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By Paul Buchheit, AlterNet

We may have once believed that the darkest days were behind us, and that slow and steady progress for middle-class workers would continue to be made. But greed and good sense are forever in competition. Gains made in our country's progressive years are, a century later, once again in serious jeopardy.

1. The Commons: A Toll Gate in the Grand Canyon

In the early 1900s the Grand Canyon had been taken over by speculators, especially Ralph Henry Cameron, an entrepreneur and soon-to-be Arizona Senator who laid claim to much of the canyon land. He built a hotel on the main trail, set up a toll gate, and even charged exorbitant prices for water at the steamy canyon bottom.

We're heading back in that direction, and we don't have Teddy Roosevelt to knock some sense into Congress. Attempts to privatize federal land were made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006, President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states. Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity has proposed to sell millions of acres of “unneeded federal land,” and the libertarian Cato Institute demands that our property be “allocated to the highest-value use.” Representative Cliff Stearns recommended that we “sell off some of our national parks.” Mitt Romney admitted that he didn't know “what the purpose is” of public lands.

2. Safety Deregulated: Workers Fell “Like a Living Torch to the Street”

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 was one of the deadliest tragedies in U.S. history. 146 garment workers died, most of them young immigrant women, some as young as 14. They worked from 9 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, forced to keep up a pace of 50 stitches per second in the preparation of blouses, all for 15 cents an hour. They were all on the 8th and 9th floors when the fire started near the end of the Saturday work shift. Up on the 10th floor were Max Blanck and …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By David Bromwich, Tom Dispatch

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Like many days, March 3rd saw the delivery of a stern opinion by President Obama. To judge by recent developments in Ukraine, he said, Russia was putting itself “on the wrong side of history.” This might seem a surprising thing for an American president to say. The fate of Soviet Communism taught many people to be wary of invoking History as if it were one’s special friend or teammate. But Obama doubtless felt comfortable because he was quoting himself. “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent,” he said in his 2009 inaugural address, “know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” In January 2009 and again in March 2014, Obama was speaking to the world as its uncrowned leader.

For some time now, observers — a surprisingly wide range of them — have been saying that Barack Obama seems more like a king than a president. Leave aside the fanatics who think he is a “tyrant” of unparalleled powers and malignant purpose. Notions of that sort come easily to those who look for them; they are predigested and can safely be dismissed. But the germ of a similar conclusion may be found in a perception shared by many others. Obama, it is said, takes himself to be something like a benevolent monarch — a king in a mixed constitutional system, where the duties of the crown are largely ceremonial. He sees himself, in short, as the holder of a dignified office to whom Americans and others may feel naturally attuned.

A large portion of his experience of the presidency should have discouraged that idea. Obama’s approval ratings for several months have been …read more

Source: ALTERNET