Anil Dash: The Right Wing’s $7 Billion Media Subsidy
Considering how much conservatives and right-wing political personalities in the United States claim to hate the liberal media, it’s remarkable how much money they’ve been able to funnel into the coffers of the liberal media institutions they malign.
How long would it take Mitt Romney to make what you make in a year?
Larry Lessig Interviews Jack Abramoff
There’s a long discussion about the power of staffers on the Hill, rather than the actual elected officials (who “never read the actual bills”). They note that staffers are the real power. Abramoff talks about how he never wanted to hire the actual Congressional Reps, but always focused on hiring staffers. And then he makes a key admission that won’t surprise many people. He says that, early on, he focused on hiring people when he had job openings. But, later, he would talk to staffers — especially chiefs of staff — and just let them know he had a job opening for them whenever they wanted it. And he would ask them: “When do you want to start?” If they said “two years,” he knew that the guy was already working for him, but on the inside. As he says “I really hired him that day,” even though he went on for two more years working as a chief-of-staff to someone in Congress.
Paul Krugman: Nobody Understands Debt
In 2011, as in 2010, America was in a technical recovery but continued to suffer from disastrously high unemployment. And through most of 2011, as in 2010, almost all the conversation in Washington was about something else: the allegedly urgent issue of reducing the budget deficit.
This misplaced focus said a lot about our political culture, in particular about how disconnected Congress is from the suffering of ordinary Americans. But it also revealed something else: when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about — and the people who talk the most understand the least.
Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer?
Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security.
To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal benefit. Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than what Schneier mocks as “security theater”: actions that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the government look like it is on the job. In fact, the continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the United States less safe.
Finally, A Rich American Destroys The Fiction That Rich People Create The Jobs
Anil Dash: Questions for the Republican Candidates
Do you pledge not to pursue war crime prosecution against the Taliban when they waterboard our soldiers?
Why would the U.S. be better with an immigration policy which would’ve kept Steve Jobs from being born here?
Why do you think the English language can’t compete in the free market & requires a socialized language policy to subsidize it?
What Sharia laws do you support other than criminalizing homosexuality, shaming assault victims & legalizing theocracy?
It’s the Inequality, Stupid explains some of what’s wrong in this country right now.
Pakistan lies. It hosted Osama bin Laden (knowingly or not). Its government is barely functional. It hates the democracy next door. It is home to both radical jihadists and a large and growing nuclear arsenal (which it fears the U.S. will seize). Its intelligence service sponsors terrorists who attack American troops. With a friend like this, who needs enemies?
