The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Reparations for the Common People Paying a long overdue dividend DONALD JEFFRIES I wrote the book  Survival of the Richest: How the Corruption of the Marketplace and the Disparity of Wealth Created the Greatest Conspiracy of All.  It received more critical praise than any of my books, from the likes of Arthur Blaustein, a former Chair of the National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity. Look at the book’s Amazon page. It has a long list of impressive blurbs under the “Editorial Reviews” section. These were people I largely have never communicated with. It was heady stuff for a community college dropout like me. Naomi Wolf compared it to the late Barbara Ehrenreich’s excellent  Nickel and Dimed.  Naomi went on the write the Foreword to the paperback version. Needless to say, I was extremely honored. But the book just never sold well. Even Naomi’s name on the paperback didn’t seem to help. There was a huge distinction between the critical praise and the dis...

  Trump, Shapiro and the War on Social Security The death of "Entitlements" DONALD JEFFRIES Ben Shapiro, the smarmy young elitist who co-founded conservative platform The Daily Wire, took a break from fondling the Wailing Wall the other day. Next to enthusiastically shilling for Israel, his key issue seems to be eliminating Social Security. You know, the primary income most retired people rely on. Shapiro came out with both guns blazing, firing away at….American senior citizens. He called retirement itself a “stupid idea” and said it was “insane” that the retirement age hasn’t been raised. This has long been a Stupid Party staple- just keep raising the retirement age. That way there will be less of the old, useless eaters to pay. Shapiro inaccurately referred to the fact that Americans are living longer, when actually the life expectancy rate in this country has been falling for the past several years. That’s because of our crack Medical Industrial Complex, and our preservati...