Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State | Blog, Perspectives. Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. — The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (1871) There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol.
The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. How did I come to write an analysis of the Deep State, and why am I equipped to write it? Photo: Dale Robbins. Seven Initiatives to Get Money Out of Politics. What You Need to Know About the Keystone XL Pipeline | Blog, What We're Reading. Last week, the Obama administration said it is extending indefinitely the amount of time federal agencies have to review plans for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which is expected to delay the decision until after the midterm elections. If approved, the project would move 830,000 of barrels of crude oil from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas every day.
The debate over Keystone has become politically charged. You’ve no doubt heard the talking points on both sides of the issue. But digging past the politics, what’s really at stake? Who stands to win and who stands to lose if the pipeline is approved? To answer those questions, and others, we’ve put together an essential KXL reader. What is Keystone XL? The Washington Post published a Keystone primer complete with graphics showing the entire 1,179-mile route. How Significant Is That Environmental Review? The recently released environmental impact review was a blow to the project’s opponents. Capitalism and Democracy: Year-End Lessons. 2013 drove home a basic lesson: US capitalism's economic leaders and their politicians now regularly ignore majority opinions and preferences. For example, polls showed overwhelming popular support for higher taxes on the rich with lower taxes on the rest of us and for reversing the nation's deepening economic inequalities.
Yet Republicans and Democrats, including President Obama, raised payroll taxes sharply on January 1, 2013. Those taxes are regressive; they take a smaller percentage of your income the higher your income is above $113,700 per year. Raising the payroll tax increased economic inequality across 2013. For another example, many American cities and towns want to use eminent domain laws to help residents keep their homes and avoid foreclosure. Used this way, eminent domain forces lenders - chiefly banks - to share more of the pains produced by capitalism's crisis. The same happened in the decades before the 1930s Great Depression. Salinas v. Texas, right to remain silent, Supreme Court right to remain silent, Supreme Court Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, constitutional right to remain silent, constitution right to remain silent, Nicholas Yarris.
Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images On Monday, in a case called Salinas v. Texas that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, the Supreme Court held that you remain silent at your peril. The court said that this is true even before you’re arrested, when the police are just informally asking questions. The court’s move to cut off the right to remain silent is wrong and also dangerous—because it encourages the kind of high-pressure questioning that can elicit false confessions. Here are the facts from Salinas: Two brothers were shot at home in Houston. At trial, Salinas did not testify, but prosecutors described his reportedly uncomfortable reaction to the question about his shotgun. The court’s ruling in Salinas is all the more troubling because during such informal, undocumented, and unregulated questioning, there are special dangers that police may, intentionally or not, coax false confessions from innocent suspects.
Rep. Paul Ryan said bipartisan budget deal is the first in divided government since 1986. Lawmakers and pundits heralded the recent agreement on federal spending reached between House Republicans and Senate Democrats as a rare, bipartisan accord between a deeply divided Congress. Some went so far as to suggest that it was historic, including Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican and chief budget negotiator for the GOP.
"This is the first divided-government budget agreement since 1986," Ryan told reporters Dec. 10, 2013, when announcing the deal alongside Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. The deal has since passed the House and Senate. We knew that recent Congresses have clashed on federal spending over the years, but was it really almost three decades since two parties came together to cut a deal? Budgets 101 First, a brief explainer on the agreement. The legislation Ryan and Murray hammered out averts a government shutdown in January 2014 by funding federal agencies and providing some relief from the across-the-board cuts known as the sequester.
