David Sirota's Blog, page 2
February 28, 2011
Five '80s Flicks That Explain How the '80s Still Define Our World
Here are five classic flicks that show how the 1980s still shapes our thinking on government, the "rogue," militarism, race, and even our not-so-distant past.
February 15, 2011
Hickenlooper's Class Solidarity
The Grand Junction Sentinel headline today says it all: "Hickenlooper Proposes Huge Budget Cuts." Yes, while Colorado's new governor campaigned on promises of being an education governor, he has just proposed historically massive cuts to Colorado's already comparatively underfunded public schools. If that wasn't enough, he had the nerve to pretend he isn't choosing this path for his state, telling reporters "There's nothing I've ever grappled with as long and hard as" education cuts.
Evidently...
Evidently...
Hickenlooper's Class Solidarity
While Colorado's new governor campaigned on promises of being an education governor, he has just proposed historically massive cuts to its already comparatively underfunded public schools.
February 10, 2011
Idiocracy By the Numbers: New Data Show Many Americans Have No Idea They Receive Government Benefits
How aggressively stupid is America when it comes to our debates over taxes, budgets and the size of government? That's been difficult to answer with any precision, beyond simply citing the Tea Partier who famously told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare." But now we have some hard numbers to tell us how deep this ignorance really goes.
According to new data crunched by Cornell University's Suzanne Mettler, large numbers of Americans who receive benefits from govern...
According to new data crunched by Cornell University's Suzanne Mettler, large numbers of Americans who receive benefits from govern...
Idiocracy By the Numbers: New Data Show Many Americans Have No Idea They Receive Government Benefits
America today is what Idiocracy looks like in practice -- a nation whose politics is inspired by "greed is good" self-interest, but whose voters often don't even know what "self-interest" actually is.
February 3, 2011
America's Dictator Addiction
As the United States continues to treat the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak with kid gloves, media outlets like
Salon
have rightly pointed out that our support of undemocratic tyrants has become more the norm than the exception. The question is: why? Why are we, a supposed beacon of democracy, so invested in so many dictatorships?
Obviously, there are many answers to that question. Some of it has to do with imperial aspirations, as taboo as that is to even mention. Some of it has to do with go...
Obviously, there are many answers to that question. Some of it has to do with imperial aspirations, as taboo as that is to even mention. Some of it has to do with go...
America's Dictator Addiction
If we perpetuate the cycle of dictator addiction by continuing to so forcefully back all those other dictatorships around the globe beyond Egypt, we will be helping guarantee other overdoses in the future.
February 2, 2011
Egypt and the Hostile Takeover: Yes, They Are Connected
The question is typically answered in our media through the construct of "pragmatism." If Mubarak leaves, the talking point goes, there could be a new government in Egypt that could threaten "regional stability" with an Iranian-style revolution. This talking point is both bigoted and imperial: It assumes that all Muslims and revolutions are monolithically the same (despite Egypt being Sunni and Arab and Iran being Shiite and Persian), and it assumes that "regional stability" is automatically ...
How Money Has Framed the Egypt Debate
Money buys the language that confine our political debate within narrow parameters. It frames the Egyptian situation as a choice between "pragmatism" (backing the dictator) and potential terrorism (allowing Egyptians to elect their own government).
February 1, 2011
Key Investors Tout Immelt as Vehicle for Corporations to Sculpt Obama's Economic Policy
As I've long maintained, the business press is often the best place to get the real story about what's going on in American politics. That's because it's focused almost exclusively on telling its investor-readers how to make money, rather than on the political media's manufactured red-versus-blue story lines -- story lines that distract us from our transpartisan oligarchy. A particularly good example of the value of the business press in telling the real political story comes from the latest ...
