Revitalizing Democracy
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“Political Dispatch” podcast: 7/11- Robert Borosage
We are happy to bring you another edition of our “Political Dispatch” podcast series from PoliticalBuzz.com. “PD” is a weekly series bringing you insight and analysis from the best political journalists and strategists as well as exclusive interviews with top politicians and campaign staffers. This week we talked with… more »Featured Issues
The Return of Sanity
The common thread in yesterday’s unbroken string of Democratic and progressive victories was the popular rejection of right-wing overreach. The series of elections held across the country yesterday weren’t supposed to yield a coherent narrative. Yet a common theme emerged: Radical-right Republicans hit a wall last night all over the country, even on a conservative social issue in what may be the most socially conservative state in the nation. So can Democrats take some hope from last night’s results? Provisionally; sort of. If Barack Obama can make next year’s election a choice between his ineffectual moderation and the Republicans’ wacked-out lunacy, the Democrats should do well. If next year’s election is a referendum on his stewardship of the economy the Democrats will likely get clobbered. It’s clear that Americans have had it with Republican extremism. Whether that will be a decisive issue in 2012 is not yet apparent.... more »
The Case
More Prisoners Does Not Mean Less Crime
It's not that simple. A 2005 report by The Sentencing Project noted that while increased incarceration rates were accompanied by a decrease in crime between 1991 and 1998, crime rates had increased between 1984 and 1991, a period in which the rate of incarceration was even higher. The director of the Pew Center on the States recently wrote, "Rigorous studies show that increased imprisonment can claim credit for only 25 percent of the nation's crime drop over the past 15 years. The other 75 percent comes from a wide variety of factors, inside and outside the criminal justice system." Those factors include support for improved policing and community crime prevention programs—federal support for which was cut by the Bush administration. We already lock up a larger percentage of our population than any other country in the world. We need to invest more in the programs and techniques that we know prevent crime and lead to healthier communities.more »
The Facts
The Dream Gone Bad: The Facts
The cost of living keeps rising.
• Since 2001, the overall costs of living has increased 21.5 percent, driven by big increases in such life essentials as gas, home heating oil and food. more »
The News
Corporations Hide Election Spending From the Public Eye
October 19th, 2010
Joe Manchin's oddly inspiring debate performance
October 19th, 2010
The Case
Curse Of The Super PACs
The arrival of Super PACs has allowed corporate big money to take control of the electoral campaign process to an unprecedented degree. The ability of the uncharismatic and relatively moderate (in Republican party terms) Mitt Romney to exert an increasing stranglehold over his party's nomination race has many causes, but the sheer size of Mr Romney's Super PAC, Restore Our Future, is certainly a crucial one of them. Four years ago, Barack Obama raised a huge campaign war chest of his own, but insisted he did not want to be beholden to outside groups. This month, though, the president has begun signalling that he wants wealthy donors to contribute to Priorities USA Action, one of the leading Democratic Super PACs. Mr. Obama has done this simply because he risks being overwhelmed by hostile Super PAC spending if he does not. More than ever before, American politics in 2012 is politics for sale — to the biggest donors. more »
The "People" Behind the Super-PAC Explosion
Since last January, super-PACs have raised nearly $93 million in preparation for the 2012 election. Of that, more than 35 percent was donated by corporations, unions, and nonprofits—or, as we've come to know them in the post-Citizens United era, people. Though non-people people have not dominated super-PAC giving (for now), their strong showing in the recent round of financial disclosures lends credence to campaign finance reformers' concerns that super-PACs enable cash-flush organizations to buy outsized influence over elections and candidates. The average corporate or union super-PAC donation was more than $62,000; in contrast, the average individual donation was around $23,500. Of the $22.4 million collectively raised by the biggest 20 corporate and union super-PAC donors, 37 percent was from labor groups, which contributed to both liberal super-PACs and their own super-PACs. The rest was largely corporate donations to conservative super-PACs and groups supporting (but officially unconnected to) Republican presidential candidates.more »
Latest from our Bloggers
feb
7
2012
3:55 pm
3:55 pm
Just in case you missed the news, "Insider trading" is back. It's even bipartisan. Well, the truth is that it never really went away after its heyday during the 1980s, when Gordon Gekko served as a stand-in for era villains like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. It launched more investigations in the 1990s than at any other time, except for the 1980s.