This is an important distinction. A tale of two states. Wisconsin and Minnesota make interesting bookends. They’re neighboring states of similar sizes, similar populations, and similar demographics. But political scientist Lawrence Jacobs did a nice job over the weekend noting an important – and contemporary – political difference between the two (thanks to my colleague Cory Gnazzo for the heads-up). While both states used to embrace a populist progressive tradition, Minnesota and Wisconsin have followed very different courses over the last few years. The Badger State elected Scott Walker (R) governor and gave control of the legislature to Republicans, while the Gopher State made Mark Dayton (D) governor and elected a Democratic legislature. After the 2010 elections, Wisconsin got to work targeting collective bargaining, tax cuts, and reduced spending. Whose governing model is proving to be more effective? Three years into Mr. The obvious caveats certainly matter. Newteacher: On the Rise of Pearson (oh, and following the money)
A long post that is worth a read here on the rise and influence of Pearson and corporate influence in education reform. Take pause, friends. Take pause but feel free to share and post comments here. Thoughts? The Pearson Monopoly Jennifer Job, UNC Chapel Hill If you haven’t heard of Pearson, perhaps you have heard of one of the publishers they own, like Adobe, Scott Foresman, Penguin, Longman, Wharton, Harcourt, Puffin, Prentice Hall, or Allyn & Bacon (among others). In a little over a decade, Pearson has practically taken over education as we know it. Pearson has realized that education is big business. To grow into the multibillion-dollar corporation they are today, Pearson blurs every line among for profit, nonprofit, and government systems.
What are some of the benefits of these partnerships? As a result of their work with the NGA, the Common Core Standards and Race to the Top assessment requirements for those standards work heavily in Pearson’s favor. The Problem with 'Compassionate Conservatism' | Perspectives. This post first appeared on AlterNet. House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Nobody in Washington talks much about the poor in America these days, even though they are more and more with us in the economic aftermath of the Great Recession.
Perhaps that is why The Washington Post welcomed Paul Ryan’s recent declaration that he wants to fight poverty “with kinder, gentler policies to encourage work and upward mobility.” The Wisconsin Republican confided to a Post reporter that he has been “quietly visiting inner-city neighborhoods” — too quietly to gain any favorable publicity, until now — and consulting with all the usual suspects in the capital’s right-wing think tanks. As a 2016 presidential hopeful, Ryan evidently intends to rebrand himself as a “compassionate conservative” — the same propaganda meme deployed by former President George W. Trickle-Down Economics is a Failure Regardless of its Name. Posted by Guy Turchetti on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 · 5 Comments Despite their arguments that there is no such theory as trickle-down economics, Republicans certainly seem to be adherents to its tenets. “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below.
The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.” When I posted this quote from Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech on Facebook, I was immediately assailed by a very good friend who happens to be very conservative. He stated that there is not and has never been any economic theory by that name. Turns out he could be right. Well, damn! Using their reasoning and the logic that I learned in school, I think we can apply this to an if-then statement of proof. George W. I'm a husband and a father. They spawned the 1 percent: How Washington and Lincoln explain inequality today. Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans' personal debt | World news.
A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans' personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit. Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy's Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012. The group purchases personal debt cheaply from banks before "abolishing" it, freeing individuals from their bills. By purchasing the debt at knockdown prices the group has managed to free $14,734,569.87 of personal debt, mainly medical debt, spending only $400,000. "We thought that the ratio would be about 20 to 1," said Andrew Ross, a member of Strike Debt and professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University. He said the team initially envisaged raising $50,000, which would have enabled it to buy $1m in debt. "In fact we've been able to buy debt a lot more cheaply than that. " Capitalism - the Stealthy Killer.
Despite calling themselves “job creators,” CEOs like casino billionaire Steve Wynn have cut jobs while their corporate profits have doubled and their corporate taxes have been slashed in half. Casino mogul Steve Wynn has more than doubled his profits since 2009, all while reducing the number of people he employs. The process is gradual, insidious, lethal. It starts with financial stress in various forms, and then, according to growing evidence, leads to health problems and shorter lives.
Financial stress is brought upon us by the profit motive of capitalism, which offers little incentive to feed hungry children, to treat the sick, to secure us in retirement, to provide job opportunities for middle-class Americans. Some of the steps in the process are becoming more and more familiar to us. 1. Giving Half of Your 401(k) to the Banks A 2 percent fee doesn't seem like much, but the documentary's claim was close to the truth. 2. It's an unthinkable trade-off, but it's happening. 3. 4.
