Republicanism. First published Mon Jun 19, 2006; substantive revision Tue Apr 15, 2014 In political theory and philosophy, the term ‘republicanism’ is generally used in two different, but closely related, senses. In the first sense, republicanism refers to a loose tradition or family of writers in the history of western political thought, including especially: Machiavelli and his fifteenth-century Italian predecessors; the English republicans Milton, Harrington, Sidney, and others; Montesquieu and Blackstone; the eighteenth-century English commonwealthmen; and many Americans of the founding era such as Jefferson and Madison. In their interpretation of the classical republicanism tradition, civic republicans are often in debate with civic humanists, with whom they are often confused (see the entry on civic humanism). Developed as a contemporary political doctrine, civic republicanism is broadly speaking progressive and liberal, but not without important distinct features. 1. 2.
OpenSecrets.org: Money in Politics -- See Who's Giving & Who's Getting. National Institute on Money in State Politics. The Institute's Blog: Nonpartisan. Timely. Transparent. The Sun Never Rises: Sources of Michigan’s Dark Money Set to Remain HiddenTwo days after Christmas, Governor Rick Snyder gave a belated gift to dark money groups and those donors who felt stifled by Michigan’s campaign finance limits.
Snyder signed Senate Bill 661, which the Money Tale described in depth here, after … Continue reading Thanks for your Support We're thankful for new general support from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for the Institute's work to invigorate debate about the role money plays in elections and policy decisions with data-backed evidence. Watch for Updates! We now offer RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds of our data that enable you to stay up-to-date on our data, track new reports, and see new contributions to candidates, parties, ballot measures, committees and states. Free-Market Public Policy | National Center for Policy Analysis | NCPA. Paying Nothing, Conservative Style. By Matthew Yglesias on October 11, 2011 at 4:44 pm "Paying Nothing, Conservative Style" Here’s Matt Labash and the Weekly Standard trying to mislead you about taxation and the income distribution: You’re either part of “us,” the “99 percent” (as all the surrounding signage identifies us), or you’re part of “them” — the rapacious 1 percent, who are purportedly strangling our nation by holding roughly one-third of its wealth, even if they also pay 38 percent of all federal income taxes while the bottom 47 percent of the population pay nothing (a Revolution is no place for facts and figures).
You might as well say that the 20 percent of Americans who smoke cigarettes regularly pay 95 percent of federal tobacco excise taxes while 70 percent of the population pays nothing. Does 70 percent of the population really pay nothing to maintain public services? Of course not. Jeff Masters: the Climate Has Shifted to a New State. Jeff Masters, one of the nation's leading meteorologists and creator of the popular weather site Weather Underground thinks something fundamental has changed: Obviously, strong tropical disturbances capable of developing into named storms are very rare in February, and I've never seen one in my 30 years as a meteorologist. However, ocean temperatures are warm enough year-round to support a tropical storm in the waters of the Western Caribbean. Water temperatures today in the region were 26 - 26.5°C (79 - 80°F), which is near average for this time of year.
If an unusual configuration of the jet stream allows wind shear to drop below about 25 knots in the Western Caribbean, there is the opportunity for a rare off-season tropical storm to form in February. We all have experienced it, but this is expert confirmation of that experience. Let's look at a few recent examples of what he's talking about, courtesy of Desdemona. Texas Drought Forces a Town to Sip From a Truck: Petroleum & Other Liquids - Analysis & Projections - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) U.S. Exports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products. Column: Doing the math on Obama’s deficits. (Graph: Todd Lindeman/Ezra Klein; data: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) The campaign trail can be a lonely place, so Mitt Romney frequently invites friends to accompany him. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is an occasional companion. So is Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. But more often, Romney brings a large clock. Romney’s people made the clock themselves.
There are two answers: more than $4 trillion, or about $983 billion. When Obama took office, the national debt was about $10.5 trillion. But ask yourself: Which of Obama’s policies added $4.7 trillion to the debt? There is a way to tally the effects Obama has had on the deficit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities was kind enough to help me come up with a comprehensive estimate of Obama’s effect on the deficit. Obama, for instance, is clearly responsible for the stimulus. When Obama entered office, the Bush tax cuts were already in place and two wars were ongoing. The other judgment call was when to end the analysis. US Code of Law. Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice | Racism, Bias & Politics | Right-Wing and Left-Wing Ideology. There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience. "Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said. Controversy ahead The findings combine three hot-button topics. Brains and bias As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. A study of averages. Mother Jones | Smart, Fearless Journalism. Founders' Constitution. History Commons.
EPA Plans to Issue Rules Covering Fracking Wastewater. The federal government had left it to states to decide how to regulate wastewater that was discharged from wells to streams, but now says it will develop national standards. The McKeesport Sewage Treatment Plant, one of nine plants on the Monongahela River that has treated wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling operations. (Joaquin Sapien/ProPublica) The EPA took another step toward tightening oversight of hydraulic fracturing today, announcing it would initiate a process to set national rules for treating wastewater discharged from gas drilling operations.