In the "aughts," the names and players changed, but the "inside game" remains the same. Now, Raj Rajaratnam and Martha Stewart serve as stand-ins for Milken and Boesky. Gekko even returned to the scene, getting out of prison little more than year before Rajaratnam began serving his own prison sentence. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney could even be called a stand-in for Gordon Gekko, in the 2012 presidential election. (But Newt Gingrich could be a runner-up for that spot.)
Not only are insider trading and inside traders back, but they're not just on Wall Street anymore. They're all over Capitol Hill, and apparently have been for a while. Naturally, now that it's news, there's a bill to ban congressional insider trading —the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge Act, a/k/a the STOCK Act.
feb
2
2012
3:34 pm
3:34 pm
MItt Romney is taking a lot of heat for saying that he's "not concerned about the very poor." To be fair, he also said he's not concerned about the very rich either. Lucky for him the feeling isn't mutual that that side of the economic divide. According to recent FEC filings, the very rich are very concerned with Mitt Romney's campaign for his party's presidential nomination. And why shouldn't they be concerned? After all, some of them are Mitt's friends and former colleagues.
jan
30
2012
9:26 am
9:26 am
The morning after his “State of the State” address where Governor Scott Walker reassured Wisconsin “We are turning things around. We are heading in the right direction,” the Milwaukee County District Attorney charged two more Walker staffers with multiple felony and misdemeanor counts of misconduct in public office.
jan
20
2012
12:09 pm
12:09 pm
Saturday is the two-year anniversary of the infamous Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court that allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.
Since then, our democracy has been drowning in a tsunami of corporate special interest money. Our government is under the thumb of the Koch brothers and other corporate moguls instead of the hands of the people.
And citizens are uniting in their disgust.
jan
19
2012
10:44 am
10:44 am
After Newt Gingrich was rewarded with a surge in the polls, for playing the race card during the South Carolina GOP debate, Mitt Romney launched another all out attack on Newt - this time focusing on Newt's record as speaker, with an assist from some Republican former members of Congress. But Romney hasn't forgotten his other rivals. He's unleashed the mother of all robo-call campaigns, and one of the main targets is Rick Santorum. Now that Romney's narrow victory in Iowa has vanished — transformed into virtual tie, thanks to a 34-point Santorum lead combined with missing precincts and other irregularities — we can probably expect more attacks on Santorum.
The thing is, Romney's attacks on Santorum are spot on. It's not about Santorum's extremism, though there's more than enough material there. The label that may undermine Santorum with Republican primary voters isn't "extremist." It's "Washington Insider."
more »nov
2
2011
1:40 pm
1:40 pm
Last month, Dorothy Cooper, a 96-year-old African-American woman from Chattanooga, Tennessee, went to the ballot box to vote. Dorothy was born before women had the right to vote and when Jim Crow laws kept most African-Americans disenfranchised. Despite this, Dorothy has not missed a single election since 1960. more »
oct
30
2011
12:44 pm
12:44 pm
What do they call the night before Halloween? Oh, yeah. Hell night. That makes tonight just right for grabbing a fistful of mashmallows and candy corn before sitting down to read this article.
It'll make your blood run cold, and afterwards you'll probably agree: It's time to stop letting this propaganda outlet keep dressing up as a newspaper.
A History of Mendacity more »
oct
24
2011
12:18 pm
12:18 pm
Wall Street may be metaphorically beating mean old President Obama with a stick for calling them (sniff) fat cats, but they are offering him plenty of carrots to soothe the pain.more »
