Archive | Politics RSS feed for this section

Eric Schneiderman: The Right Man, the Right Moment | The Nation

1 Feb

In covering (and working as an editor with) Schneiderman over the years, I’ve grown to admire him as someone who fights for what he calls “transformational politics,” which he described in the pages of The Nation in 2008 this way: “Transformational politics is the work we do today to ensure that the deal we can get on gun control or immigration reform in a year—or five years, or twenty years—will be better than the deal we can get today. Transformational politics requires us to challenge the way people think about issues, opening their minds to better possibilities.… History teaches that the overwhelming majority of elected officials follow movement builders outside government when it comes to the new and risky.”

via Eric Schneiderman: The Right Man, the Right Moment | The Nation.

Tags: ,

Occupy the Super Bowl: Now More Than Just a Slogan. | The Nation

1 Feb

The Republican-led state legislature aims to pass a law this week that would make Indiana a “right-to-work” state. … In the reality-based community, “right-to-work” means smashing the state’s unions and making it harder for nonunion workplaces to get basic job protections. This has drawn peals of protest throughout the state, with the Occupy and labor movement front and center from small towns to Governor Mitch Daniels’s door at the State House. Daniels and friends timed this legislation with the Super Bowl. Whether that was simple arrogance or ill-timed idiocy, they made a reckless move. Now protests will be a part of the Super Bowl scenery in Indy.

The Super Bowl is perennially the Woodstock for the 1 percent: a Romneyesque cavalcade of private planes, private parties and private security. Combine that with this proposed legislation, and the people of Indiana will not let this orgy of excess go unoccupied. Just as the parties start a week in advance, so have the protests. More than 150 people…marched through last Saturday’s Super Bowl street fair in downtown Indianapolis with signs that read, “Occupy the Super Bowl,” “Fight the Lie” and “Workers United Will Prevail.” Occupy the Super Bowl has also become a T-shirt, posted for the world to see on the NBC Sports Blog.

via Occupy the Super Bowl: Now More Than Just a Slogan. | The Nation.

Tags: , ,

Under Occupy DC’s tent of dreams – OccupyDC – Salon.com

31 Jan

There was Michael, once a African-American kid who went from Alaska to Iraq as a gung-ho warrior and came back from the war zone a happy-go-lucky leftist with a taste for confronting the right-wing media. There was Katie, graduate of a private school in northwest Washington who regularly facilitated the occupation’s General Assemblies and learned to try to trust the judgement of the group. There was Sam who came from Virginia with a political science degree in hand, yamulke on his head, and unshakable interest in non-hierarchical politics. There was Vic who had traveled the country for the sake of her political activism and found renewed inspiration from a man named Charles Jones, who desegregated a lunch counter in South Carolina long before any of them were born. And there were few dozen others just like them–and some not at all like them at all–who had claimed a patch of grass in McPherson Square on October 1 and called themselves OccupyDC. There was hardly a professional reformer among them.

via Under Occupy DC’s tent of dreams – OccupyDC – Salon.com.

Tags: ,

After the Battle Against SOPA—What’s Next? | The Nation

31 Jan

…For the first time ever, the Internet had taken on Hollywood extremists and won. And not just in a close fight: the power demonstrated by Internet activists was wildly greater than the power Hollywood lobbyists could muster. They had awoken a giant. They had no clue about just how angry that giant could be.

The real question now, however, is whether this community recognizes the potential it has. Ours is not a Congress that has made just one mistake—almost passing SOPA/PIPA. Ours is a Congress that makes a string of mistakes. Those mistakes all come from a common source: the ability of lobbyists to leverage their power over campaign funds to achieve legislative results that make no public-good sense.

The (Internet) giant has stopped this craziness—here and now. But the challenge is for the giant to recognize the need to stop this craziness generally. We need a system that is not so easily captured by crony capitalists.

via After the Battle Against SOPA—What’s Next? | The Nation.