Until now, the agency has largely left it to states to police wastewater discharges. Some have allowed drillers to pump waste through sewage treatment plants that aren't equipped to remove many of the contaminants, leading to pollution in some rivers and to problems at drinking water facilities. "I wouldn't say they're inadequate," she said of states' regulations, "but they could use the help. " Cheat Sheet: What’s Happened to the Big Players in the Financial Crisis. Mounted police stop Occupy Wall Street participants trying to break through police barricade in Times Square, Oct. 15, 2011. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images) Mortgage lenders contributed to the financial crisis by issuing or underwriting loans to people who would have a difficult time paying them back [1], inflating a housing bubble that was bound to pop.
Lax regulation [2] allowed banks to stretch their mortgage lending standards and use aggressive tactics to rope borrowers into complex mortgages that were more expensive than they first appeared. Evidence has also surfaced that lenders were filing fraudulent documents to push some of these mortgages through [3], and, in some cases, had been doing so as early as the 1990s. Countrywide, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, also pushed customers to sign on for complex and costly mortgages that boosted the company’s profits [7].
Where they are now: Few prosecutions have been brought against subprime mortgage lenders. The regulators. Underground Industry: Gas Pipelines Are Big Business But Lightly Regulated. The gas pipeline industry is hardly glamorous. But it is lucrative and loosely regulated. Last weekend, two oil and gas pipeline companies announced they would combine to create the biggest such firm in the U.S. when Kinder Morgan offered more than $20 billion to buy El Paso. If the deal goes through, the companies say, the behemoth would become the continent’s fourth largest energy corporation. While the pipeline business has operated largely, well, underground, several recent accidents have drawn attention to safety and the web of regulations that governs the nation’s 2.3 million miles of gas pipelines. A growing controversy over a plan to build a major oil pipeline from Canada’s Tar Sands to Texas [1] has also spotlighted industry practices.
On Monday, the Senate passed a pipeline safety bill [2] that would increase fines, hire more inspectors and implement stronger safety standards. Here’s a primer on the industry and its regulations. The Regulations The Business Key Pipeline Stats* Is Regulatory Uncertainty a Major Impediment to Job Growth? By: Dr. Jan Eberly Last week at a Senate hearing Secretary Geithner said, “I'm very sympathetic to the argument you want to be careful to get the rules better and smarter, but I don’t think there's good evidence in support of the proposition that it's regulatory burden or uncertainty that's causing the economy to grow more slowly than any of us would like.”
Economists from across the political spectrum have also weighed into this debate and reached the same conclusion. Bruce Bartlett, a senior advisor in both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, said that “no hard evidence” has been offered for claims that regulation is the “principal factor holding back employment.” And in a recent Wall Street Journal survey of economists, 65 percent of respondents concluded that a lack of demand, not government policy, was the main impediment to increased hiring.
Business Profits Trends in Workforce, Capacity Utilization, and Business Investment Financial Indicators A Sensible Path Forward Dr. Dissent Magazine. A Model for an Anarcho-Communist Society - a knol by Yvette Lessard.
Meat Ragut. Education. Health care. Corporatocracy to Democracy. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE. NEWS, COMMENTARY & INSIGHT. OMB Watch | Promoting open government, accountability, and citizen participation since 1983. Public Citizen Groups. Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division champions consumer interests before the U.S. Congress and serves as a government watchdog. We engage in public education and advocacy, and are focused on the following: - Strengthening health, safety and financial protections. Our work in this area covers consumer financial protection, patient safety, single-payer health care, consumer product safety, auto safety and worker safety. - Ensuring access to the courts to hold corporations accountable for wrongdoing.
Our work in this area covers forced arbitration, whistleblower protections, medical liability, preserving state consumer laws (pre-emption) and court secrecy. - Strengthening our democracy by exposing and combating the harmful impact of money in politics. Public Citizen’s Energy Program works to combat climate change by promoting safe, affordable and environmentally sustainable energy. Learn more about our work. Learn more about our work. Learn more about our work. Learn more about our work. Crooks and Liars. PoliticusUSA.com- Real Liberal Politics. Finance & Development, September 2011 - Equality and Efficiency. Finance & Development, September 2011, Vol. 48, No. 3 Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry PDF version Is there a trade-off between the two or do they go hand in hand? IN his influential 1975 book Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff, Arthur Okun argued that pursuing equality can reduce efficiency (the total output produced with given resources).
Do societies inevitably face an invidious choice between efficient production and equitable wealth and income distribution? In a word, no. In recent work (Berg, Ostry, and Zettelmeyer, 2011; and Berg and Ostry, 2011), we discovered that when growth is looked at over the long term, the trade-off between efficiency and equality may not exist. Inequality matters for growth and other macroeconomic outcomes, in all corners of the globe. How do economies grow? The experiences in developing and emerging economies, however, are far more varied (see Chart 2). Income distribution and growth sustainability Hazard to sustained growth Cameroon is typical.