Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 15:52 By Calvin Trillin
With curses, guns and red-faced rants,
Here comes the wing-nut faction.
The right wing’s leaders smile and say,
“Democracy in action.”
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 21:52 Last night, in my Kindle edition of The Nation magazine, I read what was perhaps the most disturbing article in quite some time… “The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers” by John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney.
There is nothing less than our very democracy at stake.
Friday, February 13, 2009 at 19:47
Updated on Friday, February 13, 2009 at 21:35 by
mavenandmeddler
“The flow of corporate money into Washington has accelerated over the last several decades because of supply and demand. … It has been like an arms race.” Robert B. Reich, from “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life”
Many years ago, I was visiting the Mexican city of Oaxaca, and while on a tour out to the pyramids there, encountered the usual gauntlet of poor children. It was like being mobbed, and all I could see was blur of faces and grasping hands, all looking for a Peso, or better yet a Dollar. What would the harm be in giving these dozen or so kids a few bucks? This is the very definition of ‘slippery slope’, because the obvious question is “where will it end?” If I had given out the money, a dozen more would have appeared instantly.
This sort of mob driven giveaway is unsustainable. And so it is with corporate lobbyists.
Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 15:28 “Reich documents in lurid detail the explosive growth of corporate lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions since the 1970s … Supercapitalism is a grand debunking of the conventional wisdom in the style of John Kenneth Galbraith.” - The New York Times