Tags: , ,

New Strategy, Old Pentagon Budget – NYTimes.com

30 Jan

After a decade of unrestrained Pentagon spending increases, President Obama deserves credit for putting on the brakes. The cuts are a credible down payment on his pledge to reduce projected defense spending by $487 billion in the next decade. They are not going to be enough. In the likely absence of a bipartisan budget pact, a further automatic across-the-board 10-year cut of nearly $500 billion is to take effect starting next January.

Even if a last-minute deal heads that off, the country needs to find more savings. And there is still plenty of room to cut deeper without jeopardizing national security.

via New Strategy, Old Pentagon Budget – NYTimes.com.

Tags:

Chomsky Agrees with Ron Paul on Foreign Policy

29 Jan

Tags: , ,

Occupying Policy | The Nation

27 Jan

One of the most substantial examples of policy efforts within Occupy is a group called Occupy the SEC, which for months has been meeting twice weekly to review the 298-page Volcker Rule through a diligent, line-by-line reading and analysis. The group’s goal is to submit a public comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission examining potential loopholes in the rule. When implemented, the Volcker Rule, part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, will restrict American banks from making certain forms of speculative investments, such as proprietary trading.

via Occupying Policy | The Nation.

Tags:

C Steele on the Issues (2012) | We The People Reform Coalition

26 Jan

Robert Steele is running for nomination as the Reform Party’s presidential candidate in 2012. Here’s bullet points on his views in two out of 20+ policy areas. It’s a very promising list and should be read thoughtfully.

Robert Steele on Abortion

* This is a matter best left to the states

* Birth control medications should be available by prescription across the land

* In cases of rape and incest, woman’s right to avoid biological enslavement

Robert Steele on Budget & Economy

* Our biggest problem is a corrupt Congress and the corrupt two-party bi-opoly

* Holding banks accountable for speculation and fraud is essential

* Moratorium on all foreclosures and evictions – insure America from the bottom up

* Full year of paid training for every unemployed person, instead of bailing out banks

* FULL EMPLOYMENT is our primary objective, INFLATION our primary enemy

via C Steele on the Issues (2012) | We The People Reform Coalition.

Tags: , ,

Wall Street execs are major Obama fundraisers – Contraception – Salon.com

26 Jan

The 62 bundlers who work in [the investment banking] industry have raised at least $9.4 million for Obama and the DNC. That “at least” is significant because the Obama campaign specifies only a dollar range in its disclosures, with the top category being “$500,000+.” So the real aggregate figure may be considerably higher.

Among these bundlers are employees of big-name firms including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Citigroup.

It’s worth emphasizing that for all the talk about grass-roots fundraising by the Obama campaign, the bundlers are a major part of the effort. The data released so far shows that at least one-third of all the money raised was sent in by a bundler, according to CRP.

via Wall Street execs are major Obama fundraisers – Contraception – Salon.com.

Tags: ,

United States Congress: A Graveyard for Democracy and Justice | by Ralph Nader

19 Jan

Will someone call a psychiatrist? This is a Congress that is beyond dysfunctional. It is an obstacle to progress in America, a graveyard for both democracy and justice. No wonder a new Washington Post-ABC news poll found an all time high of 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

Both Republicans and Democrats say they want to reduce the deficit. But they are avoiding, in varying degrees, doing this in any way that would discomfort the rich and powerful. One would think that, especially in an election year, the following legislative agenda would be very popular with the voters.

First, restore the taxes on the rich that George W. Bush cut ten years ago which expanded the deficit. …

Second, collect unpaid taxes. The IRS estimates that $385 billion of tax revenues are not collected yearly. …

Third, end the outrageous corporate loopholes that allow profitable large corporations to pay just half of the statutory tax rate of thirty-five percent. …

Fourth…get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and nearby countries like Kuwait where thousands of U.S. soldiers based in Iraq have moved.

Fifth, to increase consumer demand, which creates jobs, raise the federal minimum wage from the present level of $7.25–which is $2.75 less than it was way back in 1968, adjusted for inflation–to $10 per hour.

via United States Congress: A Graveyard for Democracy and Justice | Common Dreams.

Tags: ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →