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Billionaire Koch Brothers: “out to destroy progressivism”
Do you suspect that the Tea Party movement isn’t quite the spontaneous, grass-roots popular uprising its followers would have you believe? (…)
FiveThirtyEight: Is Obama losing his cool?
Nate Silver, the political forecaster who famously called Obama’s 2008 victory six months before election day, reacts to Robert Gibb’s rant against “the professional left” in an interview with The Hill:
The euphoric feeling among liberals in the days between the election and the inauguration seems so quaint now — like something that happened decades ago — but it was very tangible at the time. (…)
Robert Reich: Guilded Age-level inequality threatens us all
Robert Reich, economist and former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, contributes an opinion piece in The Nation which is a particularly eloquent statement of the liberal case for sweeping economic reform. (…)
Huffington Post: why we need to get past stereotypes of conservatives
Clay Farris Naff of Nebraskans for Science shares some reflections on “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” after viewing it with in a packed house in Lincoln, Nebraska — a region with, of course, close ties to Kansas and itself home to a fiesty, hopeless outnumbered band of progressive prairie populists. (…)
Here comes Rand Paul and the Tea Party
After a year of proclaiming that the Tea Party, which about 18% of Americans claim to support, represents a popular uprising against President Obama, the Republican Party is now trying to stuff the tea back in the bag
A Kansas farmers perspective on financial speculation
Chatting with Kansas Farmers Union President Donn Teske this morning, in advance of his appearance with the movie in Lincoln, Nebraska, reminded us recently that the proposed legislation to impose tighter regulation on the banks and Wall Street comes out of the Agriculture Department. Huh? As Slate’s Explainer explains:
Because traders used to gamble with corn. (…)
How to Escape a Partisan Echo Chamber
We all know by now that our President’s vision of an America (esp. (…)
Democrats distracted by wedge issues of their own?
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala) says that Democrats should focus on the economy this year, not immigration or global warming. “One in ten Americans are unemployed. Wages are stagnant. (…)
Inside the mind of the Tea Partier
Today, of course, was “Tax Day,” marked by 768 Tea Party Protests across the country. (Slate has a map of how the movement has grown across the country.)
For the occasion, the Tea Party will unveil a “Contract From America,” a ten-point list which was arrived at through polling of its members. Here’s a summary:
(1) Require each bill to identify its constitutional authorization
(2) Defund, repeal, and replace government-run health care
(3) Demand a balanced budget
(4) End runaway government spending by imposing a statutory cap limiting growth in federal spending
(5) Enact fundamental reform to simplify and lower taxes. (…)
Pope Michael: The Movie
In a small town in Kansas, a small group of Conclavists believe that all every Pope elected since Vatican II is a heretic (and the appointments to the College of Cardinals since 1958 to be invalid), so they’ve elected their own — David Bawden, or Pope Michael. (…)
Brownback challenged from his Right
It looks like the latest challenge to the political right in Kansas is…the even further right? (…)