachers' strikes, and the Women's Marches. For the activist left (I... Read more |
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Views Saturday, August 08, 2020 Rehearsals for Apocalypse: From the A-Bomb to Covid-19 Who knew we'd be this bad at facing the end of the world? Most baby boomers remember the national emergency warning system known as Conelrad. The name stands for "Control of Electromagnetic Radiation"—an aspirational goal if there ever was one. Although it was used for other kinds of emergencies,... Read more |