Published Wednesday, January 18, 2012, in the guardian.co.uk,. Link to Article What hope does the public have of making informed choices about parties’ tax policies when the press is not telling the story? How the media lost the plot on US taxation What hope does the public have of making informed choices about parties’ tax policies…
Author: mike
How the Media Enable the Republican Tax Agenda
The media doesn’t seem to understand the basics about budgets — and the inescapable relationship between aggregate revenues, aggregate spending, and total deficits. Either that, or reporters just choose to play dumb. The end result is the same, however: Journalists don’t probe deeply — or they probe when it is too late to matter —…
Have the Super-Rich Seceded From the United States?
It was in 1993 during Congressional deliberation over the North American Free Trade Agreement. I was having lunch with a staffer for one of the rare Republican members of Congress who opposed the policy of so-called free trade. I distinctly remember something my colleague said: “The rich elites of this country have far more in…
“I Know How to Beat Republicans”: Interview With Former GOP Staffer Mike Lofgren
Leslie Thatcher for Truthout: Mike, tell us a little about your background before you were a GOP staffer and how you came to be disenchanted with the Senate. Mike Lofgren: I grew up in a provincial town, a company town, in Ohio, where there was an incestuous relationship between politicians, journalists and lobbyists: nominally, they were…
Press Agent for the Super-Rich
Published Oct. 17, 2011 in the Washington Monthly. ( Link to article) It is hardly surprising that the super-rich hire press agents to sing their praises. Since time out of mind, the powerful have tossed a few pieces of silver to writers willing to extol them. So it appears to be with John Steele Gordon,…
Goodbye to All That
Barbara Stanwyck: “We’re both rotten!” Fred MacMurray: “Yeah – only you’re a little more rotten.” -”Double Indemnity” (1944) Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten – how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the…