Why can’t journalists state the obvious? According to an Annenberg survey, only a quarter of Americans can correctly name the three branches of the federal government. Is that sad fact, like the weather, something that just happens, beyond anyone’s control? Or does something make Americans resistant to the most elementary information? Could the manner in which…
Will Republicans Ever Stop Lying About the Debt?
Despite all his anti-Trump bluster, John Kasich peddles the same deceitful pronouncements about the debt as the rest of the GOP. Gage Skidmore/Flickr Publish in Washington Monthly ( Link to article) It is an established convention of the mainstream media that when journalists stumble across a Republican who can walk fully upright and doesn’t club…
How Academic and Media Excuse-making Normalizes the Abnormal
So much for the precise correlation between economic factors and political preference based on rational choosing to maximize one’s own material advantage Published July 13 in commondreams.org ( link to article) Ever since the 2016 election we all know that economic distress and anxiety out in the Great American Heartland caused white working people to vote…
Pity the Right-Winger: He Gets No Respect!
Notes from the Never-Ending Culture Wars Published in Commondreams.org (link to article) “Conservatism in its present form,” writes Lofgren, “is a funhouse-mirror exaggeration of many of the pathologies that have built up in the United States under the rubric of American Exceptionalism.” (Photo: via TownHall.com) One of the signature stereotypes of present-day political controversy is…
The ‘Deep State’ Strikes Back—Against Torture
Published in Washington Monthly ( link to article) Why generals oppose the nomination of Gina Haspel as CIA director. Our constitutional form of government, beleaguered as it has always been by the forces of power and money, has come under even more pressure in the 21st century: unprovoked wars, torture, and warrantless surveillance are now defining…
The Washington Lobbyist’s Phrasebook
A citizen’s guide to deciphering the mumbo-jumbo of K Street. Published in Washington Monthly ( Link to article) One of the requirements of my decades-long career as a Capitol Hill staffer was to learn the peculiar jargon of paid issue advocates, or as they’re more commonly known, lobbyists. I quickly learned that their phrases are as…
The 1 Percent’s Contempt for Democracy
Donald Trump isn’t the only plutocrat subverting our democracy. Published in Washington Monthly ( Link to article) When Donald Trump remarked that Chinese president Xi Jinping’s bid to consolidate power and become “president for life” was a move that he should perhaps emulate, it didn’t take more than half a news cycle for the agitation to…