Gar Alperovitz: Systemic Crisis, Politics as Usual. Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R.
Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and is a former Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University; Harvard’s Institute of Politics; the Institute for Policy Studies; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Gar Alperovitz presents at a Seattle Town Hall on Oct 3, 2012 immediately after a public screening of the presidential debate between Romney and Obama. Structural fault lines in the political system. Does the 2012 Presidential Election Matter? Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.
You can follow him on twitter at If you picked up a newspaper in DC this week, it would have been hard to avoid noticing that a bizarre and irrelevant spat is consuming much of the insider political media and top political officials. Earlier this week, a corporate lobbyist named Hilary Rosen tweeted a vague insult at GOP Presidential nominee wife Ann Romney. What if democracy is just an illusion? New Haven, CT - Karl Marx never visited the United States, but he nevertheless understood the country, because he understood capitalism.
The spectacle of democracy in the US. Tucson, Arizona - "This is my last election.
After my election I have more flexibility. " The unguarded remarks of the US President - Barack Obama - to the Russian President - Dmitry Medvedev - captured by TV cameras, has once again drawn attention to the increasing perils and undelivered promises of US presidential elections. According to a transcriptof the recorded remarks, Obama told his Russian counterpart: "On all these issues, but particularly missile defence, this, this can be solved but it's important for him to give me space. " Medvedev responded: "Yeah, I understand.
I understand your message about space.
Washington state's Latinos find 'politics has not changed with the population' Morals: Our great moral decline. Comment: Super PACs: Worse to Come. You’re nothing in Presidential politics this year without a Super PAC.
As most people know by now, Super PACs are fund-raising vehicles that support a candidate but are nominally independent of that candidate’s official campaign. Individuals can only give twenty-five hundred dollars to a candidate in a primary—and corporations cannot give anything at all—but both individuals and corporations can give as much as they please to Super PACs. Thanks to absence of those limits, in the South Carolina Republican primary, Super PACs spent about twice as much as the candidates themselves. So far, it seems, the influence of Super PACs has been immense.
Super PACs seem to deserve much of the credit for the fall and rise of Newt Gingrich’s Presidential campaign. This strange legal superstructure for our campaigns has come about largely because of Supreme Court decisions, especially the Citizens United case, from 2010. Through most of American history, there were no limits on campaign contributions. What Oligarchy Means: Small Groups of Multi-Millionaires Funding Almost All SuperPACs. Forget the five people you meet in heaven, here are the five people running the US election system these days.
We know how the super PACs have come to dominate the presidential campaign, but a closer look at financial-disclosure numbers shows how just a tiny handful of billionaires are dominating those super PACs. An analysis of January’s campaign-disclosure filings reveals that 25 percent of all the money raised for the presidential race that month came from just five donors. That select group gave $19 million to various super PACs, often in support of more than one Republican candidate. Ari Berman: The politics of the super rich. 2012: The year of the big donor - Kenneth P. Vogel. The GOP's Big Investors) Have you heard of William Dore, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, Peter Thiel, or Bruce Kovner?
If not, let me introduce them to you. They’re running for the Republican nomination for president. I know, I know. You think Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney are running.
Resources... US elections 2012 - curators. America's billionaire-run democracy - 2012 Elections. Sugar Daddies. Real News: Israel and the American Elections The obama administration. Barack Obama. Mitt Romney. Islamophobia For Office. Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins. Matt Stoller: A Real Third Party? An Anti-Big Bank Republican? Yup. By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep.
Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller. Like many of you, I had mostly given up on electoral politics. One time I went through a log of Hank Paulson’s phone calls when he was Treasury Secretary, and then Tim Geithner’s phone calls when he was Treasury Secretary. And I realized that both men were talking to essentially the same people, even though they were ostensibly in different parties. I’ve seen two new intriguing developments that are worth noting. And Anderson is a maverick, but has held significant political office. “The end game is changing public policy in the interest of the people of this country. Rocky is against American imperialism, and seems to be running against it.