Plutocracy

Talk by G. William Domhoff: Who Rules America Today? h/t G. William Domhoff

8 Plutocrats out-earned 3.6 mn Working Poor & 7 Other Headlines You won’t see in MSM

(By Paul Buchheit) The following are all relevant, fact-based issues, the "hard news" stories that the media has a responsibility to report. But the business-oriented press generally avoids them. 1. U.S. Wealth Up $34 Trillion Since Recession. 93% of You Got Almost None of It. That's an average of $100,000 for every American. But the […]

Energy

Is Rand Paul right that Cheney invaded Iraq for Halliburton Profits?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) David Corn at Mother Jones got the scoop: In 2009, Rand Paul gave a talk at Western Kentucky University in which he accused former vice president Dick Cheney of having gotten up the Iraq War to rescue his troubled oil services company, Halliburton, which– along with its subsidiaries– was awarded enormous no-bid […]

Climate Change

World Bank Head: Climate Change and Growing Inequality threaten Global Upheaval

Juan Cole

(By Jon Queally) President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, is warning that the combined crises of planetary climate change and rising global inequality in a highly interconnected world will lead to the rise of widespread upheaval as the world's poor rise up and clashes over access to clean water and affordable food result […]

Economy

Obamacare Enrolls 7.1 Million: But Will the haters ever stop hating?

Juan Cole

LAST week, while watching videos on YouTube, I was repeatedly served with an advertisement in which a mournful woman informed me that unfortunately, Obamacare “just doesn’t work.” This left me bemused, since I live in a country where a variety of Obamacare…

Economy

We’re not Envious, we’re Disappointed: US Firms Stash $2 Trillion in Foreign Tax Havens, Costing us Billions

contributors

(By Michael Winship) Here on our whimsical island off the coast of the Eastern Seaboard, we have a company called Manhattan Mini Storage that is as famous for the semi-snarky wit of its billboards and subway posters as it is for the spaces it rents to we New Yorkers who live in apartments so small […]

Barack Obama

Is Pope Francis good for the Democrats? Obama in the Vatican

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Could enormous popularity of Pope Francis spill over into American politics? Pope Francis is worried about inequality, a Democratic Party issue, and his statements and actions on the subject are a stunning rebuke to “evangelical Catholics” such as Paul Ryan, who tend rather to celebrate economic inequality or to deny it or […]

Economy

The Tea Party Just Turned Five — Is it Winning its War on Workers and Minorities?

Juan Cole

Some date the advent of the tea party to 2007, when then-presidential candidate Ron Paul held a “tax day tea party” fundraiser to fill his campaign coffers. But the broader movement began five years ago last week — shortly after Barack Obama was…

Plutocracy

The Koch Brothers’ Dark Money Man: How Sean Noble got Rich undermining Democracy

contributors

(By Kim Barker and Theodoric Meyer via ProPublica) For a brief, giddy moment, Sean Noble—a little-known former aide to an Arizona congressman—became one of the most important people in American politics. Plucked from obscurity by libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, Noble was tasked with distributing a torrent of political money raised by the […]