Politics
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The Two Rights
There are two factions within the American Right: the plutocratic right, for which Romney is a kind of caricature; and the cultural right, whose identity is so deeply entwined with values have been under attack since the dawn of the Enlightenment and are being pushed over the cliff now by consumer capitalism. These two factions
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G.E.R.M rebuffed across the Country . . .
. . . except in Washington State, where a really awful Charter School ballot measure won by a very narrow margin. (GERM = Global Education Reform Movement, which is essentially a neoliberal program to privatize public education. The Gates Foundation, which was a huge funder behind this ballot measure, is one of the chief purveyors
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Mythos & Logos 2
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy The American colonies were first settled by Protestant dissenters. These were people who refused to submit to the established religious authorities. They sought personal relationships with God. They moved to the frontier when life got too confining. They created an American creed,
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Outside Game, Inside Game
From "Will Wall Steet Be Punished?" by Andrew Leonard: But let’s not get too excited. What’s money to Wall Street? The $400 million or so spent by Wall Street in support of Romney is a rounding error for the financial sector. If anything, the amount Wall Street spends on lobbying is likely to rise in
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Michael Lind on Realignment
Michael Lind this afternoon in a post on Salon: When party systems collapse in American history, the new party system tends to emerge from within the dominant party. The defeat of the Confederates meant that the politics of the Gilded Age would be fought between the business and farmer wings of the hegemonic Republican Party.
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Does Money Matter?
Of course it does. It's not that it favors Dems or Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives; it's about how narrow moneyed interest are allowed to step all over the broader good of the Republic. In part it's about the outside game–how money shapes elections and who gets to run in them (both locally and nationally), but more
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Obama’s Acceptance Speech
Most of it seemed kind of canned, flat, laundry listy–what makes America great, etc., etc., etc. But it ended on an impassioned, stronger note: We're not as divided as our politics suggests. We're the United States of America. Not red and blue. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions. Yes and no.
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Realigning with Rednecks
Lynn Parramore in Salon/Alternet. Maybe if cultrally left progressives started to look at non-extremist cultural conservatives as something more than semi-human troglodytes, we might actually start some coalition building on interests. Let's use our frontal lobes people. I grew up with white Southern men. Some of them hard-core Republicans. They have been my classmates. My
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Tom Frank on Fizzling Protests
From a Salon Interview: Occupy once looked like it could play that role. Certainly the focus on income inequality and the concept of the 99 percent never would have resonated without their hard work. And it just … It sort of fizzled. That was a real shame. I was real excited about it at first. There was
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Quote of the Day: Alan Wolfe
Of all the problems we face, Obama can use two to show how things have gotten worse – and how government can prevent them from deteriorating even further. One is increasing income inequality. The other is climate change. Neither of these issues, it is worth pointing out, made much of an appearance during the 2012