By Iris Vander Pluym on 04.14.13
The H-1B visa phenomenon provides a curious counterpoint to the oft-stated conventional wisdom that American middle class jobs are irretrievably moving overseas solely because foreign labor is so much cheaper. In certain sectors this is undeniably true, particularly for industries that rely on low-skilled workers for high-volume manufacturing jobs...
Read MoreBy Iris Vander Pluym on 03.24.13
I.
I recently read a story about the C-130 Hercules transport plane (Lockheed Martin's Herculean Efforts to Profit From Defense Spending: The Epic Story of the C-130, TomDispatch, March 10, 2013). The author is Jeremiah Goulka, a former RAND Corporation analyst. It is the story of a powerful industry (the military-industrial complex)
extracting exactly what it wants from the U.S. taxpayer, as opposed to the other way around. It puts profit above all else, above even its ostensible purpose: i.e. the nation’s defense. What stands...
Read More
By Iris Vander Pluym – 03.03.13
I did not watch the U.S. president's State of the Union address. I had less than zero interest in the president's State of the Union address. Not because I believe a president's words do not matter; in some contexts they certainly matter very much. No, I declined to watch because after listening to this administration for 4+ years I have very little faith that anything the president says reflects his actual agenda, or gives us any
Read More
By Iris Vander Pluym - 02.10.13
A piece by Julian Assange published last November catalogs the malevolent machinations of the U.S. government as revealed by thousands of U.S. State Department cables released by Wikileaks. Reading it, one cannot help but discern whose interests U.S. foreign policy actually serves. (SPOILER ALERT! It is not We the People.)
Yet a curious thing often happens when I mention Wikileaks: people express a visceral disgust for Julian Assange, even though in context he is personally irrelevant. Why? Well, the press campaign to smear him has been relentless and...
By Iris Vander Pluym - 01.20.13
Once upon a time, war profiteering was considered profoundly immoral, or so I am told. Today it is The American Way.
The prospect of decreasing the U.S. defense budget has the Pentagon brass and defense contractors (and their Congressional servants) squawking like chickens that the sky is falling. But here in the wondrous world of reality, even the “drastic” cuts envisioned by the sequester would roll...
Read MoreBy Iris Vander Pluym - 12.16.12
Relentlessly they had offered trenchant, scathing criticism of the blood-soaked, oil-drenched policies of the Bush administration. They had done it for years. It was understandable that they would become enthralled with the soaring liberal rhetoric of a young African-American Senator from Illinois, improbably running for president. After then-Senator Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act — despite having promised he would not do so under any circumstances — it became clear that Barack Obama...
Read More