Plutocracy

By Andrew Kolin | (Informed Comment) | – – According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Labor Unions Step Up Presidential Election Spending,” labor unions contributed to Hillary Clinton at a scale that is without precedent. The article pointed to $108.2 million contributed in this presidential election cycle. These contributions raise questions […]

National Security State

America through the Hell-Gate of Horn

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The one thing you could say about empires is that, at or near their height, they have always represented a principle of order as well as domination. So here’s the confounding thing about the American version of empire in the years when this country was often […]

Banking

Why couldn’t the Corporate Old Boys’ Network Stop Trump?

contributors

By Johan Chu & Jerry Davis | (The Conversation) | – – If corporate money controls our politics, as Bernie Sanders and others have claimed, then how did the Republican Party – the reputed party of business – manage to nominate a candidate whom almost no one in Big Business supports? And why have so […]

Democratic Party

The Vanity of the Billionaires: Circuses and no Bread

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Rome was a republic until between 40 and 27 BCE, when the generals overthrew it. Military dictator Gaius Octavius put the nail in the coffin when he made himself Augustus Caesar on the latter date. The later satirist Juvenal, to whom we owe the phrase ‘bread […]

Censors

Journalist Amy Goodman to Surrender and Fight Dakota Charges

contributors

By TeleSur | – – Update: North Dakota prosecutor changes charge against Amy Goodman to ‘rioting.’ The Democracy Now! host said the charge is a “direct attack” on freedom of the press. Journalist Amy Goodman says she will turn herself in next week to authorities to fight the charge of trespassing after filming a vicious […]

Dissent

Shadows of Plutocracy darken over our Democracy in this Election

contributors

By Bill Moyers | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Sixty-six years ago this summer, on my 16th birthday, I went to work for the daily newspaper in the small East Texas town of Marshall where I grew up. It was a good place to be a cub reporter — small enough to navigate but […]

Democratic Party

Sanders: Aetna’s Obamacare threat shows what Corporate Control Looks Like

contributors

By Nika Knight, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – – Aetna threatened federal government with withdrawal from Affordable Care Act if controversial merger didn’t go through, new reporting reveals Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini bluntly told the Justice Department in July that the healthcare behemoth would drop out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges if its […]

Plutocracy

How labor’s decline opened door to billionaire Trump as ‘savior’ of American workers

contributors

By Raymond Hogler | (The Conversation) | – – Out of the economic maelstrom of the last decade, Donald Trump has emerged as the improbable, and self-proclaimed, champion of American workers. And that’s despite the fact that Trump has failed to articulate substantive policy positions regarding labor issues, other than generic railing against foreign competition […]

Democratic Party

When Dems ditched Workers for Professionals, they opened Door for Trump

contributors

Adam Barnett/ Thomas Frank | ( OpenDemocracy ) | – – The Democrats ditched the working class in favour of a professional elite leaving Trump – a master of ‘resentment politics’ – to hoover up their votes. An interview with Listen Liberal! author Thomas Frank. Now that the Republican Party has chosen a coiffured gargoyle as its nominee for […]