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Richard (RJ) Eskow
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Richard (RJ) Eskow is a former executive with experience in health care, benefits, and risk management, finance, and information technology. He is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and hosts The Breakdown, which is broadcast on We Act Radio in Washington DC.

Richard worked for AIG and other insurance, risk management, and financial organizations. He was also a public policy and finance/economics consultant, in the US and over 20 countries. Past clients include USAID, the World Bank, the State Department, the Harvard School of International Public Health, the Government of Hungary, as well as corporations and investors. He has experience in financial and numerical analysis (of benefit plans, financial risk, corporate investments), systems design, and management.

Richard has worked on long-range health policy and forecasting. His predictions are included in the recently-released Rough Guide To the Future in it's review of "the hopes, fears, and best prediction of fifty of the world's leading futurologists."

Richard is also a freelance writer. He's a regular columnist for the science and culture blog 3 Quarks Daily and a Contributing Editor for Tricycle magazine. His reflections on blogging and spiritual principles were included in Best Buddhist Writing of 2008.

Richard's also an (occasionally) working musician and songwriter who appeared regularly at venues such as CBGB's, the Washington Folk Festival, and motorcycle shows throughout the American South from 1970 through the year 2000. His last appearance was as the "opening act" for Gen. Wesley Clark in 2007, but he may be available again for the right price - or the right cause.
He can be reached at "rjeskow@gmail.com." His Twitter ID is "@rjeskow."

Blog Entries by Richard (RJ) Eskow

Apple Pie May Be American, But Apple Computer Isn't - Not Anymore

(261) Comments | Posted May 22, 2013 | 6:36 PM

Did you know that Apple Computer was a foreign entity? Did you know that it's more Irish than anything else, at least as far as taxes are concerned? Or that it pays very little in income tax, even though its products wouldn't exist if it weren't for projects funded by...

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What's Wrong With Jamie Dimon is What's Wrong With America

(39) Comments | Posted May 22, 2013 | 12:56 AM

A lot of people have attacked JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon over the years, including this author. After today's shareholder votes at JPM, Mark Gongloff is right to describe Dimon as a "cult leader." Gongloff quotes critics, like Public Citizen's Bart Naylor who offer pointed and very valid criticism...

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On the Billionaire's Agenda, Does 60 Minutes Need a Visit From ... 60 Minutes?

(13) Comments | Posted May 20, 2013 | 2:31 PM

Last week since I wrote to the Executive Vice President of CBS News asking for a comment on Lesley Stahl's unpublicized withdrawal from the Advisory Board of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. The inquiry was acknowledged and forwarded on to the press officer for 60 Minutes. There's been no response...

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A Letter From Senator Warren

(50) Comments | Posted May 19, 2013 | 11:24 PM

The day may come when the worst nightmare a crooked banker or compromised regulator can have begins with the words, "You have a letter from Senator Warren."

But before we get to that, here's an experience that may seem familiar: You're at a party or family get-together -- a Sunday...

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Kuttner's Debtors' Prison: A Much-Needed Brief Against Austerity

(23) Comments | Posted May 18, 2013 | 4:02 PM

These days the economic news reads like some strange collaboration between John Steinbeck and Eugene Ionesco, a mashup of The Grapes of Wrath and The Bald Soprano. Grim statistics of poverty, lost hope, and widespread tragedy -- the stuff of human reality -- are juxtaposed with a surrealistically disconnected political debate that focuses on...

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Simpson-Bowles Austerity Gang: Go Home

(104) Comments | Posted May 16, 2013 | 11:36 AM

Simpson and Bowles, those two hired pitchmen for budget-cutting hysteria, are still hawking an economy-killing product called "austerity economics," a product that's designed to benefit their wealthy patrons at everybody else's expense.  This philosophy provides some (very thin) intellectual cover for the Republicans' lunatic bloodbath of spending cuts.

Of course, Simpson...

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Austerity Is Dead, So Drop the Chained CPI and Increase Social Security

(50) Comments | Posted May 15, 2013 | 8:00 PM

Deficit projections have already decreased by $200 billion for this year alone, so why do Republicans keep lunging for ever-more radical spending cuts like they were corn dogs at a barbecue? That's more in deficit reduction than President Obama's proposed cut to Social Security would "save" in 10. So why...

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Holder Says Leak Required "Very Aggressive Action"... Bank Crimes, Not So Much

(456) Comments | Posted May 14, 2013 | 9:52 PM

Apparently it never occurred to Attorney General Eric Holder that the Associated Press might be "too big to fail." If it had,then his Justice Department probably never would have investigated it.

