Hyperbole Was To Lyndon Johnson What Oxygen

Now Barack Obama, Who Campaigned For Transparency, Is The President Defending Secret Negotiations On New Trade Agreements That Are Largely Being Written By Corporate Lawyers And Lobbyists. He Would Give Corporations The Key To The Treasury While He Gets The Authority To Fast Track Another Hammering Of Working People And The Environment. Yet The Only People Who Get A Real Tongue-lashing From This President's White House Are Progressives Around Town Who Dare To Call Him On The Carpet For Abandoning His Promises.

It's Very Difficult To Measure The Impact On Policy Of Any Investigative Journalism. You Hope It Matters To Let A Little More Truth Loose In The World, But You Can't Always Be Sure It Does. You Do It Because There's A Story To Be Told. I Can Tell You That The Job Of Trying To Tell The Truth About People Whose Job It Is To Hide The Truth Is About As Complicated And Difficult As Trying To Hide It In The First Place.

The Struggle Of Ordinary People For A Decent Living, For Security, Is As Old As The Republic, But It's Taken On A New And Urgent Edge. Instead Of Shared Prosperity Our Political System Has Now Produced A Winner-take-all Economy.

Reagan's Story Of Freedom Superficially Alludes To The Founding Fathers, But Its Substance Comes From The Gilded Age, Devised By Apologists For The Robber Barons. It Is Posed Abstractly As The Freedom Of The Individual From Government Control A Jeffersonian Ideal At The Roots Of Our Bill Of Rights, To Be Sure. But What It Meant In Politics A Century Later, And Still Means Today, Is The Freedom To Accumulate Wealth Without Social Or Democratic Responsibilities And License To Buy The Political System Right Out From Everyone Else.

When A Library Is Open, No Matter Its Size Or Shape, Democracy Is Open, Too.