Losing Our Way By Bob Herbert

[sasha031]

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&src=tptw

[Newsjock]

1. This is his last column for the NYT

"This is my last column for The New York Times after an exhilarating, nearly 18-year run. I’m off to write a book and expand my efforts on behalf of working people, the poor and others who are struggling in our society. My thanks to all the readers who have been so kind to me over the years. I can be reached going forward at [e-mail]."

[tom_paine]

7. Guess his replacement will be Bill O'Reilly

Who, in modern RW Nazi America, is a great intellectual and centrist.

[JVS]

8. Yet those dogfuckers Brooks and Friedman soldier on.

[sasha031]

9. is Herbert being forced to leave?

it said on the bottom he wanted to write a book.

I am going to miss this man...

[Amonester]

2. K&R

And yes, go fys g.e. & co.

[moondust]

3. K/R

[Gregorian]

4. TA DA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nho42QE2jKE

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. K&R

Thank you for this column and for so many wonderful, courageous years as an advocate for the common man! Cheers to you!

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. "New ideas and new leadership have seldom been ....

...more urgently needed."

Let us contemplate the above *carefully* as we stagger towards the beginning of another presidential election cycle.