Anatomy of the War on Women: How the Koch Brothers are Funding the Anti-Choice Agenda | Money & Politics. This post first appeared on RH Realty Check on November 5, 2013. Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) begins a filibuster in an effort to kill an abortion bill, Tuesday, June 25, 2013, in Austin, Texas. The bill would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and force many clinics that perform the procedure to upgrade their facilities and be classified as ambulatory surgical centers. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) In the dog days of summer, the “war on women” erupted into a full-fledged conflagration, as heated battles to roll back reproductive rights in the US Congress and in state legislatures across the nation were met with protests from women’s rights groups and grassroots uprisings.
In June, outside the Ohio capitol building in Columbus, for example, hundreds gathered on the lawn to protest anti-choice measures that were ultimately slipped into the annual budget bill, HB 59. And in Texas, the state capitol building in Austin was crammed with protesters as state Sen. The Koch Connection. Six Initiatives to Fight Citizens United. Inside the Dark Money-Fueled, 50-State Campaign Against American Workers | Money & Politics. In 2010, a wave election propelled tea party-endorsed candidates into statehouses across the country. Last week, the Economic Policy Institute issued the first comprehensive report surveying the impact that conservative legislation has had on workers’ rights in the past two years.
“The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011–2012” reveals the existence of a multifaceted, nationwide campaign to not only deprive working people of the right to join a union, but also keep wages low and make it harder for people to take their employers to court when they’ve been wronged. Moyers & Company caught up with the report’s author Gordon Lafer – a political economist at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center – to discuss his findings. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Joshua Holland: Your report looks at a wide array of state laws — passed or proposed — that undermined workers’ rights in 2011 and 2012. Lafer: Well, that’s right. How 'We The People' Became 'We The Corporations,' In Under 4 Minutes. The real measure of poverty: 1 out of 6 Americans. Larry Bossom, 41, who lost his job a few month ago, leaves the St. Ignatius food pantry with bags of items on Nov. 1 in Chicago.
Bossom is relying on food stamps and the food bank to help him until he finds work again. By Hope Yen, The Associated PressThe number of poor people in America is 3 million higher than the official count, encompassing 1 in 6 residents due to out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses, according to a revised census measure released Wednesday. The new measure is aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty, but does not replace the official government numbers. Put in place two years ago by the Obama administration, it generally is considered more reliable by social scientists because it factors in living expenses as well as the effects of government aid, such as food stamps and tax credits. Based on the revised formula, the number of poor people in 2012 was 49.7 million, or 16 percent. Read full Census report in this PDF. Some other findings: Here Are The Top 4 Arguments For And Against Raising The Minimum Wage. Preview: How 'Dollarocracy' is Destroying America.
The money and power behind this week’s elections results confirm that democracy is under siege. We, the people, don’t control our leaders; instead moneyed interests get their way. Corporations are free to buy politicians, judges and elections with virtually unlimited cash, while big media conglomerates reap billions from political advertising. We idealize the notion of political equality in the voting booth but eviscerate it in practice, caught in the clutches of a “money-and-media complex” not unlike the vast “military-industrial complex” President Eisenhower warned us about more than half a century ago. No one knows the dangers better than John Nichols and Robert McChesney, who speak with Bill this week on Moyers & Company. “Democracy means rule of the people, one person, one vote,” McChesney says. Learn more about the production team behind Moyers & Company. The Great American Ripoff: The High Cost of Low Taxes | Connecting the Dots. PREVIEW! Legalize Democracy: An Introduction to Move to Amend.
Wealthiest Americans Take Home Biggest Share Of Income Ever Recorded. Why the Religious “Right” is Completely Wrong. A Plutocracy Ruled by Self-Centered Jerks? | Connecting the Dots. Derek Penwell: The Problem With Assuming Liberal Christians Hate the Bible. 36 Senators Introduce Bill Prohibiting Virtually Any New Law Helping Workers. How Walmart Screws Over Employee Hours to Avoid Obamacare—An Inside Look. Another Citizens United, but Worse, Goes to the Supreme Court. The Rise of American Theocracy - Quiet Mike.