Surveying the real estate choices of Washington’s contractors, lobbyists and corporate lawyers reveals the raw, nouveau-riche tastes of our capital’s shadow government. Published in Bill Moyers and Company ( Link to article and comments) Gates at Xanadu. (Photo by Mike Lofgren) In 1927, H.L. Mencken rode by train through the Pennsylvania coal country. The houses…
Category: Articles
An oligarchy has broken our democracy. It must be dislodged
Pro forma elections have camouflaged the true state of our political system. Will that change this year? Each new election year promises change. We will choose a new president and new representatives in Congress; fresh faces will make their appearances in Washington DC, while old ones disappear. But what about the people who stay in…
Republican Deficit Hypocrisy
Published Jan 15 in the New York Times Link to Article At the Republican debate last night in South Carolina, Republicans were happy to talk about, and denounce, the budget deficit and debt. Senator Marco Rubio said that we must “bring our debt under control.” Mr. Rubio, like other G.O.P. candidates, rails against the deficit as…
The West’s Deadly Mideast Fantasies
Published in the Consortiumnews Exclusive: Madness or at least self-deception now dominates the West’s approach to the Middle East, with ostensibly rational leaders like Barack Obama and Francois Hollande fueling public hysteria about terrorism and pursuing “regime change” strategies proven to fail, as Mike Lofgren explains. Around the time of the 2003 Iraq invasion and…
Republicans Are Revolutionaries, Not Conservatives: A Response to Thomas Schaller
Published in billmoyers.com There is much to commend in Thomas Schaller’s recent piece describing the built-in structural advantages that the Republican Party enjoys in the American electoral system. Some analysts believe this advantage derives from the systematic gerrymandering of legislative districts; others declare it a result of a voluntary demographic “sorting” of Democrats into metropolitan areas…
The ‘Anti-Knowledge’ of the Elites
Published in the consortiumnews Exclusive: It’s fairly easy to spot the “anti-knowledge” spouted by the Tea Party and the Religious Right’s favorite candidates, but a more subtle form of reality-deprived “group think” pervades America’s elites though it is rarely noted in the polite circles of the mainstream media, writes Mike Lofgren. By Mike Lofgren In a previous…
GOP and the Rise of Anti-Knowledge
Ben Carson’s rise to the top of the Republican presidential field shows that many Republicans, especially Christian fundamentalists, have decoupled from the real world — and are proud of it. The more that GOP candidates embrace “anti-knowledge” the more popular they become, as Mike Lofgren explains. By Mike Lofgren In the realm of physics, the…