The Big Dick School of American Patriotism, and What We Make of It
How America’s patriotism has been converted, or perhaps more accurately, perverted, into a war culture.
Read more...Category Archives: Social policy
Nomi Prins: The Volatility/Quantitative Easing Dance of Doom
The battle between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of global financial policy is escalating to the point where the ‘haves’ might start to sweat – a tiny little. This phase of heightened volatility in the markets is a harbinger of the inevitable meltdown that will follow the grand plastering-over of a systemically fraudulent global financial system.
Read more...Announcing the Surveillance Valley Project
Asking Naked Capitalism readers to support Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley project, an investigation of how the for-profit surveillance industry uses technology to monitor and control our lives.
Read more...Obama Gives Another Greatest Speech Ever, This Time In Selma
Omissions and evasions in Obama’s Selma speech.
Read more...Connections in the Modern World: Network-Based Insights
Lambert here: For people who like to “connect the dots,” there is actually a mathematically grounded discipline that studies such networks (or graphs) formally.
Read more...Are Pilots Deserting Washington’s Drone War?
A potential fatal flaw arises in the Pentagon’s plans to create a killing force that didn’t involve messy, unpopular casualties and deaths. Drone operators are quitting faster than new ones can be trained. Killing is apparently not cost free; many drone pilots appear to suffer from a new form of mental disorder.
Read more...Matt Stoller: The Broader Net Neutrality Narrative
How the net neutrality fight created a new coalition of industrial interests and a new, sophisticated political consciousness.
Read more...Austerity Kills: Economic Distress Seen as Culprit in Sharp Rise in Suicide Rate Among Middle Aged
I’m surprised, but perhaps I shouldn’t be, that a recent study hasn’t gotten the attention it warrants. It points to a direct connection between the impact of the crisis and a marked increase in suicide rates among the middle aged.
Read more...Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Forced Into Historic Runoff
This Real News Network interview describes why the coming mayoral runoff in Chicago is in many ways a referendum on failed neoliberal policies, such as privatizing schools. The very fact that this race is taking place at all reveals an unexpectedly large degree of popular discontent with misrule by what passes for our elites
Read more...The Alternative in Greece
Let us begin with what should be indisputable: the Eurogroup agreement that the Greek government was dragged into on Friday amounts to a headlong retreat.
Read more...The School Closure Playbook – How Billionaires Exploit Poor Children in Chicago
A hard-hitting overview of who is behind the taxpayer looting program known as “corporate school reform” and the mechanics of how it operates.
Read more...Mathew D. Rose: Greece – Dead Man Walking
Rose focuses on an issue that reader Swedish Lex and other have pointed out: the heavy-handed actions of Germany in the tempestuous negotiations between the Eurozone and Greece have wound up being a major own goal.
But the bigger issue that Rose raises is that last week’s ugly negotiations, in combination with the fiasco in Ukraine, is exposing Germany as a lousy hegemon, which he argues is producing a political crisis in Germany and fracture lines in Europe.
Read more...DNC Report Says Blankety-Blank Democrats Need a “National Narrative Project.” No, They Don’t.
tl;dr: The Democrats don’t need a “narrative.” They need to go to war on policy. Then the war will be the narrative.
Read more...Sharing Economy Must Come Inside Regulatory Tent
Sharing economy businesses cannot cannot grow as regulatory cowboys. But, vested interests will be happy to strangle them with red tape.
Read more...Corporate Welfare Queens – Shocking “Development Program” Failure Rate in North Carolina
Funny how there’s little hue and cry when corporate subsidies like development programs wind up throwing taxpayer money away.
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