Cable Proudly Declares Smart Shoppers A 'Lower Quality' Of Customer They Have No Interest In
If you live in a broadband and TV market with anything even closely resembling competition, you've probably learned that the only way to get the best rates is to pit ISP retention departments against one another. Often only by seriously threatening to cancel can users force ISPs to bring out their best promotional offers, something you'll have to repeat every few years if you don't want to get socked with higher rates. The ideal consumer then, from the broadband and cable industry's perspective, is one that grumbles a little bit but can't be bothered to do a little extra legwork to secure better rates (read: the vast majority of users). Of course pitting ISPs against one another assumes you even have the choice of more than one decent broadband provider, something that's certainly not a given. While Verizon and Cablevision did compete intensely for a short while in New York, the two sides have in recent years declared what can only be called a competitive cease fire.
The Speech That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of the United States | Miles Mogulescu
Early Friday evening Sen. Elizabeth Warren took to the Senate floor and gave a plain-spoken, barn-burning speech that could make history and put her into serious contention to be the next President of the United States. There are only a handful of political speeches that have such historic impact. Barack Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention comes readily to mind. It's what catapulted an obscure Illinois state Senator into the national limelight and put him on the path to becoming President. Warren's Senate speech was different, but just as electrifying. Obama's rhetoric was lofty, high-minded, and general, with a feel-good unifying message that there's no blue America or red America but only the United States of America. Here's the heart of Warren's speech: Democrats don't like Wall Street bailouts. Please take less than 10 minutes of your time to watch the speech below. Watch Warren's 9:43 second speech below.
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups. It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government. “We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation. To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. Mr. Mr.
Henry A. Giroux | Beyond Orwellian Nightmares and Neoliberal Authoritarianism
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)Those who fight against neoliberalism must not settle for reforming a system that is as broken as it is dangerous. Any viable, transformative struggle will need a boldly democratic vision; durable, longstanding organizations and strategies that make politics meaningful. To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.- George Orwell Central to George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society was a government so powerful that it not only dominated all of the major institutions in a society, but it also was quite adept at making invisible its inner workings of power. To read more articles by Henry A. The American Deep State, or what Colonel Fletcher Prouty called the Secret Team, is a structural layer of political intermediaries: non-governmental organizations (e.g. In addition, the left has to do more than chart out the mechanisms through which neoliberal authoritarianism sustains itself.
5 Tiny Common Sense Changes That Would Save the World
#2. A Ban on Pharmaceutical Ads Pfizer Considering that most people are unable to tell the difference between their pancreas and their liver, you would figure that the decision of what drugs to give a person would be best left to someone who has spent the better part of a decade learning about the human body. In most countries, you would be right. mj0007/iStock/Getty Images "I'll give you my boner pills when you pry them from my hot, sticky hands!" If you live in the US, then you have seen firsthand that pharmaceutical companies disagree, electing to let the market decide what is and is not the best drug out there -- thus the invention of Direct to Consumer Advertising (DTCA). The sheer power of marketing means that doctors, frequently less charismatic than Don Draper, are under pressure to prescribe the drugs that patients (sorry, "consumers") demand, rather than those which medical professionals recommend. The Seemingly Obvious Solution: Consider banning DTCA, like the rest of Earth. #1.
