Politics Archives - Page 36 of 105

Politics

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Is there incentive to attack the court’s legitimacy?

September 28, 2021 • by John Stoehr

Last week, opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote about the sinking reputation of the United States Supreme Court. With respect to a new abortion law in Texas, which invalidates Roe v. Wade, the Post columnist said that, “The nub of the problem is not that (or not only that) voters are angry that the court allowed ...

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Activism

We Are All “First Liners”

Colombia’s youth are institutionalizing a revolution by building solidarity and insurgent practices that can last

September 22, 2021 • by Aura Angélica Hernández Cárdenas

To learn more about the protests and general strike in Colombia, read Julián Gómez Delgado's essay “The Decline of Colombia’s Centaur State.” One of the most important phenomena of this year’s national strike in Colombia has been las primeras líneas, or “first liners.” Men and women, some reported to be as young ...

Activism

“Justice for J6” Rally Was Much Ado About Nothing

September 22, 2021 • by Jo Freeman

Capitol Hill Police, who were under-prepared for the January 6, 2021 riot, were over-prepared for the “Justice for J6 ” rally just west of the reflecting pool at the Capitol on September 18. Tall fences surrounded the Capitol itself. Metal barriers wrapped around the designated protest area. Jersey barriers kept unauthorized ...

“Justice for J6” Rally Was Much Ado About Nothing

Capitalism

The “K” in the Economy

Private equity and the rise of permanent capital

September 20, 2021 • by Andrew Moon and Janet Roitman

The consensus is that the road to economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is K-shaped: certain sectors and populations will thrive while others stagnate or decline. Outsized online retailers and digital infrastructure providers, like Amazon, have experienced boom times, while many Main Street small businesses have gone bust. Those with a stake ...

Politics

How Corporate Subsidies Sink Small Businesses

The Alabama insurance market shows how tax breaks benefit dominant corporations

September 20, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

One of the more pernicious effects of states chucking huge sums of money at dominant corporations is that the lawmakers doing so are harming their own local businesses. Smaller outlets that already face an array of challenges when it comes to competing with the big guys have to just sit ...

How Corporate Subsidies Sink Small Businesses

Activism

Ten Years After Occupy Wall Street

A moment of madness that began on September 17, 2011, illuminated the world where the “99 percent” lived

September 17, 2021 • by Nara Roberta Silva

Ten years ago, on September 17, 2011, a few hundred people spent the night at Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park and formally initiated the movement known as Occupy Wall Street. Occupiers had no immediate goals and the occupation lasted two months. But it wasn’t insignificant, and its importance as an inflection ...

Politics

We Do Not Have a Public Health Crisis. We Have a Crisis of Law and Order

Let’s not mince words about “freedoms”

September 15, 2021 • by John Stoehr

_____ So, again, with feeling: Anti-vaccine GOP leaders are lawless. Their followers are often criminal. (I mean this literally.) I’m going to keep repeating myself no matter how many times they claim to be “fighting for their freedom.” I’m going to keep calling on the government to put an end to ...

We Do Not Have a Public Health Crisis. We Have a Crisis of Law and Order

Media

Are White People Really in Decline?

No, but when the mainstream media reports changing racial demographics as a contest for social domination, they validate white supremacists’ worst fears

September 15, 2021 • by Karen Gaffney

_____ When the United States Census Bureau released its 2020 census on August 12, 2021, the news media highlighted two important trends in race and ethnicity: a drop in the number of white people and a rise in the number of people who identify with more than one racial group. Both facts represent ...

Activism

Cut the Pentagon!

Says Code Pink

September 14, 2021 • by Jo Freeman

_____ CopePink brought roughly one hundred people to the White House to demand that the Pentagon’s budget be cut. Joined by other sponsors of the action in Lafayette Park, they cut up a large cake shaped like the Pentagon. Pieces of cake were passed to the crowd while speakers talked about the next ...

Democracy

“You Cannot Force Me to Look and Not to See”

Large-scale repression against students and the academic community in Belarus continues

September 13, 2021 • by Alaiza Pashkevich

A liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not,not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature.—John Locke, Second Treatise of Government Kids in ...

“You Cannot Force Me to Look and Not to See”

North America

9/10,11, and 12

The world was bigger then. Our two oceans provided us with the same illusion of protection our grandparents enjoyed

September 11, 2021 • by Ryan James Girdusky

It's not just that I am a man who was born and raised in New York City. It's not just that my family goes back generations here: my dad and his two brothers were cops who patrolled its streets, and my mom worked on the 97th floor of Tower One. ...

The Right

Creeping Fascism

The Texas law attacking reproductive justice is the antithesis of both law and democracy

September 8, 2021 • by Laura Briggs

_____ Is there any other phrase for the events that have activated the Texas abortion law other than “creeping fascism”? First, the ban itself is essentially an anti-law, designed to promote vigilantism. In itself, that’s not surprising. S.B. 8 is the culmination not just of numerous state-level laws that have narrowed abortion ...