By Neal Gabler – Moyers & Company – When we talk about the media’s effect on our political discourse, usually we’re referring to the way politics are reported. There are, of course, lots of other ways in which media mediate the political process, from ads to organizing to community building to fundraising, all of which…
By Robert Reich – We hear a lot about patriotism, especially around the Fourth of July. But in 2016 we’re hearing about two very different types of patriotism. One is an inclusive patriotism that binds us together. The other is an exclusive patriotism that keeps others out. Through most of our history we’ve understood patriotism…
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Vice President Joe Biden and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have announced new actions aimed at advancing President Obama’s call for a “Cancer Moonshot†to make “America the country that cures cancer once and for all†at the White House Cancer Moonshot Summit, according to a…
By Lauren McCauley – While the outsized influence that Big Money is having on federal elections is well-documented, the local impact of the Supreme Court’s 2011 Citizens United vs. FEC ruling has not been fully realized — until now. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law on Sunday published a…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – The German automaker Volkswagen has admitted to cheating on emissions tests and agreed to pay more than $15.3 billion in a settlement with U.S. regulators for decieving customers and causing pollution from its diesel vehicles, according to a release just out from the Justice Department and the Environmental…
By Dick Polman – With apologies to the climactic song in “Les Miserables,” here are the self-destructive Brits who voted yesterday to exit the European Union. Cue the music! Do you hear the people sing Singing the song of angry men We will crash the British pound Against the dollar and the yen, When the…
My Supporters and I Want Real Change – By Bernie Sanders – As we head toward the Democratic National Convention, I often hear the question, “What does Bernie want?” Wrong question. The right question is what the 12 million Americans who voted for a political revolution want. And the answer is: They want real change…
By Todd Gitlin – To readers who follow taxes and finance — subjects often introduced with the adjective “arcane†— David Cay Johnston is one of America’s best-known reporters. Johnston has worked on the staffs of Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and from 1995 to 2008, The New York Times, where his…
By David Underhill – The American South is conservative. This is repeated so often that it resembles church liturgy uttered without thought to display adherence to a creed. But it won’t bear examination. The civil rights movement sprang from the South and convulsed the whole country, which quivers still from the effects in this presidential…
President Barack Obama took a few days to go on a working vacation this week and, to help celebrate the 100th anniverrsary of the National Park Service, the first family visited Yosemite National Park, one of the nation’s most popular national parks. In a brief speech on Saturday at Sentinel Bridge with the 2,425 feet…
In a speech webcast Thursday night from Burlington, Vt., Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won more than 10 million votes in the 2016 Democratic primary, urged supporters to begin the work of organizing politically “at the local and state level in an unprecedented way.†“Election days come and go, but political and social revolutions that attempt…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Did your momma ever get on to you for some mischief and say something like this? “Wipe that smile off your face … I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap.” Well, I’m sorry to play your momma today. But if you are a Democrat or…
Nuclear weapons, climate change, and the prospects for survival. – By Noam Chomsky – In January 2015, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced its famous Doomsday Clock to three minutes before midnight, a threat level that had not been reached for 30 years. The Bulletin’s statement explaining this advance toward catastrophe invoked the two…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – I had to turn off NPR news again this morning. I can’t listen to the same old, same old pretense of two-sidedness that helped get us into this mess in the first place. I had to turn off the TV news on Sunday. Same thing. Less facts.…
By Robert Reich – When I was a boy and lost just about every sporting event I tried, my father told me, “What counts isn’t whether you win or lose but how you play the game.” Most parents told their kids this. It was part of the American creed. But I doubt Fred Trump passed…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — The national press is making fun of my native state of Alabama, again. How should I react? Jump on the funny bandwagon and agree? Or attack the national press and defend “my people?” Let’s look at the facts, first, before we take a stand…
Raging Moderate – By Will Durst – Every four years our nation’s electoral eccentricities escalate exponentially and people throw up their hands and shout, “you know, every election cycle is wacky, but especially this one.” But especially this one! With this one, the narrative changes faster than the score of a Wiffle Ball game played…
A tropical depression forming in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekened has been upgraded to Tropical Storm Colin by the National Hurricane Center, and the National Weather Service has issued a tropical storm warning for Florida’s Gulf Coast. Expected to hit the coast by Monday afternoon, Colin’s outer bands are already drenching parts of…
By Robert Reich – This morning I heard from an old friend here in California who said “I’m for Bernie, but he doesn’t really have a chance anymore. So isn’t my vote for him in the California primary just prolonging the agony, and indirectly helping Trump?” I told him: 1. True, the electoral numbers are…
Get ready to bow and kiss his ring. He may very well be the next president of the United States. – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Let’s say for the sake of fun and argument that Donald Trump is more like King Henry VIII than Adolph Hitler. Google Trump and Hitler, Nazi,…