The AP isn't just any news agency. It's the largest one in the United States and one of the...

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A Pledge for Mr. Waxman

(9) Comments | Posted May 14, 2013 | 2:02 AM

Rep. Henry Waxman should make a promise to his constituents, but he doesn't want to. So, instead of promising that he'll protect Social Security from President Obama's proposed benefit cut, Waxman told one of his constituents the very idea of asking representatives to make "pledges" is wrong.

This notion...

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Seven Ways to Honor the Mothers of America

(0) Comments | Posted May 12, 2013 | 3:08 AM

My mother has never liked Mother's Day. She says it's a phony holiday designed to boost profits for Hallmark Cards. I say, who cares as long as everybody's happy? After all, I tell her, Hallmark isn't Blackwater or Halliburton. And besides, not all profits are evil.

That doesn't mollify her....

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Will Bankers at JPMorgan Chase Finally Pay for Their Misdeeds?

(63) Comments | Posted May 11, 2013 | 6:19 PM

Will California Attorney General Kamala Harris hang tough in her new lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, the first to target individual bankers accused of defrauding the public? If so, it would be the first time in five years that executives at a major bank have personally paid a price for their...

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Tick-Tick-Tick: Do 60 Minutes and America's Billionaires Want Us to Beg?

(18) Comments | Posted May 9, 2013 | 7:54 PM

If you're a jobless person looking for food or a wounded vet who needs health care, 60 Minutes has a solution: Beg a billionaire for it. That was part of the powerful, if covert, message behind last Sunday's 60 Minutes broadcast.

The rest of Sunday night's message, which tracks closely with...

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It's a "Big Deal" When Red-state Senators Defy Obama on Social Security Cuts

(131) Comments | Posted May 7, 2013 | 7:50 PM

At least three senators up for reelection in Republican-leaning states next year are defying President Obama by indicating they'll refuse to support the White House's Social Security cuts in any "Grand Bargain" on the budget. There are a number of reasons why this is important, including the fact that it...

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60 Minutes and the Billionaire Agenda: Part 1, "Counterinsurgency Cops"

(65) Comments | Posted May 6, 2013 | 8:46 PM

This Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes was a brilliant case study in the media's ability to manipulate the public mind. The entire hour is worth studying, if only as one of the most illuminating and sophisticated examples of media manipulation in recent memory.

Who, What, When, Where ...

The most...

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Austerity in De-Niall

(42) Comments | Posted May 6, 2013 | 10:13 AM

When historian Niall Ferguson made his offensive comments about John Maynard Keynes last week, he wasn't just revealing an ugly side of own nature. He was defending his authoritarian and economically punitive ideology not only against its opponents, but against reality itself.

But then, when your best-known editorial is...

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Mushroom Clouds Over Texas, 500 Deaths in Bangladesh -- That's Why We Need Unions

(629) Comments | Posted May 3, 2013 | 4:48 PM

News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed -- and a common need for...

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Repeal the Sequester - and the Insanity Behind It - and Spend More Money

(81) Comments | Posted May 1, 2013 | 8:24 PM

Sure, we urgently need to repeal the sequester.  (You can tell your Representative that here.) But it's even more important to repeal the insane thinking that led to the sequester.  

That means repealing the deficit babble that still dominates Washington (and provided the theme for the President's weekly Saturday address)....

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My Dark Night of the Sequester

(13) Comments | Posted April 30, 2013 | 9:03 PM

A poll was released today which found that only 16 percent of adult Americans know anyone who was affected by sequester flight delays. Now that Congress has acted so swiftly to address this disproportionately higher-income inconvenience, that number probably won't grow very much. But you know somebody whose...

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When You Cheapen One Life, You Cheapen Every Life

(80) Comments | Posted April 26, 2013 | 6:49 PM

This week Slate columnist Matt Yglesias became the latest in a long list of commentators, analysts, and politicians to be seduced by the alluring notion that you can quantify, measure and model the value of a human life in intellectually stimulating, value-free, and career-advancing ways.

This false technocratic gloss is...

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Do Hill Dems Think High Health Premiums Are Okay -- Sometimes?

(7) Comments | Posted April 25, 2013 | 3:17 PM

Politico reports that Congressional leaders from both parties are trying to find a way to exempt themselves and their staff members from using the "Obamacare" health exchanges, as mandated in the health reform law.  The Politico story says that Hill leaders are afraid that their lower-paid staffers would leave...

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