Revitalizing Democracy
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Chief Whiner
March 12th, 2010
To listen to John Roberts, you'd think that mobs of pitchfork-waving Democrats had accosted a handful of trembling justices and demanded that they reverse themselves on the spot — or else. Speaking to law students at the University of Alabama, Roberts said anyone is free to criticize the court. Except, apparently, not to the justices' faces.
Featured Issues
Politicians Will Not Change The World
We have entered a time of realignment not unlike that when city states joined together to form nations. Except this time it is global; countries are becoming less relevant. The emerging rulers are corporate CEOs, members of the corporatocracy. The good news: for the first time in history this new empire has been created not by military force, but through the sale of goods and services. And the marketplace is democratic--once we decide to see it as such. It is the ultimate polling booth. Corporations exist only because we vote for them in their stores, at the malls, and over the Internet. It is up to us to decide which companies will succeed and which ones will fail. Politicians will not change the world, because they are beholden to the big corporations. AND the corporations are dependent upon you and me.... more »
Does The Obama Administration Even Want To Win In November?
The Obama team — both political and economic wings — seems to feel that their base has nowhere else to go, and all they need to do is drift towards the right in a moderately confused fashion to assure re-election for the president. Jimmy Carter had the same sort of idea.... more »
Chief Whiner
To listen to John Roberts, you'd think that mobs of pitchfork-waving Democrats had accosted a handful of trembling justices and demanded that they reverse themselves on the spot — or else. Speaking to law students at the University of Alabama, Roberts said anyone is free to criticize the court. Except, apparently, not to the justices' faces.... 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
Obama's proposed budget spending freeze sparks concern, guesswork
January 27th, 2010
‘Top Line’ -- The Argument for Obama Tacking Left
January 25th, 2010
The Case
The Problem with the Legislative Process
There are two things that are sucking all the life out of that surge of hope so many people felt when Obama came to office. The first is the perception that, early on, Obama chose to help rescue the big banks but has been more passive when it comes to creating new jobs for people, a perception which, while unfair in some regards, is reinforced by record profits and bonuses last year for the big banks we rescued while unemployment is stuck around 10%. The second is that the legislative process always seems like it follows the same depressing pattern.more »
Extortion Day in the Senate
The news of the day is that Sen. Richard Shelby has placed a "hold" on every single pending Obama nominee, until the Democrats give in to his blackmail and fork over a few billion dollars in defense pork for Alabama. When a party decides they'd like to just filibuster everything — as today's Republicans have — there's no reason they can see not to go ahead and do it. If there's no practical cost, the only thing left to stop them from filibustering everything, or putting a blanket hold on every nominee to extort some pork for Alabama, is the possibility of a political cost. At this point, that's up to the Democrats to impose.more »
Latest from our Bloggers
feb
22
2010
4:36 pm
4:36 pm
The Sideshow
Glenn Beck, in a sense, is right. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is not and could never be a "big tent." Neither is the brand of conservatism it tries so hard to sell. The "big tent," to borrow his circus analogy is usually reserved for acts featuring genuine talent and skill that tend to draw people into the "big tent."
CPAC, as speaker after speaker demonstrated, is more or less a sideshow -- relegated to a small tent, and populated with notions that have no basis in and would never work in reality, and that just don't stand up to close inspection. Inside that small tent, where people who paid the admission price really want to believe their eyes, it works. But in the cold light of day, not so much.
more »feb
14
2010
12:44 pm
12:44 pm
In contemporary American political life, only the rich can afford to be politically impatient. The big question: How long will the rest of us tolerate such a starkly unrepresentative status quo?more »
feb
3
2010
3:01 pm
3:01 pm
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mi) and chair of the House Judiciary Committee today introduced an amendment to the Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United that gave corporations the right to spend unlimited funds in election campaigns as a matter of free speech.
Edwards, a brilliant first term legislator with a long commitment to free elections, quoted Justice Lewis Brandeis: 'We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.' It is time we remove corporate influence from our policies and our politics. We cannot allow corporations to dominate our elections, to do so would be both undemocratic and unfair to ordinary citizens."
more »feb
2
2010
10:09 pm
10:09 pm
Conservatives are constantly talking about Obama's "radical, far-left agenda."
"At last!", I said. Hearing their whines and complaints I became hopeful that our government would finally serve We, the People instead of the big corporations and the wealthy. more »
feb
2
2010
11:55 am
11:55 am
In a landmark decision last week, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could spend unlimited funds to influence American elections, overturning a century of legal precedent. The Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC undermines the integrity of the U.S. government, as President Barack Obama emphasized at his State of the Union address. more »
feb
1
2010
6:30 pm
6:30 pm
Years may pass before we know the full impact of the Supreme Court's recent decision to grant corporations extraordinary and unprecedented political speech rights as if they were real people and n more »
jan
23
2010
8:40 am
8:40 am
The Supreme Court says corporations are people, and corporate spending on political campaigns is the same as free speech. Here’s what Barack Obama said in Audacity of Hope, when he was halfway between a community organizer and president: more »
