Politics
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Dems vs. the GOP
I assume you know which is which
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What Do Dems Stand For?
Fineman says something interesting in his Huffpost piece entitled "'Democrat' Is No Longer A Brand". Some excerpts: As the lame duck tax debate slogs towards its inevitable conclusion — nearly $1 trillion worth of extended and new tax cuts over two years — I'm wondering: what does the brand "Democrat" mean? If anything. The Republicans
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Krauthammer’s Coy Boy Ploy
Krauthammer is touting this tax deal as a great win for Obama and the Dems. "Golly", he's saying, "We right wingers really lost one in this round. That Obama–he's a fox." How magnanimous. That's just the kind of guy Krauthammer is–willing to give credit where credit is due–a sincere, fair-minded, independent thinker. And to think
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Individual Mandate in Trouble? [Updated]
I think it probably is. I wrote this last spring: The individual mandate is a fundamental element in the flawed architecture of this HCR bill, and the best thing about it is its not going into effect for another four years. I think there's a good chance that by the time 2014 rolls around it
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How Change Will Happen
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that nothing changes on the economic justice front until there's significant pressure that comes from the bottom up, and that's not going to happen until the culture-war issues that divide us are put to the side. I'd go farther and say that the upward pressure has to come from
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The Battle for the Commonplace Center
When democratic political leaders go to college they tend to study things like political science, economics, law, and public policy. These fields tend to use a scientifically false theory of human reason — Enlightenment reason. It posits that reason is conscious, that it can fit the world directly, that it is logical (in the sense
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Tea Party Patriots Reject Tax Cut Deal, Call For It To Be Destroyed
From TPM: In an email dispatched just minutes ago, the national office of Tea Party Patriots — the largest umbrella for grassroots tea party groups in the country — is calling on its millions of members to bombard Republicans on Capitol Hill with pleas to shut down the tax cut deal which House Democrats rejected
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Short-term vs. Long-Term Gains 2
Andrew Sabl lays out the progressive fracture points using three different polarities that amplify the point that I was making in my earlier post on this subject. The first is idealist vs. pragmatist. the second two relate more to the point that I was trying to make about short-term and long-term: 2. Civic republicans vs.
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Short-term vs. Long-Term Gains
There are two types of Progressives right now, those who are focused on the day-to-day pragmatics of politics–let's call them pragmatic Progressives–and those who are concerned about long-term systemic trends–Let's call them structural Progressives. Structural Progressives worry about the long-term destabilizing effect of wealth being distributed upward the way it has been over the last
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The Tax Deal
Since everything now is a bargaining chip, even unemployment insurance when we have chronic 10% unemployment, I guess extending an irresponsible, deficit aggravating, non-stimulative tax break for the wealthiest is a win for the president and the American people. They get another year of unemployment insurance in exchange. The rich get their ten-course dinner, and